Well, we sought and easily found an introduction to the artist who had

produced the new window in the cathedral. His name is Signor Francesco

Moretti. A common friend accompanied us to his workshop-studio. It is

situated in a part of a suppressed convent, or some such place, which

has come into the hands of the municipality, and a vast chamber in which

has been placed at the disposition of the artist. The _locale_ itself

has an Old-World look about it. A huge stair, up which you might almost

drive a coach and four, ascends from a cloister running round a

quadrangle. At the top of this we knocked at a great door, which looked

wormeaten and decayed. It was opened by a little boy, and strange and

striking indeed was the scene that presented itself. The room is an

immense and very lofty one, reaching to the rafters of the building. It

is lighted by one enormous window to the north, giving the artist just

the light his work requires. On one wall, opposite to the window, was

the cartoon which Signor Moretti had executed for the window we had been

admiring. It is of the size of the original, and is in all respects a

perfectly and highly finished drawing in black and white. The colors are

not shown on it. On an easel near it was the drawing of a colossal head

of Saint Donato, bishop and martyr, destined for a window for a church

in Arezzo. It is full of life and vigor. The head is that of an

evidently born and Nature-ordained ruler of men. And such Rome's bishops

for the most part were in the days when Saint Donato gave his life for

the faith. The window for which this drawing has been made will be a

circular one in the centre of the west front of the church in Arezzo.

Other designs, large and small, were hung with a total disregard of

symmetry or order on the wide white walls, and among them an infinity of

plaster casts of almost every part of the human body. The floor and

furniture of the vast chamber seemed to the eye of a stranger to offer

an inextricable and wellnigh indescribable medley of objects in the

utmost confusion. Quaint-looking bottles and jars of every conceivable

and inconceivable form, and of many more than all the colors of the

rainbow, were on all sorts of tables and brackets and shelves,

containing the coloring-matters which, when let out from beneath the

stoppers that held them down, were, like imprisoned genii in the Arabian

Nights' tales, destined to produce such marvelous effects. Other

suspicious-looking flasks, wearing a warning touch-me-not air, contained

chemical agents of varied kinds and properties. And everywhere, upon,

among and under all this heterogeneous litter, was glass of every

kind--plain glass, colored glass of every hue under the sun, unshaped

panes of glass, glass cut into every imaginable form. And all to any eye

save that of the master seemed to be a very type of orderless confusion.

On a large easel backed against the abundant light from the great window

was the partly-completed portion of another work, also destined for

Arezzo, consisting of two life-sized figures of Saint John the Baptist

and Saint Francis. They appeared to me to be treated in a somewhat more

archaic style than the subject of the window in the cathedral, but were

in no degree inferior in truth and accuracy of drawing and brilliancy of

color.

Above all, on one side of the room, were the furnaces in which the great

work of burning in the colors is achieved. Does the reader know under

what conditions of difficulty this part of the work is performed? When

the harmony of the coloring of a picture, especially in a branch of art

in which color goes for so much, has been duly considered and determined

on, it would not do to have that which was intended for a scarlet robe

turning out a crimson one, nor a brilliant emerald-green changed to a

bottle-green, nor, even yet more fatal, the delicate azures and lilacs

and grays of a distant landscape changed to comparative opacity, or

indeed altered by the shadow of a half-tint from that which the artist's

eye has designed for them. But if this is so with respect to the hues of

drapery or of landscape, it is easy to imagine how much more fatal would

be the slightest alteration of tint in those pieces of the glass which

are destined to represent the naked portions of the human body--in the

faces, the hands, the feet. And when, bearing these considerations in

mind, we further learn that the very smallest degree of heat in excess

of that which is required for the purpose in hand, or the very smallest

deficiency in the heat, or the greater or less degree of rapidity with

which this heat is communicated to the glass--any variation from the

exact point needed in each of these conditions--will without fail have

the effect of altering the result, it may be imagined how great are the

difficulties with which the artist has to struggle. And let it be

remembered that in other establishments for the revival of this

beautiful art the great modern principle of the division of labor is

called into aid in producing the result. The man whose business it is to

manage the furnace does this alone. All the power of his intelligence,

all the rule-of-thumb derived from his practice, is devoted to this

alone. Unable to do anything else, he has acquired the art of heating a

furnace to the exact degree needed. It is hardly necessary to insist on

the greatness of the change in the conditions when this specialty has to

be undertaken by the same brain and hands which perform equally all the

purely mental and all the purely mechanical portions of the work. The

conditions of the problem may be assimilated to those which would

surround the search for a first-rate astronomer who was also capable of

manufacturing first-rate mathematical instruments. And yet, on the other

hand, let the inevitable results of applying the principle of the

division of labor to the fine arts be considered. Mechanical excellence

attained at the cost of artistic deadness is and must be the result. The

individuality, the soul of the artist, the expression which his cunning

hand can put into his work, is found to have been lost, evaporated in

the process. What is the special value, of which the world has heard so

much lately, of an etching? A first-rate engraving is _per se_ a more

beautiful thing than an etching; but the value, the charm of the latter

is that it is the work of the hand which was directed by the designer's

brain--that, in a word, there is no division of labor in the production

of the result. And it is impossible to avoid the conviction that the

wonderfully artistic feeling and power which pervades the work in the

Duomo of Perugia are due in a great measure to the fact that there has

been no division of labor in the production of it.

Truly, it was a remarkable and striking scene, that strange workshop,

appealing very powerfully to the imagination, and carrying the

visitor very forcibly out of the ordinary surroundings of this

nineteenth-century world, and back to the habits, ways and associations

of the great centuries of art. There in the midst of it was the

master-spirit, the artist; and in truth he was, mere outward

circumstances of costume apart, a worthy representative of the olden

time, and one well calculated to carry on and complete the illusion.

Signor Francesca Moretti is a man, I should suppose, on the better side

of forty, of a tall, stalwart figure, such as becomes a genuine workman,

with a bearded face which, put a velvet toque above it, might well

recall some of the heads which the wood-cut blocks in the old editions

of Vasari have preserved for us. A modest, unassuming man--that one

might, _a priori_, have been quite sure of--delighted to talk of his

work and of the processes connected with them, doing so with frankness,

enthusiasm and unreserve--utterly above the affectation of mystery or

secresy as to his _modus operandi_, and quite ready to say to all the

world, "Do the same if you will, and better if you can." I need hardly

say that he received us with the utmost courtesy, and with that

genuinely unaffected simplicity of manner which is the heritage and the

specialty of genius, and is the true workman's patent of gentlemanhood.

Our talk was long and various, and the subject-matter of it did not tend

to dispel the illusion that we were by means of some strange

magic-lantern taking a peep into a resuscitated bit of the old

cinquecento art-life, so full were the mind and heart of the artist of

the special art-glories of his native city. Social philosophers have

much to say against the restricted nature of that intensely

concentrated form of patriotism in which the love and pride in one's

own native place--one's _paese_, as the old Italian phrase went--is a

species of religion. But it would not be difficult to show that the

objections these philosophers adduce would, if carried out logically, be

fatal to the reasonableness of all patriotism. Pure philanthropy no

doubt is a very grand sentiment, but, somehow or other, it has never as

a motive-power produced the great achievements that the narrower

sentiment of love of country has produced. And I am inclined to believe

that in the case, at all events, of ordinary people the love of one's

own "paese"--that church-steeple patriotism that it has become a fashion

with a certain school of politicians to deride--is very often a yet

stronger passion and a more powerful incentive to great deeds than even

the love of country in a larger sense. Such was undoubtedly the case

during the great days of Italian hegemony in literature and the arts. It

is difficult for those who have not made a special study of the subject

to conceive the strength of the tie that during the whole of the

mediaeval period, and for a couple of centuries beyond it, bound every

Italian citizen to the special community of which he was a member. The

fact and the consideration that he was an Italian in no degree stirred

his sympathies or moved his imagination, but that he was a Venetian, a

Florentine, a Pisan, or even that he was an Aretine, a Bolognese, a

Comasque, a Sienese or a Perugian, was all in all to him. The tie, save

perhaps in the cases of some of the greater of the historical families,

was a stronger one than even that of family. The Capulet or the Montague

may have felt that his place in the world was marked as such, but the

simple burgher who, had he not been entitled to call himself so, would

have been little better than a pariah, one whom all might have kicked

because he had no friends, a mere waif on the turbulent current of the

surging and unruly life of those days, felt in every fibre of his being,

and from his cradle to his grave, that what he _was_ in the world, and

what all that he cared for in the world depended on, was the fact that

he was a constituent part of this, that or the other civic community.

His fellow-citizens were his friends; and it but too naturally followed

that the members of other, and especially of neighboring communities,

were his enemies: even in the best times, and in the case of the best

and largest natures, they were his rivals. The relative superiority of

his own city in arts, in arms and in glory of every kind was the

strongest sentiment and most fondly-cherished belief of all those men on

whom the world now looks back as forming the diadem by virtue of which

Italy claims to have led the van of modern European civilization, but

who in their own estimation belonged wholly and exclusively to their own

city. If Dante, the range of whose intellectual sympathies can hardly be

deemed a narrow one--Dante the exile, whose chequered life made him the

denizen of so many foreign homes--could speak of the degeneration of the

pure Florentine blood by the admixture of that of _foreigners_ whose

native place was some five or ten miles outside the walls of Florence it

may be estimated how smaller minds and narrower natures would feel on

the subject. Each townsman felt that he was the heir to all the glories

achieved or inherited by his community. Each artist, each workman who

attained to praise and excellence in his craft, felt that he was

increasing the store of those glories, and was deserving well of a body

of compatriots who would lovingly appreciate his works and be the

jealous guardian of his fame. Dreadful that men living within walls on

the eastern slope of a valley should be bred to hatred of those

inhabiting other walls on the opposite slope, and be ever ready at a

moment's notice and on the smallest cause to fly at the others' throats!

Contrary to every principle alike of morality, religion, political

economy and social science! All true; and yet how wonderful, how

matchless was the amount of deathless work produced under the conditions

of that order of things!

Doubtless, Signor Francesco Moretti would not feel the smallest desire

to belittle the works of any contemporary artist of the still rival

cities around him. Doubtless he would fraternize with any such with all

courtesy and a genuine sentiment of the universal brotherhood of art.

But that Perugia was not greater and more glorious in arts and in arms

than any of her rival cities in the great olden time--that her artistic

history is not the richest, her school the most worthy of persistent

study--this it would be too much to expect him to think possible for an

instant. And accordingly our talk was of the school that had produced

Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, Pintusicchio, Perugino, Giannicola (generally but

erroneously called Giannicola _Manni_) and so many others. Signor

Moretti's own style has very evidently been formed on a long and loving

study of the works of Pietro Vannucci, more generally known as Perugino,

unquestionably the greatest of the school. The delicious figure of the

Virgin in his great window in the cathedral is thoroughly and entirely

Peruginesque. Yet in the treatment especially of his male figures Signor

Moretti has profited by the wider range of study possible at the present

day, and by the juster feeling springing from it, to avoid that

mannerism and too constantly recurring affectation of dainty

grace--often much out of place--which must be admitted to be a marking

characteristic of Perugino. There is a sturdy unself-consciousness about

Signor Moretti's figures which is incompatible with the somewhat

dandified airs and attitudinizing which Perugino often attributes to

figures to whom such characteristics seem the least appropriate, and in

cases where they would be least expected. It cannot be denied that

Perugino's figures are dignified, and that in a very remarkable degree;

but they are so by virtue of bearing, of proportion, of grace, and,

above all, of expression of face and feature; and in the case of his

full-length figures especially it is the dignity of a fine gentleman,

rather than that of a grand nature, objective and in no wise subjective

in its thoughts and preoccupations. In a word, it cannot, I think, be

denied that the grandeur and dignity of Perugino's men and women are

due rather to outward than to inward characteristics. It occurred to me

to reflect whether certain portions of our conversation in Signor

Moretti's studio might not, while illustrating in a singular manner the

value of much of the current talk of the present day about the great

Umbrian painter, throw at the same time some light on the peculiarity

which I have been mentioning. And I am the more tempted to give my

readers the gist of the conversation alluded to in that it discloses

certain interesting facts and anecdotes which are new to the world, and

will not be made known to any other part of it save the readers of

_Lippincott's_ till next year.

We were talking, as I have said, of Perugino and his works, apropos of

the spirit in which those of Signor Moretti have been conceived, and our

friend Signor Adamo Rossi was present. I had been reading an English

magazine article in which, after the manner of a certain English school

in literature and art, a great deal was said of the spirituality and

piety of sentiment which are thought to characterize the great Umbrian

painter's works, and I cited some of the remarks which I had been

reading. I saw a somewhat wicked smile mantling on the learned

professor's face and a merry twinkle shining in his eye, which led me to

ask him if his estimate of this quality in Perugino's works differed

from that of the English writer.

"Only in that it is rather amusing," said he, "to hear those special

qualities attributed to the work of a man who had no belief whatsoever,

and no sympathy with the devotional feeling he is thought to have

expressed so well."

The statement was quite new to me, as it will probably be to every

reader of these lines; and with no little surprise I asked whether the

professor were drawing an inference from any general circumstances of

probability, or whether he had any documentary evidence to support his

assertion. I was aware that Signor Adamo Rossi is one of the most

accomplished and indefatigable readers of archives in Italy, especially

on the subject of Umbrian art, and I was sure that if any documentary

evidence were in existence which could throw any light on the facts, he

would be in possession of it.

