The February "Monthly."

Pretentious things are not always the best, nor are small things the worst; the Greek gem is far more truly a work of art than the nineteenth century plaque. This is the case with the February "Monthly," where by far the best two things are the little epigrammatic verses, "Ben Jonson and the Stage," by F. S. Palmer, and "Landor," by H. S. Sanford, These are at the same time highly finished and pointed melodious and witty. Mr. Palmer has produced little better than this in all his previous writings.

In the leading article, which is rather insufficient, Professor Shaler speaks of the great growth of the smaller colleges of America, due to local, sectional, sectarian and pecuniary reasons. These small colleges, he says, although poorly equipped in laboratories and libraries, are usually strongly supported by a small, enthusiastic body of alumni. "'Tis a small college, your Honor," said Webster in the Dartmouth trial, "but we love her!" This sentiment and these men Mr. Shaler would attract to Harvard, by offering scholarships or presentations to be controlled by the faculty of the smaller college, and awarded to deserving graduates. The university could never, and should never, he says, seek to control the smaller college, for the independence of the relationship would be one of the greatest merits of the plan. Forty thousand dollars a year, he thinks, would be the cost of doing this, and furnishing yearly our graduate department with a strong working force of scholars; and ultimately resulting in "turning over to the colleges a large part of the teaching now done in our undergraduate department, and thus generally enabling us to give the greater part of our resources to students who in their training were above the level of the two lower classes in that department." In conclusion, Mr. Shaler refers to the English system, by which "many of the secondary schools of that country have in their possession presentations and scholarships which enable youths who win them to defray in part, or wholly, their education at either Oxford or Cambridge. ... The effect of these presentations both on the school which gives and that which receives, is good. They help the lower schools to fill their classes with youths contending for the prize, and they give to the universities well selected students."

After Prof. Shaler's article, readers will probably linger the longest over Mr. Carpenter's clever dialogue on dilettanteism, which is really worthy of close reading. I quote the delightful little summing up of the argument: "The true dilettante is like Antaeus; the oftener you wrestle him out of his prepossessions, the more confirmed does he become in his dilettanteism. The only remedy for eclecticism is more eclecticism.'

Mr. Leahy's "Drama" still appears in fragmentary form. The selection in this number is inferior to that in the last, and a little ponderous. Mr. Leahy, although his command of figures and similes is perhaps his strongest point, could introduce fewer without harming his verse. These selections are interesting and in many parts exceedingly beautiful, but they suffer from isolation.

Mr. Fletcher's paper on "Poe, Hawthorne and Morality." is interesting, and his stand is well taken - that Hawthorne is the truly moral writer of the two - but as a whole the paper is uneven in strength.

Mr. Bruce's is not. It is almost too strong throughout. It glows with Oriental savagery and splendor; but although the story is a very powerful, - well, tremendously powerful - one, it is rather too highly spiced for the average reader. The writer of "Alexis" has recently been censured for his penchant for slaughter; but it is to Mr. Bruce's lust for gore and rapine as the gentle zephyr is to the hurricane.