The Speculative Society dealt with the usual subjects of elocution and

debate prevalent in similar places then and since; such as, whether

there ought to be an Established Religion, and whether the Execution of

Charles I. was justifiable, and if Ossian's poems were authentic? It was

not a fraternity of speculators by any means of an alarming or dangerous

sort. John Allen and his friends, at this very time, were spouting forth

active sympathy for French Republicanism at Fortune's Tavern under

immediate and watchful superintendence of the Police; James Mackintosh

was parading the streets with Horne Tooke's colors in his hat; James

Montgomery was expiating in York jail his exulting ballad on the fall of

the Bastile; and Southey and Coleridge, in despair of old England, had

completed the arrangements of their youthful colony for a community of

property, and proscription of every thing selfish, on the banks of the

Susquehanna; but the speculative orators rarely probed the sores of the

body politic deeper than an inquiry into the practical advantages of

belief in a future state? and whether it was for the interest of Britain

to maintain the balance of Europe? or if knowledge could be too much

disseminated among the lower ranks of the people?

In short, nothing of the extravagance of the time, on either side, is

associable with the outset of Jeffrey's career. As little does he seem

to have been influenced, on the one hand, by the democratic foray of

some two hundred convention delegates into Edinburgh in 1792, as, on the

other, by the prominence of his father's name to a protest of frantic

high-tory defiance; and he was justified, not many years since, in

referring with pride to the fact that, at the opening of his public

life, his view of the character of the first French revolution, and of

its probable influence on other countries, had been such as to require

little modification during the whole of his subsequent career. The

precision and accuracy of his judgment had begun to show itself thus

early. At the crude young Jacobins, so soon to ripen into Quarterly

Reviewers, who were just now coquetting with Mary Woolstonecraft, or

making love to the ghost of Madame Roland, or branding as worthy of the

bowstring the tyrannical enormities of Mr. Pitt, he could afford to

laugh from the first. From the very first he had the strongest liberal

tendencies, but restrained them so wisely that he could cultivate them

well.

He joined the band of youths who then sat at the feet of Dugald Stewart,

and whose first incentive to distinction in the more difficult paths of

knowledge, as well as their almost universal adoption of the liberal

school of politics, are in some degree attributable to the teaching of

that distinguished man. Among them were Brougham and Homer, who had

played together from boyhood in Edinburgh streets, had joined the

Speculative on the same evening six years after Jeffrey (who in Brougham

soon found a sharp opponent on colonial and other matters), and were

still fast friends. Jeffrey's father, raised to a deputy clerk of

session, now lived on a third or fourth flat in Buchanan's Court in the

Lawn Market, where the worthy old gentleman kept two women servants and

a man at livery; but where the furniture does not seem to have been of

the soundest. This fact his son used to illustrate by an anecdote of the

old gentleman eagerly setting to at a favorite dinner one day, with the

two corners of the table cloth tied round his neck to protect his

immense professional frills, when the leg of his chair gave way, and he

tumbled back on the floor with all the dishes, sauces, and viands a-top

of him. Father and son lived here together, till the latter took for his

first wife the daughter of the Professor of Hebrew in the University of

St. Andrew, and moved to an upper story in another part of town. He had

been called to the bar in 1794, and was married eight years afterward.

He had not meanwhile obtained much practice, and the elevation implied

in removal to an upper flat is not of the kind that a young Benedict

covets. But distinction of another kind was at length at hand.

One day early in 1802, "in the eighth or ninth story or flat in

Buccleugh Place, the elevated residence of the then Mr. Jeffrey," Mr.

Jeffrey had received a visit from Horner and Sydney Smith, when Sydney,

at this time a young English curate temporarily resident in Edinburgh,

preaching, teaching, and joking with a flow of wit, humanity, and sense

that fascinated every body, started the notion of the Edinburgh Review.

The two Scotchmen at once voted the Englishman its editor, and the

notion was communicated to John Archibald Murray (Lord Advocate after

Jeffrey, long years afterward), John Allen (then lecturing on medical

subjects at the University, but who went abroad before he could render

any essential service), and Alexander Hamilton (afterward Sanscrit

professor at Haileybury). This was the first council; but it was

extended, after a few days, till the two Thomsons (John and Thomas, the

physician and the advocate), Thomas Brown (who succeeded to Dugald

Stewart's chair), and Henry Brougham, were admitted to the

deliberations. Horner's quondam playfellow was an ally too potent to be

obtained without trouble; and, even thus early, had not a few

characteristics in common with the Roman statesman and orator whom it

was his greatest ambition in after life to resemble, and of whom

Shakspeare has told us that he never followed any thing that other men

began.

"You remember how cheerfully Brougham approved of our plan at first,"

wrote Jeffrey to Horner, in April, in the thick of anxious preparations

for the start, "and agreed to give us an article or two without

hesitation. Three or four days ago I proposed two or three books that I

thought would suit him; when he answered with perfect good humor, that

he had changed his view of our plan a little, and rather thought now

that he should decline to have any connection with it." This little

coquetry was nevertheless overcome; and before the next six months were

over, Brougham had become an efficient and zealous member of the band.

It is curious to see how the project hung fire at first. Jeffrey had

nearly finished four articles, Horner had partly written four, and more

than half the number was printed; and yet well-nigh the other half had

still to be written. The memorable fasciculus at last appeared in

November, after a somewhat tedious gestation of nearly ten months;

having been subject to what Jeffrey calls so "miserable a state of

backwardness" and so many "symptoms of despondency," that Constable had

to delay the publication some weeks beyond the day first fixed. Yet as

early as April had Sydney Smith completed more than half of what he

contributed, while nobody else had put pen to paper; and shortly after

the number appeared, he was probably not sorry to be summoned, with his

easy pen and his cheerful wit, to London, and to abandon the cares of

editorship to Jeffrey.

No other choice could have been made. The first number settled the

point. It is easy to discover that Jeffrey's estimation in Edinburgh had

not, up to this time, been in any just proportion to his powers; and

that, even with those who knew him best, his playful and sportive fancy

sparkled too much to the surface of his talk to let them see the grave,

deep currents that ran underneath. Every one now read with surprise the

articles attributed to him. Sydney had yielded him the place of honor,

and he had vindicated his right to it. He had thrown out a new and

forcible style of criticism, with a fearless, unmisgiving, and

unhesitating courage. Objectors might doubt or cavil at the opinions

expressed; but the various and comprehensive knowledge, the subtle,

argumentative genius the brilliant and definite expression, there was no

disputing or denying. A fresh, and startling power was about to make

itself felt in literature.

"Jeffrey," said his most generous fellow laborer, a few days after the

Review appeared, "is the person who will derive most honor from this

publication, as his articles in this number are generally known, and are

incomparably the best; I have received the greater pleasure from this

circumstance, because the genius of that little man has remained almost

unknown to all but his most intimate acquaintances. His manner is not at

first pleasing; what is worse, it is of that cast which almost

irresistibly impresses upon strangers the idea of levity and superficial

talents. Yet there is not any man, whose real character is so much the

reverse; he has, indeed, a very sportive and playful fancy, but it is

accompanied with an extensive and varied information, with a readiness

of apprehension almost intuitive, with judicious and calm discernment,

with a profound and penetrating understanding." This confident passage

from a private journal of the 20th November, 1802 may stand as a

remarkable monument of the prescience of Francis Horner.

Yet it was also the opinion of this candid and sagacious man that he and

his fellows had not gained much character by that first number of the

Review. As a set-off to the talents exhibited, he spoke of the

severity--of what, in some of the papers, might be called the

scurrility--as having given general dissatisfaction; and he predicted

that they would have to soften their tone, and be more indulgent to

folly and bad taste. Perhaps it is hardly thus that the objection should

have been expressed. It is now, after the lapse of nearly half a

century, admitted on all hands that the tone adopted by these young

Edinburgh reviewers was in some respects extremely indiscreet; and that

it was not simply folly and bad taste, but originality and genius, that

had the right to more indulgence at their hands. When Lord Jeffrey

lately collected Mr. Jeffrey's critical articles, he silently dropped

those very specimens of his power which by their boldness of view,

severity of remark, and vivacity of expression, would still as of old

have attracted the greatest notice; and preferred to connect with his

name, in the regard of such as might hereafter take interest in his

writings, only those papers which, by enforcing what appeared to him

just principles and useful opinions, he hoped might have a tendency to

make men happier and better. Somebody said by way of compliment of the

early days of the Scotch Review, that it made reviewing more respectable

than authorship; and the remark, though essentially the reverse of a

compliment, exhibits with tolerable accuracy the general design of the

work at its outset. Its ardent young reviewers took a somewhat too

ambitious stand above the literature they criticised. "To all of us,"

Horner ingenuously confessed, "it is only matter of temporary amusement

and subordinate occupation."

Something of the same notion was in Scott's thoughts when, smarting from

a severe but not unjust or ungenerous review of Marmion, he said that

Jeffrey loved to see imagination best when it is bitted and managed, and

ridden upon the _grand pas_. He did not make sufficient allowance for

starts and sallies and bounds, when Pegasus was beautiful to behold,

though sometimes perilous to his rider. He would have had control of

horse as well as rider, Scott complained, and made himself master of the

menage to both. But on the other hand this was often very possible; and

nothing could then be conceived more charming than the earnest, playful,

delightful way in which his comments adorned and enriched the poets he

admired. Hogarth is not happier in Charles Lamb's company, than is the

homely vigor and genius of Crabbe under Jeffrey's friendly leading; he

returned fancy for fancy to Moore's exuberance, and sparkled with a wit

as keen; he "tamed his wild heart" to the loving thoughtfulness of

Rogers, his scholarly enthusiasm, his pure and vivid pictures; with the

fiery energy and passionate exuberance of Byron, his bright, courageous

spirit broke into earnest sympathy; for the clear and stirring strains

of Campbell he had an ever lively and liberal response; and Scott, in

the midst of many temptations to the exercise of severity never ceased

to awaken the romance and generosity of his nature.

His own idea of the more grave critical claims put forth by him in his

early days, found expression in later life. He had constantly

endeavored, he said, to combine ethical precepts with literary

criticism. He had earnestly sought to impress his readers with a sense,

both of the close connection between sound intellectual attainments, and

the higher elements of duty and enjoyment; and of the just and ultimate

subordination of the former to the latter. Nor without good reason did

he take this praise to himself. The taste which Dugald Stewart had

implanted in him, governed him more than any other at the outset of his

career; and may often have contributed not a little, though quite

unconsciously, to lift the aspiring young metaphysician somewhat too

ambitiously above the level of the luckless author summoned to his

judgment seat. Before the third year of the review had opened, he had

broken a spear in the lists of metaphysical philosophy even with his old

tutor, and with Jeremy Bentham, both in the maturity of their fame; he

had assailed, with equal gallantry, the opposite errors of Priestley and

Reid; and, not many years later, he invited his friend Alison to a

friendly contest, from which the fancies of that amiable man came out

dulled by a superior brightness, by more lively, varied, and animated

conceptions of beauty, and by a style which recommended a more than

Scotch soberness of doctrine with a more than French vivacity of

expression.

