gave dissatisfaction to the neighbors, and when it became known that he was ap pointed to West Point, one of them said to his father: "So Hamer has made Ulyss a cadet?" "Yes." "I am astonished that he didn't appoint some one with intellect enough to do credit to the district." Improving snubs have attended many steps of Grant's life, civil and military; but nothing has soured him, and he is so far from "a good hater," that he probably cherishes enmity against no man alive. He is in fact a good forgiver, as good a forgiver as Lincoln himself, who could have said nothing better than Grant did when the insolent Rebel officers at Vicksburg failed to offer him a chair, during the visit he made them after their surren<.. : Well, if Pemberton can stand it, under the circumstances, I can." Here is the large allowance for human nature so eminently characteristic of Lincoln; and in some of the other stories Mr. Richardson gives there are touches of humor which remind us of Lincoln's peculiar pleasantry.

At Vicksburg, "a young Rebel officer, an aid of Bowen's, was brought in prisoner. He rode a beautiful horse, with a quilted saddle and costly trappings. He answered a few questions, and then manifested the assurance of his class::

"PRISONER. 'General Grant, this horse and saddle don't belong to the Confederate government, but are my private property, presented by my father. I should be glad if I might retain them.'

"GRANT.-'I have got three or four horses, which are also my private property, meandering about the Confederacy. I'll make an exchange with you. We'll keep yours, and when you find one of mine, just take it in his place!'"

There are notices of nearly all of Grant's associates and many of his contemporaries in this personal history, and, on the whole, it might have been called a history of the war with no great presumption. Necessarily, perhaps, in making a book for strictly popular sale, a big one is desirable, and bigness is the greatness that comes of "stuffing out with straw." We must not conceal that the present work is considerably padded, not only with irrelevant narrative, but with any little story of Frederick the Great, or Napoleon, or Daniel Webster, or anybody, or any little quotation that happens to take Mr. Richardson's passing fancy. Yet it is an entertaining book; it is a valuable book in so far as the writer is eye and ear witness

of many things Grant did and said, and has his material at first-hand. We readily conceive of its outliving the political campaign.

Modern Women and what is said of them. A Reprint of a Series of Articles in the Saturday Review. With an Introduction by MRS. LUCIA GILBERT CALHOUN, New York: J. S. Redfield.

THE general impression received from these varying and very unequal essays is that the Girl of the Period is entirely worthy of the Critic of the Period. In him the fine elements of satire are as degenerate as those of dressing and pleasing in her; extravagance, coarseness, and commonness characterize them both; and if the girl has taken her costume and manners from Anonyma, it appears that the critic has formed his ideas and opinions upon the same authority. We give a passage from a paper entitled "Costume and its Morals," which is offered as a sketch of fashionable life, and which will illustrate our meaning very well:

"A white or spotted veil is thrown over the visage, in order that the adjuncts that properly belong to the theatre may not be immediately detected in the glare of daylight; and thus, with diaphanous tinted face, large painted eyes, and stereotyped smile, the lady goes forth looking much more as if she had stepped out of the green-room of a theatre, or from a Haymarket saloon, than from an English home. But it is in evening costume that our women have reached the minimum of dress and the maximum of brass. We remember a venerable old lady whose ideas of decorum were such, that in her speech all above the foot was ankle, and all below the chin was chest; but now the female bosom is less the subject of a revelation than the feature of an exposition, and charms that were once reserved are now made the common property of every looker-on. A costume which has been described as consisting of a smock, a waistband, and a frill seems to exceed the bounds of honest lib erality, and resembles most perhaps the attire mentioned by Rabelais, 'nothing before and nothing behind, with sleeves of the same.' Not very long ago two gentlemen were standing together at the Opera. 'Did you ever see anything like that?' inquired one, with a significant glance, directing the eyes of his companion to the

uncovered bust of a lady immediately below. Not since I was weaned,' was the suggestive reply. We are not aware whether the speaker was consciously or unconsciously reproducing a well-known archiepiscopal mot.”

We imagine the late Miss Menken, if she had taken to satire instead of serious poetry, treating the same subject in exactly this manner,- —a little more decently, perhaps ; and we are not unjust to very many papers in this collection in offering the quoted passages as characteristic. It is not, of course, to be supposed that they depict any but the most exceptional phases of English society; and if anything is to be argued from the notoriety these essays from the Saturday Review have attained, it is an intellectual, not a moral decay. It is very sad to reflect that the ideas of brilliancy in our generation are derived from sarcasms like the following:

"There is a certain melancholy in tracing further the career of the Fading Flower. We long to arrest it at each of these picturesque stages, as we long to arrest the sunset in its lovelier moments of violet and

gold. But the sunset dies into the gray of eve, and woman sets with the same fatal persistency. The evanescent tints fade into the gray. Woman becomes hard, angular, colorless. Her floating sentiment, so graceful in its mobility, curdles into opinions. Her conversation, so charmingly impalpable, solidifies into discussion. Her character, like her face, becomes rigid and osseous. She intrenches herself in the 'ologies. She works pinafores for New-Zealanders in the May Meetings, and appears in wondrous bonnets at the Church Congress. She adores Mr. Kingsley because he is carnest, and groans over the triviality of the literature of the day. She takes up the grievances of her sex, and badgers the puzzled overseer who has omitted to place her name on the register. She pronounces old men fogies, and young men intolerable. She throws out dark hints of her intention to compose a great work which shall settle everything. Then she bursts into poetry, and pens poems of so fiery a passion that her family are in consternation lest she

should elope with the half-pay officer who meets her by moonlight on the pier. Then she plunges into science, and cuts her hair short to be in proper trim for Professor Huxley's lectures."

