CURRENT LITERATURE.
The most interesting article in the Atlantic Monthly is Mr. G. P. Lathrop's account of the "Hawthorne Manuscripts." There is scant piety to the dead in publishing what was obviously never meant for publication ; but criticism such as Mr. Lathrop's, as reverent as it is acute, is perfectly legitimate. It is most interesting to watch, under the guidance of one thoroughly acquainted with the subject, the workings of a great artist's mind. "By Horse-cars into Mexico" is an "incident of travel" vigorously described. "Mr. Carlyle's Country" gives us familiar scenes from a fresh point of view. Fiction is represented by what must be called, we suppose, a novelette, "Antagonism." It seems meant to show us what the fiction of the future in America is to be. Here we have some twenty pages with- out so much as a single incident in them; two young people talk together, and let us see what it is that hinders the result wholly desired by others and half-desired by themselves,—that they should fall in love. It is clever enough, but a trifle wearisome. Long- fellow's posthumous poem, "Michael Angelo," is brought to a conclusion.
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