Here the units of time--the numeral, the dot and the cipher--are

divided first into two equal parts, and then into three. In both cases

the groups represent units of time--one beat of a measure--according

to the rule. It will be noticed that the form of the notes is the

same whether whole or divided into fractions; that is, there are no

different forms for "crotchets," "quavers," "semiquavers," etc., the

expression of time being better provided for. Thus, halves or thirds

are indicated to the eye by a single bar surmounting two signs for

halves, three for thirds. If the halves or thirds have in their turn

been divided by _two_, then the principal bar covers two little groups

of _two_ signs each; if the halves or thirds have been divided by

_three_, then each principal bar covers two or three little groups of

_three_ signs each.

Nothing could be more simple than this. The eye has always before

it, separate and distinct, the unit of time or beat; and the mind

apprehends instantly the number of articulated sounds, prolongations

or silences (rests) that must be sung or played during that beat.

The eye has no hesitation, the mind no calculation, as to what note

commences or ends a beat. Even the most modest student of music will

see the immense advantage of this. Nor is there any need for the

multiplicity of fractions to express different kinds of time. The

moment the eye rests upon the score the student knows the measure as

definitely and certainly as he knows the letters of the alphabet.

"And is this all there is in this system of notation?" some one will

ask. Practically, Yes. There are the symbols of intonation, the

numerals and the dot--the dot below or above the notes showing the

octave ([5.] [.5]); the two diagonal lines indicating flats or sharps

(\3 /3); the horizontal bar indicating the time (123 123[*]); and the

vertical line or bar dividing the measures (123 | 432 |).

___ ___

[*: 123 123]

The following is the air "God Save the Queen!" or, as we call it,

"America," written in this method. The lower line, of course, is the

alto:

KEY OF G.

_____ ____

1 1 2 | 7 . 1 2 | 3 3 4 | 3 . 2 1 | 2 1 7 |

[5.] [5.] [6.] | [5.] . [6.] [7.] | 1 1 1 | 1 [7.] 1 | [6.] [5.] [5.] |

___ ___

1 . 0 | 5 5 5 | 5 . 4 3 | 4 4 4 | 4 . 3 2 |

5 . 0 | 3 3 3 | 3 . 2 1 |[7.] [7.] [7.] | 2 . 1 [7.] |

______ ______ ___ ___

3 4 3 2 1 | 3 . 4 5 | 6 4 3 2 | 1 . . ||

1 [6.] [5.] [4.] [3.] | 1 . 1 1 | 1 1 [7.] | 5 . . ||

It will be noticed that the dot in the second measure which prolongs

the note _si_ (7) is not placed against it, as we are accustomed to

see it. It is carried forward into the second beat, where it belongs.

There it is grouped with the note _do_ (1), and occupies one half of

that unit of time; for all the signs grouped under a line or under the

same number of lines are equal in time to each other, the same as

all isolated signs are. In the sixth measure the dot is isolated;

therefore it fills the whole beat, while the following beat is

represented by a rest (0). In two of the measures there are groups of

two notes. Each of the notes in these groups of course equals in time

half of an isolated note, for each occupies half the time of one beat.

The French say _dechiffrer la musique_--to puzzle it out, to decipher

it, as one would say of hieroglyphs on an Egyptian sarcophagus. The

term is well chosen. The causes of the obscurity of musical notation

are numerous, but the most prolific is undoubtedly expressing time by

the form of the symbols of sound. In slow movements, and where only

few modulations occur, this does not seem to be a serious

objection; but in the rapid movements of compound time it becomes

insupportable--at least after one has learned that there is a better

way. An example in 6/8 time--six eighth-notes to the measure--will

illustrate this:

[Illustration of 6/8 notes score]

Here each triplet fills the time of one-third of a beat; that is,

three-sixteenths equal one-eighth, according to the sublime precision

of the old notation! But then no such thing as a twenty-fourth note

is in use: three twenty-fourths would just do it! This is a part of a

vocal exercise. The learner would have to divide each beat into three

parts each, unless very familiar with such exercises; and one of these

divisions would fall on a rest, another in a prolongation, another in

the middle of an eighth note. In the new method see how the crooked

places are straightened:

--------------- ---------------

----- ----- ----- -----

1 0 2 3 4 3 2 1 . 2 3 . 4 5

It "sings itself" the moment you look at it, after a little study

of this rational notation. Note also that there is no mathematical

absurdity here: the division is logical, and yet the air is perfectly

expressed in every particular.

The mastery of time in music is at best an arduous task, yet teachers

of music, as a rule, expect their pupils to learn it incidentally

while studying intonation. They give no special drill in pure time at

every lesson; and the result is that army of mediocre singers and

players who never become able to execute any but the very simplest

music at sight. They may know the theory of time, may be able to

explain to you clearly the divisions of every measure, but this is not

sufficient for the musician: he must decipher his measures with great

readiness, precision and rapidity, or he never rises above the

mediocre. The ambition to excel without hard labor is the bane of

students of the piano especially. It leads them to muddle over music

too difficult for them; finally, to learn it after a fashion, so that

they may be able to "rattle and bang" through it to the delight of

fond relatives and the amazement and pity of severe culture. Not that

we should have consideration for all that passes for severe culture

and exquisite sensitiveness among musical dilettanti. In no field of

art is there so much affectation, assumption and charlatanry as in

music. Some years ago a musician in New York of considerable

reputation refused to play on a friend's piano because, as he said, it

was a little out of tune and his ear was excruciated by the slightest

discord. The lady wondered that the instrument should be out of tune,

as it was new and of a celebrated manufacturer. She sent to the

establishment where it was made, however, and a tuner promptly

appeared. He tried the A string with his tuning-fork, ran his fingers

over the keyboard, declared the piano in perfect tune, and left. That

evening the musician called, and was informed that a tuner had "been

exercising his skill" upon the instrument. Thereupon he graciously

condescended to play for his hostess, and the sensitiveness of his ear

was no longer shocked. She never dared to undeceive him, but mentioned

the fact to another musician, a violinist, who exclaimed, greatly

amused, "The idea of a pianist pretending to be fastidious about

concord in music! Why, the instrument at its best is a bundle of

discords." Both of these musicians were guilty of affectation; for,

although the piano's chords are slightly dissonant, the intervals of

the chromatic scale are made the same by the violin-player as by the

pianist. What right, then, has the former to complain? To be sure, the

violinist _can_ make his intervals absolutely correct: he _can_ play

the enharmonic scale, which one using any of the instruments with

fixed notes cannot do. But does he, practically? Does he not also make

the same note for C sharp and D flat? The violinist mentioned of

course alluded to the process called _equal temperament_, by which

piano-makers, to avoid an impracticable extent of keyboard, divide the

scale into eleven notes at equal intervals, each one being the twelfth

root of 2, or 1.05946. This destroys the distinction between the

semitones, and C sharp and D flat become the same note. Scientists

show us that they are different notes, easily distinguished by the

ear. Representing the vibrations for C as 1, we shall have--

C C# Db D D# Eb E, etc.

1 25/24 27/24 8/9 75/64 6/5 5/4, etc.

each note being increased by one twenty-fourth of itself, or in

absolute vibrations--

C C# Db D D# Eb E, etc.

261 271 271 293 305 303 326, etc.

This is the enharmonic scale, having twenty-one notes. The chromatic

has eleven, and the name--it may be remarked in passing--is from the

Greek word for "color" ([Greek: chroma]) because the old composers

wrote these notes in colors, and had them so printed. Not a bad idea,

surely: many a learner on the piano would be overjoyed to see all the

ugly flats and sharps on the staff in brilliant holiday dress.

There is no reason at this day, when science in all fields is making

such progress, why the ordinary music-teacher should have so limited a

knowledge of his subject. He should be able to explain the fundamental

principles of the different scales upon the theory of vibration, and

to so educate the apprehension of his pupils that they will not be

content with the imperfect catechisms of the music-books in vogue. And

with the adoption of a rational system of writing music, which will

reduce the time and labor of learning it to one half, there will be

time for the niceties of a science of such vast importance to the

culture--and, indirectly, to the moral progress--of the world.

MARIE HOWLAND.

SAMBO: A MAN AND A BROTHER.

"But," I said eagerly, "you do not deny that slavery was a curse to

the country--to Southerners most of all?"

"My dear fellow," said Captain S----, knocking off the ashes from his

cigar, "don't go into that! We were talking about negroes, not about

slavery. I suppose," he added meditatively, "there are not many men in

the country who have faced more of the negro race than those of us

who spent some part of our term of service in the Freedmen's Bureau.

Imagine settling disputes from morning till night between negroes

and between negroes and whites! If you abolitionists--as you called

yourselves before the emancipation--want to have some of the romance

and sentiment of negroism dissolved, live amongst them for a time."

"You were in Virginia?" I said.

"Yes, but the negroes there are a better class than in the States

farther South and more remote from cities."

"How better?"

"Well, more intelligent. To see the deepest ignorance you have to

go to the cotton-plantations, miles in extent, where men, women and

children have been born and have died as cotton-pickers. Of course I

am not now speaking of the freedmen as they are, for it is ten years

since I was on duty in G----, Mississippi, where all the horrors of

freedom were first revealed to the poor creatures."

"'_Horrors_ of freedom!'" I repeated.

"It meant starvation to many, and intense suffering to others. Turn

out a nursery of children of five years old to care for themselves,

and they will fare better than many of the grown men and women of whom

I knew in my Southern experiences."

"You relieved G---- of the --th regiment?" I said.

"Yes, and I often think of our meeting at the depot. He had about two

minutes before taking the train to Vicksburg. 'Cap,' he said, 'go to

Sim's to board. Real Southern hospitality, and his wife's a mother if

you are sick--bound to have bilious fever, you know. And, Cap, those

confounded niggers think the Bureau is bound to back them up, right or

wrong, and in about ninety-nine cases out of a hundred they're wrong.

Clerk's got the reports and papers.'"

"Well?" I said.

"He was right. The way those planters allowed the negroes to impose

upon their good-nature and true generosity confounded me. I went to

relieve an oppressed race, and, by Jove! I was inclined to consider

the planters in that light."

"But I don't understand."

"I'll show you. When the planters found they could still have the

practised slave-labor in the cotton-fields by paying fair wages, they

made contracts with the negroes by the year. It was my fortune to be

the referee on all disputes on the accounts of the first year of such

contracts, and I solemnly declare the liberality and consideration of

the planters would astonish the hard-fisted business-men of some of

our factories. They knew the improvidence of the race, and out of

regard for them, instead of paying them in money, they allowed them to

obtain goods in their names at the leading stores. Almost invariably

these bills exceeded the amount stipulated for in the contract, but I

never knew one case where the employer made the negroes work out their

debt. When I would tell them how the accounts came out, they said:

'Well, captain, let it go: I'll pay the bills. These poor fellows do

not understand the use of money yet.'

