The violent deaths in Great Britain in 1874 were no less than 17,920,

the highest number ever registered. There were 18 executions and 1,592

suicides, so that 16,310 may be classed as unexpected. Railways killed

1,249, horse conveyances 1,313, and it is noted that those modes of

conveyance which are mostly peculiar to cities were not responsible for

this great slaughter. Street, or so-called horse railroads, killed 62

persons, omnibuses 55, cabs 61, and carriages 82, and these numbers show

how great is the skill and care exercised in the crowded streets of

cities. The source of the remaining 1,053 deaths by horses is not given

in our authority (a Scotch paper), but it is probable that exercise in

the saddle had much to do with them. There were 942 deaths in coal

mines, and 118 in copper, tin, iron, and other mines. Lightning killed

25, sunstroke 90, and cold 114. There were 461 persons poisoned, about

one-third being suicides. The bite of a fox, of a rat, of a leech, the

scratch of a cat, and the sting of a hornet each killed one person, and

two were stung to death by wasps. Of other noteworthy causes of death,

it is mentioned that a girl fourteen years old died in childbed.

* * * * *

A NEW INDUCTION COIL.

The largest induction coil ever made has lately been constructed for Mr.

Wm. Spottiswoode by Mr. Apps. It has two primaries, of which the one

used for long sparks weighs sixty-seven pounds and is formed of a bundle

of iron wires 44 inches long and 3.5625 inches in diameter. The wire is

0.032 inch in diameter. This primary has 660 yards of copper wire 0.096

inch in diameter, and wound in 1,344 turns in six layers. The spark

obtained with this primary is remarkably long in proportion to the

battery power used. With five Grove's quart cells the spark was 28

inches, with ten cells 35 inches, with thirty cells 37.5 inches and 42

inches, and it is thought that even better results could be obtained.

The insulation is so good that seventy cells have been used without

injury. The condenser is smaller than usual, being of the size commonly

used with a ten-inch coil. It has 126 sheets of tinfoil, 18 by 8-1/4

inches, separated by two sheets of varnished paper. The other primary is

heavier than the above described, weighing 92 pounds. The secondary coil

contains 280 miles of wire, in 341,850 turns. It is used for

spectroscopes and for short sparks. The power of this instrument is

really comparable to that of lightning. A block of flint glass three

inches thick has been pierced with the 28-inch spark.

* * * * *

FRENCH PROPERTY OWNERS.

The financial strength of the French is a constant marvel to other

nations. Political economists point to the single standard of coinage or

to the double standard, according as they consider France to adhere to

one or the other of these systems, as the source of this strength. But

the difference between that and other nations is probably more

conspicuous in the management of government loans than in any other

thing. The French government does not depend on syndicates. More than

four million French men and women have subscribed to the public debt,

and whatever arrangements are made with great bankers, the common people

of France are always invited to take a part of the bonds at a fixed and

fair price. That country is noticeably distinguished from Great Britain

by the equally wide distribution of land. There are more than five

million peasant proprietors in France, while the United Kingdom is owned

by about 200,000 persons. In England one person in 130 probably owns

land, as distinguished from mere house property, and outside of London

one in 30 owns a house. In Scotland one in 400 is a landowner, and one

in 28 has a house in his name. In Ireland one in 315 owns land, but only

one in 120 has title to a house.

* * * * *

TRIGONOMETRICAL SURVEY OF NEW YORK.

The board of commissioners in whose charge is placed the projected

trigonometrical survey of New York State report that preparations have

been made for beginning the work in ten counties westward from the line

of the upper Hudson river to Seneca lake. The starting points are the

four United States Coast Survey stations at Mt. Rafinesque, near Troy,

Helderberg, Princetown, and Greenwich. The position of these points has

been very accurately ascertained by means of two independent lines of

triangles carried from New England and Fire Island through Connecticut

and Massachusetts. The State Survey, therefore, enjoys the advantage of

starting from points that belong to the great chain of stations

established by the general Government, and these are so placed that the

first line of triangles which crosses the State will connect directly

with another chain of similar stations on the great lakes. The plan

followed includes the selection of prominent elevations of land for

principal stations. An earthen vessel of peculiar shape and markings

will be sunk below the first line, and its centre clearly marked. Above

this will be placed a squared stone projecting from the ground. The

latter will be the visible base of operations in common use, but the

former will be the permanent and authoritative reference in case of any

difficulty or doubt. It is intended to establish these points about

twelve miles apart, and their positions will be determined by careful

astronomical observations, checked by accurate measurements of their

distance from neighboring stations. Wherever the nature of the ground

compels the placing of these stations at distances inconveniently great,

subordinate points will be established in the intermediate ground. In

the present working ground the highlands which bound the Mohawk valley

on the north and south afford admirable positions for these stations.

The director of the survey reports that the work is well received by

farmers, and he gives some excellent reasons why it should be. Boundary

marks have so generally disappeared that in tracing the boundaries of

eleven counties where sixty corners had been made, only two were found.

It is a part of Mr. Gardner's plan to preserve these old lines, marking

them in a permanent manner. The cost of bad work appears to have been

very large to the people. The citizens of the State spend $40,000 for

maps that are really worthless. Designing persons obtain aid for

improper enterprises by exhibiting false maps, and there is no means of

disproving their assertions. Counties and towns have contributed large

sums to such projects, and the total is estimated at forty million

dollars. Half of this was paid for the Oswego Midland railroad, which

Mr. Gardner says would never have been built had its supporters known

the character of the country it would cross and the ruinous original

cost and running expenses involved in its heavy cuttings and high

grades. The cost of surveying the whole State is estimated at $200,000

for the trigonometrical work, which is all that is now projected. To

this must eventually be added topography and mapping, though these are

not necessary for fixing boundaries. Still, the whole sum required,

distributed as it would be over ten years' time, would be a light burden

and a remunerative expenditure.

* * * * *

THE USE OF AIR IN ORE DRESSING.

A correspondent, Mr. M. F. M. Cazin, writes us that the article

on "Hot Water in Dressing Ores" in the March number "is another good

illustration of how great men will stumble over little things. Permit me

to express a principle with regard to the same matter, by which without

Rittinger's profound calculations, without Ransom's laboratory

experiments, the entire question about the best medium (liquid or fluid)

for separating two equal sized particles of solids according to their

density (specific gravity) can be settled for every special case." His

"principle" is that the ideal fluid for this purpose is one that is more

dense than the lighter of the two particles and less dense than the

heavier. But this is no new revelation. The difficulty is that there is

but one fluid of the kind, and only one metal (disregarding the very

rare ones) to which it can be applied. The fluid is mercury and the

metal gold. The latter has a specific gravity of say 19, and therefore

sinks when it is carried upon a bath of fluid quicksilver, with a

specific gravity of say 13.6. The sand with which the metal is mixed has

a specific gravity of only 2.6 to 5, and floats over the mercury bath

and away into the waste, thus effecting the desired separation. This

operation, and the fact that there is such a thing as a theoretically

ideal fluid, was clearly pointed out by Rittinger, for whom Mr. Cazin

appears to have so little respect. The latter gentleman does bring

forward one new point, and it is an important one. He asserts that air

can be made to act as an "ideal" fluid, in the sense referred to here,

by imparting motion to it. This conclusion depends on the consideration

that "motion of the fluid in an opposite direction to the fall of the

solid particles is equivalent (by friction, adhesion, resistance) to an

increase of density of the fluid. Therefore air may by imparted motion

have the same separating effect, in a specified case, as water would

have without motion."

If Mr. Cazin would state his case differently, he would see more

clearly the place that air has as a separating medium. It cannot be

made an _ideal_ fluid, but it is comparable with water, which also is

never an ideal fluid, for there is no ore of common occurrence that is

lighter than water. The question in ore dressing really is whether air

can be made to work as well as water. Theoretically we can see no

objection, but in practice a great many obstacles arise. The cost is

greater both for machinery and operating expenses; the ore has to be

dried either before or after crushing, and the efficiency of the

apparatus is still doubtful. It may be possible to save more fine dust

than by the wet methods, but this point remains unproved.

This subject is a very important one, and involves very great interests.

It is a singular fact that the mechanical treatment of ores, which is a

fundamental part of mining science and practice, is not taught in any of

the American mining schools. English scientific men occasionally point

to America as the land of sound and general scientific teaching, but we

fear that a nearer acquaintance with our schools would rob us of that

reputation. It is difficult to imagine a less complete system of

instruction than that in some of our technical schools, or a more

erratic sense of industrial needs than among some of our school

managers.

* * * * *

POLAR COLONIZATION.

Congress did not appropriate the $50,000 asked for by Capt. Howgate, but

from the peculiar state of politics in the last Congress this is not

thought to indicate an unfavorable reception of his scheme. The bill was

not reported from the naval committee. It will probably be brought up

next December. That will of course be too late to accomplish anything

this year, so that the summer is lost to the main expedition, but Capt.

Howgate now proposes to send out an agent to settle upon a site for the

proposed camp, engage Esquimaux, and make other preparations. In fact,

it is proposed to spend as much as $17,000 in preliminary work and

stores, and it is thought that this can be done without increasing the

ultimate cost of the expedition more than four thousand dollars. We

regret to see that the newspapers are apt to talk about "a dash to the

pole" when they speak of this scheme. It is to be hoped that no such

dash will be attempted. Capt. Howgate should start out with the fixed

determination of making no attempt whatever to reach the pole the first

year or two. The dashing style has been the only one used in the

centuries through which the history of Arctic exploration runs. What is

now of most importance is the inauguration of tentative methods. They

are pretty certain to win in the end, and the other method of management

is about as certain to fail.

