We will dive for a moment into a Chinese wash-cellar. "John" does

three-fourths of the washing of California. His lavatories are on

every street. "Hip Tee, Washing and Ironing," says the sign, evidently

the first production of an amateur in lettering. Two doors above is

the establishment of Tong Wash--two below, that of Hi Sing. Hip Tee

and five assistants are busy ironing. The odor is a trinity of steam,

damp clothes and opium. More Mongolian tongues are heard from smoky

recesses in the rear. As we enter, Hip Tee is blowing a shower of

moisture from his mouth, "very like a whale." This is his method

of dampening the linen preparatory to ironing. It is a skilled

performance. The fluid leaves his lips as fine as mist. If we are on

business we leave our bundles, and in return receive a ticket covered

with hieroglyphics. These indicate the kind and number of the garments

left to be cleansed, and some distinguishing mark (supposing this

to be our first patronage of Hip Tee) by which we may be again

identified. It may be by a pug nose, a hare lip, red hair, no hair or

squint eyes. They never ask one's name, for they can neither pronounce

nor write it when it is given. The ticket is an unintelligible tracery

of lines, curves, dots and dashes, made by a brush dipped in India

ink on a shred of flimsy Chinese paper. It may teem with abuse and

ridicule, but you must pocket all that, and produce it on calling

again, or your shirts and collars go into the Chinese Circumlocution

Wash-house Office. It is very difficult getting one's clothes back if

the ticket be lost--very. Hip Tee now dabs a duplicate of your ticket

in a long book, and all is over. You will call on Saturday night for

your linen. You do so. There is apparently the same cellar, the same

smell of steam, damp clothes and opium, the same sputter of sprinkling

water, and apparently the same Hip Tee and assistants with brown

shaven foreheads and long cues hanging straight down behind or coiled

in snake-like fashion about their craniums. You present your ticket.

Hip Tee examines it and shakes his head. "No good--oder man," he says,

and points up the street. You are now perplexed and somewhat alarmed.

You say: "John, I want my clothes. I left them here last Monday. You

gave me that ticket." "No," replies Hip Tee very decidedly, "oder

man;" and again he waves his arm upward. Then you are wroth. You

abuse, expostulate, entreat, and talk a great deal of English, and

some of it very strong English, which Hip Tee does not understand;

and Hip Tee talks a great deal of Chinese, and perhaps strong Chinese,

which you do not understand. You commence sentences in broken Chinese

and terminate them in unbroken English. Hip Tee commences sentences

in broken English and terminates them in pure Chinese, from a like

inability to express his indignation in a foreign tongue. "What for

you no go oder man? No my ticket--tung sung lung, ya hip kee--_ping!"_

he cries; and all this time the assistants are industriously ironing

and spouting mist, and leisurely making remarks in their sing-song

unintelligibility which you feel have uncomplimentary reference to

yourself. Suddenly a light breaks upon you. This is not Hip Tee's

cellar, this is not Hip Tee. It is the establishment of Hi Sing. This

is Hi Sing himself who for the last half hour has been endeavoring

with his stock of fifteen English words to make you understand that

you are in the wrong house. But these Chinese, as to faces and their

wash-houses, and all the paraphernalia of their wash-houses, are so

much alike that this is an easy mistake to make. You find the lavatory

of Hip Tee, who pronounces the hieroglyphics all correct, and delivers

you your lost and found shirts clean, with half the buttons broken,

and the bosoms pounded, scrubbed and frayed into an irregular sort of

embroidery.

"He can only dig, cook and wash," said the American miner

contemptuously years ago: "he can't work rock." To work rock in mining

parlance is to be skillful in boring Earth's stony husk after mineral.

It is to be proficient in sledging, drilling and blasting. The

Chinaman seemed to have no aptitude for this labor. He was content to

use his pick and shovel in the gravel-banks: metallic veins of gold,

silver or copper he left entirely to the white man.

Yet it was a great mistake to suppose he could not "work rock," or

do anything else required of him. John is a most apt and intelligent

labor-machine. Show him once your tactics in any operation, and ever

after he imitates them as accurately as does the parrot its memorized

sentences. So when the Pacific Railroad was being bored through the

hard granite of the Sierras it was John who handled the drill and

sledge as well as the white laborer. He was hurled by thousands on

that immense work, and it was the tawny hand of China that hewed out

hundreds of miles for the transcontinental pathway. Nor is this

all. He is crowding into one avenue of employment after another in

California. He fills our woolen- and silk-mills; he makes slippers and

binds shoes; he is skilled in the use of the sewing-machine; cellar

after cellar in San Francisco is filled with these Celestial brownies

rolling cigars; his fishing-nets are in every bay and inlet; he is

employed in scores of the lesser establishments for preserving fruit,

grinding salt, making matches, etc. He would quickly jump into the

places of the carpenter, mason and blacksmith were he allowed, for

there are numbers of them whose knowledge of these and other trades is

sufficient at least to render them useful as assistants. He is handy

on shipboard: the Panama steamers carry Chinese foremast hands. He is

preferred as a house-servant: the Chinese boy of fourteen or sixteen

learns quickly to cook and wash in American fashion. He is neat

in person, can be easily ruled, does not set up an independent

sovereignty in the kitchen, has no followers, will not outshine

his mistress in attire; and, although not perfect, yet affords a

refreshing change from our Milesian tyrants of the roast and wash-tub.

But when you catch this Celestial domestic treasure, be sure that the

first culinary operations performed for his instruction are correctly

manipulated, for his imitativeness is of a cast-iron rigidity. Once

in the mould, it can only with great difficulty be altered. Burn your

toast or your pudding, and he is apt to regard the accident as the

rule.

The young Chinese, especially in San Francisco, are anxious to acquire

an English education. They may not attend the public schools. A few

years since certain Chinese mission-schools were established by the

joint efforts of several religious denominations. Young ladies and

gentlemen volunteered their services on Sunday to teach these Chinese

children to read. They make eager, apt and docile pupils. Great is

their pride on mastering a few lines of English text. They become much

attached to their teachers, and it is possible, if the vote of the

latter were taken, it would evidence more liking for their yellow,

long-cued pupils than for any class of white children. But while so

assiduous to learn, it is rather doubtful whether much real religious

impression is made upon them. It is possible that their home-training

negatives that.

We have spoken entirely of the Chinaman. What of the Chinawoman in

America? In California the word "Chinawoman" is synonymous with what

is most vile and disgusting. Few, very few, of a respectable class

are in the State. The slums of London and New York are as respectable

thoroughfares compared with the rows of "China alleys" in the heart of

San Francisco. These can hardly be termed "abandoned women." They

have had no sense of virtue, propriety or decency to abandon. They are

ignorant of the disgrace of their calling: if the term may be allowed,

they pursue it innocently. Many are scarcely more than children. They

are mere commodities, being by their own countrymen bought in China,

shipped and consigned to factors in California, and there sold for a

term of years.

The Chinaman has bitter enemies in San Francisco: they thirst to

annihilate him. He is accustomed to blows and brickbats; he is

legitimate game for rowdies, both grown and juvenile; and children

supposed to be better trained can scarce resist the temptation of

snatching at his pig-tail as he passes through their groups in front

of the public schools. Even on Sundays nice little boys coming from

Sabbath-school, with their catechisms tucked under their jackets,

and texts enjoining mercy and gentleness fresh upon their lips, will

sometimes salute the benighted heathen as he passes by with a volley

of stones. If he turns on his small assailants, he is apt to meet

larger ones. Men are not wanting, ready and panting, to take up the

quarrel thus wantonly commenced by the offspring of the "superior

race." There are hundreds of families, who came over the sea to seek

in America the comfort and prosperity denied them in the land of their

birth, whose children from earliest infancy are inculcated with the

sentiment that the Chinaman is a dog, a pest and a curse. On the

occasion of William H. Seward's visit to a San Francisco theatre, two

Chinese merchants were hissed and hooted by the gallery mob from a

box which they had ventured to occupy. This assumption of style and

exclusiveness proved very offensive to the shirt-sleeved, upper-tier

representatives of the "superior race," who had assembled in large

numbers to catch a glimpse of one of the black man's great champions.

Ethiopia could have sat in that box in perfect safety, but China in

such a place was the red rag rousing the ire of the Democratic bull.

John has a story of his own to carry back home from a Christian land.

For this prejudice and hostility there are provocative causes,

although they may not be urged in extenuation. The Chinaman is a

dangerous competitor for the white laborer; and when the latter, with

other and smaller mouths to feed, once gets the idea implanted in

his mind that the bread is being taken from them by what he deems a

semi-human heathen, whose beliefs, habits, appearance and customs are

distasteful to him, there are all the conditions ready for a state

of mind toward the almond-eyed Oriental which leans far away from

brotherly love.

Brotherly love sometimes depends on circumstances. "Am I not a man and

brother?" cries John from his native shore. "Certainly," we respond.

Pass round the hat--let us take up a contribution for the conversion

of the poor heathen. The coins clink thickly in the bottom of the

charitable chapeau. We return home, feeling ourselves raised an inch

higher heavenward.

"Am I not a man and brother?" cries John in our midst, digging our

gold, setting up opposition laundries and wheeling sand at half a

dollar per day less wages. "No. Get out, ye long-tailed baste! An' wad

ye put me on a livil with that--that baboon?" Pass round the hat.

The coins mass themselves more thickly than ever. For what? To buy

muskets, powder and ball. Wherefore? Wait! More than once has the

demagogue cried, "Drive them into the sea!"

PRENTICE MULFORD.

A WINTER REVERIE.

We stood amid the rustling gloom alone

That night, while from the blue plains overhead,

With golden kisses thickly overblown,

A shooting star into the darkness sped.

"'Twas like Persephone, who ran," we said,

"Away from Love." The grass sprang round our feet,

The purple lilacs in the dusk smelled sweet,

And the black demon of the train sped by,

Rousing the still air with his long, loud cry.

The slender rim of a young rising moon

Hung in the west as you leaned on the bar

And spun a thread of some sweet April tune,

And wished a wish and named the falling star.

We heard a brook trill in the fields afar;

The air wrapped round us that entrancing fold

Of vanishing sweet stuff that mortal hold

Can never grasp--the mist of dreams--as down

The street we went in that fair foreign town.

I might have whispered of my love that night,

But something wrapped you as a shield around,

And held me back: your quiver of affright,

Your startled movement at some sudden sound--

A night-bird rustling on the leafy ground--

Your hushed and tremulous whisper of alarm,

Your beating heart pressed close against my arm,--

All, all were sweet; and yet _my_ heart beat true,

Nor shrined one wish I might not breathe to you.

So when we parted little had been said:

I left you standing just within the door,

With the dim moonlight streaming on your head

And rippling softly on the checkered floor.

I can remember even the dress you wore--

Some dainty white Swiss stuff that floated round

Your supple form and trailed upon the ground,

While bands of coral bound each slender wrist,

Studded with one great purple amethyst.