"But the negroes had the laws of possession, the rights of freedom and

privileges of slavery in such a hopeless muddle that no Gordian knot

ever required more patience than an effort to enlighten them as to

their rights and wrongs. The only limit set to their credit at

the stores was that the purchases were to be confined to food and

clothing. Without any idea of money or economy, they were wasteful,

and heard with long faces that the pile of money they confidently

expected was awaiting them had already been spent. Conversations like

the following occurred many times a day:

"'No money, Mars' Cap'n? Why, ole mars' he done 'greed to gib me fou'

hund'ed dollars dis year, an' I done worked faithful, Mars' Cap'n; an'

now I ain't to have nuffin'!'

"'But you have had nearly five hundred dollars.'

"'Clare to Goodness, Mars' Cap'n, I ain't had one cent--not one cent.'

"'But you have had it in meal, bacon, calico and other goods at the

store.'

"'But dey allers gives a nigga his food and clothes, Mars'

Cap'n--_allers_. We ain't got to pay for dat ar, for sure?'

"'Yes. Now you can earn your own money you must pay for your own

food.'

"'But dey nebber does--nebber! And dar's only de ole 'ooman an' two

picaninnies. Dey's nebber ate fou' hund'ed dollars up in a year.'

"'But you have had a suit of clothes, and there is calico charged to

you.'

"'But we ain't got to pay for clothes? Dey allers 'lows a nigga two

suits a year--_allers_?

"And much argument failed to convince the poor fellows that food and

clothing were no longer to be had for nothing, the usual end of the

discussion being, often with great tears rolling down the black faces,

'An' I was promised fou' hund'ed dollars! Ole mars' done promised dat

ar, an' I've jes' worked dis whole year for nuffin'.'

"Their perfectly childlike faith in the promise of their old masters

made their disappointment more acute than can be imagined by those

who are used to the close bargains driven with the working community

farther North. 'Ole mars'' represented to them their sole idea of vast

wealth and power, and was usually almost worshipped.

"I do not deny the many horrible exceptions, the shocking cruelties,

that blot the records of slave-life; but I do maintain that they

were exceptions, and that nine cases out of ten--nay, more than that

proportion--that came under my personal observation proved that a

sincere love existed between masters and slaves. In many instances I

saw planters impoverished by the war supporting old slaves or whole

families in absolute idleness, simply because the poor creatures,

after a short trial of freedom's vicissitudes, had come back to 'home

an' ole mars',' and he had not the heart to turn them away.

"One woman, whose circumstances I knew, came to me for a pass to go

North.

"'But, Kate,' I said to her, 'you are much better off here than you

can be at the North.'

"'Done got _nuffin_' here,' she asserted positively.

"'You have that little cabin Mrs. H---- allows you to live in.'

"'Sho' now, Mars' Cap'n, 'course I has.'

"'But at the North you will have no house unless you can pay for it.'

"'Pay for it! Why, don't they gib deir niggas a cabin?'

"'No. You may get a room, but you will have to pay so much a week to

be allowed to live in it. And Mrs. H---- lets you have your food too.'

"'But dey'll gib a nigga her food, cap'n--nebber make her pay for a

han'fu' of meal an' a lash o' bacon?'

"'You will have to pay for every mouthful. And it is cold there too,

Kate--very cold at this time of the year. You will have to buy clothes

or freeze to death.'

"'But dey'll 'low me two suits?'

"'Not unless you pay for them. And work is not plenty, Kate, for the

cities are crowded with negroes who were discontented here. Suppose

you cannot get work, you will have no cabin, no food, no clothes.'"

"Did you convince her?" I asked.

"No. She said to me, 'Guess you's mistaken 'bout dat ar, Mars' Cap'n.

Dey _mus_' gib deir niggas a cabin an' a bite, you know; and dey makes

piles o' money. And sho' now, Mars' Cap'n, all de _free_ folks is

rich--dey mus' be. Nobody's po' dat's _free_.'

"You see," he added earnestly, "they did not know what freedom meant.

It was a gorgeous vision of doing as they pleased, unlimited riches

and idleness. They could work or not: whether they starved or not,

they had not taken into consideration. Freedom came upon them too

suddenly, and they had no idea of personal responsibility."

"But," I said, "they could form families, be free to keep their

children."

To my surprise, Captain S---- began to laugh. "Of all the ludicrous

scenes I remember," he said, "none were funnier than those occasioned

by the new ideas of matrimony. I remember one pretty pouting mulatto

about eighteen who came with a tall, powerful negro to the office for

a marriage license. They were married in the church, and some few

words were spoken of the solemnity of the bond between them. In about

two weeks the bride burst into my office one morning, followed by her

husband. 'Mars' Cap'n,' she said, 'can't I go home ef I choose?'

"'Certainly,' I said.

"'Dar, you nigga!' she said. 'I's gwine home dis bery day.'

"'But, Mars' Cap'n,' said the man, 'the minister said she was to lib

'long o' me fur allers.'

"'Oh,' I said, 'she wants to leave you?'

"'Jes' fo' sure I does! I'se gwine home: I done tired o' bein'

married, I is. I'se gwine back to ole missus.'

"'Does your husband treat you badly?' I asked.

"'Nebber, Mars' Cap'n,' said the man earnestly. 'I done make the fire

ebery mornin', an' cook her a hoecake 'long o' my own, so dat gal

sleep half de day. An' I done give her two pair earrings.'

"'What do you complain of?' I asked the bride.

"'Sho' now, Mars' Cap'n, I ain't a-complainin'; only I done tired o'

dat nigga, an' I'se gwine home.'

"It was wasted talk, I found afterward, that I spent in trying

to convince her of her duty to her husband. They left the office

together, but the bride disappeared, and the disconsolate husband

never found her, to my knowledge. One of the neighbors told me, 'He

jes' spiled dat gal, Mars' Cap'n, a-lettin' her have her own way all

de time. My ole woman ain't wuff shucks if I don't ware her out 'bout

onct a week.'

"'How do you wear her out?' I asked.

"'Jes' wif a stick, Mars' Cap'n. Women ain't good for nuffin' 'less

you give 'em a good warin' out when they gits sarsy.'

"And I found afterward that this man beat his wife till she fainted

about once a week. The best of the joke was, that when I remonstrated

with him the woman told me she 'didn't want no Bureau 'terference with

her ole man!'"

"But, Cap," I said, "you cannot defend the custom of tearing children

from their mothers?"

"No," he said gravely: "it hardened them. I have been as soft-hearted

as any man over the supposed maternal anguish of negro women, but I

assure you, old fellow, my own observation quite cured me. It may be

there are cases, such as we weep over in _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, but my

own experience shows not one. I think the custom of taking children

in infancy to put them in dozens under the care of old negresses past

work may be answerable for the indifference I have seen manifested by

negro mothers. I have known more than one case where the love of

a colored nurse for her white charge was strong as mother-love. I

remember one woman who came to me in a violent rage to ask if I could

not punish her mistress for striking her own child. The little fellow

had been naughty, and had been corrected by his mother. 'What fo' she

done slap Mars' Tom?' she asked: 'he ain't done nuffin', po' chile!'

"'Nonsense!' I said. 'The boy was naughty, and his mother boxed his

ears. Why, Chloe,' I added, 'what do _you_ mean by complaining? I

have seen you take your own baby by one leg and throw him across the

kitchen, without any regard to the stoves or kettles he might hit.'

"''Course you has,' she said coolly: 'he's allers under my feet.'

"'But you might strike his head and kill him.'

"'Well,' was the startling answer, 'he's nuffin' but a nigga.'

"And that was her own child, habitually treated with neglect and blows

by his mother, while she cried over the cruelty of slapping the white

child she had nursed. And it was not to curry favor, but from a

sincere belief that the one child should be caressed and loved, while

the other must expect knocks and blows, being 'nuffin' but a nigga.'

"One old crone told me, 'I've done had sixteen picaninnies, Mars'

Cap'n, but I nebber seed none o' dem after dey was 'bout six weeks

old. Dey was in de nussery, an' I was a rale smart cotton-picker, and

couldn't be spar'd to nuss chillen, nohow.'

"'But were you not allowed to see your own children?' I asked, as much

shocked as you would be.

"''Lowed! 'Course I was 'lowed ef I wanted to bother 'bout 'em. But

Law's sakes! dey was all mixed up 'long o' de others, an' I wa'n't

goin' fussin' 'bout some oder woman's baby, likely 'nuff.'

"Many such instances convinced me speedily that--whether from want of

natural affection or from their having been educated to indifference I

do not pretend to say--negro mothers in Mississippi had certainly no

violent affection for their own offspring.

"But the most shocking case that came under my immediate notice was

that of a woman seeking employment. She came to my office with two

handsome boys, all three being bright mulattoes. The little fellows

were about three and five years of age, with large brown eyes and

pretty faces, full of fun and vivacity. The mother was a tall,

fine-looking woman of twenty-two or -three, and claimed to be a good

cook. I had one place in my mind, and sent her there, as a friend had

mentioned to me that he wanted a cook, and if one came for employment

would like to have her sent to him.

"Unfortunately, he objected to the children, but, thinking the mother

could board them out, told her to 'get rid of the children' and he

would employ her.

"The next day he came to me with a face of horror. 'Captain,' he said,

'the cook you sent me has murdered both her children!'

"'Murdered them?' I cried.

"'Yes. She is in the office, and you will have to see her, I suppose.

It is awful!'

"I found the woman waiting my coming with a face of perfect composure.

"'Hannah,' I said, after I had heard the accusation of the people in

the house where the crime was committed, 'what have you to say?'

"'Nuffin', Mars' Cap'n. Mars' T---- done sed I mus' git rid o' de

picaninnies; and dey was bothersome, anyway--allers eatin', 'deed dey

was, Mars' Cap'n'--this very earnestly, as if to defend herself--'

allers a-hollerin' for suffin' to eat.'

"'But, Hannah, Mr. T---- wanted you to leave them with some of the

women to board.'

"'Nebber sed so. Jes' sed--'deed he did--"You get rid o' dem chillens

an' come here to cook." So I jes' waited till dey was asleep, an' cut

deir throats. Dey nebber screeched.'

"I was sick with horror, but through the whole of the examination the

woman showed no sign of emotion, though we all went to the house where

the two pretty babies lay, stone dead."

"What became of her?" I asked.

"I have forgotten. I sent her to Vicksburg, as the case was too grave

for my decision. I should not have held her accountable, as she was

evidently under the impression that absolute obedience was the law for

her race.

"It was odd," he continued, "but after that tragedy there came a farce

in true dramatic order. My office was hardly cleared of the parties

concerned in this dreadful murder when I was attracted to the window

by the most horrible yelping and squealing, and saw two negroes, black

as coals, barefooted, bareheaded and ragged, one leading a dog, one

trying to drag two pigs into the yard attached to my quarters. Seeing

me, one of them made a bow. 'Sarvent, Mars' Cap'n,' he said.