"Documentary evidence!" cried he: "to be sure there is. Here is a little

anecdote which I came upon the other day. Perugino fell ill at a village

about half-way between Citta di Piese (where, as I may mention, by the

by, a second large fresco by his hand, fully equal, I am assured to the

well-known Adoration of the Magi still preserved in that little town,

has quite recently been discovered) and Perugia. He was very sick, and

like to die. The parish priest of the place came to him as a matter of

course, and would have proceeded to administer the last sacraments, but

the apparently dying artist refused to avail himself of the priest's

ministry in any way. He absolutely declined to confess, saying that he

had a mind to see whether one did not fare quite as well where he was

going without any such practices."

Somewhat later he did die, and his infidelity was then so notorious that

he was refused burial in holy ground. He obtained the rites of Christian

burial eventually, it is true, but it was under the following somewhat

amusing circumstances, as appears from a notarial contract, the original

draft of which Signor Rossi has recently discovered. This very curious

document is the legal record and stipulation of a contract between the

prior of the Augustinian monastery in Perugia and the son of Perugino.

It is recited that whereas a portion of the sum due from the convent to

the deceased artist for a series of pictures painted for the convent of

the Augustines (these works, with the exception of one part of them

stolen by the French, and now, I believe, in the Musee at Lyons, are to

be seen at the present day in the Pinacotheca of Perugia, and very grand

they are) had not been paid at the time of the painter's death, it was

now hereby agreed between the prior and the representative of the

creditor that in consideration of five ducats in money paid down, and on

condition that the prior should at his own cost cause the remains of the

artist to be transported from the place where they lay in unhallowed

ground to Perugia, and should there give them Christian burial in the

church of his convent of the Augustines, the outstanding balance of the

debt should be considered to be thereby discharged and canceled. I may

mention that this curious anecdote, together with a variety of other

interesting matter respecting Perugino and the other artists of the

Umbrian school, will be found in a volume by Professor Adamo Rossi, to

be published in 1876 under the auspices of the Italian government

commission for the preservation and publication of historical documents

regarding Tuscany and Umbria.

It will be admitted that the professor's documentary evidence throws a

very singular and instructive light on the speculations of the

transcendental rhapsodists who are never weary of going into ecstasies

over the profound and touching piety of the works inspired by the vivid

and simple belief of the "ages of faith."

"But there _is_," I ventured to object, after having heard the

professor's anecdotes, "an unmistakable expression of devout feeling to

be seen in many of Perugino's faces."

"Therein," replied the professor, "you have a measure of the power of

the man's imagination. If he felt no devotion himself, he was able to

conceive the frame of mind, and consequent expression of face and

feature, in those who did."

Perugino was therefore giving us _not_ the outcome of his own heart and

emotions, as Beato Angelico did, but only his imagination of what would

be under certain given circumstances the outcome of another man's heart

and emotions. Now, may not the same exercise of the imagination account

for those special mannerisms which have been noticed as observable in

Perugino's figures? The great Umbrian painter was not a man who lived in

the companionship and intimacy of the great and noble, as several of his

successors of a generation or two later did. He was the son of a

_piccolo possidente_ (a small landowner), doubtless cultivating his own

fields, and in all respects little removed from the condition of a

_contadine_, or peasant. Look at the speaking portrait of the artist by

his own hand which hangs on the wall of the Collegio dell' arti del

Cambio in Perugia, the walls of which are covered with immortal frescoes

by him. It is a broad, bluff, open face, with abundance of

brain-development, with plenty of shrewd intelligence, and not a little

of strong volition--the presentation of a strong, highly-gifted and

thoroughly self-radiant character, but the last face in the world to

have belonged to a man accustomed to sacrifice much to the graces or

elegancies of life. Yet this is the man who may be accused, not without

some show of reason, of having deemed it desirable to array saints and

martyrs in the attitudinizing airs of dancing-masters. Is not the

explanation of the inconsistency to be found in the fact that here also

the artist was representing not what he felt and was conscious of

himself, but what his imagination told him was likely to be the

expression of the feelings and consciousness of others?

Much as Signor Moretti has of Peruginesque in the treatment of his art,

his figures, especially his male figures, are free from the faults that

have been signalized. There is a robust simplicity about them that is

far removed from affectation of any kind. In a small darkened room

opening off his studio he showed us some portions of his restoration of

a painted window belonging to the east end of the church of the

Dominicans in Perugia, on which he has been, and will for the next two

years be engaged, for the municipality of the city. The window is, as

regards dimensions, the finest in all Italy--a noble work of the later

but still brilliant period of the art. The state of dilapidation into

which it had been allowed to fall was such that, coming restored as it

will from Signor Moretti's workshop, it will in many parts be almost

equivalent to a new work. The five or six full-sized figures which we

saw restored are very grand. I do not know who the original artist may

have been--I think that it is not known--but, whoever he was, the design

of the figures is as simply grand and as free from affectation as could

be wished. And whether the restorer found the remains of the almost

destroyed work sufficient to guide him satisfactorily in this respect,

or whether their excellence as now seen be due to his own conception, it

is clear that the principles of taste on which he has formed his style

are free from faults which might have resulted from a servile following

of the manner of his great townsman.

One other reason besides the object of directing the attention of the

lovers of art to the works of a real and genuine artist has led me to

think it desirable to make Signor Moretti and his workshop known to

American and English readers. The custom, an excellent one, of putting

up in churches or other public buildings painted windows as memorials of

those lost to their country or to those dear to them has become common

on both sides of the Atlantic; and I am sure that I am giving good

counsel to any persons contemplating such an undertaking in recommending

them to pay a visit to Signor Moretti's studio at Perugia before finally

deciding on giving their commissions.

T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.

A STORY OF AMERICAN CHIVALRY.

"America is the paradise of women," is a foreign proverb that must

frequently recur to every American woman who travels or resides in the

Old World. Whenever in my Transatlantic journeyings I witness, or hear

of, or experience any flagrant act of discourtesy, or injustice arising

from contempt of the weaker sex, I am reminded by contrast of an

incident which occurred to me in early youth, and which I have often

related to astonished, almost incredulous, hearers in Europe, as a

specimen of the truly chivalrous sentiments and behavior commonly

exhibited by men toward women in every part of our great republic.

Once, when I was a very young girl, it became necessary for me to take a

journey of several hundred miles to visit a near relative who lived in

the State of Pennsylvania, a little over the New York border. It

happened that I was obliged to go alone and in an inclement season of

the year, but the circumstances were imperative, and my love of

traveling prevented any anticipation of fear or danger.

The morning of the third day after my departure from home found me

seated at breakfast in the large hotel at Corning, N. Y., which stands

within a few steps of the Corning and Blossburg railway-station. From

the conversation going on around me, I inferred that several of the

guests besides myself were going by the Blossburg train, but I could not

see the point of the landlord's jokes on the subject, which, however,

appeared to be fully understood and heartily appreciated by my

neighbors. He laughed and chuckled, and repeatedly wished us all

patience and perseverance to carry us safely through the trials in store

for us; and when we started in a body for the station, he followed us to

the door and called out that he would be sure to have a nice hot supper

of beefsteak and fried potatoes awaiting us on our return.

The train comprised only the engine and a few coal-cars, one

passenger-car, and two smaller cars for luggage. Altogether, it looked

very shabby and old-fashioned in comparison with the luxurious

appointments of the trains upon the more important lines; but the way

was short and the passengers were few, so that the accommodations were

as good as we had a right to expect.

The travelers consisted of eight or ten sportsmen equipped with rifles

and other accoutrements; two young men, one of them a lawyer, the other

a merchant (as I discovered from their conversation); an elderly

gentleman, evidently of wealth and position, whom the young lawyer

addressed as "Judge;" a middle-aged widow from Chicago; a brisk little

milliner on her way back to some Pennsylvania village with the latest

fashions from New York; and myself, a lively girl just out of school.

There was also a negro huddled up in the farthest corner of the car,

whose business it was to attend to the fire.

At eleven o'clock the train started with a great jerk, and crept slowly

out of the town. The motion was very disagreeable; the seats were hard;

the air was stuffy, and became after a while almost unbearable from the

accumulated breaths and the dry heat of the stove, into which the negro

was continually thrusting more coal. The hunters, in the forward part of

the car, exchanged remarks now and then: the rest of us read newspapers

and looked out of the windows at the monotonous winter landscape.

Wondering at the snail's pace at which we moved, I recalled the

landlord's mysterious jokes, and at last ventured to ask the little

milliner, who sat in the next seat to mine, what he meant by his

allusions. "Oh, it was nothing," she replied; "only this is an old road,

and there have been so many break-downs on it that Mr. Smith likes to

make fun of all the Blossburg passengers."

"But is anything the matter now?" I asked.

"No: we always creep along this way. You see, the distance is only

eighteen miles, or nobody could stand it. I always feel as though I

should fly out of my skin the whole way; but, after all, it is better

than a stage in cold weather. They are going to build a new road soon."

She had scarcely finished speaking when the train, which had been moving

more and more slowly, came to a dead stop. There was no station in

sight, nor any house or other sign of human occupation. We were in the

woods: a high hill was close against us on one side, and on the other a

steep embankment went down to the shore of a rapid stream that ran

through the valley. After waiting several minutes in vain for the train

to move on, one of the hunters went out to see what was the matter, and

came back laughing with the news that a piece had fallen out of the

bottom of the boiler, so that the water had put out the fire, and there

was no chance of our getting any farther until the boiler was mended.

Whereupon all the men rushed out to watch the progress of affairs, and

remained away for a time that seemed to us an age. At last they came

dropping back, one after another, each later arrival bringing more

encouraging news of the prospect of a speedy start, until finally the

same hunter who had announced the disaster appeared, saying that it was

all right and we should now go ahead. In the profound stillness of the

forest we could hear the hissing of the steam, and presently came the

welcome whistle; then two or three pantings of the engine and that

preparatory jarring of the whole train which precedes its regular

motion, and then all was still again. The same impatient hunter went out

again, and returned--this time not laughing--to inform us that as soon

as the water had begun to boil the hole had broken open again, and put

out the fire as before. Again all the men rushed out: even the

half-torpid negro in the corner became excited and followed the

procession of males, while we "womanites" waited in patience for the

sequel of the calamity.

It was now three o'clock in the afternoon, and the short winter day was

drawing near its close. The frequent opening and shutting of the door

had replaced the heavy atmosphere with a stream of cold air, at first

very refreshing, but soon uncomfortably cool, especially as the stove

had for some time ceased to give out heat, the negro, with the

improvidence that characterizes his race, having burned up the fuel as

fast as possible, without taking into account the probability of

detention. We began, too, to be dreadfully hungry, and not one of us had

brought any lunch, as we had fully expected to arrive at the end of the

railway-journey by dinner-time. To crown our miseries, the sky, which

had lowered above us gray and heavy all day, began to relieve itself in

a thick fall of snow.

The widow vented her discomfort in a monotonous grumble; the cheery

little milliner, who knew the road of old, kept up a hopeful prophesying

that we should come out all right; as for myself, I was young enough to

enjoy anything in the shape of an adventure, although this part of our

experience began after a time to seem rather tedious.

At last we heard our fellow-passengers approaching, all talking together

and apparently much excited. They brought bad news. The old engine could

not be properly mended, and it was useless to try to fire up again; we

had come only six miles, and it was twelve miles farther to the nearest

station; the conductor and engineer had decided to go on, to prevent the

evening train from starting, and to obtain another engine to remove our

train; but considering the distance they must go, and the heavy storm

that was coming on, they could not probably get back before morning. So

there we were, on a high ridge of road just wide enough to hold the

track; a mountain on one side of us and a deep river on the other; no

house in sight, and no way of getting at it if there had been one; our

fire gone out; nothing to eat or drink; night coming on, and the snow

falling as it seems to me I never saw it fall before or since.

The hunters made short work of the problem. They decided to follow the

train-hands to the next village, twelve miles off; so they picked up

their guns and knapsacks, and sprang over the ditch that lay on the

mountain side of the track and wound along the base of the hill to the

level beyond where the train had stopped. After they were gone the three

remaining men proceeded to discuss the situation. The old gentleman

mentioned that he was one of the directors of the road, and therefore

felt a degree of responsibility in our unfortunate circumstances;

moreover, as a man, he could not think of leaving three helpless women

to take care of themselves in such a dilemma, and he was sure the young

men must share this feeling; to which appeal they gave a hearty assent.

As neither of my companions seemed ready to speak, I ventured to thank

the gentlemen for their kindness, and to ask what we could do to lighten

their task--whether we could not go to some house near by, or even walk

back to Corning. But the brisk little milliner exclaimed, "I know the

whole road, and there isn't a house anywhere in this neighborhood. About

a mile back there is one in sight, but it is away over marshes and

fields, and the road is built so high up that we can't possibly get down

the bank; besides, it's a poor little hut when you get there, and I

don't believe the people could take us in."

Here the widow burst out crying, and the gentlemen, taking up the

parable, said that we could not walk to Corning. A good part of the way

the road was built over marshes and laid only upon timbers, so that we

might easily meet with some accident; besides, six miles in such a

snowstorm, and with empty stomachs! No, it was not to be thought of.