For it is to be said of Jeffrey, that when he opposed himself to

enthusiasm, he did so in the spirit of an enthusiast; and that this had

a tendency to correct such critical mistakes as he may occasionally have

committed. And as of him, so of his Review. In professing to go deeply

into the _principles_ on which its judgments were to be rested, as well

as to take large and original views of all the important question to

which those works might relate--it substantially succeeded, as Jeffrey

presumed to think it had done, in familiarizing the public mind with

higher speculations, and sounder and larger views of the great objects

of human pursuit; as well as in permanently raising the standard, and

increasing the influence, of all such occasional writings far beyond the

limits of Great Britain.

Nor let it be forgotten that the system on which Jeffrey established

relations between his writers and publishers has been of the highest

value as a precedent in such matters, and has protected the independence

and dignity of a later race of reviewers. He would never receive an

unpaid-for contribution. He declined to make it the interest of the

proprietors to prefer a certain class of contributors. The payment was

ten guineas a sheet at first, and rose gradually to double that sum,

with increase on special occasions; and even when rank or other

circumstances made remuneration a matter of perfect indifference,

Jeffrey insisted that it should nevertheless be received. The Czar

Peter, when working in the trenches, he was wont to say, received pay as

a common soldier. Another principle which he rigidly carried out, was

that of a thorough independence of publishing interests. The Edinburgh

Review was never made in any manner tributary to particular bookselling

schemes. It assailed or supported with equal vehemence or heartiness the

productions of Albemarle-street and Paternoster-row. "I never asked such

a thing of him but once," said the late Mr. Constable, describing an

attempt to obtain a favorable notice from his obdurate editor, "and I

assure you the result was no encouragement to repeat such petitions."

The book was Scott's edition of Swift; and the result one of the

bitterest attacks on the popularity of Swift, in one of Jeffrey's most

masterly criticisms.

He was the better able thus to carry his point, because against more

potent influences he had already taken a decisive stand. It was not till

six years after the Review was started that Scott remonstrated with

Jeffrey on the virulence of its party politics. But much earlier even

than this, the principal proprietors had made the same complaint; had

pushed their objections to the contemplation of Jeffrey's surrender of

the editorship; and had opened negotiations with writers known to be

bitterly opposed to him. To his honor, Southey declined these overtures,

and advised a compromise of the dispute. Some of the leading Whigs

themselves were discontented, and Horner had appealed to him from the

library of Holland House. Nevertheless, Jeffrey stood firm. He carried

the day against Paternoster-row, and unassailably established the

all-important principle of a perfect independence of his publishers'

control. He stood as resolute against his friend Scott; protesting that

on one leg, and the weakest, the Review could not and should not stand,

for that its _right leg_ he knew to be politics. To Horner he replied,

by carrying the war into the Holland House country with inimitable

spirit and cogency. "Do, for Heaven's sake, let your Whigs do something

popular and effective this session. Don't you see the nation is now

divided into two, and only two parties; and that _between_ these stand

the Whigs, utterly inefficient, and incapable of ever becoming

efficient, if they will still maintain themselves at an equal distance

from both. You must lay aside a great part of your aristocratic

feelings, and side with the most respectable and sane of the democrats."

The vigorous wisdom of the advice was amply proved by subsequent events,

and its courage nobody will doubt who knows any thing of what Scotland

was at the time. In office, if not in intellect, the Tories were

supreme. A single one of the Dundases named the sixteen Scots peers, and

forty-three of the Scots commoners; nor was it an impossible farce, that

the sheriff of a county should be the only freeholder present at the

election of a member to represent it in Parliament, should as freeholder

vote himself chairman, should as chairman receive the oaths and the writ

for himself as sheriff, should as chairman and sheriff sign them, should

propose himself as candidate, declare himself elected, dictate and sign

the minutes of election, make the necessary indenture between the

various parties represented solely by himself, transmit it to the

Crown-office, and take his seat by the same night's mail to vote with

Mr. Addington! We must recollect such things, when we would really

understand the services of such men as Jeffrey. We must remember the

evil and injustice he so strenuously labored to remove, and the cost at

which his labor was given. We must bear in mind that he had to face day

by day, in the exercise of his profession, the very men most interested

in the abuses actively assailed, and keenly resolved, as far as

possible, to disturb and discredit their assailant. "Oh, Mr. Smith,"

said Lord Stowell to Sydney, "you would have been a much richer man if

you had come over to us!" This was in effect the sort of thing said to

Jeffrey daily in the Court of Session, and disregarded with generous

scorn. What it is to an advocate to be on the deaf side of "the ear of

the Court," none but an advocate can know; and this, with Jeffrey, was

the twenty-five years' penalty imposed upon him for desiring to see the

Catholics emancipated, the consciences of dissenters relieved, the

barbarism of jurisprudence mitigated, and the trade in human souls

abolished.

The Scotch Tories died hard. Worsted in fair fight they resorted to

foul; and among the publications avowedly established for personal

slander of their adversaries, a pre-eminence so infamous was obtained by

the Beacon, that it disgraced the cause irretrievably. Against this

malignant libeler Jeffrey rose in the Court of Session again and again,

and the result of its last prosecution showed the power of the party

represented by it thoroughly broken. The successful advocate, at length

triumphant even in that Court over the memory of his talents and virtues

elsewhere, had now forced himself into the front rank of his profession;

and they who listened to his advocacy found it even more marvelous than

his criticism, for power, versatility, and variety. Such rapidity yet

precision of thought, such volubility yet clearness of utterance, left

all competitors behind. Hardly any subject could be so indifferent or

uninviting, that this teeming and fertile intellect did not surround it

with a thousand graces of allusion, illustration, and fanciful

expression. He might have suggested Butler's hero,

"--who could not ope

His mouth but out there flew a trope,"

with the difference that each trope flew to its proper mark, each fancy

found its place in the dazzling profusion, and he could at all times,

with a charming and instinctive ease, put the nicest restraints and

checks on his glowing velocity of declamation. A worthy Glasgow

baillie, smarting under an adverse verdict obtained by these facilities

of speech, could find nothing so bitter to advance against the speaker

as a calculation made with the help of Johnson's Dictionary, to the

effect that Mr. Jeffrey, in the course of a few hours, had spoken the

whole English language twice over!

But the Glasgow baillie made little impression on his fellow citizens;

and from Glasgow came the first public tribute to Jeffrey's now achieved

position, and legal as well as literary fame. He was elected Lord Rector

of the University in 1821 and 1822. Some seven or eight years previously

he had married the accomplished lady who survives him, a grand-niece of

the celebrated Wilkes; and had purchased the lease of the villa near

Edinburgh which he occupied to the time of his death, and whose romantic

woods and grounds will long be associated with his name. At each step of

his career a new distinction now awaited him, and with every new

occasion his unflagging energies seemed to rise and expand. He never

wrote with such masterly success for his Review as when his whole time

appeared to be occupied with criminal prosecutions, with contested

elections, with journeyings from place to place, with examinings and

cross-examinings, with speeches, addresses, exhortations, denunciations.

In all conditions and on all occasions, a very atmosphere of activity

was around him. Even as he sat, apparently still, waiting to address a

jury or amaze a witness, it made a slow man nervous to look at him. Such

a flush of energy vibrated through that delicate frame, such rapid and

never ceasing thought played on those thin lips, such restless flashes

of light broke from those kindling eyes. You continued to look at him,

till his very silence acted as a spell; and it ceased to be difficult to

associate with his small but well-knit figure even the giant-like labors

and exertions of this part of his astonishing career.

At length, in 1829, he was elected Dean of the Faculty of Advocates; and

thinking it unbecoming that the official head of a great law corporation

should continue the editing of a party organ, he surrendered the

management of the Edinburgh Review. In the year following, he took

office with the Whigs as Lord Advocate, and replaced Sir James Scarlett

in Lord Fitzwilliam's borough of Malton. In the next memorable year he

contested his native city against a Dundas; not succeeding in his

election, but dealing the last heavy blow to his opponent's sinking

dynasty. Subsequently he took his seat as Member for Perth, introduced

and carried the Scotch Reform bill, and in the December of 1832 was

declared member for Edinburgh. He had some great sorrows at this time to

check and alloy his triumphs. Probably no man had gone through a life of

eager conflict and active antagonism with a heart so sensitive to the

gentler emotions, and the deaths of Mackintosh and Scott affected him

deeply. He had had occasion, during the illness of the latter, to

allude to him in the House of Commons; and he did this with so much

beauty and delicacy, with such manly admiration of the genius and modest

deference to the opinions of his great Tory friend, that Sir Robert Peel

made a journey across the floor of the house to thank him cordially for

it.

The House of Commons nevertheless was not his natural element, and when,

in 1834, a vacancy in the Court of Session invited him to his due

promotion, he gladly accepted the dignified and honorable office so

nobly earned by his labors and services. He was in his sixty-second year

at the time of his appointment, and he continued for nearly sixteen

years the chief ornament of the Court in which he sat. In former days

the judgment-seats in Scotland had not been unused to the graces of

literature; but in Jeffrey these were combined with an acute and

profound knowledge of law less usual in that connection; and also with

such a charm of demeanor, such a play of fancy and wit sobered to the

kindliest courtesies, such clear sagacity, perfect freedom from bias,

consideration for all differences of opinion; and integrity,

independence, and broad comprehensiveness of view in maintaining his

own; that there has never been but one feeling as to his judicial

career. Universal veneration and respect attended it. The speculative

studies of his youth had done much to soften all the asperities of his

varied and vigorous life, and now, at its close, they gave to his

judgments a large reflectiveness of tone, a moral beauty of feeling, and

a philosophy of charity and good taste, which have left to his

successors in that Court of Session no nobler models for imitation and

example. Impatience of dullness _would_ break from him, now and then;

and the still busy activity of his mind might be seen as he rose often

suddenly from his seat, and paced up and down before it; but in his

charges or decisions nothing of this feeling was perceptible, except

that lightness and grace of expression in which his youth seemed to

linger to the last, and a quick sensibility to emotion and enjoyment

which half concealed the ravages of time.

