course of lectures, whose general intention was to expound the evolution of the characteristic literature of the period. The intelligence and value of the author's views, his good critical judgment, the tact with which he has made interesting what might so easily have been dull, are marred only by a certain rambling that makes the reading exact far more effort than it ought. Subject from subject and sentence from sentence follow clearly and pleasantly; but due sequence of paragraphs is a more difficult attainment in style, and one finds in the book in question many paragraphs whose relevance to that which immediately precedes and follows them is confusingly obscure. Four years ago a noticeable anonymous translation appeared of the three most distinctly Socratic of Plato's writings-the Apology, Crito, and Phædo. Both by the selection of these the most simple and personal parts of Plato, and by the readable English style, the translation has been made with express reference to that class of readers who do not read Greek, and even in English are not sufficiently in the habit of heavy reading to pick out from the mass of Platonic speculation in Jowett's version these kernels of profound and universal human interest. But the expensive edition in which it first appeared made it inaccessible to many of the class it was most adapted to—a fault now happily remedied by a cheaply bound though well-printed edition. The English of the version is excellent, and yet follows the Greek closely enough for the general reader; departing from it chiefly by rearrangement of sentence and clause, to make the argument clearer. This improvement in clearness upon Plato's style is the only superiority we find in the present version over Jowett's; it is equal, to Jowett's in dignity, somewhat inferior in vigor, etc. and, on the whole, just about as good a translation; while the advantage of its limited contents makes it a far better one for the general reader. Prof. Goodwin's introduction is a valuable addition. It is said that Miss Ellen Mason is the translator. -An entertaining piece of light caricature is Our Choir.2 Its folio pages are filled with sketches of the music committee, the choir, the organist, etc., and with mock-dignified verse descriptive of the subjects of the sketches. Some of the drawing is excellently droll, and all of it more or less so; the verse is occasionally neat, but oftener labored. — Under the name of Old Ocean3 is collected for children a great deal of very popular science and information concerning the ocean-physical geography, exploration, naval affairs, sea-plants and animals, fisheries, It is the merest surface skimming of these subjects, but pleasantly written, and good reading for children of ten years old and upward: this in spite of the several incidental slips in statements of fact that seem to be inevitable to books of popular or juvenile information. -The Battle of the Moy is a romance modeled after the well-known Battle of Dorking," relating "How Ireland gained her Independence" in 1892, by a single gigantic battle. It is ingenious and rather entertaining, but perfectly valueless as a political tract, for its fundamental assumption is a population in Ireland of phenomenal foresight, prudence, self-control, and reticence.With Le Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon 5 is begun a series of cheap pamphlet editions of the best modern French plays, under the series name of Theatre Contemporain. To judge by the first number, we may expect to see these plays excellently chosen and neatly issued, to the great convenience of amateur actors and French classes and reading-clubs. 4 EAST AND WEST. Cultivating the Water Supply. PEOPLE are learning that they have each a personal interest in the great processes of Nature, whom they have hitherto treated with underbred indiffer ence in her own demesne. "What has the world to do with the weather gauge?" is not a question one hears any more from the society young man who has learned the safety of being civil on points he doesn't understand. Of more consequence to politicians than the question which begins to loom on the newspaper horizon, Who shall be nominated for Presi1 Socrates. A translation of the Apology, Crito, and parts of the Phædo of Plato. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1883. dent? more to the dilettante than the discussion bethose who don't like it; more to the fashionable than tween the Howells-James school of novelists and will be the best summer move; more than elevated the delicate point whether Newport or the Continent railways East or cheap transportation West—is the little matter whether the rain-fall this season will register two inches or five in a given time. Three inches more or less a month means life in a semiparadise or a desert, treasure of money and crops 8 Old Ocean. By Earnest Ingersoll. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. 4 The Battle of the Moy; or, How Ireland gained her Independence. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1883. For sale by A. L. Bancroft & Co. 5 Le Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon. Eugène Labiche et Edouard Martin. William R. Jenkins. 