display little merit beyond such as belongs exclusively to the skilful management of good tools, while the French photographers are evidently, as a rule, artists studying such things as lighting, posing and arranging, exposing and developing with considerable artistic knowledge and preconceived design, the former with a view to putting a picture before the lens, and the latter with a view to its faithful reproduction in the operating room. Two of the great secrets of their greater success will, we believe, be found to reside in the much longer exposures they give their plates in the camera, and in the use of a developer not so rapid in its action as to escape control during development. The great cry in England has been for short exposures and powerful developers, things which war against the subtle delicacies of gradations from light to dark, and from darks into reflected lights, which constitute one of the most special and striking peculiari

ties of the best French portraits. Refer back to past volumes of the English photographic journals, and this craving for extraordinary rapidity coupled with frequent mention of the extraordinary long exposures given on the continent, where the light is more powerful and the atmosphere more pure, will be found. You will also perceive that, while articles tending directly and indirectly to give mechanical manipulation and good tools all the credit of increased success crowd their pages to a wearying degree of sameness and repetition, papers of a truly art-educational character are extremely rare, in consequence, we have been informed, of the little real appreciation they meet with from English photographic students. Hence probably the inartistic and tasteless character displayed by their photographs when contrasted with those of our more artistic and tasteful neighbors.-Popular Science Review.

MELPOMENE DIVINA; or, Poems on Christian Themes. By Christopher Laomedon Pindar. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1867.

This is an elegant little volume, but not a volume of elegant poetry. We feel unwilling to speak adversely of the effusions of a youthful author, (we suppose his youth from several poems given as "youthful efforts" as late as the year 1861,) but the truth must be honestly told, if told at all, both for young and old; and the truth is, that this book contains many easy rhymes, but very little poetic thought. The verses, too often faulty in rhythm, abound with sentences that can hardly be called good English, as, for instance, (p. 90:)

"He gazed and gazed, and deeper still The soft attachment grew,

And nearer to the charmful maid
His loving soul him drew."

acquaintance with the classic poets upon these pages, we are surprised to meet with such words as "bluey," "bleaky," "browny," and the like; together with elisions, as ""T" for "it," to begin a line; "need'd" for "needed;" and such unwarrantable extensions as giving three syllables to words like Christian," "solely," etc. We feel so much pleased, however, with his modest introduction to the volume that we will allow him to speak here for himself: "That the book is very imperfect, I am fully convinced of; that it be but taken by another as a spur to elicit a more perfect one in illustration of a similar theme, is my earnest desire. The many and almost unceasing demands of a higher order have allowed me to bestow only a few tempora subseciva' on a work to which I would have gladly devoted day and night. As such it can hardly be anything else than deficient in many respects. Yet if I be the cause of giving to but one person the pleasure of a moment in perusing these pages, and still more, if one be thence inspired to send a whisper of love to the saintly beings carolled in them, I shall consider myself happy, and my labors more than sufficiently repaid."

THE TWO ROADS, GABRIEL, MARTHA, BREAD OF FORGIVENESS, FLOWERS FROM HEAVEN, FRAGMENTS OF CORRESPONDENCE. P. O. Shea, Publisher, New York.

This is a series of beautiful stories, from the French, on the beatitudes. They are well translated, and published in good style.

The author of this volume is well known from his valuable philological works. This volume of Studies is composed of sixteen chapters of expository notes on different parables and events recorded in the gospels. He has made free use of the standard commentaries, both Catho lic and Protestant. We cannot attach any critical value to the work, as we ob serve that, where Maldonatus and the fathers go against the system to which he is committed, he passes over what they have said, and gives us instead the opinion of Calvin or his own. The volume contains, however, many suggestive thoughts, clothed in pure, good English. The typographical appearance of the vol ume is remarkably good.

MR. P. F. CUNNINGHAM, Philadelphia, has in press, and will soon publish, The new Life of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, edited by Edward Healy Thompson, and which has just appeared in London. It will make a volume of about four hundred pages.

MESSRS. BENZIGER BROS., New York and Cincinnati, are about to publish Rome and the Popes: translated from the German of Dr. Karl Brandes, by Rev. W. T. Wiseman, Professor of Church History in Seton Hall Seminary.