If such was the public estimation of this great and amiable man, to the

very termination of his useful life, what language should describe the

charm of his influence in his private and domestic circle? The

affectionate pride with which every citizen of Edinburgh regarded him

rose here to a kind of idolatry. For here the whole man was known--his

kind heart, his open hand, his genial talk, his ready sympathy, his

generous encouragement and assistance to all that needed it. The first

passion of his life was its last, and never was the love of literature

so bright within him as at the brink of the grave. What dims and deadens

the impressibility of most men, had rendered his not only more acute and

fresh, but more tributary to calm satisfaction, and pure enjoyment. He

did not live merely in the past as age is wont to do, but drew delight

from every present manifestation of worth, or genius, from whatever

quarter it addressed him. His vivid pleasure where his interest was

awakened, his alacrity and eagerness of appreciation, the fervor of his

encouragement and praise, have animated the hopes and relieved the toil

alike of the successful and the unsuccessful, who can not hope, through

whatever checkered future may await them, to find a more, generous

critic, a more profound adviser, a more indulgent friend.

The present year opened upon Francis Jeffrey with all hopeful promise.

He had mastered a severe illness, and resumed his duties with his

accustomed cheerfulness; private circumstances had more than ordinarily

interested him in his old Review; and the memory of past friends, giving

yet greater strength to the affection that surrounded him, was busy at

his heart. "God bless you!" he wrote to Sydney Smith's widow on the

night of the 18th of January; "I am very old, and have many infirmities;

but I am tenacious of old friendships, and find much of my present

enjoyments in the recollections of the past." He sat in Court the next

day, and on the Monday and Tuesday of the following week, with his

faculties and attention unimpaired. On the Wednesday he had a slight

attack of bronchitis; on Friday, symptoms of danger appeared; and on

Saturday he died, peacefully and without pain. Few men had completed

with such consummate success the work appointed them in this world; few

men had passed away to a better with more assured hopes of their reward.

The recollection of his virtues sanctifies his fame; and his genius will

never cease to awaken the gratitude, respect, and pride of his

countrymen.

HAIL AND FAREWELL!

METAL IN SEA-WATER.

The French _savans_, MM. Malaguti, Derocher, and Sarzeaud, announce that

they have detected in the waters of the ocean the presence of copper,

lead, and silver. The water examined appears to have been taken some

leagues off the coast of St. Malo, and the fucoidal plants of that

district are also found to contain silver. The _F. serratus_ and the _F.

ceramoides_ yielded ashes containing 1-100,000th, while the water of the

sea contained but little more than 1-100,000,000th. They state also that

they find silver in sea-salt, in ordinary muriatic acid, and in the soda

of commerce; and that they have examined the rock-salt of Lorraine, in

which also they discover this metal. Beyond this, pursuing their

researches on terrestrial plants, they have obtained such indications as

leave no doubt of the existence of silver in vegetable tissues. Lead is

said to be always found in the ashes of marine plants, usually about an

18-100,000th part, and invariably a trace of copper. Should these

results be confirmed by further examination, we shall have advanced

considerably toward a knowledge of the phenomena of the formation of

mineral veins.--_Athenaeum._

[From Bentley's Miscellany.]

DR. JOHNSON: HIS RELIGIOUS LIFE, AND HIS DEATH.

The title is a captivating one, and will allure many, but it very feebly

expresses the contents of the volume, which brings under our observation

the religious opinions of scores upon scores of other men, and is

enriched with numerous anecdotes of the contemporaries of the great

lexicographer. The book, indeed, may be considered as a condensation of

all that was known and recorded of Dr. Johnson's practice and experience

of religion from his youth to his death; of its powerful influence over

him through many years of his life--of the nature of his faith, and of

its fruits in his works; but there is added to this so much that is

excellent of other people--the life of the soul is seen in so many other

characters--so many subjects are introduced that are more or less

intimately connected with that to which the title refers, and all are so

admirably blended together, and interwoven with the excellent remarks of

the author, as to justify us in saying of the book, that it is one of

the most edifying and really useful we have for years past met with.

It has often been our lot to see the sneers of beardless boys at the

mention of religion, and to hear the titter of the empty-headed when

piety was spoken of, and we always then thought of the profound awe with

which the mighty mind of Dr. Johnson was impressed by such subjects--of

his deep humiliation of soul when he reflected upon his duties and

responsibilities--and of his solemn and reverential manner when religion

became the topic of discourse, or the subject of his thoughts. His

intellect, one of the grandest that was ever given to man, humbled

itself to the very dust before the Giver; the very superiority of his

mental powers over those of other men, made him but feel himself the

less in his own sight, when he reflected from whom he had his being, and

to whom he must render an account of the use he made of the vast

intellectual powers he possessed.

But the religion of Dr. Johnson consisted not in deep feeling only, nor

in much talking nor professing, but was especially distinguished by its

practical benevolence; when he possessed but two-pence, one penny was

always at the service of any one who had nothing at all; his poor house

was an asylum for the poor, a home for the destitute; there, for months

and years together, he sheltered and supported the needy and the blind,

at a time when his utmost efforts could do no more than provide bare

support for them and himself. Those whom he loved not he would

serve--those whom he esteemed not he would give to, and labor for, and

devote the best powers of his pen to help and to benefit.

The cry of distress, the appeal of the afflicted, was irresistible with

him--no matter whatever else pressed upon him--whatever literary calls

were urging him--or however great the need of the daily toil for the

daily bread--all was abandoned till the houseless were sheltered, till

the hungry were fed, and the defenseless were protected; and it would be

difficult to name any of all Dr. Johnson's contemporaries--he in all his

poverty, and they in all their abundance--in whose lives such proofs

could be found of the most enlarged charity and unwearied benevolence.

But the book treats of so many subjects, of so much that is connected

with religion in general, and with the Church of England in particular,

that we can really do no more than refer our readers to the volume

itself; with the assurance that they will find in it much useful and

agreeable information on all those many matters which are connected in

these times with Church interests, and which are more or less

influencing all classes of the religious public.

The author writes freely, and with great power; he argues ably, and

discusses liberally all the points of religious controversy, and a very

delightful volume is the result of his labors. It must do good, it must

please and improve the mind, as well as delight the heart of all who

read it. Indeed, no one not equal to the work could have ventured upon

it without lasting disgrace had he failed in it; a dissertation upon the

faith and morals of a man whose fame has so long filled the world, and

in whose writings so much of his religious feelings are displayed, and

so much of his spiritual life is unvailed, must be admirably written to

receive any favor from the public; and we think that the author has so

ably done what he undertook to do, that that full measure of praise will

be awarded to him, which in our judgment he deserves.

A perusal of this excellent work reminds us of the recent sale of some

letters and documents of Dr. Johnson from Mr. Linnecar's collection. The

edifying example of this good and great man, so well set forth in the

present volume, is fully borne out in an admirable prayer composed by

Dr. Johnson, a few months before his death, the original copy of which

was here disposed of. For the gratification of the reader, we may be

allowed to give the following brief abstract of the contents of these

papers:

"To DAVID GARRICK.

"Streatham, December 13, 1771.

"I have thought upon your epitaph, but without much effect; an

epitaph is no easy thing. Of your three stanzas, the third is

utterly unworthy of you. The first and third together give no

discriminative character. If the first alone were to stand,

Hogarth would not be distinguished from any other man of

intellectual eminence. Suppose you worked upon something like

this:

"The hand of Art here torpid lies,

That traced th' essential form of grace,

Here death has clos'd the curious eyes

That saw the manners in the face.

If genius warm thee, Reader, stay,

If merit touch thee, shed a tear,

Be Vice and Dullness far away,

Great Hogarth's honor'd dust is here."

"To DR. FARMER.

"Bolt Court, July 22d, 1777.

"The booksellers of London have undertaken a kind of body of

English Poetry, excluding generally the dramas, and I have

undertaken to put before each author's works a sketch of his

life, and a character of his writings. Of some, however, I know

very little, and am afraid I shall not easily supply my

deficiencies. Be pleased to inform me whether among Mr. Burke's

manuscripts, or any where else at Cambridge any materials are to

be found."

"To OZIAS HUMPHREY.

"May 31st, 1784.

"I am very much obliged by your civilities to my godson, and must

beg of you to add to them the favor of permitting him to see you

paint, that he may know how a picture is begun, advanced and

completed. If he may attend you in a few of your operations, I

hope he will show that the benefit has been properly conferred,

both by his proficiency and his gratitude."

The following beautiful prayer is dated Ashbourne, Sept. 18, 1784:

"Make me truly thankful for the call by which Thou hast awakened

my conscience and summoned me to repentance. Let not Thy call, O

Lord, be forgotten, or Thy summons neglected, but let the residue

of my life, whatever it shall be, be passed in true contrition,

and diligent obedience. Let me repent of the sins of my past

life, and so keep Thy laws for the time to come, that when it

shall be Thy good pleasure to call me to another state, I may

find mercy in Thy sight. Let Thy Holy Spirit support me in the

hour of death, and, O Lord, grant me pardon in the day of

Judgment."

Besides the above, Dr. Johnson's celebrated letter to the author of

"Ossian's Poems," in which he says, "I will not be deterred from

detecting what I think to be a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian," was

sold at this sale for twelve guineas.

SONETTO.

FROM THE ITALIAN OF BENEDETTO MENZINI.

I planted once a laurel tree,

And breathed to heaven an humble vow

That Phoebus' favorite it might be,

And shade and deck a poet's brow!

I prayed to Zephyr that his wing,

Descending through the April sky,

Might wave the boughs in early spring

And brush rude Boreas frowning by.

And slowly Phoebus heard the prayer,

And slowly, slowly, grew the tree,

And others sprang more fast and fair,

Yet marvel not that this should be;

For tardier still the growth of Fame--

And who is _he_ the crown may claim?

ETA

[From Household Words.]

A CHILD'S DREAM OF A STAR.

There was once a child, and he strolled about a good deal, and thought

of a number of things. He had a sister, who was a child too, and his

constant companion. These two used to wonder all day long. They wondered

at the beauty of the flowers; they wondered at the height and blueness

of the sky; they wondered at the depth of the bright water; they

wondered at the goodness and the power of God who made the lovely world.

They used to say to one another, sometimes, Supposing all the children

upon earth were to die, would the flowers, and the water, and the sky be

sorry? They believed they would be sorry. For, said they, the buds are

the children of the flowers, and the little playful streams that gambol

down the hill-sides are the children of the water; and the smallest

bright specks, playing at hide and seek in the sky all night, must

surely be the children of the stars; and they would all be grieved to

see their playmates, the children of men, no more.

There was one clear, shining star that used to come out in the sky

before the rest, near the church spire, above the graves. It was larger

and more beautiful, they thought, than all the others, and every night

they watched for it, standing hand in hand at a window. Whoever saw it

first, cried out, "I see the star!" And often they cried out both

together, knowing so well when it would rise, and where. So they grew to

be such friends with it, that, before lying down in their beds, they

always looked out once again, to bid it good night; and when they were

turning round to sleep, they used to say, "God bless the star!"

