The United States has preserved its ancient reputation in its

agricultural machinery. We are especially strong in the class which we

term "harvesters," the name including reapers, automatic binders,

mowers, horse-rakes and hay-loaders. Our baling-presses also are in

advance of competitors. A juryman may perhaps stand excused for

supposing that more than an average amount of interest is felt in the

machinery which happens to be in his class, but on Class

76--"agricultural implements in motion and in the field"--additional

interest was conferred by a series of competitive trials extending from

July 22 to August 12, and embracing reapers, mowers, steam and ordinary

ploughs, hay-presses, threshing-machines especially, but also including

all the other machines for working in the ground, gathering crops and

the storage and preparation of feed for animals. In this series of

competitive trials eight different countries entered the lists. The

prizes were twelve _objets d'art_ placed at the disposal of Monsieur

Tisseraud, the "director-general of agriculture and horticulture of

France," and the jury selected to attend the trials. Eleven of them were

accorded to machines of "exceptional merit," the idea of novelty being

included in the definition of the term. These _objets d'art_ are Sevres

vases worth one thousand francs each, and in view of their exceptional

value, and the large share that America has in the award, a list of the

names may very properly be appended.[5] Several hundred machines

competed: for instance, twenty-six reapers, sixteen mowers, fifty-four

ploughs, and so on of numerous kinds of agricultural implements and

machines for working in the soil, gathering crops and for the work of

the homestead and barn.

Last on the foreign side is the British machinery, and the collection is

very much larger and more varied than any of the preceding. There are

few lines of manufacture which are not represented here. Machines for

working in iron and other metals, for sawing and fashioning wood, for

the ginning, breaking or carding of cotton, flax, wool, jute and hemp,

for working in stone, glass, leather and paper, are shown. Then, again,

the finished productions; prime motors, such as stationary engines,

locomotives and fire-engines; lifting-machines for solids or liquids,

cranes, jacks, elevators, pumps, each in endless variety.

Prominent in the hall, and employed in driving the machinery, is the

large double compound horizontal engine of Galloway of Manchester. This

form of engine is coming to the front, as is evinced especially in the

marine service. Maudslay & Sons of London exhibit a model of the

four-cylinder marine compound engine as fitted on the "White Star line"

vessels, the Germanic, Britannic, Oceanic, Baltic and Adriatic, and on

the steamers of the "Compagnie Generale Transatlantique," the Ville de

Havre, Europe, France, Amerique, Labrador, Canada. The vessels of the

New York and Bremen line have the same class of engines, built in

Greenock, Scotland.

Amid so large a mass of machinery one can but select the most prominent,

and among these we may choose such as, while not necessarily imposing in

size, are suggestive of ideas which we may find valuable for home

introduction. Appleby & Sons lead the world in the completeness and

capacity of their great cranes and lifts for docks and wharves,

machine-shops, erection of buildings, and travelling cranes for railways

or common roads. We must make one exception--the elevators for hotels

and warehouses, in which America is in advance of all other countries.

While we have many varieties of these, we must give credit where it is

due, and the _ascenseur Edoux_ of Paris is the original of all those in

which the cage is placed upon a plunger that descends into a vertical

cylinder into which water is forced to elevate the plunger, and from

which it is withdrawn to allow the plunger and cage to descend. Very

fine specimens of this class of elevator are in the New York Post-office

building. The gantry crane of Messrs. Appleby Bros. of London is the

most complete engine of its kind in the world. It was originally

constructed for the growing requirements of the docks of the

North-eastern Railway Company of England at Middlesborough. The term

"gantry" is applied to the movable scaffold or frame, which in this case

rests upon a pair of rails twenty-three feet apart, one of them being

close to the edge of the quay. The clear height is seventeen and a half

feet, which allows the uninterrupted passage of locomotives and all

kinds of rolling-stock on each of the two lines of rails which are

spanned by the gantry. The crane is designed for a working load of five

tons, with a maximum radius of twenty-one feet from the centre of the

crane-post to the plumb-line of the lifting chain, with a capacity for

altering the radius by steam to a minimum of fourteen feet. The crane

has capacity to (1) lift and lower; (2) turn round completely in either

direction simultaneously with the lifting and lowering; (3) alter the

radius by raising or lowering the jib-head; (4) travel along the rails

by its own steam-power. All these motions are easily worked by one man,

who attends to the boiler. The travelling motion is transmitted from the

crane-engines by suitable gear and shafts to the travelling wheels, and

warping-drums or capstans are fitted on a countershaft on the inner side

of each frame, which drums can be driven independently of the travelling

wheels for moving trucks into position below the crane as they are

required for loading and unloading. Smaller cranes may pass with their

loads below the gantry, and a number of these large cranes may be

assembled so as each to work at the different hatchways of a large

screw steamer, or two may be associated together for any exceptionally

heavy lift. The value of elevation of the crane is not only in allowing

the loaded cars to be brought on tracks beneath it, but in giving it

capacity to work over the sides of large vessels, which when light may

rise twenty feet above the level of the quay, and to load or discharge

from trucks on two lines of rails on the land-side of the gantry,

overhead of the trucks on the two lines which run below the gantry.[6]

Blake's stone-breaker, though only represented by model in the United

States section, where it belongs, is shown by two English firms; and

though some Europeans profess to have improved upon its details, no

efficient substitute has been found for it, but it remains the premium

stone-crusher of the world, and has rendered services in the

exploitation of gold quartz and silver ores, and in the crushing of

stones for public works and for concretes, which can hardly be

exaggerated. In testimony taken in the United States in 1872 it was put

in evidence that five hundred and nine machines then in service effected

a direct saving over hand-labor of five million five hundred thousand

dollars per annum.

Steam-pumps are here in force--direct by Tangye and others, and rotary

by both of the Gwynnes, whose name has been so long and is so intimately

associated with this class of machines.

The emery-wheels of Thompson, Sterne & Co. of Glasgow have the same

variety of form and application usual with us, but the firm claims that

while it uses the true corundum emery of Naxos, the American article is

only a refractory iron ore, which soon loses its sharpness and becomes

inefficient. This is a question of efficiency or of veracity which we

leave to the trade. The machine adapted as a tool-grinder has six

emery-wheels for varying characters of work. Four are assorted for

gauges of different radii, for moulding-irons, etc. One has a square

face for plane-irons, chisels, etc. One is an emery hone to replace the

water-of-Ayr stone.

In examining the English locomotives exhibited two things were apparent:

one half of them have adopted the outside cylinders and wrist-pins on

the drivers, three out of four have comfortable cabs for the engineers.

These are, as we view them, sensible changes. Outside-cylinder engines

are also coming into extensive use in France. The machine tools shown by

Sharp, Stewart & Co. of Manchester are remarkably well made, and their

locomotive in the same space is an evidence of the efficiency of the

tools.

The exhibit of hydraulic-machine tools by Mr. R. H. Tweddell is a very

admirable one, and shows a multitude of stationary and portable forms in

which the idea is developed so as to reach the varying requirements.

When work is more conveniently held to the machines, the latter are

adapted to reach it whether presented vertically or horizontally, or

with one arm inside of it, as with boilers and flue-pipes. When it is

more convenient to handle the riveter, the latter is suspended from a

crane and swung up to its work, and the peculiarity of the various sizes

and shapes for different kinds of work is remarkable. The cut shows one

of the latest for riveting girders.

The Ingram rotary perfecting press, on which the _Illustrated London

News_ is worked off, prints from a web of paper of the usual length, and

is claimed as the final triumph in the line of inventors, which is thus

stated in England: Nicholson, Koenig, Applegarth and Cowper, Hoe and

Walter. We should be disposed to add a few names to the list, among

which would be Bullock and Campbell. A is the roll of paper, containing

a length of, say, two miles; B B the type and impression cylinders for

printing the inner form; C C calendering rollers to remove the

indentation of the inner form type; D D the outer form type and

impression cylinders; E E cylinders with a saw-tooth knife and an

indentation respectively to perforate the sheet between the papers; F F

rollers to hold the sheet while the snatching-rollers G G, which run at

an increased speed, break the paper off where it has been indented by E

E. The folder is in duplicate to give time to work, as each only takes

half the papers. The vibrating arm H delivers the sheets alternately to

K and J, which are carrying-tapes leading to two folding-machines. If

the sheets are not required to be folded, the arm H is moved to its

highest position, and there fixed, without stopping the machine: it then

delivers the sheets to the roller L, and by means of a blast of air and

a flyer they are laid on a table provided for them.

The rise of British factory-life and great energy in manufacturing began

with the invention of the spinning-frame by Arkwright, the power-loom by

Cartwright, the spinning-jenny by Hargreaves, and the mule by

Crompton--all within a space of twenty years ending 1785. To these must

be added the steam-engine by Watt, which made it possible to drive the

machinery, and the gin by Eli Whitney, which made it possible to get

cotton to spin. Much as iron has loomed up lately, the working of the

various fibres--cotton, wool, flax, hemp and jute--constitutes the pet

industry of her people, and very elaborate and beautiful are the

machines at the Exposition, especially attractive and less commonly

known being those for working long or combing wool, flax, hemp and jute.

The United States is not doing as much as it ought in the working of

these fibres, and the money which is paid for the purchase of foreign

linens and fabrics made of other materials than cotton and wool might,

some economists think, be employed at home in making them. The day will

come probably, but does not seem to be hastening very fast, when we

shall conclude to make our own linens, as we have within a comparatively

few years past determined in regard to all the staple varieties of

carpets.

[Illustration: INGRAM'S ROTARY PERFECTING PRINTING-MACHINE.]

