The third day there passed near Orbigo two ladies, and the judges sent

the king-at-arms and the herald to ascertain whether they were of noble

birth and provided with knights to represent them in the lists and win

them a passage through Orbigo, and also to request them to give up their

right-hand gloves. The ladies answered that they were noble and were on

a pilgrimage to Santiago; their names were Leonora and Guiomar de la

Vega; the former was married and accompanied by her husband; the latter

was a widow. The king-at-arms then requested their gloves to be kept as

a pledge until some knight should ransom them. Frances Davio, an

Aragonese knight, immediately offered to do combat for the ladies. The

husband of Doña Leonora said that he had not heard of this adventure,

and was unprepared to attempt it then, but if the ladies were allowed to

retain their gloves, as soon as he had accomplished his pilgrimage he

would return and enter the lists for them. The gloves, however, were

retained and hung in the judges' stand. The matter caused some

discussion, and finally the judges decided that the gloves should not be

kept, for fear it should seem that the defenders of the Pass were

interfering with pilgrims, and also on account of Juan de la Vega's

chivalrous response. So the gloves were sent on to Astorga to be

delivered to their owners, and Juan de la Vega was absolved from all

obligation to ransom them, "and there was strife among many knights as

to who should do battle for the sisters."

On the 16th of July, Frances Davio jousted with Lope de Estuñiga, and

when the trial of arms was ended with great honor to both, Davio swore

aloud, so that many knights heard him, "that never in the future would

he have a love-affair with a nun, for up to that time he had loved one,

and it was for her sake that he had come to the Pass; and any one who

had known it could have challenged him as an evil-doer, and he could not

have defended himself." Whereat Delena, the notary and compiler of the

original record of the Pass, exclaims, "To which I say that if he had

had any Christian nobleness, or even the natural shame which leads every

one to conceal his faults, he would not have made public such a

sacrilegious scandal, so dishonorable to the religious order and so

injurious to Christ."

The same day the king-at-arms and herald announced to Quiñones that a

gentleman named Vasco de Barrionuevo, servant of Ruy Diaz de Mendoza,

mayor-domo of the king, had come to make trial of his arms, but as he

was not a knight he prayed Quiñones to confer that honor on him.

Quiñones consented, and commanded him to wait at the entrance of the

lists, whither he and the nine defenders went on foot accompanied by a

great crowd. Quiñones asked Vasco if he desired to become a knight, and

on his answering in the affirmative he drew his gilt sword and said,

"Sir, do you promise to keep and guard all the things appertaining to

the noble order of chivalry, and to die rather than fail in any one of

them?" He swore that he would do so, and Quiñones, striking him on the

helmet with his naked sword, said, "God make thee a good knight and aid

thee to live and act as every good knight should do!" After this

ceremony the new knight entered the lists with Pedro de los Rios, and

they ran seven courses and broke three lances.

On the festival of St. James (July 25th) Quiñones entered the lists

without three of the principal pieces of his armor--namely, the visor of

his helmet, the left vantbrace and breastplate--and said, "Knights and

judges of this Passo Honroso, inasmuch as I announced through Monreal,

the king's herald, that on St. James's Day there would be in this place

three knights, each without a piece of his armor, and each ready to run

two courses with every knight who should present himself that day, know,

therefore, that I, Suero de Quiñones, alone am those three knights, and

am prepared to accomplish what I proclaimed." The judges after a short

deliberation answered that they had no authority to permit him to risk

his life in manifest opposition to the regulations which he had sworn to

obey, and declared him under arrest, and forbade all jousting that day,

as it was Sunday and the festival of St. James. Quiñones felt greatly

grieved at their decision, and told them that "in the service of his

lady he had gone into battle against the Moors in the kingdom of Granada

with his right arm bared, and God had preserved him, and would do so

now." The judges, however, were inflexible and refused to hear him.

The last day of July, late in the afternoon, there arrived at the Pass

a gentleman named Pedro de Torrecilla, a retainer or squire of Alfonso

de Deza, but no one was willing to joust with him, on the ground that he

was not an hidalgo. The generous Lope de Estuñiga, hearing this, offered

to dub him a knight, but Torrecilla thanked him and said he could not

afford to sustain in becoming manner the honor of chivalry, but he would

make good the fact that he was an hidalgo. Lope de Estuñiga was so much

pleased by this discreet answer that he believed him truly of gentle

blood, and to do him honor entered the lists with him. It was, however,

so late that they had only time to run three courses, and then the

judges pronounced their joust finished. Torrecilla esteemed so highly

the fact that so renowned a knight as Lope de Estuñiga should have

condescended to enter the lists with him that he swore it was the

greatest honor he had ever received in his life, and he offered him his

services. Estuñiga thanked him, and affirmed that he felt as much

honored by having jousted with him as though he had been an emperor.[7]

A few days after the above events an incident occurred which shows how

contagious the example of Quiñones and his followers was, and to what

amusing imitations it led. A Lombard trumpeter made his appearance at

the Pass, and said that he had been to Santiago on a pilgrimage, and

while there had heard that there was at the Passo Honroso a trumpeter of

the king of Castile named Dalmao, very celebrated in his line, and he

had gone thirty leagues out of his way in order to have a trial of skill

with him; and he offered to stake a good trumpet against one of

Dalmao's. The latter took the Lombard's trumpet and blew so loud and

skilfully that the Italian, in spite of all his efforts, was obliged to

confess himself conquered, and gave up his trumpet. |

So far, the encounters, if not entirely bloodless, had not been

attended by any fatal accident. The defenders had all been wounded, more

or less severely: once Quiñones concealed the fact until the end of the

joust in which his antagonist had been badly hurt, and it was only when

the knights were disarmed that it was discovered that Quiñones was

bleeding profusely. On another occasion his helmet was pierced by his

adversary's lance, the fragment of which he strove in vain to withdraw.

All believed him mortally wounded, but he cried, "It is nothing! it is

nothing! Quiñones! Quiñones!" and continued as though nothing had

occurred. After three encounters the judges descended from their stands

and made him remove his helmet to see whether he was wounded. When it

was found that he was not, "every one thought that God had miraculously

delivered him." Quiñones was also wounded in his encounter with Juan de

Merlo, and again concealed the fact until the end of the combat, when he

asked the judges to excuse him from jousting further that day, as his

right hand, which he had previously sprained, was again dislocated, and

caused him terrible suffering; and well it might, for the flesh was

lacerated and the whole arm seemed paralyzed.

The wounds received the 28th of July were, unfortunately, sufficiently

healed by the 6th of August to enable him to enter the lists with the

unhappy Esberte de Claramonte, an Aragonese. "Would to God," exclaims

the chronicler, "he had never come here!" In the ninth encounter

Quiñones' lance entered his antagonist's left eye and penetrated the

brain. The luckless knight broke his lance in the ground, was lifted

from his saddle by the force of the blow, and fell dead without uttering

a word; "and his face seemed like the face of one who had been dead two

hours." The Aragonese and Catalans present bewailed his death loudly,

and Quiñones was grieved in his soul at such a great misfortune. Every

possible honor was shown the dead knight, and the welfare of his soul

was not forgotten. Master Anton, Quiñones' confessor, and the other

priests were sent for to administer the sacraments, and Quiñones begged

them to chant the _Responsorium_[8] over the body, as was customary in

the Church, and do in all respects as though he himself were the dead

man. The priest replied that the Church did not consider as sons those

who died in such exercises, for they could not be performed without

mortal sin, neither did she intercede for their souls; in proof whereof

he referred to the canonical law, cap. _de Torneamentis_.[9] However, at

the earnest request of Quiñones, Messer Anton went with a letter to the

bishop of Astorga to ask leave to bury Claramonte in holy ground,

Quiñones promising if it were granted to take the dead knight to Leon

and bury him in his own family chapel. Meanwhile, they bore the body to

the hermitage of Santa Catalina, near the bridge of Orbigo, and there it

remained until night, when Messer Anton returned without the desired

license; so they buried Claramonte in unconsecrated ground near the

hermitage, with all possible honor and amid the tears of the assembled

knights. This mournful event does not seem, however, to have made a very

deep impression, for that same afternoon the jousting was continued.

The remaining days were marked by no unusual occurrence: several were

seriously but not fatally wounded, and one by one the defenders of the

Pass were disabled; so that when the 9th of August, the last day of the

jousts, arrived, Sancho de Ravenal was the only one of the ten defenders

who was able to enter the lists. He maintained the Pass that day against

two knights, and then the jousts were declared ended. When the decision

was known there was great rejoicing and blowing of trumpets, and the

lists were illuminated with torches. The judges returned the spurs which

still hung in the stand to the owners who through lack of time had not

been able to joust. Quiñones and eight of his companions (Lope de Aller

was confined to his bed by his wounds) entered the lists in the same

manner and order as on the first day, and halting before the judges

Quiñones addressed them as follows: "It is known to Your Honors how I

presented myself here thirty days ago with these companions, and the

cause of my so doing was to terminate the captivity in which until this

moment I was to a very virtuous lady, in token of which I have worn this

iron collar continually every Thursday. The condition of my ransom was,

as you know, three hundred lances broken or guarding this Pass thirty

days, awaiting knights and gentlemen who should free me from said

captivity; and whereas I believe, honorable sirs, that I have fulfilled

everything according to the terms set down at the beginning, I therefore

beg you will command me to remove this iron collar in testimony of my

liberty."

The judges answered briefly as follows: "Virtuous gentleman and knight,

after hearing your declaration, which seems just and true, we hereby

declare your enterprise completed and your ransom paid; and be it known

to all present that of the three hundred lances mentioned in the

agreement but few remain yet to be broken, and these would not have

remained unbroken had it not been for lack of adversaries. We therefore

command the king-at-arms and the herald to remove the collar from your

neck and declare you from this time henceforth free from your enterprise

and ransom." | The king-at-arms and the herald then descended from the

stand, and in the presence of the notaries with due solemnity took the

collar from Quiñones' neck in fulfilment of the judges' command.

During the thirty days' jousting sixty-eight knights had entered the

lists: of these, one, Messer Arnoldo de la Floresta Bermeja (Arnold von

Rothwald?), was a German; one an Italian, Messer Luis de Aversa; one

Breton,[10] three Valencians, one Portuguese, thirteen Aragonese, four

Catalans, and the remaining forty-four were from the Castiles and other

parts of Spain. The number of courses run was seven hundred and

twenty-seven, and one hundred and sixty-six lances were broken. Quiñones

was afterward killed by Gutierre Quijada, one of the knights who took

part in the Passo Honroso, and with whom he seems to have had some kind

of a feud. Quiñones' sword may still be seen at Madrid in the Royal

Armory, No. 1917.

T.F. CRANE.

AUTOMATISM.

CONCLUDING PAPER.