The Government commission appointed to investigate the conduct of the

English expedition has reported that its failure was principally due to

the omission of lime-juice from the provision of the sledge parties. The

reason for leaving it out was that fuel would have to be carried to thaw

it, and with a load of 237 pounds to the man, the sledge parties were

already weighted down. This shows how the most labored and extensive

preparations for a "dash" may be defeated by failure in even one

apparently small item.

Now that the subject of Arctic colonization is so energetically

discussed in this country, it may be worth while to republish the

recommendations of a German government commission appointed to consider

the scheme, when it was first proposed by Weyprecht. These were as

follows:

"1. The exploration of the Arctic regions is of great importance for all

branches of science. The commission recommends for such exploration the

establishment of fixed observing stations. From the principal station,

and supported by it, are to be made exploring expeditions by sea and by

land.

"2. The commission is of opinion that the region which should be

explored by organized German Arctic explorers is the great inlet to the

higher Arctic regions situated between the eastern shore of Greenland

and the western shore of Spitzbergen.

"Considering the results of the second German Arctic expedition, a

principal station should be established on the eastern shore of

Greenland, and at least _two_ secondary stations, fitted out for

_permanent_ investigation of different scientific questions, at Jan

Mayen and on the western shore of Spitzbergen. For certain scientific

researches the principal station should establish temporary stations.

"3. It appears very desirable, and so far as scientific preparations are

concerned, possible, to commence these Arctic explorations in the year

1877.

"4. The commission is convinced that an exploration of the Arctic

regions, based on such principles, will furnish valuable results, even

if limited to the region between Greenland and Spitzbergen; but it is

also of opinion that an exhaustive solution of the problems to be solved

can only be expected when the exploration is extended over the whole

Arctic zone, and when other countries take their share in the

undertaking.

"The commission recommends, therefore, that the principles adopted for

the German undertaking should be communicated to the governments of the

States which take interest in Arctic inquiry, in order to establish, if

possible, a complete circle of observing stations in the Arctic zones."

It will be observed that the Germans looked forward to occupying the

adjacent parts of Greenland and Spitzbergen as their share of a line of

outposts to be established by different nations around the Arctic

circle. In any such scheme America would necessarily be called on to

bear a part, and by Captain Howgate's plan her station would be the

line of Smith's Sound and its northern prolongations. This is certainly

her natural field, and is not only the roadway by which most of our

explorers have made their attempts to reach the pole, and therefore

hallowed by their historical struggles, but it is also that portion of

the Arctic region which lies nearest us. It is emphatically a _home_

field to us.

* * * * *

Twenty-seven meteors fell in the United States, and two earthquake

shocks were experienced, in February.

When the Great Eastern was recently cleaned 300 tons of barnacles were

scraped from her bottom, an area of more than 52,000 square feet.

During the hurricane of January 30 the waves in the British channel were

forty feet high as measured by a mareograph.

In December, while the snow was blocking the roads of this country,

Australia enjoyed a temperature of 110 to 116 in the shade.

Search has again been made for the planet Vulcan, the existence of which

is indicated by Leverrier's calculations, but without success.

Among the results of Nordensjold's last trip to the Jenisei river in

Siberia was a piece of mammoth hide found with some bones of that

animal.

Hygeia, "the city of health," is to be built on the Courtland's estate,

about a mile and a half west of Worthing, Sussex, England. Work will be

commenced this spring.

The "Big Bonanza" yielded $20,108,958 gold and $25,700,682 silver from

its discovery to September 30, 1876. In this deposit the usual

preponderance of gold over silver is reversed.

The Mammoth Cave is but one among many caverns in the subcarboniferous

limestones of Kentucky, the total length of which Prof. Shaler thinks is

at least 100,000 miles.

During the continuance of the Centennial, the Pennsylvania railroad

carried nearly five millions of passengers to Philadelphia, and out of

their 760,486 trunks, valises, bags, boxes, and bundles only 26 were

mislaid.

The opening of the safes, more than twenty in number, which were exposed

in the great fire at the American Watch Company's New York building

proved that safes, as now made by good firms, are really fire-proof

under ordinary circumstances. Watch movements, bank bills, diamonds and

jewelry, all came out in good order from most of them, though in some

cases the outside plates were red hot. In one safe was a delicate lace

shawl, worth $1,500, which was quite uninjured.

Two French astronomers, MM. André and Angot, have asked to be sent to

San Francisco to observe the transit of Mercury on May 5, 1878. They

hope to obtain data which will make the next transit of Venus more

fruitful.

During the last year the Signal Service extended its telegraph lines

across the Staked Plain to San Diego, California. Two continuous lines

of telegraph now extend across the country, one in the northern and one

in the southern region.

Additions of interesting animals are frequently made to the New York

Aquarium. The blind Proteus from Austria, Axolotl from Mexico,

Salamanders from Germany, and some curious fish from China are among the

latest additions to the tanks.

The combined Signal and Life-Saving Service at Cape Henry is reported to

have saved $500,000 worth of property in the storms which marked the end

of March. Telegraphic connection is found indispensable to efficient

work in watching the coast.

The bullion product of the United States from July 1, 1875, to June 30,

1876, was about $85,250,000, of which $46,750,000 was gold and

$38,500,000 silver. The annual gold product of the world is supposed to

be about $25,000,000 greater than that of silver.

The copper-bearing rocks of Lake Superior are reported by the geologist

of Wisconsin to extend almost uninterruptedly across that State. In the

Nemakagon river masses of native copper have been found, and that

country may become a rich copper region.

The second congress of Americanistes will meet in Luxembourg September

10 to 13 next. Information and tickets may be had in England of Mr. F.

A. Allen, 15 Fitzwilliam Road, Clapham, S.W. It is to be hoped there

will be less speculation and more research than at the last congress.

Persons desirous of procuring brook and salmon trout for restocking the

waters of New York State can do so by addressing Seth Green at

Rochester, who will send them on the payment of the travelling expenses

of a messenger and the giving of full directions as to route and whom to

call on.

A class in plain cooking was lately formed at the New York Cooking

School. The course consisted of twelve lessons. The tuition fees for

girls who bear their own expenses are fifty cents for a single lesson,

or $5 a course; for charitable societies, in behalf of their protegées,

$5 a course; for ladies sending their cooks for instruction, $10 a

course.

A shower of stones is reported to have fallen February 16 in Social

Circle, Walton county, Georgia, varying in size from a hen's egg to that

of a man's two fists, irregular in shape, dark grayish color,

interspersed with a bright, shiny substance resembling mica. The shower

was brief, extended over about four acres of ground, and followed an

explosive sound.

Panic fears are likely to prove the destruction of the Spitz dog. The

belief that this species is peculiarly liable to hydrophobia, and

inclined to bite on small provocation, has led a great many owners to

deliver up their Spitz dogs to the police for destruction. In one city,

East Brooklyn, there was said to be 4,000 of them, but the number is now

much reduced. Is it not possible that a similar panic among brutes may

account for the extinction of some wild species of animals?

According to one of the German papers, the Zoölogical Garden at Cologne

has been the scene of a tremendous fight between two Polar bears. They

were male and female, and the latter, being overcome, was finally

dragged by the male to the reservoir of water in the den, and held down

until she was dead. Then her lifeless body was dragged around the place

for some time by her furious conqueror.

CURRENT LITERATURE.

Miss Martineau's "Autobiography,"[2] which comprises two-thirds of

this voluminous publication, is an interesting specimen of an

interesting sort of book. It appeals much more to the general reader

than most of the multitudinous volumes which she gave to the world

during her lifetime, and we shall not be surprised if it takes its

place among the limited number of excellent personal memoirs in the

language. (For this purpose, however, we must add, it would need to be

disembarrassed of the biographical appendage affixed to it by the

editor, which, though carefully and agreeably prepared, we cannot but

regard as rather a dead weight upon the book. It repeats much of what

the author has related, and envelopes her narrative in a diffuse,

eulogistic commentary which strikes the reader sometimes as superfluous

and sometimes as directly at variance with the impression made upon him

by Miss Martineau's text.) Miss Martineau was indeed, intellectually,

one of the most remarkable women who have exhibited themselves to the

world. She was not delicate, she was not graceful, or imaginative, or

æsthetic, or some of the other pretty things that literary ladies are

expected to be; but she was extraordinarily vigorous; she had a great

understanding--a great reason. She gives, intellectually, a great

impression of force. She was a really heroic worker, a genuine

philosopher, and she made her mark upon her time. Her reader's last

feeling about her is that she was thoroughly respectable. He will have

had incidental feelings of a less genial kind; he will have been

irritated at the coarseness of some of her judgments and the

complacency of some of her claims; at her evident want of tact and

repose; at a disposition to which he will even permit himself, perhaps,

to apply the epithet of meddlesome. But he will have a strong sense of

Miss Martineau's care for great things--her sustained desire, prompting

her always to production of some kind, to help along and enlighten the

human race. She was a combatant, and the whole force of her nature

prompted her to discussion. Such natures cannot afford to be

delicate--to be easily bruised and scratched; neither can they afford

to have that speculative cast of fancy which wastes valuable time in

scruples that are possibly superfluous and questions that are possibly

vain. In spite of any such apologetic view of her disposition as may be

put forth, however, it is probable that Miss Martineau's autobiography

will give offence enough. She speaks out her mind with complete

frankness upon most of the persons that she has known, subject to the

single condition of her book being published after her death. Of its

being postponed until the death of the objects of her criticism we hear

nothing, though this would have been more to the point. Miss Martineau

deals out disapproval with so liberal a hand, that among those persons

concerned who are still living much resentment and disgust must

inevitably ensue. Downright and vigorous as she is in spirit, there is

no mistaking the degree of her censure, and as (whatever else she may

be) she is not a flippant writer, it has every appearance of being

deliberate and premeditated. We do not pretend to decide upon the

propriety of her hard knocks, or to point out the particular cases in

which they might have been a little softer; but we cannot help saying

that there is something in Miss Martineau's general attitude toward

individuals which inspires one with a certain mistrust. She was

evidently always judging and always uttering judgments. Her business in

life was to have opinions and to promulgate them, and as objects of

opinion she seems to have regarded persons very much as she regarded

abstract ideas--attributing to them an equal unconsciousness of

denunciation. This eagerness to qualify her fellow members of society

would have been perhaps a great virtue if Miss Martineau's powers of

observation had been of extraordinary fineness; but in spite of an

occasional very happy hit, we hardly think this to have been the case.

