THAT "there is a fashion in reading as well as in dress," a high. authority has declared. That this fashion is largely regulated by the seasons is undeniable. The summer's heat and the winter's cold are as strong factors in determining what we shall read as they are in settling the weight and character of our hats and gowns. The curtained room, the shaded lamp, the glowing winter fire, all invite to reflection and study, while the outdoor life of summer, with its thousand temptations to mental and physical vagabondism, leave one an easy prey to the seductive influence of the imagination. Fashion and the season are mutually agreed just now. They both point to romance as the class of literature most in demand and most suitable to the leisure and indolence of a summer life, for we take it for granted all summer life includes for every one many happy holidays and travel to new parts of the globe, in which business and its attending cares may be for a time forgotten.

It is this change of thought and scene, this shifting of ordinary points of view, that awaken in human nature the latent romance that often survives the most commonplace daily surroundings and experience, and send it to the pages of the novelist for richer and more sensuous mental food. With a south wind ruffling the waving grass, with a warm sun stealing through leafy boughs, with a greensward to rest upon, and a blue sky overhead-how dull and barren must be the soul of the weary, town-bred

worker, who finds no longing within him for the poetry and ideals of books, and their resulting comfort and sustenance.

When Macaulay wrote "I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not love reading," we are pretty sure he included in the contents of that garret a goodly number of novels. Neither heat nor cold, hunger nor sorrow counts for much even in a garret, against the charm of an enthralling book, the witching power of great writers. and the king.

Blessed with a love of reading, means to satisfy it, one is really a

Almost half the publications of the day belong to imaginative literature. And it is not strange that the popular taste demands them in such numbers, for they reflect in some measure the men, women, thoughts, scenes, and prob. lems of these complex, audacious end of the century days. Fiction has always been the mirror of humanity, and never more so than in the present. Our novelists have furnished us with a gallery of portraits, that illustrate types of mankind, from the very beginning of the world. They have told us, too, just how they lived, how they sorrowed and bore their burthens; how they acted in their joy and in their despair; and, if they were heroes of history, we know the battles they lost and won, the surroundings that made giants of them. Turning back but a little space, we may look into the carefully limned features of Pamela and Evelina,

published, are also entirely devoted to Scotch country life.

In all of Thomas Hardy's novels descriptions of the beautiful English country abound. In "Jude the Obscure' he takes us again to Wessex, his chosen field, which he has studied with a minute fidelity that is marvellous. A new English writer, F. F. Montrésor, is in entire harmony with English outdoor life. Her read

ers literally follow her "Into the Highways and Hedges" in her novel of that name, deriving sweet refreshment and comfort from the simple, natural conditions with which she deals. Like a breath of fresh air from a field of clover is Walter Raymond's "Tryphena in Love," with scenes from the author's own native Somersetshire. The majority of English novels, however, testify to the love English writers bear for English fields and lanes. The charming pastoral scenes they depict make the heart yearn for a sight of them. Even the little of nature left in London streets-which are more than usually ich in human nature-has not been overlooked, as many of the pessimistic novels of the moment bear witness.

The more recent books from our own writers in which local color especially predominates are Alice Brown's volume of stories called

"Meadow Grass," Sarah Orne Jewett's "Life of Nancy," Mrs. Wiggin's "Village WatchTower," and Noah Brooks's "Tales of the Maine Coast." These have to do entirely with New England life and character, and are studies from nature. There are other equally fascinating volumes, such as Mrs. Foote's "Cup of Trembling," which carries one to the Western pioneer country she knows so well; Eleanor Stuart's "Stone pastures," a powerful story of a Pennsylvania mining district; Mrs. Goodwin's "White Aprons," in which one lives again in Virginia in days long prior to the colonial times; and Miss Pool's "Against Human Nature," of which the larger part of the scene is laid in North Carolina.

The list of American books might easily be lengthened out, but we prefer to send our readers to our own lists further on, or to their local booksellers, for more detailed information. Under "Books About Nature" and "Books of Description and Travel" are included many delightful volumes, which supplement "The New Novels" in a fascinating and most instructive way. We leave to individual taste the selection of its own summer reading, hoping our suggestions may be helpful, and lead into fresh and new fields.

The Household at Hermiston. From Stevenson's "Weir of Hermiston." (Scribner.) SUCH was the housewifery in George Square. It was better at Hermiston, where Kirstie Elliot, the sister of a neighboring bonnet-laird, and an eighteenth cousin of the lady, bore the charge of all, and kept a trim house and a good country table. Kirstie was a woman in a thousand, clean, capable, notable; once a moorland Helen, and still comely as a blood-horse and healthy as the hill wind. High in flesh and voice and color, she ran the house with her whole intemperate soul, in a bustle, not without buffets. Scarce more pious than decency in those days required, she was the cause of many an anxious thought and many a tearful prayer to Mrs. Weir. Housekeeper and mistress renewed the parts of Martha and Mary; and though with a pricking conscience, Mary reposed on Martha's strength as on a rock. Even Lord Hermiston held Kirstie in a particular regard. There were few with whom he unbent so gladly, few whom he favored with so many pleasantries. maun have our joke," he high good-humor, as he scones and she waited at had no need either of love or of popularity, a keen reader of men and of events, there was perhaps only one truth for which he was quite unprepared; he would have been quite unprepared to learn that Kirstie hated him.

