realities instead of relatives, will have an abiding place in the future thought of the world. Without doubt poetry is an improvable art; the Spondee and the Pyrrhic, as non-existent forms, should be excommunicated; the Iambic, Anapestic, Dactylic, and Trochaic should be reformed; and future poets should excel Longfellow, Tennyson, Bryant, Pope, and Byron. But a poetic reformer, we modestly suggest, should be a reformed poet, if he expects to secure observance of his new canons of poetic composition. Whether this author meets the condition that would give weight to his suggestions is not exactly clear to his reviewer.

Sevastopol. By Count LYOF N. TOLSTOÏ. Translated from the Russian by ISABEL F. HAPGOOD. Authorized edition. 12mo, pp. 262. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Price, cloth, $1.

In 1854-55 Sevastopol was the center of European interest, for France, England, and Turkey were besieging it, and its defenders were replying from bastions with cannon-balls and a persistence of spirit that proved them to be heroes. Within the walls Captain Obzhogoff, Staff-Captain Mikhaïloff, and Adjutant Kolugin, representative military, but vain and quarrelsome aristocrats, walked to and fro, displaying mutual hostility on the brink of the city's destruction. The people all were soldiers, but the defense was inadequate. We read of terrible slaughter, but of no compromise. Regiments of Cossacks hurrying to repel the enemy; bombs flying mid-air, with malicious intent; stretcher-bearers at the corners of the streets; the boulevards filled with processions of the dead; trenches here, bayonet charges there, field hospitals every-where. Such items enter into this record of the experiences of that city from December, 1854, to September, 1855. Sevastopol in these few months was a pandemonium; at the close it was a ruin. This is its chief history; though recovered, it has made none since. The count is brilliant in description, salient in detail, transcribing actual scenes to the printed page, showing the horrors of war in its grouped calamities, and yet leaving the impression that, diabolical in itself, war is sometimes the mightiest instrument of civilization. The siege and fall of Sevastopol are nowhere better narrated than here.

Old Songs. With Drawings by EDWIN A. ABBEY and ALFRED PARSONS. 4to, pp. 122. New York: Harper & Brothers. Price, ornamental leather, $7 50. This book addresses the taste, and is suited to the study or drawingroom. The publishers have excelled themselves in its production. The calendered paper, the wood-engravings, the exquisite binding, and the general appearance win the eye and gratify the most cultivated love of the elegant and the beautiful. The "songs" will excite emotion in the youthful and revive memory in the aged. Love, both in its disappointments and successes, breathes in these old ballads, while the ingenuity and by-play of souls mutually attracted find expression in the poets of these pages. It is a book not for holidays, but for the whole year: a gift-book, but also one to be appreciated by the purchaser.