Sometimes, evidently, she went straight to the point, and often,

independently of the justice of her appreciation, this is expressed

with an extremely vigorous neatness. But frequently her descriptions of

people strike us as both harsh and superficial, and more especially as

_heated_, even after the lapse of years. She goes out of her way to

pronounce very unflattering verdicts upon men and women who have

apparently had little more connection with her life than that they have

been her contemporaries. This is apart from the rightful spirit of an

autobiography, which, it seems to us, should deal only with people who

have been real factors in the writer's life. The latter pages of Miss

Martineau's first volume contain a series of portraits, some brief,

some more extended, of which it must be said that their very incisive

lines make them extremely entertaining. Miss Martineau's style is

always excellent for strength and fulness of meaning, and at times she

has a real genius for terseness. Lord Campbell "was wonderfully like

the present Lord; was facetious, in and out of place; politic;

flattering to an insulting degree, and prone to moralizing in so trite

a way as to be almost as insulting." That has almost the condensation

of Saint-Simon. There is a very vivid, satirical portrait in this same

chapter of a certain Lady Stepney, who wrote silly novels of the

"fashionable" type which Thackeray burlesqued, and boasted that she

received £700 a piece for them; and there are sketches of Campbell,

Bulwer, Landseer, and various other persons, which if they are wanting

in graciousness, are not wanting in spirit. Miss Martineau gives _in

extenso_ her opinion of Macaulay, and a very low opinion it seems to

be. It is, however, very much the verdict of time--save in regard to

the "dreary indolence" of which the author accuses him, and which will

excite surprise in the readers of Mr. Trevylyan's "Life." Of Lockhart

and Croker and their insolent treatment of herself and her fame in the

early part of her career, she gives a lamentable, and apparently a just

account; but stories about the underhandedness and truculence of these

discreditable founders of the modern art of "reviewing" are by this

time old stories. There is also a story about poor Mr. N. P. Willis,

which, though it consorts equally with the impression which this

_littérateur_ contrived to diffuse with regard to himself, it was less

decent to relate. When Miss Martineau left England for America, Mr.

Willis gave her a bundle of letters of introduction to various people

here; and on arriving in this country and proceeding to present Mr.

Willis's passports, she found that the gentleman was unknown to most of

the persons to whom they were addressed. A fastidious delicacy might

have suggested to Miss Martineau that her lips were sealed by the fact

that, of slight value as these documents were, she had at least

accepted and made use of them. We suppose there was no case in which,

even when repudiated, they did not practically serve as an

introduction. But Miss Martineau was not fastidiously delicate.

[2] "_Harriet Martineau's Autobiography._" With Memorials by

MARIA WESTON CHAPMAN. In 3 vols. Boston: Jas. R. Osgood & Co.

This copious retrospect appears to have been written about the year

1855, when the author had ceased to labor; having earned a highly

honorable repose, and being moreover incapacitated by serious ill

health. She appears then, at fifty-three years of age, to have thought

her death very near; but she lived to be a much older woman--for upward

of twenty years. Her motive in writing her memoirs is affirmed to be a

desire to take her good name into her own hands, and anticipate the

possible publication of her letters, an event which, very properly, she

sternly deprecates. As to these letters, however, Mrs. Chapman publishes

several, and makes liberal use of others. The reader wonders what her

correspondence would have been, since what she destined to publicity is

occasionally so invidious. Another motive with Miss Martineau appears to

have been a desire to set forth, in particular, the history of her

religious opinions--the history being sufficiently remarkable. Born

among the primitive Unitarians (the city of Norwich, her paternal home,

was, we believe, a sort of focus of this amiable form of Dissent), she

passed, with her advance in life, from a precocious and morbid youthful

piety to the furthest limits of skepticism. The story is an interesting

one, and it forms both the first and the last note that she strikes; but

we doubt whether (even among persons as little "theological" as herself)

her reflections on this subject will serve to exemplify her judgment at

its best. Her skepticism is too dogmatic and her whole attitude toward

the "superstition" she has cast off too much marked by a small eagerness

for formulas in the opposite direction, and a narrow complacency in the

act of ventilating her negations. She cannot keep her hands off

affirmations about a future state, and she lacks that imaginative

feeling (so indispensable in all this matter) which suggests that the

completest form of the liberty which she claims as against her

theological education is tacit suspension of judgment. In general Miss

Martineau is certainly not superficial, but here, in feeling, she is.

This however is the penalty of having been narrowly theological in one's

earlier years; it always leaves a bad trace somewhere, especially in

reaction. The chapters in which Miss Martineau describes these early

years are admirable; they place before us most vividly the hard

conditions of her childish life, and they describe with singular

psychological minuteness the unfolding of her character and the growth

of her impressions. They have a remarkable candor, and it certainly

cannot be said that the author's portrait of her youthful self is a

flattered one. We doubt whether, except Rousseau, any autobiographer

ever had the courage to accuse himself of so ungraceful a fault as

infant miserliness. "I certainly was very close," says Miss Martineau,

"all my childhood and youth." Her account of the circumstances which led

to and accompanied her first steps in literature, of the first money she

earned (she was in sore need of it), and of the growth of her form and

development of her powers, and her confidence in them--all this is

extremely real, touching, and interesting. She succeeded almost from the

first, but her success was the result of an amount of unaided exertion

which excites our wonder. What fairly launched her was the publication

of her "Tales in Illustration of Political Economy," and there was

something really heroic in the way that as a poor young woman with

"views" of her own and without helpful companionship, she explored and

mastered this tough science. Her views prevailed, and floated her into

distinction. We have no space to allude to the details of the rest of

her career, one of the principal events of which was her visit to

America in 1834. It lasted more than two years, and was commemorated by

Miss Martineau, on her return, in no less than six volumes. Mrs. Chapman

deals with it largely in her supplementary memoir, treating chiefly,

however, of the visitor's relations with the Abolition party. Miss

Martineau evidently exaggerates both the odium which she incurred and

the danger to which she exposed herself by these relations. They were

natural ones for an ardently liberal Englishwoman to form, for the

Abolitionists, to foreign eyes, must at that time have represented the

only eminent feeling, the only sense of an ideal, visible amid the

commonplace prosperity of American life. In her last pages Miss

Martineau indulges some gloomy forebodings as to the future of the

United States, which offers, she says, the only instance on record "of a

nation being inferior to its institutions." This was written in 1855; we

abstain from hazarding a conjecture as to whether she would think better

or worse of us now.

* * * * *

We have two good novels, one very foreign and the other very domestic.

The first is by Auerbach,[3] whose high purpose and truly ideal

treatment of the narrative all who have read "On the Heights" will

remember with pleasure. He preserves the same style essentially in this

story, although it is of an entirely different character. A painter

visiting a country village in company with a young scholar and

philosopher who is an assistant librarian and is called the

collaborator, paints as a Madonna the beautiful daughter of the keeper

of the village inn. He falls in love with her, attracted no less by her

unconcealed love for him than by her beauty. He takes her to town with

him, a town where there is a little German court, very refined

_esthetik_, and very high-dried old manners. The poor girl drives him

almost mad with her awkwardness, her ignorance of polished life, and

her independence. It does not help the matter that in the latter

respect she wins the favor of others, even of the Prince himself. After

a while he avoids her, takes to wine-drinking, and comes home drunk.

She sees her position, and from what he is suffering, and she goes back

to her parents, leaving behind her an unreproachful, fond, and most

touching letter of farewell. Poor girl! sad as it was for her, what

else could she do? It was the best course under the circumstances; for

although her heart broke over it, she at least kept her love for him,

and that by remaining she might have lost. After a while she dies, and

he after a long time betrothes himself to another woman, who loves him,

and to whose love he responds with such a feeling as beauty and

sweetness and devotion might raise in the breast of a man whose heart

is really in the grave of his dead wife. He dies before a second

marriage from injuries received in a dispute with his brother-in-law.

It will be seen that this simple story of humble life presented

temptations to treatment in the most literal and realistic way. But in

Auerbach's hands it is ideal. Its likeness in certain respects to the

story of "A Princess of Thule" will strike all the readers of William

Black's most charming novel. But the treatment is as unlike as the

incidents and the localities. Auerbach's little novel is essentially

German in thought, in feeling, in purpose, in treatment. We have never

read a more thoroughly German book. This character is given to it, and

its ideality is very much enhanced by the character of the

collaborator, who is constantly looking upon every incident of life

from a lofty philosophic point of view; serious generally, sometimes

humorous, often serio-comic. "Wilhelm Meister" itself is not a more

thoroughly characteristic production of the German mind. But it is

nevertheless a sweet, simple, touching story, the sentiment diffused

through which has a peculiar charm. It forms one of Mr. Henry Holt's

well selected "Leisure Hour Series." The translation is marked by

idiomatic vigor and a very skilful adaptation of the rustic phraseology

of one language to that of the other.

