as well as all humane men, to see to it that this service is strengthened by all the assistance the government can give it, which should be all that it needs, by furnishing horses to draw the cars and more men to assist in emergencies and better pay to encourage fit men to engage in it, and promised aid to themselves and their families. in case of being crippled or lost.

It was my purpose to give some account of the wrecks recorded in these reports, and of the heroism and sufferings of the surfmen in rescuing the persons on board. But the space allotted to this subject is filled. If what has been said shall awaken interest in this service where it has not been felt, or deepen it where it has been felt, the purpose of the writer will have been accomplished.

Reminiscences of a Journalist. By Charles T. Congdon. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.

This is one of the most entertaining books of the kind that we have ever met. The author, in his early experiences and his long life as a journalist, has been thrown in with men of all sorts and conditions. He has a keen perception of individual characteristics, whether belonging to the humorous or the serious side of our human nature. He has also that rare felicity of style which is no superficial acquisition, but a revelation of the inmost nature of the man. He is thus able to endow whatever subject he treats with a singular vitality. He deals with no lay figures which he seeks to make attractive by brilliant garments hastily thrown over them. His men and women are alive. The interests to which he calls our attention are living interests. Halfforgotten actors and actresses live again in these pages, as they did nearly half a century ago in the admiring enthusiasm of the boy who now, with the mellow thoughtfulness of a veteran, brings them before us. Actors of another sort, who years ago flitted across the stage of life, sometimes in one character and sometimes in another, and who, to our thought, had become spectral and unreal, more as the remembrance of a dream than of actual persons, here rise before us as they once were, only surrounded, in their faded splendor, with a pathos which shows the kindly feelings of the writer. We recognize a man of this class. in Henry Clapp, a brilliant apparition for a season here in Boston, "who was known in New York as the King of the Bohemians," and who, with varying fortunes, went through many phases of experience. "Darker and darker grew his fortunes, and, when

they were at the darkest, he died. The pleasant though shifty life, the merry nights with congenial companions, the courage, which would not accept defeat as final, the swift expedients and hasty devices, ended in tragedy at last.... Who, if he could foresee it, would care to live such a life or die such a death?”

We recommend this book for the insight which it gives us into many hidden nooks and corners of life, for the interesting portraitures which it draws for us of men whom we are glad to know something more about, and for the revelations which it makes of the motives and initiatory movements which led to important public measures. But, above all, we value the book for the kindliness of its judgments and the sweet and gentle spirit in which the lessons, drawn from a wide and varied experience, are placed before us. The account of Horace Greeley is one which must still more endear that eccentric but greatly gifted and magnanimous reformer and public benefactor to the hearts of his countrymen. In short, as we lay down the book, which has brought us into connection with many scenes and men, we find ourselves moved by more tender sympathies and more charitable and hopeful thoughts. We feel more kindly toward others, as we look at them through the autumnal haze that is here thrown around them and us. And we look forward with a more loving assurance that all things are working onward toward more beneficent results.

Annual Report of the Woman's Educational Association.

J. H. M.

We have here the results of another year's labor, and the reports of a disinterested corps of workers in their several departments of industrial and moral and physical education, schools of carving and modelling, Harvard examinations, etc., and the list of able lectures before the Union the past year.

Uncle Remus. His Songs and his Sayings. By Joel Chandler Harris. With illustrations. New York: D. Appleton & Co. This book is redolent of the jollity and good-nature of the old plantation negro, and the writer enjoys reporting the sayings of old Uncle Remus, and perhaps was the very little boy who sat and listened to his stories. The book has also some fresh negro songs, with their rollicking measures, now glorying in the heavenly kingdom, and the next moment singing of the coon and the fox and the rabbit. Happy race! says the writer, we fancy. Shall the alphabet and the ballot spoil their joy?

After reading the recent work of Mr. Eaton on Civil Service, one is likely to feel that farther discussion is superfluous. Whatever there is to say on the subject, he seems to have said. His book is one of that discouraging kind that makes originality seem impossible. Whether we view the proposed reform from the side of theory or of history, whether as moralist or as politician, we are not likely to sound any depths he has not reached, or encounter any difficulties he has not anticipated. The book is a marvel of thorough and well-digested knowledge. We are confident, indeed, that we can suggest improvement. A somewhat fuller elaboration here and there, a more copious array of statistics, the insertion of some things which it evidently cost him an effort to leave out, would give the book a degree of serviceableness it cannot have now. Here, indeed, are whole parks of artillery and no small supply of musketry, as well. What the book should be, however, what it might easily be made,- is an arsenal from which, in the

coming conflict, every species of weapon may be drawn. This is the only criticism we can offer upon a work that, in its line, is incomparable in our literature. In substance, it amounts to the complaint that the book barely fails to contain everything that anybody might ask for; that it just misses of being perfect. The outline is complete; the argument is solid; the research it embodies is accurate and exhaustive. It is written, we may add, in the temper of a philosopher and the style of the cultured man of letters. If a cause were won when the truth is told, it were impertinence to write more. As we pen these words, however, there passes over our mind the reflection, how little this book, trenchant and unanswerable as it is, will further the reform, unless the orator, the newspaper, and the magazine shall diffuse and emphasize and re-emphasize its teachings. In this perverse world, old abuses are not summarily vanquished: it is only after oft-repeated blows that at length they fall.

It is this consideration that prompts us to write. With the aid of the book before us, we shall try to present a comparative view of the civil-service systems of England and America. Such comparison, we conceive, will be especially instructive for one or two specific reasons. England is our mother-land, in the first place. In the highlands of her history are the sources of our own. We speak her language; in law, we quote her precedents; we worship in her faith, and very widely by her ritual; her literature is the model to which we look,- our pride not less than hers. At the core, we ourselves are English. The differences that distinguish us from the English type are mainly superficial, and spring from the peculiar circumstances in which we have been placed, and the peculiar problems we have been called to solve. We participate in her renown; we share in her glory. In a sense which the Revolution happily could not obliterate, Hampden is our patriot and Cromwell our hero. We study her experiences, therefore, not as we study those of France or Russia or Turkey, which we almost feel can teach us nothing, since the genius of these peoples differs so widely from our own.

But another consideration that enhances the value of English experience is its variety. Seven dynasties, since the Conquest, have held the throne, and five of these, at least, have left records of long and varied labor at administrative problems. If we study these, we may find in them almost every type of civilized government except, indeed, pure republicanism. We are thus, in the history of a single people, enabled to observe the workings of most diverse systems of government. Would we study civil administration under military despotism? Nowhere can we better look for it than to England under the Norman and earlier Angevin kings. Would we acquaint ourselves with government by king and parliament, in which the king exercises a very real (though steadily waning) supremacy? History furnishes no better example than that of England under the Houses of Tudor and Stuart. Is it constitutional royalty in its more advanced phase of which we would note the workings,-a government administered by a king whose action is shaped by the will of the people ascertained through the machinery of party? English history shows us how it took form under the genius of William of Orange; how it developed under the virtuous but feeble Queen Anne; how it held its own under the able but bigoted and unscrupulous George III.; how it has well-nigh attained perfection under the beloved and illustrious Victoria. Under these types of government and manifold modifications of them, with statesmen of every school and of regnant ability, England has labored at the varied problem of civil administration. Had President Hayes, instead of sending Mr. Eaton to England, sent a commission to investigate the civil service of any other three European States, it would hardly have recorded more variety of experience. As our study is in the line of comparative politics, this consideration will be seen to be exceedingly valuable. If we are to learn from comparison, we shall learn the more, the more widely we compare.

Our study will be in the main historical, and will contemplate a considerable period. Before entering upon it, how