But while she was still very young, oh very, very young, the sister

drooped, and came to be so weak that she could no longer stand in the

window at night; and then the child looked sadly out by himself, and

when he saw the star, turned round and said to the patient, pale face on

the bed, "I see the star!" and then a smile would come upon the face,

and a little, weak voice used to say, "God bless my brother and the

star!"

And so the time came, all too soon! when the child looked out alone, and

when there was no face on the bed; and when there was a little grave

among the graves, not there before; and when the star made long rays

down toward him, as he saw it through his tears.

Now, these rays were so bright, and they seemed to make such a shining

way from earth to heaven, that when the child went to his solitary bed,

he dreamed about the star; and dreamed that, lying where he was, he saw

a train of people taken up that sparkling road by angels. And the star,

opening, showed him a great world of light, where many more such angels

waited to receive them.

All these angels, who were waiting, turned their beaming eyes upon the

people who were carried up into the star; and some came out from the

long rows in which they stood, and fell upon the people's necks, and

kissed them tenderly, and went away with them down avenues of light, and

were so happy in their company, that lying in his bed he wept for joy.

But there were many angels who did not go with them, and among them one

he knew. The patient face that once had lain upon the bed was glorified

and radiant, but his heart found out his sister among all the host.

His sister's angel lingered near the entrance of the star, and said to

the leader among those who had brought the people thither:

"Is my brother come?"

And he said "No."

She was turning hopefully away, when the child stretched out his arms,

and cried, "O, sister, I am here! Take me!" and then she turned her

beaming eyes upon him, and it was night; and the star was shining into

the room, making long rays down toward him as he saw it through his

tears.

From that hour forth, the child looked out upon the star as on the Home

he was to go to, when his time should come; and he thought that he did

not belong to the earth alone, but to the star too, because of his

sister's angel gone before.

There was a baby born to be a brother to the child; and while he was so

little that he never yet had spoken word, he stretched his tiny form

out on his bed, and died.

Again the child dreamed of the opened star, and of the company of

angels, and the train of people, and the rows of angels with their

beaming eyes all turned upon those people's faces.

Said his sister's angel to the leader:

"Is my brother come?"

And he said, "Not that one, but another."

As the child beheld his brother's angel in her arms, he cried, "O,

sister, I am here! Take me!" And she turned and smiled upon him, and the

star was shining.

He grew to be a young man, and was busy at his books, when an old

servant came to him, and said,

"Thy mother is no more. I bring her blessing on her darling son!"

Again at night he saw the star, and all that former company. Said his

sister's angel to the leader:

"Is my brother come?"

And he said, "Thy mother!"

A mighty cry of joy went forth through all the star, because the mother

was reunited to her two children. And he stretched out his arms and

cried, "O, mother, sister, and brother, I am here! Take me!" And they

answered him, "Not yet," and the star was shining.

He grew to be a man, whose hair was turning gray, and he was sitting in

his chair by the fireside, heavy with grief, and with his face bedewed

with tears, when the star opened once again.

Said his sister's angel to the leader, "Is my brother come?"

And he said, "Nay, but his maiden daughter."

And the man who had been the child saw his daughter, newly lost to him,

a celestial creature among those three, and he said, "My daughter's head

is on my sister's bosom, and her arm is round my mother's neck, and at

her feet there is the baby of old time, and I can bear the parting from

her, God be praised!"

And the star was shining.

Thus the child came to be an old man, and his once smooth face was

wrinkled, and his steps were slow and feeble, and his back was bent. And

one night as he lay upon his bed, his children standing round, he cried,

as he had cried so long ago,

"I see the star!"

They whispered one another, "He is dying."

And he said, "I am. My age is falling from me like a garment, and I move

toward the star as a child. And O, my Father, now I thank thee that it

has so often opened, to receive those dear ones who await me!"

And the star was shining; and it shines upon his grave.

LONGFELLOW.

The muse of Mr. Longfellow owes little or none of her success to those

great national sources of inspiration which are most likely to influence

an ardent poetic temperament. The grand old woods--the magnificent

mountain and forest scenery--the mighty rivers--the trackless

savannahs--all those stupendous and varied features of that great

country, with which, from his boyhood, he must have been familiar, it

might be thought would have stamped some of these characteristics upon

his poetry. Such, however, has not been the case. Of lofty images and

grand conceptions we meet with few, if any, traces. But brimful of life,

of love, and of truth, the stream of his song flows on with a tender and

touching simplicity, and a gentle music, which we have not met with

since the days of our own Moore. Like him, too, the genius of Mr.

Longfellow is essentially lyric; and if he has failed to derive

inspiration from the grand features of his own country, he has been no

unsuccessful student of the great works of the German masters of song.

We could almost fancy, while reading his exquisite ballad of the

"Beleaguered City," that Goethe, Schiller, or Uhland was before us; and

yet, we must by no means be understood to insinuate that he is a mere

copyist--quite the contrary. He has become so thoroughly imbued with the

spirit of these exquisite models, that he has contrived to produce

pieces marked with an individuality of their own, and noways behind them

in point of poetical merit. In this regard he affords another

illustration of the truth of the proposition, that the legendary lore

and traditions of other countries have been very serviceable toward the

formation of American literature.

About the year 1837, Longfellow, being engaged in making the tour of

Europe, selected Heidelberg for a permanent winter residence. There his

wife was attacked with an illness, which ultimately proved fatal. It so

happened, however, that some time afterward there came to the same

romantic place a young lady of considerable personal attractions. The

poet's heart was touched--he became attached to her; but the beauty of

sixteen did not sympathize with the poet of six-and-thirty, and

Longfellow returned to America, having lost his heart as well as his

wife. The young lady, also an American, returned home shortly afterward.

Their residences, it turned out, were contiguous, and the poet availed

himself of the opportunity of prosecuting his addresses, which he did

for a considerable time with no better success than at first. Thus

foiled, he set himself resolutely down, and instead, like Petrarch, of

laying siege to the heart of his mistress through the medium of sonnets,

he resolved to write a whole book; a book which would achieve the double

object of gaining her affections, and of establishing his own fame.

"Hyperion" was the result. His labor and his constancy were not thrown

away: they met their due reward. The lady gave him her hand as well as

her heart; and they now reside together at Cambridge, in the same house

which Washington made his head-quarters when he was first appointed to

the command of the American armies. These interesting facts were

communicated to us by a very intelligent American gentleman whom we had

the pleasure of meeting in the same place which was the scene of the

poet's early disappointment and sorrow.--_Dublin University Magazine._

THE CHAPEL BY THE SHORE.

By the shore, a plot of ground

Clips a ruined chapel round,

Buttressed with a grassy mound;

Where Day, and Night, and Day go by

And bring no touch of human sound.

Washing of the lonely seas--

Shaking of the guardian trees--

Piping of the salted breeze--

Day, and Night, and Day go by,

To the endless tune of these.

Or when, as winds and waters keep

A hush more dead than any sleep,

Still morns to stiller evenings creep,

And Day, and Night, and Day go by

Here the stillness is most deep.

And the ruins, lapsed again

Into Nature's wide domain,

Sow themselves with seed and grain,

As Day, and Night, and Day go by,

And hoard June's sun and April's rain.

Here fresh funeral tears were shed;

And now the graves are also dead:

And suckers from the ash-tree spread,

As Day, and Night, and Day go by

And stars move calmly overhead.

[From Household Words.]

ILLUSTRATIONS OF CHEAPNESS.

THE LUCIFER MATCH.

Some twenty years ago the process of obtaining fire, in every house in

England, with few exceptions, was as rude, as laborious, and as

uncertain, as the effort of the Indian to produce a flame by the

friction of two dry sticks.

The nightlamp and the rushlight were for the comparatively luxurious. In

the bedrooms of the cottager, the artisan, and the small tradesman, the

infant at its mother's side too often awoke, like Milton's nightingale,

"darkling"--but that "nocturnal note" was something different from

"harmonious numbers." The mother was soon on her feet; the friendly

tinder-box was duly sought. Click, click, click; not a spark tells upon

the sullen blackness. More rapidly does the flint ply the sympathetic

steel. The room is bright with the radiant shower. But the child,

familiar enough with the operation, is impatient at its tediousness, and

shouts till the mother is frantic. At length one lucky spark does its

office--the tinder is alight. Now for the match. It will not burn. A

gentle breath is wafted into the murky box; the face that leans over the

tinder is in a glow. Another match, and another, and another. They are

all damp. The toil-worn father "swears a prayer or two," the baby is

inexorable; and the misery is only ended when the goodman has gone to

the street door, and after long shivering has obtained a light from the

watchman.

In this, the beginning of our series of Illustrations of Cheapness, let

us trace this antique machinery through the various stages of its

production.

The tinder-box and the steel had nothing peculiar. The tinman made the

one as he made the saucepan, with hammer and shears; the other was

forged at the great metal factories of Sheffield and Birmingham; and

happy was it for the purchaser if it were something better than a rude

piece of iron, very uncomfortable to grasp. The nearest chalk quarry

supplied the flint. The domestic manufacture of the tinder was a serious

affair. At due seasons, and very often if the premises were damp, a

stifling smell rose from the kitchen, which, to those who were not

intimate with the process, suggested doubts whether the house were not

on fire. The best linen rag was periodically burnt, and its ashes

deposited in the tinman's box, pressed down with a close fitting lid,

upon which the flint and steel reposed. The match was chiefly an article

of itinerant traffic. The chandler's shop was almost ashamed of it. The

mendicant was the universal match-seller. The girl who led the blind

beggar had invariably a basket of matches. In the day they were vendors

of matches--in the evening manufacturers. On the floor of the hovel sit

two or three squalid children, splitting deal with a common knife. The

matron is watching a pipkin upon a slow fire. The fumes which it gives

forth are blinding as the brimstone's liquifying. Little bundles of

split deal are ready to be dipped, three or four at a time. When the

pennyworth of brimstone is used up, when the capital is exhausted, the

night's labor is over. In the summer, the manufacture is suspended, or

conducted upon fraudulent principles. Fire is then needless; so delusive

matches must be produced--wet splints dipped in powdered sulphur. They

will never burn, but they will do to sell to the unwary

maid-of-all-work.