[3] "_Lorley and Reinhard._" By BERTHOLD AUERBACH. Translated by

Charles T. Brooks. 16mo, pp. 377. New York: Henry Holt.

--As unlike to this as can be is a novel by an author whose name is

entirely new to us, but whose work bears the traces of some literary

experience.[4] Its double title is very well chosen. In it a number of

people, young and middle-aged, are gathered together for the summer in

the beautiful Connecticut country house of one of them--a wealthy young

bachelor. There they all fall in love. We can hardly say that everybody

falls in love with everybody else; but it is pretty nearly that.

Everybody is in love with some one else; and the consequence is, after a

good deal of cross-purposing and some suffering, half a dozen marriages.

The change that has taken place in the purpose of the novel and in the

manner of treatment of character by the novel writer could not be more

clearly exampled than by "Love in Idleness." It is absolutely without

plot, has hardly enough coherence to be called a story, is entirely

without incident. And yet it is very interesting from the first page to

the last, although its interest is not of the highest kind even in the

novel range. To give our readers any notion of it is quite impossible

without telling them almost all that happens, all that is said, thought,

and felt by the various personages. The book is strongly American; but

its Americans are of the most cultivated classes; and it is guiltless of

hard-fisted farmers, Southern slave-drivers, and California

gold-diggers. It is entirely free from that irritating intellectual

eruption sometimes called American humor. In fact, its personages are

taken both from the Old England and the New; and side by side, one set

can hardly be distinguished from the other as in real life. He who must

perforce be called the hero is a Senator, forty-eight years old, who is

engaged to marry a rather cool, reserved, and stately woman of thirty,

but is loved almost at first sight by Felise Clairmont, a girl of

nineteen, half French, half American, of enchanting beauty, and still

more captivating ways. She is loved by almost every other man in the

book; but her avowed lover is the Senator's younger brother, who is the

host of the assembled company, exclusive of Felise, who lives near by

with her guardian, a certain judge. The Senator loves the young girl as

fondly as she loves him, and still more deeply, and what the result is

we shall leave our readers to find out from the book itself, which will

richly repay the novel reader. It is exceedingly well written, and its

social machinery is managed with skill; but it is a little too much

elaborated in the conversations, which are rather excessively

epigrammatic at times. The author of such a novel, if not an old hand,

should give us something better and stronger ere long.

[4] "_Love in Idleness._ A Summer Story." By ELLEN W. OLNEY. 8vo

(paper), pp. 131. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.

--"The Man Who Was Not a Colonel"[5] is an amusing story of that kind

that may be denominated "light" even in fiction. The author rattles on

through a variety of incidents, and adventures, and true-love tangles,

without trying the reader's intellect with any particularly severe

infliction of character study. It is a model of that literature which

has received the distinctive title of _railway_, because in travelling

we do not care to be bothered with thinking on our own part or others.

[5] "_The Man Who Was Not a Colonel._" By a High Private. Loring,

publisher. $0.50.

* * * * *

Mr. Wallace has done well in selecting the comprehensive title

"Russia"[6] for his book. It is no mere record of a journey, or

description of a country or people as a traveller sees them. The author

spent six years in the land of the Tsars, studied the language, and

lived with the people, and now he endeavors to show the origin and

composition of the nation, its past history and present struggles,

besides making minute studies of the serf system, the communes,

emancipation in its methods and results, the peculiar conjunction of

autocracy and democracy in the principles and practice of government,

the agriculture, the religion, politics, population, and other

important factors of a great empire. The book is sufficiently praised

when we say that all these subjects are well treated. The author is

careful to point out, as an analyst should, where his studies are

incomplete, and he modestly tells us that his work is not presented as

an unassailable summation of truth, but as the conclusion to which an

unprejudiced observer came after long and careful study. We could not

ask for better evidence of his sincerity than in the defence which he,

an Englishman, makes of the Tsar's policy of foreign annexation! He

tells us that this is not the result of autocratic choice, but is the

only available one of three modes of restraint against marauding

tribes. These three are a great wall, a military cordon, and

annexation. The first is impossible in a country that for hundreds of

miles has no durable building material, the second has been tried and

found impracticable. As to the last, there is a choice between an armed

frontier and occupation of the marauder's country, and the latter

course is followed because it is cheaper in a pecuniary sense. To the

question so often asked in England, How far is Russian "aggrandization"

to go? Mr. Wallace answers that the Russian arms cannot stop until they

reach the frontier of some stable power. In short, to those

Russophobists in England who look with such alarm upon the approach of

the Russians toward India, he calmly replies that this approach is both

inevitable and desirable! No wonder he tells his countrymen that it is

their duty to know Russia better. It is plainly impossible to even

review in the most concise manner the numerous important discussions in

this remarkable book, without producing another book in doing so. Mr.

Wallace's work is one of the most valuable studies in social and

governmental economy ever written, and several causes, aside from his

personal fidelity and fitness, combine to make it so. In general,

Russian society exhibits, so far as the peasantry are concerned, a

simplicity of life and thought that carries the imagination

irresistibly back to prehistoric times. No civilized race, no

_culturvolk_, presents such aboriginal relations in its family and

commonwealth. The nobles, on the other hand, and all the cultured

class, are fermenting with great views and plans of social reform. The

ideas that made such havoc in the early days of the French revolution

have again swept within human vision, but this time they were caught up

by a practical-minded Emperor and crystallized into the greatest

premeditated political reform of this century! The wonderful feat of

quietly emancipating forty million bonded servitors, at one stroke, the

institution on a tremendous scale of what the dreamers have declared to

be the classic relation of social man--communism, the division of land,

taking about one-half from the rich and giving it to the poor--such

marvels as these throw a halo of Arabian magic about the history of

this simple people since 1861. When to these attractions is added the

fact that this land of social classicity and political ideals is

entirely accessible to study, as no other nation of like simple culture

is, we think that reasons enough have been given for saying that our

author has chosen the ripest field in the world for his harvest labors.

He has shown himself a most conscientious and able worker in it, and

our own country will be fortunate if the social revolution that has

taken place in its Southern States ever finds so unprejudiced and

painstaking a historian as he. To Americans Mr. Wallace's book should

be more interesting and valuable than to any other readers, for many of

these questions which he discusses so thoroughly have been settled in

precisely the opposite way in this country! For instance, emancipation

here was violent, the severance of master-and-slave relations complete,

the future _status_ of the two interested parties was not previously

fixed, and no compensation was given to either. Here land is held

solely by individual tenure; no person has enforced local bonds, but is

free to move everywhere--that is, with the sole exception of Indians.

We reject the colonization plan of dealing with marauding enemies, and

adopt the armed frontier system. In short, we are diametrically

opposite in our conclusions, and yet we have a national problem that is

in two important respects essentially the same as Russia's. The

settlement of a continent and the amalgamation of races is the double

task imposed on us as well as them. One mode of accomplishing it we can

see going on about us; its precise opposite is well exhibited in Mr.

Wallace's "Russia."

[6] "_Russia._" By D. MACKENZIE WALLACE. New York: Henry Holt &

Co.

* * * * *

Mr. Anderson cannot be considered a model traveller. His "Six Weeks in

Norway"[7] gives hardly anything but the starting out on each morning,

the names of places passed, and the arrival at night. But the traveller

in that country needs something of just this kind, and this book will

therefore do very well for a guide. Indeed, it is well filled with facts

suitable to such a service. Norway is a hard country to travel in. The

frequent rains and steady fish diet are depressing to dry foreigners

with a previous sufficiency of phosphorus, and like our own country

there is little besides the scenery to engage attention. Nor is the

interior the best part of the country. It looks best in a profile view

seen from the water. Whoever would see Norway must visit the fiords in a

yacht, and not trouble the land much.

[7] "_Six Weeks in Norway._" By E. L. ANDERSON. Robert Clarke &

Co.

* * * * *

The discussion of the mutual attitude of religion and science,

particularly in regard to what is known as the theory of development,

goes ceaselessly on. Books upon the subject follow each other so rapidly

that it would seem that they must long since have ceased to find any

considerable number of readers, much more of buyers. We confess that we

are somewhat weary of the controversy; particularly as it is kept up

chiefly on the side of those who call themselves religionists, who

mostly seem to be unable to bring forward any new arguments, and no less

to fail to appreciate the attitude and the purpose of those whom they

have made their antagonists. Science, as we believe, did not seek this

controversy, but was forced into it by the attacks of the champions of

religion, and is now necessarily kept somewhat on the defence. It would

seem that nearly all that can be said, and all that need be said, has

already been brought forward. But each new disputant that enters upon

the defence of theological dogma seems to be convinced that he is the

man of men who is to protect religion against what he believes to be the

danger in which it is placed by the observation of nature and the

speculation upon discovered facts which now occupies so many physicists,

including some of first-rate ability.

We may as well say, if we have not already said in our previous remarks

upon the books upon this question which have been reviewed in the pages

of "The Galaxy," that we do not regard the theory of evolution as

established. Facts of great interest bearing upon it have been

discovered, and deductions from those facts have been made and set

forth with great ingenuity and plausibility, so that it demands serious

attention _from the scientific point of view_. But this seems to us all

that has been done. Our feelings and our convictions, not to say our

creed, are all against it. It is a degrading and a hopeless view of the

universe, and particularly of man. Him it places in the attitude of a

mere physical item in the cosmos--one link, although the last and a

golden one, in a chain of events the beginning and the future of which

are alike unknown. All our instincts revolt against it. We don't

believe it; and we candidly confess that we are in the position,

abhorrent and ridiculous to the scientific mind, of not wishing to

believe it. We believe, and we desire to believe, that man was made,

however and when, as man; and that however inferior he may have been in

his first condition to what he is now, he was never anything less than

human.