A few months ago, walking along Fifteenth street, I came up behind a

friend and said, "Good-morning." No answer. "Good-morning, sir," a

little louder.--"Oh, excuse me: I did not hear you the first time."--"

How then did you know that I had spoken twice?" My friend was

nonplussed, but what had happened was this: on my first speaking the

impulse of the voice had fallen upon his ear and started a nerve-wave

which had struggled up as far as the lower apparatus at the base of the

brain, and, passing through this, had probably even reached the higher

nerve-centres in the surface of the cerebrum, near to which

consciousness resides, but not in sufficient force to arouse

consciousness. When, however, the attention was excited by my second

address, it perceived the first faint impulse which had been registered

upon the protoplasm of the nerve-centres, although unfelt. Probably most

of my readers have had a similar experience. A word spoken, but not

consciously heard, has a moment afterward been detected by an effort as

distinctly conscious as that made by the man who is attempting to

decipher some old faint manuscript. This incident and its explanation

will serve to illustrate the relation which seems to exist between

consciousness and sensation, and also between consciousness and the

general mental actions.

It will perhaps render our thinking more accurate if we attempt to get a

clear idea just here as to what consciousness is and what it is not.

Various definitions of the term have been given, but the simplest and

truest seems to be that it is a knowledge of the present existence of

self, and perhaps also of surrounding objects, although it is

conceivable that a conscious person might be shut off from all contact

with the external world by abolition of the senses. Consciousness is

certainly not what the philosopher and the theologian call the Ego, or

the personality of the individual. A blow on the head puts an end for

the time being to consciousness, but not to the man's personality.

Neither is consciousness the same as the sense of personal identity,

although it is closely connected with it. The conviction of a man that

he is the same person through the manifold changes which occur in him as

the successive years go on is evidently based on consciousness and

memory. This is well illustrated by some very curious cases in which the

sense or knowledge of personal identity has been completely lost. Not

long ago an instance of such complete loss was recorded by Doctor

Hewater (_Hospital Gazette_, November, 1879). The gentleman who was the

subject of this loss found himself standing upon the dépôt-platform in

Belaire City, Ohio, utterly ignorant of who he was or where he came from

or where he was going to. He had a little money in his pocket, and in

his hand a small port-manteau which contained a pair of scissors and a

change of linen. He was well dressed, and on stating at the nearest

hotel his strange condition and asking for a bed, was received as a

guest. In the evening he went out and attended a temperance lecture.

Excited by the eloquence of the speaker, he was seized with an

uncontrollable impulse, rushed from the room and began to smash with a

club the windows of a neighboring tavern. The roughs ran out of the

saloon and beat him very badly, breaking his arm: this brought him to

the police-station, and thence to the hospital. For months every effort

was made to identify him, but at the date of reporting without avail. He

was known in the hospital as "Ralph," that name having been found on his

underclothing. His knowledge upon all subjects unconnected with his

identity is correct: his mental powers are good, and he has shown

himself expert at figures and with a pen. For a long time it was thought

that he was feigning, but every one about him was finally convinced that

he is what he says he is--namely, a man without knowledge of his

personal identity. This curious case, which is by no means unparalleled

in the annals of psychological medicine, shows how distinct memory is

from consciousness. Memory of the past was in Ralph entirely abolished

so far as concerned his own personality, but consciousness was perfect,

and the results of previous mental training remained, as is shown by his

use of figures. It was as though there was a dislocation between

consciousness and the memory of self.

The distinctness of consciousness from memory is also shown by dreams.

Events which have passed are often recalled during the unconsciousness

of sleep. The curious although common carrying of the memory of a dream

over from the unconsciousness of sleep to the consciousness of waking

movements further illustrates the complete distinction between the two

cerebral functions.

If memory, then, be not part of consciousness, what is its nature? There

is a law governing nervous actions both in health and disease which is

known as that of habitual action. The curious reflex movements made by

the frog when acid is put upon its foot, as detailed in my last paper,

were explained by this law. The spinal cord, after having frequently

performed a certain act under the stimulus of conscious sensation,

becomes so accustomed to perform that act that it does it when the

oft-felt peripheral impulse comes again to it, although the cerebral

functions and consciousness are suspended. A nerve-centre, even of the

lowest kind, once moulded by repeated acts, retains their

impression--i.e. remembers them. Learning to walk is, as was shown in

the last paper, training the memory of the lower nerve-centres at the

base of the brain until at last they direct the movements of walking

without aid from consciousness. The musician studies a piece of music.

At first the notes are struck in obedience to a conscious act of the

will founded upon a conscious recognition of the printed type. By and by

the piece is so well known that it is played even when the attention is

directed to some other subject; that is, the act of playing has been

repeated until the lower nerve-centres, which preside over the movements

of the fingers during the playing, have been so impressed that when once

the impulses are started they flow on uninterruptedly until the whole

set has been gone through and the piece of music is finished. This is

the result of memory of the lower nerve-centres. At first, the child

reads only by a distinct conscious effort of memory, recalling painfully

each word. After a time the words become so impressed upon the lower

nerve-centres that we may read on when our attention is directed to some

other thing. Thus, often we read aloud and are unconscious of what we

have read, precisely as the compositor habitually sets up pages of

manuscript without the faintest idea of what it is all about. This law

of habitual action applies not only to the lower nerve-centres in their

healthy condition, but with equal force in disease. It is notorious that

one of the great difficulties in the cure of epilepsy is the habit which

is acquired by the nerve-centres of having at intervals attacks of

convulsive discharge of nerve-force. Some years since I saw in

consultation a case which well illustrates this point. A boy was struck

in the head with a brick, and dropped unconscious. On coming to be was

seized with an epileptic convulsion. These convulsions continually

recurred for many months before I saw him. He never went two hours

without them, and had usually from thirty to forty a day--some, it is

true, very slight, but others very severe. Medicines had no influence

over him, and with the idea that there might be a point of irritation in

the wound itself causing the epilepsy, the scar was taken out. The

result was that the seizures were the same day reduced very much in

frequency, and in a short time became amenable to treatment, so that

finally complete recovery occurred. He had, however, probably fifty

convulsions in all after the removal of the scar before this result was

achieved. Undoubtedly, in this case the point of irritation was removed

by the operation. The cause of the convulsions having been taken away,

they should have stopped at once. But here the law of habitual action

asserted itself, and it was necessary to overcome the remembrance of the

disease by the nerve-centres. It is plain that the higher nerve-centre

remembers the idea or fact because it is impressed by ideas and facts,

precisely as the lower spinal nerve-centres in the frog remember

irritations and movements which have impressed them. The faculty of

memory resides in all nerve-centres: the nature of that which is

remembered depends upon the function of the individual centre. A

nerve-cell which thinks remembers thought--a nerve-cell which causes

motion remembers motion.

The so-called cases of double consciousness are perfectly simple in

their explanation when the true nature of memory is borne in mind. In

these cases the subject seems to lead a double life. The attacks usually

come on suddenly. In the first attack all memory of the past is lost.

The person is as an untaught child, and is forced to begin re-education.

In some of these cases this second education has gone on for weeks, and

advanced perhaps beyond the stage of reading, when suddenly the patient

passes back to his original condition, losing now all memory of events

which had occurred and all the knowledge acquired in what may be called

his second state, but regaining all that he had originally possessed.

Weeks or months afterward the second state reoccurs, the individual now

forgetting all memory of the first or natural condition. It is usually

found that events happening and knowledge acquired during the first

attack of what we have called the second state are remembered in

subsequent returns, so that the second education can be taken up at the

point at which it was lost, and progress be made. This alternation of

conditions has in some instances gone on for years, the patient living,

as it were, two lives at broken intervals. This condition, usually

called double consciousness, is not double consciousness at all, but, if

the term may be allowed, double memory. It is evidently allied in its

nature to the loss of the sense of personal identity. Certain phenomena

of remembrance seen frequently in exhausting diseases, and especially in

old age, show the permanence of impressions made upon the higher

nerve-centres, and are also very similar in their nature to this

so-called double consciousness. Not long since a very aged lady of

Philadelphia, who was at the point of death, began to talk in an unknown

tongue, soon losing entirely her power of expressing herself in English.

No one could for a time make out the language she was speaking, but it

was finally found to be Portuguese; and in tracing the history of the

octogenarian it was discovered that until four or five years of age she

had been brought up in Rio Janeiro, where Portuguese is spoken. There is

little difference between the nature of such a case and that of the

so-called double consciousness, both involving the forgetting of that

which has been known for years.

There is a curious mental condition sometimes produced by large doses of

hasheesh which might be termed double consciousness more correctly than

the state to which the name is usually applied. I once took an enormous

dose of this substance. After suffering from a series of symptoms which

it is not necessary here to detail, I was seized with a horrible

undefined fear, as of impending death, and began at the same time to

have marked periods when all connection seemed to be severed between the

external world and myself. During these periods I was unconscious in so

far that I was oblivious of all external objects, but on coming out of

one it was not a blank, dreamless void upon which I looked back, a mere

empty space, but rather a period of active but aimless life, full, not

of connected thought, but of disjointed images. The mind, freed from the

ordinary laws of association, passed, as it were, with lightning-like

rapidity from one idea to another. The duration of these attacks was but

a few seconds, but to me they seemed endless. Although I was perfectly

conscious during the intermissions between the paroxysms, all power of

measuring time was lost: seconds appeared to be hours--minutes grew to

days--hours stretched out to infinity. I would look at my watch, and

then after an hour or two, as I thought, would look again and find that

scarcely a minute had elapsed. The minute-hand appeared motionless, as

though graven in the face itself: the laggard second-hand moved so

slowly that it seemed a hopeless task to watch it during its whole

infinite round of a minute, and I always gave up in despair before the

sixty seconds had elapsed. When my mind was most lucid there was a

distinct duplex action in regard to the duration of time. I would think

to myself, "It has been so long since a certain event!"--an hour, for

example, since the doctor was summoned--but Reason would say, "No, it

has been only a few minutes: your thoughts and feelings are caused by

the hasheesh." Nevertheless, I was not able to shake off, even for a

moment, this sense of the almost indefinite prolongation of time.

Gradually the periods of unconsciousness became longer and more

frequent, and the oppressive feeling of impending death more intense. It

was like a horrible nightmare: each successive paroxysm was felt to be

the longest I had suffered. As I came out of it a voice seemed

constantly saying, "You are getting worse; your paroxysms are growing

longer and deeper; they will overmaster you; you will die." A sense of

personal antagonism between my will-power and myself, as affected by the

drug, grew very strong. I felt as though my only chance was to struggle

against these paroxysms--that I must constantly arouse myself by an

effort of will; and that effort was made with infinite toil and pain. It

seemed to me as if some evil spirit had the control of the whole of me

except the will, and was in determined conflict with that, the last

citadel of my being. Once or twice during a paroxysm I felt myself

mounting upward, expanding, dilating, dissolving into the wide confines

of space, overwhelmed by a horrible, unutterable despair. Then by a

tremendous effort I seemed to break loose and to start up with the

shuddering thought, "Next time you will not be able to throw this off;

and what then?" The sense of double consciousness which I had to some

extent is often, under the action of hasheesh, much more distinct. I

have known patients to whom it seemed that they themselves sitting upon

the chair were in continual conversation with a second self standing in

front of them. The explanation of this curious condition is a difficult

one. It is possible that the two sides of the brain, which are

accustomed in health to work as one organ, are disjoined by the poison,

so that one half of the brain thinks and acts in opposition to the other

half.