"Kirstie and me would declare, in buttered Kirstie's table. A man who

Thus, at least, when the family were at Hermiston, not only my lord, but Mrs. Weir too, enjoyed a holiday. Free from the dreadful looking-for of the miscarried dinner, she would mind her seam, read her piety books, and take her walk (which was my lord's orders), sometimes by herself, sometimes with Archie, the only child of that scarce natural union. The child was her next bond to life. Her frosted sentiment bloomed again, she breathed deep of life, she let loose her heart, in that society. The miracle of her motherhood was ever new to her. The sight of the little man at her skirt intoxicated her with the sense of power, and froze her with the consciousness of her responsibility. She looked forward, and, seeing him in fancy grow up and play his diverse part on the world's theatre, caught in her breath and lifted up her courage with a lively effort. It was only with the child that she forgot herself and was at moments natural; yet it was only with the child that she had conceived and managed to pursue a scheme of conduct. Archie was to be a great man and a good; a minister if possible, a saint for certain. She tried to engage his mind upon her favorite books, Rutherford's "Letters," Scougal's "Grace Abounding," and the like. It was a common practice of hers (and strange to remember now) that she would carry the child to the Deil's Hags, sit with him on the Praying Weaver's stone and talk of the Covenanters till their tears ran down. Her view of history was wholly artless, a design in snow and ink; upon the one side, tender innocents with psalms upon their lips; upon the other, the persecutors, booted, bloody-minded, flushed with wine; a suffering Christ, a raging Beelzebub. Persecutor was a word that knocked upon the woman's heart; it was her highest thought of wickedness, and the mark of it was on her house. Her great-great-grandfather had

drawn the sword against the Lord's anointed on the field of Rullion Green, and breathed his last (tradition said) in the arms of the detestable Dalzell. Nor could she blind herself to this, that had they lived in these old days, Hermiston himself would have been numbered alongside of Bloody MacKenzie and the politic Lauderdale and Rothes, in the band of God's immediate enemies. The sense of this moved her to the more fervor; she had a voice for that name of persecutor that thrilled in the child's marrow; and when one day the mob hooted and hissed them all in my lord's travelling carriage, and cried, "Down with the persecu tor! down with Hanging Hermiston!" and mamma covered her eyes and wept, and papa let down the glass and looked out upon the rabble with his droll formidable face, bitter and smiling, as they said he sometimes looked when he gave sentence, Archie was for the moment too much amazed to be alarmed, but he had scarce got his mother by herself before his shrill voice was raised demanding an explanation; why had they called papa a persecutor?

An Old Barn.

From Abbott's "Notes of the Night." (Century Co.)

IT would require a small volume to tell how plant life was utilizing the old barn. Gray lichen and green moss were both upon the roof. Virginia creeper on the west and a trumpet-vine on the east had such firm hold on many of the broad, upright boards that they had been warped from their original support and were now held by the rank vines; one of these had ruddy foliage already, and the other, still in bloom, proved an attraction for the restless humming-birds that came and went continually. A poison-ivy clung to the hinges of the large double doors, completely concealing them. Pokeberry canes were clustered outside, ruddy and vigorous as a summer sun could make them; while a score of sickly, yellowwhite shoots, which had thrust themselves through cracks in the barn's wall, now lingered hopelessly in the unhealthy shade. Wherever water lodged and dust collected seeds of small plants had taken root.

Even in the cracks of beams and boards. wherever exposed to the sunlight, seeds had found lodgment and germinated; and in one corner, to which the sunlight came but for a short time, but where there was pretty constant moisture, an acorn placed there by a jay or squirrel had sprouted. Necessarily its career would be soon cut short, and already a great mouse-colored spider had rather closely invested it with cobwebs. The wonderful change which nature was steadily effecting was just beginning, it is true; but, could the old barn remain, it would soon be more open than now to both sunlight and showers, and then what a rank growth would cluster about it, both within and without! Even the heavy threshingfloor would be lifted up and sturdy tree-growth push aside every obstacle. Strange as it may seem, unchecked vegetation can absorb or digest even so huge a mouthful as a barn. How clearly all that I saw hinted of that which is to come, unless man should interfere. Nature, with artistic fingers, has already cast a veil over the clumsy handiwork of man, and leaving to her the task, the old and once ugly barn would become really beautiful.