the ruins of Veii. Rowland was of a dozen different minds about her, and was half surprised at times to find himself treating it as a matter of serious moment whether he liked her or not. . . . . He used sometimes to go into the little, high-niched, ordinary room which served her as a studio, and find her working at a panel six inches square, at an open casement, profiled against the deep blue Roman sky. She received him with a meek-eyed dignity that made her seem like a painted saint on a church-window, receiving the daylight in all her being. The breath of reproach passed her by with folded wings. Rowland reflected that he had never varied in his appreciation of Miss Blanchard's classic contour, but that somehow, to-night, it impressed him hardly more than an effigy stamped upon a coin of low value. . . . He congratulated her upon her engagement, and she received his compliment with a touch of primness. But she was always a trifle prim, even when she was quoting Mrs. Browning and George Sand, and this harmless defect did not prevent her responding on this occasion that Mr. Leavenworth had a 'glorious heart."" There is not a name in the book but is the ticket to something as clear cut and closely wrought as this. But what do all these animated varieties of men and women do? They do nothing but talk. There is as great a want of incident as of plot. Their conversations are amazingly clever, and bring out the dispositions of the speakers with consummate skill.

"Ah, study?' repeated Mr. Striker. To what line of study is he to direct his attention?' Then suddenly, with an impulse of disinterested curiosity on his own account, 'How do you study sculpture, anyhow?' "By looking at models, and imitating them.'

“‘At models, eh? To what kind of models do you refer ?’ "To the antique in the first place.'

'Do

"Ah, the antique,' replied Mr. Striker, with a jocose intonation. you hear, madam? Roderick is going off to Europe to learn to imitate the antique.'

"I suppose it's all right,' said Mrs. Hudson, twisting herself in a sort of delicate anguish.

“An antique, as I understand it,' the lawyer continued, 'is an image of a pagan deity, with considerable dirt sticking to it, and no arms, no nose, and no clothing. A precious model certainly !'

"That's a very good description of many,' said Rowland, with a laugh. 666 'Mercy! Truly?' asked Mrs. Hudson, borrowing courage from his urbanity.

"But a sculptor's studies, you intimate, are not confined to the antique,' Mr. Striker resumed. 'After he has been looking three or four years at the objects I describe —'

"He studies the living model,' said Rowland.

"Does it take three or four years?' asked Mrs. Hudson, imploringly. "That depends upon the artist's aptitude. After twenty years a real artist is still studying.'

666

"O my poor boy!' moaned Mrs. Hudson, finding the prospect, under every light, still terrible.

"Now this study of the living model,' Mr. Striker pursued; 'inform Mrs. Hudson about that.'

"O dear, no!' cried Mrs. Hudson, shrinkingly.

"That, too,' said Rowland, 'is one of the reasons for studying in Rome. It's a handsome race you know, and you find very well-made people.' "I suppose they're no better than a good tough Yankee,' objected Mr. Striker, transposing his interminable legs. 'The same God made us.'

But the conversations are often too prolonged, and the author endows all his personages with his own turn for analyzing, in consequence of which they all occasionally talk alike, blurring for the moment their individuality. The effect of this perpetual analysis is fatiguing; the book never ceases to interest, but it taxes the attention like metaphysics. There are signs that it occasionally wearied the author; while such pains and care are bestowed upon his characters, his style is sometimes slipshod. He says, "deceased brother" for "dead brother," and uses other equally objectionable expressions; how else did he come to write such a sentence as the following? "She herself was a superior musician, and singers found it a privilege to perform to her accompaniment." On the same ground we account for his putting the same word into everybody's mouth, "hideous" for instance, which Christina, Rowland, and Roderick all use at different times in a moral sense, yet which is not a common word so applied. This, however, is allied to an old fault of Mr. James's, which is the repetition of one striking word or phrase until it loses its force; the word "formidable" is unusual and impressive, but it occurs so often in the latter part of the present book that any other would express as much; there is so much about "passion" and "passionateness that at length the fervid sound falls coldly on the ear of the unimpassioned reader. This is curious carelessness in a writer of such remarkable flexibility of thought and plastic power of expression. His control of language is like the facility of a great pianist; there is no turn or running accompaniment of thought, no cadence, no modulation, that is not executed with the easiest precision. His language owes something of its malleability to his command of French; but this sometimes carries him too far into constructions that are not idiomatic, and a use of words which is not in the genius of the mother tongue, as, for instance, his favorite "supreme," which he

sometimes takes in its English significance of highest, and sometimes in its French meaning of final.

It was to be expected that more would be made of the background. and side-scenes in a story whose action goes on chiefly in Rome and Florence, but Mr. James has refrained with almost stoical firmness from the opportunities and temptations which they offered. Readers of his tales and sketches of travel will find but few of those incomparable passages, half descriptive, half suggestive, in which the psychological bearings of outward things are so delicately hinted; he has done wisely, no doubt, in using his exquisite gift sparingly, and wherever these bits occur they greatly enhance the situation.

Looking at the book as a whole, it is like a marvellous mosaic, whose countless minute pieces are fitted with so much skill and ingenuity that a real picture is presented, but with an absence of richness and relief, of all that is vivid and salient; there is a pervading lowness of tone, and flatness of tint. This should not be the impression left by a novel of remarkable talent; we think, however, that it is not the result of a failure to produce the desired effect, but of a mistaken aim. The method, too, is a mistaken one; no aggregate of small particles, however cunningly put together, will produce the effect of honest cutting and shaping from the piece; it may be marqueterie, or a Chinese puzzle, but it will not be art. Moreover, such work has the disagreeable property of making criticism seem like picking to pieces.

