THE FEBRUARY MONTHLY.

The first article in the current number of the Monthly, Professor Taussig's article on the late Professor Dunbar, as the record of a singularly active and varied life, is perhaps the most interesting of the number. As Professor Taussig points out, Professor Dunbar was little known to the undergraduates of the present day, but his activity and industry were such as few men are capable of. Editor of a newspaper before he was thirty, first professor of Political Economy at Harvard, he again took up, after a period of fifteen years, the editorship of his old paper, and after the bustle and excitement of one of the most hotly contested presidential campaigns in the history of our country, again returned to the quiet of a life of teaching. As one of those who had a share in forming the present policy of the University, it is, however, that he stands in closest relation to the Harvard undergraduates, and Professor Taussig's appreciation of what he accomplished in this sphere is an eloquent appeal for our esteem and admiration for one who has done to merit it more than we appreciate.

A part from one or two inconsistencies both story and dialect of "Uncle Willis Skimpy and the Cotton Bale," by T. N. Buckingham are carefully and well worked out. To the Southern reader, however, the use of Satan in dialect so marked as Uncle Willis's seems an unpardonable solecism, and the reasons for the stealing of the mysterious cotton bale are left in doubt. Uncle Willis, too, lacks convincingness. IT seems as if the author had bad no definite character in mind in writing his story, but had rather thought out his plot and set it down in negro dialect while having no firm grasp of the character of his story teller.

Still less convincing is J. G. Forbes' "Two Points of View." The matter is not original, the treatment reminiscent, the atmosphere uncertain. The sketch, however, is not lacking in good points and some of the repartee has a very collegiate tone--"What's the use of a roommate if you can't insult him?" Jack asks Bill. To which Bill meekly replies he's glad to be of use. The characters for so slight a composition are sketched with considerable skill.

One of the best stories in the number is "The Miracle of St. Anne." Those who know Canada will not fail to recall among their own acquaintance some such figures as the old cure, as Marie, as Pierre, or to remember a Sunday morning's mass in a riverside church, the long, narrow aisle, hemmed in by the tall gates of the pews.

The only critical essay in the number, on "The Catastrophe in Modern Tragedy," is excellent in its fundamental idea, but defective in expression. The statement of what the writer has in view is made in the opening paragraph, but so obscurely, and with so little stress, that it is soon completely lost. And though possessed of a knowledge of his subject and an extent of reading rare in an undergraduate, the lack of unity due to this failure to show the connection between the main idea and the details does much to weaken and to lesson the value of the essay.

"The City Editor," by G. H. Montague '01, is no more than a sketch, though carefully and consistently done.

In support of the claims made by the editorial much can be said. Bishop Brooks was not opposed to the use of tobacco, and the petition of the Graduate Club shows that the action of the committee is not popular even with the clubs for which the House is primarily intended.