They went out to see what could be done, and we awaited their decision

in great anxiety, the widow bemoaning her fate and wishing she had never

begun the journey, and the milliner rehearsing numerous other

misfortunes which had befallen the Blossburg train when she had been a

passenger; not one of which, however, had proved such a "fix" as we were

in now.

Before long the Judge returned, calling out in a cheerful voice, "We

have it! We are going to put you into the hinder baggage-car, and give

you a ride back to Corning. So pick up your traps and follow me: it is

only a few steps through the snow, and then you will be as snug as

possible."

We gladly followed our leader out of the cold, dismal car, and he helped

us, one after another, over the narrow passage separating the track from

the ditch, until we came to the open space between the train and the

baggage-car, which the young men had detached and pushed a few steps

back. It was a queer little car--like an enormous goods-box set upon

end--and the interior was nearly filled with trunks, barrels and freight

of various kinds. But by pushing about and piling up the things room was

made for us, and two of the smaller boxes were left near the door to

serve as seats, which the two elder women were invited to occupy, while

I, as the youngest and smallest of the company, was assisted by the

director to climb up into a rocking-chair that stood on the top of a

hogshead in the corner, where I had an excellent seat, except that I was

obliged to crouch a little in order not to hit my head against the

ceiling.

Having disposed of us, the three gentlemen set themselves to the work of

pushing the car back toward Corning. They could only move it by resting

their hands against the sill of the open door and then pressing forward

with all their might, their feet being braced against the earth, so that

their bodies seemed almost in a horizontal position. After once starting

it, they were in hopes to be able to keep it in motion without much

difficulty. But the task proved to be a harder one than they had

anticipated. The car was strongly built and cumbrous in itself, and the

freight it carried was heavy, to say nothing of our additional weight.

Then, too, the snow had fallen to the depth of several inches, clogging

the wheels and encumbering the footsteps of the men and darkness added

to the difficulty.

After struggling along for a considerable time there was a pause for

rest and consultation. Just then a light twinkled far over the meadows,

probably in the little hut which the milliner had described; and it was

decided that the two young men should go there and try to borrow a

horse. Accordingly, they scrambled down the steep bank, while the

director shook the snow off his clothes and came into the car to rest

until their return. We did our best to be hospitable. The milliner

wanted him to take her seat on the box, and I offered to descend from my

perch and let him have the rocking-chair; but he refused both proposals,

and, finding a small barrel in an opposite corner, seated himself upon

it and declared that he was quite comfortable. He seemed to look upon

the whole adventure as a good joke, and we thought we could do no less

than be merry also; so we chatted and laughed and told stories, and at

last, discovering that he was very fond of music, I sang several songs,

with which he expressed himself highly pleased. When I say _we_, I mean

the little milliner and myself, for I am ashamed to say that the widow

was all the while discontented and cross, maintaining a sullen silence,

excepting when she broke it to grumble over our misfortunes, and

appearing totally insensible to the generous kindness of our protectors,

who could so easily have taken care of themselves if we had not been in

their way.

By and by we heard footsteps and voices, and the two young men

reappeared with a farmer's boy leading a horse. But, oh, misery! the lad

had forgotten the rope which he was told to bring, and there was no

other way but for him to go back to the farm for it. Reproaches were

useless, and so the lad was despatched for the missing rope, with a

warning that he was to come back "in less than no time;" and the young

men joined us in the car, glad to find shelter from the snow, although

there was scarcely any room for them to stand, and none at all for them

to sit down. The horse, too, seemed inclined to join our group, as one

of the young men held him by the bridle so that his head was inside the

door.

The director gave such brilliant accounts of the entertainment he had

enjoyed during the absence of his companions that they bewailed their

deprivation most bitterly, nor would they be comforted until the

milliner had repeated her story of "Mrs. Perkins's Tea-party" and I had

sung over again all my songs. As soon as the boy reported himself the

three gentlemen hurried out to superintend the hitching up. We could see

nothing of what was going on, excepting now and then a bright gleam cast

by the lantern across the snow opposite our open door, but we could hear

all that was said, and we soon learned that there was more trouble in

store for us. The horse would not go. It was not that the load was too

much for him, for when all was ready the three men came back to their

old place and started the car, with the intention of helping the horse

all the way. But it was of no use: he would not stir a step. Perhaps he

disliked the look of the wagon; more likely, he was afraid to walk upon

the timbers; at all events, he refused to budge an inch. The boy

chirruped and hallooed and swore; the men pushed the car until it came

up to the horse's heels; but he only kicked and baulked, and would not

draw. There was nothing to be done but to dismiss the beast and his

driver, and try again. So the three gallant knights went bravely to

work, and we watched them, ashamed of our helplessness, and yet feeling

that it was out of our power to prevent their self-sacrifice. The most

that we could do was to keep up their spirits by cheerful talk and merry

songs; and I must say that when not contrasted with their greater merit

our courage in keeping up the semblance of gayety is not to be despised,

considering that we had been sitting still for hours in cold and

darkness, and had had nothing to eat or drink since our early breakfast.

Even the one disconsolate member of our company was perhaps really

incapable of exerting herself so much as we younger and naturally gayer

women succeeded in doing.

For myself, wretch that I was, I enjoyed, away up in my rocking-chair,

many a stolen moment of pure fun during the intervals my forced jollity

for the benefit of others. There was a comical side to the adventure

which made me shake with suppressed laughter even more than with cold.

The whole affair of the horse was so ridiculous! The long journey in

search of him, the forgetting of the rope, and finally the utter failure

of the plan through the obstinacy of the sagacious beast! I laughed till

the tears ran down my cheeks while listening to the discussions going on

outside. And then to see those long-suffering men pushing our lumbering

old car, with their six hands in a row on the doorsill, and their feet

stretched so far out behind as to look almost as though not belonging to

their bodies, the more so because their clothing was entirely white with

snow! Once, one of them slipped and fell down flat, and I only laughed

the harder, though feeling all the while that I could have beaten myself

for my want of gratitude. The sighings of the patient little milliner,

who sat near the door with her precious bandboxes around her, and the

occasional moans and groans of the fretful widow in her dark corner,

only ministered to my mirth, which was probably the more irresistible

because I was obliged to smother it with the greatest care lest my

companions should become aware of my inexcusable levity.

In one of the pauses for rest the young lawyer gave a shout on

discovering an apple in his coat-pocket. But instead of eating it

himself or sharing it with his fellow-laborers, he cut it into three

pieces and handed it to us, together with a snowball to quench our

thirst; and then they all set to work again as bravely as though they

themselves had just been refreshed with food and drink.

But good-will was not all that was necessary to make their enterprise

successful. Their strength was giving out, and on seeing the gleam of

another light at a distance it was thought best to try to procure

another horse. Again the two young men set off across the meadows, and

again the good old Judge came into the car and took his seat on top of

the barrel. But the sequel of the second endeavor was more satisfactory

than the first had been. The young men returned with a lively young

horse, which, after being duly fastened with the rope that this boy had

not forgotten, started off at a good pace as soon as the car had been

got underway. He seemed to draw the load so easily that the three

exhausted men thought they might rest a while, and so they all piled

into the car and drew the door partly to, in order to keep out the cold

wind, which had begun to blow quite hard. They, poor souls! rejoiced

greatly over their change of base, and imagined themselves in wonderful

luck; while we, the former occupants, realized that our misery had a

lower depth than we had yet experienced, since we were nearly stifled by

the confined air, and at the same time chilled to the very marrow of our

bones by the close proximity of those animated bundles of melting snow.

But an unexpected piece of good-fortune fell to us all just then. The

Judge, while swinging his foot over the side of his barrel, happened to

strike one of them against a small object that tumbled over and rolled

away between the boxes. He sprang down to the floor in a moment.

"Hurrah!" he cried: "I believe I have run down a keg of oysters." A

match was lighted and the precious freight hunted for. It turned out to

be not oysters, but a tin box of oyster-crackers. "Never mind," said the

Judge: "it is something to eat, at any rate, and the owner will never

need it as much as we do. What's the use of being a director of the road

if one cannot help himself to the property once in a while?" So saying,

he pried open the box, the young lawyer keeping the matches going in

order to give him light, and soon the contents were distributed among

the company. While we were munching away at our dry food, now and then

varying the fare by a pull at a snowball, the driver gave a shout and

the car suddenly stopped.

On going out the men were told that we had come to a culvert, over which

the horse could not go, and so one of the party unhitched the horse and

led him carefully down the steep bank and up the other side on to the

track again, while the others pushed the car across the partially-open

space. Then the horse was hitched up anew, the car started, and our

guests again darkened the doorway. But the culverts multiplied, and as

the same process must be gone through with each one, the gentlemen gave

up trying to come under shelter between-times, and patiently plodded

along in the deep snow behind the car.

By and by the horse began to show signs of giving out, and the old mode

of pushing was resorted to in order to help him. But he was young and

easily tired, and finally the driver said he must not draw any more; so

he was unhitched, the boy was paid and dismissed, the men bent their

weary backs again to grasp the low doorsill, and we creaked along more

slowly than ever.

At last the lights of Corning became visible, and the work immediately

stopped. We were within about a mile of the town, and the director now

proposed that his two companions should go on and return with a

conveyance, while he remained in charge of us. This was done, and in

less time than it had taken to procure a steed for our railway vehicle

our deliverers appeared in the road below us, looking very grand in a

large sleigh carrying lamps, filled with fur robes, and drawn by two

fiery black horses that promised to bring our prolonged discomforts to a

speedy close. But how to reach this tantalizing object? The railway was

on an embankment, and between us and the road was another ridge, a deep

ditch filled with half-frozen water lying between. The young men debated

for a few moments, and at last went to a neighboring fence and broke off

a long board, which they brought and laid across from the track to the

ridge; and then one of them stood nearly knee-deep in the ditch and

supported the board on his shoulder, while the other climbed up the

ridge and told the director to hand us over, one at a time, as far as

his arm would extend, and he would reach out to us from the other side.

In this way we all passed over safely, and had no further mishap,

excepting that once the horses became unmanageable, and we came very

near being run away with on our way to the hotel.

As we drove up to the door the landlord appeared, rubbing his hands and

chuckling, just as he had done on our departure, and crying out, "Didn't

I tell you I should see you again to-day? and it hasn't struck twelve

yet! And I told you, too, that I would have a good supper of beefsteak

and fried potatoes ready: there they are smoking hot in the dining-room

this blessed minute; so come and eat."

The deliciousness of that meal I will not attempt to describe, nor the

comfort of the night's rest that followed it. Before separating from our

generous companions we three women (for even the widow came out strong

after the trouble was over) tried to express in some degree our

gratitude for their extreme kindness, but they laughed at the very idea

of any obligation on our side, and declared that the pleasure of our

society had far outweighed the hardships of the journey.

As a fitting sequel to this story I will add that the next morning the

two young gentlemen (one of whom resided in the town which I was

intending to visit, and knew my relations well) hired a sleigh and

invited me to drive across the country to my destination with them. And

about a week after my arrival I was surprised by a visit from the

director, who said that, having business in the county, he had come

twenty miles out of his way to see the little girl who had been so

cheerful and good-humored under so severe a trial of fortitude as was

our railroad disaster among the Pennsylvania hills. I believe that the

noble old gentleman really thought me more deserving of praise than

himself; and I am certain that not one of the three ever considered that

there was anything wonderful in having thus sacrificed their comfort and

risked their health in behalf of three women, insignificant in

themselves and having no claim, not even that of previous acquaintance,

upon their attention and care.

E.

WILLIAM, EARL OF SHELBURNE.

Among the English statesmen of a century ago, William, earl of

Shelburne, seems to us to have a peculiar claim upon the recollection of

citizens of the United States--one, too, that involves none of those

offensive associations that cluster round the names of, let us say,

Grenville and North. For in looking at Lord Shelburne's career we see a

man whose clear-sighted judgment from the first, and consistently,

protested against that system of high-handed imperialism which drove

thirteen reluctant colonies into a war of independence; who both in

office and out of office did his utmost, first to avert, by a policy

never of cowardly concession, but of just expediency, the impending

storm, and then, when it had burst, to withstand and counteract its

fury; and the last great act of whose public life was to conclude the

struggle which he had always deprecated and deplored.

It is therefore with no ordinary interest that we welcome the first

installment of a work[C] whose promise--and, we at once cordially add,

performance--heralds a really satisfactory account, a realizable

flesh-and-blood portraiture, of the English prime minister under whose

administration the peace preliminaries of 1782 were signed. The present

biographer comes before us with advantages for the treatment of his

subject never before possessed. He has enjoyed access not only to his

great-grandfather's papers at Lansdowne House, but to those of two other

most important actors in the British drama of a century ago--Lord Bute,

"the favorite," and Henry Fox; and these documents, pieced together and

set side by side, throw upon the events to which they relate, and the

motives and objects of their authors, that light, unquestionable and

convincing, which is the peculiar and happy characteristic of this kind

of evidence. It is all very well for an acrid Walpole, or in our own day

a scandal-mongering Greville, to draw, with plausibly life-like touches,

his version of this or that historical transaction--to tell us, with the

authority of one seemingly in the secret, that in such and such a matter

Lord A. was scheming for this, and that we are to find the key to Mr.