From these strictures the last two chapters must be excepted. The story has the immense merit of rising to a climax at the end; there is more breadth and movement in the final twenty-five pages than in all the rest of the book. We have heard it objected, that Mr. James has resorted to a hackneyed expedient for getting rid of a troublesome hero; but there is nothing hackneyed in his way of using it. The effect falls short of what it might have been, because author and reader are still left looking on, curious, speculative, philosophical; we stand apart and watch the working of Rowland's anguish, and note the "magnificent movement" of Mary Garland's despair. But the close of Roderick Hudson is beautiful, powerful, tragical; it is intense, yet not overstrained; all it lacks is to have been told with more human feeling.

3.- Insectivorous Plants. By CHARLES DARWIN, M. A., F. R. S. With Illustrations. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1875.

We have all been long familiar with the remarkable insect-catching properties of the North Carolina Venus's Fly-trap (Dionæa muscipula),

and have looked with a curious interest at the pictures of its closed leaves with their chevaux-de-frise of marginal spikes, crossed over the body of a captured fly. This was generally regarded as a sort of singular accident, or at least as an exceptional phenomenon, quite peculiar to Dionæa; and beyond occasional speculations as to whether the trapped insects were utilized in any way for the nutrition of the plant, but little attention was paid to the subject, and it was not considered a matter of any great importance.

But for the last ten or fifteen years evidence has been accumulating among botanists that this occurrence is neither so rare nor so unimportant as was formerly supposed. The capture of insects by Dionæa, instead of being an occasional accident, is a constant and habitual phenomenon. Many different kinds of insects and other articulates are taken in this way. Dr. Canby, of North Carolina, collected fourteen leaves of Dionæa growing in its natural site, all of which had caught their prey, including altogether one fly, three ants, one spider, one centipede, and eight beetles. According to the observations of Dr. Canby, as well as those of Mrs. Treat of New Jersey, the same leaf will sometimes re-expand and capture a second or even a third insect, after disposing of the first. It is certain that the insects thus caught are not only employed for the nutrition of the plant, but that this is a main source of supply of the nitrogenous material required for its tissues. Similar facts have also been observed in other species of plants; and the capture of various kinds of articulate animals, in greater or less abundance, as a means of livelihood so to speak, is now fairly recognized as a natural phenomenon, not only in Dionæa, and in six or seven different species of Sundew, but also in Aldrovanda, Drosophyllum, Roridula, Byblis, Pinguicula, Utricularia, and Genlisea. It appears that these are in reality insectivorous plants. They possess certain organs of such structure and properties that they inevitably, in the natural course of things, attract, seize, and destroy their animal prey, as regularly and systematically as the spider captures his fly. In the case of Dionaea this is accomplished by the sudden trap-like closure of the irritable leaves. In other instances, as in that of the Sundew, the clasping movement is a slow one; but the insect is held entangled by a viscid secretion, and so gradually embraced by the bending filaments. Sometimes, as in Byblis, Roridula, and Drosophyllum, where there is no movement of the leaves, it is their viscid secretion alone which effects the capture, like so much bird-lime. In Pinguicula, there is both a viscid secretion and a movement of the leaves. Two of the species mentioned, namely, Aldrovanda vesiculosa and Utricularia vulgaris, are water-plants; they entrap, of course,

aquatic animals, mostly crustaceans, worms, and various insect larvæ. In Utricularia, the capturing apparatus is an irregularly hemispherical bladder, provided with a sort of valve, opening inward. This valve the intruder easily pushes aside on entering; but it closes again and imprisons him securely when he is once in. Mr. Darwin found, on one occasion, as many as ten little crustaceans in a single bladder of Utricularia neglecta; and Professor Cohn, of the Institute of Physiological Botany at Breslau, after immersing a fresh plant of Utricularia vulgaris in water abundantly inhabited by crustaceans, found the next day nearly all its bladders containing captured prey.

Mr. Darwin's attention was first directed to the insect-catching properties of the Sundew in 1860. His very numerous and careful observations have accordingly extended over a period of several years; and their results are recorded, in a systematic form, in the present volume. All the plants now known or reasonably suspected to be insectivorous are described at some length, but the most elaborate and original portion of the book relates to the Sundew; and we shall confine ourselves mainly to the investigations of the author on this species and its singular habits of life. The method of observation employed, and the manner in which its results are given to the reader, form a model for investigations of this kind. Everything is both done and told with a precision which leaves nothing to be desired; and no one can read the book without a sense of genuine satisfaction, at acquiring a knowledge so definite and based upon data so clearly and accurately stated. A few examples may be selected from among many, to illustrate this feature, which is a prominent one throughout. In speaking of the movement of the leaf-tentacles, when excited by the contact of raw meat, the author says (page 24): —

"Another tentacle, similarly treated, distinctly though slightly changed its position in ten seconds. In two minutes and thirty seconds it had moved through an angle of about 45°. In five minutes it had moved through 90°. And when I looked again, after ten minutes, it had reached the centre of the leaf; so that the whole movement was completed in less than seventeen minutes and thirty seconds."

On page 236, after enumerating various trials to determine the mode of transmission of the exciting impulse through a leaf, he says:

'In ten other experiments, minute bits of meat were placed on a single gland or on two glands in the centre of the disk. On eight of these leaves, from sixteen to twenty-five of the short surrounding tentacles were inflected in the course of one or two days. On the two