Literary Notes

Prof. John Tyndall, who recently spent tome time on the top of the Alps, at Brieg, Switzerland, wrote while there an essay on "The Sky." It will be publishid in an eaily number of the Forum. A posthumous essay entitled "In Dickens-Land," will appear in the Christmas Soribner'g, by Edwin Percy Whipple, the late critic and leoturer, who was one of the most ardent admirers of the genius of Charles Dekens. The Popular Science Monthly for December will contain articles by Professor Huxley, Grant Allen, and the Duke of Argyll; and an interesting bit of autobiograpby, entitled " The Boyhood of Darwin," frora the forthcoming " Life and Letters" of the great naturalist. Mrs. F. H. Bun ett's new story will begin in the Cbristmas number of St. Nicholas. It is called Sira Crewe, and it depicts the life of a little girl in a boardingschcol in London. This number of St. Nicholas will have stories by Washington Gladden, H. H. Bsyesen, Frank R. Stockton, and J. T. Trowbridge, with an Ilústrate i account of the voyage of the Woi ld balloon, wriiten by the leporter who took the trip from St. Louis last summer. Mis Francés E. Willard, president of the National Women's Christian Tem per - ance Union, the fourteenth annual meeting of which is now in session at Nashville, Tenn., has juat written a narrative of the rise aud an explanation of the purpose of thi organization, which is by far the largest society of vromen ever formed. It has a rnembership of 200,000, taking in almost every State and Terntory and most foreign countries. The essay will be published inthe Forum for December. Recent celegrams from Russia show that the government of that country is still pursuing the policy of arbitrary and despotic repression which is described by Mr. Kennan in a paper entitled "The Last Appeal of the Russian Liberáis" in the November Century. A number of young army and navy officers in St. Petersburg have just been tenteneed to penal servitude in the Siberian mines for merely setting forth in the course of a debate the advantages which another governmemal system would have over the present one. There is said to be muoh excitement and indignation among the friends of the young officers in military circles, and the circumstance furnishes another illustration of the way in which the Russian government, by punishing with excessive severity natural and peaceful discussion, excites and keeps alive the revolutionary spirit. As the liberáis of Moscow say in the ineresting appeal to the Tsar, quoted in Mr. Kennan's article, " The principal reason br the morbid form which the cantest with the government has taken is the absence in Russia of any opportunity for the 'ree development of public opinión and the free exercise of public activity."