The main tide of fashion sets rather towards Beverly Farms and Manchester than in this direction. The family lead, gladly, a quiet life, little disturbed by a bustle of visits. They depend chiefly for society upon the guests they bring down with them. They find plenty of occupation and interest, too, in caring for their boys. These are twins, as I have said, and so much twins as to be with difficulty distinguished apart. I was interested to know if they began to develop the literary faculty. ‘Heaven forbid!’ said their father in comic horror. Aldrich’s study at Lynn is a modest upper room, in a wing, with a plain gray cartridge-paper on the walls, no pictures, and nothing to conspire with a flagging attention in its wanderings. One’s first impulse, on looking up from the little writing-table in the center of the floor, would be to cast his eyes out of the single window, where Egg Rock, in a bit of blue sea, is again visible. This window should be an inspiring influence, letting in its illumination upon the fabrics of the heated brain; and not in the gentler mood alone, for tragedy is often abroad there. The fog shrouds Egg Rock, then rolls in and envelopes the universe under its stealthy domination; again, the gale spatters the brine upon the window-panes, and beats and roars about the house as it might on the light at Montauk. As an editor, Aldrich is methodical. He goes early in the day to the office of _The Atlantic Monthly_, and there writes his letters, examines his manuscripts, and sees (or does not see) his visitors upon a regular system. As to his personal habit of writing his literature, he has none--at least no times and seasons. He waits for the mood, and defends this practice as the best, or, at least for him, almost the only one possible. This has to do, no doubt, with the small volume of his writings, smaller comparatively than that of most of his contemporaries. This result is perhaps contributed to also by the easy circumstances of his life, and yet more by his devotion to extreme literary finish. Experienced though he is, and successful though he is, no manuscript leaves his hands to be printed till he has made at least three distinct and amended drafts of it. He could never have been a newspaper man; the merest paragraph would have received the same care, and in the newspaper such painstaking is ruinous. His was a talent that had to succeed in the front rank or not at all. He has produced little of late, far too little to meet the demands of the audience of eager admirers he has created. So delightful a pen, so droll and original a fancy, so charming a muse, we can ill afford to spare. Yet that mysterious genius that goes about collecting material for the archives of permanent fame can have but little to dismiss from a total so small and a performance so choice. WILLIAM HENRY BISHOP.