From what has already been said it is plain that memory is entirely

distinct from consciousness, and that it is in a certain sense

automatic, or at least an attribute of all nerve-centres. If this be so,

it would seem probable, _a priori_, that other intellectual acts are

also distinct from consciousness. For present purposes the activities of

the cerebrum may be divided into the emotional and the more

strictly-speaking intellectual acts. A little thought will, I think,

convince any of my readers that emotions are as purely automatic as the

movements of the frog's hind leg. The Irishman who said that he was

really a brave man, although he had a cowardly pair of legs which always

ran away with him, was far from speaking absurdly. It is plain that

passion is something entirely beyond the conscious will, because it is

continually excited from without, and because we are unable to produce

it by a mere effort of the will without some external cause. The common

phrase, "He is working himself up into a passion," indicates a

perception of the fact that consciousness sometimes employs memories,

thoughts, associations, etc. to arouse the lower nerve-centres that are

connected with the emotion of anger. It is so also with various other

emotions. The soldier who habitually faces death in the foremost rank of

the battle, and yet shrinks in mortal fear or antipathy from a mouse, is

not an unknown spectacle. It is clear that his fear of the little animal

is based not upon reason, but upon an uncontrollable sensitiveness in

his nervous system acquired by inheritance or otherwise. It does not

follow from this that conscious will is not able to affect emotion. As

already pointed out, it can arouse emotion by using the proper means,

and it undoubtedly can, to a greater or less extent, directly subdue

emotion. The law of inhibition, as it is called by the physiologist,

dominates the whole nervous system. Almost every nerve-centre has above

it a higher centre whose function it is directly to repress or subdue

the activity of the lower centre. A familiar instance of this is seen in

the action of the heart: there are certain nerve-centres which when

excited lessen the rate of the heart's beat, and are even able to stop

it altogether. The relation of the will-power to the emotions is

directly inhibitory. The will is able to repress the activity of those

centres which preside over anger. In the man with red hair these centres

may be very active and the will-power weak; hence the inhibitory

influence of the will is slight and the man gets angry easily. In the

phlegmatic temperament the anger-centres are slow to action, the

will-power strong, and the man is thrown off his balance with

difficulty. It is well known that power grows with exercise, and when we

habitually use the will in controlling the emotional centres its power

continually increases. The man learning self-control is simply drilling

the lower emotional centres into obedience to the repressive action of

the higher will. Without further demonstration, it is clear that emotion

is distinct from conscious will, and is automatic in the sense in which

the term has been used in this article.

Imagination also is plainly distinct from consciousness. It acts during

sleep. Often, indeed, it runs riot during the slumbers of the night, but

at times it works with an automatic regularity exceeding its powers

during the waking moments. It is also true that judgment is exercised in

sleep, and that reason sometimes exerts its best efforts in that state.

But not only do the intellectual nets go on without consciousness during

sleep, but also while we are awake. Some years since I was engaged in

working upon a book requiring a good deal of thought. Very frequently I

would be unable to solve certain problems, but leaving them would find a

day or two afterward, on taking pen in hand, that the solution traced

itself without effort on the paper clearly and logically. During the

sleeping hours, or during the waking hours of a busy professional life,

the brain had, without my consciousness, been solving the difficulties.

This experience is by no means a peculiar one. Many scientific workers

have borne testimony to a similar habit of the cerebrum. The late Sir W.

Rowan Hamilton, the discoverer of the mathematical method known as that

of the quaternions, states that his mind suddenly solved that problem

after long work when he was thinking of something else. He says in one

place: "Tomorrow will be the fifteenth birthday of the quaternions. They

started into life or light full grown on the 16th of October, 1843, as I

was walking with Lady Hamilton to Dublin and came up to Brougham Bridge;

that is to say, I then and there felt the galvanic circle of thought

closed, and the sparks which fell from it were the fundamental equations

between _I, F_ and _K_ exactly as I have used them ever since. I felt

the problem to have been at that moment solved--an intellectual want

relieved which had haunted me for at least fifteen years before." Mr.

Appolo, a distinguished scientific inventor, stated in the Proceedings

of the Royal Society that it was his habit to get the bearings and facts

of a case during the day and go to bed, and wake the next morning with

the problem solved. If the problem was a difficult one he always passed

a restless night. Examples might be multiplied. Sir Benjamin Brodie,

speaking of his own mental action, states that when he was unable to

proceed further in some investigation he was accustomed to let the

matter drop. Then "after an interval of time, without any addition to my

stock of knowledge, I have found the obscurity and confusion in which

the subject was originally enveloped to have cleared away. The facts

have seemed all to settle themselves in their right places, and their

mutual relations to have become apparent, although I have not been

sensible of having made any distinct effort for that purpose."

Not only is there such a thing, then, as unconscious thought, but it is

probable that the best thinking is rarely, if ever, done under the

influence of consciousness. The poet creates his work when the

inspiration is on him and he is forgetful of himself and the world.

Consciousness may aid in pruning and polishing, but in creating it often

interferes with, rather than helps, the cerebral action. I think any one

of my readers who has done any literary or scientific writing will agree

that his or her best work is performed when self and surrounding objects

have disappeared from thought and consciousness scarcely exists more

than it does in a dream. Sometimes the individual is conscious of the

flow of an undercurrent of mental action, although this does not rise to

the level of distinct recognition. Oliver Wendell Holmes speaks of a

business-man of Boston who, whilst considering a very important

question, was conscious of an action going on in his brain so unusual

and painful as to excite his apprehension that he was threatened with

palsy; but after some hours his perplexity was all at once cleared up by

the natural solution of the problem which was troubling him, worked out,

as he believed, in the obscure and restless interval. "Jumping to a

conclusion," a process to which the female sex is said to be especially

prone, is often due to unconscious cerebration, the reasoning being so

rapid that the consciousness cannot follow the successive steps. It is

related that Lord Mansfield once gave the advice to a younger friend

newly appointed to a colonial judgeship, "Never give reasons for your

decisions. Your judgments will very probably be right, but your reasons

will almost certainly be wrong." The brain of the young judge evidently

worked unconsciously with accuracy, but was unable to trace the steps

along which it really travelled.

We are not left to the unaided study of our mental processes for proof

that the human brain is a mechanism. In the laboratory of Professor

Goltz in Strasburg I saw a terrier from which he had removed, by

repeated experiments, all the surface of the brain, thereby reducing the

animal to a simple automaton. Looked at while lying in his stall, he

seemed at first in no wise different from other dogs: he took food when

offered to him, was fat, sleek and very quiet. When I approached him he

took no notice of me, but when the assistant caught him by the tail he

instantly became the embodiment of fury. He had not sufficient

perceptive power to recognize the point of assault, so that his keeper,

standing behind him, was not in danger. With flashing eyes and hair all

erect the dog howled and barked furiously, incessantly snapping and

biting, first on this side and then on that, tearing with his fore legs

and in every way manifesting rage. When his tail was dropped by the

attendant and his head touched, the storm at once subsided, the fury was

turned into calm, and the animal, a few seconds before so rageful, was

purring like a cat and stretching out its head for caresses. This

curious process could be repeated indefinitely. Take hold of his tail,

and instantly the storm broke out afresh: pat his head, and all was

tenderness. It was possible to play at will with the passions of the

animal by the slightest touches.

During the Franco-German contest a French soldier was struck in the head

with a bullet and left on the field for dead, but subsequently showed

sufficient life to cause him to be carried to the hospital, where he

finally recovered his general health, but remained in a mental state

very similar to that of Professor Goltz's dog. As he walked about the

rooms and corridors of the soldiers' home in Paris he appeared to the

stranger like an ordinary man, unless it were in his apathetic manner.

When his comrades were called to the dinner-table he followed, sat down

with them, and, the food being placed upon his plate and a knife and

fork in his hands, would commence to eat. That this was not done in

obedience to thought or knowledge was shown by the fact that his dinner

could be at once interrupted by awakening a new train of feeling by a

new external impulse. Put a crooked stick resembling a gun into his

hand, and at once the man was seized with a rage comparable to that

produced in the Strasburg dog by taking hold of his tail. The fury of

conflict was on him: with a loud yell he would recommence the skirmish

in which he had been wounded, and, crying to his comrades, would make a

rush at the supposed assailant. Take the stick out of his hand, and at

once his apathy would settle upon him; give him a knife and fork, and,

whether at the table or elsewhere, he would make the motions of eating;

hand him a spade, and he would begin to dig. It is plain that the

impulse produced by seeing his comrades move to the dining-room started

the chain of automatic movements which resulted in his seating himself

at the table. The weapon called into new life the well-known acts of the

battle-field. The spade brought back the day when, innocent of blood, he

cultivated the vineyards of sunny France.

In both the dog and the man just spoken of the control of the will over

the emotions and mental acts was evidently lost, and the mental

functions were performed only in obedience to impulses from

without--i.e. were automatic. The human brain is a complex and very

delicate mechanism, so uniform in its actions, so marvellous in its

creation, that it is able to measure the rapidity of its own processes.

There are scarcely two brains which work exactly with the same rapidity

and ease. One man thinks faster than another man for reasons as purely

physical as those which give to one man a faster gait than that of

another. Those who move quickly are apt to think quickly, the whole

nervous system performing its processes with rapidity. This is not,

however, always the case, as it is possible for the brain to be

differently constructed, so far as concerns its rapidity of action, from

the spinal cord of the same individual. Our power of measuring time

without instruments is probably based upon the cerebral system of each

individual being accustomed to move at a uniform rate. Experience has

taught the brain that it thinks so many thoughts or does so much work in

such a length of time, and it judges that so much time has elapsed when

it has done so much work. The extraordinary sense of prolongation of

time which occurs in the intoxication produced by hasheesh is probably

due to the fact that under the influence of the drug the brain works

very much faster than it habitually does. Having produced a multitude of

images or thoughts in a moment, the organ judges that a corresponding

amount of time has elapsed. Persons are occasionally seen who have the

power of waking at any desired time: going to bed at ten o'clock, they

will rouse themselves at four, five or six in the morning, as they have

made up their minds to do the previous night. The explanation of this

curious faculty seems to be that in these persons the brain-functions go

on with so much regularity during sleep that the brain is enabled to

judge, though unconsciously, when the time fixed upon has arrived, and

by an unconscious effort to recall consciousness.