Feeling thus and believing thus, we nevertheless cannot see that those

who are resisting science on the ground that its assumed discoveries are

at war with the assumed teachings of revealed religion are doing wisely,

or that they, even the best of them, have written one word which in the

least impairs the value or the significance of the facts and the

deductions which science has set forth. Science is only to be met by

science. Theology cannot touch it. A beast and a fish cannot fight: one

must stay on land and the other must stay in the water. Religionists, on

the one hand, say that if science has discovered, or professes to have

discovered, anything at variance with the Mosaic cosmogony, it is not to

be believed. Scientific observers say on the other that if theology

teaches anything at variance with fact and logic, so much the worse for

theology. This attitude of the two will be maintained. It is natural,

and in a certain sense right, that it should be maintained. Each will

hold its position. Neither can accept the conclusions of the other or

its methods without both ceasing to be what they are. Notwithstanding

this difficulty, which is radical, the controversy will go on, until it

is decided, not by argument, but by time, experience, and the moral and

intellectual development of mankind.

A laborious contribution to the controversy has been made, by Clark

Braden,[8] who announces himself as president of Abingdon college,

Illinois. It is our own fault, probably, that we have never heard before

of the president or of the college. Neither he, however, nor his

publishers will fail through lack of confidence to make themselves

known, or because they have any misgivings as to the sufficiency of

their work. The author, in a prefatory note addressed "to reviewers and

critics," invites the most searching criticism of his book, but

earnestly requests that it shall be carefully read, and asks to have all

criticisms, particularly those which are adverse, sent to him, that they

may, as he says, "aid him in his search for truth." But plainly he has

little doubt that he has settled "the question of the hour," and what he

wishes is to enjoy the spectacle of science vainly struggling in his

giant grasp. His tone throughout the book is one of overweening

self-confidence. Darwin, Tyndall, Huxley, Spencer, Carpenter, and the

rest are to be snuffed out by the president of Abingdon college,

Illinois; nay, their very methods of research and modes of reasoning are

to be swept into the intellectual dust-bin of that institution by his

besom. And in a long address which accompanies his book, in which the

publishers speak, but the style of which bears a remarkable resemblance

to that of Mr. Braden, it is pointed out with unction that while much

has been written by the advocates of the theory of creation by

intelligence, in refutation of the evolution hypothesis, yet "no

thoughtful reader has ever felt satisfied with any one book"; "no one

has attempted to present, in all its infinity, mystery, and unfathomable

depth, the problem for which evolution is offered as a solution. This is

a fundamental failure." Of course this great need is to be supplied,

this fundamental failure made good, by Mr. Clark Braden's book. And then

the publishers break forth in words which seem to be the genuine

utterances of their own feeling: "The book is a compactly printed volume

of four hundred and eighty pages, printed on the best quality of paper,

and printed and bound in the best style of art. It contains as much

matter as most three-dollar books, and more than many of them.... Every

preacher and believer of the Bible should have a copy. All who profess

to believe these theories of evolution should, above all others, have a

copy. We want to place a copy in the hands of all parties." Doubtless.

This is delicious. Every one who believes the Bible should "have a

copy," and every one who don't believe it should "have a copy." In a

word, to "have a copy" of this book is the chief end of man, the first

requisite to reasonable existence for every human being. And then the

publishers wind up with a request for copies of the reviews of the book,

as "we desire to use them in the sale of the book, and in selecting

papers in which we will advertise." Innocent creatures! that last touch

shows how guileless they are; how they wouldn't think of such a thing as

offering a bribe to editors and publishers of newspapers; and how purely

disinterested they are in their desire to place "a copy" in the hands of

"all parties."

[8] "_The Question of the Hour, and its Various Solutions,

Atheism, Darwinism, and Theism._" By CLARK BRADEN. 8vo, pp. 480.

Cincinnati: Chase & Hall.

We fear that our pages will not be selected for the advertising of this

book; which, by the way, is commonly printed and meanly bound. Candidly

we do not think that it is the end of all things. Possibly there may be

some controversy hereafter; some men may go on investigating nature and

believing in facts alone. The book reminds us of a social sketch in

"Punch," which shows two dilapidated field preachers, evidently among

the most ignorant and feeble-minded of their class, meeting on the edge

of a heath from which people are going away. One says to the other,

"Been on the 'eath? What did you preach about?" "Oh," is the reply, "I

give it to Darwin an' 'Uxley to rights." Not that Mr. Braden is in any

sense ignorant, or in any way to be compared to "Punch's" field

preacher except in his evident belief that he has "give it to Darwin

an' 'Uxley to rights," and in the perfect indifference with which

Darwin and Huxley will regard his performance. Briefly, nothing worthy

of particular remark in Mr. Braden's book. Those who wish to find the

whole question between science and revealed religion set forth as it

appears to Mr. Braden, and the facts and arguments of science met by

the usual stock-in-trade weapons of the theologian and the

metaphysician, may find all this in Mr. Braden's book, in which the

author certainly does go pretty well over the whole ground. What is

really his theme is found in this passage of one of his appendices (p.

382): "The issue between theist and atheist is: What is the necessary,

absolute, uncaused, unconditioned being or substance? What is it that

is the self-existent, independent, self-sustaining and eternal? What is

the ground, source, origin, or cause of all existences and phenomena?

This is the problem of problems, that determines all systems of

science, philosophy, and thought." Well, to these questions science

answers, We don't know; we don't pretend to know, and we probably never

shall know. We have discovered by patient observation certain facts,

and, according to the laws of right reason, we think that between these

facts there are such and such relations. In this we may be mistaken. If

we are, very well; we shall be glad to correct our error. In either

case we shall go on observing, considering, and reasoning, but

confining ourselves strictly to fact. If any dogma or transcendental

notion that you know of is at variance with fact or with reason, we may

be sorry or we may not; but in either case we can't help it. Dogmas and

notions are nothing to us. And as to that self-existent, unconditioned,

eternal intelligence that you talk about, pray tell us what you know

about it. We shall be glad to learn. Don't tell us what you think,

believe, or have an inward conviction of, but what you know. What _do_

you _know_ about it? Give us at least a solid basis of absolute

knowledge to stand upon and to start from, and we are ready to listen

to you. If you cannot do this, good morning; look you after your

dogmas, and we will keep to our facts. The truth is that not Paul and

Barnabas were more driven to part company than the disputant who sets

up as of any authority a theological dogma, no matter what, or a

metaphysical abstraction, no matter what, and the man who studies

nature scientifically. One believes because he believes, and really at

bottom from no other reason; the other is in a chronic state of

inquiry; he believes nothing in regard to any subject of inquiry but

that which rests upon the ground of absolute knowledge. Mr. Braden's

book, although it is filled with evidences of wide reading and high

education, reads like a book of metaphysical and theological

commonplace. It reminds us of our college days in the lecture room of

the professor of moral philosophy. It is well enough in its way, but it

will attract little attention in the pending controversy. Of its style

we must say that, considering the position of its author, we wish it

were better, and that in the use of language it were an example more

worthy to be followed. Its first sentence is: "One of the _wise_

utterances of one _whom_ his contemporaries declared spoke as never man

spoke, was that no _wise_ man would begin," etc. On the next page we

have such vulgar error as "_transpiring_ before our eyes," "decay and

dissolution _transpiring_ in every department of nature"; and as to

_shall_ and _will_ the author seems to have no conception of their

proper functions in English speech. This, for the president of Abingdon

college, is not well.

--Of a somewhat different character, and of much greater importance, is

a little book which presents James Martineau's last utterances on this

subject.[9] It is made up of an address delivered in Manchester New

College, October 6, 1874, and two papers which appeared subsequently in

the "Contemporary Review." Dr. Bellows, in his introduction, expresses

the feeling with which religious minds will read these papers when he

says, "it is refreshing in the midst of the crude replies which alarmed

religionists are hastily hurling at the scientific assailants of faith

in a living God, to hear one thoroughly furnished scholar, profound

metaphysician, and earnest Christian entering his thoughtful and deeply

considered protest against the tendencies or conclusions of modern

materialism." Mr. Martineau may now be justly regarded as the leading

champion of faith. He has this distinction because he is not hampered by

creeds, or articles, or hierarchal responsibility; he is yet an earnest

believer in the essentials of the Christian religion as it is accepted

by all orthodox Protestant denominations, while to these qualifications

he adds a wide range of knowledge and eminent ability as a reasoner. He

is able to meet the men of science on their own ground, and he does so.

They will not acknowledge themselves vanquished; and perhaps from the

very nature of the case, as we have already remarked, they cannot be

vanquished by any argument in which revelation or metaphysics enters as

a premise; but they will not refuse their admiration at the union of

subtlety and strength, of ability and courtesy with which they are

treated. We find many admirable passages in this book marked for

reference, as we went through it; but we must pass them by. During the

last few months we have devoted so many pages of our department of

literature to the discussion of this subject, that readers with whom it

is not a hobby might reasonably object to a further continuance of the

subject here. We content ourselves with recommending this little,

thoughtful, strongly written book to the attention of our readers. They

will find the best array of arguments with which to meet scientific

materialism.

[9] "_Modern Materialism in its Relations to Religion and

Theology._" By JAMES MARTINEAU, LL.D. With an introduction by

Henry W. Bellows, D.D. 16mo, pp. 211. New York: G. P. Putnam's

Sons.

