The History of a Parisienne. By OCTAVE FEUILLET. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers. The heroine of this story, if heroine she may be called, is a Parisian woman of fashion, and is depicted in the first chapter as an angel. This angel eventually marries a certain Baron de Maurescamp, the choice of her mother, and like all such marriages contracted by other than the parties most concerned, it turns out to be a truly unfortunate affair. Upon awaking from her first blissful dream of love, and realizing that the gaudy bubble of her imagination has bursted, the angel, whose name is Jeanne, begins to show signs of mortal attributes, and in the course of the story is transformed into a vindictive fiend by the brutal conduct of her husband, with whom it soon becomes apparent she has no sympathies in common. Having determined herself fully upon this point, she seeks that essential congeniality of disposition in the person of another man, and near the end of the book is discovered in an attempt on the baron's life. There is nothing which could be called a plot in the story, -simply a thread of connecting incidents,-and its whole tendency is to palliate immorality, giving plausible argument for the commission of acts which circumstances scarcely justify. As in numerous French writings, the effect of reading such a work would be, upon many minds, extremely hurtful, if it even proved entertaining. Hours of Fancy; or, Vigil and Vision. A Book of Poems. By ALDINE S. KIEFFER. Dayton, Va: Ruebush, Kieffer & Co. The author of this volume appears to have been a soldier in the Confederate army, and with a Southerner's natural partiality for the "gray" has infused in many of his poems a sentiment for that color. This is more particularly noticeable in some lines entitled "Confederate Dead," to which is appended a dirge: "Sleep, sleep, sleep, And the April clouds shall ever Tears of grief o'er those who never The allusion to liberty sounds strangely; but aside from things of this nature the poetry is good, and the author has shown a keen appreciation of the beauties of nature, mingled with deep sympathy for the ills of life, which is very pleasing. Nor does he “gush” of “babbling brooks,” with faint allusions to "hyacinth bowers," and all that. On the contrary, in many places a more thoughtful selection of words would have proved beneficial, but the majority of his verses are strong in their simplicity and common sense. An instance of this may be found under the head of "Longings": "For each sweet joy that dies, a pain is born, As surely as the evening follows morn. And pain lives longest in this world of ours, As thorns survive the death of all the flowers." and the stanzas following are all as good, but it is unfortunate that a little further on the printer should make Mr. Kieffer say: "Fold back my dust within thy bosom watm," instead of warm, as he no doubt intended. In some instances the rhythm seems somewhat strained, as "The first to speak was Denville Dold, Who in brief words his story told." The name "Dold" in this instance seems very much as if it was selected to rhyme with "told" without reference to its beauty as a name. There are other minor points, which careful revision might have obviated, but as a whole, "Hours of Fancy" cannot fail to be looked upon with favor. Among its principal poems worthy of note is the "Phantom Bride" and "Sir Fontaine's Ride," both New Year's stories, and dealing in ghosts extensively, as most New Year's stories do,-the latter being on the order of Burns's "Tam O'Shanter," with the exception that Sir Fontaine is chief ghost of the procession. Other poems, under the head of "Lyrics," are very sweet and pretty, and evince strong feeling upon the writer's part. No truer sentiment than this can be expressed in words, singularly apropos. What is Art ?—We are lost in the consideration of the above question, from the fact that there seems to be a general haziness or fogginess existing as to what constitutes art, especially as we have tailors designating themselves "arttailots." There is in the term art, when applied in a very wide sense, a latitude or all-embracing power, which includes in its range the whole of the arts of peace and war. Industrial art, imitative art, high art, and low art, plastic art, and constructive art, all these are terms which roll glibly off the tongues of the numerous preachers on art matters. The query at the head of this paper is, we think, a very pertinent question in these days, when dukes, lords, and commons are delivering fine speeches, orations, and diatribes on art on every convenient occasion; when everybody seems called upon to air their theories and dilate upon the canons of art; when schools of design abound; when multitudes of writers in the various professional journals are striving to indoctrinate the public with their individual and peculiar ideas on the subject; when book after book is being published upon art at home and art abroad, art in the work-shop and factory, art in and upon everything, until everything we use and wear must be works of art or nothing. According to these apostles of art, we must furnish our houses in accordance with the peculiar art-notions of this and that professor. One eminent teacher tells us that the patch-work style of Japan is the thing for us, and is so convinced by the fact, that he goes into a large way of business in order to be able to supply the articles he recommends. Another equally eminent man tells us that we can only prove true art in our home by following his particular ideas of art, and so ad libitum, but in all this we find no answer to our question as to what is