s to follow the example of the blessed Benoit, or at least as
far as the measure of spiritual strength in each will allow; but we
apprehend that many will modestly confess that the peculiar virtues of
the saint are inimitable.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Little Hodge. By the author of "Ginx's Baby." New York: Dodd & Mead.

The pamphlet has changed since the days of Swift and Dr. Johnson, and
the modern method, which seeks to influence opinion by means of a short,
pointed story, is certainly a gain in persuasiveness and pictorial
vigor. It is hard to say what the dean of Saint Patrick's would have
thought of _The Battle of Dorking_, or _Ginx's Baby_, or _Lord Bantam_,
or _Little Hodge_, by the author of the last two of these. The dean's
ferocity of expression no modern writer can allow himself; and the
engine of a tremendous intellect is by no means apparent, as it was in
his work, behind the efforts of our modern pamphleteers. But the nerves
of pity, when exquisitely touched, are as apt to influence action as the
feelings of hate or scorn, and Swift's proposal, from the depths of his
bleeding heart, to fat and eat the Irish children, was no more adapted
to produce reformed legislation than is the picture in _Little Hodge_ of
the ten deserted children starving under the thatch, the eldest girl
frozen and pallid, the father shot by a gamekeeper, after having failed
to support his motherless brood. Swift would have put in some matchless
touches, but the picture seems adapted to our day of average, mechanical
commonplace. It has a nerve of tenderness in it which will work upon the
gentler souls of our communities. The father of _Little Hodge_ is
represented as an honest field-laborer, working for Farmer Jolly at nine
shillings a week. The birth of his manikin baby and the accompanying
death of his wife increase his cares past bearing. He thereupon commits
three crimes in succession: he applies to Jolly for an increase of pay,
he joins the agrarian movement of a year ago, and he attempts to run
away and find work elsewhere. He is inexorably, minutely and witheringly
punished for these several acts, and at last gets his only chance of
comfort in a violent death, leaving his poor problems unsolved and his
children naked and starving. Such a picture, if drawn by a foreigner,
would arouse English indignation from shore to shore; but it is
home-drawn. The only foreign delineation is in the author's Jehoiachin
Settle, a sta