he best influenced the whole by fulfilling the
highest law of his individual life. What other faith could sustain him,
when his exhausting labors were not rewarded by a recognized success in
any way commensurate with their desert? Yet no one ever saw him when the
luminous quality of his spiritual nature was clouded, or the special
stimulus to use his powers to the utmost was withdrawn.

Few recipes for comfortable living are to be gathered from such a story.
Vainly we ask for a little repose upon our pilgrimage along those
sublime heights of holy exertion whither that example leads us. We
examine the chronicle of labor and privation, if haply we may find some
paragraph wherein the philanthropist dines out or goes to the theatre.
But the solemn claims of humanity are always in his keeping, and we must
get inured as we may to his rigorous stewardship. And it is by the grace
of such exceptional men that our country is to become less the paradise
of charlatanry, and better to deserve the title of Model Republic. They
draw the poison from that current philosophy which maintains that the
intellect of man has always led the way in social advancement, his moral
nature being subordinate thereto. Not as the sum of past forces, but by
his own inherent moral life, does Horace Mann fill these pages. It is a
sterling biography, which no educated American can afford not to read.
It is only partial praise to call the book deeply interesting. It
vivifies and inspires.

_The Gentle Life_. Essays in Aid of the Formation of
Character. London: Sampson Low, Son, and Marston.

The title of this book constitutes its chief, we had almost said its
sole, claim to consideration. We open its pleasant-looking pages with
pleasant memories of Charles Lamb and Leigh Hunt, and pleasant
anticipations, not of brilliancy, indeed, nor trenchant truth, but of
medicine for our weariness, a moment of quiet in the rush and whirl of
things, a breath of repose from over the sea to cool and tranquillize
these fervid days of ours. We are tranquillized, indeed! We find
ourselves straightway in a desert, stuck full of flowers, it is true,
from innumerable gardens, but a desert still: for the unhappy exotics
have suffered so severely in the transportation as to be scarcely able
to hold up their heads, and, where they still preserve their original
beauty, only serve to throw into stronger relief the surrounding
sterility. It is a medley of dismal platitu