re apt to
praise the volumes which encumber the book-seller's shelves rather than
those which run through seven editions in as many days.

Like most other American essayists, she has couched many of her phrases
and ideas in the Emersonian mould. Her sentences are short; she uses a
homely illustration by preference. "Independence," she says, "in an
absolute sense is an impossibility. The nature of things is against it.
The human soul was not made to contain itself. It was made to spill
over, and it does and will spill over, always as _quid pro quo_,
wherever lodged, to the end of time."... "There is a vast amount of
thinking which ought to be in the market. We hold our best thoughts and
give our second best."... "We do a good deal of shirking in this life on
the ground of not being geniuses. The truth is, there is an immense
amount of humbug lurking in the folds of those specious theories about
genius. Let a man or woman go to work at a thing, and the genius will
take care of itself."

Miss Cleveland has gathered a large audience, and it is a satisfaction
to feel in reading her book that she holds her place before them with
invariable good sense, high faith, and a dignity which commands respect.

"Aulnay Tower." By Blanche Willis Howard. Boston: Ticknor & Co.

There is a good situation in "Aulnay Tower," but the book may be said to
be all situation, with little movement, no development, and the very
slightest free play of character and motive. The scene is laid at the
chateau of the Marquis de Montauban, not far from Paris, at the moment
in the Franco-German war when Sedan had been fought, the emperor was a
prisoner, and the Germans were investing the capital. The marquis, his
niece the Countess Nathalie de Vallauris, and his chaplain the Abbe de
Navailles, in spite of orders from General Trochu, have remained at this
country-seat, apparently indifferent to passing events. Thus it is a
rude awakening when they find the Germans knocking at the castle doors
and demanding entertainment for the officers of the Saxon grenadiers,
who are quartered upon them during most of the time occupied by the
siege of Paris.

Here, then, is the situation. The Countess Nathalie, a widow of
twenty-three, "a beautiful woman, young, pale, fair-haired, stately and
forbidding," confronts these invaders of her private peace and enemies
of her country, intending to freeze them by her haughtiness, her
indifference, her disdain, but carr