One of the most important machines in the Exposition, from the American

point of view, is the "double Macarthy roller-gin," exhibited by Platt

Brothers & Co. of Oldham, England. It is a curious instance of how

machines sometimes revert to their original types. The oldest machine

for ginning cotton is undoubtedly the roller-gin, and it was known in

India, China and Malaysia long before Vasco da Gama turned the Cape of

Good Hope and opened the trade of the East to the Portuguese and their

successors. The common roller-gin of Southern Asia was shown at the

Centennial from Hindostan, Java and China, and is exhibited here from

Java. It has a pair of rollers about the size of broomsticks, close

together and turning in different directions, which pinch and draw the

fibre through, while the seeds are prevented from passing by the

closeness of the rollers. Whitney's invention of the saw-gin in 1794

revolutionized the business and changed the whole domestic aspect of our

Southern States. In it the fibre is picked from the seed by means of

saw-teeth projecting through slits in the side of the chamber in which

the seed-cotton is placed. But the roller-gin has again come upon the

stage, and with the late improvements is likely to become the gin of the

future. When the close of our civil war put an end to the "cotton

famine," as it was called, in Europe, and American cotton resumed its

place in the market, the export of the East Indian and Egyptian cottons

would have been immediately suppressed if they had not possessed the

roller-gin in those countries. Ten thousand of the double Macarthy gin

are used in India, and five thousand of the single roller-gin in Egypt.

It is understood that the saw-gin is used in but a single district in

India. While the saw-gin injures any variety of cotton by cutting,

tearing, napping and tangling the fibres, its action upon the long and

fine staple called "sea island" is ruinous, and the roller-gin alone is

suitable for working it. The slow action of the single roller-gin,

cleaning about one hundred and fifty pounds of lint per day, made its

cultivation too expensive, but the double roller-gin will clean nine

hundred pounds in ten hours, or one hundred and twenty pounds an hour of

the common upland short-staple cotton. It is thought by Southern members

of the United States commission that the introduction of the double

roller-gin into our country would greatly increase the profitableness of

the culture of cotton, and especially of the "sea island," which is at

present much neglected, and in the growth of which we need fear no

rivalry. Each roller is made of walrus leather, and rotates in contact

with a fixed knife, dragging by its rough surface the fibres of cotton

between itself and the knife. A grating holds the seed-cotton. Besides

these parts there are moving knives to which are attached a grid or

series of fingers. At each elevation of the moving knives, the grids

attached thereto lift the cotton to the elevation of the fixed

knife-edge and of the exposed surface of the rollers: on the descent of

each moving knife the seeds which have become separated from the fibre

are disentangled by the prongs of the moving grid passing between those

of the lower or fixed grid about seven hundred and fifty times per

minute, and are by this rapidity of action flirted out.

It would be scarcely fair to neglect altogether the English annex in

which all the agricultural implements are exhibited, nor that which

contains its carriages. So much commercial intercourse, so many journals

published in the respective countries, have made each pretty well

acquainted with the agricultural machines and methods of the other. The

principal difference is in the splendid plant for steam-ploughing

exhibited by Fowler & Son and by Aveling & Porter, and in the great

number and variety of the machines and apparatus for preparing food for

animals--chaff-cutters, oat- and bean-bruisers and crushers,

oilcake-grinders, boilers and steamers for feed and mills for rough

grinding of grain.

A shed by the annex contains two curious machines for working stone--one

a dresser, belonging to Brunton & Triers, which has a large wheel and a

number of planetary cutters whose disk edges as they revolve cut the

stone against which they impinge. The other machine, by Weston & Co., is

for planing stone mouldings. The stone-drills are in the same annex;

also the Smith and the Hardy brakes, the former of which is the European

rival of the Westinghouse, acting upon the vacuum principle, and already

in possession of so many of the lines in Europe that it proves a serious

competitor.

Perhaps nothing in the French Exposition excites more surprise in the

minds of those who are conversant with technical matters than the

immense advance of the French since 1867 in the matter of machinery. The

simple statement of the names of the exhibitors, their residences and

the subject-matter occupies a large volume, and the quality and variety

are equal to the quantity.

Reference has been made to the web perfecting printing-machine in the

English section, but quite a number are shown in the French department,

three of them by Marinoni of Paris, one of which prints the journal _La

France_, eighteen thousand an hour. It prints, cuts, counts, folds and

piles the papers. Another by the same maker prints twenty thousand an

hour of the _Weekly Dispatch_ (English paper), and counts and piles them

in heaps of one hundred each. A third works on the _Petit Journal_,

printing forty thousand per hour with two forms. Alauzet & Co. have also

a web perfecting press, _a double touche_, for illustrated papers and

book-printing. This wets, prints, cuts, counts and folds in octavo four

thousand per hour of super-royal size. They also show a double railway

topographic press, printing in two colors. Vauthier's roller-press is

arranged to work on an endless roll of paper or on sheets fed in as

usual, and prints in six colors. Electro shells are secured in position

on the respective rollers, which are in horizontal series, and the paper

is conducted by tapes to the rollers in succession. The French section

shows a great variety of polychrome, lithographic and zincographic

printing-machines, and also a great number of ordinary job and card

presses, the most interest, however, centring in the large number and

variety of the web perfecting presses for newspapers and for bill-work

where long numbers are required.

France has a right to exemplify the Jacquard in its fulness, for it is

hers. The original machine of Vaucanson and that of Jacquard are in the

Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, as well as a long series of

exemplifications of successive improvements. The Grand Maison de Blanc

of Paris has a large one, making an immense linen cloth of damask

figures, all in white, and representing what I took at first to be an

allegorical picture of all the nations bringing their gifts to the

Exposition. I found afterward that it was called _Fees du Dessert_. It

is about three metres wide, and just as long as you please to make it,

but the pattern is repeated every five metres. The design, on paper, is

hung against the wall, and is twelve by eight metres, all laid off in

squares of twelve millimetres, and these again into smaller ones exactly

a square millimetre in size. The number of small squares on the sheet of

paper is ninety-six million, which represents the number of the

intersections of the warp and woof in the pattern. There are nine

thousand and sixty-six perforated cards in the Jacquard arrangement for

floating the threads which form the damask pattern, and the whole

machine stands on a space of about twenty by twelve feet and is eighteen

feet high. It is worked by one man, without steam-power, the shifting of

the harness being done by two foot-levers and the shuttle thrown by a

pull-cord.

We may here observe the looms that weave the marvellously fine silk

gauzes realizing such fanciful Indian names as "morning mist," which

poetically express the lightness of a web that when spread upon the

grass is not visible unless one stoops down and examines closely. To

even name the various looms here would be to make a list of ribbons,

velvets, cloths and other tissues. The subsidiary machines for dressing

the fabrics are here also--for napping, teasling, shearing, stretching

and brushing, for measuring, folding and packing.

The other modes of making fabrics shown are a machine for making

fishing-nets of great width, and a number of knitting-machines, from the

stocking-frame of eighty years ago to the small domestic machine, and

the larger one with nine hundred needles in the circumference and making

a circular seamless fabric eighteen inches in diameter. The march of

improvement is eminently shown here, where an old man is patiently

knitting a flat web of ten inches with a series of five motions between

the rows of stitches, while just by are the circular machines, whose

motions are so rapid that the clicks of the needles merge into a whir,

and a man is able to attend to six machines, making one hundred and

thirty pounds of knitted goods per day.

Passing the large exhibit of machines for the working of fibres

preliminary to the loom--the carding, roving, spinning, reeling and

warping--and the allied but different machines which make wire-cloths of

different meshes and size, we come to the ropemaking-machines for hemp

and wire, which are shown principally in their products, the

manufacture taking an amount of room and material which could hardly be

expected to be efficiently shown in a crowded building where space is

valuable.

The French plant for boring small shafts to find water or obtain

sections of the strata, and the larger ones for sinking large ones for

mines, are shown by several exhibitors. The annular drills remove

cylindrical sections of the strata from ten to sixty centimetres in

diameter: the large chisels resemble those described in the Belgian

exhibit, having a diameter of four metres and a weight of twenty-five

thousand kilos.

The department of mining has some excellent large models of mining

districts, in which the face of the country is represented with the

natural undulations, the villages, roads, fields and streams, and made

in removal-sections which expose the underlying strata, the galleries,

drifts and shafts of the subterranean world.

An attempt to describe the steam-engines, of such various size, shape,

position and capacity, would exhaust all the space permissible in a

magazine article.

The wood-working tools of France are excellent, and our manufacturers

must look well to their laurels. We have as yet the advantage in

compactness and simplicity, with adjustability and adaptation to varying

classes of work. The band-saw is claimed as a French invention, and the

crowds around the workman who saws a roomful of dolls' furniture out of

a single block as large as one's fist are as great here as they were at

Philadelphia. The Blanchard lathe for turning irregular forms is here in

a variety of forms. This is an interesting object of study, as

illustrating the usual course of invention, in which a master-hand

grasps a subject which has been suggested in an incomplete and

comparatively ineffective manner from time to time by others. De la Hire

and Condamine during the last century described lathes adapted to turn

irregular shapes, and the scoring-machine for ships' blocks invented by

Brunel and made by Maudslay for Chatham dockyard in England, 1802-8,

was as perfect an exemplification of the idea as the nature of the work

to be done required. Blanchard, however, in 1819 gave the finishing

stroke, and the lathe will bear his name for long years. Inventors of

three nations attacked the problem, and each aided the result.

