The Monthly.

The Monthly for June is pre-eminently a prose number and although all of the three articles are long, the number on the whole is a good one.

Mr. Harold N. Fowler has the graduate contribution this time.- a paper entitled "Recollections of a German Gymnasium." The particular "gymnasium" to which Mr. Fowler refers is the Kreuzschule of the Georg Platz in Dresden, and in the course of his article he gives a thorough description of the methods employed in German schools, the hours of study, the studies themselves, peculiarities of teaching and gradation of pupils. The paper is on the whole a clear and concise exposition of the "German way of doing things," a system which has so many advantages over the American in certain respects, that it behooves progressive students of this country to ascertain the why and wherefore. Mr. Fowler states authoritatively that at the time he entered Harvard College the average age of his German classmates was under sixteen, while that of his class at Harvard was about eighteen and four months; and further that German boys of almost any given age are further advanced in the course of education than their American contemporaries,- for which deficiency the author suggests a possible remedy.

In "The Discouragement of Horace Tennant," Mr. Cohen can truthfully be said to have turned his literary shovel to virgin soil, although what he has unearthed is of rather a peculiar nature. After a careful perusal, we should call it a sketch with most (but not all) of the characteristics of a story; a sketch, in which there are delineations of three distinct characters,- one Horace Tennant, a Harvard graduate, cultivated and cynical, the well-springs of whose enthusiasm are not, however, entirely dried up, returning to his Texas home after an absence of four years-secondly, a Texas girl, plump and pretty, with a natural antipathy to books and other instruments of cultivation, and a predilection for slang and amorous raillery (a girl whose type is familiar to many Harvard men) -and lastly, "a short, thickset young man with the countenance of a brakeman," of muckers, muckerish. Of these delineations, the first is the best, the second having certain touches of vulgarity which are not pleasing. Regarded as a story, this effort of Mr. Cohen's lacks effect in its conclusion.

The best piece of prose in the number is "A Study of William Morris," by P. M. Lovett. To those who are at all familiar with Mr. Morris' life and work, this paper will be of interest as a vivid and picturesque account of the friend of Swinburne and Rossetti; and to those who do not know William Morris, we would recommend a careful perusal of this excellent sketch of Mr. Lovett's.

Two communications-both suggested by Mr. Abbot's article in the April number on Harvard Clubs, both written by Harvard graduates-and an editorial on the new department of Comparative Literature, make up the remainder of the number.