About twenty years ago Chemistry discovered that the tinder-box might be

abolished. But Chemistry set about its function with especial reference

to the wants and the means of the rich few. In the same way the first

printed books were designed to have a great resemblance to manuscripts,

and those of the wealthy class were alone looked to as the purchasers of

the skillful imitations. The first chemical light producer was a complex

and ornamental casket, sold at a guinea. In a year or so, there were

pretty portable cases of a phial and matches, which enthusiastic young

housekeepers regarded as the cheapest of all treasures at five

shillings. By-and-by the light-box was sold as low as a shilling. The

fire revolution was slowly approaching. The old dynasty of the

tinder-box maintained its predominance for a short while in kitchen and

garret, in farm-house and cottage. At length some bold adventurer saw

that the new chemical discovery might be employed for the production of

a large article of trade--that matches, in themselves the vehicles of

fire without aid of spark and tinder, might be manufactured upon the

factory system--that the humblest in the land might have a new and

indispensable comfort at the very lowest rate of cheapness. When

Chemistry saw that phosphorus, having an affinity for oxygen at the

lowest temperature, would ignite upon slight friction, and so ignited

would ignite sulphur, which required a much higher temperature to become

inflammable, thus making the phosphorus do the work of the old tinder

with far greater certainty; or when Chemistry found that chlorate of

potash by slight friction might be exploded so as to produce combustion,

and might be safely used in the same combination--a blessing was

bestowed upon society that can scarcely be measured by those who have

had no former knowledge of the miseries and privations of the

tinder-box. The Penny Box of Lucifers, or Congreves, or by whatever name

called, is a real triumph of Science, and an advance in civilization.

Let us now look somewhat closely and practically into the manufacture of

a Lucifer Match.

The combustible materials used in the manufacture render the process an

unsafe one. It can not be carried on in the heart of towns without being

regarded as a common nuisance. We must therefore go somewhere in the

suburbs of London to find such a trade. In the neighborhood of Bethnal

Green there is a large open space called Wisker's Gardens. This is not a

place of courts and alleys, but a considerable area, literally divided

into small gardens, where just now the crocus and the snowdrop are

telling hopefully of the springtime. Each garden has the smallest of

cottages--for the most part wooden--which have been converted from

summer-houses into dwellings. The whole place reminds one of numberless

passages in the old dramatists, in which the citizens' wives are

described in their garden-houses of Finsbury or Hogsden, sipping

syllabub and talking fine on summer holidays. In one of these

garden-houses, not far from the public road, is the little factory of

"Henry Lester, Patentee of the Domestic Safety Match-box," as his label

proclaims. He is very ready to show his processes, which in many

respects are curious and interesting.

Adam Smith has instructed us that the business of making a pin is

divided into about eighteen distinct operations; and further, that ten

persons could make upward of forty-eight thousand pins a day with the

division of labor; while if they had all wrought independently and

separately, and without any of them having been educated to this

peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made

twenty. The Lucifer Match is a similar example of division of labor, and

the skill of long, practice. At a separate factory, where there is a

steam-engine, not the refuse of the carpenter's shop, but the best

Norway deals are cut into splints by machinery, and are supplied to the

match-maker. These little pieces, beautifully accurate in their minute

squareness, and in their precise length of five inches, are made up into

bundles, each of which contains eighteen hundred. They are daily brought

on a truck to the dipping-house, as it is called--the average number of

matches finished off daily requiring two hundred of these bundles. Up to

this point we have had several hands employed in the preparation of the

match, in connection with the machinery that cuts the wood. Let us

follow one of these bundles through the subsequent processes. Without

being separated, each end of the bundle is first dipped into sulphur.

When dry, the splints, adhering to each other by means of the sulphur,

must be parted by what is called dusting. A boy sitting on the floor,

with a bundle before him, strikes the matches with a sort of a mallet on

the dipped ends till they become thoroughly loosened. In the best

matches the process of sulphur-dipping and dusting is repeated. They

have now to be plunged into a preparation of phosphorus or chlorate of

potash, according to the quality of the match. The phosphorus produces

the pale, noiseless fire; the chlorate of potash the sharp, crackling

illumination. After this application of the more inflammable substance,

the matches are separated, and dried in racks. Thoroughly dried, they

are gathered up again into bundles of the same quantity; and are taken

to the boys who cut them; for the reader will have observed that the

bundles have been dipped at each end. There are few things more

remarkable in manufactures than the extraordinary rapidity of this

cutting process, and that which is connected with it. The boy stands

before a bench, the bundle on his right hand, a pile of half opened

empty boxes on his left, which have been manufactured at another

division of this establishment. These boxes are formed of scale-board,

that is, thin slices of wood, planed or scaled off a plank. The box

itself is a marvel of neatness and cheapness. It consists of an inner

box, without a top, in which the matches are placed, and of an outer

case, open at each end, into which the first box slides. The matches,

then, are to be cut, and the empty boxes filled, by one boy. A bundle is

opened; he seizes a portion, knowing, by long habit, the required number

with sufficient exactness; puts them rapidly into a sort of frame,

knocks the ends evenly together, confines them with a strap which he

tightens with his foot, and cuts them in two parts with a knife on a

hinge, which he brings down with a strong leverage: the halves lie

projecting over each end of the frame; he grasps the left portion and

thrusts it into a half open box, which he instantly closes, and repeats

the process with the matches on his right hand. This series of movements

is performed with a rapidity almost unexampled; for in this way, two

hundred thousand matches are cut, and two thousand boxes filled in a

day, by one boy, at the wages of three halfpence per gross of boxes.

Each dozen boxes is then papered up, and they are ready for the

retailer. The number of boxes daily filled at this factory is from fifty

to sixty gross.

The _wholesale_ price per dozen boxes of the best matches is FOURPENCE,

of the second quality, THREEPENCE.

There are about ten Lucifer Match manufactories in London. There are

others in large provincial towns. The wholesale business is chiefly

confined to the supply of the metropolis and immediate neighborhood by

the London makers; for the railroad carriers refuse to receive the

article, which is considered dangerous in transit. But we must not

therefore assume that the metropolitan populations consume the

metropolitan matches. Taking the population at upward of two millions,

and the inhabited houses at about three hundred thousand, let us

endeavor to estimate the distribution of these little articles of

domestic comfort.

At the manufactory at Wisker's Gardens there are fifty gross, or seven

thousand two hundred boxes, turned out daily, made from two hundred

bundles, which will produce seven hundred and twenty thousand matches.

Taking three hundred working days in the year, this will give for one

factory, two hundred and sixteen millions of matches annually, or two

millions one hundred and sixty thousand boxes, being a box of one

hundred matches for every individual of the London population. But there

are ten other Lucifer manufactories, which are estimated to produce

about four or five times as many more. London certainly can not absorb

ten millions of Lucifer boxes annually, which would be at the rate of

thirty-three boxes to each inhabited house. London, perhaps, demands a

third of the supply for its own consumption; and at this rate the annual

retail cost for each house is eightpence, averaging those boxes sold at

a halfpenny, and those at a penny. The manufacturer sells this article,

produced with such care as we have described, at one farthing and a

fraction per box.

And thus, for the retail expenditure of three farthings per month, every

house in London, from the highest to the lowest, may secure the

inestimable blessing of constant fire at all seasons, and at all hours.

London buys this for ten thousand pounds annually.

The excessive cheapness is produced by the extension of the demand,

enforcing the factory division of labor, and the most exact saving of

material. The scientific discovery was the foundation of the cheapness.

But connected with this general principle of cheapness, there are one or

two remarkable points, which deserve attention.

It is a law of this manufacture that the demand is greater in the summer

than in the winter. The old match maker, as we have mentioned, was idle

in the summer--without fire for heating the brimstone--or engaged in

more profitable field-work. A worthy woman, who once kept a chandler's

shop in a village, informs us, that in summer she could buy no matches

for retail, but was obliged to make them for her customers. The

increased summer demand for the Lucifer Matches shows that the great

consumption is among the masses--the laboring population--those who

make up the vast majority of the contributors to duties of customs and

excise. In the houses of the wealthy there is always fire; in the houses

of the poor, fire in summer is a needless hourly expense. Then comes the

Lucifer Match to supply the want; to light the candle to look in the

dark cupboard--to light the afternoon fire to boil the kettle. It is now

unnecessary to run to the neighbor for a light, or, as a desperate

resource, to work at the tinder-box. The Lucifer Matches sometimes fail,

but they cost little, and so they are freely used, even by the poorest.

And this involves another great principle. The demand for the Lucifer

Match is always continuous, for it is a perishable article. The demand

never ceases. Every match burnt demands a new match to supply its place.

This continuity of demand renders the supply always equal to the demand.

The peculiar nature of the commodity prevents any accumulation of stock;

its combustible character--requiring the simple agency of friction to

ignite it--renders it dangerous for large quantities of the article to

be kept in one place. Therefore no one makes for store, but all for

immediate sale. The average price, therefore, must always yield a

profit, or the production would altogether cease. But these essential

qualities limit the profit. The manufacturers can not be rich without

secret processes or monopoly. The contest is to obtain the largest

profit by economical management. The amount of skill required in the

laborers, and the facility of habit, which makes fingers act with the

precision of machines, limit the number of laborers, and prevent their

impoverishment. Every condition of this cheapness is a natural and

beneficial result of the laws that govern production.

TUNNEL OF THE ALPS.

The Sardinian Government is about to execute a grand engineering

project; it is going to pierce the summit-ridge of the Alps with a

tunnel twice as long as any existing tunnel in the world. A

correspondent of the _Times_ announces the fact. From London as far as

Chambery, by the Lyons railroad, all is at present smooth enough; and

the Lyons road is indeed about to be pushed up the ascents of Mont

Meillaud and St. Maurienne, even as far as Modane at the foot of the

Northern crest of the Graian and Cottian Alps: but there all further

progress is arrested; you can not hope to carry a train to Susa and

Turin unless you pierce the snow capped barrier itself: this is the very

step which the Chevalier Henry Maus projects. The Chevalier is Honorary

Inspector of the Genie Civil; it was he who projected and executed the

great works on the Liege railroad. After five years of incessant study,

many practical experiments, and the invention of new machinery for

boring the mountain, he made his final report to the Government on the

8th of February, 1849. A commission of distinguished civil engineers,

artillery officers, geologists, senators, and statesmen, have reported

unanimously in favor of the project; and the Government has resolved to

carry it out forthwith. The "Railroad of the Alps," connecting the

tunnel with the Chambery railway on the one side and with that of Susa

on the other side, will be 36,565 metres or 20-3/4 English miles in

length, and will cost 21,000,000 francs. The connecting tunnel is thus

described:

"It will measure 12,290 metres, or nearly seven English miles in length;

its greatest height will be 19 feet, and its width 25 feet, admitting,

of course, of a double line of rail. Its northern entrance is to be at

Modane, and the southern entrance at Bardonneche, on the river

Mardovine. This latter entrance, being the highest point of the intended

line of rail, will be 4,092 feet above the level of the sea, and yet

2,400 feet below the highest or culminating point of the great road or

pass over the Mont Cenis. It is intended to divide the connecting lines

of rail leading to either entrance of the tunnel into eight inclined

planes of about 5,000 metres or 2-1/2 English miles each, worked like

those at Liege, by endless cables and stationary engines, but in the

present case moved by water-power derived from the torrents."

