the
quality of the materials themselves." If the German critics whom we are
asked to imitate have taught us anything, it is to look through form at
the substance within, and to judge that. When criticism was supposed a
science, it declared with a mathematical absoluteness that no drama was
good or great which did not preserve the unities. Yet Shakespeare has
written since, and no critic in the world thinks his plays bad or
weak,--thanks, chiefly, to the German criticism, which is an art, and
not a science, as Mr. Purnell desires us to think it. In fact, criticism
is almost purely a matter of taste and experience, and there is hardly
any law established for criticism which has not been overthrown as often
as the French government. Upon one point--namely, that a critic should
judge an author solely by his work, and never by anything known of him
personally--we think no one will disagree with our essayist.

We hardly know how much or how little to value the clever workmanship of
these essays, which is characteristic of a whole class of literature in
England, though we suspect it has not much greater claim to praise than
the art possessed by most Parisians of writing dramatic sketches of
Parisian society. It seems to come of a condition of things, rather than
from an individual faculty. Still, it is remarkable, and even admirable,
though in Mr. Purnell's case it is not inconsistent with dealing
somewhat prolixly with rather dry subjects, and being immensely
inconclusive upon all important matters, and very painfully conclusive
on trivial ones. Our essayist says little that is new of Montaigne, and
does not add to our knowledge of Steele, Swift, and Sterne, though he
speaks freshly and interestingly of Roger Williams as the first promoter
of religious toleration. He requires seventeen pages ("Literary
Hero-Worship") to declare that a great poet ought not to be thought
great because he is not a great soldier, and _vice versa_; he is neat
and cold, and generally doubtful of things accepted, and assured of
things doubted,--and, without being commonplace himself, he seems to
believe that he was born into the world to vindicate mediocrity of
feeling.

_The College, the Market, and the Court; or, Woman's Relation to
Education, Labor, and Law._ By CAROLINE H. DALL. Boston: Lee and
Shepard.

Here is a woman's showing of women's wrongs, a woman's appeal to men for
simple justice. All the facts of the matter are grouped and prese