* * * * *

My story is not much--is it?--to tell:

It seems a wandering line of music, faint,

Whose sweet pathetic measures rise and swell,

Then, strangled, fall with curious restraint.

'Tis like the pictures that the artists paint,

With shadows forward thrown into the light

From the real figures hidden out of sight.

And is not life crossed in this strange, sad way

With dreams whose shadows lengthen day by day?

But you, dear heart--sweet heart loved all these years--

Will recognize the passion of the strain:

Who eats the lotos-flower of Love with tears,

Will know the rapture of that numb, vague pain

Which thrills the heart and stirs the languid brain.

All day amid the toiling throng we strive,

While in our heart these sacred, sweet loves thrive,

And in choice hours we show them, white and cool

Like lilies floating on a troubled pool.

MILLIE W. CARPENTER.

"PASSPORTS, GENTLEMEN!"

The close of July, 1870, found our party tarrying for a few days at

Geneva. We had left home with the intention of "doing" Europe in less

than four months. June and July were already gone, but in that time,

traveling as only Americans can, Great Britain, Belgium, the Rhine

country and portions of Switzerland had been visited and admired. We

were now pausing for a few days to take breath and prepare for yet

wider flights. Our proposed route from Geneva would lead us through

Northern Germany, returning by way of Paris to London and Liverpool.

We had intentionally left Paris for the last, hoping that the

Communist disturbances would be completely quieted before September.

At this time their forces had been recently routed, and the Versailles

troops were occupying the capital. The leaders of the Commune were

scattered in every direction, and, if newspaper accounts were to be

believed, were being captured in every city of France. Especially was

this true of the custom-house upon the Swiss frontier, where report

said that more than one leading Communist had been stopped by the

lynx-eyed officials, who would accept no substitute for the signed and

countersigned passport, and hold no parley until such a passport had

been presented.

In view of these facts, the American minister in Paris had issued a

circular letter to citizens of the United States traveling abroad,

requesting them to see that their passports had the official visé

before attempting to enter France, thus saving themselves and friends

a large amount of unnecessary trouble and delay. Nothing was said

of those who might think proper to attempt an entrance _without_ a

passport, such temerity being in official eyes beyond all advice or

protection. Influenced by this letter and several facts which had come

under our notice proving the uncertainty of all things, and especially

of travel in France, we saw that our passports were made officially

correct.

While at Geneva our party separated for a few days. My friends

proposed making an expedition up the lake, while I arranged to spend

a day and night at Aix-les-Bains, a small town in the south of France.

My object in visiting it was not to enjoy the sulphur-baths for which

it is famous, but to see some friends who were spending the summer

there. I had written, telling them to expect me by the five o'clock

train on Wednesday afternoon. As my stay was to be so brief, I left

my valise at the hotel in Geneva, and found myself now, for the first

time, separated from that trusty sable friend which had until this

hour been my constant companion by day and night.

The train was just leaving the station when a lady sitting opposite to

me, with her back to the locomotive, asked, in French, if I would be

willing to change seats. Catching her meaning rather by her gestures

than words, I inquired in English if she would like my seat, and found

by her reply that I was traveling with an English lady.

I should here explain that although I had studied the French language

as part of my education, I found it impossible to speak French with

any fluency or understand it when spoken. My newly-made friend,

however (for friend she proved herself), spoke French and English with

equal fluency.

In the process of comparing notes (so familiar to all travelers)

mention was made of the recent war and the unwonted strictness and

severity of the custom-house officials. In an instant my hand was upon

my pocket-book, only to find that I had neglected to take my passport

from my valise.

The embarrassment of the situation flashed upon me, and my troubled

countenance revealed to my companion that something unusual had

occurred. I answered her inquiring look by saying that I had left my

passport in Geneva. Her immediate sympathy was only equaled by her

evident alarm. She said there was but one thing to be done--return

instantly for it. I fully agreed with her, but found, to my dismay,

upon consulting a guide-book, that our train was an express, which did

not stop before reaching Belgarde, the frontier-town.

I would willingly have pulled the bell-rope had there been any, and

stopped the train at any cost, but it was impossible, and nothing

remained but to sit quietly while I was relentlessly hurried into the

very jaws of the French officials. The misery of the situation was

aggravated by the fact that I could not command enough French to

explain how I came to be traveling without a passport. As a last

resort, I applied to my friend, begging her to explain to the officer

at the custom-house that I was a citizen of the United States, and had

left my passport in Geneva. This she readily promised to do, although

I could see that she had but little faith in the result. After a ride

of an hour, during which my reflections were none of the pleasantest,

we arrived at Belgarde. Here the doors of the railway carriages were

thrown open, and we were politely requested to alight. We stepped

out upon a platform swarming with fierce gendarmes, whom I regarded

attentively, wondering which of them was destined to become my

protector. From the platform we were ushered into a large room

communicating by a narrow passage with a second room, into which our

baggage was being carried. One by one my fellow-passengers approached

the narrow and (to me) gloomy passage and presented their passports.

These were closely scanned by the officer in charge, handed to an

assistant to be countersigned, and the holder, all being right, was

passed into the second room. Our turn soon came, and, accompanied by

the English lady, I approached my fate.

Her passport was declared to be official, and handing it back

the officer looked inquiringly at me. My friend then began her

explanation. As I stood attentively regarding the officer's face, I

could see his puzzled look change into one of comprehension, and

then of amusement. To her inquiry he replied that there would be

no objection under the circumstances to my returning to Geneva and

procuring my passport. Encouraged by the favorable turn my fortunes

had taken, I asked, through my friend, if it would be possible for me

to go on without a passport. An instantaneous change passed over his

countenance, and, shrugging his shoulders, he replied that it was

impossible: there was a second custom-house at Culoz, where I should

certainly be stopped, forced to explain how I had passed Belgarde, and

severely punished for attempting to enter without a passport. I did

not, however, wait for him to finish his angry harangue, but passed on

to the second room, where I was soon joined by my interpreting friend,

who explained to me in full what I had already learned from the

officer's countenance and gesture. She thought that I was fortunate in

escaping so easily, and advised an immediate return to Geneva. I again

consulted my guide-book, and found that there was no return train for

several hours, and consequently that I should arrive in Geneva too

late to start for Aix-les-Bains that night. This would necessitate

waiting until Thursday, and perhaps force me to give up the trip, for

our seats were engaged in the Chamouni coach for Friday morning. I

imagined my friends in vain awaiting my arrival at Aix, and the smiles

of our party when they found me in Geneva upon their return from the

lake. But, more than all, the possibility of not reaching Aix at all

troubled me, for I was very anxious to see my friends there, and had

written home that I intended to see them.

I found by my guide-book that our train reached Culoz before the

Geneva return train; so on the instant I formed the desperate resolve

of running the blockade at Belgarde, and if I found it impossible to

pass the custom-house at Culoz, _there_ to take the return train for

Geneva. I walked to the platform as if merely accompanying my friend,

stood for a moment at the door of the carriage conversing with her,

and then, as the train started for Culoz, quickly stepped in and shut

the door. Her dismay was really pitiable: had I not been somewhat

troubled in mind myself, I should have laughed outright. She saw

nothing before me but certain destruction, and I am free to confess

that the prospect of a telegram flashing over the wires at that moment

from Belgarde to Culoz was not reassuring. The die, however, had

been cast, and now nothing remained but to endure in silence the

interminable hour which must elapse ere we should reach Culoz. There

we were to change cars, the Geneva train going on to Paris, while

we took the train on the opposite platform for Aix-les-Bains. This

necessitated passing through the dépôt, and passing through the dépôt

was passing through the custom-house. As our train stopped in front of

the fatal door, and one by one the passengers filed into it and were

lost to sight, I seemed to see written above the door, "All hope

abandon, ye who enter here!" It was simply rushing into the jaws of

fate: there was not the slightest possibility of my being able to pass

through that dépôt unchallenged. I should be carried on to Paris if

I remained in the train; I should be arrested if I remained on the

platform; I was discovered if I entered the custom-house. Eagerly I

glanced around for some means of escape. Every instant the number of

passengers on the platform was decreasing, the danger of discovery

rapidly increasing.

I had feared lest some benevolent French officer, anxious for my

safety, would be found waiting to assist me in alighting: I was

thankful to find that I should be allowed to assist myself, and

that no one paid any particular attention to me. As I stood there

hesitating what course to pursue, and feeling how much easier my mind

at this moment would be were I waiting on the Belgarde platform, I

noticed a door standing open a few steps to the left. Without any

further hesitation I walked directly in, to find myself in a railroad

restaurant. It proved to be a tower of refuge.

No one had noticed me. There were other passengers in the room,

waiting for the Paris train; so, joining myself to them, I remained

there until the custom-house doors were closed and the guards had left

the platform. The question now arose, How should I reach the opposite

platform? The train might start at any moment: the only legitimate

passage was closed. I knew that the attempt would be fraught with

danger, yet I felt that it was now too late to draw back. If I

remained any length of time in the restaurant, I should be suspected

and discovered; and as I thought of that moment a terrific scene arose

before my mind in which an excited French official thundered at me

in his choicest French, while I stood silent, unable to explain who

I was, how I came there, whither I was going; I imagined myself being

searched for treasonable documents and none being found; I seemed to

see my captors consulting how they could best compel me to tell what

I knew. These scenes and others of like nature entertained me while

I waited for the coast--or rather platform--to be cleared. When at

length all the immediate guards were gone, I started out to find

my way, if possible, to the train for Aix. I have read of travelers

cutting their way through trackless forests, of ice-bound mariners

anxiously seeking the North-west passage, and, worse than all, of

luckless countrymen wandering bewildered through the streets of

Boston; but I am confident that no traveler, mariner or countryman

ever sought his way with more circumspection and diligence than I in

my search for a passage between those two platforms.

As I glanced cautiously up and down I saw a door standing open at

some little distance. Around that door all my hopes were immediately

centred. It might lead directly to the custom-house; it might be the

entrance to the barracks of the guards; it might be--I knew not what;

but it might afford a passage to the other platform.

I walked quickly to the door, glanced in, saw no one and entered. The

room was a baggage-room, and at that moment unoccupied. It instantly

occurred to me that a baggage-room _ought_ to open on both platforms.

I felt as though I could have shouted "Eureka!" and I am confident

that the joy of Archimedes as he rushed through the streets of

Syracuse was no greater than mine as I felt that I had so unexpectedly

discovered the passage I was seeking. Passing through this room, I

found myself in a second, like the former unoccupied. It had occurred

to me that all the doors might be closed, and the thought had

considerably abated my rejoicing; but no! I saw a door which stood

invitingly open.

No guards were stationed on the platform; so I stepped out, and before

me stood the train for Aix, into which my fellow-passengers were

entering, some of them still holding their passports in their hands.

