The old town of Oxford-with its scores of colleges, with their beautiful quads, chapels, charming old halls, libraries; High Street, with its magnificent sweep, curving like a river; the Thames, with its beautiful banks; the quaint old churches; the attractive residences in the newer part of the town-was to me one of the most interesting places in Europe. The lawns are marvels of beauty. Indeed, there is nothing that approaches the beauty of an English lawn,—the softest green, like velvet, dotted with daisies: it is a thing of beauty, a joy forever. Some one asked the secret of these beautiful lawns about the Oxford colleges. The answer was, "Have land enriched and prepared in the best way, roll it, care for it, lavish tenderness upon it for one hundred years, and you will produce such a lawn." No! not unless you can also have that moist English climate, which makes the most beautiful parks and gardens in the world, but which also gives few days when life can be enjoyed out of doors, save by a people which is by nature, or has become by habit, half amphibious. I saw young people playing tennis, boating, walking, and riding, in the drizzling rain, apparently unconscious that it was raining at all. If people remained indoors for the rain in England, there would be little out-of-door life.

The traveller in the English Lake district, and in Scotland, is obliged to pay no attention to the weather. A mackintosh and an umbrella are essentials of life in the British Isles. No one ventures out, however fine the day, without an umbrella.

After living in England for two months, I could understand why England had planted her colonies in the "ends of the earth," and the proverbial tenacity and steadfastness of the Englishmen. A race which can thrive in such a climate, and overcome its disadvantages, is made of stern stuff, and is not likely to be daunted by any obstacle.

dismal tunes that the people were all unhappy.

One could understand that a little of the spirit Macaulay complained of among the Puritans might survive in modern England. Macaulay said, "The Puritans did not object to bear-baiting because it hurt the bears, but because it gave the people pleasure." MARIE C. REMICK.

JAMES PARTON.

It is perhaps too early to foretell the final judgment of the literary world on the lifework of Mr. Parton. The great satisfaction with which many of us have read and reread his Franklin and Jefferson and Burr, and especially his remarkable volumes on Voltaire, which John Morley calls an immortal triumph of biography, and George Meredith compares with Boswell's Johnson, makes us confident that they will be among the enduring books of American literature.

There is hardly a page of his writings which is not luminous, warm, and helpful, He did not deploy his intellect to spy matters at a cold distance: he went himself.

mind, heart, and conscience. He had a wonderful faculty of identifying himself with his biographical or historical subject. I am assured that more than one of his bio

graphical works was undertaken from the motive of strict justice, to vindicate a character from the aspersions of prejudice and the falsehoods of bigotry, and to allow the man, living or dead, the impartial appreciation of his fellow-men, and especially of generations to come. If there was too little severity in some of his judgments of persons, it was because his nature was so in love with humanity, and so considerate of human temptation and infirmity and environments, that it recoiled from the distant possibility of injustice or uncharitableness. And yet the writings of Channing hardly reveal a higher ideal of character, a more explicit conscientiousness, or a more Puritanic repugnance to all forms of moral evil. His writings for young people are characterized by a purity of tone and loftiness of motive unexcelled by any author. The clearness and picturesqueness of his style and his wealth of illustration have done much to make the best things captivating to young minds and hearts.

Personally, Mr. Parton was one of the most beloved of men. No man was so generally endeared to the people of his own city of Newburyport. Wherever he went, in whatever place or circumstances, his presence was felt. His soul looked out through calm and earnest eyes. His benevolence wrote itself on his features. His generous impulses and affections told themselves in the pressure of his hand, the mellow sympathy of his voice, his gentleness of bearing, his unaffected approach to every person. He was a child among children. He was happily at home with the educated and the ignorant. Human suffering, far and near, became his own. His purse most generously obeyed the compassion of his heart. The dumb animals had in him a champion and elder brother. He said of the wide and cheerful acre that surrounds his house, "My title to it consists in my sharing it with others'; and those others were often a score of boys and girls who in their own homes knew little of life's verdure and freedom.

He was the centre and soul of the Public School Board and the City Improvement Society.

Differing in many of his views from the exceedingly conservative community in which he lived, the differences did not alienate him from the majority, but through his breadth of sympathy and sweetness of charity drew him nearer to them and drew them nearer to him.

