CURRENT LITERATURE.

Vennor's Weather Bulletin is the latest thing in journalistic ventures.

George Bancroft is nearly through with the last volume of his history.

G. P. Lathrop is announced to be the author of "After Glow," in the No-Name Series.

"Victor Emmanuel," by Edward Dicey, is the latest issue in the new Plutarch series.

"Love and Death," is the title of a long poem by Edward Arnold, to appear in the May Harper's.

Prof. Tyler looks forward to an early publication of the third volume of his work on American literature. - [Era.

In the April Harper's, Prof. Gildersleeve of Johns Hopkins has an interesting article on the "Athena Parthenos" of Phidias.

Scribner's Sons publish "Malmos, the Quietist," by John Bigelow, and "Outlines of Primitive Belief," by Mr. Kearney, author of the "Dawn of History."

Messrs. B. F. De Costa and Henry P. Johnston have become editors of the Magazine of American History, in place of Mr. John A. Stevens, its former editor and founder, who has retired.

Matthew Arnold has written a volume of "Irish Essays and Others," which Smith, Elder & Co. publish. This does not agree well with Mr. Arnold's determination, expressed in one of his latest books, to abandon, for the future, discussions in politics and theology and devote himself to literature. There is an interesting and appreciative, if not a brilliant, sketch of Mr. Arnold, in the April Century, by Andrew Lang, and the number has, as a frontispiece, an admirable portrait of Mr. Arnold, drawn after the painting by C. F. Watts. The following sentences occur in the article: "But the Greek drama was, as Mr. Arnold recognizes in his admirable preface to "Merope," the child of peculiar social and theatrical conditions. We cannot, even at Harvard or Balliol, hope to bring back those conditions. . . . The preface contains, perhaps, the briefest and most lucid account ever yet given of the nature and aims of the Greek drama, and of the functions of the chorus." Mr. Lang, himself a graduate of Oxford, gives us a glimpse into the results of the system of compulsory studies there, at the time when Matthew Arnold was professor of poetry. He says: "The position (Mr. Arnold's) with its chance of influencing young men, seems an enviable one. But there are so many compulsory lectures at Oxford, and attendance thereon is such a weariness, that many, even of the undergraduates who care for literature, seldom go. I never, I am ashamed to say, availed myself of the opportunity of listening to Mr. Arnold, because his lectures were delivered in the afternoon, when cricket or the river seemed more attractive than Apollo's lute."