Brickmaking, diamond-cutting; machines for making paper bags, envelopes,

cuffs and collars; distilleries, sugar-mills, with the successive

apparatus of vacuum-pans, pumps and centrifugal filters; soap, stearine,

paraffine, wax, candle, candy and chocolate machines and

apparatus,--succeed each other, and we next find ourselves in a busy

factory of cheap jewelry, Exposition souvenirs and medals, chains and

charms. The leather machinery is deserving of a careful description, but

it would be too technical perhaps, and there is no romance in the

handling of wet hides, the scraping, currying, stretching and pommelling

which even the thickness, prepare the surface and develop the pliability

of the leather. Near this is the boot- and shoe-making, sewing and

cable-screw wire machines, but none for pegging. Sewing-machines, copies

of the various American forms, occupy the end of the hall.

Separate buildings around the grounds and on both banks of the Seine

contain groups of machinery at which we can but glance. Two long

pavilions have agricultural machines, and one each is appropriated to

materials for railways, to civil engineering, pumps, gas-works, the

forges of Terre Noire, the iron-works of Creusot, the ministry of public

works, stoves, the government manufacture of tobacco, navigation,

life-saving apparatus of floats and boats, fire-engines and ceramics.

Add to these two annexes, each one thousand feet long, containing

locomotives, cars, street-cars, telegraph-apparatus and many acres of

the surplus machinery of all classes excluded from the large building

for want of room, and a person may form some adequate idea of the

immense extent and variety of this wonderful collection.

EDWARD H. KNIGHT.

THE COLONEL'S SENTENCE: AN ALGERIAN STORY.

"I've known many clever fellows in my time," said Paul Dupont, French

sous-lieutenant in the --th of the line, as he sat sipping his coffee in

front of the Hotel de la Regence at Algiers, "but by far the cleverest

man I ever met was our old colonel, Henri de Malet. People said he ought

to have been an _avocat_, but that was giving him but half his due, for

I'll be bound he could have outflanked any lawyer that ever wore a gown.

In his latter days he always went by the name of 'Solomon the Second;'

and if you care to hear how he came by it I'll tell you.

"Before he came to us De Malet was military commandant at Oran, and it

was there that he did one of his best strokes--outgeneralling a

camel-driver from Tangier, one of those thorough-paced Moorish rascals

of whom the saying goes, 'Two Maltese to a Jew, and three Jews to a

Moor,' Now this Tangerine, when pulled up for some offence or other,

swore that he wasn't Muley the camel-driver at all, but quite another

man; and as his friends all swore the same, and he had managed to alter

his appearance a bit before he was arrested, he seemed safe to get off.

But our colonel wasn't to be done in that way. He pretended to dismiss

the case, and allowed the fellow to get right out into the street as if

all was over; and then he suddenly shouted after him, 'Muley the

camel-driver, I want to speak to you.' The old rogue, hearing his own

name, turned and came back before he could recollect himself; and so he

was caught in spite of all his cunning.

"The fame of this exploit went abroad like wildfire, and it got to be a

saying among us, whenever we heard of any very clever trick, that it was

'one of Colonel de Malet's judgments;' and so, when he was transferred

from Oran to Algiers, it was just as if we all knew him already,

although none of us had ever seen him before. But it wasn't long before

we got a much better story than that about him; for one night a man

dined at our mess who had known the colonel out in India, and told us a

grand tale of how he had astonished them all at Pondicherry. It seems

that some things had been stolen from the officers' quarters, and nobody

could tell who had done it. The first thing next morning the colonel

went along the line at early parade, giving each of the native soldiers

a small strip of bamboo; and then he said, very solemnly, 'My children,

there is a guilty man among us, and it has been revealed to me by Brahma

himself how his guilt is to be made clear. Let every man of you come

forward in his turn and give me his piece of bamboo; and the thief, let

him do what he may, will have the longest piece.'

"Now, you know what superstitious hounds those Asiatic fellows always

are; and when they heard this announcement they all looked at each other

like children going to be whipped. The colonel took the bamboos one

after another, as solemnly as if he were on a court-martial, but when

about a dozen men had gone past he suddenly sprang forward and seized

one of them by the throat, shouting at the full pitch of his voice, 'You

are the man!'

"Down went the fellow on his knees and yelled for mercy, confessing that

he _was_ the man, sure enough. As for the rest, they looked as

frightened as if all the gods in the caverns of Elephanta had come

flying down among them at once; and from that day forth they salaamed to

the very ground at the mere sight of the colonel half a mile off.

"'How on earth did you manage that, colonel?' asked the senior major, a

great fat fellow, as stupid as a carp.[7]

"'Nothing simpler, my dear fellow,' answered De Malet, laughing. 'The

strips were all exactly the same length, and the thief, fearing to get

the longest piece, betrayed himself by _biting off the end_.'

"This, as you may think, added a good deal to the colonel's reputation;

and when we had that affair with the Bedouins at Laghouat we soon saw

that he could fight as well as manoeuvre. In the thick of the skirmish

one of the rogues, seeing De Malet left alone, flew at him with drawn

yataghan, but the colonel just dropped on his horse's neck and let the

blow pass over him, and then gave point and ran the fellow right through

the body, as neatly as any fencing-master could have done it. You may be

sure we thought none the less of him after that; but all this was

nothing to what was coming.

"Well, De Malet had been with us about a year when the railway was begun

from Algiers to Blidah, and the directing engineer happened to be one of

my greatest friends, Eugene Latour, as good a fellow as I ever met. It

was quite a fete with us whenever he dined at mess, for his jokes and

good stories kept every one brisk; and then to hear him sing! _ma foi_,

it was wonderful! One minute some rattling refrain that seemed to set

the very chairs dancing, and then suddenly a low, sad air that fairly

brought the tears into your eyes. They were in mine, I know, every time

I heard him sing those last two verses of 'The Conscript's Farewell:'

I thought to gain rich spoils--I've gained

Of bullets half a score:

I thought to come back corporal--

I shall come back no more.

Feed my poor dog, I pray thee, Rose,

And with him gentle be:

He'll miss his master for a while--

Adieu! remember me![8]

"Well, as I was saying, Eugene had been put over the work, and I don't

know where they could have found a better man for it. Whether it poured

with rain or came on hot enough to cook a cutlet without fire, it was

all one to him: there he was at his post, looking after everything,

with his eyes in ten places at once. You may think that under such a

chief the laborers had no chance of idling; and everything was getting

on splendidly when one morning, as he was standing on the parapet of a

bridge, his foot slipped and down he went, I don't know how far. The

fall would have killed him outright if by good luck there hadn't

happened to be an Arab underneath (the only time that an Arab ever _was_

of any use, I should say), and Eugene, alighting upon _him_, broke his

own fall and the Bedouin's neck to boot.

"Now, if there had been nobody there to tell tales, this wouldn't have

mattered a pin, for an Arab more or less is no such great matter; but,

as ill-luck would have it, there were three or four more of the rascals

near enough to see what had happened, and of course they raised a

hue-and-cry directly. And when it was noised abroad that a Christian dog

(as they politely call us) had killed a Mussulman, you should have seen

what an uproar there was! The people came running together like vultures

when a camel drops down in the desert, and there was a yelling and

dancing and shaking of fists that made one's very head turn round. Poor

Eugene would have been torn to pieces on the spot if the guard hadn't

formed round him and defended him; and the only way we could pacify the

mob was to promise them justice from the district magistrate; so away to

the magistrate we all went.

"Now, I dare say Mr. Magistrate was a very good fellow in his way, and I

don't want to say a word against him, but still, it must be owned that

he wasn't exactly the kind of man to stand firm in the midst of a rabble

of wild Mohammedans, all howling and flourishing their knives at once

under his very nose. To tell the plain truth, he was frightened out of

his wits; and the only thing _he_ thought of was how to shift the

responsibility on to somebody else's shoulders as fast as possible. So

he said (and it was very lucky he did, as it turned out) that Latour,

being in government employ, must be tried by military law; and he

packed them all off to the commandant, who, as I've told you, was no

other than Colonel de Malet.

"It was no easy matter for the colonel to get at the facts of the case,

for all the rascals kept shrieking at once, one louder than another; but

at last, bit by bit, he managed to get a pretty clear idea of what had

happened; and then he said, very solemnly, 'A French officer does his

duty, let it be what it will. You have come here for justice, and

justice you shall have.'

"There was a great roar of triumph from the crowd, and poor Eugene

looked as blank as a thief in the Salle de la Police.

"'Before I pass sentence, however,' pursued De Malet, 'I wish to ask

this young man' (pointing to the son of the dead Arab, who was the

ringleader of all the mischief) 'whether he will accept of any

compromise.'

"'No, no!' yelled the young brigand--'life for life!'

"'So be it,' said the colonel gravely, 'and you, by Mussulman law, are

your father's destined avenger. Therefore, let the engineer be taken

back to the very spot where his victim was standing, and do you go up to

the top of the parapet and _jump down upon him_!'

"_Tonnerre de ciel!_ what a roar of laughter there was! The very Arabs

couldn't help joining in. As to the young villain himself, he stood

stock-still for a moment, and then flew out of the court like a madman;

and that was the last of him. We gave Eugene a famous supper that night

at the Cafe Militaire in honor of his escape; and the story was in all

the papers next morning, headed 'A Judgment of Solomon.' And from that

day to the end of his life Colonel de Malet never went by any other name

among us but 'Solomon the Second.'"

DAVID KER.

STARLIGHT

How dark against the sky

Loom the great hills! Over the cradled stream

They lean their dusky shadows lovingly,

Watching its happy dream.

The oil-well's little blaze

Gleams red and grand against the mountain's dark:

Yon star, seen through illimitable haze,

Is dwindled to a spark.