Mr. Parton was of English birth, coming to this country in early boyhood; but no native of the land was more thoroughly American, and no descendant of the Pilgrims has been a more earnest believer in New England as the garden of the world's noblest ideas.

In religion Mr. Parton would probably have called himself an agnostic. Religious above most men, he was unable to frame the first word of a theology; and he had no doctrine concerning future destiny. He once said to me, "I have found this life such an inestimable blessing, so manifold, and so unfailing of good, that it would be sheer avarice in me to demand another." Mr. Parton's religious experience was that of a multitude of the finest souls. Early in life he had been repelled and, as he expressed it, greatly wronged by the Ortho

doxy in which he was reared. For a large part of his life he had nothing to do with churches. About three years ago, however, he became a constant and helpful member of the Unitarian congregation. To an Episcopal clergyman not long before his death he said: "I have changed my ideas about going to church. I sent my little children to the Unitarian Sunday-school, because it seemed to be the form of religion that had the least of humbug in it; and, when they came to me and asked me to go to church with them, I felt as if it was a personal call from a higher source. ... I have missed a great deal by not going to church in my earlier days."

In purity and reverence, in love unfeigned, in conscience for truth, in the spirit of human helpfulness, in the union of the great virtues which we love to call Christian, few men have surpassed this modest and gentle and childlike man of letters. "There lies the best head, and cleverest, in America," said a literary friend to some bystanders at his funeral. "Ah! sir,” replied two of his neighbors, in tears, "you knew his cleverness; but he was less clever than he was good." Who now shall write the life of America's greatest biographer? SAMUEL C. BEANE.

Newburyport, Mass.

THOMAS HILL.

Another great and good man of the Unitarian Church has joined "the choir invisible." Dr. Hill had more than fulfilled the canonical period of patriarchal life. Born of English parents, Jan. 7, 1818, in New Brunswick, N.J., he died Nov. 21, 1891, at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Dr. Alfred Worcester, in Waltham, Mass. Between these two dates was a life of extraordinary power and usefulness. Like many of our noblest men, he was early inured to hardship and labor, serving as an apprentice successively to a printer and an apothecary, and eking out the means of his livelihood and education by self-denial and industry. In a very interesting article in the Forum for December, 1887, he gives an autobiographical sketch of his early life, and an account of the books which helped him. He says his boyhood's schooling did not begin

The

till he was nine years old, and ended before he was twelve; but he was always an eager and precocious reader. At twenty he resolved to go to college, and was finally fitted at Leominster, Mass., under Dr. Rufus P. Stebbins, and at Leicester Academy for Harvard, where he graduated in 1843, and from the Cambridge Divinity School in 1845. The same year he was ordained as pastor of the Unitarian church in Waltham, where he continued for fifteen years. office of the Christian minister he esteemed above every other, and never suffered the attractions of science, or other brilliant careers easily accessible to him, to wean him from his first love. To preach the gospel of Jesus Christ he esteemed the highest honor and the noblest service on earth. He performed his last labor in the pulpit in Meadville, Pa., whither he went to give his course of lectures on "Ethics" to the students of the Theological School.

But no profession could wholly confine his free ranging mind, or tie him down to a single course of thought and action. Dr. Hill came the nearest to being a universal genius of any man of his time. He was our "Admirable Crichton" in a better sense than that boasted paragon of the sixteenth century. He was an expert in almost every branch of human knowledge and learning, theology, ethics, mathematics, metaphysics, science, languages, music, poetry, logic, and education. While yet an undergraduate, he was one of a half-dozen men in America who could read the "Mécanique Céleste" of Laplace. He received at the same period a gold medal from the Franklin Institute of Pennsylvania for the invention of a machine to calculate the eclipses of the moon. In 1850 he published a work on "The Doctrine of Curves." He was in correspondence with distinguished men of science abroad, and at home he was the honored friend of Peirce and Agassiz, and was invited to accompany the latter in his expedition to South America and the Pacific Ocean, as one of the savans of the exploration. early exchanged his belief in the philosophy of sensation of Locke for the intuitional school. He was an enthusiastic admirer and frequent quoter of the writings of Emerson. He was exempt from the bigotry of either conservatism or radicalism. He initiated the elective system of studies while

He

President of Harvard, as a regular ordinance of the university. He was greatly interested in the Phonetic Reform, and published articles on the subject. While a pastor in Waltham, he served many years on the school board, and was subsequently chosen President of Antioch College, and afterward of Harvard University. He was familiar with the hypothesis of evolution, and, like his friend Agassiz, rejected it. In his lectures to the Theological School of Meadville, on "the Postulates of Revelation," he argued with great power and beauty for theism on morphological and teleological lines, and vivified the argument by illustrations drawn from a wide survey of the natural world. His alternate powers of analysis and synthesis were well matched. He published poems which not only exhibited metrical skill, but a profound sympathy with the objects and scenes of the natural world, detecting in each and all the higher ministry they fulfilled for the soul.

