musician will find these
volumes invaluable in the pursuit of his studies, the general reader
will be interested in the well-drawn descriptions of men, manners, and
customs, and the antiquary will pore over the pages with a keen delight.

The work is illustrated with several specimens of the early style of
writing music, the first being an illuminated engraving and fac-simile
of the song, "Sumer is icumen in,"--the earliest secular composition, in
parts, known to exist in any country, its origin being traced back to
1250. It should have been mentioned before this that the very difficult
task of reducing the old songs to modern characters and requirements,
and harmonizing them, has been most admirably done by McFarren, who has
thus made intelligible and available what would otherwise be valuable
only as curiosities.

1. _Folk-Songs_. Selected and edited by John Williamson Palmer, M.D.
Illustrated with Original Designs. New York: Charles Scribner. 1861.
Small folio. pp. xxiii., 466.

2. _Loves and Heroines of the Poets_. Edited by Richard Henry Stoddard.
New York: Derby & Jackson. 1861. Quarto, pp. xviii., 480.

3. _A Forest Hymn_. By William Cullen Bryant. With Illustrations of John
A. Hows. New York: W. A. Townsend & Co. 1861. Small quarto, pp. 32.

We have no great liking for illustrated books. Poems, to be sure, often
lend themselves readily to the pencil; but, in proportion as they stand
in need of pictures, they fall short of being poetry. We have never yet
seen any attempts to help Shakspeare in this way that were not as
crutches to an Indian runner. To illustrate poetry truly great in itself
is like illuminating to show off a torchlight-procession. We doubt if
even Michel Angelo's copy of Dante was so great a loss as has sometimes
been thought. We have seen missals and other manuscripts that were truly
_illuminated_,--

"laughing leaves
That Franco of Bologna's pencil limned ";

but the line of those artists ended with Fra Angelico, whose works are
only larger illuminations in fresco and on panel. In those days some
precious volume became the Laura of a poor monk, who lavished on it all
the poetry of his nature, all the unsatisfied longing of a lifetime.
Shut out from the world, his single poem or book of saintly legends was
the window through which he looked back on real life, and he stained its
panes with every brightest hue of fancy and tender half-tint of reverie.
There was, indeed, a chan