1883. Comédie par New York: pouring in from those exhaustless gold mines, just six inches under the surface, or drought, dull faces, sorry times for pleasure-seekers, and the shadow which rests over Europe and Britain creeping across the prosperous skies of our Western World. War, pestilence, drought are three bad angels linked together in evil fame, and we may be forgiven if we shudder at the parching breath of the passing pinions of the least of these. Yet of all baleful visitants, this is one which might be exorcised in a generation of well-directed effort. Man need not wait the slow change of epochs to restore fertility and moisture to the great plains of the central Territories, or to the New England hillsides. Were the intelligence of the country for one whole year directed to the problem of preventing drought, and securing abundant water provision for the United States, the dread of drought would be left behind us, and the stories of parched pasturage and herds dying for the want of water would be as much things of the past as tales of Indian fights. How? By simple if somewhat extensive means, which are old as the pyramids. You may read it in your Bible, if you have one-if not, you may find it on the Egyptian cliff walls-how in time of plenty the kingdom was preserved from seven years' famine by storing its surplus food in gigantic granaries which fed a great fraction of the then known world. That beldam country had the superlative blessing of one man who was wise for his race, and a ruler who knew enough to take good counsel when it was laid before him; in which respect our country compares unfavorably with Egypt. If, instead of narrowing the intellects of the age to the petty problems of electric lights and heating cities by steam, or disfiguring streets with elevated railroads to be the signal jest of history in a dozen years, part of the keenness devoted to stock-jobbing projects should turn to an interest which concerns the whole nation, it would see that what Joseph did with Nile wheat must be done in the storage of water. Taking year with year, enough rain falls, or water is conveyed in rushing mountain streams, to feed the settled parts of the country, and free them from the fear of drought; and this volume of water must be arrested on its way to the sea, stored where it will be under control, and economized for the needs of the soil. The The task is not singular in its magnitude. It is no more than the states of Holland did in building the dikes which preserved the kingdom from the encroaching sea. What these sturdy Netherlanders did to keep back the waters, we must do to preserve them-less an afrit's labor than the other. Moquis might teach us how to build such reservoirs as supplied their cities when the wilderness of the San Juan was thick with people, as it is now with the sherds of their ruined pottery. The Southern Pacific Railroad waters its engines from great cisterns in the Colorado Desert, filled in the rainy sea same for his own acres. The most singular thing to an eastern visitor in the Southwest is that in the universal want of water there is hardly a cistern on private property. In the adobe soil it would be comparatively small labor to make huge reservoirs to receive the fierce showers or the flow of brooks in the season of melting mountain snows; and series of dams and tanks by the side of valley streams might keep back the water which runs to the sea in a few weeks. By a system of house cisterns connected with every roof in the Territories, with artificial pools in beaten adobe, with reservoirs and dams to the mountain streams, the accumulation of water would be ample for town uses and for irrigation. The great work would remain to reclothe the mountain slopes with fast-growing trees; for every tree is a source of freshness to the soil about it, delaying the drying of the earth and of the streams by its shade, and actually condensing from the air and diffusing a cloud of invisible moisture about its boughs. It is no child's work to do this great service to the State, but as much in its way has been done before. The great tree-planters of rank in England furnish the example. The Earl of Fyfe, the foremost planter in Scotland, thirty or forty years ago turned 14,000 acres of unproductive hillside into forest. The first Marquis of Breadalbane and the former Duke of Athol added largely to the value of their property by planting 6,000,000 trees apiece. The present duke following worthily in the traditions of his house, counts 70,000 firs in a single plantation. Mr. Jones, the Welsh landowner, could number over 60,000 Spanish chestnuts, 80,000 oaks, and as many ash, 90,000 larch and 100,000 Scotch firs, beside 30,000 wych elms, 35,000 mountain elms, and 150,000 other trees in one year's planting a work worthy the ambition of a country gentleman. Or, if other example was needed, the commandant of more than one idle garrison might take a hint from Hannibal, who employed his army of Punic soldiery