Far greater to my eye

The swimming lights of yonder fishing-boat

Than worlds that burn in night's immensity--

So huge, but so remote.

Ah, I have loved a star

That beckoned sweetly from its distant throne,

Forgetting nearer orbs that fairer are,

And shine for me alone.

Better the small and near

Than the grand distant with its mocking beams--

Better the lovelight in thine eyes, my dear,

Than all ambition's dreams.

CHARLES QUIET.

THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE OF 1878 IN VENEZUELA.

On Friday evening, the 12th of April, 1878, we were collected, as usual,

in our drawing-room in Caracas, and were in the act of welcoming an old

friend who had just returned from Europe, when there came suddenly a

crash, a reverberation--a something as utterly impossible to convey the

impression of as to describe the movement which followed, or rather

accompanied, it, so confused, strange and unnatural was the entire

sensation. It was like the rush of many waters, the explosion of

cannon--like anything the imagination can conceive; and at the same time

the earth appeared to leap beneath our feet, then swayed to and fro with

an oscillating motion: the panes of glass rattled in the windows, the

beams of the flooring above creaked ominously; lamps, chandeliers and

girandoles vibrated and trembled like animated creatures. The great

bells of the cathedral suddenly rang out a spontaneous peal of alarm

with a sonorous, awe-inspiring clang, while the clock in the tower

struck the ill-timed hour with a solemn, unearthly reverberation.

This was but the work of a few seconds: a few more and Caracas would

have been a heap of ruins, as in the earthquake of 1812. But even in

these short moments we had time, horror-stricken and pallid with terror

as we were, to cry out, "An earthquake! an earthquake!"--to seize upon

our European friend, who did not seem to realize the danger, to drag him

from the chair which he was just about to take, I pushing him before me,

while my sister pulled him by the arm down the long drawing-room into

the corridor which surrounds the central court, while still the earth

rocked beneath our feet and everything around us trembled with the

vibration.

By this time the city was thoroughly alarmed. Cries of "Misericordia!

misericordia!" resounded on every side, and every one prophesied another

and a greater shock. These fears were not entirely uncalled for, for at

twenty minutes past nine there was a second, and several more before

daybreak, although none proved to be as severe as the first.

In a short time carriages began to roll by in all directions, bearing

the more timorous to the villages and plantations outside of the city:

the open public squares or _plazas_ filled rapidly with the excited

population, especially when telegram after telegram began to arrive from

La Guayra, Puerto Cabello, Valencia, La Vittoria and the intervening

towns--all having felt the violence of the shock, and anxious lest the

capital might have been destroyed. This proof of the extent of the _onda

seismica_, as the scientists termed it, served to increase the general

alarm. Tents were improvised in the plazas, composed of blankets,

counterpanes, etc., stretched across ropes attached to the trees in the

square, those who had no such appliances at hand remaining all night

upon the public benches or upon more comfortable seats which they caused

to be transported for their accommodation.

The scene in the principal square of Caracas, the Plaza Bolivar--upon

which front the cathedral on the eastern side, the palace of the

archbishop on the southern, the presidential residence (called the _Casa

Amarilla_, or "Yellow House") on the western, and a number of other

public buildings on the northern--was one which under less terrifying

circumstances would have been most imposing, for the archbishop left his

palace and descended by the great stairway into the plaza, accompanied

by a train of his attending priests, to raise the fainting spirits of

the terrified multitude, who, with pallid faces upraised to Heaven or

crouched upon the bare ground in attitudes of supplication, implored

mercy from on high. And inasmuch as calamitous events, such as the

appearance of comets, earthquakes or pestilences, are usually the

signal for great moral reforms, doubtless many a promise of a purer life

was registered in that hour of terror by those self-accused by their

quickened consciences.

The archbishop--who is a young man, devout, fervent and sincere, a very

anchorite in his habits and mode of life, thin, spare of frame, and with

features eloquent with the fire of intellect, morally and physically the

splendid ideal of what a true priest ought to be--wandered among his

flock, exhorting, comforting, admonishing and cheering them; while the

_Hermandades_, a religious brotherhood, headed by their color-bearer,

upon whose banner the effigy of the Virgin, their patron saint, was

emblazoned, walking two by two in procession in the long gowns of their

order--some red, some black, some white--and each carrying a lighted

taper, traversed the plazas and paraded the streets the whole night. The

glimmering light of the tapers falling upon these dusky shrouded forms

in the gloom of this awful night, the melancholy refrain of the prayers

which they chanted as they passed through the awestruck city, the

lessening glimpses of the flickering tapers as the train passed solemnly

by into some distant street,--all served rather to intensify than to

tranquillize the alarm.

The excitement and agitation of the people were so great that no one

thought of going to bed: those who, like ourselves, went neither to the

country nor to the open squares, sat in their windows and compared their

experiences or gathered news from every passer-by; for they feared to

separate from their families, lest a worse shock might overtake some one

of them apart from the rest. Besides this, the danger in the streets was

greater than at home, because of their narrowness and the likelihood of

the walls on either side toppling over upon pedestrians.

The night had been beautifully clear, and the moon brilliant as it is

only in the tropics, but toward midnight the weather became cloudy and a

drizzling rain fell at intervals, driving us within doors between one

and two o'clock, but only to lie down fully dressed upon our beds, with

lights burning and doors left open, so as the more readily to facilitate

our escape if necessary. One or two slight shocks recurred during the

night, but morning dawned at last, finding us unhurt; and with returning

day our courage too returned, so _darkness_ "doth make cowards of us

all." It was then ascertained that the cathedral had sustained some

slight damage; the image of the Virgin in the church of the Candelaria

had been thrown to the ground and broken to pieces; and the National

Pantheon, the observatory of the new university and other public

buildings, with many houses, had been injured, but none thrown down and

no lives lost.

No one, however, could dwell long in lamentation over these accidents

when the news reached us the next morning of the terrible calamity which

had overtaken the beautiful valley of the Tuy. This valley lies to the

south of the city of Caracas, at an elevation of twelve or fifteen

hundred feet above the sea, and is noted for being one of the most

fertile of the many rich agricultural districts in which Venezuela

abounds. The river Tuy, two hundred miles in length and navigable for

about forty miles, flows through the centre, fertilizing the soil and

causing it to become the granary of the capital, its abundant crops

usually sufficing, in fact, for the consumption of the whole province.

Indeed, were there more public highways its surplus products might find

their way to still more distant portions of the republic. The whole

valley is studded with towns, villages and plantations: of the former,

the principal are Ocumare, Charallave, Santa Teresa, Santa Lucia and

Cua.

The city of Cua was beyond comparison the richest and most flourishing

of all, being situated at the head of the valley, where it opens toward

the vast _Llanos_ or plains, and being also the emporium of many

extensive districts producing the staples of the country, such as

coffee, cocoa, sugar and indigo. There too had been transported enormous

timber from the still virgin forests--timber of the most valuable kind,

whether for ornament, for building or for dyeing purposes. Nor was the

city more remarkable for its advantageous situation and the importance

of its commerce than for the refinement of its society. Unlike the

generality of inland towns in South America, where the constitution of

society is apt to be rather heterogeneous, Cua was the residence of many

of the principal families of the country--gentlemen at the head of

wealthy commercial establishments, or opulent planters owning large

estates in the neighborhood, but making the city their permanent abode.

Hence the society was far beyond what might have been imagined as

regards position and general cultivation. Cua, like all Spanish American

towns, was laid out at right angles, while many of the houses rivalled

the handsomest in Caracas, and were furnished with equal splendor.

Such was the state of things in this smiling valley when, at the same

moment precisely at which we in Caracas felt the shock of the

earthquake, all the above-mentioned towns--Ocumare, Santa Lucia,

Charallave, etc.--were shaken to their foundations. The latter

especially suffered greatly, for not a house was left uninjured or safe

to inhabit, although the occupants had time to escape. But Cua--unhappy

Cua!--was utterly destroyed. Without a moment's warning, without a

single indication of their impending fate, all the inhabitants were

buried beneath the mass of ruins to which in a few seconds it was

reduced. Perhaps it is not strictly correct to say there had been no

sign. The heat had become so intense between seven and eight o'clock

that numbers of persons were seated outside of the houses or had betaken

themselves to the open squares to endeavor to seize a breath of fresh

air, while many of the lower classes were sleeping under the open sky;

to which fact, indeed, they owed their lives. The only habitations which

survived the violence of the shock were the huts of the poor, being what

is called _bajareque_, made of posts driven into the earth and otherwise

formed of a species of wild cane tied together and cemented with mud

and straw, these primitive dwellings being usually considered

earthquake-proof.

Besides the extraordinary heat, a friend of ours, who was riding from

his plantation into the town, observed another indication of some

disturbance in the usual processes of Nature. While crossing the river

he noticed that the fishes were leaping in great numbers out of the

water, and called the attention of several persons to the fact. They

attributed this, however, to the discomfort occasioned by the intense

heat, for the temperature of the water had increased so much that it had

become disagreeable to drink.