"'What do you want?' I asked. 'Tie those pigs up before you come in,'

for he was dragging them up the steps.

"'Likely shoats, ain't dey?' said the other eagerly. 'We jes' come

down 'bout dem ar shoats, Mars' Cap'n.'

"'An' dat ar dog,' broke in the other.

"Here the dog made a dash at the pigs, and in trying to escape the

latter ran between the legs of the men, upsetting one. Such a hubbub

of squealing pigs, barking dog, laughing and swearing men as ensued

beggars description. When there was some order restored, the pigs and

dog tied up in the yard, the biggest of the darkeys, scraping his best

bow, said, 'We jes' come, Mars' Cap'n, 'bout a little complexity 'long

o' dat ar dog and dem two shoats.'

"'No 'plexity it all, cap'n,' said the other.--'Jes' you keep to

facks, you Hannibal.--You see, Mars' Cap'n, dat ar nigga he had de

dog: jes' a good-for-nuffin' mongrel, _he_ is, fo' sure now.'

"'Rale likely dog, Mars' Cap'n,' broke in the other. 'Dat ar dog'll

twist a pig off'n his legs onto his back quicker'n winkin'--'deed will

he.'

"I had been long enough in G---- to appreciate this speech, having

seen droves of pigs in gardens or vegetable-patches routed by dogs.

A monstrous pig would roll over perfectly helpless after a dexterous

twist of a small dog holding the hind leg of the heavy animal between

his teeth. I do not know how they are trained, but it is far more

mirth-provoking than any circus to see two or three little yelping

dogs rout some fifty great pigs in this way.

'"Ain't wuff two shoats,' growled the other darkey.

"'Wuff twenty-'leven racks o' bones like dem ar.'

"'Stop!' I said.--'You speak, Hannibal, and you wait till your turn,'

I added to the other man.

"'You see, Mars' Cap'n,' said Hannibal, 'Bill he wanted dat ar dog o'

mine powerful bad--'deed you did, you nigga!--an' he done swopped off

two missable weak ole shoats on me for dat dog. Well, Mars' Cap'n, I

done fed up dem shoats fo' free or fou' months; an', now dey's likely

pigs an' a-makin' bacon, Bill he wants to swop back, he does.'

"'You see, Mars' Cap'n,' broke in the other, 'dat ar dog was to be

a huntin'-dog, he was. Wish ter gracious you'd jes' see him _hunt_!

Stan' an' bark an' yelp till dar ain't a quail in ten miles, he will,

an' splash inter de ribber till he'll scare ebery duck fo' seven

miles.'

"And then they went at it, abusing and defending the dog, till we

heard a great scuffling, and saw the pigs had broken loose and were

tearing down the street, followed by the dog, every nigger in sight,

and, bringing up the rear, Hannibal and Bill, who never returned. How

they settled their dispute I never heard."

"One! two!" chimed the mantel-clock, and we parted for the night,

while I lay awake a long time musing upon the "Sambo" of my

imagination and the "Sambo" of the experiences of Captain S----.

S. A. SHEILDS.

THE EMPRESS EUGENIE.

When the bloody business of the _coup d'etat_ was definitely finished,

the murder-stains washed from the streets, the victims interred, and

a few thousand of the best and boldest hearts of France had taken the

sorrowful road of exile, the new emperor bethought him of how best to

gild his freshly-gained throne.

A court was to be constructed, and that right speedily. After the

gloomy tragedy of the overthrow of the Republic, France was to be

treated to the grand spectacular piece of the Second Empire. And for

that a _corps de ballet_ and trained supernumeraries were needed. The

role of leading lady, too, was vacant. An empress was to be sought for

without delay. Negotiations were opened with several princely houses

for the hands of damsels of royal birth, but speedily came to

naught. As yet, the new-made emperor was a parvenu amid his royal

contemporaries. The negotiations for the hand of the Swedish princess

Vasa did indeed promise at one time to be crowned with success. But

the emperor sent his physician to take a look at the lady, and to

judge if her physique promised healthful and numerous offspring; and

this fact, coming to the ears of her family, caused a sudden stop to

be put to the whole affair. Meantime, at the reunions of Compiegne,

the personality of a young and lovely foreign countess was coming

prominently into notice, owing to the evident impression that her

charms had made upon the susceptible heart of Napoleon III. This lady,

Eugenie Montijo, countess de Teba, was no longer in the first bloom of

girlhood, having been born in 1826. But she was in the full meridian

of a beauty which, had the crown matrimonial of France, like the apple

of Ate, been dedicated to the fairest, would have ensured her the

throne by sheer right divine. It is indeed said that as a young girl

her charms were in no wise remarkable: on her first appearance in

society at the court of Madrid she created no sensation whatever. She

was too pale and quiet-looking to attract attention. But one day, the

court being at Aranjuez, during a _fete champetre_, Mademoiselle de

Montijo had the good or ill fortune to fall into one of the ornamental

fishponds in the garden. She was taken out insensible, and her wet and

clinging garments revealed a form of such statuesque perfection that

all Madrid went raving about her beauty. She plunged a commonplace

girl--she rose a Venus. And when she first attracted the notice of

Napoleon she was indisputably one of the loveliest women in Europe.

She was tall, slender, exquisitely proportioned, and her walk was that

of a goddess. Her features were delicate and regular; her eyes long,

almond-shaped, and full of a tender and dreamy sweetness: her small

and faultlessly-shaped head was set upon a long, slender neck with the

swaying grace of a lily upon its stalk; her shoulders were sloping and

beautifully moulded, notwithstanding her lack of embonpoint, for

in those days she was as slight as a reed. A profusion of fair

hair--which she wore turned back from the face in the graceful

style known as "a la Pompadour," but speedily to be rechristened "a

l'Imperatrice"--and a hand and foot of truly royal beauty completed an

ensemble of charms that were well calculated to drive poor masculine

humanity out of its seven senses.

Cold and calculating as was Napoleon III., it drove him out of _his_,

for in every respect such a marriage was an unwise and an impolitic

one. It lent to his new-founded throne neither the lustre of an

alliance with royalty nor the popularity that might have been gained

by the selection of a Frenchwoman as the partner of his fortunes. The

Spanish blood of the countess de Teba made her obnoxious in the eyes

of many of her future subjects. Moreover, the antecedents of the lady

were not altogether without reproach. Not that any actual stigma had

ever clung to her character, but she had always been looked upon in

European circles as that anomalous character in such society, a fast

girl. Stories, some true and some false, were circulated respecting

her follies and her escapades. Evidently, if Caesar's wife should be

above suspicion, she was not the person who should have been selected

to become the wife of Caesar.

The fact of the emperor's interest in the fair foreigner was revealed

by an incident, slight in itself and only important by the emotions

which it called forth. At one of the small intimate reunions at

Compiegne, Mademoiselle de Montijo happened, while dancing, to

entangle her feet in the long folds of her train, and she fell

with some violence to the floor. The extreme anxiety and distress

manifested by the emperor acted as a revelation to all present. A

stormy opposition to the projected alliance was at once organized

among the familiars of the emperor--the men who had aided in his

elevation, and to whom it was too recent for them to stand in awe of

him. MM. de Morny and de Persigny in particular were violent in their

opposition. In fact, the latter went so far as to tell the emperor at

the close of a long and stormy interview on the subject that it was

hardly worth while to have made a _coup d'etat_ to end it in such a

manner. M. de Morny argued and reasoned with his imperial brother, but

neither the violence of Persigny nor the arguments of De Morny made

any impression on the cold and inflexible will of Napoleon III., and

a few days later the countess made her appearance at one of the

court-balls in a dress looped and wreathed with the imperial

emblem-flower, the violet. The emperor, advancing toward her,

presented her with a superb bouquet of the same significant blossoms.

The meaning of that little scene was fully understood by the

spectators. The marriage was irrevocably decided upon, and all that

they had to do was to submit to the imperial will and make ready to

offer their homage to the new empress. With the solitary exception of

Prince Napoleon, the imperial family submitted with a good grace to

the matrimonial projects of their chief. The Princess Mathilde in

particular, although the marriage would depose her from the place

that she then occupied as the first lady of the court, declared her

willingness to bear the train of the new empress in public if such a

duty should be required of her, as it had been of the sisters of the

First Napoleon.

There remained, however, an arrangement to be completed which, though

awkward and painful, was yet positively necessary. No one better than

Napoleon III. was aware of the truth of the old adage which declares

that a man must be off with the old love before he is on with the new.

In an hotel on the Rue du Cirque dwelt a lady who had been the partner

of his days of exile and ill-fortune, who had impoverished herself in

his service, and who had devoted herself to furthering his aims with a

persistency worthy of a better cause. This lady, the well-known Mrs.

Howard, was now to be got rid of. A frank and open rupture was not in

the style or the ideas of her royal and sphinx-like lover. A pretended

secret mission to England lured her from Paris. She learned the truth

at Boulogne, and hastened back to her home. There she found that her

hotel had been visited by the police, and that a cabinet wherein she

kept the letters of Louis Napoleon had been broken open and rifled of

its contents. Deeply wounded by the treatment she had received, she

withdrew, not without dignity, from all attempt at contesting the

position with her rival. "I go," she wrote to Napoleon, "a second

Josephine, bearing with me your star." To do justice to the emperor,

it must be confessed that he treated her in other respects with royal

liberality. The title of countess of Beauregard and a fortune of a

million of dollars were allotted to her. She withdrew to England,

where she afterward married. In 1865 a great longing to behold

Paris once more came upon her. Her youth and beauty gone, a worn,

disappointed and unhappy woman (for her marriage had turned out

most wretchedly), she returned to Paris only to die. Her eldest son

succeeded to the title of count de Beauregard, and was made consul

at Zanzibar. Since the downfall of the Empire he has lived a sort of

Bohemian existence in Paris, where his striking resemblance to Louis

Napoleon has won for him the nickname of "the ghost" (_le revenant_).

Meanwhile, the preparations for the marriage were proceeding

vigorously. The future empress and her mother had been installed in

apartments at the Elysee. The household of the royal bride was already

formed, including the princess of Essling as chief lady-in-waiting,

and the Count (afterward Duke) Tascher de la Pagerie as

head-chamberlain. The nuptial ceremony took place on the 30th of

January. The bride's dress was composed of white velvet, with a veil

of point d'Angleterre, the time being too short to have one of point

d'Alencon manufactured. The details of the ceremony were closely

copied from those of the wedding of Napoleon I. and Marie Louise, and

the state-coach was the same that had been used at the coronation of

the great emperor. It was a magnificent vehicle, covered with gilding

and ornaments, and so heavy that the eight fine horses that drew it

were less for show than for actual service. The ceremony took place in

the cathedral of Notre Dame, which was illuminated for the occasion

with fifteen thousand wax-lights. The bride was visibly agitated.

