The November "Monthly."

The Monthly for November contains a number of interesting articles covering a wide range of subjects. The graduate paper is "The Student's Business, a Homily," contributed by Professor L. B. R. Briggs. Critical articles on Harvard life and its influences have been so numerous of recent months that Harvard men are beginning to feel like specimens in an educational museum. If all the criticisms were as good humored as Professor Briggs' we could not complain. He has been most intimately associated with Harvard undergraduates for many years and surely knows whereof he speaks. His comments on the abstracting influence of outside work may seem to the undergraduates rather severe but at all events he is impartial in his severity. Every busy man will admit that his routine studies are sacrificed more or less to his societies, his papers or his athletics, but he will also claim that his outside work is of great value and his time is not wasted. Professor Briggs makes us laugh at our own follies but he would be the last man to advocate an abridgement of the freedom of thought and action which is the occasion of those follies which he deplores.

Mr. Herrick's "Resurgens" is in a very different vein from most of his previous works. It lacks the vigor and picturesqueness of his Mexican sketches, but is far superior in delivery of thought and treatment. The first part is a little dull and prosy but towards the end the movement is better. The development of Catherine's character is excellent and is the chief merit of the piece

We are surprised that the Monthly should open its columns to the publication of so partisan an article as Mr. Garrison's "Why I am not a Republican." Whether we agree with him or not in his violent outcry against the Republican party, we must deplore the admission of party politics into college journalism. The Monthly has not lived up to its literary standard, for the article can hardly claim recognition on the ground of its literary merit.

The thought in Mr. Sanford's poem, "On Reading the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam," is very beautiful, but the expression is so involved and the versification is so peculiar, that it is difficult to get at the real meaning without several readings. Mr. Bates has a short poem, "Behind the Barriers," of a quiet descriptive style, but not especially noteworthy. The editorial is on "Student Officers," and as usual is worthy careful reading. The number closes with the usual book notices.