new characters are introduced, the Just and the Unjust. The former represents old times and manners; the latter the

beneath the sea, in the company of his son Achilles.

When the Just taught the young, they did not gad about in the forum or lounge in the bath-rooms. They were respectful to their elders, modest and manly. It was the Just who "formed the warriors of Marathon.» The Unjust scoffs at such training. If the young may not have their fling, their lives are not worth living. "You tell me," he adds, "that this is profligacy. Well, are not our tragic poets, orators, demagogues, and most of their auditors profligate ?" The Just has to admit this. Strepsiades, discovering

that the lessons of Socrates are too much for him, sends his clever son to take his place. Pheidippides becomes an accomplished Sophist, mystifies the creditors, and beats his father, all the time proving to him that he is acting logically. The old man, at length undeceived, summons his slaves and neighbors, and sets fire to the house and school of Socrates.

ndromache, a tragedy, by Euripides. The heroine (Hector's widow) is part of the spoil of Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, in the sack of Troy. She has of course undergone the usual fate of feminine captives, and has borne her master a son named Molossus. Hermione, the daughter of Menelaus and lawful wife of Pyrrhus, is furiously jealous of this Trojan slave; and with the aid of her father, resolves to kill Andromache and the child during the absence of her husband. Fortunately the aged Peleus, the grandfather of Pyrrhus, arrives just in time to prevent the murder. Orestes, a cousin of Hermione, to whom she had formerly been betrothed, stops at her house on his way to Dodona. Hermione, fearing the resentment of her spouse, flies with him. Then they lay an ambuscade for Pyrrhus at Delphi, and slay him. Peleus is heart-broken when he learns the tid

gedy by Racine, suggested to him by some lines in the Eneid of Virgil. The play owes very little to the 'Andromache' of Euripides except the title. In Euripides, everything is simple and true; in Racine, everything is noble, profound, and impassioned. The Andromache of the French poet is a modern Andromache, not the real Andromache of antiquity; but the drama is one of his greatest works, and wrought a revolution in French dramatic art by proving that ceptible movements of the passion of love the delicate shades and almost imper

could be an inexhaustible source of interest on the stage. The drama was parodied by Subligny in his 'Folle Querelle.' Racine suspected that the parody was written by Molière, and the affair was the occasion of a serious breach between them.

Aulularia (from Aulula, a pot), a

comedy by Plautus. Although an old miser is the principal character in the play, the real hero, or heroine, is the pot. The favor of his Lar, or household god, enables Euclion to dig up a pot of gold, buried beneath the hearth by his grandfather. No sooner has he become rich than avarice takes hold of him. With

trembling hands he buries the pot deeper still: he has found it, others may; the very thought makes his hair stand on end. The dramatic situations of the play turn on this dread of Euclion's that some one will rob him of his new-found treasure. The fifth act is supposed to have been written by Antonius Urceus Codrus, a professor in the University of Bologna, some time during the fifteenth century. Molière's 'L'Avare' is an imitation of the 'Aulularia. It has been imitated also, at least in the principal character, by Le Mercier in his 'Comédie Latine.'

visited by his wife, the sea-goddess Thetis, who bids him have done with sorrow, and send Andromache and her child to Molossia. There she is to wed Helenus, the son of Priam, and for the rest of her life enjoy unclouded happiness. Thetis orders the burial of Pyrrhus in Delphi. Peleus himself will be released from human griefs, and live with his divine spouse forever in the palace of Nereus

Congreve. This, the only serious play written by Congreve, was produced in 1697, and was most successful. Lugubrious is a cheerful term by which to characterize it. Almeria, the daughter of Manuel, King of Granada, while in captivity marries Alphonso, the son of Anselmo, King of Valencia. In a battle with Manuel, Anselmo is captured, Alphonso drowned, and Almeria returned

to her father. He insists upon her marriage with Garcia, the son of Gonzalez, his favorite. Manuel captures Zara, an African princess, and with her two Moors, Osmyn and Heli. Almeria finds that Osmyn is Alphonso; and Zara, overhearing them, is led by her jealousy to induce the King to allow her mutes to strangle him, and to give orders that none but her mutes shall have access to him. Gonzalez, to secure a mute's dress, kills one, and finds on him a letter from Zara to Alphonso, telling him she has repented and will help him to escape. Manuel orders Alphonso to be executed at once; and to prove Zara's treachery, places himself in chains in Alphonso's place to await her coming. Gonzalez, to make sure of Alphonso's death, steals down and kills him. Meeting Garcia, he learns that Alphonso has escaped, and that he has killed the King instead of Alphonso. The King's head is cut off and hid, so that his death may not be known. Zara, thinking that it is the body of Alphonso, poisons herself; and Alphonso, storming the palace, reaches Almeria in time to prevent her from taking the remainder of the poison. Two quotations from this play have

constant under many vicissitudes, despite the influence of her mother, whose recommendation to Polly to be "somewhat nice in her deviations from virtue» will sufficiently indicate her character. Having one wife does not deter Macheath from engaging to marry others, but his laxity causes him much trouble. Being betrayed, he is lodged in Newgate gaol. His escape, recapture, trial, condemnation to death, and reprieve, form the leading episodes in his dashing career. After his reprieve he makes tardy acknowledgment of Polly as his wife, and promises to remain constant to her for the future. Polly is one of the most interesting of dramatic characters, at least three actresses having attained matrimonial peerages through artistic interpretation of the part. Gay's language often conforms to the coarse taste and low standards of his time; and the opera, still occasionally sung, now appears in expurgated form. Its bestknown piece is Macheath's famous song when two of his inamoratas beset him at once