The gentleman to whom I have alluded, Don Tomas de la G----, describes

the subterranean noise at Cua during the earthquake as something

terrific, like the discharge of hundreds of cannon, while the earth rose

simultaneously under his feet. There are two kinds of earthquakes--that

of _trepidacion_, which comes directly from below, with an upward

motion; the other, _de oscilacion_, where the earth sways to and fro

like a pendulum, and which is generally less dangerous. Unfortunate Cua

experienced both: the first shock was one vast upheaval, the whole town

being uprooted from its foundations and every house uplifted and

overturned, and before the bewildered population could realize what was

happening they were buried beneath the ruins. The shock then changed

into the oscillatory movement, and set all this mass of destruction to

quivering as if it were the dire agony of some living creature. All was

so sudden that few were saved by their own exertions, those who survived

having either been dug out of the ruins afterward or cast forth by the

counter-motion as the earth rocked to and fro in the second shock. It

was as if the city had been lifted up _en masse_, and then thrown back

with the foundations uppermost--upside down, in fact. Don Tomas de la

G---- happened to be in the plaza in front of the church when the shock

came: in the endeavor to steady himself he grasped a tree close by; the

tree was uprooted, throwing him violently forward; then suddenly

reversing its course in an exactly opposite direction, it flung him off

to a great distance, bruising him severely. While clinging to the tree

he beheld the church in front of him, a new and handsome edifice,

literally lifted up bodily into the air and then overturned with an

appalling crash, "not one stone left upon another." If this had occurred

an hour or two previously, hundreds would have perished within the

walls, for there had been religious services in the church until a late

hour, it being the Friday before Holy Week, termed by Spanish Catholics

_Viernes del Concilio_.

Don Tomas de la G---- described the whole scene as something too

terrible for the imagination to conceive. After the stupendous crash

caused by the falling of the houses, for a few moments there ensued an

awful silence: then, amid the impenetrable darkness caused by the cloud

of dust from the fallen walls, which totally obscured the murky light of

a clouded moon, there arose a cry of anguish from those without--a wail

as of one great voice of stricken humanity; then the answering smothered

groan of those buried beneath the ruins--a cry like nothing human,

rising as it did from the very bowels of the earth.

There ensued a scene the harrowing details of which can never be fully

given--the search of the living and uninjured for those dead, dying or

imprisoned ones who lay beneath the great masses of stone and mortar.

Sometimes, in answer to the desperate cries of those outside or already

rescued, smothered, almost inaudible cries for help might be heard, so

faint as to seem scarcely human, and yet growing fainter and fainter

still, until those who were working for the release of the captive

became aware that their labor was in vain, and that only a corpse lay

beneath their feet. No light could be obtained in this stifling Erebus

of dust and darkness: all means of obtaining light had been buried in

the undistinguishable mass, and where lighted lamps were overturned in

the crash they had set fire to beams and rafters in the houses, and

many who escaped being crushed were burned to death. Even proper

instruments were wanting, and the number of persons who had collected to

assist in the work of searching the debris was totally inadequate to the

occasion. Many instances of distress I can vouch for as authentic, as

the victims were intimate friends of my own, and all the individuals I

am about to mention were persons of the highest respectability, the

upper classes having suffered more than the lower, who, living in huts

such as I have described, were generally uninjured.

One of the richest commercial houses in Cua was owned by three German

gentlemen, brothers. The eldest, having married a Spanish American lady

of the place, had lately built himself a magnificent mansion, and one of

his brothers resided with him. The lady was seated between her

brother-in-law and husband when the shock came: a huge beam from the

ceiling fell across her brother-in-law and literally divided him in two,

while the side wall, falling at the same time, buried her husband from

her sight. She herself was saved by the great packages of hemp and

tobacco which fell around her and prevented the wall from crushing her.

Blinded by the darkness and choked by the dust, she yet managed with the

only hand at liberty to tear an opening which allowed her to breathe,

and through which she called for help. Faint accents answered her: they

were the tones of her husband's failing voice. She called to him to have

courage--that she had hopes of release. "No," he replied, "I am dying,

but do not give way. Live for our child's sake." As well as her

agitation and distress would permit she endeavored to sustain him with

words of encouragement, but in vain. About fifteen minutes passed in

this sad colloquy: the replies came more and more slowly, more and more

painfully, and then they ceased: the imprisoned lady comprehended in her

lonely agony that she was a widow. She, a living, breathing woman, fully

conscious of her awful anguish, lay helpless between the stiff and stark

corpses of her husband and brother-in-law, and quite ignorant of the

fate of her infant child, which had been left in another part of the

house. Her cries were heard at last by a muleteer, who made some efforts

to release her, but alone and in the darkness he could accomplish

little. He went in search of aid, but his companions, after he had

returned to the house, refused to endanger their lives, as the shocks

were incessant and a high wall still standing threatened to topple over

upon them at any moment. They even endeavored to dissuade the muleteer

from any further effort, but the good creature replied that he was

indebted to the imprisoned lady for many kindnesses, and that he was

willing to risk his life in her behalf. One or two remained with him,

and they succeeded at last in releasing her, but were obliged to cut her

clothes from her body, as they seemed immovably nailed to the floor, the

Good Samaritan of a muleteer covering her with his own cloak. The bodies

of her husband, brother-in-law, two clerks and several servants were

recovered the next day and buried.

Another lady was found, when the ruins of her house were cleared away,

upon her knees, with her children surrounding her in the same

attitude--all dead! Their bodies were uninjured, so that it is probable

that they were suffocated by the dust of the falling walls. A gentleman

named Benitez, who had been standing at the door of his house, ran into

the centre of the street and fell upon his knees: a little boy from the

opposite doorway rushed in his terror into Benitez's arms. At that

moment the two houses fell, and in this attitude the bodies of the man

and the child were found the following day. A bride of twenty-four hours

was killed with three of her children by a previous marriage. A fourth

child was supposed also to have been killed, but on the third day a

soldier who was passing the house pierced a basket which was among the

ruins with his bayonet out of curiosity, when to his amazement a

childish voice cried out, "_Tengo hambre_" ("I am hungry"), and the

basket being lifted a living child was discovered, thus almost

miraculously saved.

One lady was crushed to death under the weight of the body of her

daughter, who could not move a limb, although she knew her mother was

dying beneath her. A beam had fallen transversely across the daughter,

and in this position she crouched, listening in agony to the

death-struggles of her parent. More, almost, than the bitterness of

death itself must have been the horror of such a situation and the

terrible contact during long hours of silent darkness with a cold, rigid

corpse. This lady belonged to the family of Fonseca-Acosta, one of the

most distinguished in Cua, its head being the eminent physician Dr.

Acosta, now of Paris, one of the favored circle of the ex-queen Isabella

of Spain, with his wife, who was Miss Carroll, a sister of the present

governor of Maryland.

The Acosta family suffered perhaps more than any other, no less than

fourteen of its members having perished, among them Dona Rosa, a still

young and remarkably handsome woman, with her son, a lad of fifteen, and

her baby grandchild. It was to save the life of this grandchild that

Dona Rosa forfeited her own, as she ran into the house to snatch it from

its cradle. Of the same family two little boys had fallen asleep at

their play: one lay upon a sofa, and the other had crept beneath it. The

earthquake literally turned the room upside down, the sofa being

overturned by the falling wall, the child beneath thrown out and killed

by the descending rafters, while the boy who had been sleeping upon it

fell beneath the lounge, and, being thus protected, actually remained in

this position uninjured for the greater part of two days. He had been

numbered with the many dead in that house of sorrow, and was only found

when the mourning survivors were searching for his remains to inter

them--alive, but insensible, and entirely unable to give any account of

what had befallen him.

Every member of the police force, twenty-five in number, was killed,

together with nine prisoners under guard.

But it is impossible to give an adequate description of that night of

horror in Cua by enumerating individual instances of suffering. Those

that I have given are merely a few out of hundreds of others equally

distressing.

The survivors encamped upon the banks of the river Tuy, where they might

well repeat those tender lines of the Psalmist: "By the waters of

Babylon we sat down and wept." Even the discomfort of the heavy rains

which set in could make no impression upon hearts bowed down and crushed

by the terrible calamity which had swept away their all--home, friends,

everything that makes life worth having--at one quick blow. Not a house

was left standing in their beautiful city: even the outlines of the

streets were no longer visible: it was with the greatest difficulty that

any particular building or locality could be recognized.

Tents of various materials were improvised upon the river-side,

sheltering without regard to age, sex or social condition the wounded,

and even the dead. Many were in a state of delirium, some in the agonies

of death, hundreds weeping for their lost friends and relatives, and

many unable to recognize the recovered bodies on account of their having

been burned beyond recognition by the fire caused by the upsetting of

petroleum lamps. For the first two days the bodies were buried in the

usual manner, but on the third decomposition had set in to such an

extent that it was found necessary to burn them. An eye-witness

exclaims: "Of all that I have seen in what was the rich, the beautiful,

the flourishing city of Cua, now a cemetery, nothing has made so

profoundly melancholy an impression upon me as the cremation of the

bodies of the unfortunate victims of the late disaster, tied together

with ropes and dragged forth from the ruins, one over another, the

stiffened limbs taking strange, unnatural attitudes, and upon being

touched by the flames consuming instantly, on account of their advanced

decomposition." The body of a little child was thrown upon this funeral

pile, when suddenly the eyes opened, and the voice cried out, "_Pan!

pan!_" ("Bread! bread!") Imagine the feelings of the spectators at

beholding how nearly the little creature had been immolated!

The explosion and principal strength of the subterranean forces were

concentrated in the town of Cua and within a radius of four or five

leagues (twelve or fifteen miles) around it. Within this distance great

chasms of various widths had opened, all running from east to west. From

some of these streams of a fetid liquid issued, intermingled with a

grayish-tinted earth, which caused many persons to surmise that a

volcano was about to burst forth, especially as the earthquake-shocks

still continued for many days, accompanied by loud subterranean reports.

Although the catastrophe was confined to the valley of the Tuy, the

shocks were felt for many hundred miles in every direction, even as far

as Barquesimeto and other places toward the Cordilleras.