THE FLOWER GATHERER.

[FROM THE GERMAN OF KRUMMACHER.]

"God sends upon the wings of Spring,

Fresh thoughts into the breasts of flowers."

MISS BREMER.

The young and innocent Theresa had passed the most beautiful part of the

spring upon a bed of sickness; and as soon as ever she began to regain

her strength, she spoke of flowers, asking continually if her favorites

were again as lovely as they had been the year before, when she had been

able to seek for and admire them herself. Erick, the sick girl's little

brother, took a basket, and showing it to his mamma, said, in a whisper,

"Mamma, I will run out and get poor Theresa the prettiest I can find in

the fields." So out he ran, for the first time for many a long day, and

he thought that spring had never been so beautiful before; for he looked

upon it with a gentle and loving heart, and enjoyed a run in the fresh

air, after having been a prisoner by his sister's couch, whom he had

never left during her illness. The happy child rambled about, up hill

and down hill. Nightingales sang, bees hummed, and butterflies flitted

round him, and the most lovely flowers were blowing at his feet. He

jumped about, he danced, he sang, and wandered from hedge to hedge, and

from flower to flower, with a soul as pure as the blue sky above him,

and eyes that sparkled like a little brook bubbling from a rock. At last

he had filled his basket quite full of the prettiest flowers; and, to

crown all, he had made a wreath of field-strawberry flowers, which he

laid on the top of it, neatly arranged on some grass, and one might

fancy them a string of pearls, they looked so pure and fresh. The happy

boy looked with delight at his full basket, and putting it down by his

side, rested himself in the shade of an oak, on a carpet of soft green

moss. Here he sat, looking at the beautiful prospect that lay spread out

before him in all the freshness of spring, and listening to the

ever-changing songs of the birds. But he had really tired himself out

with joy; and the merry sounds of the fields, the buzzing of the

insects, and the birds' songs, all helped to send him to sleep. And

peacefully the fair child slumbered, his rosy cheek resting on the hands

that still held his treasured basket.

But while he slept a sudden change came on. A storm arose in the

heavens, but a few moments before so blue and beautiful. Heavy masses of

clouds gathered darkly and ominously together; the lightning flashed,

and the thunder rolled louder and nearer. Suddenly a gust of wind roared

in the boughs of the oak, and startled the boy out of his quiet sleep.

He saw the whole heavens vailed by black clouds; not a sunbeam gleamed

over the fields, and a heavy clap of thunder followed his waking. The

poor child stood up, bewildered at the sudden change; and now the rain

began to patter through the leaves of the oak, so he snatched up his

basket, and ran toward home as fast as his legs could carry him. The

storm seemed to burst over his head. Rain, hail, and thunder, striving

for the mastery, almost deafened him, and made him more bewildered every

minute. Water streamed from his poor soaked curls down his shoulders,

and he could scarcely see to find his way homeward. All on a sudden a

more violent gust of wind than usual caught the treasured basket, and

scattered all his carefully-collected flowers far away over the field.

His patience could endure no longer, for his face grew distorted with

rage, and he flung the empty basket from him, with a burst of anger.

Crying bitterly, and thoroughly wet, he reached at last his parents'

house in a pitiful plight.

But soon another change appeared; the storm passed away, and the sky

grew clear again. The birds began their songs anew, the countryman his

labor. The air had become cooler and purer, and a bright calm seemed to

lie lovingly in every valley and on every hill. What a delicious odor

rose from the freshened fields! and their cultivators looked with

grateful joy at the departing clouds, which had poured the fertilizing

rain upon them. The sight of the blue sky soon tempted the frightened

boy out again, and being by this time ashamed of his ill-temper, he went

very quietly to look for his discarded basket, and to try and fill it

again. He seemed to feel a new life within him. The cool breath of the

air--the smell of the fields--the leafy trees--the warbling birds, all

appeared doubly beautiful after the storm, and the humiliating

consciousness of his foolish and unjust ill-temper softened and

chastened his joy. After a long search he spied the basket lying on the

slope of a hill, for a bramble bush had caught it, and sheltered it from

the violence of the wind. The child felt quite thankful to the

ugly-looking bush as he disentangled the basket.

But how great was his delight on looking around him, to see the fields

spangled with flowers, as numerous as the stars of heaven! for the rain

had nourished into blossom thousands of daisies, opened thousands of

buds, and scattered pearly drops on every leaf. Erick flitted about like

a busy bee, and gathered away to his heart's content. The sun was now

near his setting, and the happy child hastened home with his basket full

once more. How delighted he was with his flowery treasure, and with the

pearly garland of fresh strawberry-flowers! The rays of the sinking sun

played over his fair face as he wandered on, and gave his pretty

features a placid and contented expression. But his eyes sparkled much

more joyously when he received the kisses and thanks of his gentle

sister. "Is it not true, dear," said his mother, "that the pleasures we

prepare for others are the best of all?"

ROYAL ROAD TO KNOWLEDGE.--A Mr. Jules Aleix, of Paris, states that he

has discovered a new method of education, by which a child can be taught

to read in fifteen lessons, and has petitioned the Assembly to expend

50,000 francs on a model school to demonstrate the fact.

[From Household Words.]

SHORT CUTS ACROSS THE GLOBE.

To a person who wishes to sail for California an inspection of the map

of the world reveals a provoking peculiarity. The Atlantic Ocean--the

highway of the globe--being separated from the Pacific by the great

western continent, it is impossible to sail to the opposite coasts

without going thousands of miles out of his way; for he must double Cape

Horn. Yet a closer inspection of the map will discover that but for one

little barrier of land, which is in size but as a grain of sand to the

bed of an ocean, the passage would be direct. Were it not for that small

neck of land, the Isthmus of Panama (which narrows in one place to

twenty-eight miles) he might save a voyage of from six to eight thousand

miles, and pass at once into the Pacific Ocean. Again, if his desires

tend toward the East, he perceives that but for the Isthmus of Suez, he

would not be obliged to double the Cape of Good Hope. The eastern

difficulty has been partially obviated by the overland route opened up

by the ill-rewarded Waghorn. The western barrier has yet to be broken

through.

Now that we can shake hands with Brother Jonathan in twelve days by

means of weekly steamers; travel from one end of Great Britain to

another, or from the Hudson to the Ohio, as fast as the wind, and make

our words dance to distant friends upon the magic tight wire a great

deal faster--now that the European and Columbian Saxon is spreading his

children more or less over all the known habitable world: it seems

extraordinary that the simple expedient of opening a twenty-eight mile

passage between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, to save a dangerous

voyage of some eight thousand miles, has not been already achieved. In

this age of enterprise that so simple a remedy for so great an evil

should not have been applied appears astonishing. Nay, we ought to feel

some shame when we reflect that evidences in the neighborhood of both

isthmuses exist of such junction having existed, in what we are pleased

to designate "barbarous" ages.

Does nature present insurmountable engineering difficulties to the

Panama scheme? By no means: for after the Croton aqueduct, our own

railway tunneling, and the Britannia tubular bridge, engineering

difficulties have become obsolete. Are the levels of the Pacific and the

Gulf of Mexico, which should be joined, so different, that if one were

admitted the fall would inundate the surrounding country? Not at all.

Hear Humboldt on these points.

Forty years ago he declared it to be his firm opinion that "the Isthmus

of Panama is suited to the formation of an oceanic canal--one with fewer

sluices than the Caledonian Canal--capable of affording an unimpeded

passage, at all seasons of the year, to vessels of that class which sail

between New York and Liverpool, and between Chili and California." In

the recent edition of his "Views of Nature," he "sees no reason to

alter the views he has always entertained on this subject." Engineers,

both British and American, have confirmed this opinion by actual survey.

As, then, combination of British skill, capital, and energy, with that

of the most "go-ahead" people upon earth, have been dormant, whence the

secret of the delay? The answer at once allays astonishment: Till the

present time, the speculation would not have "paid."

Large works of this nature, while they create an inconceivable

development of commerce, must have a certain amount of a trading

population to begin upon. A gold-beater can cover the effigy of a man on

horseback with a sovereign; but he must have the sovereign first. It was

not merely because the full power of the iron rail to facilitate the

transition of heavy burdens had not been estimated, and because no

Stephenson had constructed a "Rocket engine," that a railway with steam

locomotives was not made from London to Liverpool before 1836. Until the

intermediate traffic between these termini had swelled to a sufficient

amount in quantity and value to bear reimbursement for establishing such

a mode of conveyance, its execution would have been impossible, even

though men had known how to set about it.

What has been the condition of the countries under consideration? In

1839, the entire population of the tropical American isthmus, in the

states of central America and New Grenada did not exceed three millions.

The number of the inhabitants of pure European descent did not exceed

one hundred thousand. It was only among this inconsiderable fraction

that any thing like wealth, intelligence, and enterprise, akin to that

of Europe, was to be found; the rest were poor and ignorant aboriginals

and mixed races, in a state of scarcely demi-civilization. Throughout

this thinly-peopled and poverty-stricken region, there was neither law

nor government. In Stephens's "Central America," may be found an amusing

account of a hunt after a government, by a luckless American

diplomatist, who had been sent to seek for one in central America. A

night wanderer running through bog and brake after a will-o'-the-wisp,

could not have encountered more perils, or in search of a more

impalpable phantom. In short, there was nobody to trade with. To the

south of the isthmus, along the Pacific coast of America, there was only

one station to which merchants could resort with any fair prospect of

gain--Valparaiso. Except Chili, all the Pacific states of South America

were retrograding from a very imperfect civilization, under a succession

of petty and aimless revolutions. To the north of the isthmus matters

were little, if any thing better. Mexico had gone backward from the time

of its revolution; and, at the best, its commerce in the Pacific had

been confined to a yearly ship between Acapulco and the Philippines.

Throughout California and Oregon, with the exception of a few European

and half-breed members, there were none but savage aboriginal tribes.

The Russian settlements in the far north had nothing but a paltry trade

in furs with Kamschatka, that barely defrayed its own expenses. Neither

was there any encouragement to make a short cut to the innumerable

islands of the Pacific. The whole of Polynesia lay outside of the pale

of civilization. In Tahiti, the Sandwich group, and the northern

peninsula of New Zealand, missionaries had barely sowed the first seeds

of morals and enlightenment. The limited commerce of China and the

Eastern Archipelago was engrossed by Europe, and took the route of the

Cape of Good Hope, with the exception of a few annual vessels that

traded from the sea-board states of the North American Union to

Valparaiso and Canton. The wool of New South Wales was but coming into

notice, and found its way to England alone round the Cape of Good Hope.

An American fleet of whalers scoured the Pacific, and adventurers of the

same nation carried on a desultory and inconsiderable traffic in hides

with California, in tortoise-shell and mother of pearl with the

Polynesian Islands.