B.'s conduct in the knowledge that he was all along intriguing for that;

but how often it happens that when, by good luck, the contemporaneous

documentary evidence of correspondence, private memoranda and the like

is forthcoming, the off-hand allegations of the memoir-writer are in

infinite particulars tried and found wanting in correctness, and

sometimes fall refuted altogether! More than one notable instance of

this will strike the historical student in reading this first volume of

Lord Shelburne's _Life_; and in the eventful and disputed years which

Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice has yet to chronicle it may safely be assumed

that he will have plenty to say in the way of correction and explanation

of previous histories of the time.

An autobiographical fragment, composed by Lord Shelburne in his closing

years, and found among the Shelburne papers at Lansdowne House, presents

with a vividness of detail and verisimilitude that leaves nothing to be

desired the outlines of the first twenty years of his life. The Second

George had been ten years on the throne, the Young Pretender, alike the

bugbear and the consolidator of the House of Hanover, was a stripling of

seventeen, when, in the summer of 1737, William Fitzmaurice, afterward

earl of Shelburne (the name by which history best knows him) and marquis

of Lansdowne, was born in Dublin. "I spent the four first years, of my

life" (he tells us) "in the remotest part of the south of Ireland, under

the government of an old grandfather [Thomas Fitzmaurice, earl of

Kerry], who reigned, or rather tyrannized, equally over his own family,

and the neighboring country as if it was his family, in the same manner

as I suppose his ancestors, lords of Kerry, had done for generations

since the time of Henry II., who granted to our family one hundred

thousand acres in those remote parts in consideration of their services

against the Irish, with the title of barons of Kerry.... My grandfather

did not want the manners of the country nor the habits of his family to

make him a tyrant. He was so by nature. He was the most severe character

which can be imagined--obstinate and inflexible: he had not much

understanding, but strong nerves and great perseverance, and no

education except what he had in the army, where he served in his youth,

with a good degree of reputation for personal bravery and activity. He

was a handsome man, and, luckily for me and mine, married a very ugly

woman, who brought into his family whatever degree of sense may have

appeared in it, and whatever wealth is likely to remain in it." In 1741

the stern grandfather died, and in the course of the next ten years the

grandson picked up such bits of education as an Irish public school of

the period, supplemented by a clerical private tutor, might afford. At

sixteen he went to Christ Church, Oxford (in those days boys were

commonly taking their degrees at the universities at an age when they

would now be well content to have won their way into a school sixth

form), and there read law, history, Demosthenes, and "by myself a great

deal of religion."

And here our autobiographer abruptly turns aside from the incidents of

his own story to sketch the antecedents, existing condition and

character of the politics and politicians of the time of his first entry

into public life. No one, we take it, will be disposed to quarrel with

the interruption, for it gives us, in the space of a few pages, a

picture of men and manners which, painted as it is by the mature hand of

a shrewd contemporary observer, cannot but form a most important

addition to our stock of knowledge of those times. The literary style of

this piece of writing shows Lord Shelburne to have had in him the

making of a successful memoirist. Gossip, anecdote, passages of sarcasm

and epigram are mingled in skillful proportions; and there is certainly

no waste of the milk of human kindness. Pitt (Lord Chatham) is dissected

with ruthless elaboration: half a dozen minor statesmen are scarified

with a single sentence apiece. Horace Walpole himself, with all his

sinister acidity, nowhere hits harder--we had almost said more

bitterly--than does Lord Shelburne in this short sketch of his. But just

as an English House of Commons loves nothing so well as a "personal

explanation," so the personalities of literature have a way of

attracting us in the direct ratio of their piquancy and severity. Lord

Shelburne has quite a gift of killing two birds with one stone in his

trenchant criticisms. He cannot crush George III.'s father without

demolishing poor Lord Melcombe _en passant_. "The prince's life (he

says) may be judged in some degree from the account given of it in Lord

Melcombe's diary--a man who passed his life with great men whom he did

not know, and in the midst of affairs which he never comprehended, but

recites facts from which others may draw deductions which he never

could. The prince's activity could only be equaled by his childishness

and his falsehood. His life was such a tissue of both as could only

serve to show that there is nothing which mankind will not put up with

where power is lodged."

The elder Pitt--with whom, it will be remembered, Lord Shelburne acted

in the memorable events that immediately preceded and accompanied the

beginning of the war of independence--comes in for his full share of

severe animadversion, but the portrait is undeniably vigorous and alive.

Here is a specimen: "It was the fashion to say that Mr. Pitt was

insolent, impetuous, romantic, a despiser of money, intrigue and

patronage, ignorant of the characters of men, and one who disregarded

consequences. Nothing could be less just than the whole of this, which

may be judged by the leading features of his life, without relying on

any private testimony. He certainly was above avarice, but as to

anything else, he only repressed his desires and acted; he was naturally

ostentatious to a degree of ridicule; profuse in his house and family

beyond what any degree of prudence could warrant. His marriage certainly

had no sentiment in it. The transaction at the time of his resignation

does not carry with it an absolute indifference as to money or other

advantages, nor did there appear in any of his subsequent negotiations,

in or out of power, that he went beyond what was necessary to satisfy

the people at the time or to secure his wished-for situation. In truth,

it was his favorite maxim that a little new went a great way.... I was

in the most intimate political habits with him for ten years, the time

that I was secretary of state included, he minister, and necessarily was

with him at all hours in town and country, without drinking a glass of

water in his house or company, or five minutes' conversation out of the

way of business. I went to see him afterward in Somersetshire, where I

fell into more familiar habits with him, which continued and confirmed

me in all that I have said. He was tall in his person, and as genteel as

a martyr to the gout could be, with the eye of a hawk, a little head,

thin face, long aquiline nose, and perfectly erect. He was very well

bred, and preserved all the manners of the _vieille cour_, with a degree

of pedantry, however, in his conversation, especially when he affected

levity, I never found him when I have gone to him--which was always by

appointment--with so much as a book before him, but always sitting alone

in a drawing-room waiting the hour of appointment, and in the country

with his hat and stick in his hand."

All this, it must not be forgotten, was written in the year 1801, long

after the writer had finally retired from the battlefield of politics,

upon which, at the period when his own account of his youth breaks off,

he had not yet made his first essay. Some practical experience of actual

battlefields was to be gained by the future statesman before his

appearance in the parliamentary arena. Just before the time when,

between nineteen and twenty years of age, he was leaving Oxford, the

Seven Years' War broke out, and finding "home detestable, no prospect of

a decent allowance to go abroad [he had a trifling six hundred pounds a

year from his father, though], neither happiness nor quiet," he joined

the army and went on foreign service. Here he had the good-fortune to

come under the chivalrous General Wolfe, whom he eulogizes in terms the

genuine warmth and heartiness of which is all the more striking from the

contrast with his generally severe judgments upon his contemporaries. At

the battle of Minden in 1759, and again at Kloster Kampen in the

following year, he displayed conspicuous personal courage, which was

rewarded, on his return to England, with the rank of colonel and the

court appointment of _aide-de-camp_ to the new king, George III.

Hardly had camp been exchanged for court when circumstances offered the

young Lord Fitzmaurice his first introduction to a kind of political

employ which was to be thenceforward, through a series of years, his

frequent and peculiar function. Lord Bute, the favorite, had begun to

climb the ladder of ministerial office, and had cast his eyes upon that

unscrupulous and greedy but undeniably able politician, Henry Fox, as

the man most desirable for his purpose by way of a House-of-Commons

ally. Owing, very possibly, to the fact that there existed some

connection between Fox and Fitzmaurice's father, Lord Fitzmaurice fell

into the place of intermediary between the parties to this negotiation,

which had hardly passed out of its first stage when the death of his

father removed him, now Lord Shelburne, to the House of Lords before he

had ever taken the family seat, into which he had been elected at the

last general election, in the lower House. The negotiation was

successfully carried through. Fox named his price--a peerage for his

wife--and after considerable haggling got it, and in return undertook a

position which Shelburne announced to Bute in a letter dated October

31, 1761, as follows: "Mr. Fox will attend [the House of Commons] every

day, and will, either by silence or by speaking, as he finds it prudent

according to the occasion, do his best to forward what your lordship

wishes, and will enter into no sort of engagement with any one else

whatever." But before the year was out Bute found himself in want of a

closer and more positive support on the part of Fox than he had in the

first instance contracted for. The peace party, which he (Bute) headed,

had at last the close of the continental war full in sight, peace

preliminaries were about to be laid before Parliament, but there was a

prospect of the war party fighting over the terms proposed by ministers,

and Bute felt that he must have a strong leader to champion his treaty

in the House of Commons. Fox was his man for the place, and Shelburne

was again commissioned to treat with him. The details of a negotiation

of this kind are not of a character to call for very particular

attention a century afterward, but the letters between the parties--many

of them now for the first time published--are not without considerable

interest from the light they throw upon the characters and motives of

their writers. The position of a go-between is always more or less

perilous; his task, however well performed, is generally a thankless

one; nor in such matters can the adeptest diplomacy, joined to the most

thorough _bona fides_, always ensure the conduct of the common agent

against misapprehension and sore feelings. Of this the particular

negotiation of which we are now speaking is a typical instance. Bute's

offer (through Shelburne) to Fox was the leadership of the Commons, with

a peerage for himself to follow. Fox at the time held the very lucrative

post of paymaster-general--lucrative, because in those days it was

deemed a perfectly legitimate practice for the paymaster to make a

private profit out of the investment of the public moneys for the time

being under his control. Shelburne appears to have assumed--and so,

indeed, it was only natural to assume--that Fox would not dream of

accepting high office in the ministry without at the same time resigning

his extra-ministerial berth at the Pay Office; and there is evidence

that such--at first, at any rate--was Fox's own intention. The king was

given to understand that Fox's resignation of the Pay Office would be a

term of the proposed arrangements, and consented to them on that

footing; and then all at once Fox came out in the character of Injured

Innocent, protested that he had never meant to resign, that he had all

along intended to have his cake as well as eat it, and that Shelburne

had entrapped and betrayed him. The story goes, but on what authority

history saith not, that Bute afterward owned to Fox that Shelburne's

conduct in this transaction had been a "pious fraud," and that Fox

retorted, "I can see the fraud plainly enough, but where is the piety?"

The correspondence and the other evidence which, with a pardonable

jealousy for his ancestor's fair fame, Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice sets out

with much detail in his biography, requires, we think, at the very

least, that a verdict of "Not proven" should be entered in Shelburne's

favor; but a man who chooses to make personal negotiation his specialty

must not be surprised to find his tact sometimes called trickery, and

his double agency set down as double dealing. It is certain that the

part he played in the Bute-Fox negotiations entailed upon Shelburne

imputations of duplicity which he never succeeded in entirely

dissipating. The king himself wrote of him as "the Jesuit of Berkeley

Square," alluding, no doubt, to the nickname "Malagrida" (the name of a

prominent Italian Jesuit of the day) which somebody had fastened upon

him, and which served Goldsmith as the text of that deliciously

maladroit remark of his to the earl: "Do you know, I never could

conceive the reason why they call your lordship Malagrida, _for

Malagrida was a very good sort of man_."

Bute, however, obviously retained undiminished confidence in his

favorite agent, for in his arrangements for the formation of a new

ministry under the ostensible headship of George Grenville in the

spring of 1763, he not only employed Shelburne in negotiations with no

less than seven politically important personages, but he even wished to

get him the seals of secretary of state. This, however, was more than

Grenville would consent to. He objected that the old peers would be

jealous of the elevation of the representative of a family which,

however great its note in Ireland, was a comparatively recent addition

to the peerage of Great Britain; and also--reasonably enough, one is

inclined to say--that Shelburne's youth and total inexperience of office

rendered it advisable that he should at least try his 'prentice hand in

one of the lower administrative offices. Shelburne was at this time, it

must be remembered, only five-and-twenty years of age. A man of his

parts and rank and opportunities might rise rapidly in those days, but

he had hitherto had absolutely no official training; and the English

Parliament had not yet seen, what it was soon to see in the younger

Pitt, a chancellor of the exchequer of the almost undergraduate age of

three-and-twenty. However, Bute persisted in forcing upon his

friend--who appears to have been not unwilling to stand for the time

aside--a place in the new ministry, and he accordingly accepted the

presidency of the Board of Trade, was sworn a privy councillor, and

entered the cabinet of the so-called "Triumvirate" administration.

Immediately he found himself called upon to face American questions in

which he was destined to play so important a part. Some time before he

took office, Fox, in one of his shrewd letters to Bute, had marked out

Shelburne as a man pre-eminently fitted to effect "that greatest and

most necessary of all schemes, the settlement of America;" and he had

hardly been a month at the Board of Trade when a communication from Lord

Egremont, the "Southern" secretary of state, directed his particular

attention to this subject.

The North American colonies--or, as they were commonly called,

plantations--labored in those days, in their relation with the

home-country, under the inconveniences of a system of dual government.

