None of the old-established magazines adheres so persistently to the
traditions of a somewhat sombre past as does the Atlantic Monthly. It despises illustrations, and never breaks out into eccentricity of type. Yet the May number stands out con- spicuous for the positive embarrassment of riches that it offers to its readers in the way of substantial and readable miscellaneous articles. Take, for example, Mr. McMaster's "The Political Depravity of the Fathers." Americans who are very properly horrified by Tammany Hall and its works, may find it refreshing to learn that "a very little study of long-forgotten politics will suffice to show that in filibustering and gerrymandering, in stealing governorships and legislatures, in using force at the polls, in colonising and in distributing patronage to whom patronage is due, in all the frauds and tricks that go to make up the worst form of practical politics, the men who founded our State and National Governments were always our equals, and often our masters." Equally good, though quite different in style and subject, are "Some Notes on the Art of John La Farge," "Christmas Shopping at Assuan," and "New Figures in Literature and Art,"—the last a most competent criticism of a very capable new American writer, Mr. Richard Harding Davis. The fiction is very good. Especially excellent is the new instalment of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's story of "A Singular Life." The intensity of the preacher's fight for the soul of the drunkard is almost Ilugoesque.
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