in the work of planting olive-trees. How many regiments spoiling in the empty routine of camp life would welcome the office of setting and tending government plantations on the plains! It is with some diffidence that one refers to the last great project which was distinctly in mind in beginning to write this page-a project which would be a state and national, not to say continental, benefit the old proposal to turn the Rio Colorado into the desert basin; a proposal which is most likely to provoke a smile from those who know least about it, like many other plans which have been valiantly wrought out to the good and honor of mankind. Since this scheme was first broached by educated men who knew the desert in many journeyings across it, and knew the river from its June floods to its April languor, other great works of which the world was incredulous have been completed or well begun. The Suez Canal shortened the way round the globe, and the Darien Canal will soon straighten the track for ocean steamers, and this plan of turning a river into its old desert bed involves not half as much labor; and there is not an engineer on the Southern road who does not know that the plan is feasible. From the report of the survey for the Pacific Railroad, by Lieutenant Williamson, in November, 1853, to the enthusiastic support of the idea by Ross Browne and Dr. Widney in the old OVERLAND MONTHLY, the formation of this new lake has been discussed, urged, and its great advantages are now generally conceded. Briefly, the plan urged was by a cut thirty miles long from the head of the Gulf of California, to let its waters into the desert, the largest part of which lies below the sea-level, and overflow an area some thirty miles wide by eighty in length. Ross Browne favored the idea of bringing the Colorado also into the basin; and the influence of such a lake as the two waters would give would change the climate of southern California, send a great rain-fall to Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties, lead to fuller streams and growth of timber, and be the model for a score of similar enterprises in this sun-distressed country. Why is it not as much of an exploit to rescue a desert as to subdue a province? Has a Man any Rights in Himself? THE habit of human nature to give damaging testimony against itself is rarely set forth in the remark quoted by the "London Athenæum" from one of our literary men a graduate of Harvard, and more or less engaged in library work since his undergraduate days. It gives a curious impression of the sensibilities of a certain class of educated men who have to do with literature, when he writes "with amusement" of the hesitation felt by English librarians about divulging the names of authors who choose to be anonymous. "On this side of the water," he writes, "we have no scruples of that kind, and rather take pleasure in printing the name of a contributor who would like to have it suppressed." There still exists a class with whom the instincts and traditions of gentlemen are not extinct, and their numbers are much larger than is generally supposed. They owe human nature the service of showing the world how thoroughly they hold such hoodlumism of sentiment as the above in contempt. Any expression so detestable to the better feelings of humanity finds its nearest approach to an excuse in that it comes of obstuseness; such as that of which a master of English writes: "The essence of all vulgarity lies in want of sensation. It is in the blunt hand and the dead heart, in the diseased habit, in the hardened conscience, that men become vulgar." A degree of the same indignation is felt by all clear-headed, right-minded people who have been pained by seeing Hawthorne's literary remains disturbed and hawked about. If the dead know what passes on earth, what wretchedness will not that shrinking sensitiveness and fastidious taste endure at seeing the incomplete experimental fragments of his thought thus thrown down for the curiosity of the polite mob whom he detested when alive. Worse indignity could hardly be offered the genius which the nation delighted to honor. The decency which shades an invalid's totterings and maunderings from the public gaze should surely be extended to genius in its moods of drooping and uncertain fancy. It was Hawthorne's wish that these fragments should remain in obscurity, and there was no going outside it. If a man has any rights in himself, his wish should be final in such a matter. It only remains for the ignoble generation which could tolerate such desecration of the rights of the dead to dig up the bones of Shakspere. The misfortune which befell the poetic fame of Mr. Tennyson from the pilfering of rejected manuscripts from his waste-basket by a too-adoring wife, and their circulation by injudicious friends, was another invasion of those sacred rights a man might be supposed to have in himself. But Tennyson was alive, and from his well-known temperament it may safely be assumed that the penalty visited in private on the offenders was prompt, liberal, and not undeserved. It may be