As the population of Cua had entirely deserted the city and encamped

upon the river-side, and as large sums of money and other valuables were

known to be buried beneath the ruins, some heartless, lawless wretches

took advantage of the unprotected state of things, under pretence of

assisting in the work of extricating the victims, to appropriate

everything that they could secrete without being discovered. Only one of

the public officials, General E----, had escaped: the police had

perished. It was a situation where only prompt and stringent measures

could avail. General E----, therefore, with Don Tomas de la G----, whom

I have before mentioned, assumed the responsibility of issuing a most

energetic order of the day, and Don Tomas was commissioned by the

general to draw up the document. In relating the anecdote to me, Don

Tomas avers that the order had to be drawn upon the back of a letter

which he discovered in his pocket, and that great delay was caused by

its being an impossibility to procure ink. A poor black woman, however,

hearing of his perplexity, announced that her son had been learning to

write, and that as her _rancho_ or hut was still standing, the bottle

of ink would probably be found tied to a nail in the wall, as well as

the pen; that is, provided the thieves had not made away with it, of

which she appeared to be somewhat suspicious. She consented to go for

the articles herself, stipulating, however, that Don Tomas and one or

two others should accompany her, believing, apparently, that numbers

would guarantee her against injury from the earthquake. The ink was

found where she had described it, but, unfortunately, no pen. Here was

another dilemma! She bethought herself at last that a neighbor of hers

possessed a pen; so the party was obliged to retrace its steps to the

encampment for further information. The neighbor was sufficiently

generous to lend the pen, but stoutly refused to re-enter the stricken

city. She described its _locale_, however, as being between a rafter and

a _cana_ in the roof at the entrance of her hut. The thieves, it proved

upon investigation, had spared the precious implement, although,

probably, if they had surmised the use to which it was to be put, that

of fulminating destruction to their machinations, they might not have

been so honest. All difficulties having been at length overcome, the

important document was drawn up, and duly published the following

morning by _bando_--that is, by sound of the trumpet, drum and fife--a

body of citizens doing duty in lieu of troops, and the individual with

the most stentorian lungs thundering forth the edict from where the

corner of the streets might have been supposed to be. The proclamation

was to the effect that any person or persons discovered robbing houses

or insulting females should be shot on the spot, without trial or

benefit of clergy. This measure of lynch law had the desired effect, and

proved sufficient to maintain order until the arrival of a corps of

three hundred soldiers sent by the government for that purpose.

As soon as the disaster was made known, General Alcantara, the president

of the republic, sent carts laden with provisions, blankets, shoes,

hats, etc., besides money, and coaches to convey the unfortunate Cuans

to their friends in the adjacent towns. The president also recommended

the unfortunate people of Cua to the generosity of Congress, which was

then in session. A sum of one hundred thousand dollars for rebuilding

the city was immediately voted--a large sum for so impoverished a

nation--and subscriptions from neighboring states, as well as private

ones, have been most liberal. But these are but a drop in the bucket.

Some of the finest plantations in the country surrounded Cua--coffee,

sugar, cocoa, indigo, etc.--all with handsome mansions and expensive

offices, with stores, sugar-mills and steam-engines, many of them worth

from fifty to a hundred thousand dollars. After the disastrous 12th no

one for many miles in the vicinity slept under roof, but all encamped on

the adjacent plains: not even the rainy season, which soon set in with

great violence, sufficed to drive them from their hastily-contrived

shelter. From the 12th of April to the 30th there were ninety-eight or

ninety-nine shocks of earthquake.

In Caracas too the people still continued to sleep in the public

squares, although the capital had hitherto escaped the greatest violence

of the shocks. Various rumors among the most ignorant part of the

population, however, still kept up the general excitement. A certain

astronomer or professor of the occult sciences, a Dr. Briceno by name,

had even the audacity to circulate a paper throughout the city, headed

by the ominous title, "_Vigilemos!_" (_Let us watch!_). He prophesied

that on the 17th of April, at twenty-nine minutes past one, there would

certainly occur a great _cataclismo_, connecting the movements of the

moon with the occurrence of earthquakes, and assuring the populace that

at that hour this heavenly body would be in the precise position to

produce this extraordinary _cataclismo_, whatever that might prove to

be. The public excitement was intense, but the fatal day and hour

arrived, passed, and found the city still safe and unharmed.

ISABELLA ANDERSON.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

THE HISS AND ITS HISTORY.

"I warrant thee, if I do not act it, they will hiss me."--_Merry

Wives of Windsor._

Hissing is a custom of great antiquity. Cicero, in his _Paradoxes_, says

that "if an actor lose the measure of a passage in the slightest degree,

or make the line he utters a syllable too short or too long by his

declamation, he is instantly hissed off the stage." Nor was hissing

confined to the theatre, for in one of his letters Cicero refers to

Hortensius as an orator who attained old age without once incurring the

disgrace of being hissed. Pliny notes that some of the lawyers of his

day had paid applauders in court, who greeted the points of their

patron's speech with an _ululatus_, or shrill yell. This Roman manner of

denoting approval seems akin to the practice of the Japanese, who give a

wild shriek as a sign of approbation, and hoot and howl to show their

displeasure. But the sound of the goose--the simple hiss--is the most

frequently-employed symbol of dissent. "Goose" is, in theatrical

parlance, to hiss; and Dutton Cook, in his entertaining _Book of the

Play_, remarks that the bird which saved the Capitol has ruined many a

drama.

The dramatist is of all creative artists the most unfortunate. He can

never present himself directly to his critics; he must be seen through a

medium over which he has but slight control; he must depend wholly on

the actors of his play, and too often he is leaning on a reed. Colman

accused John Kemble of having been the cause of the original failure of

_The Iron Chest_, and Ben Jonson published his _New Inn_ as a comedy

"never acted, but most negligently played by some of the king's

servants, and more squeamishly beheld and censured by others, the king's

subjects, 1629; and now, at last, set at liberty to the readers, His

Majesty's servants and subjects, to be judged of, 1631."

Nor are Colman and Jonson alone in their tribulations. Sheridan was

hissed, and so were Goldsmith and Fielding and Coleridge and Godwin and

Beaumarchais and About and Victor Hugo and Scribe and Sardou, and many

another, including Charles Lamb, who cheerfully hissed his own _Mr. H_.

The operatic composer is even more unfortunate than the dramatist, for

he is dependent not only on the acting but on the singing of his

characters; and he is also at the mercy of the orchestra. Wagner's

_Tannhaeuser_ led a stormy life at the Paris opera for a very few

evenings, and its failure the composer has never been willing to let the

world forget. Rossini was more philosophical. On its first performance

the _Barber of Seville_, like the comedy of Beaumarchais, whence its

libretto is taken, was a failure; and when the curtain fell, Rossini,

who had led the orchestra, turned to the audience and calmly clapped his

hands. The anger at this openly-expressed contempt for public opinion

did not prevent the opera from gradually gaining ground, until by the

end of the week it was a marked success. Had it been a failure, the

composer would have borne it easily: Mr. Edwards informs us that when

Rossini's _Sigismondo_ was violently hissed at Venice he sent a letter

to his mother with a picture of a large _fiasco_ (bottle). His _Torvaldo

e Dorliska_, which was brought out soon afterward, was also hissed, but

not so much. This time Rossini sent his mother a picture of a

_fiaschetto_ (little bottle).

Nor is it, in modern times, authors or actors alone who are subject to

the hiss. The orator may provoke it by a bold speech in support of an

unpopular measure or an unpopular man. But here the hisser is not so

safe, nor the hissee--to coin a convenient word--so defenceless. The

orator is not hampered by the studied words of a written part: he has

the right of free speech, and he may retort upon his sibilant

surrounders. Macready records that on one occasion, when Sheil was

hissed, he "extorted the applause of his assailants by observing to

them, 'You may hiss, but you cannot sting.'" Even finer was the retort

of Coleridge under similar circumstances: "When a cold stream of truth

is poured on red-hot prejudices, no wonder they hiss."

Sir William Knighton declares that George II. never entered a theatre

save in fear and trembling from dread of hearing a single hiss, which,

though it were at once drowned in tumultuous applause, he would lie

awake all night thinking about, entirely forgetful of the enthusiasm it

had evoked. He must have felt as Charles Lamb did, who wrote: "A hundred

hisses (hang the word! I write it like kisses--how different!)--a

hundred hisses outweigh a thousand claps. The former come more directly

from the heart." It is hard to entirely agree with Lamb here. Hissing

seems to me to proceed for the most part from ill-temper, or at least

from the dissatisfaction of the head. Applause is often the outburst of

the heart, the gush of a feeling, an enthusiasm incapable of restraint.

No wonder that the retired actor longs for a sniff of the footlights and

for the echo of the reverberating plaudits to the accompaniment of which

he formerly bowed himself off.

Indeed, applause is the breath of an actor's nostrils. Without it good

acting is almost impossible. Actors, like other artists, need

encouragement. Applause gives heart, and, as Mrs. Siddons said, "better

still--breath." Mrs. Siddons's niece has put on record her views, as

valuable as her famous relative's: "'Tis amazing how much an audience

loses by this species of hanging back, even when the silence proceeds

from unwillingness to interrupt a good performance: though in reality it

is the greatest compliment an actor can receive, yet he is deprived by

that very stillness of half his power. Excitement is reciprocal between

the performer and the audience: he creates it in them, and receives it

back again from them."

To one set of actors a hiss takes the place of applause. It is the

highest compliment which can be paid to a "heavy villain," for it bears

witness to the truth with which he has sustained his character.

