Exotics and Retrospectives. By Lafcadio Hearn. (Little, Brown, and Co.)—Mr.
Lafcadio Hearn is always interesting when he writes about Japan and Japanese modes of thought ; but though there are several entertaining essays in the present volume, the work, as a whole, does not rise to the very high level of his two previous books. The style is as captivating as ever, but the subjects chosen are not of such universal interest. The best of the papers are those on climbing Fuji-no-Yams, on insect musicians, on frogs, and on moon-desire. Very curious are the papers called respectively "Sadness in Beauty and "Frissons." In the first of these Mr. Hearn tries to suggest the reason why tears-
" Rise to the heart and gather to the eyes, On looking at the happy autumn fields."
He seems, ea far as we can make out, to think that the survivals of our dead selves—i.e., of the thousand lives lived by us before —somehow vibrate with regret when the sunset glow recalls to them sunset glows seen ages before. "To the windows of the house of life their phantoms crowd—like prisoners towards some vision of bright skies and flying birds, free hills and glimmer streams, beyond the iron of their bars." That is a very pretty piece of fantastic transcendentalism, but we fear that it will not stand any very close analysis.
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