The November number of the Harvard Monthly appeared yesterday, and is full of interesting and well-presented matter. The only exception that may well be taken to the selection of the articles is that, with two exceptions, they are all poetry, or else prose about poetry. Even granting that poetry is the "purest distillation of human thought," the reader of a magazine like the monthly is surprised, and perhaps a little disappointed, at finding it an anthology pure and simple. It might have been well to keep some of the verse for the adornment of the next number. Mr. Francis Ellingwood Abbot contributes the leading article on "The Future of Philosophy at Harvard." Anything that Mr. Abbot can have to say on this subject well deserves careful attention, though the ideas which he advances will hardly meet with the approval of many students who have acquired their notions of philosophy in Harvard. Mr. Abbot takes a very advanced position as regards the "reform of philosophy," and is perhaps led to expect too much from the regenerate system which is to be based purely on "scientific methods." Because the "older chemistry has yielded to the 'new chemistry,' and because natural history has undergone a fundamental revolution," we have no satisfactory ground for inferring, as Mr. Abbot does, that philosophy, "the organic unity of all human knowledge," is destined to undergo a like reform. In his desire to see philosophy put on a modern scientific basis, and in his anxiety to crush out agnosticism, Mr. Abbot seems to be perfectly ready to sacrifice the whole field of pure metaphysics. The essay would have been much more valuable if the writer had stopped to support such statements as that the "Kantian principle on which agnosticism rsts is itself a sophism." We are asked to take rather too much on faith.

A letter from Scotland is very pleasant reading to any one who cares for Harvard, and the editors of the Monthly can well feel gratified at President Eliot's action in making their paper the medium of communicacation for the student of St. Andrews in Scotland. There is reason for regret that we have no "Students' Representative Council" that might send an appropriate reply to this letter of greeting.

"Holiday Time" is another evidence of the exceptional charm of the author's lines. Take as an example:

"Then through the vivid expectant hush

The Dure-souled song of a wild brown thrush!-

A ringing silver shaft sent home

To pierce the silence' tenuous dome."

In "How Matthew Arnold Impressed Me," we have a glowing and well-written account of the effect of the English poet's work on a plastic mind. The personality of the author is thrust for ward rather more than propriety or good taste would allow in an article of this kind. Without wishing to be cynical, I find considerable presumption in its spirit. The talents of the writer give promise for a very fair future, but let him delay the publication of his autobiography until the world may fairly be assumed to be more anxious for it.

The "Sonnet" is very pleasing, and as the production of a writer hitherto unknown in the Monthly, if I mistake not, is distinctly encouraging.

The essay on "The Heroic Couplet in English Verse" is very interesting, and shows a careful study and an unusually large acquaintance with early English poetry.

The two stanzas of "Riding to the Hunt" are much smoother and flowing than much else the writer has published. The morose undertone which completes each stanza is in striking and effective contrast with the gayety of the opening lines.

It is to my regret that lack of space prevents my speaking at greater length of the exceptional merit of the translations given in "Some Studies in Catullus." In many instances they surpass for perfection of rendering and beauty of English, the translations of Leigh Hunt and a host of other poets, not to speak of the clumsy productions of a pedantic Munroe. It gives an admirer of Catullus intense pleasure to see his spirit caught so thoroughly and rendered so well in our mother-tongue.

The highest praise-and this is not exaggerated-which one can bestow on these translations, is the desire which grows in the reader of seeing all of Catullus works rendered so well. This essay and its precursor in a number of last year, are a worthy addition to the small stock of literature that is growing up around Rome's truest lyric poet.

"Symbols," a good thought in a pretty frame, finishes this delightful number.