Mr. Copeland gave an entertaining talk last evening before an audience which must have numbered five hundred persons, and which completely filled Sever 11. The talk was on The Sherman Letters, "Trilby," "The Profligate," and other contemporary books and plays.

The way to learn about great things, Mr. Copeland said, was to read the words of great men. With the exception of the first rank of our great leaders, no one could be found who surpassed General Sherman. His letters to his mother, which extend over the remarkable period of half a century, were the word of a great man telling of great things. From them we might get most truthful and vivid pictures of the Civil War.

Mr. Copeland then spoke enthusiastically of a book of poems which had lately appeared, called "A Little English Gallery," written by Miss Louise Imogen Guiney. He said that it was an agreeable account of some well known characters in literature, and that in this volume Miss Guiney had shown herself a real poet.

"Pride and Prejudice," by Jane Austen was then taken up by Mr. Copeland. Her books, he said, had been read with delight by the greatest men both of England and America. All through her works one feels that it is of real life he is reading. But "Pride and Prejudice," he thought, was not the best of her books, of which the most delightful perhaps were her latest works: "Mansfield Park," "Emma," "Persuasion." One goes to Jane Austen for humor, and not for pathos. Her novels are no more real than Miss Wilkens's "Pembroke," which is an extraordinary work, full of passion and power throughout. The descriptions of New England funerals which are to be found several times in the stories of Mary Wilkens are masterpieces of their kind. Another feature of her writings is that sad New England love, which finds it easier to renounce than to possess. Iron strength of will is the merit and at the same time the fault of "Pembroke," for no less than six characters in this story are gifted with this quality.

"The Profligate," Mr. Copeland said, is one of Pinero's best plays, but is not nearly equal to several other contemporary plays of the same sort, such as "The Doll House," translated from Ibsen, "Magda" by Zudemann, or "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," by Pinero himself. The "Profligate" is of interest, for it is an attempt to write a serious play which shall give a true picture of life.

"Trilby," said Mr. Copeland, is full of the charm of novelty. In it all conventionalities are thrown aside. Du Maurier defies in one half page all the rules of syntax and most of the rules of rhetoric. He does know of the periodic sentence. The book is not written, it is talked, and Mr. Henry James has said of it, that it is not even talked, it is smoked. Taffy, the Laird, and Little Billee are types, not individuals, but the close feeling of friendship, amounting almost to brotherhood, is masterfully drawn. The test of an imaginative work is the power it has of hypnotising its readers. Mr. Copeland felt that the first part of the book did exercise this influence upon him, but that just as soon as Trilby began to be hypnotised, he began to wake up, and from that time the book fell off in interest tremendously. The one person in the book, he said, who is not only a type but an individual, is Trilby herself.

Mr. Copeland then spoke of du Maurier's earlier work, Peter Ibbetson, which, he said, is a far more delicate book, in an artistic sense, than "Tribly." And it has the added advantage of keeping up the interest to the end.

After the talk Mr. Copeland read the first chapter of "Pride and Prejudice," and selections from Thomas Bailey Aldrich. He ended by reading Thackery's "Ballade of the Bouillabaisse," which, he said, might be called the key note of "Trilby."