CURRENT LITERATURE.
By far the most significant article in the Universal Review for this month is from the pen of Count Tolstoy,. on " Marriage, Morality, and Christianity." It affords a striking contrast to the outrageously lax views as to the future relation of the sexes given in the last number by Mr. Grant Allen. The Count's aim, on the : contrary, is to exalt and purify humanity ; but much of his argu- ment, as the editor observes, is " strained to breaking-point," and his judgment of our Saviour's teaching with regard to marriage is that of a fanatic. With much that Count Tolstoy says we agree heartily ; but what can we think of a man's sanity who asserts that marriage, from a Christian point of view, is "not a progress, but a fall ; " that Christ " rather disapproved it than otherwise ;" and that sexual relations under the sanc- tion of marriage are a weakness and a sin ? The article is translated from an unpublished MS., with the approval of the author. A paper headed " Some Unpublished MSS. of the Poet Cowper," is of a wholly painful character. One of them is a dismal but grateful hymn describing his illusions when insane and his deliverance from them. 'There is no trace in it of the future poet. Then there is a letter to Mrs. Unwin written by Cowper while watching over his dying brother at Cambridge, and expressing alarm as to his spiritual state. " I go to sleep," he writes, "in a storm, imagining that I hear his cries, and wake in terror lest he should be just departing." In a letter to Teedon, the poor fellow whom Cowper at one time regarded as an oracle, he writes of his "infinite despair," and his persuasion that he shall " perish miserably, and as no man ever did." Mr. Traill's "Trumpet of Fame," which is concluded in this number, is a clever skit, written in the form of a tale, on the personalities and weedy gossip of the Society journals, Mr. Quilter writes once more, in an eminently readable article, of " The Art of England;" and Mrs. Crawford describes " The Rival Salons" in the Champs Elysees and in the Champs de Mars. The attractive- ness of these papers is much increased by illustrations.
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