The Christmas New England Magazines.

The New England Magazine for December is devoted very largely to the Fine Arts. Beginning with an article on architecture the table of contents contains a paper on Music in Chicago and finally courses around to a discussion of the question of sculpture. Besides this there are the ordinary expository articles which one meets so often in magazines, such as "The Republic of Peru," and "A Birds-Eye View of the Sahara." There is but little fiction in the number, a rather conventional story by Grace Blanchard, a sketch called "Pretty Miss Barneveld," and the conclusion of "One of a Thousand." The "curiosities." so to speak, are the fac-sim-iles of Whittier's first two printed poems, or Longfelow's sonnets to Whittier and Tennyson, and Tennyson's acknowledgment of Longfellow's sonnet.

As for the first article in the magazine, "The builders of the Cathedral," it sounds like a well-written final paper in Fine Arts 4. including even a quotation from Professor Norton. The article itself would not be of so much interest were it not for the exquisite illustrations; these are really charming.

The article on "The Outlook for Sculpture in America," by the American sculptor William Ordway Partridge is also interestingly illustrated. In regard to his subject, Mr. Partridge says,

"We have shown, then, that our people are ready for their great sculptor; that the conditions of life with us are in the main there necessary to the production of a great art. We are learning to look upon the nude form in the way that Greece regarded it, viz: as the highest possible embodiment of a man's conception of and love for ideal beauty, veritably the temple of the spirit. When we learn that to have a beautiful and finely developed form requires moderation in life and subjection to the spiritual. then shall we know that the nude form is as pure as God made it"

To Harvard men C. L. Slattery's essay on Religion in Schools will be interesting from the fact that Slatrery graduated from here in '91. If the article on cathedrals sounds like a Fine Arts 4 paper, this essay has a distinct aroma of Philosophy 3 The last half of the paper contains some excellent suggestions.

Finally an article on "How Civil Government is taught in a New England High School' is worthy of a good deal of attention. It is well-written, and the method of teaching described is certainly ingenious.