Sometimes the performer mistakes reproof for approval. An amateur

singer, describing to her father the great success she had achieved at

her first concert, concluded by saying, "Some Italians even took me for

Pasta."--"Yes," corroborated her mother: "before she had sung her second

song they all cried, 'Basta! basta!'" ("Enough! enough!")

Pasta herself is the heroine of an amusing anecdote. She gave her

servant, a simple _contadina_, an order for the opera on a night when

she appeared in one of her greatest parts. That evening the great prima

donna surpassed herself; she was recalled time and again; the audience

were wildly enthusiastic; almost every number was encored. Returning

home, she wearily asked her maid how she had enjoyed the play. "Well,

the play, ma'am, was fine, but I felt sorry for _you_," was the

reply.--"For me, child! And why?"--"Well, ma'am," said the waiting-maid,

"you did everything so badly that the people were always shouting and

storming at you, and making you do it all over again."

There are situations even worse than Pasta's, as Pauline Lucca has

recently discovered in Vienna, where she was fined fifty florins for

violating the law which forbids the recognition of applause. It seems

cruel to mulct a pretty prima donna for condescending to acknowledge an

encore.

Whether or not it be law in Austria to prevent a courtesy and a smile,

rewarding the enthusiasm of an audience, it is certainly law in England

and France that a dissatisfied spectator shall be at liberty to express

his dissatisfaction. It has been held by the Court of Queen's Bench

that, while any conspiracy against an actor or author is of course

illegal, yet the audience have a lawful right to express their feelings

at the performance either by applause or by hisses. The Cour de

Cassation of France has decided in the same way. When Forrest,

therefore, hissed Macready for introducing a fancy dance in _Hamlet_, he

was doing what he had a legal right to do, though the ultimate result

of it was the Astor Place riot and the death of many. In ancient Rome

the right to hiss seems also to have existed in its fulness. Suetonius

in his life of Augustus informs us that Pylades was banished not only

from Rome, but from Italy, for having pointed with his finger at a

spectator by whom he was hissed, and turning the eyes of the whole

audience upon him. But as time passed on, and Nero took the imperial

crown and chose to exhibit it himself to the public on the stage, all

the spectators were bound to applaud under penalty of death.

The French law forbids disturbance of any kind except when the curtain

is up. In France the boisterousness of the Dublin gallery-boy would

hardly be tolerated. The Parisians would have been amazed at a recent

incident of the Irish stage. When Sophocles' tragedy of _Antigone_ was

produced at the Theatre Royal with Mendelssohn's music, the gallery

"gods" were greatly pleased, and, according to their custom, demanded a

sight of the author. "Bring out Sapherclaze," they yelled. The manager

explained that Sophocles had been dead two thousand years and more, and

could not well come. Thereat a small voice shouted from the gallery,

"Then chuck us out his mummy."

There is a delicious tradition that Mrs. Siddons, when playing in

Dublin, was once interrupted with cries for "Garry Owen! Garry Owen!"

She did not heed for some time, but, bewildered at last and anxious to

conciliate, she advanced to the footlights and with tragic solemnity

asked, "What is Garry Owen? Is it anything I can do for you?"

Actors are not always willing to stand baiting quietly: they turn and

rend their tormentors. Mrs. Siddons herself took leave of a barbarian

audience with the words, "Farewell, ye brutes!" George Frederick Cooke,

describing his own failings, said: "On Monday I was drunk, and appeared,

but they didn't like that and hissed me. On Wednesday I was drunk, so I

didn't appear; and they didn't like that. What the devil would they

have?" Once at Liverpool, when he was drunk and did appear, they didn't

like it. He reeled across the stage and was greeted by a storm of

hisses. With savage grandeur he turned on them: "What! do you hiss

me--me, George Frederick Cooke? You contemptible money-getters, you

shall never again have the honor of hissing me. Farewell! I banish you!"

He paused, and then added, with contemptuous emphasis, "There is not a

brick in your dirty town but is cemented by the blood of a negro."

Edmund Kean treated one of his audiences with less vigor, but with equal

contempt. The spectators were noisy and insulting, but they called him

out at the end of the piece. "What do you want?" he asked.--"You! you!"

was the reply.--"Well, here I am!" continuing after a pause, with

characteristic insolence: "I have acted in every theatre in the United

Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, I have acted in all the principal

theatres throughout the United States of America, but in my life I never

acted to such a set of ignorant, unmitigated brutes as I now see before

me."

J. B. M.

A NEW TOPIC OF CONVERSATION.

There can be no doubt but what the increase of interest in the

decorative arts has lightened the general tone of society in our cities.

"I buy everything new that I can find," a lady remarked the other day

when her bric-a-brac was praised: "not that I care anything in especial

for this sort of thing, but because it is such a blessing to have

something to talk about." One shudders now to remember the drawing-rooms

of a generation ago--a colorless, cold, negative background for social

life; rich sweeping curtains of damask satin and lace muffling the

windows; impossible sofas and impracticable chairs gilded and elaborated

into the most costly hideousness; an entire suite of rooms utterly

barren of interest; a place given over to the taste of the upholsterer;

nothing on any hand which contained a suggestion of life or emotion,

thought or effort; every sign of occupation banished--nothing tolerated

save the dullest uniformity, which depressed originality into inanity.

No wonder that this barrenness of household resource had its effect upon

women, and that every one complained of the meagre results of ordinary

social intercourse. Now-a-days, when tables are crowded with

bric-a-brac, cabinets laden with porcelain and faience, and richly-hung

walls brightened with plaques and good pictures, the female mind has

received a fresh impulse, almost an inspiration, which will show clear

results before many years have passed.

Enthusiasm for bric-a-brac and pottery, for embroidery and general

decorative art, is strongest among practical and unimaginative

people--people who know little or nothing of the world of thought opened

by books, and who have hitherto been somewhat disheartened by a

conviction of their own dulness. To them the present mania is an

undoubted lease of the finer uses of intellect, and their mental

horizons have widened until the prose of their lives is brightened into

poetry. Every one now-a-days feels the stirring of the artistic impulse,

and is able in some way to gratify it.

The American mind is always extravagant, and is certain to aim at too

much and leap too high, and in this renaissance of decorative art carry

its admiration of the beautiful and rare entirely too far in one

direction--in the matter of dress at least. The costly velvets and

satins and silks, which outweigh and surpass in beauty those of the

early centuries, are seen on every side cut up and tortured into

intricate and perplexing fashions of toilette. In the olden times these

fabrics were wisely considered too rich to be altered from one

generation to another, but were passed from mother to daughter as an

inheritance. So far as the ornamentation of her own person is concerned,

the American woman is too expensive and prodigal in her ideas, and

wastes on the fashion of the hour what ought to grace a lifetime.

But in turning her talent to the fitting-up of her house the American

woman is apt to be thrifty, ingenious and economical; and since she has

learned what decorative art really is, she works miracles of cleverness

and beauty. And, as we began by saying, it is a real blessing to have a

new topic of conversation. True, there can be nothing more fatiguing to

those who are free from the mania for pottery and porcelain than a

discussion between china-lovers and china-hunters concerning, for

instance, the difference between porcelain from Lowestoft and porcelain

from China. Then, again, in the society of a real enthusiast one is apt

to be bored by a recapitulation of his or her full accumulations of

knowledge. You are shown a bit of "crackle." You look at it admiringly

and express your pleasure. Is that enough? Can the subject be dismissed

so easily? Far from it. "This is _real_ crackle," the collector insists,

with more than a suspicion that you under-value the worth of his

specimen; and then and there you have the history of crackle and the

points of difference between the imitation and the real. And in glancing

at his collection your tongue must not trip nor your eye confound

styles. It requires a literal mind, besides a good memory and practised

observation, to be an expert, and diffused and generalized knowledge

amounts to little.

We have in mental view a lady who five years ago possessed apparently

neither powers of thought nor capacity for expression, but who has,

since she became a collector of china and antique furniture, developed

into a tireless talker. Formerly she sat in her pale gray-and-blue rooms

dressed faultlessly, "splendidly null," and you sought in vain for a

topic which could warm her into interest or thaw out a sign of life from

her. Now her rooms are studies, so picturesquely has she arranged her

cabinets of china, her Oriental rugs and hangings, and her Queen Anne

furniture; and she herself seems a new creature, so transfused is she by

this fine fire of enthusiasm which illuminates her face and warms her

tongue into eloquence. There is no dearth of subjects now. The briefest

allusion to the Satsuma cup on the table beside you, and the lady, well

equipped with matter, starts out on a tireless recapitulation of the

delights and fatigues of collecting. She is a better woman and a much

less dull one from this blossom of sympathy and interest with something

outside of the old meaningless conditions of her life.

We all remember that it was a point of etiquette inculcated in our youth

never to make allusion to the furniture and fittings of the houses where

we paid visits. That rule is far more honored in the breach than in the

observance now-a-days. It would show chilling coldness not to inquire if

our fair friend herself embroidered the curtains of velvet and

mummy-cloth which drape her doors and windows, and if that plaque were

really painted by one of the Society of Decorative Art, and not imported

from Doulton.

It would, in fact, seem as if this initiation in fresh ideas and

aims--which, even if trivial, are higher than the old uncreative forms

of occupation and interest--was an answer to the yearning of the

feminine mind for something to sweep thoughts and impulses into a

current which results in action. And certainly any action which lends

interest, worth and beauty to domestic life, which draws out talent and

promotes culture, is deserving of all encouragement.

L. W.

THE STORY OF THE TROCADERO.