Taking my seat in one of the carriages, in a few moments the train

started and I was on my way to Aix. The relief was unspeakably great.

An instant before it seemed as if nothing short of a miracle

could save me from a French guard-house, and now, by the simplest

combination of circumstances, in which a restaurant and baggage-room

bore an important part, I had passed unchallenged. I remember that I

enjoyed the scenery and views along the route from Culoz to Aix more

than while passing from Belgarde to Culoz.

My friends were found expecting me upon my arrival, and joined in

congratulating me upon my happy escape. A night and day were passed

very pleasantly, and then arose the question of return.

I suggested telegraphing to Geneva for my passport, but that

was vetoed, and it was decided that I should return as I had

come--passportless. I confess that the attempt seemed somewhat

hazardous. If it was dangerous to attempt an entrance into France,

how much more so to attempt an exit, especially when the custom-house

force had been doubled with the sole object that all possibility of

escape might be precluded, and that any one passing Culoz might be

stopped at Belgarde! It was urged, however, that our seats had been

engaged in the diligence for Friday morning, and to send for the

passport would consume considerable time--would certainly delay the

party until Saturday, and perhaps until Monday, which delay would

seriously affect all their plans, time being so limited and so many

places remaining to be visited. I had passed once, why not again?

Influenced by these facts, and thinking what a triumph it would be

once more to baffle French vigilance, I determined to attempt the

return. There was a train leaving Aix about eight P.M., reaching

Geneva at eleven: it was decided that I should take this train. I had

arranged a vague plan of action, although I expected to depend rather

upon the suggestion of the moment.

It was quite dark when we reached Culoz. As the train arrived at the

platform, and we were obliged again to change cars, I thought of the

friendly restaurant; but no! the restaurant was closed, and moreover

a company of gendarmes was present to see that every one entered the

door leading to the custom-house. There was no room for hesitation or

delay. I entered under protest, but still I entered.

In a moment I perceived the desperate situation. The room had two

doors--one opening upon the platform from which we had just come, and

now guarded by an officer; the other leading to the opposite platform,

and there stood the custom-house officer receiving and inspecting the

passports. It was indeed Scylla and Charybdis. If I attempted to pass

the officer without a passport, I was undone; if I remained until all

the other passengers had passed out, I was undone. For an instant I

felt as if I had better give up the unequal contest. The forces of the

enemy were too many for me. I saw that I had been captured: why fight

against Fate? A moment's reflection, however, restored my courage. It

was evident that one thing alone remained to be done: that was to find

my way out of the door by which I had just entered, as speedily as

possible. But there stood the guard.

The train by which we had come was still before the platform: an idea

suggested itself. Acting as if I had left some article in the train, I

stepped hurriedly up to the guard, who, catching my meaning, made way

for me without a word. Once upon the platform, I resolved never again

to enter that door except as a prisoner. The guard followed me with

his eyes for a moment, and then, seeing me open one of the carriage

doors, turned back to his post. As soon as I perceived that I was

no longer watched I glided off in the opposite direction under the

shadows of the platform. I was looking for a certain door which I

remembered well as a friend in need. I knew not in which direction it

lay, nor could I have recognized it if shut; but hardly had I gone ten

steps when the same door stood open before me. It was the act of an

instant to spring through it, out of sight of the guard. Why this door

and baggage-room should have been left thus open and unguarded when

such evident and scrutinizing care was taken in every other quarter, I

have to this day been unable to understand. But for that fact I should

have found it utterly impossible to pass that custom-house going or

coming.

Once in the baggage-room, the way was familiar, and, passing into the

second room, I found the door open as on the day previous, and in

a moment stood undiscovered upon the platform. Entering the waiting

train, I was soon on the way to Belgarde.

My only thought during the ride was, What shall I do when we arrive at

Belgarde? I expected to see the doors thrown open as before, and hear

again the polite invitation to enter the custom-house. Was it not

certain detection to refuse? was it not equally dangerous to obey? The

officer at Belgarde had seen me the day before, and warned me not to

go to Culoz. What reception would he give me when he saw me attempting

to return? Or it might be he would not remember me, and then in

the darkness and confusion I should surely be taken for an escaping

Communist. That I had passed Culoz was no comfort when I remembered

that this would only aggravate my guilt in their eyes.

The case did indeed seem desperate. Willingly would I have jumped out

and walked the entire distance to Geneva, if I might only thus

escape that terrible custom-house, which every moment loomed up more

terrifically. At length this troubled hour was passed: we had arrived

at Belgarde, and the moment for action had come. I had determined to

avoid the custom-house at all hazards. When the doors were thrown

open I expected to alight, but not to enter. My plan was to find some

sheltering door, or even corner, where I could remain until the others

had presented their passports and were beginning to return, then join

them and take my seat as before. The dépôt at Belgarde was brilliantly

lighted, and the gendarmes pacing to and fro in the gaslight seemed

not only to have increased in numbers, but to have acquired an

additional ferocity since the day previous.

As I looked but my spirit sank within me. I could only brace myself

for the coming crisis. For several moments nothing was said or done.

The doors remained shut, and no one seemed at all concerned about

our presence. Each minute appeared an hour as I sat there awaiting

my fate. The suspense was becoming too great: I felt that my stock of

self-possession was entirely deserting me. At length I began to hope

that they were satisfied with the examination at Culoz, and would

allow us to pass unchallenged. Just at that moment, as hope was

dawning into certainty, the door opened and the custom-house officer

entered with a polite bow, while a body of gendarmes drew up behind

him upon the platform. He uttered two French words, and I needed no

interpreter to tell me that they were "Passports, gentlemen!"

I shuddered as I saw him standing so near, within reach of my arm.

There were six persons besides myself in the carriage, and I was

occupying a seat beside the door farthest from the platform. Any one

who has seen a European railway-carriage will understand me when I say

that I sat next to the right-hand door, while he had entered by the

left. One by one the passports were handed up to him until he held six

in his hand.

With the rest of the passengers I had taken out my pocket-book and

searched as if for my passport, but had handed none to him, and now I

sat awaiting developments. I saw that he would read the six passports,

and then turn to me for the seventh.

The desperate thought flashed upon me of opening the door and escaping

into the darkness. The carriage itself was so dimly lighted that I

could barely see the face of my opposite neighbor, and I therefore

hoped to be able to slip out without any one perceiving it. The

attempt was desperate, but so was the situation. The officer was

buried in the passports, holding them near his face to catch the dim

light. The door was fastened upon the outside, and so, watching him,

I leaned far out of the window until I was able to reach the catch

and unfasten the door. A slight push, and it swung noiselessly open. I

glanced at the officer: he was intently reading the _last_ passport. I

had placed one foot upon the outside step, and was about to glide out

into the darkness, when he laid the paper down and looked directly at

me.

It would have been madness to attempt an escape with his eyes upon me;

so, assuming as nonchalant a look as my present feelings would allow,

I answered his inquiring glance with one of confident assurance.

He saw my nonchalant expression. He saw the open pocket-book in my

hand. He had _not_ counted the number of passports. All the passengers

were settling themselves to sleep. It must be all right; so, with

a polite "Bon soir, messieurs!" he bowed and left the carriage. My

sensation of relief may be better imagined than described. Hardly had

he left our carriage when we heard the sound of voices and hurrying

feet upon the platform, and looking out saw some unfortunate

individual carried off under guard. I trembled as I thought how

narrowly I had escaped his fate. In a few moments, however, we were

safely on our way to Geneva, and as we sped on into the darkness,

while congratulating myself upon my fortunate escape, I firmly

resolved to be better prepared for the emergency the next time I

should hear those memorable words, "Passports, gentlemen!"

A.H.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

THE CORNWALLIS FAMILY.

The death was lately announced of two of the last survivors--only

one of the name is now left--of a family whose chief played a very

conspicuous, and for himself unfortunate, part in this country a

century ago--the marquis Cornwallis. His only son, who married a

daughter of the celebrated match-making duchess of Gordon, left no

male issue, but five daughters. Two of them, the countess of St.

Germans--wife of the earl who accompanied the prince of Wales on his

visit here--and Lady Braybrook, died some years ago; and recently

Lady Mary Ross, whose husband edited the correspondence of the first

marquis, and Lady Louisa, who never married, have also gone to their

graves.

The family of Cornwallis is very ancient, and can point to many

distinguished members. Its ancestral seat is at Brome, in Suffolk.

This is a fine old mansion, and the hall, which is very lofty and open

to the roof, is an excellent specimen of the work of other days. The

chapel contains capital oak carving. In the village church there are

monuments worth notice of the family.

Following the fate of so many other places, Brome passed after the

death of the second marquis to a _novus homo_, one Matthias Kerrison,

who, having begun life as a carpenter, contrived in various ways to

acquire a colossal fortune. His son rose to distinction in the army,

obtained a seat in Parliament, which he held for thirty years, and was

created a baronet.

He left at his death a son and three daughters. The former, long

married, is childless. The sisters are respectively the wives of Earl

Stanhope, the well-known historian; Lord Henniker, a wealthy Suffolk

proprietor; and Lord Bateman. It is understood that under the late

baronet's will the son of the last will, in the event of the present

baronet dying childless, succeed to the property. It will thus be

observed that Brome, after having been for four centuries in one

family, is destined to change hands repeatedly in a few years.

When the second Marquis Cornwallis died sonless, the marquisate became

extinct, but the earldom passed to his first cousin. This nobleman,

by no means an able or admirable person, married twice. By his first

marriage he had a daughter, who married Charles Wykeham-Martin, Esq.,

M.P., whose father, by a concatenation of chances, became the owner

of Leeds Castle, near Maidstone, in Kent--a splendid moated baronial

pile, dating from the thirteenth century, but added to and improved

in admirable taste. Leeds was formerly the property of the Fairfax

family, whose chief, the present lord, resides near Washington. It

came to them from the once famous family of Colepepper.

Earl Cornwallis married a second time late in life, and had an only

daughter, Lady Julia. From that time his one idea seemed to be to

accumulate for this child, and accordingly at his death she was

the greatest heiress in England, her long minority serving to add

immensely to her father's hoards. Of course, when the time approached

for her entering society under the chaperonage of her cousins, the

marquis's daughters, speculation was very rife in the London world as

to whom she would marry, and many a mamma of high degree cast sheep's

eyes at the heiress, and thought how charmingly her accumulations

would serve to clear the encumbrances on certain acres. But they were

not kept long in suspense. One night during the London season, when

the ladies Cornwallis gave a grand ball, a damper was cast over the

proceedings, so far at least as aspirants to the heiress's money-bags

were concerned, by the announcement of her engagement. Said a lady to

a gentleman in the course of that evening, "Most extraordinary! There

seem to be no men in the room to-night." "Why, of course not," was the

rejoinder, "after this fatal news." Lady Julia's choice fell upon a

young officer in the Guards, Viscount Holmesdale, eldest son of Earl

Amherst. Lord Holmesdale was unexceptionable in point of position,

but his pecuniary position was such as to make one hundred and fifty

thousand dollars a year a very agreeable addition to his income. It

may, however, be a satisfaction to those less richly endowed with this

world's goods than Lady Holmesdale to reflect that being an heiress

generally proves rather the reverse of a passport to matrimonial

bliss; and by all accounts she is no exception to the usual fate in

this respect. We can't have everything in this world.