She was as pale as death, and her voice in making the responses was

scarcely audible. No wonder if in that hour a premonition of

evil weighed upon her soul. The civil register of the imperial

family--which, preserved by the devotion of some of the adherents

of the Bonapartes, had been brought forth to be used at the civil

ceremony which had taken place the day before--might well have

thrilled her with forebodings. The last record inscribed on those

pages had been the birth of the king of Rome. How had it fared with

that scion of a mighty father? how might it fare with her own possible

offspring?

It speedily became evident that the marriage, unpopular as it had been

among the counsellors of the emperor, was still more so among the

people at large. No cries of "Long live the empress!" save from the

throats of paid agents of the government, rose to greet the beautiful

Eugenie when she appeared in public. People stared sullenly at her as

at a passing pageant, but were moved neither by her charms nor her

gentle and gracious courtesy to any outburst of enthusiasm. To the

masses she was "L'Espagnole," the heiress to the bitter hate inspired

by the Austrian, Marie Antoinette. Epigrams on the marriage, seasoned

with the cruel and ferocious wit for which the Parisians are so

famous, circulated on all sides. Some bold hand affixed to the walls

of the Tuileries a series of doggerel verses wherein the empress was

first called by the nickname of "Badinguette," which was universally

applied to her after the fall of the Empire. The author of these lines

was discovered and banished to Cayenne, but his verses, set to a

popular tune, were long sung in secret in the taverns and workshops of

the suburbs.

To a certain extent, popular opinion respecting the young and lovely

Eugenie was correct. She was indeed emphatically not the wife that

Louis Napoleon should have chosen. A woman of intelligence and force

of character might have done much to aid in founding his throne on

a more stable basis. The downfall of the Empire, though probably

inevitable, might have been delayed for at least a generation. But his

choice had fallen upon a lady who had but one qualification for the

position in which he had placed her--namely, extreme personal beauty.

She was indeed kind-hearted and amiable, and among the temptations

of a court as dissolute as was that of Louis XV. she preserved her

reputation unspotted. But she was narrow-minded and unintellectual, a

bigoted Catholic, and so blinded by national and religious prejudices

that many of the most fatal mistakes of the Empire are directly

traceable to her influence. An alliance with a royal princess would

have strengthened the throne of Louis Napoleon: an alliance with a

French lady would have drawn toward him the hearts of the nation. But

Eugenie was neither a princess nor a Frenchwoman, nor yet a woman

of vigorous and commanding intellect; and his union with her was

undoubtedly a serious political error.

But for some time all went well. She ruled gracefully over her

allotted realm, which was that of Fashion. The influence of a crowned

Parisian beauty over the social doings of the world can hardly be

over-estimated. Eugenie invented toilettes that were copied by all the

women in the civilized world: she invented crinoline, and added a new

product to the manufactures of the earth. No woman better understood

the art of dress than she. Certain of her toilettes have retained

their celebrity to this day. Never did the art of costly dress reach

so high a pinnacle. She fringed her ball-dresses with diamonds, and

covered them with lace worth two thousand dollars a yard. Then, like

many wise and economical ladies, she undertook to have her dresses

made at home, and installed a dressmaker's establishment in the

Tuileries, where these splendid garments were prepared under her

immediate supervision. The workroom was directly over her private

apartments. By means of a trapdoor, whose mechanism was skilfully

dissimulated among the ornaments of the cornice and ceiling, a

mannikin, arrayed in the garb that was in progress, could be lowered

for the empress's inspection. This singular branch of the royal

household was under the charge of a functionary whose business it

was to purchase silks, velvets and laces at wholesale prices and to

superintend the workwomen. The knowledge of its existence was soon

spread abroad, and did the empress infinite harm. The petty economy of

the proceeding horrified and disgusted the Parisians, who, economical

themselves, have ever scorned that virtue in their sovereigns. Many

of the partisans of the court denied the existence of such an

establishment, but during the period that elapsed between the downfall

of the Empire and the outbreak of the Commune the curious throngs that

visited the Tuileries might trace amid the mouldings of the ceiling in

the empress's boudoir the outline of the famous trapdoor.

It would have been well had she never turned her attention to any less

feminine or more dangerous pursuits. But in an evil hour for France

and for the nation she undertook to dabble in politics. Left regent

during the Austro-Italian campaign, she acquired a taste for reigning,

which was increased by the flatteries of her husband's ministers and

the counsels of her confessor. It was currently said at court that the

Mexican expedition "came ready-made from her boudoir." She hated the

United States, as a true daughter of Spain could not fail to detest

the coveters of Cuba and the friends of progress and of enlightenment.

Consequently, she did not fail to further a project whose real aim was

to deal the great republic, then struggling in the throes of civil

war, a decisive stab in the back. She approved of the war with China,

and condescended to enrich her private apartments with the spoils of

the Summer Palace. But her pet project, the one that she had most at

heart, was the war with Prussia. The now historical phrase, "This is

_my_ war," was uttered by her to General Turr soon after the outbreak

of hostilities. And when, an exile and discrowned, she first sought

the presence of Queen Victoria, she sobbed out with tears of vain

remorse, "It was all my fault. Louis did not want to go to war: 'twas

I that forced him to it." Poor lady! bitterly indeed has she atoned

for that unwise exercise of undue influence. The holy crusade of which

she dreamed against the enemies of her Church and of her husband's

throne ended in giving her son's inheritance to the winds.

Nor was her domestic life a happy one. She loved her husband;

and indeed Napoleon III. seems to have possessed a rare power of

attracting and securing the affections of those about him. Few that

came within the influence of his kindly courtesy, his grave and gentle

voice, but fell captive to the spell thus subtly exercised. He made

many and warm personal friends, even among those who were hostile to

his politics and his dynasty. And by three women at least he was loved

with a fervor and a constancy that no trial could shake. One of these

was the Princess Mathilde, his cousin and once his intended wife;

another was Mrs. Howard; the third was his wife. But, like many men

who are much loved, Louis Napoleon was incapable of anything like

genuine and constant love for any woman. His passion for his lovely

empress was as brief as it had been violent. He vexed her soul and

tortured her heart by countless conjugal infidelities. She resented

this state of affairs with all the vehemence of an outraged wife and a

jealous Spaniard. It is said that she once soundly boxed the ears of

the distinguished functionary who filled in her husband's household

the post that the infamous Lebel held during the latter days of the

life of Louis XV. Twice she fled abruptly from the court, unable to

bear the presence of insolent and triumphant rivals, and the ingenuity

of the fashionable chroniclers of the day was taxed to invent

plausible pretexts for her sudden journeys to the Scottish or the

Italian lakes. No wonder that the soft eyes grew sadder and the

smiles more forced as the years passed on and brought only weariness,

disenchantment and the shadow of the coming end.

Alphonse Daudet has said in _Le Nabab_ that there exists in the life

of every human being a golden moment, a luminous peak, where all of

glory or success that destiny reserves is granted; after which comes

the decadence and the descent. This golden moment in the life of the

empress Eugenie was the occasion of the first French international

exhibition in 1855. She was then in the full pride of her womanhood

and her loveliness. The greatest lady in Europe, Queen Victoria, had

been her guest, had embraced her as an equal and had given her proofs

of real and sincere friendship. Enveloped in clouds of priceless

lace and blazing with diamonds of more than regal splendor, she had

presided, _la belle des belles_, over the opening of the exhibition in

the Champs Elysees. And, above all, the event so anxiously desired by

her husband and by the supporters of his cause was near at hand. She

was soon to become the mother of the heir to the imperial throne. With

every aspiration gratified, every wish accomplished, she did indeed

seem in that year of grace the most enviable of human beings. The

later splendors of the exhibition of 1867 were more apparent than

real, and the gorgeous assemblage of reigning sovereigns brought

with it for Eugenie a subtle and premeditated insult. The kings and

emperors who responded to the imperial invitation and came to visit

the court of Napoleon III., with one exception, that of the king

of the Belgians, left their wives at home. They acted as men do in

private life when they receive invitations to a ball given by a family

of doubtful standing with whom they are unwilling to quarrel.

I have spoken of the birth of the prince imperial. It may perhaps

interest the reader to know how much this auspicious event cost the

French nation. Not less than nine hundred thousand francs (one hundred

and eighty thousand dollars), of which twenty thousand dollars were

paid for the young gentleman's first wardrobe. The whole amount

expended at the birth of the Comte de Paris did not exceed this latter

sum.

The details of the scenes at the Tuileries after the downfall of the

Empire, and those of the flight of the empress, are well known. It

is now generally conceded that after Sedan the fate of the imperial

dynasty was in the hands of Eugenie. Had she withdrawn to Tours or to

Bourges, summoned the Assembly to meet there, and called around her

the partisans of the Empire, she might have saved the heritage of her

son. But her essentially feminine and frivolous nature was not fitted

for deeds of high resolve or for heroic determinations. A morbid dread

of following in the footsteps of Marie Antoinette had pursued her in

the later years of her prosperity. She knew that she was unpopular,

and visions of the fate of the Austrian queen or of the still more

horrible one of the Princesse de Lamballe must have risen before her

as the shouts of the Parisian mob, exulting in the downfall of

her husband, met her ear. In that hour of disaster and of woe no

Frenchman, for all the boasted chivalry of the race, was at hand

to aid or protect the fair lady who had so long queened it at the

Tuileries. The Austrian ambassador, the Italian minister, the Corsican

Pietrio planned and managed her escape from the palace. She took

refuge in the house of an American, her dentist, Dr. Thomas W.

Evans. He it was who got her out of Paris and accompanied her to the

seacoast, placing his own carriage at her disposal. She crossed the

Channel in the yacht of an English gentleman. Thus guarded by aliens,

she passed from the land of her queenship to that of exile.

To-day, in her abode at Chiselhurst, the widow of Napoleon III.

attracts scarcely less of the world's interest and attention than

she did as throned empress and queen of Fashion. Unfortunately, the

supreme tact that once was her distinguishing quality seems to have

deserted her in the days of her decadence. She, the most graceful of

women, has not learned the art of growing old gracefully. She had

played the part of a beauty and the leader of fashion for years. Now

that she is past fifty that character is no longer possible to her.

But she might have assumed another--less showy, perhaps, but surely

far more touching. With her whitening hairs she might have worthily

worn the triple dignity of her widowhood, her maternity and her

misfortune. She has chosen instead, with a weakness unworthy of the

part that she has played on the wide stage of contemporary history, to

clutch vainly after the fleeting shadow of her vanished charms. A head

loaded with false yellow hair, a face covered with paint and powder, a

mincing gait and the airs and graces of an antiquated coquette,--such

to-day is she who was once the world's wonder for her loveliness and

grace, a bewigged Mrs. Skewton succeeding to the dazzling vision that

swerved the calculating policy of Napoleon III. and won his callous

heart, and that still smiles upon us from the canvas of Winterhalter.