art. Let us see if we can answer the question. One great authority tells us that art is the expression of man's delight in God's | work. If we accept this doctrine, we must conclude that the nearer we approach nature in our efforts to produce art works the better the art; and that all good art must be natural in its form and expression. Art is defined by another writer as having for its motive and end the giving of pleasure. While we acknowledge that the giving of pleasure to others is one of the purest and best pleasures we ourselves can enjoy, we can hardly accept this as the highest motive in the production of art works, nor indeed as a primary motive, for we are well assured that some of the greatest and most important works the world has seen have been done without a thought of what others would think about them. A real and true artist is and ever must be absorbed in his work, having no thought of what he or she will say. He has no room in his thoughts for such ideas, the whole powers of his brain and intellect are concentrated upon what he is doing. If this were not so, how poor that work would be; no doubt works thus created do give the keenest pleasure to the beholder, and the artist himself will derive pleasure from the success which elicits such expressions from others, there being but few of us who are insensible to praise or blame (replicas of Diogenes being exceedingly rare). Another writer makes out art to be the science of the beautiful, and gives his reason that beautiful objects create feeling, hence the word æsthetics, which is ever at the tongue's-end of pretenders to art knowledge, who apply the word, or rather misapply it, to objects having no connection with art whatever. Beautiful objects are produced by art, but this is simply one of the effects or results of art, and not art. The varions writers on æsthetics, from Baumgarten, | Schelling, Hegel, Metor Cousin, to Burke, on the sublime and beautiful; Allison, Jeffries, and others discourse most eloquently on the aesthetics of art, but we cannot gather from any or all of these what really constitutes art. They preach of association of ideas, Platonism, and all sorts of notions in connection with art, which are simply not art, but some of its effects. We conceive art to be the active manifestation of the inventive and creative faculty in man, elevated and refined by intellectual culture, acting upon and controlling the imagination. Let us see how this applies. Primitive art, as exhibited by savage tribes, is in its degree as true a manifestation of art as is the highest production of the most cultivated intellect. We say in its degree, for it will be evident that the savage can only carve or paint up to and not beyond the standard of his intellectual or imitative faculties; what he knows he can represent in his own way, but no more; and what he does he marks with his own individuality, the mind showing itself in the work, which is the vital test of all art. Skill in manipulation, while necessary, and, in fact, indispensable to art, is in itself but a medium for the visible rendering of the thought influencing the mind at the time. In carving his war-club or the prow of his canoe, in weaving the mats he wears or uses, or in arranging the shells, feathers, animals' teeth, and other objects with which he adorns himself, he no doubt follows, to some extent, the traditions and customs of his fathers, especially in those wonderful geometrical patterns which he produces with such exactness, interlaced in such intricate and labyrinthian form, leading us almost to the conclusion that there is an instinctive faculty of order implanted in the human mind, which impels even the most ignorant savage to arrange his decorative treasures in symmetrical forms, and, while possibly imitating to some extent what has been done before, gives to his work some sort of impress of his own individuality, which constitutes what is called art. Rising in the scale of civilization, knowledge, and intelligence, we find the same principles in application, but in a higher and more intellectual form. The symbolism in the works of the ancient Egyptians, and their representations of the games, customs, and ceremonies, while retaining a general resemblance, are each and all full of evidence of true art; that is, individualism. Coming down still later, we see this principle more strongly and fully exemplified in painting, sculpture, and music. The greatest workers of the greatest artists of any age or country carry out this principle, and have written it in plain language on their works. We see in these works the motive, the feeling, and the inner mind of the artist, from whence the conceptive idea emanated and was perfected; we see in it the master mind and hand, the two being in perfect unison; the individualism is so marked that hundreds of years after, their works can be distinguished from all others. And when the material value of these works comes to be appraised, how soon do the judges apportion the difference in value of an original by a great master, and a copy of the same! In the one is the man as he lived, thought, and worked, and in the other we see but a copy, and, however close that may be to the original, its value as a work of art is nil. No copyist can impart that indescribable charm which the original possesses; he can simply render what he sees, which is not his individualism, but another's, and is not art. The greater the mind, the|tographers and photography, but art is something different greater the art. In the works of Michael Angelo we see evidences of power, vast, sublime, a towering majesty of mind, which is impressed in