Lady Holmesdale's property was tied up by her old father (whose whole

thoughts were given to this end, and who was in the habit of carrying

his will on his person) to such a degree that in the event of her

death her husband can only derive a very slight benefit from his

wife's property beyond the insurances which may have been effected

on her life. She is childless, and has very precarious health. Her

principal seat is Linton Park, near Maidstone, Kent, in which county

she is the largest landowner. In the event of her dying without issue,

her estates pass to the son of Major Fiennes Cornwallis, who was

second son of the late Mr. Wykeham-Martin by Lady Holmesdale's elder

half-sister.

A cousin of Lady Holmesdale, Miss Cornwallis, the last representative

of a third branch, died some years ago. This lady, who possessed rare

literary and social acquirements, bequeathed her property to Major

Wykeham-Martin, who thereupon changed his name to Cornwallis. The

major, a gallant officer, one of those of whom Tennyson says,

Into the jaws of death

Rode the six hundred,

only survived the Balaklava charge to die a few years later through

an accident in the hunting-field. "A fine, modest young officer," was

Thackeray's verdict about him, when, after dinner at "Tom Phinn's," a

noted bachelor barrister of eminence whose little dinners were not

the least agreeable in London, the story of that famous ride had been

coaxed out of the young _militaire_, who, if left to himself, would

never have let you have a notion that he had seen such splendid

service. The only Cornwallis now left is Lady Elizabeth, granddaughter

of the first marquis.

NOVELTIES IN ETHNOLOGY.

Two savants of high reputation have lately undertaken to seek out the

origin of that German race which has just put itself at the head of

military Europe. One is Wilhelm Obermüller, a German ethnologist,

member of the Vienna Geographical Society, whose startling theory

nevertheless is that the Germans are the direct descendants of Cain!

The other scholar, M. Quatrefages, a man of still greater reputation,

devotes himself to a proposition almost as extraordinary--namely, that

the Prussian pedigree is Finn and Slav, with only a small pinch of

Teuton, and hence, in an ethnographical view, is anti-German!

That M. Quatrefages should maintain such a postulate, his patriotism

if not his scientific reputation might lead us to expect; but that

Obermüller should be so eager to trace German origin back to the first

murderer is rather more suprising. Obermüller's work embraces in

its general scope the origin of all European nations, but the most

striking part is that relating to Germany. He holds that, from

the remotest era, the Celto-Aryan race, starting from the plain

of Tartary, the probable cradle of mankind, split into two great

branches--one the Oriental Aryans, and the other the Western Aryans,

or Celts. The former--who, as he proceeds to show, were no other than

the descendants of Cain--betook themselves to China, which land they

found inhabited by the Mongolians, another great primordial race; and

we are told that the Mongolians are indicated when mention is made in

Scripture of Cain's marriage in the land of Nod. The intermixture of

Cainists and Mongolians produced the Turks, while the pure Cainist

tribes formed the German people, under the name of Swabians (Chinese,

_Siampi_), Goths (_Yeuten_ in Chinese) and Ases (_Sachsons_). Such, in

brief, is the curious theory of Obermüller.

The question next arises, How is it that we find the Germans

transplanted from the Hoang-Ho to the Rhine? We are told that, being

driven out of China by the Turks, they poured into the European

countries which the Celts or Western Aryans had already occupied.

These latter had in the mean time gone out from the Asiatic cradle

of the race, and following the course of the Indus to Hindostan and

Persia, had, under the name of Chaldeans, overrun Armenia, Syria,

Arabia, Egypt and North Africa, which latter they found inhabited by

certain negro races, whereas in Egypt they discovered red-skins or

Atlantides; which latter, by the way, form also our own aborigines.

The intermixture of the Celts with these primitive races just named

produced the Jews and Semitic people. At the time of the Celtic

invasion Western Europe and Northern Africa were occupied by the race

of the Atlantides, while the Mongolians, including also the Lapps,

Finns and Huns, peopled the north of Europe and of Asia. The Celts

pushed in between these two races, and only very much later the German

people, driven out of China by the Turks, as we have said, arrived in

Europe.

When, therefore, did these Cainist invasions of Germany take place?

Obermüller says that the date must have been toward the epoch of

the Roman conquests. Gallia was then inhabited in the south by the

primitive Atlantid race of Ligurians and by the Greek colony of

Massilia; in the centre by the Gaelags (Celts) or Gauls, who, pouring

northward from Spain, had conquered it fifteen hundred years before

the Christian era; and in the north by the Belgic Cimbrians, who had

come from Germany, and who were designated under the name of Germans

(_Ghermann_) or border-men, and who, though called _Germani_ by Caesar

and Tacitus, were yet not of the Cainist stock, but Celts. However,

these Germans, whom the Romans encountered to their cost on the Rhine

and Danube, were of the genuine Oriental Cainist stock, and these,

after centuries of fierce struggle, they failed to conquer, though the

Celts of Britain, Gaul and Spain, as well as all the old empires of

the East, had fallen an easy prey to their victorious eagles.

It only remains to add that this invasion of Germany by Cain's progeny

was accomplished in three streams. The Ases (Sachsons) directed

themselves to the Elbe and Danube, and thence to the north; the Suevi,

or Swabians, chose the centre and south of Germany; while the Goths

did not rest till they had overrun Italy, Southern France and Spain.

But each of these three main streams was composed of many tribes,

whom the old writers catalogue without system, mixing both Celtic and

Teutonic tribes under the general name of Germans; and it is only in

modern days that the careless enumeration of the classic writers has

been rejected, and a more scientific method substituted. It will

be seen, in fine, that in the main Obermüller does not differ from

accepted theories in German ethnology, which have long carefully

dissevered the Celts from the Teutons, and assigned to each tribe with

approximate accuracy its earliest fixed abode in Europe. It is the

tracing back of the German race proper to the first-born of Adam,

according to scriptural genealogy, which makes this theory curious and

amusing.

To the work of M. Quatrefages we have only space to devote a

paragraph. Originally contributed to the _Revue des Deux Mondes_,

it bears the marks in its inferences, if not in its facts, of being

composed for an audience of sympathizing countrymen, rather than for

the world of science at large. M. Quatrefages says that the first

dwellers in Prussia were Finns, who founded the stock, and were in

turn overpowered by the Slavs, who imposed their language and customs

on the whole of the Baltic region. The consequent mixture of Finns and

Slavs created a population wholly un-German; and what dash of genuine

Germanism Prussia now has was subsequently acquired in the persons of

sundry traders from Bremen, followed by a class of roving nobility,

who entered the half-civilized country with their retainers in quest

of spoils. Besides these elements, Prussia, like England and America,

received in modern times an influx of French Huguenots; which M.

Quatrefages naturally considers a piece of great good fortune for

Prussia. Briefly, then, the French savant regards Prussia as German

only in her nobility and upper-middle classes, while the substratum

of population is a composition of Slav and Finn, and hence thoroughly

anti-German. As, according to the old saying, if you scratch a Russian

you will find a Tartar beneath, so, according to M. Ouatrefages,

we may suppose that scraping a Prussian would disclose a Finn. The

political inferences which he draws are very fanciful. He traces

shadowy analogies between the tactics of Von Moltke's veterans and

the warlike customs of the ancient Slavs, and suggests that the basic

origin of the Prussian population may lead it to cultivate a Russian

alliance rather than an Austrian, forgetting, apparently, that by

his own admission the ruling-classes of Prussia are German in origin,

ideas and sympathies.

L.S.

THE STEAM-WHISTLE.

While Mr. Ruskin was lately bewailing the bell-ringing propensity of

mankind, the English Parliament and several American legislatures,

city or State, were assaulting the greater nuisance of the

steam-whistle, and trying to substitute bell-ringing for it. Mr.

Ruskin's particular grievance was, that his own nerves were _crispé_

by the incessant ding-dong of the church-bells of Florence summoning

the devout to prayer, but he generalized his wrath. Possibly, he

would have been less sensitive and fastidious regarding the musical

carillons of the Italian city were he wont to dwell within ear-shot of

an American factory or railroad-station. Not that Mr. Ruskin fails to

appreciate--or, rather, to depreciate--railways in their connection

with Italian landscapes; for, besides his series of complaints

regarding the Florence bells, he denounces the railway from Rome to

Naples, and the railway-tunnels under Monts Cenis and St. Gothard, and

the railway-bridge leading into Venice, as enemies of the beautiful

and picturesque in Nature. But it is the locomotive, independent of

the shriek, that is his abomination; whereas a man less sensitive to

sights, and (if possible) more sensitive to sounds, might pardon the

cutting up of the landscape were his ear-drum spared from splitting.

Emerson asks, "What is so odious as noise?" But a _Saturday Reviewer_

once devoted an elaborate essay to the eulogy of unmitigated noise, or

rather to the keen enjoyment of it by children. People with enviable

nerves and unenviable tastes often enjoy sounds in the ratio of their

lack of melody--say, such everyday thoroughfare music as the slap and

bang of coach-wheels on the cobble-stones; the creaking of street-cars

round a sharp curve, like Milton's infernal doors "grating harsh

thunder;" the squeaking falsettos of the cries by old-clothes' men,

itinerant glaziers, fishmongers, fruiterers, tinkers and what not; the

yells of rival coachmen at the railway-stations, giving one an idea

of Bedlam; the street-fiddlers and violinists with horribly untuned

instruments; the Italian open-air singers hoarsely shouting,

"Shoo Fly" or "Viva Garibaldi! viva l'Italia!" the gongs beaten on

steamboats and by hotel-runners at stations on the arrival of trains;

the unearthly squeals and shrieks of new "musical instruments" sold

cheap by street-peddlers; the horrible noise-producers which boys

invent for the torture of nervous people--such, for example, as this

present season's, which is happily styled "the devil's fiddle," or

"the chicken-box," whose simplest form is an emptied tomato-can, with

a string passed through the end and pulled with the rosined fingers.

Now, that a man may be pleased with a rattle, even if it be only a

car-rattle, is conceivable, but it is hard to understand how he can

retain a relish for the squeal of a locomotive-whistle. The practice

of summoning workmen to factories by this shrill monitor, of using

it to announce the dinner-hour, the hour of resuming work after the

nooning, and the hour of quitting work for the night, ought to be

abolished everywhere. There is not the faintest excuse for it, because

clocks and bells will do the same work exactly as well. On the other

hand, the whistle causes perpetual irritation to the nervous, feeble

and sick, and frequent cases of horses running away with fright at the

sudden shriek, smashing property or destroying life.

