At the entrance examination of the Ecole this year sixteen American students of architecture were received. Last year there were but eight, which up to that time was the largest number recorded. * * * * * The Chicago Architectural Club has given evidence this year of very great activity, and its work has been directed in many channels and with good effect. Its lectures, classes, competitions, smokers, Bohemian nights, receptions, ladies' nights, expeditions to places of interest, and finally its exhibition of last month have all been excellently chosen to instruct, interest, and amuse its members, and incidentally promote the general cause of architectural education. The long list of attractions has held the interest of its members without flagging. In the classwork it has had the services and advice of the best and most competent men connected with the profession; and in all directions it is to be congratulated upon the good work done. Books. _AEsthetic Principles_: By Henry Rutgers Marshall, M. A. Macmillan & Co. 1895. 201 pages. $1.25. Probably many readers of THE BROCHURE SERIES have struggled as has the writer (and possibly some are still in an unsettled state of mind in consequence) over the abstruseness of the current works upon the philosophy of art, trying to find some obscure foundation on which to build for themselves a theory of aesthetics. To such, and to all others who have any wish to reason connectedly on art matters, Mr. Marshall's little book will be interesting and instructive reading. It is remarkably clear and understandable even to a reader with no special training in metaphysical reasoning, and in point of literary style and carefully considered use of language it is a genuine treat. Its object is to explain, in as direct and simple language as possible, the nature and origin of our ideas of the beautiful, and the logical deduction to be made from the premises, which will guide us in the practice of the fine arts, or the production of beauty of some special type. As Mr. Marshall is an architect, many of his illustrative examples are drawn from architecture, and the book on this account is especially interesting to architects. * * * * * _Rational Building_: Being a translation of the article "Construction" in the _Dictionnaire Raisonne de l'Architecture Francaise_ of M. Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc. By George Martin Huss, Architect. New York: Macmillan & Co. 1895. 367 pages. Illustrated. $3.00. This book, although confined entirely to the consideration of the French Gothic, will be found of great value to students. Many of our readers are of course familiar with it in its original form, while others may have followed the translation as it has appeared from time to time in the pages of the _American Architect_.