There have been few stories in recent magazine literature so extraordinary in its plot and so forcible in its vivid descriptions as the late William Douglass O'Connor's "Brazen Android," the concluding portion of which appears in the Atlantic Monthly for May. If the first part of the romance was remarkable, it was at least within the lines in which story tellers are accustomed to confine themselves; but the character introduced in the second part is so inexplicable, and his action in the story so tremendous, that what has seemed but strange hitherto becomes now the merest commonplace. The power of the story is analogous to that which one finds in Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher."

It is something of a relief to turn from the tension of "The Brazen Android" to the portion of a hitherto unpublished journal of Richard Henry Dana, which describes a voyage on the Grand Canal of China. The most charming part of the paper is that where Mr. Dana gives us a picture of the exquisite courtesy and politeness of a certain Chinese gentleman named U-u. This U-u showed a characteristic bit of Chinese courtesy-which might be recommended to Harvard men-when, declining to smoke more than one or two puffs of a cigar given him by a friend or to take more than one or two sips of wine, he said, not that they were too strong for him, but that he was not strong enough for them!

Mr. William P. Andrews finishes a second paper on "Goethe's Key to Faust," which will prove of the greatest interest to German students; and the remaining articles in the number are up to the Atlantic's usual high standard.