CURRENT LITERATURE.
English Idyls and other Poems. By Jane Ellice. (Macmillan and Co.)—We cannot place the author of these very pretty verses above the class of good imitators. She has studied the Laureate's writings until she can mock his style with the most perfect fidelity, and produces something almost as good as the model. Only there is a certain want of force—the manner is rather more studied than the matter, and the Laureate's tendency to digress into description of scenery is carried to a
always the salient points, of their favourite, that what is in his hands a livelihood, and that the road to it ought Therefore to be smoothe beauty becomes in them a fault, simply because they give us too much them. We quite agree with her that parents who cannot provide for of it. Nor is the same error confined to style ; it may be seen in the their daughters are unjust to them in comparison with the boys. Almost choice of subjects. There can be no doubt, we think, that if Mr. all parents consider themselves bound to give their sons a fair start in Tennyson had never written The Two Sisters Miss Ellice would never life, but they do little for the girls, who when the father dies find them- have written Leoline. But the revenge of Mr. Tennyson's subject is selves penniless and without a trade. This tells most on the middle natural, if exaggerated and horrible. The woman had been wrong, and classes, for the women of the lower classes are largely employed in menu- she slays her enemy. Leoline becomes the object of the lawless desires factories, and what these last need is mostly protection from mere money- of a "proud Earl," and her husband therefore kills her and takes the making employers. But the middle classes are shut out from employ- Earl her corpse. Bat this is simply preposterous. Virginius did not ment in a measure by public opinion. Against this Miss Parkes contends kill his daughter till the haters had their hands on her. Men do not as unfair, and we think rightly. Since we make women support them- proceed to that last extremity till the last injury has been endured, or selves, we should give them fair play. The essays, which are more is at least imminent. Leoline's husband goes to meet it, as it were. practical in character, do not seem to 1113 quite equal to the introduction. Any but a fool would have tried to remove to a place of safety, or even The volume is very prettily bound.
trusted to the chapter of accidents, before killing the woman he loved. Memoirs Read before the Anthropological Society of London, 18634. And if these violent situations are not founded on the simple passions Vol. I. (Trabner and Co.)—This very unprejudiced society quite proper to the whole human race, if they can only ba justified on the realizes the aspiration of the gentleman who wished to form a social club theory of a peculiar idiosyncrasy in the person described, the poem of which the one sole and fundamental rule was to be that everything becomes horrible—it does not awe, but revolt. If a diseased mind is to was an open question. While fully acting up to this great principle, the be depicted, it must be done at large, as in Maud so that the reader members, however, seem to us to linger rather wearisomely over the clearly understands that he is studying morbid mental anatomy. " everlasting nigger." The President contributes an elaborate paper on Generally, however, Miss Ellice writes on simpler moods of passion or the negro's place in nature, which is strictly in conformity with the
the domestic affections, and here her poems will give real pleasure. highest principles of the society, for it leaves everything as it found it
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