Let us give moral aid and comfort to the campaign, Cisatlantic and

Transatlantic, against the steam-whistle. In the local councils of

Philadelphia, Camden and other cities it has been well opened in our

country; in the House of Commons has been introduced a bill providing

that "no person shall use or employ in any manufactory or any other

place any steam-whistle or steam-trumpet for the purpose of summoning

or dismissing workmen or persons employed, without the sanction of the

sanitary authorities." They call this whistle, by the way, it

would seem, the "American devil," for the Manchester _Examiner_

congratulates its readers that the "American devil" has been taken by

the throat, and ere long his yells will be heard no more.

John Leech, it is said, was actually driven from house to house in

a vain effort to escape the nuisance of organ-grinders, whom he has

immortalized in Punch by many exquisite sketches, showing that they

know "the vally of peace and quietness." Some of his friends declare

that this nuisance so worked on his nerves that he may be said to

have died of organ-grinders. Holmes has immortalized the same guild of

wandering minstrels as a sort of "crusaders sent from infernal clime

to dock the ears of melody and break the legs of time." And yet the

hand-organ, so often the subject of municipal legislation, is dulcet

music compared with the steam-whistle, even when the latter instrument

takes its most ambitiously artistic form of the "Calliope."

SIAMESE NEWS.

Letters recently received from Bangkok, Siam, bearing date July 25,

1872, give the following interesting items.

His Majesty has just appointed an English tutor to his royal brothers,

associating with them some of the sons of the higher nobles to the

number of twenty. This certainly indicates progress in liberal and

enlarged views in a land where hitherto no noble, however exalted his

rank or worthy his character, was considered a fit associate for the

princes of the royal family, who have always been trained to hold

themselves entirely aloof from those about them. The young king now on

the throne has changed all this, and says he wishes not only that his

brothers shall have the advantage of studying with others of their own

age, but that they should thus learn to know their people better, and

by mingling with them freely in their studies and sports acquire more

liberal views of men and things than their ancestors had. He insists

that his young brothers and their classmates shall stand on precisely

the same footing, and each be treated by the teacher according to his

merits. The king intends to appoint yet other teachers in his family

for both boys and girls; and though perhaps the time may not yet have

come, it is certainly not far distant, when Siam will sustain high

schools and colleges, both literary and scientific.

The religious aspect of the nation is somewhat less promising. Though

the royal edict gives protection to all religions, and permits every

man to choose for himself in matters of conscience, it can scarcely be

said that the two kings take any real interest in Christianity. They

think less of Booddhism, its mystic creed and imposing ceremonies, and

have made very many changes in the form of worship; but, apparently,

they are no more Christians than were their respective fathers, the

late first and second kings. They treat Christianity with outward

respect, because they esteem it decorous to do so; and the same is

true of the regent and prime minister; but none of them even profess

any real regard for the worship of the true God. The concessions made

thus far indicate progress in civilization, not in piety; and while

the kings and their subjects are assuredly loosing their grasp on

Booddhism, they are not reaching out to lay hold on Christianity. It

seems rather as if the whole nation were swaying off into the frigid

regions of skepticism, and, influenced by the example of many unworthy

representatives of Christian countries, they live only for the

luxuries and laxities of the present life. Priestly robes are much

less frequently seen on the river and in the streets than formerly;

and many of the clergy no longer reside at the temples, but with their

families in their own houses; thus relinquishing even the pretence of

celibacy, which has hitherto been one of the very strongest points

of Booddhism, giving it an appearance of sanctity and a hold on

the affections of the people that nothing else can do. With this

rapidly-increasing renunciation of priestly celibacy and the

daily-diminishing ranks of the clergy, Booddhism, the mammoth religion

of the world, seems tottering to ruin, and even the present generation

may see its utter demolition, at least so far as Siam is concerned.

Services at the temples are now held in imitation of English morning

and evening prayers; a moral essay is read, at which the body-guards

of the kings and the government officers are generally required to

be present, and the remainder of the day they are excused from duty,

instead of being kept, as formerly, Sundays and week-days, in almost

perpetual attendance on His Majesty.

The supreme king is now in his twentieth year, and will take the

reins of government this year. He is tall and slight in person,

gentlemanlike in manners, perfectly well bred, and always courteous to

strangers, though even more modest and unassuming than was his father,

the priest-king, whose praises are still fresh in every heart. His

Majesty speaks English quite creditably, wears the English dress most

of the time, and keeps himself well informed as to matters and things

generally. His reign, thus far, promises well for himself and his

kingdom.

The second king, still called King _George Washington_, is now about

thirty, and a most noble specimen of the courtly Oriental gentleman.

His tall, compact figure is admirably developed both for strength and

beauty, his face is full and pleasing, and his head finely formed.

He is affable in manner, converses readily in English, and is fond

of Europeans and their customs. He keeps his father's palace and

steamboats in excellent condition, and his body-guard under thorough

drill. On a recent visit of the American steamer Moreton he came out

on the battlements of his palace, and after watching her progress for

some time, he signaled her to lay to, which she did just opposite his

palace. He immediately went aboard, and remained for an hour or so,

chatting merrily with both ladies and gentlemen, while the steamer

puffed up the river a few miles, and then returned for His Majesty to

disembark at his own palace. King George occasionally wears the _full_

English dress, either civil or military, but generally only the

hat, coat, linen and shoes, with the Siamese _pàh-nûng_ in lieu of

pantaloons. The regent, the minister of foreign affairs and many of

the princes and nobles have adopted this mongrel costume, and, to a

greater or less extent, our language, manner of living and forms

of etiquette. Visitors to the kings now sit on chairs, instead of

crouching on cushions before the throne, as formerly; while native

princes and ministers of state no longer prostrate themselves with

their faces in the dust in the royal presence, but stand at the foot

of the throne while holding an audience with their Majesties, each

being allowed full opportunity to state his case or present any

petition he may desire. The sovereigns are no longer unknown,

mysterious personages, whose features their people have never been

permitted to look upon; but they may be seen any fine day taking their

drives in their own coaches or phaetons, and lifting their hats to

passing friends. Nor do they on ordinary occasions deem it necessary

to be surrounded by armed soldiers for protection, but go where they

list, with only their liveried coachmen and footmen, and perhaps a

single companion or secretary inside.

The city itself has correspondingly improved. Within the walls have

just been completed two new streets, meeting at right angles near

the mayor's office, where is a public park of circular form very

handsomely laid out. The streets radiating from this centre are broad,

and lined with new brick houses of two stories and tiled roofs. These

are mostly private dwellings, uniformly built; and with their broad

sidewalks and shade trees of luxuriant tropical growth present a

very picturesque appearance. One wide street, commencing at the royal

palace, extends six or seven miles through the city, reaching

the river near a little village called Pak-lat-bon. This is the

fashionable _drive_, where may be seen not only their Majesties, the

regent, the prime minister and other high dignitaries lounging in

stately equipages drawn by two or four prancing steeds, but many

private citizens of different nations in their light pony-carriages,

palanquins, etc., instead of the invariable barges and _sampans_ of a

few years ago, when the river was the "Broadway" of the city and the

canals its cross-streets. Steamers of various dimensions now

busily ply the river: the kings own several, which they use for

pleasure-boats; eight or ten are fitted up as war-steamers, and others

are packets to Singapore, China and elsewhere, carrying passengers and

merchandise.

The regent, _Pra-Nai-Wai,_ is a sedate, dignified, courteous gentleman

of sixty-five, who walks erect with firm step and manly form, and with

mental and physical powers still unimpaired. His half-brother, who

filled the post of minister of foreign affairs at the commencement

of the present reign, died blind some little time back, after twice

paying ten thousand dollars to a Dutch oculist from Batavia to operate

on his eyes for cataract. His successor, the present minister, is one

of the finest specimens of a Siamese gentleman in the country. He

was first a provincial governor; then went on a special embassy to

England; last year attended the supreme king on his visit to Singapore

and Batavia; and recently accompanied him again to India, whence the

royal party have but just returned. The regal convoy consisted of five

or six war-steamers, and His Majesty, besides his own officers, was

escorted also by the English consul at Bangkok, the harbor-master and

several European officers in the Siamese service. The royal tourist

visited Rangoon, Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Allahabad and Ceylon;

and entered with great gusto into the spirit of his travels, seeing

everything, asking questions and taking notes as he passed from point

to point. The regent, in conjunction with the second king, held the

reins of government during the absence of the first king; and in truth

the regent has for the most part governed the country since the death

of the late king, in 1868, the young heir being then but fifteen years

of age. The regent is decidedly a favorite with both kings and people,

and his rule has been popular and prosperous.

MADISON AS A TEMPERANCE MAN.

Many years ago, when the temperance movement began in Virginia,

ex-President Madison lent the weight of his influence to the

cause. Case-bottles and decanters disappeared from the sideboard at

Montpelier--wine was no longer dispensed to the many visitors at that

hospitable mansion. Nor was this all. Harvest began, but the customary

barrel of whisky was not purchased, and the song of the scythemen in

the wheatfield languished. In lieu of whisky, there was a beverage

most innocuous, unstimulating and unpalatable to the army of dusky

laborers.

The following morning, Mr. Madison called in his head-man to make the

usual inquiry, "Nelson, how comes on the crop?"

"Po'ly, Mars' Jeems--monsus po'ly."

"Why, what's the matter?"

"Things is seyus."

"What do you mean by serious?"

"We gwine los' dat crap."

"Lose the crop! Why should we lose it?"

"'Cause dat ar crap ar heap too big a crap to be gethered 'thout

whisky. 'Lasses-and-water nuver gethered no crap sence de woil' war'

made, ner 'taint gwine to."

Mr. Madison succumbed: the whisky was procured, the "crap" was

"gethered," case-bottles and decanters reappeared, and the ancient

order was restored at Montpelier, never again to be disturbed.

NOTES.

Amidst the recent hurly-burly of politics in France, involving the

fate of the Thiers government, if not of the republic itself, a minor

grievance of the artists has probably been little noticed by the

general public. Yet a grievance it was, and one which caused men of

taste and sentiment to cry out loudly. The threatened act of vandalism

against which they protested was a proposal to fell part of the Forest

of Fontainebleau. The castle and forest have long belonged to the

state, but why the woods should now be cut down by the government is

not clear. The motive is probably to turn the fine timber into

cash, though a Paris wit, in pretended despair of other explanation,

jokingly alleged, at the time of Prince Napoleon's late expulsion from

France, that the government was afraid the prince, taking refuge in

its dense recesses, might there conceal himself (_à la_ Charles II.,

we presume) in one of its venerable oaks. At any rate, it was arranged

to level a part of the timber, and on hearing of this threatened

mutilation of a favorite resort the French artists rallied to beg M.