Of course the subject of automatism might have been discussed at far

greater length than is allowable in the limits of two magazine articles,

but sufficient has probably been said to show the strong current of

modern physiological psychology toward proving that all ordinary mental

actions, except the exercise of the conscious will, are purely physical,

produced by an instrument which works in a method not different from

that in which the glands of the mouth secrete saliva and the tubules of

the stomach gastric juice. Some of my readers may say this is pure

materialism, or at least leads to materialism. No inquirer who pauses to

think how his investigation is going to affect his religious belief is

worthy to be called scientific. The scientist, rightly so called, is a

searcher after truth, whatever may be the results of the discovery of

the truth. Modern science, however, has not proved the truth of

materialism. It has shown that the human organism is a wonderful

machine, but when we come to the further question as to whether this

machine is inhabited by an immortal principle which rules it and directs

it, or whether it simply runs itself, science has not, and probably

cannot, give a definite answer. It has reached its limit of inquiry, and

is unable to cross the chasm that lies beyond. There are men who

believe that there is nothing in the body save the body itself, and that

when that dies all perishes: there are others, like the writer, who

believe that they feel in their mental processes a something which they

call "will," which governs and directs the actions of the machine, and

which, although very largely influenced by external surroundings, is

capable of rising above the impulses from without, leading them to

believe in the existence of more than flesh--of soul and God. The

materialist, so far as natural science is concerned, stands upon logical

ground, but no less logical is the foundation of him who believes in

human free-will and immortality. The decision as to the correctness of

the beliefs of the materialist or of the theist must be reached by other

data than those of natural science.

H.C. WOOD, M.D.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM AND DEMOCRATIC IDEAS.

A movement which appeals not to the emotions, but to the

intellect--whose advocates aim at enlightening-the public mind and

convincing it of the truth of some new or disregarded principle, and the

necessity of enforcing it--needs above all things open and active

opposition, both as a stimulant to its supporters and as a means of

arousing general attention. It has been very unfortunate for our

Civil-Service Reformers that they have never been able to provoke

discussion. They have had the field of argument all to themselves. Their

repeated challenges have been received only with silent respect,

scornful indifference, or expressions of encouragement still more

depressing. Those whose hostility they were prepared to encounter have

been the readiest to acknowledge the truth of their propositions--

considered as pure abstractions--and have even invited

them to apply their system--in conjunction with that which it seeks to

supplant. Meanwhile, the popular interest has been kept busily absorbed

by issues of a different nature; and the Reformers, snubbed in quarters

where they had confidently counted on aid, and hustled from the arena in

which they had fondly imagined they were to play a prominent part and

exert a decisive influence, are now, it is announced, about to devote

their energies to the quiet propagation of their views by means of

tracts and other publications, abstaining from any appearance in the

domain of actual politics either as a distinct party or as an organized

body of independent voters appealing to the hopes and fears of existing

parties, and ready to co-operate with one or the other according to the

inducements offered for their support.

We heartily wish them success in this new enterprise, and it is as a

contribution to their efforts that we publish in this number of the

Magazine an article which, so far as our observation extends, is the

first direct argumentative attack upon their doctrines and open defence

of the system they have assailed. We shall not undertake to anticipate

their reply, but I shall content ourselves with pointing out, on the

principle of _fas est ab hoste doceri,_ what they may learn from this

attack, and especially what hints may be derived from it in regard to

the proper objective point of their proposed operations. Hitherto, if we

mistake not, they have been led to suppose that the only obstacles in

their way are the interested antagonism of the "politicians" and the

ignorant apathy of the great mass of the people, and it is because they

have found themselves powerless to make head against the tactics of the

former class that they intend to confine themselves henceforth to the

work of awaking and enlightening the latter. There is always danger,

however, when we are expounding our pet theories to a group of silent

listeners, of ignoring their state of mind in regard to the

subject-matter and mistaking the impression produced by our eloquence.

George Borrow tells us that when preaching in Rommany to a congregation

of Gypsies he felt highly flattered by the patient attention of his

hearers, till he happened to notice that they all had their eyes fixed

in a diabolical squint. Something of the same kind would, we fear, be

the effect on a large number of persons of well-meant expositions of the

English civil-service reform and its admirable results. Nor will any

appeals to the moral sense excite an indignation at the workings of our

present system sufficiently deep and general to demand its overthrow.

Civil-service reform had a far easier task in England than it has here,

and forces at its back which are here actively or inertly opposed to it.

There the system of patronage was intimately connected with

oligarchical rule; official positions were not so much monopolized by a

victorious party as by a privileged class; the government of the day had

little interest in maintaining the system, the bulk of the nation had a

direct interest in upsetting it, and its downfall was a natural result

of the growth of popular power and the decline of aristocracy. Our

system, however similar in its character and effects, had no such

origin; it does not belong to some peculiar institution which we are

seeking to get rid of: on the contrary, it has its roots in certain

conceptions of the nature of government and popular freedom--of the

relations between a people and those who administer its affairs--which

are all but universally current among us.

It is this last point which is clearly and forcibly presented in the

article of our contributor, and which it will behoove the Reformers not

to overlook. Nothing is more characteristic of the American mind, in

reference to political ideas, than its strong conservatism. This fact,

which has often puzzled foreign observers accustomed to connect

democracy with innovating tendencies and violent fluctuations, is yet

easily explained. Though ours is a new country, its system of government

is really older than that of almost any other civilized country. In the

century during which it has existed intact and without any material

modification the institutions of most other nations have undergone a

complete change, in some cases of form and structure, in others of

theory and essence. Even England, which boasts of the stability of its

government and its immunity from the storms that have overturned so many

thrones and disorganized so many states, has experienced a fundamental,

though gradual and peaceable, revolution. There, as elsewhere, the

centre of power has changed, the chain of tradition has been broken, and

new conceptions of the functions of government and its relations to the

governed have taken the place of the old ones. But in America nothing of

this kind has occurred: the "old order" has not passed away, nor have

its foundations undergone the least change; the municipal and colonial

institutions under which we first exercised the right of

self-government, and the Constitution which gave us our national

baptism, are still the fountain of all our political ideas; and our

party struggles are not waged about new principles or animated by new

watch words, but are fenced and guided by the maxims transmitted by the

founders of the republic. This is our strength and our safeguard against

wild experiments, but it is also an impediment to every suggestion of

improvement. It binds us to the letter of tradition, leads us to

confound the accidental with the essential, and gives to certain notions

and certain words a potency which must be described as an anachronism.

We still use the language of the Revolutionary epoch, recognize no

perils but those against which our ancestors had to guard, and put faith

in the efficacy of methods that have no longer an object, and of phrases

that have lost their original significance. Because George III.

distributed offices at his pleasure as rewards, and bound the holders to

party services in conformity with his will, the sovereign people is to

do the same. "Rotation in office" having been the means in the

eighteenth century of dispelling political stagnation and checking

jobbery and corruption, it is still the only process for correcting

abuses and getting the public service properly performed. The prime duty

of all good citizens is to emulate the incessant political activity of

their patriotic forefathers, and it is owing solely to a too general

neglect of this duty that ballot-stuffing and machine-running, and all

the other evils unknown in early days and in primitive communities, have

come into existence and gained sway throughout the land. These and

similar views, according to our observation, characterize what we may

without disrespect, and without confining the remark to the rural

districts, term the provincial mind, and wherever they exist the ideas

of the Civil-Service Reformers are not only not understood or treated as

visionary, but are regarded with aversion and distrust as foreign,

monstrous and inconsistent with popular freedom and republican

government.

AN UNFINISHED PAGE OF HISTORY.

I can easily understand why educated Americans cross the Atlantic every

year in shoals in search of the picturesque; and I can understand, too,

all that they say of the relief which ivied ruins and cathedrals and

galleries, or any other reminders of past ages, give to their eyes,

oppressed so long by our interminable rows of store-box houses, our

pasteboard villas, the magnificence of our railway accommodations for

Ladies and Gents, and all the general gaseous glitter which betrays how

young and how rich we are. But I cannot understand why it is that their

eyes, thus trained, should fail to see the exceptional picturesqueness

of human life in this country. The live man is surely always more

dramatic and suggestive than a house or a costume, provided we have eyes

to interpret him; and this people, as no other, are made up of the

moving, active deposits and results of world-old civilizations and

experiments in living.

Outwardly, if you choose, the country is like one of the pretentious

houses of its rich citizens--new, smug, complacently commonplace--but

within, like the house again, it is filled with rare bits gathered out

of every age and country and jumbled together in utter confusion. If you

ride down Seventh street in a horse-car, you are in a psychological

curio-shop. On one side, very likely, is a Russian Jew just from the

Steppes; on the other, a negro with centuries of heathendom and slavery

hinting themselves in lip and eye; the driver is a Fenian, with the

blood of the Phoenicians in his veins; in front of you is a gentleman

with the unmistakable Huguenot nose, and chin; while an almond-eyed

pagan, disguised behind moustache and eye-glasses, courteously takes

your fare and drops it for you in the Slawson box. Nowhere do all the

elements of Tragedy and Comedy play so strange a part as on the

dead-level of this American stage. It is because it is so dead a level

that we fail to see the part they play--because "furious Goth and fiery

Hun" meet, not on the battle-field, but in the horse-car, dropping their

cents together in a Slawson box.

For example, as to the tragedy.

I met at dinner not long ago a lady who was introduced to me under a

French name, but whose clear olive complexion, erect carriage and

singular repose of manner would indicate her rather to be a Spaniard.

She wore a red rose in the coils of her jetty hair, and another fastened

the black lace of her corsage. Her eyes, which were slow, dark and

brilliant, always rested on you an instant before she spoke with that

fearless candor which is not found in the eyes of a member of any race

that has ever been enslaved. I was told that her rank was high among her

own people, and in her movements and voice there were that quiet

simplicity and total lack of self-consciousness which always belong

either to a man or woman of the highest breeding, or to one whose

purpose in life is so noble as to lift him above all considerations of

self. Although a foreigner, she spoke English with more purity than most

of the Americans at the table, but with a marked and frequent recurrence

of forcible but half-forgotten old idioms; which was due, as! learned

afterward, to her having had no book of English literature to study for

several years but Shakespeare. I observed that she spoke but seldom, and

to but one person at a time; but when she did, her casual talk was the

brimming over of a mind of great original force as yet full and unspent.

She was, besides, a keen observer who had studied much, but seen more.

This lady, in a word, was one who would deserve recognition by the best

men and women in any country; and she received it here, as many of the

readers of _Lippincott_, who will recognize my description, will

remember. She was caressed and feted by literary and social celebrities

in Washington and New York; Boston made much of her; Longfellow and

Holmes made verses in her honor; prying reporters gave accounts of her

singular charm and beauty to the public in the daily papers.