It strikes us that the ideas and sarcasms here are of about equal value with the Girl of the Periods' pinchbeck gauds and ornaments, and that the satirist has not even the poor advantage of displaying them at first-hand. We have all seen this dreary, dreary stuff before; it is inexpressibly cheap and poor.

We have already hinted a distinction between the two classes of essays in this book, which are apparently by several hands. Those studying modern women's minds, as "Women's Heroines," "Interference," "Plain Girls," "Ambitious Minds," "Pretty Preachers," etc., are much better than the pictures of women's manners. But there is throughout the book an air of brutality and of savage excess as far from true satire as from truth; and the dull, industrious pounding of denunciation in the worse papers, unrelieved by any flash of humor or wit, is to the last degree tedious.

The Story of the Kearsarge and Alabama. San Francisco: Henry Payot & Co.

THE author, who has been induced to publish this narrative of the famous combat between the Kearsarge and the Alabama, by the want that existed of a popular, detailed, and yet concise account of the affair, may congratulate himself on having exactly met this want. We have read his clear, full, brief history of an action already so familiar with fresh interest and fresh intelligence. With no feeble-minded impulses to be dramatic or picturesque, he is graphic in the best way, and brings the whole occurrence before his reader with the simplicity of a sensible man, and the quiet power of an artist. We think we could have read even a duller narrative with pleasure in the exquisite print which the publishers have given his little book, and which is noticeable as characteristic of the California press.

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OT so much criticism as personal recollections of the men who have "painted and passed away," and of some who are still working out the great problem of life among us, would seem to be wanted just now.

Let us begin, therefore, with GILBERT STUART, one of the best painters for male portraiture since the days of Titian, Velasquez, Rubens, Vandyck, and Rembrandt. A man of noble type himself, robust and hearty, with a large frame, and the bearing of one who might stand before kings, all Stuart's men look as if they were predestined statesmen, or had sat in council, or commanded armies,

their very countenances being a biography, and sometimes a history of their day; while his women, often wanting in the grace and tenderness we look for in the representations of Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Sir Thomas Lawrence or Sully, are always creatures of flesh and blood, like Mrs. Madison, or Polly Madison as they still persist in calling her, though somewhat too strongly individualized perhaps for female portraiture.

I.

At our first interview, which happened nearly fifty years ago, when Stuart was not far from sixty-five, this freshlooking, old-fashioned, large-hearted man, reminding you constantly of Washington himself, and General Knox or Greene, or perhaps of the late Mr. Perkins, Thomas H., who were all in their look and bearing rather more English than American, insisted on my emptying a tumbler of old East Indian Madeira, which he poured out from a half-gallon ewer, like cider or switchel in haying-time. And this at an early hour of the day, when cider itself or switchel might have been too much for a youngster like me, brought up, if not on bread and milk, at least on the plainest of wholesome food.

At first, having heard much of his propensity for hoaxing, I could hardly believe him when he threw off about half a tumblerful, and, smacking his lips, told me it was Madeira which had been twice round the Cape; nor did he believe me, I am afraid, when I told him I never did anything of the sort, for he winked at me as much as to say, “Can't

In the course of an hour's chat that followed, he told me story after story of himself, some of which are well worth repeating. First, he tried me with a pun, which he had let off in a high wind, for the sake of saying de gustibus non disputandum, and which I swallowed without a wry face, though it went sadly against my stomach; and then he launched out into a severe though pleasant criticism upon our social habits, our Pilgrim Fathers, the blue laws, and what he called the bigotry and fanaticism of the day, intermingled with anecdotes of a rather startling character, and then followed some of his own personal experiences over the bottle.

At Philadelphia he had once belonged to a club of a dozen or twenty good fellows, who were a law to themselves. Once a year they came together, bringing with them twelve or twenty bottles apiece, according to their number, every drop of which it was a point of honor with them to drink off before they separated.

At one of these gatherings, the very last, I believe, — a large hamper was set down between him and a neighbor who was reckoned a prodigious gourmet, and from whose decision about wines and vintages there was no appeal; and Stuart was urged, with a sly wink and a tap on the elbow, to "dip in "; his friend assuring him in a whisper, that a certain oddly shaped bottle, which he pointed out, contained the finest claret he had met with for years, a down right purple nectar, indeed, "bottled velvet," a compound of sunshine, ripeness, and aroma. Others of the company who sat near Stuart, and who had been favored in the same way, nodded assent, looked mischievous, and smacked their lips with decided emphasis in confirmation.