LUCY H. HOOPER.

* * * * *

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

A LOST COLONY.

Why does nobody--antiquarian, historian, or even novelist--open again

that forgotten page of history, the story of the lost colony of

Norwegians who disappeared in the fourteenth century from the shores

of Greenland? Doctor Hayes, after he came back, had a good deal to say

of them, but he did not gather all the facts, and his book, I believe,

is now out of print.

I know no mystery made of such nightmare stuff as this in history;

and mysteries are growing scarce now-a-days as eggs of the terrible

Dinornis: we cannot afford to lose one of them.

The foremost figure in the story is of course Leif _hin-hepna_ ("the

happy"). There is much to be unearthed concerning that famous pioneer

in discovery and religion, and we Americans surely ought to have

enough interest in him to do it, as Leif unearthed this continent for

us out of the hold of the sea and Demigorgon ages ago, while the dust

of which Columbus was to be made centuries later was yet blowing loose

about the streets of Genoa. Leif, besides discovering new worlds,

turned the souls of all his father's subjects from paganism to such

Christianity as the times afforded. I protest, this vigorous young

Greenlander heads the roll of unrecognized heroes in the world:

heathen and Christians have made demigods and saints out of much

flimsier stuff than he.

The colony, too, out of which he came, what a spectral shadow it is

beside the live flesh-and-blood figures of other nations! At the

banquet of the boar-eating Scottish thanes there was one empty chair,

and that was filled by a ghost. We hear of the East and West Bygds,

settlements with hundreds of farms, churches, cathedrals, monasteries,

set on the narrow rim of green coast which edges Greenland, lying

between the impenetrable wall of ice inland and the Arctic Sea

without. They had their religion, which Leif brought to them; they

were busy and prosperous; they married, traded, fought, loved and

died; and with a breath they all vanished from off the face of the

earth. There is no ghost-story like this in literature.

Where will you find, too, such a delightful flavor of ancient mystery

as in the old chronicles which tell of these people? Besides the

Sagas there are the voyages of long-ago-forgotten navigators--Arthur

himself, the Venetian brothers Nicolo and Antonio Zeni, King Zichmni,

divers Frisian fishermen. These old records, coffee-colored with

age and frail as skeleton leaves, are yet to be found in certain

libraries, and surely would tempt any one with a soul above

newspapers. In them you shall hear how these voyagers, in their poor

barkentines of from ten to two hundred tons, entered into this region

of enormous tides, of floating hordes of mountainous icebergs, of

flaming signs in the sky--into all the horrors, in fact, of an

Arctic winter and night, darkened still deeper for them by nameless

superstitious terrors. They went down to these deeps in very much the

temper with which a living man now-a-days would adventure into hell.

The icy peaks of the far-off land they knew were glittering silver,

and the sea was full of malignant spirits which guarded it. A

mountain-magnet lay hid under the sea, dragging the ships down to it

(as late, indeed, as 1830 skilled Danish navigators declared that they

felt the stress from it, and fled in terror): the unnatural tides were

the breathing of angry Demigorgon. There were, however, other sights

and sounds not to be explained in even this reasonable fashion. On a

fair day and a calm sea panic would seize the soul of every man on

board, and the ship would turn and beat homeward, "as one who knows a

frightful fiend doth follow him behind."

It is the mystery of the lost colony, however, which ought to be

opened by some competent hand. In 1406, Queen Margaret, it will be

remembered, laid an interdict upon trade with them: for two centuries

afterward not even a passing barkentine touched upon the Greenland

shore. At the end of that time, when explorers were sent from the

civilized world in search of the long-forgotten colonists, they

had utterly vanished. There, to this day, are their dwellings and

churches, solidly built of stone in an architectural style which Graah

fifty years ago described as simple and elegant: there are even the

ruins of the monastery which the Zeni brothers declare was heated by

a magical hot sulphurous spring, the waters of which were conveyed

through the building by pipes. But the people had absolutely

disappeared. Not even a bit of pottery, a grave or a bone was left;

which last is a noteworthy circumstance, as portions of the human body

are almost indestructible in that climate. Seventeen expeditions have

been sent out by the Danish and Norwegian governments in search of

this lost colony, the last of which was within the present half

century. One of these was headed by Egedi, a poor Norwegian clergyman

to whom is owing the civilization of Greenland, and of whose strange

heroic life we know too little.

There are two or three conjectures to account for the disappearance of

this colony. One is that they were all murdered by the Skroeellings.

But where are their bones? Besides, the colonists numbered from

fifteen to twenty thousand, and were much superior to the natives in

size, strength, intelligence and knowledge of war.

Graah, a Danish navigator who came in search of them in 1828, believes

that they were carried off bodily by the English after the ravages

of the "black death" in England, to repair the waste of human life,

citing a treaty of 1433 in which England was charged with abducting

Danish subjects for that end. Another theory is that the Frisian king

Zichmni carried them off captive. Pope Nicholas asserts this outrage

as a fact in a bull in 1448. But Zichmni is as uncertain a personage

in history as Demigorgon; and the good popes were not so infallible as

to matters of general news before the establishment of telegraph and

postal service as they are now.

Mr. Dalton Dorr, who accompanied Hayes, tells me that among the

Esquimaux there is a tradition that a colony of foreigners once owned

the land, and about five centuries ago emigrated in a body northward,

crossing the Mer de Glace--that they found an open sea, and somewhere

within the eternal rampart of snow and ice now dwell securely by its

shores. As early as 1500 the migratory Skroeellings told of this colony

far to the north-east. These rumors possessed substance enough to

warrant the expeditions from Denmark, which have all been directed to

the eastern coast. Graah heard from his guides of a strange people

with high features, hoarse voices and large stature living beyond the

limits passed by Europeans.

Here is a mystery surely worth finding out--a people exiled from their

kind for centuries living at the Pole--something better worth search

than even Franklin's bones. To give it reality, too, we must remember

how many Arctic explorers have caught sight, as they thought, of an

open sea near the Pole--a sea with strong, iceless swells, and on

whose shores warm rains fell. Nobody need suggest that these people

would probably, after our search, not be worth looking for. What shall

we do with the North-west Passage when we have found it?

R. H. D.

THE DIFFICULTIES OF BEING AGREEABLE.

"A man will please more by never offending than by giving a great deal

of delight." In this remark of Doctor Johnson's lies the art of being

agreeable. But nothing is more difficult than to avoid offending. Most

people are offended by trifles. For instance, persons generally take

umbrage at superior brilliance of conversation. "The man who talks for

fame will never please." Even he who talks to unburden his mind will

please only some old and solitary friend. Large experience and great

learning, however quietly carried, are very offensive to those who

have them not. Clever things cannot be said unobtrusively enough. A

person so brilliant as to make others feel that his efforts are above

theirs will be detested. Moreover, one of the difficulties of being

agreeable is that the apprehension of offending and the small hope of

pleasing destroy all captivation of manner. The confident expectation

of pleasing is an infallible means of pleasing. Characters pleased

with themselves please others, for they are joyous and natural in

mien, and are at liberty from thinking of themselves to pay successful

attention to others. Still, the self-conceited and the bragging are

never attractive, self being the topic on which all are fluent and

none interesting. They who dwell on self in any way--the self-deniers,

the self-improvers--are hateful to the heart of civilized man.

The Chinese, who knew everything beforehand, are perfect in

self-abnegation of manner. "How are your noble and princely son and

your beautiful and angelic daughter?" says Mandarin Number One.--"Dog

of a son have I none, but my cat of a daughter is well," says Mandarin

Number Two.

To set up for an invariably agreeable person you must adjust yourself

to the peculiarities of others. You must talk of books to bookworms:

you must be musical with musicians, scientific with savants.

Furthermore, you have to make believe all the time that you are

enjoying yourself. The belle is a lady who has an air of enjoying

herself with whomsoever she talks. We like those who seem to delight

in our company. You must not overdo it, and thus make yourself

suspected of acting; but do not imagine that you will please without

trying. Those who are careless of pleasing are never popular. Those

who do not care how they look invariably look ugly. You will never

please without doing all these things and more.

What a Pecksniffian business it is to go into! Who wants to refrain

from smart, spiteful sayings when he happens to think of them, to

abjure laughing at friends and ridiculing enemies, to renounce the

tart rebuff, the keen _riposte_? Amazing that any succeed! and many

do. There are some gentlemen who are entirely agreeable--"gentlemen

all through," like Robert Moore in _Shirley_. They have order,

neatness, delicacy of movement, reticence, incuriosity: their

unaffected English has almost the charm of a musical composition. They

are generally men whose mothers well nagged them when they were small

with perpetual adjurations: "Do not bang the door," "Stop kicking your

feet," "Stop clinking your plate with your fork," and so on.

In some inscrutable way, young girls often attain thorough

agreeableness. Look at lazy little Jane: she has acquired the highest

charm of repose. Look at Sally, who used to be such an angular and

hurried little girl: she is all quips and cranks and wreathed smiles

now. And meek, humble-minded Martha, in former days so diffident,

blushing and taciturn, has found out the value of a deferential

demeanor and the knack of being a good listener, and can sing a ballad

with a pathos and dramatic effect that eclipse the highly-embellished

performances of other girls.

Ladies who make a profession of pleasing become irresistibly alluring.

Actresses have abundant hair, fine teeth, all physical beauty, because

they train themselves to beauty, though not originally better endowed

than most others. Actresses' voices are set habitually, not in

complaining, whining, creaking or vociferating keys, but in

chest-tones clear and calm in quality. Actresses do not grow old,

partly in consequence of their constant attention to the toilette,

partly in consequence of the fact that they have hope and ambition,

and enough occupation and enough rest, and do not worry over trifles.

To remain young is one of the difficulties of being agreeable. Whoever

does so is obliged to adopt the Aristotelian maxim of moderation,

Placidity of temper is necessary to the clear-pencilled eyebrow and

the magnolia complexion. Frowns, weeping, excitement, despair and

laughter wrinkle the face. Nature keeps women's forms well rounded to

extreme old age, and their faces remain agreeable when they take the

trouble to keep them so. The brow, the fair front, need never be

furrowed. Of all we meet in the street, very few have tranquil,

undistorted faces: the old are screwed out of shape, the young are

going to be so. A well-preserved beauty is one who neither puckers her

face into wrinkles nor mauls it with her hands: she never buries her

knuckles in her cheeks, nor rests cheek on palm or chin on hand, nor

folds her fingers around her forehead while reading, nor rubs her

"argent-lidded eyes." She veils her face from the wind; she does not

work with uncovered neck and arms: therefore they do not become tawny.