She was accompanied by two of the men of her family. They did not speak

English, but they were men of strong practical sense and business

capacity, with the odd combination in their character of that

exaggerated perception of honorable dealing which we are accustomed to

call chivalric. They had, too, a grave dignity and composure of bearing

which would have befitted Spanish hidalgos, and beside which our pert,

sociable American manner and slangy talk were sadly belittled. These men

(for I had a reason in making particular inquiries concerning them) were

in private life loyal friends, good citizens, affectionate husbands and

fathers--in a word, Christian men, honest from the marrow to the

outside.

Now to the strange part of my story, revolting enough to our republican

ears. This lady and her people, in the country to which they belong, are

held in a subjection to which that of the Russian serf was comparative

freedom. They are held legally as the slaves not of individuals, but of

the government, which has absolute power over their persons, lives and

property. Its manner of exercising that power is, however, peculiar.

They are compelled to live within certain enclosures. Each enclosure is

ruled by a man of the dominant race, usually of the lower class, who, as

a rule, gains the place by bribing the officer of government who has

charge of these people. The authority of this man within the limits of

the enclosure is literally as autocratic as that of the Russian czar. He

distributes the rations intended by the government for the support of

these people, or such part of them as he thinks fit, retaining whatever

amount he chooses for himself. There is nothing to restrain him in these

robberies. In consequence, the funds set aside by the government for the

support of its wretched dependants are stolen so constantly by the

officers at the capital and the petty tyrants of the separate enclosures

that the miserable creatures almost yearly starve and freeze to death

from want. Their resource would be, of course, as they are in a

civilized country, to work at trades, to farm, etc. But this is not

permitted to them. Another petty officer is appointed in each enclosure

to barter goods for the game or peltry which they bring in or crops that

they manage to raise. He fixes his own price for both his goods and

theirs, and cheats them by wholesale at his leisure. There is no appeal:

they are absolutely forbidden to trade with any other person. The men of

my friend's family--educated men and shrewd in business as any merchant

of Philadelphia--when at home were liable to imprisonment and a fine of

five hundred dollars if they bought from or sold to any other person

than this one man. They are, too, taught no trade or profession. Each

enclosure has its appointed blacksmith, carpenter, etc. of the dominant

class, who, naturally, will not share their profits by teaching their

trade to the others.

Within the enclosures my friend and her people, no matter how

enlightened or refined they may be, are herded, and under the same

rules, as so many animals. They cannot leave the enclosure without

passes, such as were granted to our slaves before the war when they

wished to go outside of the plantation. This woman, when seated at

President Hayes's table, the equal in mind and breeding of any of her

companions, was, by the laws of her country, a runaway, legally liable

to be haled by the police back to her enclosure, and shot if she

resisted. She and her people are absolutely unprotected by any law. It

is indeed the only case, so far as I know, in any Christian country, in

which a single class are so set aside, unprotected by any law. When our

slaves were killed or tortured by inhuman masters, there was at least

some show of justice for them. The white murderer went through some form

of trial and punishment. The slave, though a chattel, was still a human

being. But these people are not recognized by the law as human beings.

They cannot buy nor sell; they cannot hold property: if with their own

hands they build a house and gather about them the comforts of

civilization and the wife and children to which the poorest negro, the

most barbarous savage, has a right, any man of the dominant class can,

without violating any law, take possession of the house, ravage the

wife and thrust the children out to starve. The wrong-doer is subject to

no penalty. The victim has no right of appeal to the courts. Hence such

outrages are naturally of daily occurrence. Not only are they

perpetrated on individuals, but frequently there is a raid made upon the

whole of the inmates of one enclosure--whenever, in fact, the people in

the neighborhood fancy they would like to take possession of their land.

The kinsmen of my friend, with their clan numbering some seven hundred

souls--a peaceable, industrious Christian community, living on land

which had belonged to their ancestors for centuries--were swept off of

it a few years ago at the whim of two of their rulers: their houses and

poor little belongings were all left behind, and they were driven a

thousand miles into a sterile, malarious region where nearly half of

their number died. The story of their sufferings, their homesickness and

their despair on the outward journey, and of how still later some thirty

of them returned on foot, carrying the bones of those who had died to

lay them in their old homes, is one of the most dramatic pages in

history. De Quincey's "Flight of a Tartar Clan" does not equal it in

pathos or as a story of heroism and endurance. At the end of their

homeward journey, when almost within sight of their homes, the heroic

little band were seized by order of the ruler of their enclosure and

committed to prison. The tribe are still in the malarious swamps to

which they were exiled. Strangers hold their farms and the houses which

they built with their own hands.

The anomalous condition of a people legally ranking as animals, and not

human beings, would naturally produce unpleasant consequences when they

are criminally the aggressors. When they steal or kill they cannot be

tried, sent to jail or hung as if they were human in the eye of the law.

The ruler of each enclosure is granted arbitrary power in such cases to

punish at his discretion. He is judge, jury, and often executioner. He

has a control over the lives of these people more absolute than that of

any Christian monarch over his subjects. If he thinks proper to shoot

the offender, he can call upon the regular army of the country to

sustain him. If the individual offender escapes, the whole of the

inmates of the enclosure are held responsible, and men, women and

children are slaughtered by wholesale and without mercy.

My readers understand my little fable by this time. It is no fable, but

a disgraceful truth.

The government under which a people--many of whom are educated,

enlightened Christian gentlemen--are denied the legal rights of human

beings and all protection of law is not the absolute despotism of Siara

or Russia, but the United States, the republic which proclaims itself

the refuge for the oppressed of all nations--the one spot on earth where

every man is entitled alike to life, liberty and the pursuit of

happiness. The only people in the world to whom it denies these rights

are not its quondam slaves, not pagans, not runaway convicts, not the

offscourings of any nation however degraded, but the original owners of

the country.

The legal disability under which the Indian is held is as much of an

outrage on human rights, and as bald a contradiction of the doctrines on

which our republic is based, as negro slavery was.

R.H.D.

A LITTLE IRELAND IN AMERICA.

The humorous side of life was never more vividly brought before me than

while living a few years ago in the vicinity of an Irish settlement in

one of the suburbs of New York. What we call "characters" were to be

found in every cottage--the commonplace was the exception. Indeed, I do

not remember that it existed at all in "The Lane," as this locality was

called.

Perhaps among the inhabitants of The Lane none more deserved distinction

than Mary Magovern. The grandmother of a numerous family, she united all

the masculine and feminine virtues. About the stiff, spotless and

colossal frill of her cap curled wreaths of smoke from her stout

dhudeen as she sat before the door blacking the small boots of her

grandchildren, stopping from time to time to remove the pipe from her

mouth, that she might deliver in her full bass voice a peremptory order

to the large yellow dog that lay at her feet. It was usually on the

occasion of a carriage passing, when the dog would growl and rise. Very

quickly out came the pipe, and immediately followed the words, "Danger,

lay by thim intintions;" and the pipe was used as an indicator for the

next movement--namely, to patiently lie down again upon the ground.

Mary Magovern kept a drinking-shop behind the living-rooms of her

cottage, and the immense prestige she had in The Lane must have had some

foundation in the power which this thriving business gave her, many of

her neighbors being under the obligation of debt to her.

Mike Quinlan would have been her most frequent visitor had it not been

for the ever-open eye of Mrs. Quinlan, which caused her husband to seek

his delights by stealth at a village a mile away. Mike was an elderly

and handsome man, but his wits had ebbed out as the contents of the

wine-cup flowed in, and the beauty that had won so remarkable a person

as Mrs. Quinlan in its first glow was somewhat marred. He was the owner

of a small cart and a mule, and those who had stones or earth to move

usually remembered to employ poor Mike. But it was on foot, as a more

inconspicuous method of eluding the watchfulness of Mrs. Quinlan, that

Mike slipped away to the neighboring village of an afternoon, and it was

on foot that I one night saw Mrs. Quinlan going over the same road with

an invincible determination in her countenance and a small birch rod in

her hand. Mrs. Quinlan was somewhat younger than her lord and master:

she had a clear, bright-blue eye, a roseate color in her little slender

face, and gray hair tidily smoothed back beneath the dainty ruffles of

her cap, about which a black ribbon was tied. She wore short petticoats

and low shoes, and as she walked briskly along she smoothed her apron

with the disengaged hand, as if, the balance of the family

respectability having so wholly fallen upon her own shoulders, she would

not disturb it by permitting a disorderly wrinkle. Half an hour later

she passed again over the road, her face turned homeward and wearing an

even greater austerity, the birch rod grasped firmly in her hand, and

her worser half preceding her with a foolish smile upon his lips, half

of concession, half of pride in the power to which he stooped.

Another of Mrs. Magovern's occasional visitors was Old Haley, who had

regular employment upon our own place. Like Mike Quinlan, he rejoiced in

a wife who was an ornament to her sex--a most respectable, handsome and

intelligent woman, though education had done little to sharpen her wits

or widen her experience. She could tell a one from a five dollar bill,

as her husband would proudly inform you, and she could cook a dinner, do

up a skirt or a frilled cap, keep a house or tend a sick friend, as well

as any woman in the land. "Maggie's a janeous!" her husband would remark

with a look of intense admiration.

One evening Mrs. Haley made her appearance at our house, asking for an

audience of my mother. The object was to inform her--these sympathetic

people like to be advised in all their affairs--that being in need of

various household supplies she proposed on the following day to go to

the city and purchase them at the Washington Market.

"I suppose you have been to the city before, Mrs. Haley?" remarked my

mother.

"I have not, ma'am," said Mrs. Haley.

"Had you not better take some friend with you who has been there before,

lest you should get lost?"

"Faith, I had, ma'am: I had a right to have moor sinse an' think o'

that."

So Mrs. Haley departed, returning again in company with Mary Magovern:

"Here's Mary Magovern, ma'am: she's goin' along wid me."

"Ah, that's very well.--You know the city, Mary? you've been there?"

"I have not, ma'am."

"Why, what, then, is the use of your going with Mrs. Haley?"

"We'll make a shtrict inquiry, ma'am."

The next morning they started, and at four o'clock Old Haley came in

much anxiety of mind to seek comfort of my mother: "Maggie's not come,

ma'am. Faith, I'm throubled, for the city is a quare place."

When it grew late Haley returned again and again, in ever-increasing

anxiety, to be reassured. At last, when the family were retiring to bed,

came Mrs. Haley and Mrs. Magovern to report their arrival. In spite of

the lateness of the hour my mother received them, and in spite of their

wearied and worn faces administered a gentle rebuke for the anxiety that

Mrs. Haley had caused her spouse.