Thiers, like the character in General Morris's ballad, to "spare those

trees." And well may they petition, for the forest contains nearly

thirty-five thousand acres, abounding in beautiful and picturesque

scenery. It can boast finer trees than any other French forest, while

its meadows, lawns and cliffs furnish specimens of almost every plant

and flower to be found in France. Now, when we add that its views are

exceedingly varied, its rocks, ravines, plateaus and thickets

each offering some entirely different and admirable study to the

landscape-painters who frequent it in great numbers during the spring

and autumn months (for it is only fourteen or fifteen leagues out of

Paris, on the high road to Lyons), we have shown reason enough for the

consentaneous action on the part of the men and women of the brush and

pencil.

The traveled reader will hardly need to be told that good judges

consider the forest and castle to compose the finest domain in France.

But there are also numberless historic reminiscences intertwined with

Fontainebleau. And, by the way, it was originally known as the

Forêt de Bierre, until some thirsty huntsmen, who found its spring

deliciously refreshing, rebaptized it as Fontaine Belle Eau. Such, at

least, is the old story. The first founding of a royal residence there

dates at least as far back as the twelfth century, and possibly much

farther, while the present château was begun by Francis I. in the

sixteenth. So many famous historic events, indeed, have taken place

within the precincts of the forest that the committee of "Protection

Artistique" is pardonable in claiming that "Fontainebleau Forest ought

to be ranked with those national historic monuments which must at all

hazards be preserved for the admiration of artists and tourists," as

well as of patriotic Frenchmen. What illustrations shall we select

from among the events connected with it, about which a thousand

volumes of history, poetry, art, science and romance have been

composed? At Fontainebleau, Charles V. was royally feasted by Francis;

there the Edict of Nantes was revoked; there Condé died; there the

decree of divorce between Napoleon and Josephine was pronounced; and

there the emperor afterward signed his own abdication. It is true

that nobody proposes to demolish the castle, and that is the historic

centre; but the petitioners claim that it is difficult and dangerous

to attempt to divide the domain into historic and non-historic,

artistic and non-artistic parts, with a view to its mutilation. There

is ground for hoping that a favorable response will be given to the

eloquent appeal of the artists and amateurs.

The vanity of Victor Hugo, though always "Olympian," perhaps never

mounted to a sublimer height than in the reply he sent to M. Catulle

Mendes on receiving from him the news of Gautier's death. It contained

but half a dozen lines, yet found space to declare, "Of the men of

1830, _I alone am left_. It is now my turn." The profound egotism of

"_il ne reste plus que moi_" could not escape being vigorously lashed

by V. Hugo's old comrades of the quill, dating back with him to 1830,

and now so loftily ignored. "See, even in his epistles of condolence,"

they cry, "the omnipresent _moi_ of Hugo must appear, to overshadow

everything else!" One indignant writer declares the poet to be a mere

walking personal pronoun. Another humorously pities those still extant

contemporaries of 1830 who, after having for forty years dedicated

their songs and romances and dramas to Hugo, now learn from the

selfsame maw which has greedily gulped their praises that they

themselves do not exist, never did exist. One man of genius

slyly writes: "Some of us veterans will find ourselves

embarrassed--Michelet, G. Sand, Janin, Sandeau _et un pen moi_. Is it

possible that we died a long time ago, one after the other, without

knowing it? Was it a delusion on our part to fancy ourselves existing,

or was our existence only a bad dream?" But to Victor Hugo even these

complaints will perhaps seem to smoke like fresh incense on the altar

of self-adulation which this great genius keeps ever lighted.

The reader may remember the story of that non-committal editor who

during the late canvass, desiring to propitiate all his subscribers of

both parties, hoisted the ticket of "Gr---- and ----n" at the top

of his column, thus giving those who took the paper their choice of

interpretations between "Grant and Wilson" and "Greeley and Brown."

A story turning on the same style of point (and probably quite as

apocryphal, though the author labels it "_historique_") is told of an

army officers' mess in France. A brother-soldier from a neighboring

detachment having come in, and a _champenoise_ having been uncorked in

his honor, "Gentlemen," said the guest, raising his glass, "I am about

to propose a toast at once patriotic and political." A chorus of hasty

ejaculations and of murmurs at once greeted him. "Yes, gentlemen,"

coolly proceeded the orator, "I drink to a thing which--an object

that--Bah! I will out with it at once. It begins with an _R_ and ends

with an _e_."

"Capital!" whispers a young lieutenant of Bordeaux promotion. "He

proposes the _Republique_, without offending the old fogies by saying

the word."

"Nonsense! He means the _Radicale_," replies the other, an old captain

from Cassel.

"Upon my word," says a third as he lifts his glass, "our friend must

mean _la Royaute_."

"I see!" cries a one-legged veteran of Froschweiler: "we drink to _la

Revanche_."

In fact, the whole party drank the toast heartily, each interpreting

it to his liking.

In the hands of a Swift even so trivial an incident might be made

to point a moral on the facility with which alike in theology

and politics--from Athanasian Creed to Cincinnati or Philadelphia

Platform--men comfortably interpret to their own diverse likings some

doctrine that "begins with an _R_ and ends with an _e_," and swallow

it with great unanimity and enthusiasm.

Possibly the death of Mr. Greeley, after a prolonged delirium induced

in part by political excitement, may add for Americans some fresh

interest to the theory of a paper which just previous to that pathetic

event M. Lunier had read before the Paris Academy of Medicine. The

author confessed his statistics to be incomplete, but regarded them

as ample for the decisive formulation of the proposition that great

political crises tend to increase the number of cases of mental

alienation. The leading point of his elaborate argument appears to

be the classification of fresh cases of insanity developed since the

beginning of the late French war. The strongest comparison is one

indicating an excess of seven per cent, in the number of such cases,

proportioned to the population in the departments conquered and

occupied by the Germans, over those which they did not invade.

Finally, M. Lunier reckons the cases of mental alienation induced

by the late political and military events in France at from

twelve hundred to fifteen hundred. Politics without war may, it is

considered, produce the same results--results not at all surprising,

of course, except as to their extent. As to this last, if M. Lunier's

figures and deductions be correct, the mental strain of exciting

politics is even more destructive than has been generally supposed.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Gareth and Lynette. By Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet-Laureate. Boston:

J.R. Osgood & Co.

"With this poem the author concludes the Idyls of the King." The

occasion is a tempting one to review the long series of Arthurian lays

written by Tennyson, from the _Mort d' Arthur_, and the pretty song

about Lancelot and Guinevere, and the first casting of "Elaine's"

legend in the form of _The Lady of Shallot_, down to the present tale,

flung like a capricious field flower into a wreath complete enough

without it. The poet's first adventure into the subject--the

mysterious, shadowy and elevated performance called the _Mort d'

Arthur_--will probably be always thought the best. Tennyson, when

he wrote it, was just trying the peculiarities of his style: he was

testing the quality of his cadences, the ring of his long sententious

lines repeated continually as refrains, and the trustworthiness of his

artful, much-sacrificing simplicity. He put as it were a spot or two

of pigment on the end of his painting-knife, and held it up into the

air of the vaporous traditions of the Round Table. It stood the test,

it had the color; but the artist, uncertain of his style, his public

and his own liking, made a number of other tentatives before he

could decide to go on in the manner he commenced with. He tried the

_Guinevere_, laughing and galloping in its ballad-movement; he tried

the _Shallot_, with a triple rhyme and a short positive refrain, like

a bell rung in an incantation, and brought up every minute by a finger

pressed upon the edge. Either of these three--although the metre of

the first was the only one endurable by the ear in the case of a long

series of poems--either of these had, it may be positively said, a

general tone more suitable to the ancient feeling, and more consistent

with the duty of a modern poet arranging for new ears the legends

collected by Sir Thomas Malory, than the general tone of the present

Idyls. Those first experiments, charged like a full sponge with the

essence and volume of primitive legend, went to their purpose without

retrospection or vacillation: each short tale, whether it laughed or

moaned, promulgated itself like an oracle. The teller seemed to have

been listening to the voice of Fate, and whether, Guinevere swayed the

bridle-rein, or Elaine's web flew out and floated wide, or Lancelot

sang tirra-lirra by the river, it was asserted with the positiveness

of a Hebrew chronicle, which we do not question because it is history.

But we hardly have such an illusion in reading the late Idyls. We

seem to be in the presence of a constructor who arranges things, of a

moralist turning ancient stories with a latent purpose of decorum, of

an official Englishman looking about for old confirmations of modern

sociology, of a salaried laureate inventing a prototype of Prince

Albert. The singleness of a story-teller who has convinced himself

that he tells a true story is gone. That this diversion into the

region of didactics is accompanied, on our poet's part, with every

ingenuity of ornament, and every grace of a style which people have

learned to like and which he has made his own, need not be said.

The Tennysonian beauties are all there. The work takes its place

in literature, obscuring the Arthurian work of Dryden, as Milton's

achievement of _Paradise Lost_ obscured the Italian work on the same

subject which preceded it. The story is told, and the things of the

Round Table can hardly be related again in English, any more than the

tale of Troy could be sung again in Greek after the poem of Homer.

But beauties do not necessarily compose into perfect Beauty, and

the achievement of a task neatly done does not prevent the eye from

wandering over the work to see if the material has been used to the

best advantage. So, the reader who has allowed himself to rest long

in the simple magic evoked by Malory or in the Celtic air of

Villemarque's legends, will be fain to ask whether a man of Tennyson's

force could not have given to his century a recasting which would have

satisfied primitive credulity as well as modern subtility. There is

an antique bronze at Naples that has been cleaned and set up in a

splendid museum, and perhaps looks more graceful than ever; but the

pipe that used to lead to the lips, and the passage that used to

communicate with the priest-chamber, are gone, and nothing can

compensate for them: it used to be a form and a voice, and now it is

nothing but a form.

We have just observed that in our opinion the first essays made by the

Laureate with his Arthurian material had the best ring, or at least

had some excellences lost to the later work. _Gareth and Lynette_,

however, by its fluency and simplicity, and by not being overcharged

with meaning, seems to part company with some of this overweighted

later performance, and to attempt a recovery of the directness and

spring of the start. It is, however, far behind all of them in a

momentous particular; for in narrating _them_, the poet, while able to

keep up his immediate connection with the source of tradition, and to

narrate with the directness of belief, had still some undercurrent of

thought which he meant to convey, and which he succeeded in keeping

track of: Arthur and Guinevere, in the little song, ride along like

primeval beings of the world--the situation seems the type of all

seduction; the Lady of Shallot is not alone the recluse who sees life

in a mirror, she is the cloistered Middle Age itself, and when her

mirror breaks we feel that a thousand glasses are bursting, a thousand

webs are parting, and that the times are coming eye to eye with the

actual. In those younger days, Tennyson, possessed with a subject, and

as it were floating in it, could pour out a legend with the credulity

of a child and the clear convincing insight of a teacher: when he came

in mature life to apply himself to the rounded work, he had more of a

disposition to teach, and less of that imaginative reach which is

like belief; and _now_ he is telling a story again for the sake of

the story, but without the deeper meaning. Lynette is a supercilious

damsel who asks redress of the knights of the Round Table: Gareth,

a male Cinderella, starts from the kitchen to defend her, and after

conquering her prejudices by his bravery, assumes his place as a

disguised prince. It is a plain little comedy, not much in Tennyson's

line: there are places where he tries to imitate the artless

disconnected speech of youth; and here, as with the little nun's

babble in _Guinevere_, and with some other passages of factitious

simplicity, the poet makes rather queer work:

Gold? said I gold?--ay then, why he, or she,

Or whosoe'er it was, or half the world,

Had ventured--_had_ the thing I spake of been

Mere gold--but this was all of that true steel

Whereof they forged the brand Excalibur,

And lightnings played about it in the storm, etc.

