ought to practise the principles of the Christian religion as well as individuals. The friends, except poor old Dunsford, who is dead, meet at Milverton's country seat, and the novel is read by Milverton in chapters, and criticised by the hearers, while a large number of social and literary topics are also discussed. The circle of friends has been somewhat widened, and embraces Cranmer, an exact but prosy official, Mauleverer, a cynic, and one or two others, but Ellesmere remains the chief and most interesting spokesman. The conversations between these persons are better than the story, excellent and original as that is. In one place they discourse on writing and the structure of sentences, and Ellesmere is asked to define what a weighty sentence should be. He replies:

It should be powerful in its substantives, choice and discreet in its adjectives, nicely correct in its verbs; not a word that could be added, nor one which the most fastidious would venture to suppress; in order lucid, in sequence logical, in method perspicuous; and yet with a pleasant and inviting intricacy which disappears as you advance in the sentence; the language throughout not quaint, not obsolete, not common, and not new; its several clauses justly proportioned and carefully balanced, so that it moves like a well disciplined army organized for conquest; the rhythm not that of music but of a higher and more fantastic melodiousness, submitting to no rule, incapable of being taught; the

substance and the form alike disclosing a happy union of the soul of the author to the subject of his thought; having, therefore, individuality without personal predominance; and, withal, there must be a sense of felicity about it, declaring it to be the product of a happy moment, so that you feel that it will not happen again to that man who writes the sentence, or to any other of the sons of men, to say the like thing so choicely, tersely, mellifluously and completely.

This sentence illustrates, as well as defines, a weighty sentence.

The conversations abound in good things, anecdotes, stories, fables, maxims, and proverbs. They are the best talk of accomplished and refined ladies and gentlemen on the most interesting topics, and are excellent models for young people who are sometimes embarrassed in company for want of something to say. We have no hesitation in saying that a person who will carefully study these conversations and has the intelligence to profit by them, cannot become other than a fine conversationalist.

Few writers have been so versatile or have treated upon so many subjects as Sir Arthur Helps, always with thoughtfulness and never without grace. On all those questions which are called women's questions he was in advance of his time. No more ardent admirer of woman ever

wrote or spoke, and his writings breathe a tender

ness and regard for her not often seen. He is both appreciative and chivalrous, and he places her intellectually on the same plane with men. The sixth, seventh and eighth chapters of "Companions of My Solitude" are full of wisdom and tenderness on the greatest of social problems. Helps does not idealize woman. He makes her his companion and friend.

No one can read the works of this charming, thoughtful and subtle writer without great gain. They are full of worldly wisdom and of elevating and ennobling thought. They should be in household where books are cherished and

every

read.

RUSKIN'S "MODERN PAINTERS."

IN 1843 there was published in England a volume entitled "Modern Painters," by a "Graduate of Oxford." It was in the main not a criticism but an appreciation of the works of J. M. W. Turner, who had been for more than fifty years an academician and member of the Royal Academy. Turner had not been a neglected painter, but had achieved considerable distinction, though he was by no means considered the greatest of modern landscape painters. It is not exact, therefore, to say, as is sometimes said, that Ruskin "discovered" Turner, but what he did do was to blow Turner's trumpet and to proclaim him, from Dan to Beersheba, as the greatest of English landscape painters. He magnified his works and made it appear as if Turner was charged with a special mission to the world to elevate mankind and exemplify the divine beauty of art.

This apotheosis of Turner, by the Graduate of Oxford, who was no other than John Ruskin,

aged twenty-four, excited a considerable storm in the world of art, and particularly among those hostile to the Preraphael brotherhood, which was commencing about that time, and of which Ruskin seemed to be the apostle. But Ruskin wrote in such glowing terms, and his criticisms were so incontrovertible, that in less than ten years after "Modern Painters" was published its author was acknowledged as the one apostolic critic of art. Turner was the one accepted landscape painter of the modern world, and Ruskin was his prophet.

Ruskin brought art into fashion in the Englishspeaking world and was the first to teach his countrymen what they should enjoy and why. He instilled into them the love of art and elevated and ennobled their minds by depicting for them the wondrous works of human genius on the one hand and the wondrous works of nature on the other. With a gift of expression that has seldom been equaled, and never surpassed, he showed forth the perennial beauties of architecture, sculpture and painting as they may be seen in Venice, in Florence and in Rome and joined with them the still grander manifestations of nature as seen in the Alps, the Jura, the lordly Rhine and the rolling sea.