--The defect of "Captain Mago" is that its author has endeavored to reconstruct from remains of a purely literary kind the life of a time which was antecedent to the most of our oldest literature. Another author, Mr. Mahaffy, has had great success in a similar field because he chose for reconstruction a society which has left literary monuments of a very varied character and great abundance. His "Social Life in Greece" and other works about the ancient Greeks were written before he ever saw that historic country, and yet he tells us in his last work,[S] written after a personal visit and stay of some time, that his former writings were sufficiently true to the Greece of to-day to deceive living Greeks into the belief that he had been intimately acquainted with their landscapes and familiar customs. Mr. Mahaffy's "Rambles" among modern Greeks are a very interesting finish to his idealizations of their ancestors. It is comforting to know that after all her spoliations the country is still so rich in remains of ancient art as to retain more fine and pure specimens of the best work than are to be found in all the rest of the world. Very little is done toward uncovering and nothing toward restoring these sculptures, for the Greeks are jealous of foreigners and unable or not sufficiently interested to do this themselves. They are willing to allow others to do the work, but Greece must have all the profit. Still, there the works lie, and may be recovered at some future day. We may even be comforted to think they are well covered with soil, for the present inhabitants of the country, with exquisite barbarity that their ancestors could not have practised, use the standing monuments of art as a mark for pistol practice! Another point in which they show a constitutional divergence from their forefathers is in the singular barrenness that has fallen upon their women. Once their land teemed with a native-born population. Now the household remains so long childless that it is very common to find the wife's mother a permanent member of the household, being retained for companionship! Even the mature family contains but few children, and this in the best agricultural parts of the country. While these differences exist the author is not at a loss to find strange resemblances. The yellow hair and fair complexion, the forms which are even now types of the same race that stood for the old statues, the language, and a multitude of other things prove that the old race continues in purity and that Greece is not now filled with a mere mixture of Turks, Albanians, and Sclaves. Our author has a poor opinion of the Greek's capacity for government, and likens them to the Irish. He thinks that both these races are constitutionally incapable of government, and need subjugation by a foreigner. In this characteristic he finds a strong resemblance between the modern and the ancient Greek, for both have suffered personal jealousy to outweigh the strongest