But while they were praising it Stuart stooped down, without being observed, and drew out a bottle of another shape, with a different seal, and amused himself with tasting it, until his friend, the connoisseur, hap

got hold of the wrong article, and then went on to say that he had lately bought several hampers at auction at such a bargain that he could well afford to throw away the doubtful portion, such as Stuart had been dabbling with. But being a very obstinate man, as everybody knew, Stuart persisted until he had nearly finished the second bottle, when he "let the delicious secret out." On being asked why he continued drugging himself with that detestable stuff, when he had a bottle of the finest claret before him, he said, "Simply because, on the whole, I prefer Burgundy."

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Burgundy! Burgundy!" they exclaimed; "are you mad, Stuart, or is this only another of your jokes?" every man catching up a bottle, and pouring out a glass for himself, as the tumult increased. "Burgundy! and how happened you to know that it was Burgundy, Stuart?"

"By tasting. I took it for granted, from the shape and size of the seal and the fashion of the bottle that it was something out of the common way; for," added he, "the seals were emphasized, and had not been tampered with.” Of course there was nothing more to be said after the verification that followed.

At another time he was dining with Gouverneur Morris, after that gentleman's return from Portugal. There was a large party of handsome women and fashionable men, who occupied high positions in Church or State, and carried their honors bravely. The conversation was chiefly about wines, and especially port wine and vintages; their host maintaining, as well he might, that in this country we never saw any real port wine; and, among other pleasant things, he averred that more port wine, or what passed for port wine, was drank in London than was ever made in Portugal; that even there the genuine article was never to be had for love or money, except under peculiar circumstances, even the "old port" of the London docks being, at best, but a

decoction of logwood and elder-berries or grape-cuttings; and that, in fact, the real Simon Pure was so utterly unlike what passes for port wine here and elsewhere, that our best judges would call it insipid, having neither body nor soul. Nevertheless, he had managed while in Portugal to make an arrangement whereby he could obtain a quarter-pipe now and then for himself or a friend as a special favor, the government itself being afraid to allow the exportation of unadulterated wines, lest they should injure the sale of the rest.

---

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"And now," said he, "to show you all how you have been abused in this matter, I must beg of you to try a glass of what I call port wine, -old port. — Here, George" (to a waiter behind his chair), "bring us up, - let me see," and here he glanced up and down the long table, as if counting noses, "bring us up three bottles, not more, I cannot afford more, till my stock is replenished, of the vintage I have been telling you of, — and give us clean glasses."

-

The waiter soon appeared with just three bottles, fat and chunky, and covered with dust and cobwebs. The clean glasses were rather undersized, it must be acknowledged; but they were filled, and held up to the light, and looked through, and then there was a deal of talk about the aroma, · the bouquet, and what they called the body, as if it were condensed sunshine, flashing through a live grapery. Stuart was just raising the glass to his lips, when he caught a whiff of the aroma, and set it down, without tasting it, and without being observed. The talk went on. The ladies began to chirp and chatter like sparrows on the house-tops, I give Stuart's language, not my own, and the sparkle of their cyes, and the uncommon freshness of their lips, by the time they had managed the second glass, only served to strengthen his convictions.

At last, after collecting the suffrages, which were not only unanimous but enthusiastic, the host turned to Stuart, and, seeing a full glass before him,

asked what he had to say for himself, and whether he had ever met with such old port in all his life before. "Never!" said Stuart; and then the host nodded and smiled, and looked about with a triumphant air, as much as to say, What did I tell you? "Never!" but still there was something in the look or tone of his guest which puzzled Mr. Morris, and seemed to call for explanation. "Come, come, Stuart!" said he, "none of your tricks upon travellers. We want your honest opinion, for we all know you are the best judge of wines to be found on this side of the water; and therefore I ask you once more, in all seriousness, if you ever drank such old port in all your life, either at home or abroad, 'pon your honor, now?"

"never!"

"Never," said Stuart, And then there was a dead silence, and the host himself began to look uneasy, not knowing how to understand what he believed to be one of Stuart's jokes; and then Stuart added in his own peculiar way: "You must excuse me, my friend, and you, ladies and gentlemen; but I assure you that what you have all been taking for old port wine is not wine at all.”

"Not wine at all," exclaimed Morris, almost jumping out of his chair,— "why what the plague - is it then?"

"I should call it - excuse me," --taking a sniff, as he passed it back and forth before his nose, "I should call it cherry bounce!”

For a moment the host appeared thunder-struck, wellnigh speechless with amazement; but then, as if suddenly recollecting himself, his countenance underwent a change, and, calling the waiter, he said, "George, you scoundrel!" in a sort of stage whisper, that could be heard all over the room,

"George, tell me where you found these bottles." The poor fellow trembled and shook; but after a few words of explanation, Morris threw himself back in his chair, and laughed and laughed until it seemed as if he would never stop; and it turned out that this port wine, so carefully selected by him