_Mark Twain._--Of American humourists “Mark Twain,” known in private life as Samuel Langhorne Clemens, is readily placed foremost by critics and admirers both at home and abroad. He has the right to be considered the Nestor of our writers, for, born in 1835, he began to produce his earliest work when Irving was in his prime, and has therefore seen at least one phase of every school in our literature. His younger years were those of the decline of the Knickerbocker writers; he saw the rise and fall of the Concord group, the Cambridge poets, and the New York writers; and now he is present at the general upward movement all over the country, including the South and the West. His relation to our literature is not unlike that of Fanny Burney to the novel; she was born before Richardson published “The History of Sir Charles Grandison,” and did not die until twelve years after the birth of George Meredith, thus being contemporaneous with the greatest English novelists from the first to the last. Mr. Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri, and when scarcely thirteen years old was apprenticed to a printer. Barring a few years spent as pilot upon the Mississippi, he has devoted his life to literary work. His writings include “The Innocents Abroad” (1869), the humorous record of a trip in the countries of the Eastern Hemisphere; “The Gilded Age” (1873), a novel written conjointly with Charles Dudley Warner; “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” (1876), and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (1884), both books about boys whose exploits are interesting to young and old alike; “A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur” (1889), a cruel parody of Malory’s “Morte d’Arthur”; and “Christian Science,” an attempt, despite all the fun it makes, to report sincerely upon a careful investigation of the claims of Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy and her disciples. It is unfortunate for Mr. Clemens that he is a humourist, for he has had to suffer the lot long ago mentioned by Holmes as the fate of the fun-producer: no one can ever take such a man seriously; no one can believe that he ever has any other purpose than to tickle our fancy or awaken our laughter. Yet it is not impossible that future critics may come to regard “The Prince and the Pauper” (1882) and “The Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc” (1896), two serious and dignified pieces of writing, as Mr. Clemens’s best work.