--From the same publishers, who seem very catholic in their reception of

authors, we have a volume which, the more because of its ability and its

calmness of tone, Mr. Martineau would regard with sadness, and with

horror, and perhaps with dread.[10] Mr. Frothingham has undertaken the

task of studying the records of the foundation of Christianity from a

purely literary point of view and with all the aids that can be derived

from criticism. The result of his studies may be said to be the

satisfaction of his own mind that Jesus of Nazareth was not and did not

intend to be the founder of a new religion; that he believed himself to

be and set himself up as the Messias, the temporal Messias, expected by

the Jews; and that Christianity was founded by Paul. His conception of

Paul is striking, and however he may fail in establishing his position

in regard to him, it certainly must be admitted that he has made of him

a very interesting and energetic figure, and one which is consistent

with itself and with all that we are told of the great apostle to the

Gentiles. He calls him both Jew and Greek--Jew by parentage, nurture,

training, and genius, Greek by birthplace, residence, and association,

an enthusiast, even to fanaticism, by temperament, and yet freed from

extreme narrowness of mind by intercourse with the people and the

literature of other nations. He was a Jew whose feeling upon the Christ

question was always intense, so much so that he worried and tormented

the people who did not believe as he did. He was a Messianic believer of

the school of the Pharisees, or strict Jews; but all at once, as such

things do happen to such men, another aspect of the Messianic

expectation burst upon him with the splendor of a revelation, and

determined his career. To the conception of the Messias and of Jesus's

conformity to it which suddenly took possession of Paul, Mr. Frothingham

assigns the origin of the Christian religion as it was known in the

second century. With a cool and almost humorous adaptation of a

political phrase of the day, he calls this Paul's "new departure." That

Mr. Frothingham's book is clear in thought, interesting in substance,

agreeable and good in style every one acquainted with his writings will

readily believe. As to the points that he has undertaken to establish,

we are pretty sure that after reading his book few will think with him

who were not ready to do so before they began it.

[10] "_The Cradle of the Christ_: A Study of Primitive

Christianity." By OCTAVIUS BROOKS FROTHINGHAM 12mo, pp. 233.

New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

* * * * *

Dr. Watson F. Quinby of Wilmington has written an odd pamphlet on

mongrelism in races. His belief is that population tends to become

homogeneous, but this is not an averaging process. When two races mingle

and intermarry, the mongrel product does not exhibit the balanced

characteristics of both, but the traits of the higher race are absorbed

and hid in those of the lower. Asia, he says, "was formerly powerful,

with white peoples all along its northern and eastern borders, and far

into the interior. But they first enslaved the black race, then mingled

their blood, and have finally become merged in them." The resulting

mongrel people always lacks the intellectual force necessary to maintain

the civilization of the higher. Arts decline and national decay sets in.

In this way is explained the existence of noble ruins among inefficient

and barbarous nations, who practise a much ruder style of architecture.

The Mexicans are the type of this retrogression. Dr. Quinby predicts for

them an increasing decline until Aztec civilization is restored. If the

Doctor's theories could be established, there are enthusiastic

ethnologists who would not hesitate to say that the Mexicans could not

be put to a better use than this. Shut them up and compel them to breed

themselves back into Aztecs! Dr. Quinby's speculations are, to a great

extent, based on studies of language, and of lingual affinities he is a

bold, not to say reckless, expounder. Some of his work reads as if Mark

Twain had turned philologist. For instance:

"Eighty miles from the mouth of the Indus was a place called

Hingliz. The people of this part celebrate the festival of Bhavani

on the first day of May, when their custom is to erect a pole in

the field and adorn it with pendants and garlands. They also

celebrate another festival on the last day of March, called Huli

(Phulee), when they amuse themselves by sending one another on

foolish errands. _All this has a very Hinglish look(!)._ This is

probably the place where the Hinglish people came from, for though

the Romans called themselves angles, they call themselves English."

* * * * *

To explore libraries, to sift out from masses of irrelevant matter what

alone is of value to the naval student, to subject the poetical

descriptions of great battles to the cold eye of professional criticism,

and to give the results in a condensed, well written, and interesting

form, is the task Commodore Parker has assumed, and so far as the volume

under consideration is concerned[11]--the first of a series--the task has

been well and faithfully performed. The amount of labor involved is

immense! The author passes rapidly over the navies of antiquity for the

reason, probably, that we are more familiar with that history than with

the naval history of a period nearer to us both in time and

relationship. What schoolboy has not read of Xerxes sitting in his

golden chair overlooking the Piræus and the galleys of his immense fleet

strung along the coast of Attica as far as the eye could reach?

He counted them at break of day,

But when the sun set where were they?

[11] "_The Fleets of the World._" By Commodore FOXHALL A. PARKER,

United States Navy. New York: D. Van Nostrand.

Such was Salamis.

When his narrative reaches the navies of the Italian republics of the

middle ages, however, our author seems all aglow with love of his theme,

and well he may be! Venice, in her day of glory, possessed the finest

navy of the times. Captain Pantero Pantera, writing of it in 1614,

speaks with enthusiastic admiration of its fine arsenals, numerous

stores, and numbers of workmen on permanent pay. These things, he says,

were always most "carefully attended to by the republic of Venice, which

indeed in this respect not only equals, but excels all the naval powers

of the Mediterranean." There is so much of romance and poetry, indeed,

in connection with the naval history of Venice, that it requires a cool

head and steady hand to steer along the courses of sober truth; but that

truth we must not be surprised to find, in that clime of sunshine and

beauty, often out-vieing the wildest efforts of fiction. Very similar is

the history of the sister republic of Genoa. Unfortunately these lovely

sisters were great rivals, and during wars which covered a period of

about one hundred and thirty years wasted each other's strength and

resources without achieving a particle of good to either. As a judgment,

it would almost seem, for such stupendous and long-continued folly, the

seeds of destruction were planted without their own bosoms. Both

attained the pinnacle of earthly glory, but from both issued forth a

wanderer who was destined in time to set his seal upon the fate of his

native city. The Genoese Columbus, followed by the Venetian Cabot, led

the way to the great western continent which, by diverting the course of

trade and commerce from its old channels, caused the loss of wealth and

the final decay of the Italian republic. The spirit of discovery once

aroused, other navigators followed, and Vasco da Gama, by opening the

road to the East Indies by the way of the Cape of Good Hope, so injured

the trade of Venice with the east as to render her downfall inevitable.

But the history of the old sea kings of the north, and the tracing of

their line of descent through old England to the hardy seaman of New

England, is still more interesting to our naval students.

The Vikings--"sons of the fiords"--were undoubtedly the most arrant

pirates of all history. They were the dread of all Europe. "A furore

Normanorum librera nos Domine," prayed the Church throughout

Christendom. Many of these piratical princes became, through habitual

success, so devoted to their calling that they never extinguished it,

but rather gloried in passing their lives on board their ships. It was

their fond boast that they never reposed under an immovable roof, nor

drank their beer in peace by their fireside, and the ships in which they

had led their wild and adventurous lives formed in death their

sepulchre. Passing over the discovery of North America by Eric the Red

(about 700 B.C.), we may come at once to Harold Harfagra--Harold the

Fairhaired, or Harold Fairfax, a name so well represented to-day in our

own navy. Having made himself master of all Norway, the restless young

spirits of the realm took themselves off on one of their accustomed

expeditions. Led by a youth named Rollo, son of the celebrated sea-rover

Jarl Ragnvald, they ascended the Seine and laid siege to Paris. So

successful were these Normans that Charles the Simple ceded to Rollo

that part of Neustria since called Normandy. By the terms of the treaty,

Charles was to give his daughter Gisele in marriage to Rollo, together

with the province of Normandy, provided he would do homage, and embrace

the Christian religion. To do homage was to kiss the feet of the king.

All that the sturdy Rollo could be prevailed upon to do, however, was to

place his hand in that of the king, and to depute one of his followers

to do homage for him. The gentleman to whom this duty was assigned

raised the king's foot so high that his majesty was thrown upon his

back; whereupon the rude Normans burst out laughing, so little respect

for royalty had these wild rovers of the sea. Two hundred years later

the descendants of these same Normans achieved the Conquest of England.

They became by the heat of much and continued contest and attrition

gradually fused, with the Angles and the Saxons, already inhabitants of

the island, into the modern Englishman and his representative on the

shores of New England.

This volume not only shows the reader--the general as well as

professional reader--the large scope embraced in a proper study of

history, but it also demonstrates that naval archaeology is not a mere

idle amusement, suited to the elegant leisure of the scholar. It has a

great and practical value, enabling an officer to understand his own

profession the more thoroughly in all its branches. Commodore Parker has

conferred a material benefit on his profession by the valuable

contribution he has made to its literature. He has, moreover, by his

straightforward narration, pleasant style, and copious illustrations

from standard authorities, rendered agreeable and entertaining to the

general reader what otherwise might have proved technical, and of too

special a character.

* * * * *

Mr. Perkins's book[12] almost disarms criticism by its very character,

for it is impossible to make a selection of books that is at the same

time limited in size and adapted to diverse and contrary necessities.

Private libraries want the best books, public libraries the books most

called for by the general and often undiscriminating public. "The Best

Reading" contains the titles of about ten thousand books, and as that is

less than half the number printed every year, the work is confessedly

incomplete from whatever point of view we look at it. Still it is useful

to librarians, of whom there are several hundred inexperienced ones in

the country, and to professional essayists, or magazine writers, a class

that must contain thousands of persons. With every allowance for

unavoidable imperfections, we think Mr. Perkins can revise the list with

advantage, taking out some obsolete writers and putting in some new ones

in their place--Herbert Spencer for example.

[12] "_The Best Reading_: Hints on the Selection of Books, on

the Formation of Libraries, Public and Private, on Courses of

Reading," etc. With a Classified Bibliography. By FREDERICK

BEECHER PERKINS. G. P. Putnam's Sons.