What, then, would have been the use of cutting a canal, through which

there would not have passed five ships in a twelvemonth? But twenty

years have worked a wondrous revolution in the state and prospects of

these regions.

The traffic of Chili has received a large development, and the stability

of its institutions has been fairly tried. The resources of Costa Rica,

the population of which is mainly of European race, is steadily

advancing. American citizens have founded a state in Oregon. The

Sandwich Islands have become for all practical purposes an American

colony. The trade with China--to which the proposed canal would open a

convenient avenue by a western instead of the present eastern route--is

no longer restricted to the Canton river, but is open to all nations as

far north as the Yang-tse-Kiang. The navigation of the Amur has been

opened to the Russians by a treaty, and can not long remain closed

against the English and American settlers between Mexico and the Russian

settlements in America. Tahiti has become a kind of commercial emporium.

The English settlements in Australia and New Zealand have opened a

direct trade with the Indian Archipelago and China. The permanent

settlements of intelligent and enterprising Anglo-Americans and English

in Polynesia, and on the eastern and western shores of the Pacific, have

proved so many _depots_ for the adventurous traders with its innumerable

islands, and for the spermaceti whalers. Then the last, but greatest

addition of all, is California: a name in the world of commerce and

enterprise to conjure with. There gold is to be had for fetching. Gold,

the main-spring of commercial activity, the reward of toil--for which

men are ready to risk life, to endure every sort of privation;

sometimes, alas! to sacrifice every virtue; one most especially, and

that is patience. They will away with her now.

Till the discovery of the new gold country how contentedly they dawdled

round Cape Horn; creeping down one coast, and up another: but now such

delay is not to be thought of. Already, indeed, Panama has become the

seat of a great, increasing, and perennial transit trade. This can not

fail to augment the settled population of the region, its wealth and

intelligence. Upon these facts we rest the conviction that the time has

arrived for realizing the project of a ship canal there or in the near

neighborhood.

That a ship canal, and not a railway, is what is first wanted (for very

soon there will be both), must be obvious to all acquainted with the

practical details of commerce. The delay and expense to which merchants

are subjected, when obliged to "break bulk" repeatedly between the port

whence they sail and that of their destination, is extreme. The waste

and spoiling of goods, the cost of the operation, are also heavy

drawbacks, and to these they are subject by the stormy passage round

Cape Horn.

Two points present themselves offering great facilities for the

execution of a ship canal. The one is in the immediate vicinity of

Panama, where the many imperfect observations which have hitherto been

made, are yet sufficient to leave no doubt that, as the distance is

comparatively short, the summit levels are inconsiderable, and the

supply of water ample. The other is some distance to the northward. The

isthmus is there broader, but is in part occupied by the large and deep

fresh-water lakes of Nicaragua and Naragua. The lake of Nicaragua

communicates with the Atlantic by a copious river, which may either be

rendered navigable, or be made the source of supply for a side canal.

The space between the two lakes is of inconsiderable extent, and

presents no great engineering difficulties. The elevation of the lake of

Naragua above the Pacific is inconsiderable; there is no hill range

between it and the gulf of Canchagua; and Captain Sir Edward Belcher

carried his surveying ship _Sulphur_ sixty miles up the Estero Real,

which rises near the lake, and falls into the gulf. The line of the

Panama canal presents, as Humboldt remarks, facilities equal to those of

the line of the Caledonian canal. The Nicaragua line is not more

difficult than that of the canal of Languedoc, a work executed between

1660 and 1682, at a time when the commerce to be expedited by it did not

exceed--it is equaled--that which will find its way across the Isthmus;

when great part of the maritime country was as thinly inhabited by as

poor a population as the Isthmus now is; and when the last subsiding

storms of civil war, and the dragonnades of Louis XIV., unsettled men's

minds, and made person and property insecure.

The cosmopolitan effects of such an undertaking, if prosecuted to a

successful close, it is impossible even approximately to estimate. The

acceleration it will communicate to the already rapid progress of

civilization in the Pacific is obvious. And no less obvious are the

beneficial effects it will have upon the mutual relations of civilized

states, seeing that the recognition of the independence and neutrality

in times of general war of the canal and the region through which it

passes, is indispensable to its establishment.

We have dwelt principally on the commercial, the economical

considerations of the enterprise, for they are what must render it

possible. But the friends of Christian missions, and the advocates of

universal peace among nations, have yet a deeper interest in it. In the

words used by Prince Albert at the dinner at the Mansion House

respecting the forthcoming great exhibition of arts and industry,

"Nobody who has paid any attention to the particular features of our

present era, will doubt for a moment that we are living at a period of

most wonderful transition, which tends rapidly to accomplish that great

end--to which, indeed, all history points--the realization of the unity

of mankind. Not a unity which breaks down the limits and levels the

peculiar characteristics of the different nations of the earth, but

rather a unity the result and product of those very national varieties

and antagonistic qualities. The distances which separated the different

nations and parts of the globe are gradually vanishing before the

achievements of modern invention, and we can traverse them with

incredible speed; the languages of all nations are known, and their

acquirements placed within the reach of every body; thought is

communicated with the rapidity, and even by the power of lightning."

Every short cut across the globe brings man in closer communion with his

distant brotherhood, and results in concord, prosperity, and peace.

TRUTH IN PLEASURE.--Men have been said to be sincere in their pleasures,

but this is only that the tastes and habits of men are more easily

discernible in pleasure than in business; the want of truth is as great

a hindrance to the one as to the other. Indeed, there is so much

insincerity and formality in the pleasurable department of human life,

especially in social pleasures, that instead of a bloom there is a slime

upon it, which deadens and corrupts the thing. One of the most comical

sights to superior beings must be to see two human creatures with

elaborate speech and gestures making each other exquisitely

uncomfortable from civility; the one pressing what he is most anxious

that the other should not accept, and the other accepting only from the

fear of giving offense by refusal. There is an element of charity in all

this too; and it will be the business of a just and refined nature to be

sincere and considerate at the same time. This will be better done by

enlarging our sympathy, so that more things and people are pleasant to

us, than by increasing the civil and conventional part of our nature, so

that we are able to do more seeming with greater skill and

endurance.--_Friends in Council._

[From the Dublin University Magazine.]

THE GERMAN MEISTERSINGERS--HANS SACHS.

We once chanced to meet with a rare old German book which contains an

accurate history of the foundation of the Meistersingers, a body which

exercised so important an influence upon the literary history, not only

of Germany, but of the whole European Continent, that the circumstances

connected with its origin can not prove uninteresting to our readers.

The burghers of the provincial towns in Germany had gradually formed

themselves into guilds or corporations, the members of which, when the

business of the day was discussed, would amuse themselves by reading

some of the ancient traditions of their own country, as related in the

old Nordic poems. This stock of literature was soon exhausted, and the

worthy burghers began to try their hands at original composition. From

these rude snatches of song sprung to life the fire of poetic genius,

and at Mentz was first established that celebrated guild, branches of

which soon after extended themselves to most of the provincial towns.

The fame of these social meetings soon became widely spread. It reached

the ears of the emperor, Otho I., and, about the middle of the ninth

century, the guild received a royal summons to attend at Pavia, then the

emperor's residence. The history of this famous meeting remained for

upward of six hundred years upon record among the archives of Mentz, but

is supposed to have been taken away, among other plunder, about the

period of the Smalkaldic war. From other sources of information we can,

however, gratify the curiosity of the antiquarian, by giving the names

of the twelve original members of this guild:

Walter, Lord of Vogelweid,

Wolfgang Eschenbach, Knight,

Conrad Mesmer, Knight,

Franenlob of Mentz, Theologian,

Mergliny of Ment, Theologian,

Klingsher,

Starke Papp,

Bartholomew Regenboger, a blacksmith,

The Chancellor, a fisherman,

Conrad of Wurtzburg,

Stall Seniors,

The Roman of Zgwickau.

These gentlemen, having attended the royal summons in due form, were

subjected to a severe public examination before the court by the wisest

men of their times, and were pronounced masters of their art;

enthusiastic encomiums were lavished upon them by the delighted

audience, and they departed, having received from the emperor's hands a

crown of pure gold, to be presented annually to him who should be

selected by the voice of his fellows as laureate for the year.

Admission to these guilds became, in process of time, the highest

literary distinction; it was eagerly sought for by numberless aspirants,

but the ordeal through which the candidate had to pass became so

difficult that very few were found qualified for the honor. The

compositions of the candidates were measured with a degree of critical

accuracy of which candidates for literary fame in these days can form

but little idea. The ordeal must have been more damping to the fire of

young genius than the most slashing article ever penned by the most

caustic reviewer. Every composition had of necessity to belong to a

certain class; each class was distinguished by a limited amount of

rhymes and syllables, and the candidate had to count each stanza, as he

read it, upon his fingers. The redundancy or the deficiency of a single

syllable was fatal to his claims, and was visited in addition by a

pecuniary fine, which went to the support of the corporation.

Of that branch of this learned body which held its meetings at

Nuremberg, Hans Sachs became, in due time, a distinguished member. His

origin was obscure--the son of a tailor, and a shoemaker by trade. The

occupations of his early life afforded but little scope for the

cultivation of those refined pursuits which afterward made him

remarkable. The years of his boyhood were spent in the industrious

pursuit of his lowly calling; but when he had arrived at the age of

eighteen, a famous minstrel, Numenbach by name, chancing to pass his

dwelling, the young cobbler was attracted by his dulcet strains, and

followed him. Numenbach gave him gratuitous instruction in his tuneful

art, and Hans Sachs forthwith entered upon the course of probationary

wandering, which was an essential qualification for his degree. The

principal towns of Germany by turns received the itinerant minstrel, who

supported himself by the alternate manufacture of verses and of shoes.

After a protracted pilgrimage of several years, he returned to

Nuremberg, his native city, where, having taken unto himself a wife, he

spent the remainder of his existence; not unprofitably, indeed, as his

voluminous works still extant can testify. We had once the pleasure of

seeing an edition of them in the library at Nuremberg, containing two

hundred and twelve pieces of poetry, one hundred and sixteen sacred

allegories, and one hundred and ninety-seven dramas--a fertility of

production truly wonderful, and almost incredible, if we reflect that

the author had to support a numerous family by the exercise of his lowly

trade.

The writings of this humble artisan proved an era, however, in the

literary history of Germany. To him may be ascribed the honor of being

the founder of her school of tragedy as well as comedy; and the

illustrious Goethe has, upon more than one occasion, in his works,

expressed how deeply he is indebted to this poet of the people for the

outline of his immortal tragedy of "Faust." Indeed, if we recollect

aright, there are in his works several pieces which he states are after

the manner of Hans Sachs.