"Well, indade it's no wonder he was throubled," said Mrs. Haley, "an'

it's a wonder we got here at all. We got nothing at the Washington

Market, for we couldn't find it at all: I think they tuk it away to

Washington. It was in the mornin' airly that we got to the city, ma'am,

an' there was a koind of a carr, an' a gintleman up on the top of it,

an' anuther gintleman at the dure of it, wid the dure in his hand, an'

he sez, sez he, 'Git in, ladies,' sez he.--'We're goin' to the

Washington Market, sur,' sez I.--That's where I'll take yez, ladies,'

sez he. 'Pay yer fares, ladies.' An' we got in, ma'am, an' wint up to

the top of the city, an' paid tin cints, the both of us. An' there was a

great many ladies an' gintlemen got in an' done the same, ma'am, an'

some got out one place an' some another. An' whin we got up to the top

of the city, 'Mrs. Magovern,' sez I,' this isn't the Washington Market,'

sez I.--' It is not, Mrs. Haley,' sez she.--'We'll git out, Mrs.

Magovern,' sez I.--'We will, Mrs. Haley,' sez she. An' thin, ma'am,

there was a small bit of a howl in the carr, and it was through the howl

the ladies an' gintlemen would cry out to the gintleman on the top o'

the carr, and he'd put his face down forninst it an' spake wid thim; an'

I cried up through the howl to him, an' sez I, 'Me an' Mrs. Magovern

will git out, sur,' sez I, 'for this isn't the Washington Market at

all.'--'It is not, ma'am,' sez he, 'but that's where I'll take yez,' sez

he. 'Sit down, ladies,' sez he, 'and pay me the money,' sez he. 'I had a

great many paple to lave,' sez he. An' indade he had, ma'am. An' we paid

the money agin, an' we wint down to the bottom o' the city. 'This is not

the Washington Market, Mrs. Magovern,' sez I.--'It is not, Mrs. Haley,'

sez she.--'We'll git out, Mrs. Magovern,' sez I.--'We will, Mrs. Haley,'

sez she. Thin came the gintleman that first had the dure in his hand.

'What's the matther, ladies?' sez he.--'This isn't the Washington

Market, sur,' sez I.--'It is not, ma'am,' sez he, 'but the city is a

great place,' sez he, 'an' it's not aisy to go everywhere at wonst,' sez

he; 'an' if yez will have patience,' sez he, 'ye'll git there,' sez he.

'Git in, ladies,' sez he, 'an' pay yer fares.' Wid all the houses

there's in the city, an' all the sthrates there's in it, faith, it was

no good at all to thry to foind our way alone; but thim wur false

paple--they niver took us to the Washington Market at all; an' it was

all the day we wint up to the top o' the city and down to the bottom o'

the city, and spinding our money at it. An' sez I, 'Mrs. Magovern, it

would be better for us if we wint home,' sez I.--'It would, Mrs. Haley,'

sez she; an' we come down to the boat, an' it was two hours agin befoor

the boat would go, an' thin we come home; an' it's toired we are, an'

it's an' awful place, the city is."

Haley's statements could seldom be relied on, but his untruth fulness

was never a matter of self-interest, but rather of amiability. He

desired to tell you whatever you desired to know, and to tell it as you

would like to hear it, even if facts were so perverse as to be contrary.

One day I wanted to do an errand in the village, and called for the

horse and carriage. Haley brought them to the door. As I took the reins

I remembered that it was noon and the horse's dinner-time: "Did the

horse have his dinner, Haley?"

"I just gave it to him, ma'am; and an ilegint dinner he had."

"Why did you feed him just when I was about to drive him?"

"Oh, well, it's not much he got."

"He should have had nothing."

"Faith, me lady, I ownly showed it to him."

There were no more respectable people in The Lane than John Godfrey and

his family. His pretty little wife with an anxious face tenderly watched

over an ever-increasing family of daughters, till on one most

providential occasion the expected girl turned out to be a boy, and I

went with my sisters to congratulate the happy mother. "What will you

name the little fellow, Mrs. Godfrey?" I asked, sympathetically.

The poor woman looked up with a smile, saying weakly, "John Pathrick,

miss--John afther the father, an' Pathrick afther the saint."

The following year the same unexpected luck brought another boy, and

again we young girls, being much at leisure, carried our

congratulations: "What will be the name of this little boy, Mrs.

Godfrey?"

"Pathrick John, miss--Pathrick afther the saint, an' John afther the

father."

A confused sense of having heard that sentence before came over me.

"Why, Mrs. Godfrey," I said, "was not that the name of your last child?"

"To be shure, miss. Why would I be trating one betther than the other?"

A member of this same family, upon receiving a blow with a stone in the

eye, left her somewhat overcrowded paternal home for the quieter

protection of her widowed aunt, Mrs. King, and one day my sister and

myself knocked at Mrs. King's door to inquire about the state of the

injured organ.

"Troth, miss, it's very bad," said Mrs. King.

"What do you do for it, Mrs. King?"

"Do?" said Mrs. King, suddenly applying the corner of her apron to her

overflowing eyes--"Do?" she continued in a broken voice. "I've been

crying these three days."

"But what do you do to make it better?"

Mrs. King took heart, folded her arms, and thus applied herself to the

setting forth of her humane exertions: "In comes Mistress Magovern,

an', 'Mrs. King,' sez she, 'put rar bafesteak to the choild's oye;' an'

that minit, ma'am, the rar bafesteak wint to it. Thin comes Mrs. Haley.

'Is it rar bafesteak ye'd be putting to it, Mrs. King?' sez she. 'Biling

clothes, Mrs. King,' sez she. That minit, ma'am, the rar bafesteak come

afif an' the biling clothes wint to it. In comes Mrs. Quinlan. 'Will ye

be destryin' the choild's oye intirely, Mrs. King?' sez she. 'Cowld ice,

Mrs. King.' An' that minit, ma'am, the biling clothes come aff an' the

cowld ice wint to it. Oh, I do be doin' iverything anybody do tell me."

It was a memorable sight to see the Gunning twins wandering down The

Lane hand in hand when their maternal relative had gone out washing for

the day and taken the door-key with her. "Thim lads is big enough to

take care of thimsilves," she would remark, though "the lads" were not

yet capable of coherent speech. No doubt they wandered into some

neighbor's at meal-time and received a willingly-given potato or a drink

of milk. They seemed happy enough, and their funny, ugly little faces

were defaced by no tears. They grew in time old enough to explain their

position to inquiring passers-by and to pick up and eat an amazing

quantity of green apples. A lady passing one day stopped and

remonstrated with one of them. "Barney," she said, "it will make you ill

if you eat those green apples."--"I do be always atin' of them, ma'am,"

replied Barney, stolidly.

Perhaps it may have been the green apples, but from whatever cause

Barney fell ill, and all that the doctor prescribed made him no better.

"It's no matther, stir," said Mrs. Gunning one morning: "yer needn't

come ag'in. I'll just go an' ask Mrs. ------" (my mother).

The next morning the doctor, meeting my mother, laughingly remarked

that it was very plain that they couldn't practise in the same

district: he had just met Mrs. Gunning, who informed him that "what

Mrs. ------ gave her the night befoor done the choild a power of good."

The day preceding our departure from the place my sister and I passed

through The Lane, and received the most amiable farewells, accompanied

with blessings, and even tears. The figure I best remember is that of

Mrs. Regan, who, bursting out from her doorway, stood in our path, and,

dissolving in tears, sobbed out, "Faith, I'm sorry yez be goin'. I don't

know what I'll do at all widout yez;" and, seizing my sister's hand,

gave her this unique recommendation: "Ye were always passing by

mannerly--niver sassy nor impidint, nor nothing."

The Lane has changed to-day. A Chinese grocer has, I hear, set up a shop

in its midst. Some of its most noted characters have passed away, and

the younger generation have taken on habits more American than those of

their predecessors.

M.R.O.

A CHILD'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

A quaint and charming volume, which has fallen in our way, is _Little

Charlie's Life_, "the autobiography of a child between six and seven

years of age, written with his own hand and without any assistance

whatever." It was at the urgent request of the gentleman who acted as

editor, Rev. W.R. Clark--thus rescuing an inimitable little work from

comparative oblivion--that the parents of the youthful author

reluctantly consented to the publication of this curious delineation of

child-life. From the date of his birth (1833), Charlie must have written

his work some forty years ago. How long he was engaged in its

composition is not stated, but from the internal evidence yielded by the

spelling and the handwriting (for the work is lithographed in exact

imitation of the manuscript) we should infer that it occupied two or

three years, the handwriting of the first seven chapters being in

imitation of ordinary printing, while the remaining chapters appear in

an ordinary schoolboy's hand. We may add that it is copiously

illustrated by himself, and that the illustrations are worth their

weight in gold, supplementing as they do, in a superfluously exact and

curiously quaint manner, this most unique work.

He starts with this account of himself: "My name is Charles John Young,

and I was born in Amfort, a pretty village in Hampshire, 1833 in July,

that pleasant time when the birds sing merrily and flowers bloom

sweetly. My father and mother are the kindest in the world, and I love

them dearly and both alike. I shall give a description of them by and

by. In the mean time I shall just say that my papa is a clergyman."

The earlier chapters describe the various migrations of the family from

one parish to another, and from them we have no difficulty in

recognizing in "papa" the Rev. Julian Young, who possessed no small

share of the talents that distinguished _his_ father, the celebrated

tragedian, Charles Young, and which seem to have been transmitted to our

author, who, we understand, has honorably served his country in Her

Majesty's army. From his earliest years Charlie seems to have been

strongly influenced by religious feelings. His creed was a bright and

trustful one, a realization of God's presence and of the need of

speaking to Him as to one who could always hear and help. When he was

about three years old, we are told in the editor's interesting preface,

he was often heard offering up little petitions for the supply of his

child-like wants. Once, when, his nurse left him to fetch some more

milk, his father overheard him saying, "O God, please let there be

enough milk in the jug for me to have some more, for Jesus Christ's

sake. Amen." Many quaint little religious reflections and scriptural

allusions are interspersed throughout the book. In one place he declares

that "without papa and mamma the garden would be to me what the

wilderness was to John the Baptist;" while again he offers up a pathetic

prayer for a baby-brother; and throughout we are struck by the fact that

his religion was pre-eminently one of love. Charlie's educational

advantages were of the noblest and best, home-training largely

predominating. In the ninth chapter he refers in a simple matter-of-fact

way to his early studies: "Mamma devotes her time in teaching me and in

reading instructive books with me. Papa tells me about the productions

of the earth, rivers, mountains, valleys, mines, and, most wonderful of

all, the formation of the human body." Further on we read: "Nothing of

any great importance occurred now for some time. My life was spent

quietly in the country, as the child of a Wiltshire clergyman ought,

mamma devoting her time in teaching me, and my daily play going on the

same, till at last papa and mamma took me to the splendid capital of

England." However much this brilliant transition may have dazzled him,

he still prefers his quiet country home, arguing thus: "As to living

there [in London], I should not like it. The reason why--because its

noisy riots in the streets suit not my mood like the tranquil streams

and the waving trees I love in England's country.... 'Tis true--oh, how

true!--in the poetic words of Mr. Shakespeare, 'Man made the town, God

made the country.'"