The Board of Trade was the working colonial office, framed instructions

to the governors, gave information and advice, and carried on the

every-day colonial business generally; but the secretary of state for

the southern department, whose sphere of supervision embraced all the

colonies wherever situate, had always a permanent right to interfere in

and control the conduct of colonial affairs. It was in virtue of this

right that in May, 1763, Secretary Lord Egremont took the initiative in

setting the Board of Trade to work to solve the problem of how best to

arrange for the administration of the wide area of North American

territory that the peace had transferred from French to British rule.

His instructions were short and pointed. "The questions (he wrote) which

relate to North America in general are--1st, What new governments should

be established there? what form should be adopted for such a government?

and where the capital or residence of each governor should be fixed?

2dly, What military establishment will be sufficient? what new forts

should be erected? and which, if any, may it be expedient to demolish?

3dly, In what way, least burdensome and most palatable to the colonies,

can they contribute toward the support of the additional expense which

must attend their civil and military establishments upon the arrangement

which your lordships shall propose?" Mark the "3dly." It is interesting,

as illustrating the ideas and circumstances which led to the famous

Stamp Act, to see how completely Lord Egremont's question assumes not

only the right of the mother-country to tax her colonies, but the

probable expediency of her actually exercising that right. In his reply,

Shelburne, while admitting the revenue question to be a "point of the

highest importance," practically evaded it on the plea of the inability

of the board to form a satisfactory opinion without further materials.

With regard to the new territory, his advice, which was followed, was,

in effect, not to attempt to annex the whole of the north-western

acquisitions, but to form a new colony of Canada, limited by definite

geographical boundaries.

"American historians," remarks Lord Shelburne's biographer, "have seen

in the policy thus pursued a deliberate intention of closing the West

against further emigration, from the fear that remote colonies would

claim the independence which their position would favor. The statesmen

of the eighteenth century have follies enough to answer for without

charging them with this in addition. However impossible it was in

practice to dam up the ever-advancing tide of the English race, it was

equally impossible in theory openly to avow the intention of

dispossessing the still powerful savage nations, which were bound to

England by numerous conventions, and were regarded for the most part as

subjects of George III., equally entitled with the inhabitants of

Boston, or even of London, to the protection of his government. To

adjust the relations between savage and civilized man during the period

of the struggle which can have but one result is a task as difficult as

it is thankless, but American Presidents have not been accused of

attempting to prevent further colonization of their continent because

they have from time to time issued proclamations ascertaining and

attempting to protect the ever-retiring bounds of the Indian

reservations."

But the march of events was soon to take the responsibility of the

"settlement" (save the mark!) of American affairs out of the hands of

Shelburne. He had joined the ministry more because of the insistance of

his friend, Bute, the potent cabinet-maker, than from any general

sympathy with the views of the men with whom he had to act; and every

week put him more and more out of touch with them. He protested formally

to Egremont against the dual government of the colonies, and when the

latter tried to shelve the question by professing fatigue, curtly told

him--what was true enough--that he must expect more if the affairs of

America were to be put in order. He questioned the legality of the

action of his colleagues, the Triumvirate (Grenville, Halifax and

Egremont), in ordering the arrest of Wilkes of _North Briton_ fame.

But, oddly enough, considerations of a wholly different character

appear to have influenced his actual resignation of office. Bute,

nominally in retirement, but really playing the _role_ of ministerial

wirepuller-in-ordinary, had a surprising fancy for devising unlikely

combinations; and now he was minded to conjure with the still potent

name of Pitt. Once more, and, as it happened, for the last time, he

sought the service of Shelburne as negotiator, and once more Shelburne,

undeterred by past experiences, undertook the difficult position. Pitt

nibbled, and for a time seemed about to bite, but in the end he drew off

unhooked; whereupon (at the beginning of September, 1763) Shelburne

immediately resigned the Board of Trade. What his real motive in taking

this step was, his own letters do not at all clearly show. Doubtless he

felt his uncordial relations with his colleagues irksome, but we can

also hardly doubt that the attraction Pitt was beginning to exercise

over him formed a material factor in his resolve. Freed from the

trammels of office, Shelburne boldly stood forward as an opponent of the

arbitrary and fatuous course which the Grenville ministry, all

subservience to the king's wishes, adopted in the miserable business of

Wilkes. Jeremy Bentham has said of Shelburne that he was the only

statesman he ever heard of who did not fear the people. Certainly,

Shelburne on this occasion showed, with an unmistakableness that simply

infuriated George III., that he did not fear the court. The king made no

secret of his displeasure. He dismissed the ex-minister even from his

post of royal _aide-de-camp_, and when he appeared at court snubbed him

pointedly by pretending not to notice his presence. Bute followed suit,

and from this time all intercourse between him and Shelburne ceased.

For upward of a year after these events Shelburne kept entirely aloof

from the world of politics, busying himself with the management of his

estates in the country, collecting a vast number of historical documents

(which are now in the British Museum), and every now and then coming up

to London to enjoy the society of the "young orators" (as Walpole calls

them) who frequented his house in Hill street, and the non-political

clubs of _litterateurs_. Benjamin Franklin was among his visitors at

this time, and the two, as Shelburne in a letter to Franklin nineteen

years afterward reminds him, "talked upon the means of promoting the

happiness of mankind."

But it was not in nature that a man of Shelburne's energetic and

practical temperament should long be content to remain in his tent when

a Grenville was afield with such (to say the least) debatable measures

as the taxation of the colonies and the Regency Bill inscribed upon his

banner. His marriage happening to occur just at the time when the famous

Stamp Act was in the House of Lords kept Shelburne away from the debates

on that measure, to which we may be sure he would, if present, have

offered a persistent and uncompromising opposition; but at the end of

April, 1765, he appeared in his place in Parliament to deliver a

vigorous speech against the Regency Bill, and showed the courage of his

opinions by leading a minority of eight into the lobby. To Rockingham,

now at the head of the ministry, it was obvious that Shelburne, despite

his years--he was barely eight-and-twenty--was a personage whose support

was worth conciliating, and in July he offered to replace him in the

Board of Trade. The offer was declined, and not unnaturally. Shelburne

had always, with Pitt, protested against the policy of the Stamp Act,

and could hardly have sat in a cabinet which, domineered over by the

king, was preparing to carry it into execution. We may surmise, too,

that he was not unalive to the advantages of a waiting game, and that,

closely allied with Pitt as he had now become, and heartily believing in

him, he was unwilling to take office on any other than what we may call

the Pitt platform. Indeed, he himself says as much in writing to Pitt, a

few months afterward, apropos of the Rockingham overtures: "My answer

was very short and very frank--that, independent of my connection, I was

convinced, from my opinion of the state of the court, as well as the

state of affairs everywhere; no system could be formed, durable and

respectable, if Mr. Pitt could not be prevailed on to direct and head

it." In the same letter--the date is about December, 1765--he tells

Pitt, "'Tis you, sir, alone, in everybody's opinion, can put an end to

this anarchy, if anything can. I am satisfied your own judgment will

best point out the time when you can do it with most effect. You will

excuse me, I am sure, when I hazard my thoughts to you, as it depends

greatly upon you whether they become opinions, but, by all I find from

some authentic letters from America, nothing can be more serious than

its present state; and though it is my private opinion it would be well

for this country to be back where it was a year ago, I even despair of a

repeal [of the Stamp Act] effecting that if it is not accompanied with

some circumstances of a firm conduct, and some system immediately

following such a concession."

Whatever the faults and weaknesses of the Rockingham administration of

1765-66--and they were many--their moral courage in proposing and

carrying through the repeal of the Stamp Act ought to stand weightily to

their credit. The king was well known to be vehemently averse to the

slightest tampering with the act; and it is difficult for any body of

statesmen, even where--which here was anything but the case--public

opinion unanimously admits that a false step has been taken, to face the

obloquy and sneers sure to attend upon any proposal to retrace it.

However, the repealing measure was proposed and carried, Shelburne

supporting the ministers with all his might, though, doubting as he did

even the abstract right of England to tax her colonies, he with only

four other peers divided the House against them on the question of the

well-known declaratory resolution. _Sic vos non vobis._ Though the

Rockingham administration repealed the Stamp Act, it was the popular

belief that Pitt had been the real moving cause in the matter. Pitt, and

none other, was demanded by the national voice. The king reluctantly

yielded. Pitt marched into the royal closet with words of profoundest

deference upon his tongue and the stern triumph of a conqueror in his

heart, and proceeded to form an administration in which there was not

even the offer of a place for Rockingham. For Shelburne, on the other

hand, he immediately sent, and offered him the seals of secretary of

state. Such an appointment must have been a bitter pill indeed to George

III., but Pitt stood firm, and the king had to swallow his dislike as

best he might. What Choiseul, the French minister, thought of the new

arrangement appears from an interesting letter from him to Guerchy in

London, which Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice quotes from a copy at Lansdowne

House. His conclusion is: "Alors le ministere d'Angleterre aura une

certaine consistance; sans cela, avec l'opposition de my Lord Temple,

l'ineptie de M. Conway, la jeunesse et peut-etre l'etourderie de my Lord

Shelburne quoique gouverne par M. Pitt, il ne sera pas plus fort qu'il

ne l'etoit ci-devant. My Lord Chatham a pris une charge trop forte

d'etre le gouverneur de tout le monde et le protecteur de tous." At this

critical point, the mosaic administration (as Burke felicitously

nicknamed it) just formed, Pitt entering the House of Lords as earl of

Chatham, to the annoyed surprise of the multitude to whom he had so long

been distinctively the Great Commoner, Shelburne at nine-and-twenty

essaying the grave responsibilities of a secretaryship of state, the

first volume of the biography before us comes, most tantalizingly, to a

close. We stand on the threshold of the ever-memorable events of the war

of independence, and our appetite is keenly whetted for the feast of

freshly interesting details which, though Mr. Bancroft has enjoyed most

liberal access to the papers at Lansdowne House, may confidently be

expected to be brought to light by one possessed of the opportunities,

and, as the volume before, us abundantly shows, the diligence and

judgment of Lord Shelburne's present biographer. The main outlines of

Shelburne's career throughout the war are familiar, doubtless, to most

American readers. How he dissented from his colleagues' treatment of

the American difficulty, and was driven, in consequence, to resign his

office; how, in opposition, he struggled with all the energy of his

character against the policy of North; how, when that policy received

its deathblow in the surrender of Cornwallis, he had the quiet triumph

of seeing the king come over to the views which he had so long vainly

advocated; how, placed at the head of affairs, he arranged and got the

king's consent to preliminaries of peace; and how, before he had time to

finish his work, he was overthrown by the most disgraceful coalition

that British parliamentary government has seen;--are not all these

things written in a hundred history books? But pending the detailed and

authentic narrative of these things that we shall look for in a future

volume of this new life of Shelburne, we have here, by anticipation, a

most powerful sketch, by Shelburne's own hand, of one of the

principal--we cannot add famous--actors in the conduct of the war; we

mean the notorious Lord George Sackville, who, after being cashiered for

cowardice at Minden, was whitewashed by the first Rockingham ministry,

and thenceforward so boldly held up his head again, and traded on his

plausible gravity of manner and family connections, that in the heat of

the war the court actually got him appointed to the peculiarly

responsible post of American secretary. Shelburne is terribly severe

upon his conduct. "He sent out (writes Shelburne) the greatest force

which this country ever assembled, both of land and sea forces, which

together perhaps exceeded the greatest effort ever made by any nation,

considering the distance and all other circumstances, but was totally

unable to combine the operations of the war, much less to form any

general plan for bringing about a reconciliation. The best plan which

was formed in the office was one which was given in by General Arnold.

The inconsistent orders given to Generals Howe and Burgoyne could not be

accounted for except in a way which it must be difficult for any person

who is not conversant with the negligence of office to comprehend.

Among many singularities he had a particular aversion to being put out

of his way on any occasion. He had fixed to go into Kent or

Northamptonshire at a particular hour, and to call on his way at his

office to sign the despatches, all of which had been settled, to both

these generals. By some mistake, those to General Howe were not fair

copied, and, upon his growing impatient at it, the office, which was a

very idle one, promised to send it to the country after him, while they

despatched the others to General Burgoyne, expecting that the others

could be expedited before the packet sailed with the first, which,

however, by some mistake, sailed without them, and the wind detained the

vessel which was ordered to carry the rest. Hence came General

Burgoyne's defeat, the French declaration, and the loss of thirteen

colonies." What, indeed, could have been, even _a priori_, greater

fatuity than to entrust the direction of a war to a man who years

before, on the continent of Europe, had over and over again proved

himself to be utterly destitute of every military quality--of whose

general repute the following lines, quoted by Shelburne (from a

newspaper of the time of the Seven Years' War), with the caustic

commentary, "It is feared there was too much foundation for what is

insinuated, and more need not be said," are a sufficiently suggestive

indication?--

All pale and trembling on the Gallic shore,

His lordship gave the word, but could no more:

Too small the corps, too few the numbers were,

Of such a general to demand the care.

To some mean chief, some major or a brig.,[D]

He left his charge that night, nor cared a fig.

'Twixt life and scandal, honor and the grave,

Quickly deciding which was best to save,

Back to the ships he ploughed the swelling wave.