She avoids immoderate toil, which makes the hair to fall, the features

sharp, the skin clammy and yellow. She avoids immoderate laziness, as

causing obesity and a greasy complexion or pallor, lassitude and loss

of vitality. Such are; the difficulties of being agreeable.

M. D.

OUR SUB-GARDENER.

He who doubts that civilized progress and industry is beneficial to

birds, and promotes their comfort and multiplication, never saw

the robin and the purple grakle following the plough on a summer's

morning. The ploughman is not more punctually afield than his unbidden

but welcome feathered attendants. They are ahead of him, perched

patiently in the trees that dot fence or hedgerow. They see the team

afar off, and as the gate rattles in opening for its admission the

glad tidings is sent down the line in whistle or chirrup, the most

musical of breakfast-bells. The worm that but for the intrusive

ploughshare would blush unseen beneath the soil, and but for

the feathered detective on the lookout for him would regain his

subterranean retreat, might take a less cheery view of the philosophy

of the matter; but he too is, taken collectively, favored by tillage

and fattens on high-farming like an English squire. But we are not

at present occupied with his feelings. Somebody must suffer in the

battledore game of eat and be eaten, and we shall let the chain of

continuous destruction rest here with the grub that reaps where he

hath not sown. Horse, man and bird are honestly and harmoniously

picking up a living at the expense of a fourth party that also thrives

in the long run.

Not many of us get out with the plough at the orthodox hour of

sunrise. It is a privilege few, comparatively, possess, and fewer

still enjoy. The doctors recommend it warmly, on the ground that,

though perhaps productive of rheumatism, it is death to dyspepsia. The

faculty have, however, on this point piped to us in vain, and it is

not at all in consequence of their advice that those who luxuriate

in early agriculture adopt that system of hygiene, any more than the

birds, who, as we have remarked, are first up and out, and who, at

this season, in flat defiance of all medical rules, adopt a purely

animal diet. Later, long after Lent, their food is varied with fruits

and seeds, but never to such an extent as to amount to vegetarianism.

This carnivorous taste ranks high in the "charm of earliest birds" so

interesting to the cultivator. He, as a rule, is not wrapped up in

the strawberry or the cherry that in the fulness of time comes to

be levied on, in very moderate percentage, by a few of his musical

associates. We do not forget that the blackbird has a weakness for

planted maize, and that the quota of the cornhill is very truly and

safely stated in the doggerel--

One for de blackbird, one for de crow,

Two for de cut-worm, and two for to grow.

The cut-worm is here correctly defined as the enemy, while the excise

claimed by the birds is head-money for his extirpation. An adaptation

of this instructive couplet to gardening for the guidance of those of

us who do not farm, but garden in a small way, would naturally enlarge

the allowance of the cut-worm. From the more limited demesne the crow

and the grakle are generally excluded. What is their loss is

the cut-worm's gain. Nowhere does he run (or burrow) riot more

successfully than in old gardens. Living in darkness, from an apparent

consciousness that his deeds are evil, he seems to be fully advised of

all that goes on above ground. One would fancy that he has a complete

system of subterranean telegraphs, like those coming into vogue in

Europe. He learns within a few hours or minutes of every new lot of

plants sprouting from the seed or set out from the hotbed. Upon both

he sets systematically to work, following his row with a precision and

thoroughness at once admirable and exasperating. You go out of a May

afternoon, and with the tenderest care establish in their summer homes

your very choicest plants. Reverse "One counted them at break of day,

and when the sun set where were they?" and the tale that greets you

the next morning is told. Did the spoiler need them for food, you

would be partly reconciled to his proceedings, or at least would know

how to frame some sort of an excuse for them. But he merely divides

the succulent stem close to the surface of the ground, above or below,

and leaves the wreck unutilized even by him. A comfort is that flight

is not his forte. He is generally to be found by the exploring

penknife or trowel close by the scene of his crime, and is thus easily

subjected to condign punishment. But his wife, family and friends

survive in different spots of the adjacent underworld, to give

evidence of their existence only in subsequent havoc. The titillative

rake or the peremptory hoe does not help you much in their discovery;

for their color is that of the soil, their size as various as that

of bits of gravel, and they are not easily perceptible to a cursory

glance from the ordinary height of the eye. Here is where keener

optics than yours, sharpened perhaps by a keener impulse--that of the

stomach--come to the rescue. The catbird, whose imploring mew you

listened to from your bed some time before thinking proper to respond

to it, is intently watching operations from the other end of the

border or the square. His lusty youngsters have been trained, after

the good old fashion, to early hours, and they are impatient for

breakfast. Their parent sees what you do not, and astonishes you by

suddenly pouncing upon a bit of earth you have just broken and seizing

a stout worm. This stranger, if presentable to the family circle, he

is at once off with, his spouse taking his place in the field. Or the

youngsters may still be _in futuro_. All the same: whatever turns up

is welcome to him. His appetite seems as insatiable as that of half a

dozen nestlings: they, you know, will eat three or four times their

own weight in twelve hours. He is thus immensely useful to you, but

your appreciation of that fact is as nothing to his estimate of your

value to him. He accepts you as a being sent for his benefit. You are

a part of his scheme of providence. True, he pities while he rejoices

over you. Your blindness and stupidity in not seeing the fat and

luscious tidbits he snaps up from almost beneath your feet is of

course a subject of wonder and disdain. But he learns to make

allowances for you, and comes to view your failings charitably,

especially as they enure to his benefit, and so lean to Virtue's side.

Fear of you he has none. Indeed, you inspire in him a certain sense of

protection, for in your presence his habitual vigilance is lulled, and

his apprehensive glances over his right and left shoulders fall to a

lower figure per minute. He has learned there to feel safe from hawk

and cat, and knows enough of other birds to be sure that none of them

will "jump" his little claim of fifty feet square whereof you are the

moving centre. His individual audacity gives him the sway of that

small empire, and he doubts not that you will support him in acting up

to the motto of the Iron Crown of the Lombards. His cousin the robin

may, and very probably does, hover on the outskirts, but an exact

distance measures the comparative boldness and familiarity of the two

species. The catbird is, say, ten yards more companionable than his

red-vested relative in the latter's most genial and trustful mood; and

his faith is of a more robust type and less easily and permanently

weakened by rebuffs. The robin rarely hovers round you, but likes to

have the whole premises quietly to himself. His attachment does not

take a personal hue, but is rather to locality. His acquaintanceship

with you is never so intimate as that of the catbird, who soon

recognizes your step, your dress and the peculiar touch and cadence of

your hoe, even as a college oarsman will identify the stroke of a

chum or a rival a quarter of a mile off. If the robin does fix your

individuality in his mind, he deigns to make no sign thereof. At most

he accepts you as part of the mechanism of creation. You make no draft

upon his bump of reverence. He does not set you on his Olympus. This

mark of the spirit which makes him, on the whole, a more respectable

and dignified character than his less gayly-dressed cousin tends in

some sense to commend him the less to you, since we all like the

homage of the "inferior animals," birds or voters. You half dislike

the independence of the robin, who is equally at home in the parterre

or the forest, on the gravel-walk or in the upper air. On the other

you have more hold. He is rarely seen higher than twenty feet above

ground, and is strictly an appendage of the shrubbery and the orchard.

Even in his unhappy voice there is a domestic tone, closely imitated

as it is from Grimalkin. Imitated, we say, for we have never been able

fully to believe that this mew is the bird's original note. We shall

ever incline to the impression that it is an acquired dialect, picked

up in the mere wantonness born of a conscious and exceptional power of

mimicry.

E. C. B.

A NEW AND INDIGNANT ITALIAN POET.

Mrs. Leo Hunter's selection of an "Expiring Frog" as a subject for

poetical composition has lately been surpassed by a new Italian poet.

The latter, Signer Giovanni Rizzi, has just published at Milan a small

volume of sonnets, chiefly ironical in character, in which he gives

vent to his disgust at the positive and materialistic tendencies of

the present day. The theme of the three most remarkable among these

productions is that useful but not very aesthetic animal, the hog.

Signer Rizzi is the professor of literature at the military school and

the high school for girls in Milan. Not long ago his three sonnets

to the hog--or, more literally, the boar (_maiale_)--appeared in an

Italian journal called _Illustrazione Italiana_, prefaced by a letter

to the editor, in which the author stated that as apes, toads and

caterpillars have now been triumphantly introduced into literature, he

no longer felt any hesitation about bringing forward in the same way

his esteemed friend the boar. These three pieces, together with others

of the same form and character, have now been published as a book

under the title of _Un Grido_. This work begins with an address to the

reader, in which the poet laments the prevailing tendency of public

opinion, and protests against what he considers a determined war on

all old and honored beliefs and feelings, and a substitution therefor

of a vague and revolting materialism. Then come five sonnets to Pietro

Aretino, the witty poet and scoffer of the Renaissance era. Aretino is

invited to reappear among men, for the world, says Rizzi, has again

become worthy of such a man's presence. Leaving Dante to Jesuits, and

Beatrice to priests, it has made Aretino its favorite model, and has,

consequently, said farewell to everything resembling shame. In the

last of these five sonnets the poet addresses his beloved thus: "And

we too, O Love! do we still keep holy honor, home, faith, prayer,

truth and noble sorrow?"

After the five sonnets to Aretino come the three to the boar (_Al

Maiale_) which have already been mentioned. Here the author enters

into a mock glorification of that animal, and declares himself ready

to give up all pretensions to any superiority over it. He proceeds

to "swear eternal friendship" with it, and offers it his hand

to solemnize the compact; but, suddenly remembering that such

old-fashioned practices must be very distasteful to his new friend, he

immediately apologizes for having conformed to such a ridiculous old

prejudice. He does not expect his "long-lost brother" to make any

effort to elevate himself or to change his swinish nature in any

particular, but thinks we should all bring ourselves down to the

boar's mental and physical level as soon as we can. The closing verses

of the third sonnet may be freely rendered as follows:

And when, at last, the grave shall close above us,

No solemn prayer our resting-place should hallow,

No flowers be strewn by hands of those that love us.

But if, at times, you'll come where we are lying,

O worthy friend! upon our graves to wallow,

That thought should give us joy when we are dying.

The last piece in this little collection is addressed to "The Birds of

my Garden" _(Agli Uccelletti del mio Giardino)_. Though inferior to

the others in boldness and originality of conception, it is much more

graceful and attractive, and shows that the writer is by no means

deficient in elegance of style and delicacy of treatment.

Signor Rizzi may, it is probable, be taken as a type of a large class

among his countrymen, to which the iconoclastic tendencies of our time

seem strange and horrible. Indeed, it is possible that he is one of

the earliest heralds of a widespread reaction in opinion and feeling

throughout his native land. At any rate, his poems can hardly fail

to become popular, and to produce some effect among a people so

susceptible to the influences of witty and sarcastic poetry as are the

Italians even at this day.