But, with Dr. Hill's brilliant intellectual gifts and rich stores of learning and science, he preserved two of the brightest jewels of character,-childlike simplicity and an earnest spiritual faith. As a preacher, he excelled in strong and profound thought and earnest appeals for a holy and righteous life. In Waltham, Yellow Springs, Cincinnati, Meadville, and Portland, where he preached, he will be remembered as the faithful and eloquent preacher of Christianity, which he illustrated by a consistent life and example. He always moved and lived on the highest plane.

Dr. Hill was twice married; and he leaves seven children, three sons and four daughters. His domestic life was happy, tender, and beautiful. The fragrance of Christian piety and love ever filled and consecrated his home.

He published a great number of articles in the current reviews and magazines, and many occasional sermons, addresses, and poems. His works may be divided into four classes, showing the wide range and incessant activity of his pen,-scientific, educational, poetic, and religious. His scientific works included volumes on Geometry and Arithmetic, the editing of an English volume on "The Stars and the Earth," a work on the Phonetic System and its Use in Schools; in religion, a volume of ser

"The pallid leaf floats from the tree,

And fading joys flit from my heart; Dull pains record that they depart: The account is left with grief and me. "Grief madly whispers, 'He has fled,

As withering leaves float from the tree;
In nature's course they cease to be,
And who shall wake the slumbering dead?'

"The brave heart answers, 'Leaves may fall,
Return again to parent earth,
And give new generations birth:
None ask their beauties to recall.'

"Not so with him whom I have wept,
With those who mourn for him with me.
We cannot hold that death may be,
But know that he has only slept.
"Faith is the proof of things not seen:
Since He is true who fills the heart
With faith and hope, I cannot part
From my fixed trust,- -on Him I lean."
A. A. LIVERMORE.

THE POWER OF BOOKS.

With the exception of heredity and material environment, what influence is more potent than the books we read! It has been said that books are the windows through which the soul looks out. It is for each of us to determine what sort of "windows" we shall "look through,"-whether those in which the glass is covered with flaws, distorting even the most beautiful of God's creations and causing them to look disproportioned and hideous, or those through which objects appear true to nature, and through which we may see, with all clearness, the infinite blue of heaven. What we see ought to be of such a character as to stimulate pure and noble thought, and tend to elevate the standard of our lives.

The effect of good reading upon a young, unfolding mind is beyond comparison. The soul during this chrysalis state is like unto a pure white bud, with petals tightly closed, waiting only for time to reveal the golden calyxes within. If it can but be shielded at

this period from all that may stunt its growth or detract from its purity and fragrance (the soul of the flower), it will develop into a fulness of life and incomparable beauty. Its inspiring influence will be felt by all who are blessed by contact. Many a heart will be gladdened by its divine ascendency, and it will have given an impetus to many a poor discouraged soul, who, "seeing, shall take heart again."

True, a distinguished man has said, "Grant but as many kinds of mind as moss"; yet it is quite possible, even among people who for generations have evinced no literary taste, to cultivate a desire for refined reading, as well as for refining influences in all the departments of life.

If you would develop a noble manhood or womanhood, surround one in youth with books; and, after the first hunger is over, the child will become fastidious, and will not be satisfied with the "refuse" matter if his nature be of a pure tenor. Surround our girls and boys with books which shall appeal to their childish sympathies, and do not force them into reading subjects beyond their comprehension; for this too often creates a distaste for all reading. The books which by strong precept shall teach our children humanitarian principles, with charity, truth, and genuineness, these are what they need to build up the strong and vigorous personalities which are to be the coming generation of men and women.