"How happy could I be with either
Were t'other dear charmer away!"

first, "Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast;" and the second, "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned; nor hell a fury, like a woman scorned.»

Beggar's Opera, The, by John Gay, was

first played in 1728, exciting "a tempest of laughter." Dean Swift, upon whose suggestion this "Newgate pastoral" was written, declared that "The Beggar's Opera' hath knocked down Gulliver." The object of the play was to satirize the predatory habits of " "polite society in thief-infested London, and incidentally to hold up to ridicule Italian opera. The chief characters are thieves and bandits. Captain Macheath, the hero, is the leader of a gang of highwaymen. A handsome, bold-faced ruffian, "game" to the last, he is loved by the ladies and feared by all but his friends - with whom he shares his booty. Peachum is the "respectable" patron of the gang, and the receiver of stolen goods. Though eloquently indignant when his honor is impeached, he betrays his confederates from self-interest. Macheath is married to Polly Peachum, a pretty girl, who really loves her husband. She remains

garay. This was the most successful of the author's plays, running through more than twenty editions. It was first acted in March 1881, and so greatly admired that a popular subscription was at once started to buy some work of art to remind the writer of his triumph. In its printed form it is dedicated to "everybody," another name for the subject of the play. Dante tells us in his story of Paolo and Francesca that "Galeoto was the book they read; that day they read no more!" Galeoto was the messenger between Launcelot and Queen Guinevere; and in all loves the third may be truthfully nicknamed "Galeoto." Ernest, a talented youth, is the secretary and adopted son of Julian and his wife Teodora, many years younger than himself. Ernest looks up to her as a mother; but gossip arises, he overhears Nebreda calumniate Teodora, challenges him to fight, and leaves Julian's house. Julian, a noble character, refuses to heed the charges against his wife and adopted son, but is at last made suspicious. Teodora visits Ernest, and implores him not to fight, as it will give color to the rumors. Julian meantime is wounded by Nebreda, and taken to Ernest's room.

century is treated at great length. The book opens with a picture of two 'Pigmy Pugilists from a wall in Pompeii, and closes with a sentimental street Arab of Woolf exactly like those which for twenty years after he continued to draw. The volume is not only amusing, but most instructive as a compendium of social history.

Art in Ancient Egypt, A History of,

from the French of Georges Perrot and Charles Chipiez; translated and edited by Walter Armstrong. 2 vols., 1883.Art in Chaldea and Assyria. 2 vols., 1884. -Art in Phoenicia and its Dependencies. 2 vols., 1885.-Art in Sardinia, Judæa, and Asia Minor. 2 vols., 1890. - Art in Persia. I vol., 1892.-Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria, and Lycia. 1 vol., 1892.Art in Primitive Greece. 3 vols., 1894.

This entire series not only constitutes a monumental contribution to the history of art in its earlier and more remote fields, but serves most admirably the purpose of a realistic recovery of the

almost lost histories of the eastern originators of human culture. Perrot as author of all the narratives, and Chipiez as the maker of all the drawings and designs, have together put upon the printed and pictured page a conscientious and minutely accurate history, fully abreast of the most recent research,- French, English, German, and American,- and supplying revelations of the life, the worship, the beliefs, the industries, and the social customs of the whole eastern group of lands, from Egypt and Babylonia to Greece. Although the necessarily high cost of the magnificent volumes (about $7 each) may be a bar to wide circulation of the work, the extent to which it is available in libraries permits access to its treasures of story and illustration by the great mass of studious readers.

Arti

rtist's Letters from Japan, An, by John La Farge. "The pale purple even melts around my flight" ran the author's telegram at the moment of turning his face toward those islands where, as he afterwards wrote from Nikko, "everything exists for the painter's delight." And the telegram struck the keynote of the journey; for it is atmosphere, even more than varied information, that renders these letters remarkable. The wonderful whiteness, the "silvery milkiness," of the atmosphere was the first "absorbingly new thing" that struck the

painter when he landed at Yokohama. He erects a series of brilliant toriis or

gateways (literally bird-perches of the gods), the reader getting the most exquisite glimpses of life and art in the "land of inversion," where "art is a common possession." Like the shrines to which they lead, the letters are enriched with elaborate carving and delicate designs. But unlike the actual toriis, they do not of necessity point out any place, pleased rather with some tone "of meditation slipping in between the beauty coming and the beauty gone." Or they serve as a frame to a "torrent rushing down in a groove of granite» between "two rows of dark cryptomeria," or a garden or a sunset: "a rosy bloom, pink

