emark, in this connection, the
wide difference between the General's style and that of his wife. Mrs.
Fremont is a true woman, and has written a true woman's book. The
General is a true man, and his words are manly words. Her style is full,
free, vivid, with plenty of dashes and postscripts,--the vehicle of much
genius and many noble thoughts; but in itself no style, or a careless
and imperfect one. The Pathfinder writes as good English prose as any
man living. We cannot be mistaken. The hand that penned the "Story of
the Guard" could not hold the pen of the Proclamation or the
Farewell Address, or the narrative of the Rocky-Mountain Expedition.
Nevertheless, it has done well. Let its work lie on our tables and dwell
in our hearts with the "Idyls of the King,"--the Aeolian memories of a
chivalry departed blending with the voices of the nobler knighthood of
our time.

_Seven Little People and their Friends_. New York: A.F. Randolph.

This is a charming book for the holidays. Not that it requires such
a temporary occasion to give it interest, elevated as it is by its
inherent excellence above that class of books which may be said almost
entirely to depend upon such factitious accidents for whatever of
success they may reasonably hope to obtain. It is, irrespective of time
or occasion, a genuine story-book, adapted particularly to children
between the ages of six and sixteen years, yet not, as is usually the
case in books for children, confined to these narrow limits in either
direction; since there is somewhat for any child that can be supposed to
have an interest in narrative, and a great deal for every man who
has genius, according to Coleridge's well-known definition of
genius,--namely, that it is the power of childhood carried forward into
the developments of manhood. This is saying, indeed, quite as much as
could be said for the general features of the book, and more than could
be said for any other child's book, excepting alone Hans Andersen's
inimitable stories.

Speaking of the book as compared with the works of Hans Andersen, it is
more consciously a work of art, in an intellectual sense; it is more
complicated in incident, or rather, we should say, in the working-up
of the incident, whether that be an advantage for it or not. In almost
every instance, Hans Andersen's stories could be told apart from the
book,--indeed, it is true that many of them were thus told to children,
whom the Danish storyteller casua