Our view of Shelburne would be but a one-sided one if it regarded him

solely and wholly as a public character, and took no count of the

domestic and private side of him. We are proportionately grateful for

some extracts from a diary kept at the time by his wife, Lady Shelburne,

which her great-grandson has been able to lay before us. They picture to

us a quietly-ordered, rather serious home, pretty constantly frequented,

however, by company, as one would expect from the many interests and

associations of its busy-minded master. He seems to have been in the

habit of treating his wife, in private, to solid readings in history,

politics and theology. One morning breakfast is followed by some

chapters of Thucydides, the next by part of one of Abernethy's sermons,

another day "Lord Shelburne read to us a paper concerning the Stamp Act

in America;" while on a fourth occasion Lady Shelburne, after dining at

the French ambassador's and going to a couple of gossipy assemblies

afterward, comes home to her lord, who very appropriately reads to her

"a sermon out of Barrow against judging others--a very necessary lesson

delivered in very persuasive and pleasing terms." More of Lord

Shelburne's private life we shall no doubt learn in the second volume of

his biography, in which we are promised "a picture of the society of

which Bowood [Lord Shelburne's country-seat in Wiltshire] was the centre

during the latter part of the century." Here, for the present, we

conclude by registering once more our cordial appreciation of the

service that is rendered to history by the publication of such

biographies of leading men as that treated of in this paper. Documentary

evidence carefully collected, besides correcting the hasty and generally

biased assertions of irresponsible contemporary chroniclers, forms the

only trustworthy foundation for the judgment of the impartial historian.

W. D. R.

FOOTNOTES:

[C] _Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, afterward First Marquess of

Lansdowne, with Extracts from his Papers and Correspondence._ By Lord

EDMOND FITZMAURICE. Vol. 1., 1737-66. Macmillan & Co., London and New

York, 1875.

[D] Brigadier-general Mostyn.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

SOCIETY IN PARIS.

If there is one point in social matters wherein Philadelphia shines

pre-eminent, it is in the matter of entertainments, whether private or

public. A lavish and generous hospitality rules our actions whenever we

bid a guest to our board. Emphatically, it is to our board. If that

hospitality has a flaw, it is to be found in the fact that we make the

eating and drinking part of our festivities of far too much importance.

Terrapin and Roederer take the place of dress and of diamonds. Our

cooks, and not our mantuamakers, are set in a flutter at the rumor of a

projected ball. We are less learned in point lace than we are in

croquettes. There may be a flaw in our diamonds, but our butter is

peerless. Our balls have their culminating point in the supper, and not

in the German. We invite our best friends more willingly to partake of a

new dish than to meet some distinguished stranger. And at most of our

grand entertainments two great rushes take place--the one toward the

dining-room when supper is announced, and the other out of the front

door when the banquet is ended, when repleted Nature finds no more joy

at the thought of terrapin, and when champagne has become a delusion and

a snare.

In far different style do people entertain on the other side of the

water. In Paris, that very paradise of cookery, the substantial element

of balls and parties is either wholly wanting or is but a very secondary

consideration. A Parisienne will bid you to her house, and leave you to

refresh exhausted Nature with a cup of tea and a sponge-cake. In summer

she may vary the entertainment by offering you a glass of currant syrup

and water. She would consider herself as utterly ruined in a financial

point of view did she conceive that an assemblage of some twenty or

thirty people would require anything more substantial. At entertainments

on a larger scale, such as _soirees musicales_, evening receptions,

etc., ices, coffee, sandwiches and a variety of small cakes are usually

handed round during the course of the evening; and that is all. At the

grandest of grand balls the supper is almost invariably composed

entirely of cold dishes--chicken, filet of beef, fish with mayonnaise

sauce, etc., with ices, cakes and delicious bon-bons. If extra

magnificence in the matter of viands is aimed at, it is sought in the

matter of unseasonable and consequently costly delicacies. Thus, at a

ball which was given during the month of February last the feature of

the supper was strawberries served in unlimited profusion. The

substantiality, the abundance, the variety of one of our Philadelphia

suppers, with its terrapin, its croquettes, its oysters dressed in half

a dozen styles, its game and sweetbreads and chicken salad, its ices and

Charlotte Russe and meringues, its fruits and flowers, its oceans of

champagne, rivers of hock and lakes of claret punch, would make a

Parisian open his eyes--ay, and his mouth as well. For, be it known, the

foreigners who scorn suppers in their native land lay aside all such

prejudices with marvelous celerity when bidden to a Philadelphia

banquet.

It must, however, be confessed that this simplicity in the matter of

food which is characteristic of French entertainments is a great

encouragement to the givers of soirees in general. With us, to entertain

as other people do requires not only a lengthy purse, but a degree of

care and forethought in the preparation for any festivity which is very

wearing on body and mind alike. If Mrs. Quakercity wishes to invite

fifty people to her house, her soul is vexed within her and her body is

worn to a shadow with the magnitude of her preparations before the event

can take place. Not so with Madame la Marquise. The purse of Madame la

Marquise is but slender and her rooms are small. Nevertheless, she

shrinks not from bidding her friends come to see her. Either she has, in

pleasant sociable fashion, a regular reception-evening, once a week,

when she is "at home" to all her friends and acquaintances, or else she

organizes a little soiree twice or thrice during the season. Fifty or

sixty people, as many as her rooms will conveniently hold, are invited.

The mistress of the house provides something in the way of some good

amateur music, a charade or two acted in almost professional style, a

bit of declamation, or possibly the presence of some literary or

artistic lion. Everybody comes, and everybody tries to make himself or

herself as agreeable as possible. Nobody turns up his or her nose at the

cup of tea, the delicately cut sandwiches, the tiny cakes that are

handed round during the course of the evening. Nobody goes away

groaning, "Heavens! how hungry I am!" Madame la Marquise cannot afford

to give her friends _pate de foie gras_ and hothouse strawberries, and

they neither expect to have them nor blame her for not offering them. If

she were obliged to offer costly and delicate viands to her friends

whenever she invited them to her house, she would not be able to invite

them at all. They recognize the fact, and enjoy the hospitality which

she offers them without expecting anything more. But I should very much

like to see a reception at home where tea and sandwiches formed the sole

refreshments of the evening. The comments of the departing guests would

be more audible than flattering to the hostess, I am afraid.

The dinner-parties which form in Paris, as with us, a very prominent

feature of social life, are far less heavy in character than are the

same class of entertainments with us. They consist of fewer courses,

which are served more rapidly. The guests are usually invited at seven

o'clock, and are seldom detained at table after ten. Music, either

private or professional, usually fills up the evening. It is customary

to invite a certain number of guests to come in after a grand dinner to

pass the remainder of the evening--a practice which proves that in

Parisian society people are far less "cantankerous" than they are in our

own. I can scarcely picture to myself a state of affairs wherein an

American belle or society-man would consider an invitation to "come in"

after dinner as anything but an insult. Which proves that we are not,

after all, as we pride ourselves upon being, the most sensible people on

the face of the earth in _all_ respects. That pleasant willingness to

accept invitations as they are really meant, and to appreciate

hospitality for its own sake, is a social lesson that the members of

American society would do well to study after the example set by their

Parisian brethren.

A Parisian dinner-party is far less conducive to indigestion than is one

of our own. Not only are the courses fewer, as I before remarked, but

the viands are less rich in quality and are served in smaller portions.

Delicacy of flavor, and not solidity, is the result aimed at by a true

French _cordon bleu_. There is also considerable taste and ingenuity

displayed in serving the ices, which are brought to the table in all

manner of pretty and fanciful forms. Thus, at one dinner-party a basket

formed of brown _nougat_ was handed round. It was filled with apricots

moulded in peach-tinted ice and of delicious apricot flavor. At another

the basket was of white _nougat_, and the ice-cream was colored and

moulded to represent pink and crimson roses. On another occasion a large

silver dish was borne in, on which was placed a bundle of asparagus, the

stalks held together by a broad blue satin ribbon. The ribbon was

untied, the stalks fell apart, and one was served to each guest,

together with a rich sauce from a silver sauce-boat. The asparagus-stalk

was composed of vanilla ice-cream, and the green part of pistacchio ice,

while the sauce was a delicately flavored cream. The imitation of the

vegetable was perfect in every particular, and was thoroughly deceptive.

The floral decorations at dinner-parties are usually on a far less

extensive scale than with us. A single basket tastefully arranged for

the centre of the table is considered quite sufficient, except on

occasions of extra magnificence and importance.

The official balls at the Elysee, of which two or three are usually

given every winter, are very informal in character. The American

traveler who wishes to attend must send in his or her name through the

medium of the American minister. The invitation-lists are divided into

as many sections as there are balls to be given, so as to avoid

over-crowding in the comparatively small salons of the Elysee. Madame

MacMahon and the marshal receive their guests in a small reception-room,

which is the first of the suite of apartments on the first floor, all of

which are thrown open to the public on such occasions. They receive in a

perfectly simple and informal manner. Each guest on entering bows to the

host and hostess without any form of presentation, and is then at

liberty to wander about at will. The apartments thrown open comprise the

state suites on the first and second floors, numbering some twenty or

thirty rooms in all. A temporary gallery is erected to serve as a

supper-room, and there refreshments are served all through the evening,

there being no set hour for supper, as with us. The profusion of flowers

and lights, the crowd of powdered footmen in the white and scarlet

liveries of the marshal, the delightful music and splendid toilettes,

combine to make these balls very elegant and attractive, though far less

so than were the official fetes given under the Empire, when the superb

apartments of the Hotel de Ville and of the Tuileries formed the grand

ball-rooms for the hospitalities of the government. The Elysee is much

too small to accommodate the crowds that usually rush to these

festivals. The heat and crush are excessive, and it is recorded that

after the great ball last year wisps of costly laces, shreds of

Chantilly, rags of old point, scraps of point de Bruxelles strewed the

grand staircase from top to bottom. The crowd, owing to the division of

the invitation-lists of which I have spoken, is less dense this year,

but still great enough to render a ball at the Elysee anything but a

comfortable form of enjoyment.

There is one feature about Parisian entertainments, whether public or

private, which is apt to strike a stranger very unpleasantly; and that

is the card-playing--nay, to put it accurately, the actual

gambling--which forms one of the amusements of the evening. It is not

pleasant to behold in the salons of the President of the French Republic

an accurate reproduction in miniature of the departed glories of

Baden-Baden and of Homburg--the shaded lamps, throwing a lurid light on

the "board of green cloth," the piles of gold, the shifting cards, the

intent faces of the players, and the groups of gazers looking on in

silence. Vast sums are, I am told, often lost and won in this manner

during a single evening. This, at least, is a reproach from which

American entertainments of the highest class are certainly free. John

Morrisey may take his seat in Congress, but he does not direct the

amusements in the back parlor of the White House.

But if French society is unexacting in the matter of refreshments, it

runs to waste in regard to dress. The toilettes worn at all

entertainments of any extent and formality far surpass in costliness and

beauty any festal garbs which feminine humanity can contrive to don in

America. In this birthplace of dress, dress is a pre-eminent and

all-important feature. Two great points are _de rigueur_ in a

Frenchwoman's toilette: it must always be appropriate, and always be

fresh. It may not be costly, it may not be elaborate, but those two

qualities must not be lacking. And they shade things off so much more

minutely than they do with us. A ball-dress cannot be a dinner-dress,

and _vice versa_; while in America the same toilette is considered

appropriate for both occasions. If a dinner-party is to number over

twelve guests, a low-necked dress is admissible; otherwise, the

dinner-dress must be made with open corsage and half-long sleeves. The

same shade of glove is not suitable at a wedding-reception that is

proper for a formal call. The handsomest of walking-dresses is

inadmissible to receive calls in or to wear out in the evening to the

opera or to a small party. The very length of skirt that is appropriate

for each festive occasion is regulated by the laws of fashion. A lady at

the Grand Opera or Les Italiens must not wear her opera-cloak after she

takes her seat in the theatre: it is considered only a wrap, no matter

how magnificent or costly it may be. Fancy jewelry of all kinds is

entirely out of fashion, and is seen no more: pearls and precious stones

alone are worn on full-dress occasions. This rule has, it is whispered,

caused a great increase in the trade of dealers in imitation jewelry,

those who cannot afford the real article taking refuge in the highly

_vraisemblable_ splendors of wax-lined pearls and paste diamonds. It is

rumored that after one of the great official balls of last season a

superb diamond necklace was found behind one of the cushions of a sofa

at the Elysee. It was placed in the hands of the prefect of the police,

where it remained for some time without any claimant presenting herself.

Finally, it was decided that the ornament should be sold and the

proceeds applied to the relief of the poor of Paris. A jeweler was

accordingly summoned, who, by the application of acids and a file, soon

proved conclusively to the authorities that the precious _trouvaille_

was a worthless piece of imitation. Sardou's heroine in his _Maison

Neuve_, who sells her small real diamonds in order to appear at a ball

ablaze with paste, is a true character of the epoch, and was evidently

sketched from real life. But the disappearance of the masses of

_clinquante_ which used to be worn some years ago is a positive boon to

the lovers of correct taste in dress.

Another striking feature of European society to an American is the

predominance of old women therein--ladies of sixty or seventy years of

age, very much coiffees, tremendously dressed and glittering with gems.