* * * * *

Both Mr. Loftie's "Plea for Art in the House" and the Misses Garrett's

advice on "House Decoration"[13] belong to the best kind of works on the

very important subject of cultivating good taste in the furniture of the

home. They are very direct and clear, and their authors are entirely

competent to instruct us all on this subject. Especially are they free

from what we consider to be the worst fault a book of this kind can

show, an obtrusive pretension to superior taste. It is a great mistake

to suppose that we can elevate people by showing them that we consider

ourselves far above them in taste and judgment; but this mistake is not

unfrequently made. That may be the fact, but if there is no evidence of

it but a patronizing treatment of others, there is little hope that much

good will be done. Both these books are free from that error, and Mr.

Loftie especially takes his readers into a survey of a good many

branches of decorative art, exhibiting a familiar acquaintance with them

all, talking alternately of the blunders and successes of collectors,

real and would-be, and all with a natural enthusiasm and freedom from

superciliousness. The Garrett sisters also give a great number of

valuable suggestions and some very taking illustrations of tasteful

decoration. We wish they had given less of their work to criticism of

the conventional London house and more to the description of what is

good. So far as we are acquainted with books of this class, they abound

in two faults, discursiveness and inordinate discussion of bad models.

Artistic house decoration is a technical art, and must be taught like

all other arts--by the exhibition of good precedents. Strictly speaking,

there can be no theories in matters of taste. All the so-called laws or

canons of taste are obtained by observing what has been well done. From

that we may learn what is well doing, and the educated taste produces

good work. There is nothing in art so implicit as the surveyor's

dependence upon the law of magnetic attraction. The notes of a survey

well made to-day can be given to a surveyor a century hence, and he will

bring the lines out to within half an inch, and put his hand upon each

boundary mark that has been made. But it is not so in art. In all the

reconstructions of ancient Grecian buildings not one has been rebuilt.

Neither the Madeleine nor the Valhalla repeat the art of the Parthenon,

however faithfully they repeat its form and measurements. Good taste is

a thing that no French surveyor can secure with any refinement whatever

of the metric system. But still there is a soil in which this plant can

be grown, and that soil is the collective evidences of good taste in the

past. Let us have a book so full of good illustrations that didactic

instruction shall not be needed.

[13] "_A Plea for Art in the House._" By W. J. LOFTIE, F. S. A.

Porter & Coates, Philadelphia. (Art at Home Series.)

"_Suggestions for House Decoration in Painting Woodwork and

Furniture._" By RHODA and AGNES GARRETT. Porter & Coates,

Philadelphia. (Art at Home Series.)

NEBULÆ.

--Our discussion of life insurance management, in this part of "The

Galaxy," was but preliminary to the thorough article upon the subject

which we present to our readers in this number. It is a subject of great

importance, and one which concerns multitudes of the very best class of

our citizens, to whom we recommend this article for thoughtful perusal.

Its writer has a more thorough acquaintance with life insurance

management than is probably possessed by any other one man in the

country. He _knows_, he does not infer or conjecture, and he has

learned by experience the only way in which to bring life insurance

companies to an effective responsibility. What they are, even when they

are not managed in a manner undeniably fraudulent, has been shown by the

recent investigations at Albany, which brought to light the payment of

salaries and bonuses of monstrous extravagance and the use of proxies by

the thousand on the part of the officers who took these great sums out

of the pockets of clerks and clergymen, widows and orphans. Something

must be done, and that speedily, to correct this abuse even among the

honest companies, and the way to doing it is pointed out in the article

to which we refer.

--Since we prepared our last nebulous notes, General Grant has passed

into private life. The country has accepted the event as a matter of

course; it has elicited very little comment. The end of his

administration was made the occasion of some retrospection and some

criticism, it is true; but that did not, in either case, touch the

subject which presents itself to us in connection with the change which

took place in Washington on the 4th of March. General Grant, by becoming

then a mere private citizen, closed one of the most remarkable careers

in modern history. Men, a very few men, have done more, or been more,

than he has done or has been; but it would be difficult to name a man in

modern times who rose from obscurity to such a height, passed through

such a series of events, held such power, and who passed peaceably, and

in full possession of his health and all his faculties, into an

absolutely powerless and private condition, and all this in sixteen

years. The experiences of Cromwell and Washington were most nearly like

Grant's. But Cromwell fought six years ere he won his crowning victory

at Worcester; and although he was made Lord Protector in 1657, was known

to all England as an able and energetic member of the Long Parliament,

and one of the leaders of the popular party in 1640, seventeen years

before. Washington also saw six years pass from the time when he drew

his sword under the old elm at Cambridge, as Commander-in-Chief of the

colonial forces, to that when he received Lord Cornwallis's at the

surrender of Yorktown; and, made President in 1789, he retired in 1797,

twenty-three years after he took command. But he was a prominent citizen

of Virginia thirty-five years before that date, and was nominated deputy

to the colonial congress in 1774. The position of our retiring President

was very different, and his career was briefer and more crowded with

events. In March, 1861, except his old West Point comrades and his few

personal acquaintances, there were probably not twenty people in the

country who knew of the existence of ex-brevet Captain Grant, U.S.A.

Three years saw him the victor in hard-fought fields, in which the

forces on either side more than trebled all that ever Cromwell or

Washington commanded, and in 1864 he became General-in-Chief of the

immense army of one of the great powers of the world; one year more saw

him absolute victor, and the saviour of the Union. Four years passed,

and he voluntarily laid down his sword and his supreme military command,

to become President of the United States, doing so because he was

regarded as the only man who could save in peace what he won in war. At

the end of four years, he received, like Washington and Jefferson,

Jackson and Lincoln, the honor of a reëlection, and three years later he

seemed likely to have the unprecedented distinction of an election to a

third term. Now, although we may not say there is none so poor to do him

honor, he is entirely without position, military or civil, and it is

certainly true that many a mousing politician has far more influence

than the victor of Appomatox and he who was once dreaded by many people,

and looked to by others without dread, as the coming "man on horseback."

--Such a career in these days was possible only in this country, and

here it will probably be impossible hereafter. Of civil war we have, we

may be sure, seen the last, as it was really the first, that was ever

fought on our soil. And indeed it was big enough to suffice for our

share of that sort of thing for ever. That we shall ever be called upon

to wage war with a foreign foe is in the extremest degree improbable. No

other power wants any of our territory, at the price, at least, which it

would cost to get it; and we have taken all that we want from other

people. Cuba, if we get it--the advantage of which is not clear to all

minds--we shall get by purchase. We shall, therefore, it would seem,

never be so greatly indebted again to a successful general. In case we

should be so, and he should be one of General Sherman's successors, it

may be reasonably doubted if, with General Grant's experience before his

eyes, he will give up the assured life position of General-in-Chief for

the temporary honors and troubles of the Presidential chair. It is not

necessary to be a blind admirer of General Grant, or a member of the

party which made him twice President, to do him the justice of admitting

that his resignation of the office which he won with such eclat, and

held with such general honor, the world over, was a sacrifice to the

good of the Union for which he fought. He had for life a position

equally honorable with that of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and

more striking in its distinction. He had no superior but the President

of the United States; not a certain man, but the incumbent of the office

for the time being. He might, and probably would, have seen a succession

of such men rise, and pass into powerless privacy, while he maintained

his high position. He gave up this permanent distinction, with its

well-assured emoluments, at what we must admit that he regarded as the

call of duty, of patriotism. And now he is, so to speak, a nobody.

Admitting all the errors that have been charged against him--and he

doubtless committed many--admitting even that the party which he

represented is hostile to the best interests of the country (we do not

say that it is so, for we speak for no party and in no political

interest in these pages)--the spectacle of the passage of such a man

into absolute public insignificance, without any public care or public

thought for his future, is a very impressive one, and one not in all

respects admirable. As his career was possible only in this country, so

also was the close of it. The government, the people of no other great

nation, would drop a man who had done what he did, and held the

positions which he held, into an unprovided, obscure future, putting him

off, like an old shoe. Once the victorious commander of an army of half

a million of men, a man whose name was in the mouths of all the

civilized world, for eight years the ruler, with more than kingly power,

of a nation of forty millions, and a country which stretched from the

Atlantic to the Pacific, and which covered the temperate zone in a

continent, he has been remitted again, as far as the nation is

concerned, into his former unimportance, we cannot say obscurity, to

live a private life upon a very moderate competence. It may be right

that this should be so; but none the less is the spectacle one of great

interest and significance; all the more is his brief career one of the

most remarkable in the history of civilized peoples.

--General Grant's successor seems to be in earnest upon one subject, in

his apparent purpose in regard to which he must have the hearty approval

of good men of all parties--civil service reform. In this there is no

doubt that General Grant himself was at first quite as earnest. But the

Republican politicians were too much for him; his own military habits of

thought and his devotion to his personal friends also led him to adopt a

course of action in this respect inconsistent with the purpose which he

first avowed in regard to it; and the great and much needed reform still

remains to be worked out. After all, the principal point, the great

good, to be attained is the suppression of office-seeking as a sort of

business, the extinction of office-seekers as a class. Our politics are

sadly in need of purification. The corruption which disgraces our

Government in the eyes of all good men at home and abroad taints both

parties. In this respect there is nothing to choose between them. Now

nothing would tend so much to better our condition in this respect as

the absolute removal from the arena of political strife of the tens of

thousands of minor offices at the disposal of the party in possession of

the Government. Let them no longer be the prizes of victory at the

polls, and the men who now make politics a trade would find their

occupation gone, and they would no longer concern themselves much about

nominations and elections. The political affairs of the country would

then naturally fall into the hands of the honest, intelligent, and

thrifty men who now have little influence upon them. Let it be once

understood that, whatever party is in power, no man in office, except

those directly around the President, is to be removed except for

incompetence, neglect, or malversation, and the first great step will

have been taken toward our political regeneration. Nor is its influence

upon politics the only great benefit which would thus be secured. The

existence of a great body of men who are withholding themselves from the

ordinary business and work of life in the hope that something will turn

up in politics which will enable them to live, and perhaps to get money

in irregular ways, by office-holding, is demoralizing. It tends to make

and to keep in existence a body of shiftless men who otherwise would be

obliged to turn their attention to mechanics, to trade, to agriculture.