Despite the stilted style and absurdly pompous descriptions, with an

occasional terrible breakdown, Charlie's love of Nature, and especially

of the animal creation, seems to have been most genuine. He speaks of

"the wide ocean which when angry roars and clashes over the beach, but

when calm crabs are seen crawling on the shore and the sun shines bright

over the waves," and of "the billows rolling over each other and foaming

over the rough stones," with an apparently real enthusiasm. The softer

emotions of his nature were engrossed in this way, as we infer from the

negative evidence afforded by his autobiography that he reached his

seventh year without any experience of the tender passion.

His physiological ideas in the speculations regarding the origin of a

baby-brother are naïvely expressed: "One day I was told that a baby was

born [this was when he was three years and a half old], and upon going

into mamma's bedroom I saw a red baby lying in an arm-chair wrapped in

swaddling-clothes. It puzzled me very much to think how he came into the

world: it was mysterious, very, and I cannot make it out now. My first

thought was, that he must have had airy wings, and after he had come

they had disappeared. My second thought was that he was so very little

as to be able to come through the keyhole, and increased rapidly in

size, just as it says in the Bible that a grain of mustard-seed springs

to be so large a tree that the fowls of the air can roost upon it."

In his sixth year Charlie evinced poetic tendencies. We have in one of

his poems a description of his grandpapa, "a venerable old gentleman

with dark eyes, gray hair, noble features, and altogether very generous

aspect." Here is "a song appropriate to him:"

Oh, venerable is our old ancestor--

Cloud on his brow,

Lightning in his eyes,

His gray hair streaming in the wind.

To children ever kind,

To merit never blind,--

Oh, such is our old ancestor,

With hair that streameth wild.

At the head of this poem is a picture of the old ancestor, consisting of

a hat, a head, a walking-stick, one arm and two legs, one of

which--whether the right or left is doubtful, as their origin is

concealed by the aforesaid arm--is much longer than the other, and

walking in a contrary direction. The most wonderful feature of this

sketch is the "hair streaming in the wind," the distance from the poll

to the end of the flowing locks being longer than the longest leg.

We cannot conclude without an extract describing a "dreadful accident"

which happened to our youthful author; "perhaps," as he solemnly says,

"for a punishment of my sins, or to show me that Death stands ready at

the door to snatch my life away:" "One night papa had been conjuring a

penny, and I thought _I_ should like to conjure; so I took a round brass

thing with a verse out of the Bible upon it that I brought into bed with

me. I thought it went down papa's throat, so _I_ put it down _my_ throat,

and I was pretty near choked. I called my nurse, who was in the next

room. She fetched up papa, and then my nurse brought the basin. Papa

beat my back, and I was sick. _Lo! there was the counter!_ Papa said,

'Good God!' and my nurse fainted, but soon recovered. Don't you think

papa was very clever when he beat my back? Papa then had a long talk

afterward with me about it--a very serious one."

The above pathetic story is accurately illustrated, but we especially

regret that we cannot transfer to these pages some of the marvellous

delineations of the animals in the Clifton Zoological Garden.

M.S.D.

WANTED--A REAL GAINSBOROUGH.

I am an unmarried man of twenty-four. After that confession it is hardly

necessary to add that I am in the habit of thinking a great deal about a

person not yet embodied into actual existence--i.e. my future wife. I

have not yet met her--she is a purely ideal being--but at the same time

I so often have a vivid conception of her looks, her air, her walk, her

tones even, that she seems to be present. My misery is that I cannot

find her in real life.

No one need fancy that I am an imaginative man: quite the contrary is

the fact. I am a lawyer, and have an office in Bond street. Every

morning at eight o'clock I take the Sixth Avenue horse-cars and ride

down to Fourteenth street. I have a fancy for walking the rest of the

way, and toward evening I saunter back homeward along Broadway and Union

Square.

Prosaic as these journeys may seem, they are nevertheless the

inspiration of my hopes, the feeders of my visions. It is at such times

that I enjoy my glimpses of the lady I long to meet. I jostle gentle

creatures at every step: feminine shapes and feminine tones are on every

side presented to eyes and ears. I trust nobody will be prejudiced

against me when I confess that I see the fair one of my dreams in the

shop-windows. Once having seen her, I become immeasurably happy, and go

on dreaming about her until we meet again. It may seem a curious

admission, but this beautiful although impalpable being is suggested by

the charming dresses, hats and bonnets displayed on the milliners'

blocks. None of our artists can paint portraits now-a-days: Art seems to

have withdrawn her gifts from them and endowed the dressmakers and

milliners instead.

It was at first difficult for me to decide on the personality of my

beloved. My earliest fancy was for a blond: at least the dress was of

pale blue silk with a profusion of lace trimmings. Her hat was of straw

faced with azure velvet, and the crown surrounded by a long plume, also

of ciel blue. I knew by heart the features of this fair young creature,

invisible although she was to others. They seemed to belong more to a

flower than to a face: her eyes were large and blue, full of appealing

love; her hair was of course golden; her smile was angelic; and her

whole expression was one of sweetness and goodness. She was my first

dream: little although she belonged to actual life, she used to trip

about by my side and sit with me in my room at home. Suddenly, however,

I became enamored of a different creature, and my dream changed. I began

to think of my lovely blond regretfully as of a beautiful creature too

good for earth who died young. It is the habit of the shopkeepers to

change the figures in their windows, and one morning I fell in love with

quite a different creature. She wore when I first saw her a long dress

of black silk and velvet sparkling with jet; over her shoulders was

thrown carelessly a mantle of cream-colored cloth; on her head was a

plush hat--what they call a Gainsborough--trimmed with a long graceful

plume, also of cream-color. Although only her back was toward me, I knew

by instinct exactly what her face was. She was dark of course, with a

low broad forehead, about which clustered little short curls; her eyes

were superb, at once laughing and melancholy; her features suggested

rather pride than softness; but her smile was enchanting, open, sunny,

like a burst of light from behind a cloud. Nothing could be more real

than this vision. At first the discovery of this magnificently-endowed

woman rendered me happy: I used to walk past the shop half a dozen

times a day to look at her. Her costumes varied, but they always

suggested the same dark but brilliant lineaments, the same graceful

movements, the same peculiarly lovely tones. She often looked back at me

over her shoulder, but had an air of evading me. All at once, with

surprise and delight, I remembered that she might be found in actual

existence, in real flesh and blood. I deserted the image for a week in

the hope of finding the reality. I paced Fifth Avenue; I went to the

dry-goods stores; I attended the theatres. Often I seemed to see her

before me--the picturesque hat, the long plume, the rich mantle and

dress. At such moments while I pressed forward my heart beat. When the

cheek turned toward me and the eyes lighted up with surprise at my

disappointed stare, it was easy enough to see that I had made a mistake.

There was the hat, the cloak, the bewitching little frippiness of lace

and net and ribbon about the bust. She had, however, copied the

masterpiece without investing herself with its soul: her face was vague

and characterless, her whole personality void of that eloquent

womanliness which had so wrought upon me. This experience was so many

times repeated that I was frightfully tormented by it. The familiar

dress seemed to reveal with appalling truthfulness the lack of those

qualities of heart and soul which I demanded. Those lovely, picturesque

outlines suggest not only rounded cheeks colored with girlish bloom, but

something more; and the graceful draping is not a meaningless husk.

I have gone back to my shop-window image. She never disappoints me. She

is as beautiful, as magnificently endowed, as full of fascinating life

and spirit, as ever. I sometimes think, unless I find her actual

prototype, of buying that Gainsborough hat, that cloth mantle and velvet

dress, and hanging them up in my room.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

History of the English People. By John Richard Green. New York:

Harper & Brothers.

Most readers interested in English history have long felt the need of

such a work as this, in which the results of recent research among

original sources and of the critical examination of earlier labors are

gathered up and summarized in a narrative at once clear and concise,

free from disquisition, minuteness of detail and elaborate descriptions,

without being meagre or superficial, devoid of suggestiveness or of

animation. In calling his work a _History of the English People_, Mr.

Green has not undertaken to deviate from the beaten track, devoting his

attention to social development and leaving political affairs in the

background. What he has evidently had in view is the fact that English

history is in a special sense that of the rise and growth of free

institutions, exhibiting at every stage the mutual influence or combined

action of different classes, permeated even when the Crown or the

aristocracy was most powerful by a popular spirit, and contrasting in

this respect with that of France and Spain, in which during many

centuries the mass of the people lost instead of gaining ground,

representative bodies analogous to the English Parliament were deprived

of their rights or swept out of existence, and liberty was sacrificed to

national consolidation and unity. Whence this difference came need

hardly be pointed out. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes were neither freer

nor more enterprising than the Franks and other Teutonic families; but

the fortune which carried them to Britain saved them from inheriting any

onerous share of the great legacy of the Roman Empire--with the task of

absorbing and transmitting its language and civilization--secured them

against the risk of being either merged in a more numerous race or

submerged by a new influx, and thus preserved an identity and continuity

which link their latest achievements with their earliest exploits, and

stamp their whole career with the same character.

With such a subject, Mr. Green has had no difficulty in so marking its

divisions as to concentrate attention on successive epochs without

dropping the thread that runs through the whole. The earlier portions of

his work are naturally the most instructive and the fullest of interest.

The last volume, indeed, which covers the ground from the Revolution to

the battle of Waterloo, besides including the index to the whole work,

gives far too rapid a survey of momentous and familiar events to afford

profit or satisfaction. One feels that, while the style retains its

fluency, the tone has lost its warmth, and that much of the writing must

have been perfunctory: the reading, at all events, cannot but be so. But

scarcely any one, however well acquainted with the ground, can follow

without pleasure and an enlargement of view Mr. Green's account of

"Early England," "England under Foreign Kings," "The Charter" and "The

Parliament" (from 1307 to 1461), which form the subjects of the first

four books; while the next four, occupying the second and third volumes,

and entitled "The Monarchy," "The Reformation," "Puritan England" and

"The Revolution," are marked by a grasp of thought, a fine sense of

proportion, a thorough knowledge and well-balanced judgment of men and

events, and not unfrequently a dramatic force, which sustain the

interest throughout, and which make them a valuable addition, and

sometimes a necessary corrective, to the fuller and more brilliant

narratives in which the same periods and subjects have been separately

treated.