unmistakable language upon all he has done, written so large that all men who behold his works, high and low, the ignorant and the learned, are alike impressed with the grandeur and sublimity of the concep tions of his mind, which qualities are the essence and sum of all art. Where these qualities are absent, art does not and hence the pictures are produced independently. He does not create them; he merely chooses his positions, sup| plies the means, the light does the rest. As a matter of course, there is in photography (as in all else) scope for the exercise of skili, taste, and knowledge, there being pho exist. Coming down to our own times, with whose art productions we are more immediately concerned, we find that the term art is being prostituted to purposes whose sole aim and end is money-making, therefore it is all the more necessary that we should understand what art really is. The painter who from the unity of mind and hand creates is an artist (i.e. a creator of art). Whatever be the subject of his work, pictorial or decorative, in which he clearly and distinctly shows the motive which actuates and governs him, and which is imprinted unmistakably on all he does, then he is an artist; otherwise, he is simply a copying machine, and not an art-creator or artist. We hear much nowadays of art manufactures; there is no such thing, nor can there be. We have been taught that engravings are works of art. The engraving itself, the work of the engraver on copper or other metal, may be a work of art, for although he may copy the work of some great master and engrave it, yet the very nature of his work necessitates a creative power, in order to give a faithful rendering of the painter's work. Here, again, while the manipulative skill is indispensable, and must be acquired by long practice and experience, it is nought without the mind to comprehend and control the hand which executes. Many of our great engravers have been and are true artists, but the copies taken from their works, which are called engravings, are not in themselves works of art, but are simply copies of a work of art obtained by mechanical means, and do not require the aid of the artist, but can be, and are, produced by persons not having one spark of artistic feeling in them. The same principle applies if we take music, which is termed one of the fine arts. It is the composer, the creator, and not the singer, who is the true artist; it is he whose name goes down to posterity on the roll of fame. The singer may be, and often is, a truly artistic expositor of the great maestro's works, but after all he is but the expositor and not the creator, consequently holds but a secondary place in the temple of fame. The true artist is the originator, the inventor. We might as well say that the printer who prints the score is an artist; his is not a work of art, nor are the copies he produces works of art, and so it is with engravings. Photography is not art; it is the result of scientific principles applied through and by the aid of light to the production of sun-prints, and is, in fact, reduced to a mere mechanical process. There is no trace of the artist's mind, | to this. There can be no art without originality; the degree of imagination and refinement pervading each manifestation of this originality or creative power will in a great measure depend upon the peculiar properties of the imagination possessed by each particular individual, being in its expression high or low, refined or coarse, according to the degree of culture, knowledge, and experience each individual mind is possessed of, apart entirely from manipulative skill. Hundreds of men can copy who cannot originate or create; these are not artists, nor art-workmen. Let us enter one of the numerous so-called art manufactories, where so much of the sham cut furniture is made. We there see men employed making furniture in the prevailing style, whatever may be fashionable at the time. One man is making one part, one another, and still yet another part is being made by some one else, and in the aggregate reproducing mere fac-similes of what has been originated and created long ago. These men, with other workmen so engaged, are no doubt, so far as their manipulative skill is concerned, the best of their kind, but they are mere human machines, not allowed (even if they had the power) to depart one iota from their model. Labor is divided and sub-divided, and each individual workman is compelled to go on grinding away at a stereotyped pattern, ad infinitum, until it becomes almost impossible for him to get out of the rut or groove; his inventive or creative powers become blunted, or lost entirely. Now these men cannot by any stretch of language be called art-workmen, nor is the work they produce art-work. If a man adds to the article he makes anything of detail, either in form, color, or as a decoration, and that addition is entirely his own original idea, his own creation, that man produces art-work, poor and feeble it may be, but yet art, it being, however simple, a manipulation of the inventive and creative power possessed by that individual man. This being admitted, let us get away from the cant of the day, and call a spade a spade. Art can invent and create, can construct and carve, can paint and draw, but art cannot be manufactured. Notes. We are in receipt of the " Mississippi Valley Medical Monthly," published at Memphis, Tenn., and edited by Julius Wise, M.D. It is a magazine devoted exclusively to the medical profession, containing lectures and essays on interesting cases, their treatment and cure. The copy before us is number six of the first volume, and as it is yet young the