The Lord of Vogelweid, whose name we find occupying so conspicuous a

position in the roll of the original Meistersingers, made rather a

curious will--a circumstance which we find charmingly narrated in the

following exquisite ballad:

"WALTER VON DER VOGELWEID."

"Vogelweid, the Minnesinger,

When he left this world of ours,

Laid his body in the cloister,

Under Wurtzburg's minster towers.

"And he gave the monks his treasure,

Gave them all with this bequest--

They should feed the birds at noontide,

Daily, on his place of rest.

"Saying, 'From these wandering minstrels

I have learned the art of song;

Let me now repay the lessons

They have taught so well and long.

"Thus the bard of lore departed,

And, fulfilling his desire,

On his tomb the birds were feasted,

By the children of the choir.

"Day by day, o'er tower and turret,

In foul weather and in fair--

Day by day, in vaster numbers,

Flocked the poets of the air.

"On the tree whose heavy branches

Overshadowed all the place--

On the pavement; on the tomb-stone,

On the poet's sculptured face:

"There they sang their merry carols,

Sang their lauds on every side;

And the name their voices uttered,

Was the name of Vogelweid.

"'Till at length the portly abbot

Murmured, 'Why this waste of food,

Be it changed to loaves henceforward.

For our fasting brotherhood.'

"Then in vain o'er tower and turret,

From the walls and woodland nests.

When the minster bell rang noontide,

Gathered the unwelcome guests.

"Then in vain, with cries discordant,

Clamorous round the gothic spire.

Screamed the feathered Minnesingers

For the children of the choir.

"Time has long effaced the inscription

On the cloister's funeral stones;

And tradition only tells us

Where repose the poet's bones.

"But around the vast cathedral,

By sweet echoes multiplied,

Still the birds repeat the legend,

And the name of Vogelweid."

EDUCATION.--The striving of modern fashionable education is to make the

character impressive; while the result of good education, though not the

aim, would be to make it expressive.

There is a tendency in modern education to cover the fingers with rings,

and at the same time to cut the sinews at the wrist.

The worst education, which teaches self denial, is better than the best

which teaches every thing else, and not that.--_Tales and Essays by John

Sterling._

[From Household Words.]

GHOST STORIES--AN INCIDENT IN THE LIFE OF MAD^{LLE} CLAIRON.

The occurrence related in the letter which we are about to quote, is a

remarkable instance of those apparently supernatural visitations which

it has been found so difficult (if not impossible) to explain and

account for. It does not appear to have been known to Scott, Brewster,

or any other English writer who has collected and endeavored to expound

those ghostly phenomena.

Clairon was the greatest tragedian that ever appeared on the French

stage; holding on it a supremacy similar to that of Siddons on our own.

She was a woman of powerful intellect, and had the merit of affecting a

complete revolution in the French school of tragic acting; substituted

an easy, varied and natural delivery for the stilted and monotonous

declamation which had till then prevailed, and being the first to

consult classic taste and propriety of costume. Her mind was cultivated

by habits of intimacy with the most distinguished men of her day; and

she was one of the most brilliant ornaments of those literary circles

which the contemporary memoir writers describe in such glowing colors.

In an age of corruption, unparalleled in modern times, Mademoiselle

Clairon was not proof against the temptations to which her position

exposed her. But a lofty spirit, and some religious principles, which

she retained amidst a generation of infidels and scoffers, saved her

from degrading vices, and enabled her to spend an old age protracted

beyond the usual period of human life, in respectability and honor.

She died in 1803, at the age of eighty. She was nearly seventy when the

following letter was written. It was addressed to M. Henri Meister, a

man of some eminence among the literati of that period; the associate of

Diderot, Grimm, D'Holbach, M. and Madame Necker, &c., and the

_collaborateur_ of Grimm in his famous "Correspondence." This gentleman

was Clairon's "literary executor;" having been intrusted with her

memoirs, written by herself, and published after her death.

With this preface we give Mademoiselle Clairon's narrative, written in

her old age, of an occurrence which had taken place half a century

before.

"In 1743, my youth, and my success on the stage, had drawn round

me a good many admirers. M. de S----, the son of a merchant in

Brittany, about thirty years old, handsome, and possessed of

considerable talent, was one of those who were most strongly

attached to me. His conversation and manners were those of a man

of education and good society, and the reserve and timidity which

distinguished his attention made a favorable impression on me.

After a green-room acquaintance of some time I permitted him to

visit me at my house, but a better knowledge of his situation and

character was not to his advantage. Ashamed of being only a

_bourgeois_, he was squandering his fortune at Paris under an

assumed title. His temper was severe and gloomy: he knew mankind

too well, he said, not to despise and avoid them. He wished to

see no one but me, and desired from me, in return, a similar

sacrifice of the world. I saw, from this time, the necessity, for

his own sake as well as mine, of destroying his hopes by reducing

our intercourse to terms of less intimacy. My behavior brought

upon him a violent illness, during which I showed him every mark

of friendly interest, but firmly refused to deviate from the

course I had adopted. My steadiness only deepened his wound; and

unhappily, at this time, a treacherous relative, to whom he had

intrusted the management of his affairs, took advantage of his

helpless condition by robbing him, and leaving him so destitute

that he was obliged to accept the little money I had, for his

subsistence, and the attendance which his condition required. You

must feel, my dear friend, the importance of never revealing this

secret. I respect his memory, and I would not expose him to the

insulting pity of the world. Preserve, then, the religious

silence which after many years I now break for the first time.

"At length he recovered his property, but never his health; and

thinking I was doing him a service by keeping him at a distance

from me, I constantly refused to receive either his letters or

his visits.

"Two years and a half elapsed between this period and that of his

death. He sent to beg me to see him once more in his last

moments, but I thought it necessary not to comply with his wish.

He died, having with him only his domestics, and an old lady, his

sole companion for a long time. He lodged at that time on the

Rempart, near the Chaussee d'Antin; I resided in the Rue de

Bussy, near the Abbaye St. Germain. My mother lived with me; and

that night we had a little party to supper. We were very gay, and

I was singing a lively air, when the clock struck eleven, and the

sound was succeeded by a long and piercing cry of unearthly

horror. The company looked aghast; I fainted, and remained for a

quarter of an hour totally insensible. We then began to reason

about the nature of so frightful a sound, and it was agreed to

set a watch in the street in case it were repeated.

"It was repeated very often. All our servants, my friends, my

neighbors, even the police, heard the same cry, always at the

same hour, always proceeding from under my windows, and appearing

to come from the empty air. I could not doubt that it was meant

entirely for me. I rarely supped abroad; but the nights I did so,

nothing was heard; and several times, when I came home, and was

asking my mother and servants if they had heard any thing, it

suddenly burst forth, as if in the midst of us. One night, the

President de B----, at whose house I had supped, desired to see

me safe home. While he was bidding me 'good night' at my door,

the cry broke out seemingly from something between him and me.

He, like all Paris, was aware of the story; but he was so

horrified, that his servants lifted him into his carriage more

dead than alive.

"Another time, I asked my comrade Rosely to accompany me to the

Rue St. Honore to choose some stuffs, and then to pay a visit to

Mademoiselle de St. P----, who lived near the Porte Saint-Denis.

My ghost story (as it was called) was the subject of our whole

conversation. This intelligent young man was struck by my

adventure, though he did not believe there was any thing

supernatural in it. He pressed me to evoke the phantom, promising

to believe if it answered my call. With weak audacity I complied,

and suddenly the cry was heard three times with fearful loudness

and rapidity. When we arrived at our friend's door both of us

were found senseless in the carriage.

"After this scene, I remained for some months without hearing any

thing. I thought it was all over; but I was mistaken.

"All the public performances had been transferred to Versailles

on account of the marriage of the Dauphin. We were to pass three

days there, but sufficient lodgings were not provided for us.

Madame Grandval had no apartment; and I offered to share with her

the room with two beds which had been assigned to me in the

avenue of St. Cloud. I gave her one of the beds and took the

other. While my maid was undressing to lie down beside me, I said

to her, 'We are at the world's end here, and it is dreadful

weather; the cry would be somewhat puzzled to get at us.' In a

moment it rang through the room. Madame Grandval ran in her

night-dress from top to bottom of the house, in which nobody

closed an eye for the rest of the night. This, however, was the

last time the cry was heard.

"Seven or eight days afterward, while I was chatting with my

usual evening circle, the sound of the clock striking eleven was

followed by the report of a gun fired at one of the windows. We

all heard the noise, we all saw the fire, yet the window was

undamaged. We concluded that some one sought my life, and that it

was necessary to take precautions again another attempt. The

Intendant des Menus Plaisirs, who was present, flew to the house

of his friend, M. de Marville, the Lieutenant of Police. The

houses opposite mine were instantly searched, and for several

days were guarded from top to bottom. My house was closely

examined; the street was filled with spies in all possible

disguises. But, notwithstanding all this vigilance, the same

explosion was heard and seen for three whole months always at the

same hour, and at the same window-pane, without any one being

able to discover from whence it proceeded. This fact stands

recorded in the registers of the police.

"Nothing was heard for some days; but having been invited by

Mademoiselle Dumesnil[2] to join a little evening party at her

house near the _Barriere blanche_, I got into a hackney-coach at

eleven o'clock with my maid. It was clear moonlight as we passed

along the Boulevards, which were then beginning to be studded

with houses. While we were looking at the half-finished

buildings, my maid said, 'Was it not in this neighborhood that M.

de S---- died?' 'From what I have heard,' I answered, 'I think it

should be there'--pointing with my finger to a house before us.

From that house came the same gun-shot that I had heard before.

It seemed to traverse our carriage, and the coachman set off at

full speed, thinking we were attacked by robbers. We arrived at

Mademoiselle Dumesnil's in a state of the utmost terror; a

feeling I did not get rid of for a long time."

[2] The celebrated tragedian.

[Mademoiselle Clairon gives some further details similar to the

above, and adds that the noises finally ceased in about two years

and a half. After this, intending to change her residence, she

put up a bill on the house she was leaving; and many people made

the pretext of looking at the apartments an excuse for gratifying

their curiosity to see, in her every-day guise, the great

tragedian of the Theatre Francais.]

"One day I was told that an old lady desired to see my rooms.

Having always had a great respect for the aged, I went down to

receive her. An unaccountable emotion seized me on seeing her,

and I perceived that she was moved in a similar manner. I begged

her to sit down, and we were both silent for some time. At length

she spoke, and, after some preparation, came to the subject of

her visit.

"'I was, mademoiselle, the best friend of M. de S----, and the

only friend whom he would see during the last year of his life.

We spoke of you incessantly; I urging him to forget you,--he

protesting that he would love you beyond the tomb. Your eyes

which are full of tears allow me to ask you why you made him so

wretched; and how, with such a mind and such feelings as yours,

you could refuse him the consolation of once more seeing and

speaking to you?'