It may be questioned whether hap-hazard talk ever, in any age of human

speech, took a form like that, though it is just like Tennyson in many

a weary part of his poetry. The blank verse, for its part, is broken

with all the old skill, and there are lines of beautiful license, like

this:

Camelot, a city of shadowy palaces,

or strengthened with the extra quantity, like this:

Stay, felon knight, I avenge me for my friend!

or imitating the motion described, as these:

The hoof of his horse slept in the stream, the stream

Descended, and the Sun was washed away;

but occasionally the effort to give variety leads into mere puzzles

and disagreeable fractures of metre, such as the following quatrain:

Courteous or bestial from the moment,

Such as have nor law nor king; and three of these

Proud in their fantasy, call themselves the Day,

Morning-Star, and Noon-Sun, and Evening-Star.

The first line in this quotation, if it be not a misprint of the

American edition, can only be brought to any kind of rule by accenting

each polysyllable on the last, and is not, when even that is done, a

pleasant piece of caprice. There are plenty of phrases that shock

the attention sufficiently to keep it from stagnating on the smooth

surface of the verse; such are--"ever-highering eagle-circles," "there

were none but few goodlier than he," "tipt with trenchant steel," and

the expression, already famous, of "tip-tilted" for Lynette's nose; to

which may be added the object of Gareth's attention, mentioned in the

third line of the poem, when he "stared at the _spate_." But in the

matter of descriptive power we do not know that the Laureate

has succeeded better for a long time past in his touches of

landscape-painting: the pictures of halls, castles, rivers and

woods are all felicitous. For example, this in five lines, where the

travelers saw

Bowl-shaped, through tops of many thousand pines,

A gloomy-gladed hollow slowly sink

To westward; in the deeps whereof a mere,

Round as the red eye of an eagle-owl,

Under the half-dead sunset glared; and cries

Ascended.

Or this simple and beautiful sketch of crescent moonlight:

Silent the silent field

They traversed. Arthur's harp tho' summer-wan,

In counter motion to the clouds, allured

The glance of Gareth dreaming on his liege.

A star shot.

It is still, perfect, and utterly simple sketches like these, thrown

off in the repose of power, that form the best setting for a heroic

or poetical action: what better device was ever invented, even by

Tennyson himself, for striking just the right note in the reader's

mind while thinking of a noble primitive knight, than that in another

Idyl, where Lancelot went along, looking at a star, "_and wondered

what it was"?_ Of a more imaginative kind of beauty are the

descriptions of the walls of rock near Castle Dangerous, decked by the

hermit with tinted bas-reliefs, and the fine one of Camelot, looking

as if "built by fairy kings," with its city gate surmounted by the

figures of the three mystic queens, "the friends of Arthur," and

decked upon the keystone with the image of the Lady, whose form is

set in ripples of stone and crossed by mystic fish, while her drapery

weeps from her sides as water flowing away. The most charming part of

the character-painting is where the shrewish Lynette, as her estimate

of the scullion-knight gradually rises in view of his mighty deeds,

evinces her kindlier mood, not directly in speech, but by catches of

love-songs breaking out of the midst of her scornful gibes: this is

a very subtle and suitable and poetical way of eliciting the

under-workings of the damsel's mind, and it is continued through five

or six pages in an interrupted carol, until at last the maiden, wholly

won, bids him ride by her side, and finishes her lay:

O trefoil, sparkling on the rainy plain,

O rainbow, with three colors after rain,

Shine sweetly: thrice my love hath smiled on me.

The allegory by which Gareth's four opponents are made to form a sort

of stumbling succession representing Morn, Noon, Evening, and Night or

Death, is hardly worth the introduction, but it is not insisted

upon: the last of these knights, besieging Castle Perilous in a skull

helmet, and clamoring for marriage with Lynette's sister Lyonors,

turns out to be a large-sized, fresh-faced and foolish boy, who issues

from the skull "as a flower new blown," and fatuously explains that

his brothers have dressed him out in burlesque and deposited him as a

bugbear at the gate. This is not very salutary allegorizing, but it

is soon over, and the poem closed, leaving a pleasant perfume in the

reader's mind of chivalry, errantry and the delicious days before the

invention of civilization.

Handbook of the History of Philosophy. By Dr. Albert Schwegler.

Translated arid annotated by James Hutchison Stirling, LL.D. New York:

Putnam.

Spinoza teaches that "substance is God;" but, says Mr. Matthew Arnold,

"propositions about substance pass by mankind at large like the idle

wind, which mankind at large regards not: it will not even listen to

a word about these propositions, unless it first learns what their

author was driving at with them, and finds that this object of his

is one with which it sympathizes." There is no way of getting the

multitude to listen to Spinoza's _Ethics_ or Plato's _Dialectics_ but

something is gained when a man of science like Dr. Schwegler happens

to possess the gift of fluent and easy statement, and can pour into a

work like the present, which is the expansion of a hasty encyclopaedia

article, the vivacity of current speech, and the impulse which gives

unity to a long history while it excludes crabbed digressions. It

happens that the American world received the first translation of

Schwegler's _History_ _of Philosophy_; and it may be asked, What need

have Americans of a subsequent version by a Scotch doctor of laws? The

answer is, that Mr. Seelye's earlier rendering was taken from a first

edition, and that the present one includes the variations made in five

editions which have now been issued. Even on British ground the work

thus translated has reached three editions, and the multitude of

"mankind at large," hearing of these repeated editions in Edinburgh

and of twenty thousand copies sold in Germany, may begin to prick

up its ears, and to think that this is one of the easily-read

philosophies of modern times, of which Taine and Michelet have the

secret. It is not so: abstractions stated with scientific precision in

their elliptic slang or technicality are not and cannot be made easy

reading: the strong hands of condensation which Schwegler pressed down

upon the material he controlled so perfectly have not left it lighter

or more digestible. The reader of this manual, for instance, will be

invited to consider the Eleatic argumentation that nothing exists but

Identity, "which is the beënt, and that Difference, the non-beënt,

does not exist; and therefore that he must not only not go on talking

about difference, but that he must not allude to difference as being

anything but the non-beënt; for if he casts about for a synonym, and

arrives at the notion that he may say non-existent for non-beënt, he

is abjectly wrong, for beënt does not mean existent, and non-beënt

non-existent, but it must be considered that the beënt is strictly the

non-existent, and the existent the non-beënt." Such are the amenities

of expression into which an eloquent metaphysician, trying his best

to speak popularly, is led. Yet the book is readable to that orderly

application of the mind which such studies exact, and is the firmest

and strictest guide now speaking our English tongue. Its steady

attention to the business in hand, from the pre-Socratic philosphies

down through the great age of the Greek revival, to Germany and Hegel

at last, is most sustained and admirable. Indeed, few thinkers of

Anglo-Saxon birth are able even to praise such a book as it deserves.

The only real impediment to its acceptance by scholars of our race is

that its attention to modern philosophy is rather partial, the French

and the Germans getting most of the story, and English philosophers

like Locke and Hume receiving scant attention, while Paley is not

recognized. This class of omissions is attended to by the Scotch

translator in a mass of annotations which lead him into a broad and

interesting view of British philosophy, in the course of which he has

some severe reflections on the ignorance of Mr. Lewes and Mr. Mill. On

account of these valuable notes, and also for the alterations made

by Schwegler himself, we feel that we must invite American scholars

possessing the Seelye translation to replace it or accompany it by

this present version, which is a cheap and compassable volume.

Joseph Noirel's Revenge. By Victor Cherbuliez. Translated from the

French by Wm. F. West, A.M. New York: Holt & Williams.

M. Victor Cherbuliez belongs to a Genevese family long and honorably

connected with literature in the capacity of publishers both at Paris

and Geneva. It is in the latter town and the adjacent region that the

scene of the present story--the first, we believe, of the author's

works which has found its way into English--is laid; and much of

its charm is derived from the local coloring with which many of the

characters and incidents are invested. Even the quiet home-life of

so beautiful and renowned a place cannot but be tinted by reflections

from the incomparable beauties of its surroundings, and from the

grand and vivid passages of its singularly picturesque history. The

subordinate figures on the canvas have accordingly an interest greater

than what arises from their commonplace individualities and their

meagre part in the action--like barndoor fowls pecking and clucking

beside larger bipeds in a walled yard steeped in sunlight. But the

sunlight which gives a delicious warmth and brightness to the earlier

chapters of the novel is soon succeeded by gloom and tempest. The

interest is more and more concentrated on the few principal persons;

and the action, which at the outset promised to be light and amusing,

with merely so much of tenderness and pathos as may belong to the

higher comedy, becomes by degrees deeply tragical, and ends in a

catastrophe which is saved from being horrible and revolting only by

the shadows that forecast and the softening strains that attend it. In

point of construction and skillful handling the story is as effective

as French art alone could have made it, while it has an under-meaning

rendered all the more suggestive by being left to find its way into

the reader's reflections without any obvious prompting. The heroine,

sole child of a prosperous bourgeois couple, stands between two

lovers--one the last relic of a noble Burgundian family; the other a

workman with socialist tendencies. Marguerite Mirion is invested with

all the fascination which beauty of face, simplicity of mind, purity

of soul, sweetness of disposition and joyousness of spirit can impart.

