them songs of which Jews have always been fond. Nearly all the plays are melodramas, in which the contents go for nothing or are too absurd to count for anything. But the couplets have survived, and are fast becoming street ballads or folksongs, according to the quality of the same. Goldfaden's songs, in which there is always a ring of the true folksong, are giving place to the worthless jingles of Marks, Hurwitz, Awramowitsch, Mogulesco, and the like, and the old national poems are being superseded by weak imitations of 'Daisy Bell,' 'Do, do, my Huckleberry, Do,' 'The Bowery Girl,' and other American ballads. Now and then a couplet of a national character may be heard in the theatres, and more rarely a really good poem occurs in these dramatic performances, but otherwise the old folksong is rapidly decaying. I. Reingold, of Chicago, is a fruitful balladist who at times strikes a good note in his songs; but in these he generally painfully resembles certain passages in Rosenfeld's poetry, from whom he evidently gets his wording if not his inspiration. Side by side with this deteriorated literature there goes on a more encouraging folk-singing. Zunser, who now owns a printing-office in New York, continues his career as a popular bard as before, and has written some of his best poems in the New World. It is interesting to note how America affects his Muse, for he sings now of the 'Pedlar' and the 'Plough.' The latter, a praise of the farmer's life, to which he would encourage his co-religionists, has had the honor of being translated into Russian. Among his later poetry there is also one on 'Columbus and Washington,' in which, of course, both are lauded. The Stars and Stripes have been the subject of many a song by Judeo-German poets, which is significant, since not a single ode has been produced praising Russia or the Czar. Goldfaden, too, has written some of his songs in America, and Selikowitsch has furnished two or three translations and adaptations that may be classed as folksongs. Still more encouraging is the class of poetry which has had its rise entirely in America or in England, for among these poets it has received the highest development yet attained.