publisher has our best wishes for the success of his undertaking.We are also in receipt of a pamphlet from the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education, giving an interesting account of the progress of education in Belgium and Malta, and some statistics on illiteracy and crime in France. In reference to the latter, of over three thousand criminals arrested in one year for various crimes, only five hundred could read and write well. HOME AND SOCIETY. Home. No word in any language conveys so many pleasing memories or satisfying thoughts as this little word, Home. It whispers to our hearts of cheery firesides, and gently recalls those happy faces about the table when all the family-circle is complete. The father, with admiring smile, is listening proudly to his youngster's prattle, while mother darts her approving glances from behind the cozy tea-urn and now and then gives some advice to these, her dear ones, that will in after-years be light unto their feet. And thus in such a home the youthful minds of good and great are framed and formed, so when temptations come they reap the good of such instruction and find the strength to battle with their tempter. Strangely enough, a Frenchman has not at his command a single word that means home, nor any equivalent. He can say, "My house," or, "I will go to my wife," but he has no home, and the lack of this restraining influence has greatly affected the morals of French society. In this country its blessings are fully appreciated, and every effort made to make home the abode of comfortthough not in comfort alone does the sweet influence lay, but in that invisible bond of holy affection which binds one member of a happy household to the other, and makes their intercourse one of perpetual enjoyment. Let this element be lacking and all other attractions will sink into nothingness. On the other hand, some homes are rendered distasteful by the prim and scrupulously exact appearance of every apartment, which the mother of the household feels it her bounden duty to maintain at all hazards. She will follow her husband or the children about and pick up every raveling they let fall, or straighten every misplaced chair, until the constraints of such a home are irksome, and this husband or children will seek elsewhere the freedom their natures require. To obviate this it is essential not only that the fireside should be made comfortable, but that some amusement be also furnished to attract and keep ever alive the flame of this mutual love. A want which is chiefly supplied by literature. Every home should be graced by some journal that will furnish sufficient reading; but great care must be exercised in the selection of that journal, since our opinions and impressions are formed by what we read, especially in youth. A perfect home, then, is where its inmates have every freedom that is consistent with a proper respect and regard for one another, and where they may find, in pleasant intercourse and the enjoyment of innocent pleasures, the requisite recreation from daily labor. It is with the idea of assisting to attain this.object that POTTER'S AMERICAN MONTHLY is designed, and as issue follows issue, it strives to supply the great demand for pure and refined, yet entertaining literature. Grandmother's Part in the Family." How old are you?" asked a small lad one day of an elderly gentleman. "I am very nearly sixty," was the reply. "Then," said the precocious interlocutor, "your best days are over." "I hope they are still to come," answered the gentle philosopher. These two views of old age resume all that has been said about it. A few look forward to the portion of years on the verge of life's last horizon as to a privileged span; the majority avert their eyes from it, as from a dreary spacechilly and desolate. The young, with their buoyant animal spirits, their gay dreams of existence, feel separated by what seems an impassable gulf from the time when pleasures will have worn themselves out; when hopes and passions will be chilled; friends and loves departed; strength and beauty fled. To those in the heyday of activity the thought of old age seems as unrealizable and remote as the thought of death itself. When the prime of life is past, for the first time, perhaps, the thought of old age rises like a cold monitor, and the heart's pulses get slackened and chilled by the contemplation. So many projects still remain unfinished that have been begun, or are only planned out in the brain; there is so much yet to be done; for the first time rises the question, "Will there be time to do it all?" The shock of beholding the shadow of old age coming across the waste of life is perhaps keenest to the dreamer. So many of these sit under the shadow of the hill of knowledge, listening to the whispers of those who have climbed the summit. Dreamers are imaginatively ambitious as a rule, and they have fondly hugged the thought that they, too, would climb, and talk on to the living after they are dead; and now, lo! old age is coming, and the great work is not begun yet that is to make them be remembered at the feast of existence when their place at it will know them no more. Of all revolts against the activity and chill of years, that of the old is the most depressing to witness. "Oh! the joys that came down shower-like Of friendship, love, and liberty Ere I was old! Ere I was old-oh! woeful ere !