This element is far from being an attractive one. A venerable dowager

with white roses and lilies of the valley in her frizzed gray hair, with

many diamonds and pearls displayed upon a neck which should long ago

have retired into the deep obscurity of kerchief and high corsage, is

not a charming object. It has been made a subject of reproach against

American society that it is given up so entirely to the youth of both

sexes. Well, after all, it is better so--that is, so far as balls and

dancing-parties are concerned. Seventeen in white tarletan is a far more

beauteous and appropriate ornament for a ball-room than is seventy in

white brocade or rose-pink satin.

L. H. H.

NATIONAL FORMS OF GREETING.

The general structure of a language is admitted on all hands to be a

good index of the character of the people using it. To cite but two

instances: the firm, compact, stern mould in which a Latin sentence is

cast seems only the natural mode of expression for those who so firmly,

compactly and sternly carried their eagles in triumph over the world and

assembled the deities of conquered nations in their own Pantheon; while

the marvelous grace and flexibility spread like a transparent veil of

ravishing beauty over the well-posed members of a Greek sentence could

emanate, from no source so naturally as the gay, beauty-loving sons of

the Hellenes, whose conceptions of beauty are the ideals for all time;

whose flexible wit needed, as it created, the vehicle of its

communication; and whose philosophical acumen could flash out in no

speech less capable of manifesting delicate shades of thought.

What is thus true of language in general has a concentrated truth in the

forms of speech used in greetings. Let us compare these in a few

languages, ancient and modern, and see if the fact be not so. We will

begin with the most familiar, as it is the best and most enduring, type

of the Semitic race--the Hebrew. The history of the Jews--at any rate as

it is set forth in their own sacred Books--is pre-eminently the history

of a race singled out by an overruling Power for the education of

_conscience_. To this bear witness the laws of the Two Tables, and most

of those other laws, purely ceremonial, whose apparent triviality in

some particulars is at any rate a mode of symbolizing what was the main

object of the Lawgiver--keeping the heart and conscience pure. To this

bear witness the indignant denunciations of their prophets, as well as

the impassioned pleadings to return to a better mind and keep the

conscience unaccused--to "do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly

with God." To this bear witness the plaints--the like of which no other

ancient literature furnishes--of their royal Psalmist, the type of what

was best and noblest in his race--plaints which mourned not so much

outward adversity or physical suffering as the pain of a hurt

conscience, a realization of guilt which threw a pall over all that else

was bright--plaints which, as that secluded education in Palestine

became handed down to posterity and diffused wherever the Old Testament

found its way, have been adopted by humanity as the _de profundis_ of

all hearts conscious of guilt. And what was the Hebrew's salutation as

he met his brother or his friend? "Peace!" The inner life of the race

could not be more clearly shown by volumes.

With the Greek it was different. His heaven and his earth were

counterparts of each other. Even his Zeus Terpikeraunos seemed fonder of

other occupations than hurling his flashing bolts. The Father of gods

and men disdained not (when nectar and ambrosia perhaps began to surfeit

him) to lead the dwellers of Olympus on festive journeys to the

"blameless Ethiops," and there pass a week or two in revels. No chance

of a quiet flirtation would he miss if only he could escape the keen

watchfulness of Hera; and not unfrequently, if such escape were

hopeless, would he run the risk of a curtain-lecture rather than forego

his _tete-a-tete_. And for the other "greater gods," if we except the

cold Pallas Athene and the stately spouse of Zeus, their principal aim

seemed to be to have a jolly time of it.

Man tanzt, man schwaetzt, man kocht, man trinkt, man liebt:

Nun sage mir, wo es was Besseres giebt?

might serve popularly as the Greek's notion of the occupations of the

gods when they were not quarreling with each other; and no wonder, for

he simply peopled Olympus with exaggerated counterparts of himself and

his fellows. Life to him was nothing if it was not a fast and merry one;

and to make it so were pressed into the service not only what catered to

his sensual nature (and, truly, if Faust had been a Greek there had been

no need of Mephistopheles), but all the charms of art, all the powers of

exuberant fancy, all the keen delights of literary culture. He had

higher aspirations than mere enjoyment, even of an elevated kind:

witness Salamis and Mycale, the Pass of Thermopylae and the fields of

Marathon and Plataea. But when the serious business of life gave time,

wine, flowers and lovely women were uppermost in his thoughts. To and

from him, then, what greeting so natural as [Greek: Chaire!] ("Rejoice!"

"Be happy!")?

As we pass from the shadows of the Acropolis and the Acrocorinthus to

the crests and valleys of the Seven Hills, the tone is changed. We do

not speak of the degenerate days when, after his indignant burst of

Non possum ferre, Quirites,

Graecam Urbem,

Juvenal, in speaking of Rome itself, says,

Non est Romano cuiquam locus hic, ubi regnat

Protogenes aliquis, vel Diphilus, aut Erimarchus,

although even then the Latin speech retained forms of a nobler

antiquity. We speak rather of those times when Rome was Roman--when the

spirit which framed the speech still pervaded the commonwealth which

used the speech. To the citizen of that time the idea of the chief of

the Olympian gods was not of a rollicking despot, angry and jovial by

turns, a delighter in thunderbolts, a cloud-compeller, a reckless

adulterer: he was the awful personification of the majesty of law,

mighty to impose its decrees and mighty to avenge its disregarded

sanctions--who, brought near to the city, was worshiped as Jupiter

Capitolinus, majestic as the conservator of civil and social order. The

charms of art, the graces of song, the effeminacy of festal pleasures

were little recked of by the Roman of the Roman period--he who used his

ancestral speech in the meanings imposed upon its terms by his fathers.

Phoebus Apollo and Pallas Athene were not so much revered by him as

was Mars of the visage stern and the bloody hand, to whom he gloried in

ascribing the blood of Romulus, protected by whom he believed the

"Mavortia moenia" would stand for ever. To him the state was

everything, the citizen nothing, save in so far as he was a working

member of the state. No private pleasure, no private gain, no private

right was admitted which stood in the way of the common weal; and

whatever privileges one might have, belonged to him not as a man, but as

a Roman, reflecting in his own person the sacred being of the state. No

wonder that in spite of all reverses, and until absorption of foreign

poisons had vitiated the blood of her sons or fratricidal strife had

spilled it, Rome saw the world at her feet. No wonder, too, that the

customary greeting of those who used her speech was "Salus!" ("Health!")

at meeting, and "Vale!" ("Be strong!") at parting.

To pass from ancient nations to modern. No race has had, in its way, a

greater influence upon European civilization than the French, many-sided

in character, and whose language is that of modern diplomacy. By no

people are _appearances_ more studied or cared for. Courage,

undoubtedly, is possessed by the men, but a Frenchman (the typical

Frenchman, that is) is better pleased if his courage, whether on the

field of battle, in the private encounter or the civic assembly, can

have a good _mise en scene_ for its exhibition. Deportment is the great

thing; and in social life who can deny what charm is given to friendly

intercourse--even though one may know that feelings are not very

deep--by the studious attention to a pleasant way of saying or doing

things?--so different from the heedless bluntness of some other races,

which, even while it may proceed from no unkindness, yet gives, at any

rate, the impression of disregard for the feelings of others. What a

regard to appearances is not revealed in such common expressions as

"Etre de mauvaise tournure" and "Avoir bonne tournure," as applied to

either man or woman? And as for the women, who can excel a Frenchwoman

in the art of looking if not elegant, yet at any rate spruce, by the aid

of even meagre materials, and in the art of "savoir faire," of which our

English "tact" hardly preserves the aroma? What dynasty or party shall

rule the destinies of France may be uncertain. Bonapartist, Legitimist,

Republican may be in the ascendant or may be hurled from power, but

under each or all, whether for good or evil, _manners_ will rule until

the French cease to be French; for when they meet you do not they say,

naturally, "Comment vous portez-vous?" ("How do you _carry_ yourself?")?

If a Frenchman should unintentionally run against you, would he not ask

your pardon with the politest possible bow? If a German should encounter

you in the same unintentionally unceremonious way, would he not in all

probability, after the recoil, look at you with inquiring eyes, with a

mixture of phlegmatic coolness and curiosity, and partly as an

exclamation, partly as an interrogation, utter the monosyllable "So!"?

He would not be so much occupied in trying to parry the blunder

gracefully as in thinking of its cause, with that love of sifting which

involuntarily exhibits itself even in little things, or with that

tendency to take even jokes gravely which originated the fable of Pope

Joan, and led a learned commentator, in his annotations on Thucydides,

to cite, with all the ponderous clang of a critical Latin note, the

factions "of the Long Pipes and the Short Pipes, mentioned by Mr.

Diedrich Knickerbocker in his _History of New York_," as a grave

historic parallel to the factions at Athens and those of the Guelphs and

the Ghibellines! Wonderful is the exactness in research, as well as the

gravity, of the Teuton--his reflectiveness, his going to the bottom of

the minutiae of facts, as well as his recourse to his "inner

consciousness" when the concrete fails him. Thoroughness, quiet,

plodding thoroughness--a looking at things in all their bearings, an

exhaustive (as well as exhausting) treatment of a subject, whether of

fact or of speculation, a constant striving to _find out_ all about

whatever he takes in hand--is not this one of his most marked

characteristics? And so, is it not natural that his greeting should be,

if he is gravely polite, "Wie _befinden_ Sie sich?" ("How do you _find_

yourself?")?

Lastly, the Anglo-Saxon greeting has its revelation of character no less

than the others. No corner of the earth is ignorant of the

representatives of that sturdy race whose commerce is worldwide; whose

inventions have revolutionized ways and means of getting and doing and

having things; whose enterprise is boundless; whose self-contained

courage is resistless in onset as it is strong in resistance; whose busy

going to and fro, or whose steady home-work, always has an eye to the

main chance; whose stateliness as shown in the conservative wealth of

the Old England is matched by its progressiveness as developed in the

New; whose Anglo-Saxon _homes_ are models of what is nowhere else so

readily found, "home comforts," won by hard work or conserved by happy

inheritance. Has not the Anglo-Saxon a character all his own--a

compound, doubtless, of the good (and often the bad) elements which he

has absorbed with his natural acquisitiveness from others? And can the

same number of words better gather up the sum and substance of it than

his salutation, "How do you _do_?"?

J. A. H.

SEASONABLE READING.

I once wrote for a monthly magazine an out-door paper--a summer study,

intended to enliven the reader's feeling rather than enlighten his

understanding--and timed the production of it so that it should appear

during the winter. The thought that it would be read only by bright

firesides cheered me not a little in the writing. The editor,

endeavoring to propitiate that thoughtless creature, "the general

reader"--in matters of art but another name for "the general prejudice"

or "the general ignorance"--notified me in January that he would prefer

to hold the contribution till summer came again, when it would be

regarded as "more appropriate, and just the thing to be read under

green arbors and spreading beeches." I was glad to know that he thought

it just the thing to be read anywhere, but nevertheless resolved to lay

before the general reader, or the general prejudice, or the general

ignorance, my little protest.

Most people are aware that the effects of Nature are so evanescent that

the painter generally makes his study as if he were observing an

eclipse. Down go a few strokes; into the spaces go notes, signs,

symbols--all in the shortest kind of shorthand. Six months afterward,

when the picture is made amid other scenes, the sketch and notes are

used, to be sure, so far as they go, but the artist uses his good memory

more. All people know that a book or canvas gives us not Nature, but an

interpretation, a translation, a few selections, a memory of Nature. If

the work be good, we are glad to abstract our eyes, for the time, from

all else. We can do this best when the scene from which the work was

studied is shut farthest away from sight. Summer landscapes themselves

are one thing, and we enjoy them in summer: such landscapes

utilized--they cannot be reproduced--by art, are another thing, and

these we enjoy at the winter fireside, when the eye sees nothing without

except leaden clouds and effacing snow. Not even the average American

would take a landscape-painting under his arm if he wished to get the

good of it, and go set it up in the glare of an open harvestfield or in

the darkness of a deep wood, although these objects may have made the

picture. He would enjoy Nature just as well, no doubt, during such a

proceeding, but would he get the good of art? What would the painter do

to the critic or buyer who subjected his work to such a test? Poison him

at the very least. And this is what the literary artist should complain

of, rather than desire, at the hands of an editor. He should not want

the little bit that he selected, narrowed, intensified, idealized, and

then imperfectly transcribed from memory, brought out and set up before

a reader whose eye is filled at every glance with the overpowering and

inexhaustible realities of Nature herself.

Just the thing to read in the blistering days of July, if anything can

be read then, is a graphic description of a snowstorm, or a lively

account of the way a polar bear invaded the ice-hut of a benumbed

Eskimo, or a history of the Washington Monument: something cold. Ice is

as grateful in your dog-day literature as in your August julep. No one

will hold that at such a time he prefers to contemplate a picture of

Sahara or of a frying-pan. On the same principle, let us have, in art,

our green leaves and warm colors amid the frosts of midwinter. Only the

atmospheric extremes, summer and winter, can be seriously considered in

"seasoning" periodical literature, the months our almanacs call spring

being neither one thing nor another. In capricious April, however, a

vision of golden and placid October would seem to be the proper thing,

as would the freshness of May in the mellow melancholy of autumn. If

editors receive more censures than compliments for publishing certain

articles, into which the element of "news" does not enter, six months

after the seasons of which they treat, there is one obscure contributor

at least who considers the necessity a virtue.