Mr. Green does not appear to have gone deeply into the study of original

sources, but it is only in his incidental treatment of continental

history that his deficiencies in this respect become palpable. Here he

is often inaccurate, and even when his facts are correct his mode of

stating them shows that he is not master of the whole field, and has

little appreciation of mingled motives and attendant circumstances. Such

a sentence as this: "The restoration of the towns on the Somme to

Burgundy, the cession of Normandy to the king's brother, Francis, the

hostility of Brittany, not only detached the whole western coast from

the hold of Lewis, but forced its possessors to look for aid to the

English king who lay in their rear," could not have been written with

any clear ideas of either the political or the geographical relations

of the places mentioned. What is meant by the "western coast"? Not,

certainly, the towns on the Somme, which lie in the north-east, nor

Normandy, which has indeed a western coast of its own, but cannot be

said to form part of the western coast of France. Nor does Brittany

include "the _whole_ western coast," or even the larger portion of it,

while it could not have been "detached from the hold of Lewis," inasmuch

as he had never held it. As little will that remark apply to the other

provinces on the western coast, as these were still in his possession.

Who are meant, therefore, by the "possessors" of this misty coast, and

why the English king is said to have lain "in their rear," can only be

conjectured. It is a small blunder that the French king's brother is

called "Francis" instead of Charles, since we must not suspect Mr. Green

of confounding him with the duke of Brittany, who bore the former name.

But the whole passage, in connection with what follows it, indicates

that the author has mixed up the state of affairs at two very close, but

very distinct, conjunctures. Many similar instances of defective

knowledge might be cited, nor are they confined to this early period.

The remark, in regard to Charles of Austria (the emperor Charles V.),

that "the madness of his mother left him _next heir_ of Castille" is

nonsense: he was her heir in any case, while through her madness he

became nominally joint, and virtually sole, ruler of the kingdom. His

son Philip had not been "twice a widower" when he married Mary of

England, and the assertion that "he owed his victory at Gravelines

mainly to the opportune arrival of ten English ships of war" is

patriotic, but foolish. That "Catholicism alone united the burgher of

the Netherlands to the noble of Castille, or Milanese and Neapolitan to

the Aztec of Mexico and Peru," would be an incomprehensible statement

even if Peru had been inhabited by the Aztecs. Such errors, however,

cannot seriously impair the value of Mr. Green's work. Its merits, as

regards both matter and form, are solid and varied. The scale on which

it was planned adapts it admirably to the gap which it was intended to

fill, and, except in the latter portions, its comparative brevity of

treatment excludes neither important facts nor modifying views. No

shorter work could give the reader any adequate knowledge or conceptions

in regard to English history, and no longer work is needed to make him

fully acquainted with its essential features.

White Wings: A Yachting Romance. By William Black. New York: Harper

& Brothers.--Roy and Viola. By Mrs. Forrester. Philadelphia: J.B.

Lippincott & Co.--The Wellfields. By Jessie Fothergill.

(Leisure-Hour Series.) New York: Holt & Co.--Troublesome Daughters.

By L.B. Walford. (Leisure--Hour Series.) New York: Holt &

Co.--Brigitta. By Berthold Auerbach. (Leisure--Hour Series.) New

York: Holt & Co.

There is a time appointed to read novels--a time which belongs, like

that of other good things, to youth, when the real and the ideal merge

into each other, and even the most practical beliefs turn upon the

notion that the world was created for ourselves, and that the general

system of things is bound to furnish circumstances and incidents which

shall flatter our unsatisfied desires. It seems a pity that it should

not fall to the lot of the critic to write down his impression of new

books at this epoch, when he is most fitted to enjoy them. When romance

and other delights have blankly vanished--"gone glimmering through the

dreams of things that were"--he is scarcely fitted to trust the worth of

his own impressions. Reading from mere idle curiosity or with critical

intentions, and reading with delight, with eager absorption in the story

and an eager desire to know how it turns out, are two different matters.

The loss of this capacity for enjoyment of the every-day novel is not a

subject for self-gratulation, coming as it does from our own absence of

imagination and from narrowing instead of increasing powers. That period

of our existence when we could read anything which offered should be

looked back upon with a feeling of purely admiring regret, and in our

efforts to master the novel of to-day we should endeavor to bring back

the glory and the sweetness of the early dream.

It is not so very long ago that Mr. William Black's novels began to

charm us. He did not take Fame at a single leap, but wooed her

patiently, and suffered many a repulse. His first book, _Ion; or,

Marriage_, was probably the very worst novel ever written by a man who

was finally to make a great success. _The Daughter of Heth_ achieved

this result, and _The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton, A Princess of

Thule_ and _Macleod of Dar_ deepened, one by one, the witchery the

first threw over us. The author's power was especially shown in

investing his maidens with glamour and piquancy: Coquette and Sheila led

their captives away from the suffocating dusts and the burning heats of

life. Then his backgrounds were so well chosen--those mysterious reaches

of the far northern seas, the slow twilights over the heaving ocean, the

swift dawns, the storms and the lightnings, and the glad blue skies.

Even the music of the bagpipes inspired lamentations only less sweet

than notes of joy. Mr. Black still has lovely girls; his yachts still

pitch and roll and scud over the tossed and misty Hebridean seas; there

are the same magical splendors of air and sky and water and shores; the

wail of the pibroch is heard as of yore--

Dunvegan! oh, Dunvegan!

Why, then, is it that his last book fails to do more than arouse dim

memories of some previous enjoyment? Why are his violets without

perfume? Why is his music vacant of the old melodies?

In _Roy and Viola_, on the contrary, Mrs. Forrester is seen at her best,

and has given us a book of lively interest. The situation in some

respects suggests that of _Daniel Deronda:_ D'Arcy is a sort of

Grandcourt cheapened and made popular, acting out his instincts of

tyranny and brutality with more ostentation and less good taste. What is

subtly indicated by George Eliot is given with profuse effect by the

present writer. Viola, if not a Gwendolen, is yet an unloving wife. Sir

Douglas Roy plays a somewhat difficult rôle--that of friend to the

husband and undeclared lover to the wife--without losing our respect. He

is in many ways a successful hero, and acts his part without either

insipidity or priggishness. A genial optimist like Mrs. Forrester, as

her old readers may well believe, sacrifices to a hopelessly unhappy

marriage no lot which interests us. Disagreeable husbands die at an

auspicious moment, and everybody is finally made happy in his or her own

way, which includes the possession of plenty of money. The conversations

are piquant, and the interest of the story is well kept up.

_The Wellfields_ is a falling off from _Probation_, which in its turn

was a distinct falling-off from Miss Fothergill's initial story, _The

First Violin_. The characters are dim, intangible, remote, possessing no

reality even at the outset, and as they progress becoming even more

estranged from our belief and sympathy. Jerome is too feeble to arouse

even our resentment, which we mildly expend on Sara instead for

displaying grief for so poor a creature. When an author publishes one

successful book, it should be a matter of serious thought whether it is

not worth while to make such a triumph the crowning event of his or her

destiny, lest Fate should have in reserve the tedious trials which await

those who are compelled to hear that their sun has set.

Mrs. Walford's last book has, in a measure, retrieved a certain

reputation for interest which her _Cousins_ had lost. In _Troublesome

Daughters_, however, one looks in vain for the fulfilment of the promise

of _Mr. Smith_ and her delightful _Van: A Summer Romance_.

In _Brigitta_ we find enough of Auerbach's charm to like the story,

simple as it is. It recalls his greater books only by the fidelity of

the tone and the clearness of the pictures. Xander is well drawn, and

the tragedy of his life, portrayed as it is by those few strong touches

which reveal the real artist, is profoundly impressive.

------

_New Books Received._

Geo. P. Rowell & Co.'s American Newspaper Directory, containing Accurate

Lists of all the Newspapers and Periodicals published in the United

States, Territories and the Dominion of Canada, together with a

description of the towns and cities in which they are published. New

York: George P. Rowell & Co.

The Skin in Health and Disease. By L. Duncan Bulkley, M.D. (American

Health Primers.) Philadelphia: Presley Blakiston.

The Confessions of a Frivolous Girl. Edited by Robert Grant. Vignette

Illustrations. Boston: A. Williams & Co.

The Life and Public Services of James A. Garfield. By Major J.M. Bundy.

New York: A.D. Barnes & Co.

The Mystery of Allanwold. By Mrs. Elizabeth Van Loon. Philadelphia: T.

B. Peterson & Brothers.

Political and Legal Remedies for War. By Sheldon Amos, M.A. New York:

Harper & Brothers.

Mary Anerley: A Yorkshire Tale. By R.D. Blackmore. New York: Harper &

Brothers.

A Selection of Spiritual Songs, with Music for the Sunday-school. New

York: Scribner & Co.

[Footnote 1: I use here the official nomenclature of Pennsylvania: by

whatever title the local officials are known in the various States, the

general fact is of course the same in all.]

[Footnote 2: In some tests given in Richards' _Treatise on Coal Gas_ (p.

293) the following results were shown: Obstruction of light by--

A clear glass globe, about 12 per cent.

An engraved " " " 24 "

Obscured all over " " " 40 "

Opal " " " " " 60 "

Painted " " " " " 64 " ]

[Footnote 3: There is a recent method of adding carbon to the gas which

is not liable to the objection of clogging the pipes. By a small

apparatus a stick of naphthaline is attached to the burner so as to be

slowly vaporized. It is not yet in the hands of dealers in

gas-fixtures.]

[Footnote 4: Our narrative is drawn from the _Libra del Passo Honroso,

defendido por el excelente caballero Suero de Quiñones, copilado de un

libro antiguo de mano por Fr. Juan de Pineda, Religiose de la orden de

San Francisco. Segunda edicion_. Madrid, 1783, in the _Crónicas

españolas_, vol. v.]

[Footnote 5: In modern French, _Il faut délivrer_--"It is necessary to

release," referring to the chain worn by Quiñones.]

[Footnote 6: "If it does not please you to show moderation, I say, in

truth, that I am unfortunate."]

[Footnote 7: Prosper Mérimée, in a note to his _History of Peter the

Cruel_ (London, 1849, vol. i., p. 35), says, referring to the above

episode, "I do not think that at that period an example of similar

condescension could be found anywhere except in Spain. A century later

the _chevalier sans peur et sans reproche_, the valiant Bayard, refused

to mount a breach in company with lansquenets."]

[Footnote 8: Beginning, "Libera me, Domine, de morte æterna," etc.]

[Footnote 9: The Church as early as 1131 (Council of Rheims) endeavored

to prevent these dangerous amusements by denying burial in consecrated

ground with funeral rites to those who were killed in tournaments.]

[Footnote 10: Puymaigre explains this almost total absence of Frenchmen

by the fact that in 1434 the wars between Charles VII and the English

were being waged. The English pilgrims to Santiago (the large number of

whom we have previously mentioned) were probably non-combatants.]