noticed that this outrage singularly preluded the falling off of Tennyson's poetry, as if he had said to himself that, his standard of high poetic finish being violated, and his ideal as a poet once marred, it was no use trying to live up to it any more. If people were satisfied with thin sentiment, it was not worth while to try to write better for them. The gods hide themselves and speak from cloud. Men of genius, knowing their infirmities, are solicitous of the same protection for their imperfections. The examples of heathen and childish curiosity above warn every literary man at least of the wisdom of keeping letters, rough draughts, and hasty versions in his own control, by strict censorship of waste-basket, and prompt committal to the flames of what they would not have proclaimed from the housetops. For the manners, taste, and honesty of our highly cultivated people do not withhold them from actions on a par with that of the western man of Mr. Curtis's story, who pulled down the newspaper curtain from the window of a room where a traveler was putting on his shirt, with the frank inquiry, "What are you so blamed private about ?" The Snow-fay's Gift. OUTCROPPINGS. A LEGEND OF THE LAPWAI, IDAHO. A STRANGE, weird land is the far-off WestA wonder-spot on the earth's fair breast; Like the flow of tears on a maiden's cheeks Is the crystal tide of its amber creeks; And the winding course that the rivers take Is the aimless trail of the writhing snake. There the distant view of the treeless butte Has the monster form of a sleeping brute; And the giant slopes of the landscape seem Like the phantom shapes in the wildest dream. Now the rocky scarps of the cañon rise As the lifting walls to the arching skies; And the traveler shrinks to a pigmy mite As he scans the face of the dizzy height. Anon the mass of a stony hand Like an index points to the better land. Ah! the proudest heart may the warning heed Of the silent hand on the lonely mead! Anon the cliff by an art sublime Is a castle grim of the feudal time, With its ivied wall by the dismal moat And the bastion drear where the banners float. Of a lonely peak in the far-off West, The wings of Love fly fast and far ; Can stay the doom his quiver carries. : Where Lapwai's rippling waters glide, VOL. I.-43. When times are true the maids are coy, Though blest with brown or ebon tresses; And many a simple art employ To husband well their fond caresses. And who shall say that a maiden's choice May never shift, or the heart revolt? Or who proclaim with a prophet's voice That Cupid aims but a single bolt? The frosts were gone from the purling rills; The sod was green, and the camas bloomed. A rival came from the northern hills, And Ken-wah's hopes of a bride were doomed. The god who once in an angel's guise Had whispered thoughts of a lover's bliss, Now seemed, alas! to his jealous eyes A fiend who spoke with the serpent's hiss. An Indian legend, strange and old, To breathless maids by lodge-fires told, Declares that once with passion wild A mortal wooed the Snow-king's child. Alas, that youth of earthly mold Should ere have loved a maid so cold! Ofttimes, the doting warrior hied To keep the tryst by Lapwai's side; And oft his longing heart would fain Have sealed their troth, but prayers were vain. Still, still she veiled her icy cheek; Refused each vow his lips might speak. One night, amid the drifting snows He kept the tryst where Lapwai flows, And, led by passion's will unchaste, He rudely clasped her frozen waist. With wailing cry of goblin fear, That pierced afar the wintry air, She spread her snowy pinions bright, And left him there in grewsome plight. Long, long before his vows were said To northern lands the snow-fay sped, And vanished through the moon-lit skies With elfish laugh that mocked his cries; Yet dropped a plume of spotless hue O'er Colville meadows as she flew. When zephyrs fanned the budding trees, And chased the cold from frosty leas, The plume that decked the snow-fay's wing Became a flower to greet the springA single spray of stainless white, To charm the eye and mark her flight. Since then, the youth who plucks that flower With whispered vows at midnight hour, And thrice invokes the injured fay, Shall win the maiden's heart for aye. Grim Winter held within his arms In Ken-wah's life no sunlight glows; When moonbeams on the hilltop lie, A moment's pause by the foaming steep Inspired by words that the maiden spake, Now light his feet by the punk-fire's glim Ere the pledge be won that he longs for most. Along the banks of the Sanpuelle, Where poplars hide its purling rills All heedless yet of the coming doom, 'Tis the mystic watch of the silent night; In haste he whispers timely vows Thy bones beneath the tamarack-tree. The murderer views the gasping clay; Then spurns the lifeless form aside, lea And quickly clasps the glittering spray. As one pursued by demon bands, He quits the place with blood-stained hands; And bears the injured snow-fay's gift Far south before the night-shades lift. Ah! little reck his blood-shot eyes The tell-tale drop that stains the prize. |