C. H.

[According to the theory of "C. H.," the Christmas number of a magazine

should be filled with midsummer idyls, while Christmas carols would be

the appropriate reading in July or August. He thinks this would provide

a grateful relief--like ice on a hot day or a blazing log on a cold

one--from the effects of any intensity of temperature in the opposite

seasons. But this is confounding sensations with mere conceptions, and

seeking to "cloy the hungry edge of appetite by bare imagination of a

feast." The ice cools and the fire warms, but a description of one or

the other in place of the reality would make its absence only the more

intolerable. Reynolds the dramatist tells us that one of his summer

pieces was damned, owing to a scene in which the actors were served with

plentiful libations of cool drinks--a tantalizing spectacle that drew a

storm of hisses from the hot and thirsty audience. We hope the editor

whom "C. H." has so inconsiderately assailed may not be tempted to

revenge himself by exposing his contributor to a similar mishap.--ED.]

A HINT FOR THE CENTENNIAL.

The interest in the approaching Centennial celebration at Philadelphia

is daily widening and extending, and if those entrusted with its

management prove themselves competent for the work, and show that they

are duly inspired with its breadth and its significance to the world,

before the end of the present year there will not be a hamlet in the

land whose citizens are not made prouder of their nationality and

individually anxious to contribute something to its glory. It should be

made the grandest occasion of the kind which the world has ever

witnessed, for if it be anything less than that, it will fail to respond

to the honest aspirations and generous pride of the American heart.

Aside from the museum proper--the collection of past and present

manufactures, past and present implements of industry--every day should

witness some grand tournament, like that trial of grain-reapers which

took place at the exposition at Paris in 1855. The scene was a splendid

field of grain forty miles from the city. Three machines--one English,

one French (from Algiers), and one American--were the weapons of the

contest. The audience was a crowd of curious witnesses gathered from

every quarter of the globe. At a signal from the judges' stand the fine

machines started and moved each over its allotted acre, cutting down and

raking the grain like magic. The Algerian machine did its work in

seventy-two minutes, the English in sixty-six, and the American in

twenty-two minutes! A French journal at the time said of the American

machine, "It did its work in the most exquisite manner, not leaving a

single spear ungathered, and it discharged the grain in the most perfect

shape, as if placed by hand for the binders. It finished its piece most

gloriously." The contest was finally narrowed down to three reapers,

all American, and the champion won its laurels amid the most deafening

shouts of applause.

SHRIMPS.

Some one has said that he who first swallowed an oyster was a brave man,

but many will agree that the one who first devoured a shrimp bodily was

still braver. Not but that the shrimp may possess desirable nutritive

qualities--may indeed be exceedingly palatable to those whose

imaginations are proof against the sight of its jointed legs and arms

and its ugly physiognomy. But in India, at least, where dead human

bodies are often seen floating down the sacred Ganges literally covered

with these crustaceans, the appetite for them must be sensibly affected.

Many of Her Majesty's subjects there will never touch a shrimp after

once witnessing this spectacle in the Ganges. The animal, however, may

not be the common shrimp (_Crangon vulgaris_).

Catching shrimps for market is quite an extensive industry, and in

France mostly pursued by women, who wade knee deep into the water,

pushing before them a net sewed around a hoop at the end of a long

stick. A pannier or bag tied around the waist receives the animals from

the net. In winter the shrimp retires from the beach into deeper water.

It is then caught in boats with nets, made now of galvanized wire, which

resists the action of the sea-water and is a great improvement upon the

old twine net. In feeding, the shrimp grasps its minute prey by the

short rake-like appendages between the legs proper and the tail, and

passes it along up to its claws, and then to the mouth. These appendages

serve also as a brush when the shrimp makes its toilet. To do this it

stands as high as it can on the tips of its long legs, and bends its

head and claws under its body, and when these are duly brushed the lobes

of the tail are subjected to the same process.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

The Poetical Works of William Blake, Lyrical and Miscellaneous.

Edited, with a prefatory memoir, by William Michael Rossetti.

Boston: Roberts Brothers.

The Poems of William Blake, comprising Songs of Innocence and

of Experience, together with Poetical Sketches and some

Copyright Poems not in any other edition. London: Basil Montagu

Pickering.

It does not add to the mere delight of reading Blake's poems to know

that in point of time they preceded the writings of Cowper, Wordsworth

and Burns, but assuredly it enhances our estimation of their merit, and

should have great weight in determining the literary rank of their

author. His first volume, called _Poetical Sketches_, printed only for

private circulation after lying for six years in manuscript, appeared in

1783, and then only by dint of the kindly efforts of influential and

prosperous friends, notably Flaxman the sculptor. The _Sketches_ were

written between the ages of twelve and twenty. The _Songs of Innocence

and Experience_ appeared between 1787 and 1794, and were united in one

volume in the latter year. It is by the poems contained in these two

volumes, although he published or left in manuscript many other

compositions, most of which are collected in one or the other of the

editions now before us, that he is best known. During his lifetime his

writings never achieved any general literary success. It fared with his

poems as with his paintings, only in a minor degree: they were highly

esteemed by the initiated, by his personal friends, by a few men whose

keen natural perception of genius enabled them to discern it in spite of

the eccentricity and inequality of his work; but to the general public,

on whose recognition depends the reputation of the artist, his verses as

well as his drawings were a sealed, or at least an enigmatical, book.

His verses have no literary atmosphere about them: they smell neither

of the midnight oil nor of that smoke of fame the fumes of which Byron

tells us "are frankincense to human thought." They seem to have been

written as spontaneously as a bird might warble on a bough, and no bird

was ever more careless of auditors than Blake. It was not until twelve

years after his death that a selection from his poems was given to the

general public by the elder Pickering, and twenty-four years after

(eleven years ago) a more general interest was created in his work, both

as artist and poet, by a long and elaborate biography of him written by

Mr. Gilchrist, and accompanied by a selection from his poems made by Mr.

Rossetti. Subsequent to this publication appeared a voluminous critical

essay on his genius by Mr. Algernon Charles Swinburne. The former of

these two books was calculated to induce and foster a more general

knowledge and appreciation of Blake's poetry. We can hardly say as much

for Mr. Swinburne's essay. The exaggerated and fantastical epithets of

praise, the involved and overloaded method of criticism, would have the

effect upon most readers of creating a distaste in advance for the

writings so heralded. The "Prefatory Memoir" prefixed by Mr. W. M.

Rossetti to the most recent edition of the poems is of a different

character, and may be commended to all readers who are about to make

acquaintance with them.

But the best and most efficient introduction that a true poet can have

is the general publication of his works. Let them speak for themselves

to lovers of poetry, and no other prophet or expounder is needed. This

is no place for extended comment on Blake's characteristics as a poet.

His best songs are worthy to be ranked with those of the early

Elizabethan dramatists, and they are not like them as a copy is like an

original, but rather resemble them as the inspirations of a kindred

genius. To find the superiors of some of Blake's songs we must go to

Shakespeare. The faults of his best poems are always superficial, and

often mere errors of carelessness and of the absence of literary

workmanship, but the hand that strikes the keynote is the hand of a

master. Such pieces as the "Lines to the Evening Star," the songs

beginning "Memory, hither come," "How sweet I roamed from field to

field!" "Love and Harmony combine," and the "Address to the Muses," in

the _Sketches_, are full of melody and sweetness, and have a certain

lyrical perfection in which Blake excels; while in the _Songs of

Innocence_ the poems called "Night" and "Ah Sunflower!" seem to be

equally beautiful. "A Little Boy Lost," in the _Songs of Experience_, is

perhaps the best known of all the poems, and is quoted, with an

unlicensed change of title, in Mr. Emerson's _Parnassus_. The disorder

of Blake's mind, which was a very real and positive fact, undoubtedly

had a detrimental effect on his work, both in art and literature; and

there is often a sense of "sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh"

as he touches on some one of the subjects which were potent to disturb

his brain. But when he sings for the love of singing, with no memory of

the outer world and its terrible problems, the solving of which lay

heavy on his heart and brain, then he is all sweetness, melody and

harmony, and gives us not only the delight of his exquisite verses, but

that other joy that comes from the sense of breathing an atmosphere of

devotion, purity, and genial sweetness.

Les Pleiades. Par le comte de Gobineau. Stockholm and Paris.

The author of this book has traveled extensively, and has been a keen

observer of men and manners, as well as a diligent student of history

and ethnography. He has represented his government in countries so

remote and contrasted as Persia and Sweden, has made antiquarian

researches in the islands of the Mediterranean, has visited parts of

America, and has won reputation as a scholar and writer by a number of

works on such abstruse questions as Oriental philosophy and religion,

the cuneiform inscriptions and the distinctions of race. The present

book is merely a novel, yet it was clearly intended to embody the

deepest and maturest thoughts of the author in regard to "the proper

study of mankind," both individually and collectively. The nature of

man, how it is affected by diversity of circumstances, by nationality,

descent, rank and occupation, by the relations of class to class, of

society to the individual, of personal will to a controlling

destiny,--this may be said to form the _motive_ of the volume; and

though such action as there is in it takes place chiefly at the court of

one of the minor states of Germany, this narrow field was evidently

selected on a similar principle to that of the Greek drama, with its

"unities" of time and place and the narratives and explanations of the

Chorus. The discussions in the book embrace all the problems of

history, the characters are of different nationalities, and are all

enriched by the fruits of culture and travel, and the story is a series

of crucial tests by which, as we are to infer, the author's theories are

verified. This plan is not absolutely novel. Goethe had adopted a still

slighter though far happier framework for his ripest thoughts and

profoundest observations. Yet even Goethe's exquisite art was at fault

when he sought to extend the original design; and if the first part of

_Wilhelm Meister_ is the most perfectly constructed work in the whole

range of literature, the second is merely a heap of precious materials,

with here and there such groupings and dispositions as indicate how

details had been conceived, while the general plan refused to shape

itself in the master's mind. Count Gobineau's failure is of a different

kind. His story is not only grotesque in construction, but inartistic in

all its parts. In every group of incidents there is the same lack of

harmony and completeness as in the adaptation and subordination of each

to the whole. Nor, with all the author's knowledge of life and of men,

has he succeeded in creating characters recognizable as life-like and as

veritable originals. Single features are well drawn, certain

temperaments are keenly analyzed, but the whole conception is never

firm, consistent and complete. The simplest, like old Lanze and his

daughter Lina, are intrinsically commonplace; the most elaborated, like

Madame Tonska and the duke Jean-Theodore, waver between familiar types

and questionable shadows; and those that, like Laudon and the

Gennevilliers, promise better results, are imperfectly developed. Such

defects would be fatal in a novel of the ordinary kind. But this is not

a novel of the ordinary kind. The real staple of the book consists not

of the incidents and the characters, but of discussions and reflections

which sparkle with wit, with shrewd observation, and with ingenious if

not absolutely profound speculation. There are a hundred little essays

in it, compact with thought and bristling with epigram, that have an

eighteenth-century flavor, and suffuse with a _sauce piquante_ what

would otherwise have been a flavorless dish. Whether the theory from

which the title of the book is derived, and which is expounded at length

in the opening chapters, would bear a rigid examination, or was even

meant to be taken seriously, may be doubted. It is, at all events, very

poorly illustrated by the characters and events selected to exemplify

it.

_Books Received._

Africa: The History of Exploration and Adventure from Herodotus to

Livingstone. By Charles H. Jones. With illustrations. New York: Henry

Holt & Co.

The Vatican Decrees in their bearing on Civil Allegiance. By Henry

Edward, Archbishop of Westminister. New York: Catholic Publication

Society.

Six Months under the Red Cross with the French Army. By George H.

Boyland. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co.

The Tower of Babel: A Poetical Drama. By Alfred Austin. Edinburgh and

London: Wm. Blackwood & Sons.

Young Folks' History of the United States. By T. W. Higginson.

Illustrated. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

Baby Died To-day, and Other Poems. By the late William Leighton. London:

Longmans, Green & Co.

Goethe's Hermann and Dorothea. Vol. I. of German Classics. New York: G.

P. Putnam's Sons.

Types and Emblems: A Collection of Sermons. By C. H. Spurgeon. New York:

Sheldon & Co.

The Maintenance of Health. By J. M. Fothergill, M.D. New York: G. P.

Putnam's Sons.

A Passionate Pilgrim, and Other Tales. By Henry James, Jr. Boston: James

R. Osgood & Co.

Christian Belief and Life. By A. P. Peabody, D.D., LL.D. Boston: Roberts

Brothers.

Ezra Stiles Gannet: A Memoir. By his son, W. C. Gannet. Boston: Roberts

Brothers.

Recollections and Suggestions. By John, Earl Russell. Boston: Roberts

Brothers.

Birds of the North-west. By Elliot Coues. Washington: Government

Printing-office.

Morality of Prohibitory Liquor Laws. By W. B. Weeden. Boston: Roberts

Bros.

Victor La Tourette: A Novel. By a Broad Churchman. Boston: Roberts

Brothers.

Domus Dei. By Eleanor C. Donnelly. Philadelphia: P. F. Cunningham & Son.

Poems of Twenty Years. By Laura W. Johnson. New York: De Witt C. Lent.

Protection and Free Trade. By Isaac Butts. New York: G. P. Putnam's

Sons.

Mistress Judith. By C. C. Frazer Tytler. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Generalship: A Tale. By George Roy. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co.