** says Coleridge. It is probable, therefore, that the large part of the human race considers old age as an evil. But it is one, as the Italian proverb has it, that all men desire to have for themselves; and plentiful are the directions given by which this evil may be attained by the cultivation of a sound digestion, an equable temper, and the stern repression of undue sensitiveness. In one of his witty maximes, where truth is uttered in a most delicate and compact form, that polite and smiling misanthropist, La Rochefoucauld, says, "Few men know how to age becomingly." Perhaps, if this art of understanding how to grow old were mastered, the saying of the sage would be justified who placed his best days in his declining years. It would then be indeed like the last act of a well-written play, to which it has been likened. The climax is reached, the fate of the characters is decided; only here it is the portion of the passions and cares that have ruled life that is pointed out. This love is extinguished; this absorbing ambition is put away like a worthless care; that neglected aspiration is brought forward and placed in the very core of the heart. "It is, then, all the comfort that I find in my old age," says Montaigne in one of his immortal essays, "that it deadens many desires in me, and many cares that troubled life; care for the court and the world; care for wealth, greatness, science, health, for myself." The old age of the domineering egotist-of the cynic whose mummified moral nature is embalmed in epigrams is only one degree less degrading than that of the voluptuary, whose white-faced terror of death would be piteous were it not revolting. There is a loveliness and a charm in old age to whom accumulating years have brought wisdom and left the feelings young. Those dear, enchanting old people, who can enjoy nature and sympathize with youth, laugh at innocent jokes, and who have yet seen enough to understand pity-there is something of the priest and the patriarch in such characters. Their neighborhood to the next world gives a sacredness to their personality; their experience of this one makes them our surest guides in our perplexities. They have traveled over life's country, and understand the roads and the cross-roads thereof. On the relation of the old to the young, Victor Hugo has treated in a poem entitled "L'Art d'être Grand-père." In those fresh and genial pages he has celebrated the delight a child can bring to the old man; the cheer, like hearkening to the chirpings of a nestful of birds, its babble gives-the pure thought its innocence suggests the phantasies its vivid imagination kindles. If the tie between the grandfather and child be so subtle, it would seem that the one between it and the grandmother would be many-sided. On the continent, where families, especially in country houses, live in a more patriarchal manner than here, and where it not unfrequently happens that we find three generations living under one roof, the rôle of the grandmother is perhaps more definite. Her experience directs the young mother how to supply the first physical and mental needs of the child; her days of leisurely quiet, spent away from the bustle of life, give her greater opportunities of watching the little one at its games, of listening to its prattle, and entering into its interests; her experienced and more unprejudiced eyes may often discern the varied individualities growing up together in the family brood. And when the little maid steps from childhood into young girlhood, something, often like a mystic tie, unites her to the grandmother. To youth and to old age the present has little import. The attractiveness of life lies away from it. The calm anticipation, in a beautiful old age, of the life beyond the grave, exercises a singular power over youth. A venerable presence near the threshold of the other world is like an assurance of that other world to the young in the first fervor of religious enthusiasm. The vividness with which the old remember the notable days of their past is one of the most touching characteristics of age. In Tennyson's poem, The Grandmother," this 66 Growing Old.— -"What is the secret of your long life?" asked Alexander, the young master of the world, of a peasant numbering a hundred and sixty years. The reply was significant, whether regarded as fact or symbol; it was simply: "Oil without and honey within." A sweet soul breathing good-will and hyblæan kindness; an external, suave, genial, unctuous, smoothing the roughness of every-day contact, will of itself insure long years. "Old age is unlovely," said the bard of Selma, to whom life was worthless except as filled with the clash of arms and the prowess of contending warriors; but there is no charm in our day in the ghastly crash of artillery and the deadly aim of a Minié rifle, against which the ancient shield and armor of woven steel are as the spider's web. "The pitcher shall be broken at the fountain, desire shall fail, and the grasshopper be a burden," is a sorry picture of man in any aspect, and for ages children have pondered these paragraphs till they became ingrained, and cast melancholy shadows as the years lengthened. When a child of eight or nine years old, I chanced upon a book of anecdotes, which seemed to me a treasure. I had early imbibed a horror for the wrinkles and disabilities of old people, who, it seemed to me, were neglected and solitary, while my own long-lived relatives never grew old, but were bright and intelligent to the last; and I attributed this difference to the superior colloquial powers of the latter; which was not a bad inference for a child. I explained to my older sister this philosophy in this wise: "When most of people grow old, they are hideous; wrinkled, doubled up, and dull and disagreeable, I can't bear them. I mean to learn all I can out of this book, so that I may have something to talk about, and be funny sometimes." |