W. W. C.

A NEZ PERCE FUNERAL.

"Call me, Washington, when they are going to bury him," said the

doctor.

George Washington, evidently not quite sure that he understood the

doctor, said with an interrogative glance, "You like--see him--dead

man--put in ground?" And, pointing downward and alternately bending

and extending one knee, he made a semblance of delving.

The doctor nodded.

"Good! Me tell you."

"I want to go, Washington," said the lieutenant.

"And I too," said the lieutenant's guest, myself.

George Washington was one of the Nez Perce prisoners surrendered by

Joseph to General Miles after the battle of Bear-Paw Mountain. The

dead man was one of the wounded in that action who died from his

wounds, aggravated, no doubt, by fatigue and exposure while the

prisoners were marching to the east in the winter of 1877 under orders

from the War Department. George spoke a few words of English, and was

quite an intelligent Indian. He was very clean--for an Indian--and was

comfortably clad.

"How soon?" asked the doctor.

"He--call me--when he ready: me call you."

"Good! Then I shall go to dinner."

"We had better eat our dinner," said the lieutenant: "it is growing

late.--Come and have some dinner, Washington."

Washington seemed not quite sure that he understood correctly. He had

a modest distrust of his English. In the matter of an invitation to

dinner doubt is admissible. "You--want _me_--" here George Washington

tapped himself on the savage breast--"eat--with _you_?" And here,

gracefully reversing his hand, with the index extended, he touched the

lieutenant on the civilized bosom.

"Yes: come in."

We three entered the tent. As it was an ordinary "A" tent, with a

sheet-iron stove in it, it was pretty full with the addition of two

good-sized white men and an Indian of no contemptible proportions. The

lieutenant and I sat on the blankets, camp-fashion: Washington sat on

my heavy riding-boots, with the stove perforce between his legs.

"Good wahrrm!" ejaculated George Washington, hugging the stove.

"Hustleburger!" shouted the lieutenant.

"Yes, sir."

"George Washington will take dinner with us. Set the table for three."

"All right, sir, lieutenant!"

"Good man--docther," Washington remarked, nodding several times to

emphasize his observation: "ver'--good man--docther."

We eagerly assented, pleased to see that the Indian appreciated the

doctor's kindness to his people.

Rabelais's quarter of an hour began to hang heavily on us. Washington

was equal to the occasion: taking a survey of the tent, he nodded

approvingly and remarked, "Good tepee."

"Not bad this weather."

"Good eyes!" said Washington in a burst of enthusiasm.

These two simple words in their Homeric immensity of expression meant

all this: "The fire made on the ground in our Indian lodges fills them

with continual smoke, and consequently we Indians suffer very much

from sore eyes. Now, your little stove, while it warms the tent much

better than a fire, does not smoke, and your eyes are not injured."

Our habitual table, a small box, was not constructed on the extension

plan. It would not accommodate three. So Hustleburger handed directly

to each guest a tin cup of macaroni soup. Washington disposed of the

liquid in a very short time, but the elusive nature of the macaroni

rather troubled him. We showed him how to overcome its slippery

tendency. Smacking his lips, he said, with a broad smile, "Good! What

you call him?"

"Macaroni."

"Maclony? Good! Maclony--maclony." he continued, repeating the word to

fix it in his memory.

Our only vegetable was some canned asparagus. Washington was

delighted with it after he had been initiated into the mystery of its

consumption. He did not stop at the white. "What you call--_him_?"

"Asparagus."

"Spalagus--spalagus? Goo-oo-d!"

"Did you never eat asparagus before, Washington?"

"Never eat him--nev' see him. Spalagus--spalagus! Goo-oo-d!"

Hustleburger now brought in the dessert, which consisted of canned

currant-jelly, served in the can. Each guest helped himself from the

original package, using a "hard tack" for a dessert-plate, _more

antiquo_. Washington was bidden to help himself. Before doing so,

however, he wished to test the substance placed before him, and,

taking a little on the end of his spoon, he carried it to his lips.

Then an expression of intense enjoyment overspread his dusky face; his

black eyes sparkled like diamonds; his full lips were wreathed in a

smile. "Ah! goo-oo-oo-d!" he cried, with a mouthful of _o_'s. "What

you call HIM?"

"Jelly."

"Yelly? Ah! yelly goo-oo-ood! Me--like--yelly--much." And he helped

himself plentifully.

A smell of burning woollen became unpleasantly noticeable. Washington

still had the stove between his legs: it was red-hot. He never moved,

but ate "yelly."

"Washington, you're burning!" cried the lieutenant.

Washington smiled. "Much wah-r-rum!" he remarked in the coolest manner

possible.

"Throw open the front, then."

A long, shrill cry now rang through the silence and the darkness.

Washington jumped up suddenly, ran out of the tent, and uttered a cry

in response so similar that it might pass for an echo of the first.

Then, returning, he said, "He call. He--ready--put--dead man--down.

Come! Me--come back--eat--yelly."

Fortunately, the Indian camp was not far off. The night was

pitch-dark. Led by Washington, we got through the thick underbrush

without much trouble. The grave was dug near the water's edge, where

the Missouri and the Yellowstone, meeting, form an angle. A large fire

of dry cottonwood at the head of the grave fitfully lit up the dismal

scene. A bundle of blankets and buffalo-robes lay by the open grave.

Some Indians of both sexes with bowed and blanketed heads stood near

it. Washington was evidently awaited. As soon as he appeared a little

hand-bell was rung, and a number of dark, shrouded figures with

covered faces crept forth like shadows from the lodges throughout the

camp and crowded around the grave, a mute and gloomy throng.

The bell was rung again, and the dark crowd became motionless as

statues. Then Washington in a mournful monotone repeated what I

supposed to be prayers for the dead. At the end of each prayer the

little bell was rung and responses came out of the depths of the

surrounding darkness. Then the squaws chanted a wild funeral song in

tones of surpassing plaintiveness. At its close the bell tinkled once

more, and the figures that surrounded the grave vanished as darkly

as they came. Washington, one or two warriors and ourselves alone

remained.

"You like--see--him--dead man?" asked Washington.

The question was addressed to me.

I never want to look on a dead face if I can avoid it; so with

thanks I declined. Washington seemed a little disappointed, as if he

considered we showed a somewhat uncourteous want of interest in the

deceased. Noticing this, the lieutenant said he would like to see the

dead man's face, and, preceded by Washington, we moved toward the

bundle of blankets and buffalo-robes that lay by the side of the

grave. Washington threw back the buffalo-robes, and a bright gleam of

the cottonwood fire disclosed the upturned face of the dead Nez Perce

and lightened up the long, thick locks of glossy blue-black hair. It

was the face of a man about thirty--bold, clear-cut features and long,

aquiline nose: a good face and a strong face it seemed in death.

When we had looked upon the rigid features a few moments, Washington

covered the face of his dead brother. The body, coffined in blankets

and skins, was placed in the grave, and the men began to throw the

earth upon it.

"That's--all," said Washington. "Come!"

And he moved away toward our tent.

He seemed to think some apology necessary for the simplicity of the

ceremonial. "If," said he, "Chapman [the interpreter]--he tell--we

sleep here to-morrow--we put dead man--in ground--when sun he ver'

litt'; an' Yoseph he come--an' you come--an' I come--all come--white

man an' Injun."

"He was a fine-looking young man," I remarked, alluding to the dead

Indian.

Washington was pleased by the compliment to his departed brother.

He stopped short, and, turning toward me, said, "Yes, he fine young

man--good man--good young man."

"I thought he was rather an oldish man," remarked the lieutenant.

"No, no," replied Washington, touching his head--"all black hairs--no

white hairs. Good young man."

And Washington led the way back toward the lieutenant's tent, saying,

"Let us go--eat up--yelly."

J. T.

REFORM IN VERSE.

A want of the day is some good fugitive poetry: bad is superabundant.

The demand is for short and telling effusions in plain, direct and

intelligible English, speaking to feelings possessed by everybody, and

placing incidents, scenes and creatures, familiar or exceptional, in

a poetic light, bright and warm rather than fierce or dazzling. The

millions are waiting to be stirred and charmed, and will be very

thankful to the singer who shall do it for them. Studied obscurity

of thought and language, verbal finicalities and conceits, and mere

ingenuities of any kind, rhythmic, mental or sentimental, will not

meet the occasion: that sort of thing is overdone already. It is the

"swollen imposthume" of refinement, an excrescence on culture, a

penalty of which we have suffered enough. The Heliconian streams which

are not deep, but only dark, must run dry if they cannot run clear.

Sparkling and pellucid rills, wherein we can all see our own-selves

and trace our own dreams, irradiated with light like the flickering

of gems, and set off with rich foil, are those to attract the popular

eye. Genuine humor, pathos, elevation and delicacy of fancy seek no

disguise, but aim at the utmost simplicity of expression. Inversions,

like affectation in every shape, are foreign to them. True songsters,

like the birds, warble to be heard, understood and loved, and not to

astonish or puzzle.

We read the other day, duly headed "For the ---- ----," and signed

with the contributor's name and place of residence, Wolfe's well-known

lines to his wife, the one good thing preserved of him, and better, in

our humble judgment, than those on the burial of Moore. The wearer of

borrowed plumes was obviously confident that his theft would not be

detected, readers of to-day having been so long unfamiliar with poetry

of that character as to be sure to set it down as original and hail

the reviver of it as a new light. Perhaps he may turn out to have been

right in that impression, and figure as the herald, if not an active

inaugurator, of a new era of taste in verse. He cannot remain the

only practical asserter of the theory that it is better to steal good

poetry than to write bad. Should his followers, however, shrink from

downright theft, they might consent to shine as adapters. Some who are

masters of English undefiled might help the cause by translating some

of the best bits of Browning, Swinburne and Rossetti, to say nothing

of Tennyson, who has gradually constructed a dialect of his own and

trained us to understand it.

By fugitive poetry we mean the work of those usually classed as

song-writers and lyrists, leaving out the big guns, if we have had any

of the latter tribe since Milton, who was himself strongest in short

poems. Most modern poets have made their debut in the periodical

press, and those who did not have shown a painful tendency to run to

epic. The age respectfully declines epics.

We should not despair of the suggested revival. Ours is not the first

period that has suffered under the dealers in _concetti_. They have

had things somewhat their own way before--in the century which

included Spenser and Donne, for instance. Our euphuists may pass away

like those of the Elizabethan era, or, like the best of them, live in

spite of faults with which they were gratuitously trammelled.

E. B.

* * * * *

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Bits of Travel at Home. By H. H. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

The author's present home we should incline to fix in Colorado, but

she includes New England and California in her travels, and finds

something beautiful to describe wherever she goes within those broad

limits. The Yosemite, the Big Trees, the Mormons, the Chinese, the

snow-sheds, drawing-room cars, agates, prairie-and mountain-flowers,

New Hampshire life and scenery, and an infinity of like material,

are readably, and not incongruously, presented in her little book.

