The Century.

The Century for May is an excellent number, even though it gives us quite too much of that morbid egotist whose recent memoirs have excited so much curiosity and so little real sympathy. There are two unsigned articles concerning Marie Bashkistseff, one laudatory, the other critical.

The Washington portraits, both of Martha and George, are strangely unfamiliar, prim, hard, dry, unsympathetic, and disturbing to our mental images. The text is interesting but light.

"The Women of the French Salons" is exceedingly interesting and the illustrations are a gallery by themselves. With such vivid writing it is hard to realize that all is ashes of those bright pretences.

Mr. Kennan's "Blacked Out" describes press censorship in Russia. An illustration shows a page of the Century "blacked out" by officials.

"Chickens for Use and Beauty" is a taking paper, fully illustrated. Jefferson's Autobiography loses nothing in interest. "Valor and Skill in the Civil War" compares the two armies without drawing any very definite conclusions.

Poetry and fiction are in the usual proportion, the best of the latter being the "Romance of Two Cameras." Walt Whitman and T. B. Aldrich are among the poets.

Major Powell writes of Arid Lands and plans for their irrigation. The Topics of the Time and Open Letters are about as usual.