as the clouds themselves, filled the entire air, near and far, toward the light." The idealist easily passes to the effect of the moral atmosphere. The whole drift of the book is toward a purer art; but it contains much lively matter,-accounts of the butterfly dance in the temple of the Green Lotus, and of fishing with trained cormorants. A thread runs through the letters, tracing the character and progress of the usurping Tokugawa family, from the cradle of their fisherman ancestors to the graves of the great shogun and his grandson in the Holy Mountain of Nikko. In Nikko the interest culminates: there was written the chapter on Tao, serene as the peculiar philosophy it diffuses, and perhaps the best part of the book, which sets forth the most serious convictions on universal as well as Japanese art. Yet the letters were written without thought of publication or final gathering into this unique volume, with its various addenda and the "grass characters » of its dedicatory remarks peeping out irregularly, like the "lichens and mosses and small things of the forest that "grow up to the very edges of the carvings and lacquers."

Art

rt of Japan, The ('L'Art Japonais'), by Louis Gonse. This standard work, published in 1886, treats successively of painting, architecture, sculpture, decorative work in metal, lacquer, weaving, embroidery, porcelain, pottery, and engraving. It points out the unity and harmony of all artistic production in a country where no distinction is made between the minor and the fine arts, where even handwriting-done with the most delicate of implements, the brush-is an art within

The

an art, and where perfect equipment implies a universality of aptitudes. But painting is the key to the entire art, and the book dwells upon all that is indigenous or not due to Chinese influence. It traces the development of the parallel schools of painting: the Tosa, dependent on the fortunes of the imperial family, and the Kano, following Chinese tradition and supported by the shogunate. shrines of Nikko are regarded as the culminating point of architecture and painting: there is nothing in the modern Tokio to compare with them. Many pages are devoted to Hokusai; long disdained by his countrymen, but now become so important that a painting with his signature is the white blackbird of European and Japanese curiosity. Kiosai, who was fiftytwo at the time of writing, is commended for his resistance to European influence. Among the abundant illustrations, several examples of colored prints are given, as well as reproductions of bronzes and lacquer. Still more interesting is the reproduction—a bronze nine feet in height, now in Paris-of the colossal Buddha of Nara, the largest statue ever cast in bronze. Throughout the book all materials and processes are clearly explained. The method of casting is the same as in Europe, the perfection of the workmanship constituting the only difference. The best ivory is of a milky transparency,the reader is warned against netzkes that have been treated with tea to make them look old. Cherry-wood lends itself to the most minute requirements of the engraver. A Japanese connoisseur could judge the æsthetic value of a piece of lacquer by the quality of the materials alone. The etiquette, significance, and wonderful temper of the Japanese blade are discussed, and the deterioration of art since the revolution of 1868 lamented. In the first chapter several compliments are paid to the researches and practical good sense of the Americans and English.

Ralph Roister Doister, by Nicholas

Udall, was the first English comedy, although not printed until 1556, and probably written about 1541. At this time Nicholas Udall, its author, was headmaster of Eton school; and the comedy was written for the schoolboys, whose custom was to act a Latin play at the Christmas season. An English play was an innovation, but Ralph Roister Doister' was very successful; and though

Nicholas Udall rose in the Church, reaching the dignity of canon of Windsor, he is chiefly remembered as the author of this comedy.

Roisterer is an old word for swaggerer or boaster; and the hero of this little five-act comedy is a good-natured fellow, fond of boasting of his achievements, especially what he has accomplished or might accomplish in love. The play concerns itself with his rather impertinent suit to Dame Christian Custance, "a widow with a thousand pound," who is already the betrothed of Gavin Goodluck. But as Gavin, a thrifty merchant, is away at sea, Ralph Roister Doister sees no reason why he should not try his luck. His confidant is Matthew Merrygreek, a needy humorist, who undertakes to be a go-between and gain the widow's good-will for Ralph. He tries to get some influence over the servants of Custance; and there is a witty scene with the three maids,- Madge Mumblecrust, Tibet Talkapace, and Annot Allface. The servants of Ralph - Harpax and Dobinet Doughty-have a considerable part in the play, and the latter complains rather bitterly that he has to run about so much in the interests of his master's flirtations.

Dame Custance, though surprised at the presumption of Ralph and his friend, at length consents to read a letter which he has sent her, or rather to have it read to her by Matthew Merrygreek. The latter, by mischievously altering the punctuation, makes the letter seem the reverse of what had been intended. Ralph is ready to kill the scrivener who had indited the letter for him, until the poor man, by reading it aloud himself, proves his integrity.

While Dame Custance has no intention of accepting Ralph, his suit makes trouble between her and Gavin Goodluck, whose friend, Sim Suresby, reports that the widow is listening to other suitors. There is much amusing repartee, several funny scenes, and in the end all ends well.