CURRENT NOTES.
A writer in the Daylight, of Norwich, England, says these pleasant words of Lippincott's Magazine, of which a successful edition is now published in England: "I have read with delight that always interesting magazine published by Lippincott. Lippincott's Magazine contains a complete story of about one hundred pages, by a well-known author, every month. 'Sinfire,' by Julian Hawthorne, is worthy of the son of one of the greatest literary men of America,—Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is full of distinction, force, and has a poetical thrill about it which haunts the reader like the melody of Schubert's 'Erl King.' 'The Whistling Buoy,' too, struck me as vigorous, breezy, and charming. But I must not forget one of the most delightful stories I ever read, entitled 'The Farrier Lass o' Piping Pebworth.' It is a work of real genius, full of the priceless gift of humor; it has also touches of pathos and strokes of real dramatic power. It is like the very best work of Thomas Hardy, with some of the breadth of the Elizabethan dramatists. In fact, I know no publication more interesting, varied, and delightful than Lippincott's Magazine."
Horsford's Acid Phosphate.—Beware of Imitations. Imitations and counterfeits have again appeared. Be sure that the word "Horsford's" is on the wrapper. None are genuine without it.
The attack recently made by Swinburne in the Fortnightly Review upon Walt Whitman has been a surprise to the admirers of both poets, and a shock to the admirers of Swinburne. It is impossible to reconcile the lyric fervors of Swinburne's earlier apostrophes to the American poet with the coarse and brutal strictures of his prose essay. If the feeling in the latter be genuine, and not assumed for the purpose of attracting attention, the whole episode suggests a curious commentary on the conservatism that attends advancing age. Schiller, who in his lawless youth wrote "The Robbers" and a number of revolutionary lyrics, survived to write "The Fight with the Dragon." The Lake poets, who all began as sympathizers with the French Revolution and with all rebellion against the established order, ended up as respectable, humdrum, God- and king-fearing Englishmen. "I am no more ashamed of having sympathized with the French Revolution than I am of having been a boy," writes the Southey of mature and sober age. Wordsworth's defection to the conservative majority excited Robert Browning to compose his magnificent lyric "The Lost Leader." But Browning himself can hardly be numbered among the radicals and progressionists of the present, either because they have gone beyond him or he has fallen back. In a humorous extravaganza called "P.'s Correspondence," Hawthorne pictures Lord Byron as an old man, fat, gouty, and reconciled to his wife. "Her ladyship's influence, it rejoices me to add, has been productive of the happiest results upon Lord Byron, in a religious point of view. He now combines the most rigid tenets of Methodism with the ultra doctrines of the Puseyites, the former being perhaps due to the convictions wrought upon his mind by his noble consort, while the latter are the embroidery and picturesque illumination demanded by his imaginative character. Much of whatever expenditure