Is it worth our while to read ephemeral second or third rate novels, when an inexhaustible field of the grandest and most sublime literature is so accessible to nearly all? In the line of fiction why not select from the works of those authors whose names will stand pre-eminent so long as time shall be?

Fancy one's self reading Mme. de Staël's "Corinne," with all its depth of pathos, its psychological portrayal of human passion and thought, with the unmistakable touches of a most delicately organized nature everywhere evident through the book; and then, after all this, reading such books as we see posted at all the news-stands, which "everybody is reading." Thanks to the properly balanced minds of many people, "everybody" is not reading them.

Nowadays, 'tis almost as cheap pecuniarily to buy a good book as a poor one; and how infinitely more profitable to the reader!

Who has read Mrs. Browning's most beautifully chaste and delicately refined poem of "Aurora Leigh" without his very nature being raised to a higher standard, and without receiving a more complete conception of life and its intricacies! Such books become woven into the very fibre of life, and, doubtless, bear a far greater significance upon one's personality than we comprehend. This brings to mind the clever simile of Emerson: "If you gather apples in the sunshine or make hay or hoe corn, and then retire within doors, and shut your eyes and press them with your hand, you shall still see apples hanging in the bright light, with boughs and leaves thereto, or the tasselled grass, or the corn flags, and this for five or six hours afterwards. There lie the impressions on the retentive organ, though you knew it not. So lies the whole series of natural images with which your life has made you acquainted."

To those of my readers who are acquainted with the following books, what a host of delightful reminiscences the very mention of them awakens in the mind!

For example, take Victor Hugo's sublime story, "Les Misérables." Instantly our fancy recalls the character of Jean Valjean, and the awful mental tempests through which we have followed the workings of his mind. Nothing can be more terrifying than contemplation of this sort; for it is an effort to understand the conscience of man, the very interior workings of his soul and mind. We trace the exquisitely pathetic story of this man's existence from its beginning to its end, notice how his early life contradicts that of his more matured years, how from a poor, degraded convict and galley-slave his mind becomes exalted and his life purified through the influence of that beautifully simple and beneficent character whom none that have ever known him will cease to remember,-the Bishop Muriel.

This book is one of the good things of life; and it cannot fail to thrill its readers, and to impress upon their minds the lamentable truth of "man's inhumanity to man," and the contrast of the influence of a sublime personality like that of the bishop.

Such productions as Tennyson's "Enoch Arden," Bryant's "Thanatopsis," Longfellow's "Evangeline" and "Psalm of Life"; books like Dr. Geikie's "Entering on Life,"

Lubbock's "Pleasures of Life," Emerson's "Essays," Carlyle's "Heroes" and "Sartor Resartus," Ruskin's "Crown of Wild Olive"; novels like "Mill on the Floss," "David Copperfield," "Kenilworth," "Vanity Fair," "Rienzi," and the "Last Days of Pompeii,".are real gems to contemplate, and their very mention causes delightful memories to pass through the mind. And who can estimate the influence of such books upon a susceptible nature?

Life is often so prosaic, and its daily scenes so realistic, that there can be scarcely any fear of ideality reaching an injurious degree. How very sordid and bereft of the poetical life seems at times to some of us! Yes, "it takes the Ideal to blow a hair's breadth off the Actual." This is no time for the languid, maudlin sentimentalist. Ours is a "workaday world"; but there is always time and always place for the advancement of the human intellect, and for the elevation and purification of thought, act, and life. "There is what's higher in this very world than we can live or catch at."

After holding close and intimate companionship with these grand natures, our lives can never be so small again.

Our books are to us sometimes the very nearest and dearest friends. In hours of despondency they impart a soothing influence which is almost superhuman; and in our gayer hours they seem to have, as the poet says, "a voice of gladness and a smile," and all through life they are true to our every mood.

"We are, if not the masters, at any rate almost the creators of ourselves." Therefore should every person hold himself responsible in individual act and thought, and to this end employ every possible opportunity for improving the mind. For, as we are known by the company we keep, so shall we likewise be known by the books we read.

One should never read a book without first asking himself the question, “Why am I reading this?" The answer should be, "Because it is of a character which will aid me in my interpretation of life, or which will lead my thoughts to a higher conception and better appreciation of life, or which will, in short, tend to the purification of my thoughts and the strengthening of my whole personality"; and not even is this an end in