Population is so sparse and Nature so redundant in the scene of most

of her descriptions as to render them sometimes a little lifeless, and

oblige her to depend too solely upon her powers of landscape painting

with the pen. We miss the human element, as we do in the vast, however

luxuriant, pictures of Bierstadt and Moran--artists who preceded her

on the same sketching-ground. Not that she fails to make the most of

what Nature places before her. Rather, she makes too much of it, and

lavishes whole pages on truthful, minute and vivid, but bewildering,

detail of mountain, river, rock, plain, plants and sea. She is

enraptured, for example, with Lake Tahoe and with the wild flowers of

California and Colorado, and enables us to understand why she is so;

but the raptures are not shared by the reader, partly for the very

reason that they are so elaborately explained. Printer's ink, when

used as a pigment or pencil, should be used sparingly, with a few,

sharp, clear, bold touches, and without painful finish or niggling.

What amplification would not weaken instead of heightening the effect

of "the copse-wood gray that waved and wept on Loch Achray"? Breadth,

distance and atmosphere are obscured by H. H.'s carefully itemized

foregrounds. But the itemizing is done admirably and con amore by one

who is a botanist, a poet and an observer. The Great Desert is no

desert to her: no square foot of it is barren. Even the sage-brush has

a charm, if only from its dim likeness to a miniature olive tree, both

being glaucous and hoary. An oasis of irrigated clover on Humboldt

River is made a theme for an idyl. The vast rocks, when bare even of

moss, are at least rich and various in tint and form, and have plenty

of meaning to her.

A traveller between Omaha and San Francisco might well carry this

pocket volume as a lorgnette. It will show him what he might otherwise

miss, and make more visible to him what he sees. It belongs to a high

class of railroad literature, and is in style and matter so full of

movement as to suggest the railway to readers by the fireside.

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

This series of manuals for beginners with pencil and palette will

include five small books. The two before us treat of "Landscape

Painting" and "Sketching from Nature." Both are old acquaintances,

reprinted respectively from the thirty-fourth and thirty-eighth London

editions. When they first came under our eye, more years ago than we

need state, they bore the imprint of a London firm of color-dealers,

and were loaded down with advertisements and less direct

recommendations of their wares to an extent that rather obscured the

valuable and interesting part of the publications. This rubbish has

been swept away in the American edition, so that the tyro can get at

what he needs to know more readily, and use it with more confidence,

than when he was puzzled to distinguish between solid instruction and

hollow puffery. The notes added by the American editor are very scant,

and yet so sensible as to enhance one's regret at their paucity and

meagreness. Directions for the use of pigments and vehicles well

enough adapted for the English climate may require modification for

ours. Moreover, British artists have not unfrequently, in their

methods, shown themselves too prone to sacrifice durability to

immediate effect. The list of colors has, too, been enriched by some

accessions within the past third of a century which demand mention.

Such points should be considered in a new edition of the brochure on

landscape painting. Generally speaking, it is a good guide, and may

safely be placed in the hands of the young colorist.

The sketcher from Nature will find in the other a succinct set of

rules clearly stated. He will not need much else if he has a good hand

and eye, and the industry and perseverance to use them. He has first

to render objects and scenes by simple lines; and to assist him in

that the elementary laws of perspective are here laid before him. Some

mechanical appliances, such as a small frame that may be carried in

the pocket, divided by equidistant wires, vertical and horizontal, and

serving, when held before the eye, to fix the relative situation of

points in the view, we do not find alluded to. Perhaps they are as

well let alone, as corks have been abandoned in the swimming-school.

When the series is completed the whole may well be bound together.

Smaller type, thinner paper and less margin would make a book readily

portable, containing all that is indispensable to the student, and a

good deal besides that the maturer artist will be none the worse for

being reminded of. One who has attained some little facility with the

pencil might adopt it as a sufficient mentor in the field or in the

studio, and accept its guidance in a path to be perfected by his own

powers, according to their measure, toward such pleasure, elevation of

taste or fortune as art offers. Studies abound everywhere. The ruins,

arched bridges and picturesque dwellings and other erections of Europe

are but slenderly to be regretted by the American beginner. He has no

lack of clouds, rocks, trees, houses, etc., embracing within their

contours every possible line and shade. He may even learn precision of

line and tint better than his Transatlantic brother, who is apt to be

tempted into carelessness by the ragged variety and indecision of

the objects offered by his surroundings and nearly unknown here.

The broken and wandering touch suggested by the jagged stones of a

crumbling castle is not that which one should begin by cultivating.

Breadth and firmness in form, color and chiaroscuro are attainments to

be first held in view, and never to be lost sight of.

We have often wondered that the _technique_ of art should have so

meagre a literature. Its philosophy and poetry have employed many

pens, and been exhaustively analyzed, but this has been mostly the

work of outsiders--of critics devoid even of the qualification laid

down by Disraeli of having failed in the practical exploitation of the

field they discuss, but for all that often powerful critics. Artists

have rarely been able to paint their pictures in black and white

and run them through the press. They cannot so display the infinite

gradations that grow upon their canvas, nor trace in words the subtle

principles which have presided at the birth of their works and of

every part of them. General rules they can lay down, as poets can the

elements of their own trade; but these rules are at the command of the

veriest daub or rhymester; the manifold development of them to results

almost divine remaining, even to those who achieve it in either walk,

evasive and untraceable. The masters of verse and art have mapped

out for us none of their secrets. The deductions we make from their

practice are our deductions, not theirs. Raffaelle, if questioned,

could only point to his palette spread with the common colors, and

Homer had not even pen and ink. Our versifiers are provided with

admirable paper and gold pens, and our artists, young and old, with

the colors Elliott once told an inquirer he made his marvellous

flesh-tints with--red, blue and yellow.

Adventures of a Consul Abroad. By Luigi Monti. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

This is a didactic or illustrative story, with a moral we find thus

laid down on the last page: "Our government sends men abroad who,

after hard labor and long experience, learn a complicated, delicate

and responsible profession; and no sooner have they learned it, and

are able to perform creditably to themselves and the government

they represent all its intricate duties, than they are recalled and

replaced by inexperienced men, who have to go through the same ordeal,

and never stay long enough to be of real service to their country."

The gentleman upon whose shadowy shoulders is placed the heavy task of

pointing this dictum is Samuel Sampleton, Esq., teacher of a private

seminary on Cape Cod, who gets tired of the young idea and seeks more

profitable and expanded fields of labor. He has not, at the outset,

the slightest preparation for the duties of the position--that of

United States consul at Verdecuerno (a translation of Palermo into

"Greenhorn")--or even knowledge of what they are. His utter lack of

information in the premises is indeed quite exceptional, especially

in a New England teacher. We should have expected an average lad of

fourteen in any part of the Union to have suspected that a consul

would need some acquaintance with the language of the people among

whom he was stationed, if not some slight notion of the general

routine and purposes of the office. Mr. Sampleton, however, is not

lacking in shrewdness and energy, and sets to work manfully, despite

the difficulties of his situation, general and special. After several

trying years, the comical tribulations of which are graphically

set forth, he is just beginning to feel himself at home when he is

summarily placed there in another sense by recall. He comes back as

poor as he went, save in experience and the languages, and resumes the

ferule with the determination not again to abandon it for the pen of

the public employe.

It is chiefly to the social side of consular life that Mr. Monti

introduces us, and most of the scenes belong to that aspect. The

salary, no longer eked out by fees and other perquisites, is much

inferior to the emoluments of other consuls at the same port, and

the American representative is consequently entirely outshone by his

colleagues of other nationalities. A considerable degree of diplomatic

style is expected from the corps, and kept up by all but himself. In

dinners, equipages, buttons and gold lace, and display of every kind,

not merely France, England and Russia, but Denmark and Turkey, leave

him deep in the shade. They have consular residences, large offices

and reading-rooms, with secretaries, interpreters and the other

paraphernalia of a small embassy, while Jonathan nests, with his

wife, on the third or fourth flat of a suburban rookery, and uses his

dining-room for an office. The sea-captains grumble at having to seek

him in such a burrow, and being accorded nothing when they get there

beyond the barest official action. He cannot interchange courtesies

with the magnates of the city, and thus places himself and the

interests of his country, so far as that often potent means of

influence goes, at a great disadvantage. A pompous commodore brings an

American squadron into port, and is ineffably disgusted at finding

his consul utterly unable to do the honors or in any way assist the

cruise.

Our author holds that the compensation of these mercantile and

quasi-diplomatic agents ought to be largely increased, it being now

inadequate as measured either by their labor and responsibility or

by the allowances made by other nations, our commercial rivals.

Certainly, additional pay in any reasonable proportion would be but a

trifle in comparison with the result should it promote the rise of our

marine from its present unprecedented state of depression. If consuls

will create, or recreate, shipping, and reintroduce the American flag

to the numerous foreign ports to which it is becoming each year more

and more a stranger, let us by all means have them everywhere and at

liberal salaries, with quant. suff. of clerks, assistants, flunkeys,

dress-suits for dinner-parties and court-suits for state receptions,

and all the other necessaries of an efficient consulate, the want

whereof so vexed the soul of Mr. Sampleton. And then let us make

fixtures of these gentlemen, with good behavior for their tenure of

office, and in the selection of them endeavor to apply abroad the test

it seems next to impossible to adhere to at home--honesty, capacity

and fidelity.

_Books Received_.

The Bible for Learners. By Dr. H. Oort and Dr. I. Hooykaas. Volume II.

From David to Josiah, from Josiah to the supremacy of the Mosaic Law.

Authorized Translation. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

A Vision of the Future: A Series of Papers on Canon Farrar's "Eternal

Hope." By Various Divines. (No. 3 of the International Religio-Science

Series.) Detroit: Rose-Belford Publishing Co.

The Cincinnati Organ, with a Brief Description of the Cincinnati Music

Hall. Edited by George Ward Nichols. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co.

Protection and Revenue in 1877. By William G. Sumner. (Economic

Monographs, No. 8.) New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Hallock's American Club List and Sportsman Glossary. By Charles

Hallock. New York: Forest and Stream Publishing Co.

Shooting Stars, as observed from the "Sixth Column" of the _Times_. By

W. L. Alden. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Christ, His Nature and Work: A Series of Discourses by Eminent

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

Poganuc People: Their Loves and Lives. By Harriet Beecher Stowe. New

York: Fords, Howard & Hurlbert.

Children of Nature. By the Earl of Desart. Toronto: Rose-Belford

Publishing Co.

Francisco: A Poem. By William Watrous. San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft &

Co.

Aspirations of the World. By L. Maria Child. Boston: Roberts Brothers.