HENRY WARD BEECHER’S “Star Papers” show the same control of musical English which made his sermons and orations famous. They are evidently inspired by a determination to succeed in doing something wholly unlike preaching, and their success in this respect is marked. They are pleasant conversations with the reader on subjects in which all healthy people ought to be interested—books, flowers, the woods,—even “angleworms, white grubs, and bugs that carry pick and shovel on the head.” He gossips over these in the most genial and companionable way, and if sometimes he shows the result of ex cathedra habits of teaching, no pupil who is worthy to be well taught will blame him for it. He was born at Litchfield, Connecticut, June 24th, 1813, and died March 8th, 1887, at Brooklyn. As a pulpit orator he ranks with Phillips Brooks whom he surpasses in power of pleasing expression, though surpassed by him in insight. As an essayist, he shows the influence of Addison and Irving, with occasional suggestions of the homely humor of Izaak Walton.