Yet she is, and feels herself to be, entirely _bourgeoise,_ longing

for no ideal heights, worldly or spiritual, ready for all ordinary

duties, content with simple and innocent pleasures, rinding in the

life, the thoughts, the occupations and enjoyments of her class all

that is needed to make the current of her life run smoothly and to

satisfy the cravings of her bright but gentle nature. It is in simple

obedience to the will of her parents that she marries Count Roger

d'Ornis, and is carried from her happy home at Mon-Plaisir to a

dilapidated castle in the Jura, where there are no smiling faces or

loving hearts to make her welcome--where, on the contrary, she meets

only with haughty, spiteful or morose looks and a chilling and gloomy

atmosphere. It is from sheer necessity that she accepts the aid

of Joseph Noirel, her father's head-workman, whose ardent spirit,

quickened by the consciousness of talent, but rendered morbid by the

slights which his birth and position have entailed, has been plunged

into blackest night by the loss of the single star that had illumined

its firmament. Count Roger is not wholly devoid of honor and

generosity; but he has no true appreciation of his wife, and will

sacrifice her without remorse to save his own reputation. Joseph, on

the other hand, is ready to dare all things to protect her from

harm; but he cannot forego the reward which entails upon her a deeper

misery. It is Marguerite alone who, in the terrible struggle of fate

and of clashing interests and desires, rises to the height of absolute

self-abnegation; and this not through any sudden development of

qualities or intuitions foreign to her previous modes of thought,

but by the simple application of these to the hard and complicated

problems which have suddenly confronted her. Herein lies the novelty

of the conception and the lesson which the author has apparently

intended to convey. See, he seems to say, how the bourgeois nature,

equally scorned by the classes above and below it as the embodiment of

vulgar ease and selfishness, contains precisely the elements of true

heroism which are wanting alike in those who set conventional rules

above moral laws and in those who revolt against all restrictions. The

book is thus an apology for a class which is no favorite with poets

or romancers; but, as we have said, the design is only to be inferred

from the story, and may easily pass unnoticed, at least with American

readers. The character of Noirel is powerfully drawn, but it is less

original than that of the heroine, belonging, for example, to the

same type as the hero of _Le Rouge et le Noir_--"ce Robespierre de

village," as Sainte-Beuve, we believe, calls him.

Homes and Hospitals; or, Two Phases of Woman's Work, as exhibited in

the Labors of Amy Button and Agnes E. Jones. Boston: American Tract

Society; New York: Hurd & Houghton.

Doubtless we should not, though most of us do, feel a tenderness for

the Dorcas who proves to be a lady of culture and distinction, rather

different from the careless respect we accord to the Dorcas who has

large feet and hands, and mismanages her _h_'s. In this elegant little

book "Amy" is the descendant of influential patrons and patronesses,

and "Agnes" is the lovely saint whom Miss Nightingale calls "Una,"

though her high-bred purity and lowly self-dedication rather recall

the character of Elizabeth of Hungary. Agnes, in Crook lane and

Abbot's street, encounters old paupers who have already enjoyed the

bounty of her ancestress's (Dame Dutton) legacy. When she becomes

interested in the old Indian campaigner, Miles, she is able to procure

his admission to Chelsea through the influence of "my brother, Colonel

Dutton." She lightens her watches by reading Manzoni's novel,

_I Promessi Sposi,_ she quotes Lord Bacon, and compares the

hospital-nurses to the witches in _Macbeth_. These mental and

social graces do not, perhaps, assist the practical part of her

ministrations, but they undoubtedly chasten the influence of

her ministrations on her own character. It is as a purist and an

aristocrat of the best kind that Miss Dutton forms within her own mind

this resolution: "If the details of evil are unavoidably brought under

your eye, let not your thoughts rest upon them a moment longer than is

absolutely needful. Dismiss them with a vigorous effort as soon as you

have done your best to apply a remedy: commit the matter into higher

Hands, then turn to your book, your music, your wood-carving, your pet

recreation, whatever it is. This is one way, at least, of keeping the

mind elastic and pure." And with the discretion of rare breeding she

carries into the haunts of vice and miserable intrigue the Italian

byword: _Orecchie spalancate, e bocca stretta_. A similar elevation,

but also a sense that responsibility to her caste requires the most

tender humility, may be found in "Una." When about to associate with

coarse hired London nurses at St. Thomas's Hospital, she asks herself,

"Are you more above those with whom you will have to mix than our

Saviour was in every thought and sensitive refinement?" It was by

such self-teaching that these high-spirited girls made their life-toil

redound to their own purification, as it did to the cause of humanity.

The purpose served by binding in one volume the district experiences

of Miss Dutton and the hospital record of Miss Jones is that of

indicating to the average young lady of our period a diversity of ways

in which she may serve our Master and His poor. With "Amy" she may

retain her connection with society, and adorn her home and her circle,

all the while that she reads the Litany with the decayed governess or

_Golden Deeds_ to the dying burglar. With "Agnes" she may plunge into

more heroic self-abnegation. Leaving the fair attractions of the world

as utterly as the diver leaves the foam and surface of the sea, she

may grope for moral pearls in the workhouse of Liverpool or train

for her sombre avocation in the asylum at Kaiserwerth. Such absolute

dedication will probably have some effect on her "tone" as a lady. She

can no longer keep up with the current interests of society. Instead

of Shakespeare and Italian literature, which we have seen coloring

the career of the district visitor, her life will take on a sort of

submarine pallor. The sordid surroundings will press too close for any

gleam from the outer world to penetrate. The things of interest will

be the wretched things of pauperdom and hospital service--the slight

improvement of Gaffer, the spiritual needs of Gammer, the harsh

tyranny of upper nurses. "To-day when out walking," says the brave

young lady, as superintendent of a boys' hospital, "I could only keep

from crying by running races with my boys." The effect of a training

so rigid--training which sometimes includes stove-blacking and

floor-washing--is to try the pure metal, to eject the merely

ornamental young lady whose nature is dross, and to consolidate

the valuable nature that is sterling. Miss Agnes, plunged in hard

practical work, and unconsciously acquiring a little workmen's slang,

gives the final judgment on the utility of such discipline: "Without

a regular hard London training I should have been nowhere." Both the

saints of the century are now dead, and these memoirs conserve the

perfume of their lives.

Songs from the Old Dramatists. Collected and Edited by Abby Sage

Richardson, New York: Hurd & Houghton.

Any anthology of old English lyrics is a treasure if one can depend

upon the correctness of printing and punctuating. Mrs. Richardson has

found a quantity of rather recondite ones, and most of the favorites

are given too. Only to read her long index of first lines is to catch

a succession of dainty fancies and of exquisite rhythms, arranged when

the language was crystallizing into beauty under the fanning wings of

song. That some of our pet jewels are omitted was to be expected.

The compiler does not find space for Rochester's most sincere-seeming

stanzas, beginning, "I cannot change as others do"--among the sweetest

and most lyrical utterances which could set the stay-imprisoned hearts

of Charles II.'s beauties to bounding with a touch of emotion. Perhaps

Rochester was not exactly a dramatist, though that point is wisely

strained in other cases. We do not get the "Nay, dearest, think me

not unkind," nor do we get the "To all you ladies now on land," though

sailors' lyrics, among the finest legacies of the time when gallant

England ruled the waves, are not wanting. We have Sir Charles Sedley's

"Love still hath something of the sea

From which his mother rose,"

and the siren's song, fit for the loveliest of Parthenopes, from

Browne's _Masque of the Inner Temple_, beginning,

"Steer, hither steer your winged pines,

All beaten mariners!"--

songs which severally repeat the fatigue of the sea or that daring

energy of its Elizabethan followers which by a false etymology we term

chivalrous. We do not find the superb lunacy of "Mad Tom of Bedlam" in

the catch beginning, "I know more than Apollo," but we have something

almost as spirited, where John Ford sings, in _The Sun's Darling_,

"The dogs have the stag in chase!

'Tis a sport to content a king.

So-ho! ho! through the skies

How the proud bird flies,

And swooping, kills with a grace!

Now the deer falls! hark! how they ring."

For what is pensive and retrospective in tone we are given a song

of "The Aged Courtier," which once in a pageant touched the finer

consciousness of Queen Elizabeth. The unemployed warrior, whose

"helmet now shall make a hive for bees," treats the virgin sovereign

as his saint and divinity, promising,

"And when he saddest sits in holy cell,

He'll teach his swains this carol for a song:

Blest be the hearts that wish my sovereign well!

Cursed be the souls that think her any wrong!

Goddess! allow this aged man his right

To be your beadsman now, that was your knight."

The feudal feeling can hardly be more beautifully expressed.

From the devotion that was low and lifelong we may turn to the

devotion that was loud and fleeting. The love-songs are many and well

picked: one is the madrigal from Thomas Lodge's _Eitphues' Golden

Legacy,_ which "he wrote," he says, "on the ocean, when every line

was wet with a surge, and every humorous passion counterchecked with

a storm;" and which (the madrigal) had the good fortune to suggest and

name Shakespeare's archest character, Rosalind. We cannot dwell

upon this perfumed chaplet of love-ditties. Mrs. Richardson is here

doubtless in her element, but she does not always lighten counsel

with the wisdom of her words; for instance, when, in Beaumont and

Fletcher's "Beauty clear and fair," she makes an attempted emendation

in the lines--

"Where to live near,

And planted there,

Is still to live and still live new;

Where to gain a favor is

More than light perpetual bliss;

Oh make me live by serving you."

On this the editress says: "I have always been inclined to believe

that this line should read: 'More than _life_, perpetual bliss.'" The

image here, where the whole figure is taken from flowers, is of being

planted and growing in the glow of the mistress's beauty, whose favor

is more fructifying than the sun, and to which he immediately begs

to be recalled, "back again, to this _light_." To say that living

anywhere is "more than life" is a forced bombastic notion not in

the way of Beaumont and Fletcher, but coming later, and rather

characteristic of Poe, with his rant about

"that infinity with which my wife

Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life."

Mrs. Richardson's notes, in fact, contradict the impression of

thoroughness which her selecting, we are glad to say, leaves on the

mind. She is aware that the "Ode to Melancholy" in _The Nice Valour_

begins in the same way as Milton's "Pensieroso," but she does not seem

to know that the latter is also closely imitated from Burton's poem in

his _Anatomy of Melancholy_. And she quotes John Still's "Jolly Good

Ale and Old" as a "panegyric on old sack," sack being sweet wine.

The publishers have done their part, and made of these drops of oozed

gold what is called "an elegant trifle" for the holidays. Mr. John La

Farge, a very "advanced" sort of artist and illustrator, has furnished

some embellishments which will be better liked by people of broad

culture, and especially by enthusiasts for Japanese art, than they

will be by ordinary Christmas-shoppers, though the frontispiece to

"Songs of Fairies," representing Psyche floating among water-lilies,

is beautiful enough and obvious enough for anybody.

_Books Received._

A Concordance to the Constitution of the United States of America. By

Charles W. Stearns, M.D. New York: Mason, Baker & Pratt.

The Standard: A Collection of Sacred and Secular Music. By L.O.

Emerson and H. R. Palmer. Boston: Oliver Ditson & Co.

Gems of Strauss: A Collection of Dance Music for the Piano. By Johann

Strauss. Boston: Oliver Ditson & Co.

The Greeks of To-Day. By Charles K. Tuckerman. New York: G.P. Putnam &

Sons.

The Eustace Diamonds. By Anthony Trollope. New York: Harper &

Brothers.

How to Paint. By F.B. Gardner. New York: Samuel R. Wells.