It helps to increase our too great tendency to speculative and unstable

habits of life. It is bad in every way. As to the particular method by

which the much-needed change is to be brought about there may be various

opinions; but among sensible and decent men there is none as to the

prime necessity of the extinction of office-seeking. In whatever he may

do to effect this the new President will have the best wishes even of

the greater number of those who cast their votes against him.

--From civil service to domestic service is a great leap; but there is

this likeness between the two, that both, in this country at least, are

in a deplorable condition of inefficiency. And as to domestic service,

the complaints of householders in England are hardly less loud and

grievous than those which go up daily in America. In both countries

there is a great cry for provision for unemployed women; and yet in

both countries the procurement of women capable and willing to give

good household work in return for good wages seems to vibrate between

the not remote points of difficulty and impossibility. Disorder, dirt,

waste, and cooking which is only the destruction of good viands by

reducing them to an unpalatable and indigestible condition are,

according to all accounts, the lot of all housekeepers whose means do

not enable them to procure the most skilful and highly trained domestic

servants. In England a strange remedy has been proposed, adopted in a

measure, and thus far with success. It is the introduction of what are

called, even in England, "lady helps." There is something amusing in

seeing our cousins, who used to sneer at the Yankee phrase "helps," and

also at the Yankee help herself, who would not be regarded (unwisely it

may be) as a servant, turn in despair to the word and the thing as the

only relief in their domestic perplexity. The scheme was first proposed

by Mrs. Crayshaw, of Cyfarthfa Castle, the wife of one of the

wealthiest iron masters in England. Considering the fact, known to

everybody there, that there were thousands of poor gentlewomen--that

is, of women born and bred in the comparatively wealthy and cultivated

classes--who were absolutely penniless, living in want, in suffering,

or in a pitiful and oppressive dependence, she thought that many of

these women would be willing to enter domestic service under certain

conditions. She made inquiries; she was encouraged; and she set herself

to work to effect what promises to be a great and beneficent reform.

The conditions which she exacted for her _protegées_ were that they

should have comfortable and separate rooms, that they should be called

upon to do none of the rough work, like scrubbing, for example, or

boot-cleaning (although they were responsible for its being well done),

and that they should be treated with personal respect. They were to be

called "lady helps." She started her project only about two years ago;

and although it was met at first with incredulity and with ridicule,

already it is so successful that although the applicants for such

employment are many, she cannot supply the demand by housekeepers for

her helpful ladies. For it is found that these ladies give what is

wanted, intelligent, conscientious service. They are truthful; they can

be trusted; they learn easily; they work well; they are quiet, pleasant

in manner; and, strange to say, they are cheerful. To the last one

other of her conditions may contribute largely. They are to be hired

only in couples, so that they have companionship of their own sort.

What will be the end of all this who can tell? The prospect, however,

is cheering to that class of householders who have not large means and

who yet require faithful, well-trained, intelligent domestic servants

for their daily comfort, and no less to a large class of respectable

and educated women, who may find under the new domestic regime a refuge

from the woes of extremest poverty--poverty which presses the more

hardly upon them because they are educated and respectable. There is

nothing in itself degrading in the performance of domestic labor; quite

the contrary. No woman who is worthy of her sex hesitates to perform it

for her husband, her children, or herself, or feels in the least

degraded thereby, or is so regarded by her acquaintances. The feeling

against performing it for others is a mere prejudice born of custom, of

fashion. Let it once be understood that no woman loses the respect of

others or need diminish her own by doing it for others as a means of

livelihood, and the ranks of lady helps will be crowded.

--In illustration and in furtherance of Mrs. Crayshaw's truly, and, it

would seem, wisely benevolent scheme, a little book has just been

published in England, and reprinted in this country. It is by Mrs.

Warren, who is the writer of some half a dozen excellent hand-books of

household management. It professes to tell the story of the troubles of

a small household, that of a professional man, whose wife is reduced to

despair by the incompetence, the neglect, the wastefulness, the

untruthfulness, and the dishonesty of the servants, who come to her one

after another, each worse than the other. The causes of complaint are

exactly those from which American housewives suffer. Depending upon her

servants, whose deficiencies she is incapable of supplying herself, she

is sometimes unable to give her husband a wholesome meal, decently

served; and this preys upon her to such a degree that when he happens to

be kept away she fancies that he remains away voluntarily because his

home is unattractive. In her despair she proposes a "lady help" to him.

He scouts the suggestion. The thing is impossible, ridiculous. She

practises a pious deceit upon him; gets a lady help surreptitiously into

the house, and keeps her out of sight until order, and cleanliness, and

good dinners have subdued him into a proper frame of mind to receive

with meek acquiescence the announcement of the origin of this beneficent

change. Then all goes on happily. Money is saved, comfort supplants

wretchedness and confusion, and domestic life becomes enjoyable upon a

small income. It must be admitted that the authoress has it all her own

way. The lady help is a paragon. She is the niece of a distinguished man

of science, well bred, highly educated, self-respecting, but humble and

modest, kind-hearted, and without the least pride or false shame. She is

an angel of goodness to the under servant, who does the coarse work of

the house, and teaches her as if she were her younger sister. She

herself, although invited into the parlor and to sit at the family

table, prefers to remain in the kitchen, which she brings into such a

condition of neatness and order that it is a sort of little culinary

palace. Plainly such women cannot be always looked for in "lady helps,"

and, moreover, there is this difficulty: If it should get about, as it

surely would, that such a paragon of womanhood and housekeeping skill

was to be found, if she had only moderate personal attraction, the

kitchen over which she "presided" would be besieged by an army of

bachelors, among whom it would be quite out of the order of nature that

there should not be one that would victoriously carry her captive and

put her in a parlor somewhere, with "helps," lady or other, to do her

bidding.

--A story quoted by Mrs. Warren in illustration of the imperfect

apprehension and confused memory of many people, particularly those of

the class from which servants usually come, is too good to be passed by.

The Rev. Dr. McLeod relates in his journal that he once received from

two intending communicants the following replies to the following

questions:

Who led the children of Israel out of Egypt?--Eve.

Who was Eve?--The mother of God.

What death did Christ die? [After a long time came the answer]--He

was hanged on a tree.

What did they do with the body?--Laid it in a manger.

What did Christ do for sinners?--Gave his Son.

Do you know of any wonderful works that Christ did?--Made the World

in six days.

Any others?--Buried Martha, Mary, and Lazarus.

What became of them afterwards?--Angels took them to Abraham's

bosom.

What had Christ to do with that?--He took Abraham.

Who was Christ?--The Holy Spirit.

Are you a sinner?--No.

Did you never sin? and do you love God perfectly?--Yes.

This reminds us of the Cambridge (England) student who, on his divinity

examination, being called upon to give the parable of the Good

Samaritan, after reciting the benevolent man's promise to the host, "and

when I come again I will repay thee," wound up with "This he said,

knowing he should see his face no more."

--Ex-Mayor Hall has made a very needless stir in New York and throughout

the country, and seems to have managed his disappearance very

bunglingly. Is it not, indeed, very commonly the case that men who wish

to go away secretly and have their whereabouts unknown--perpetrators of

great frauds, robberies, murders, and the like--neglect what seems to

disinterested persons the easiest, most obvious, and most sure means of

concealment, while they lay themselves out with great labor and

ingenuity upon others which are of secondary importance, and which seem

not likely to present themselves to the inquiring mind under such

peculiar circumstances? Mr. Hall, we assume for good reasons, wished to

leave New York suddenly, to live in retirement, and not to have the

place of his retreat known. He therefore gathers a little money

together, and without saying a word to any one, takes ship at Boston and

goes to England. He simply disappears. Consequently within twenty-four

hours suspicion is aroused, within forty-eight anxiety is felt, and in

the course of three or four days a hue and cry is sent over the whole

country. It goes to England, of course, by telegraph, and when the

steamers arrive a prying, mousing gentleman, whose business it is to

find out things for the New York press, visits them one by one, passes

the passengers under inspection, and of course finds Mr. Hall,

spectacles and all. It is strange that a man of Mr. Hall's experience of

the world, a criminal lawyer, an ex-mayor, a political associate of

Tweed, Sweeney, and Connelly, should not have seen that such would be

the inevitable course of events if he should leave New York as he did.

But how natural for him to say that he was called East, or West, or

South by important business which would keep him away ten days or a

fortnight, to provide his family and his clerk with that response to

inquiries, even if the former suspected the true state of the case, and

then to start for England. True enough, in the end his flight would be

known, which was inevitable; but he would have had a full fortnight's

start, and would have been comfortably on the continent or hidden in the

wilderness of London, probably the best place in the world for the

concealment of a fugitive person who is not very singular in appearance

and in habits, and who is not known at all to the London police. Mr.

Hall might, with a little forethought, have so arranged his affairs that

he would have been out of reach and past recognition before suspicion

was aroused, not to say before a hue and cry was raised. But as it was,

this astute lawyer, this crafty politician, who has been familiar with

the ways of tricky people all his life, who knows by constant

intercourse with them the habits of men that fly and men that pursue,

who is practically acquainted with journalism, does just what defeats

his purpose--whatever was the occasion of his leaving New York so

suddenly, as to which we say nothing.