There is no portion of the Paris Exhibition of 1878 which has excited

more attention or attracted more visitors than has the Palace of the

Trocadero. Yet few of the visitors who pass beneath its lofty portals

ever imagine that the site of the sumptuous edifice is haunted by

historical associations of no slight degree of interest. In fact, before

the palace "rose like an exhalation" at the bidding of the skilled

architects employed by the government few persons knew anything about

the Trocadero at all. That lofty eminence, incomparably the finest

building-site in Paris, with its graduated slopes gay with flowers and

verdure, has long been a favorite lounging-place for Parisian artisans

when out for a holiday, or for tourists seeking for a good view of the

city and shrinking from the fatigue of climbing to the top of the Arc de

Triomphe. Yet no one seemed to know anything of its history, or even why

a hill in Paris should bear the name of a Spanish fort. And yet, to a

certain extent, the spot is one of genuine historical interest.

Successively a feudal manor, a royal domain, a cloister, and the site of

unrealized projects of the later monarchs of France, religion, ambition,

sorrow and glory have there at different times sought a refuge or a

pedestal.

The Trocadero occupies a part of the site of the ancient village of

Chaillot, whose existence can be traced back to the eleventh century. In

its earlier days this village was celebrated for its vineyards and

gardens and for its enchanting view; which last charm its site still

retains. It was bestowed by Louis XI. on the historian Philippe de

Comines, from whose heirs the domain was purchased by Catherine de

Medicis. The building-loving queen caused a palace to be erected there,

but of that edifice no trace now remains. After the death of the queen,

Chaillot and its palace became the property of the President Janin, who

probably tore down and rebuilt the royal abode, as he is accused in the

memoirs of the time of being largely possessed by a mania for pulling

down and rebuilding all the mansions in his possession. An engraving of

the edifice as he left it exists in the Bibliotheque Nationale. It shows

a very charming structure in the Renaissance style, erected, apparently,

at a point halfway down the slope, since there are two lines of terraces

behind it, as well as many in front.

The next owner of the domain of Chaillot was Francois de Bassompierre,

former friend and boon-companion of Henri IV. He did not occupy it very

long, being sent to the Bastile by Cardinal de Richelieu a very few

years after the purchase was completed. During his imprisonment he lent

Chaillot to his sister-in-law, Madame de Nemours. One day Richelieu sent

to the Bastile to request his prisoner to let him occupy Chaillot as a

summer abode. Bassompierre accordingly sent word to his sister-in-law

that she must make way for the all-powerful minister. Richelieu

remained at Chaillot for over six weeks, and declared that the furniture

of the apartments was far finer than anything in that line which the

king possessed.

The sad figure of Henriette Marie, the widowed queen of Charles I. of

England, and youngest daughter of Henri IV., comes next upon the scene.

She it was who, having purchased Chaillot after her return to France,

established there the convent of Les Dames de la Visitation. A chapel

was added to the extensive structure left behind by her father's old

comrade, and it was in that chapel that her funeral sermon was preached

by Bossuet--one of the first of those marvellous pieces of funereal

eloquence which more than aught else have contributed to render his name

immortal.

Next we have a vision of Louise de la Valliere, "like Niobe, all tears,"

flying to the arms of the abbess of the Visitandines for refuge from the

anguish of beholding the insolent De Montespan enthroned in her place.

It took all the eloquence and persuasive powers of Colbert to induce the

fair weeper to return with him to Versailles. She yielded at last, but

not without many sad forebodings that were destined to be only too

perfectly fulfilled. "When I left the king before, he came for me: now,

he sends for me," she sighed. She bade farewell to the abbess, assuring

her that she would speedily return. But when, after three years more of

suffering and humiliation, she finally retired to a convent, she did not

enter that of the Visitandines, but that of the Carmelites, then

situated in the Faubourg St. Jacques.

In 1707 a dispute between the Superior of the Visitandines and the

officers of the king led to the abolition of the feudal privileges of

Chaillot, and it was created a suburb of the city of Paris. Henceforward

the quiet convent belongs no more to history. From the windows of their

cells the nuns could behold the laying out of the Champ de Mars and the

erection of the new military school decreed by Louis XV. But they were

not destined to witness the Festival of the Republic, which took place

on the Champ de Mars, since in 1790 the convent was suppressed and the

nuns dispersed. The buildings still remained, and were devoted to

various public uses till they were swept away to give place to the

gigantic project of the First Napoleon, whose plans, had they been

carried out, would have totally changed that quarter of Paris and

rendered it one of the most beautiful portions of the city.

Percier and Fontaine, the architects of the emperor, have left behind

them a full account of the projects of their imperial master relative to

the heights of Chaillot. Being commissioned to erect a palace at Lyons,

they opposed the idea on account of the difficulty of finding a suitable

site for the projected building, and proposed instead the hill of

Chaillot as being the finest site that it was possible to find in

France. Their proposition was accepted: the buildings then occupying the

height were purchased and torn down, and the works were commenced. The

plan of Napoleon was a grandiose one, including not only the palace, to

which he gave the name of his son, calling it the "Palace of the King of

Rome," but also a series of buildings filling up three out of the four

sides of the Champ de Mars, including two barracks, a military hospital

and a palace of archives, as well as edifices for schools of art and

industry. As to the palace itself, it was to have a frontage of over

fourteen hundred feet on the Quai de Billy--an extent which is about

that of the present Palace of the Trocadero. The whole of the plain of

Passy, which was but little built upon at that epoch, was to be

transformed into a wooded park stretching to and including the Bois de

Boulogne. The grounds surrounding the palace were to be joined to the

Avenue de Neuilly, to the Arc de Triomphe and to the high road of St.

Germain by wide avenues bordered with trees.

This splendid project was destined never to be realized. Hardly had the

foundations of the palace been laid when the disastrous campaign of

Moscow put an end to the works. Money was wanted for soldiers and

ammunition more than for palaces and parks. After the battle of

Leipsic, Napoleon had the idea of making of his scarcely-commenced

palace a Sans Souci like that of Frederick the Great--a quiet retreat

where he could escape from the toils and cares of empire. But hardly had

the works been recommenced on this diminished basis when the abdication

of the emperor and his exile to Elba came to put a stop to them anew,

and this time a decisive one; for, though a few workmen were employed in

levelling the grounds and building the walls during the Hundred Days,

there was neither spirit nor conviction in the work: the illusions of

other days had fled, and were not to be revived. It was impossible for

even the most sanguine partisans of Napoleon to imagine that the palace

would ever be completed and receive him as a tenant.

Under the Restoration it was decided to utilize the deserted foundations

and to erect thereon a barrack. The laying of the cornerstone of the new

edifice was made the occasion of a solemn festival in honor of the

successes of the French army in Spain. The day chosen was the

anniversary of the taking of the fort of the Trocadero at Cadiz by the

duc d'Angouleme, and the better to mark the occasion the height on which

the new barrack was to stand was solemnly rebaptized by the name of the

fort in question. The programme of the fete was long and elaborate. It

consisted of a representation of the taking of the Trocadero, a sham

battle in which twenty battalions of the royal guard took part. Then

came the laying of the cornerstone, which duty was performed by the

dauphin and dauphiness. But the projected barrack of the Bourbons shared

the fate of the palace of Napoleon. It was never built, and for nearly

thirty years the ruins of the abandoned foundations and terraces were

left to be picturesquely clothed with weeds and wild grasses. Only the

name bestowed upon the height remained, and it was still called the

Trocadero.

Under the Second Empire the laying out of the numerous handsome avenues

which extend around the Arc de Triomphe, and have it for a centre,

necessitated the clearing and levelling of the deserted site. It was at

first proposed to erect there a monument in commemoration of the

victories of Magenta and Solferino, and the plans were actually drawn

up: it was to have consisted of a lofty column, surpassing in its

dimensions any similar monument in Paris. At the base of this column a

fountain and a vast cascade were to be constructed, and the slope was to

have been laid with turf and planted with trees. But this project, too,

came to naught, and the Exhibition of 1867 only impelled the authorities

into grading and laying out the ground, strengthening and repairing the

flights of steps that led to the summit, and embellishing it with

grass-plats and flower-beds. Later, the project was conceived by

Napoleon III. of erecting on the summit of the Trocadero a Grecian

temple in white marble, destined to receive the busts of the great men

of France with commemorative inscriptions--a project which the downfall

of the Second Empire found unrealized. The ancient site of the village

of Chaillot seemed like one of those spots of which we read in monkish

legends, which are haunted by a demon that destroys the work and blights

the existence of whoever attempts to build upon them. Palace, barracks,

monument and temple alike never existed, and were but the shadowy

precursors of disaster to their projectors. It was reserved for the

Third Republic to break the evil spell, and to crown the picturesque and

historic eminence with an edifice worthy of the beauty of the site and

of its associations with the past.

L. H. H.

SWISS ENGINEERING.

Switzerland, of all the countries of Europe, presents the most grave and

numerous obstacles to intercommunication. The number and size of the

mountains and glaciers, the depth of the valleys, the torrential

character of the rivers,--everything unites to make the highways cost

enormously in money, while the feats of skill they necessitate are "the

triumph of civil engineers, the wonder of tourists, the despair of

shareholders and the burden of budgets." Among these triumphs are the

viaduct of Grandfey; the railroads that climb the Righi and the

Uetliberg; the Axen tunnel and quay; and the Gotthard tunnel, over nine

miles long--a solid granite bore through a mountain. One that was

honored by a national celebration on the 16th of last August was the

reclaiming from the water of the vast plain called Seeland, the

territory occupying the triangle bounded by the river Aar and the Lakes

of Bienne, Neufchatel and Morat. It was wholly under water, and had

slowly emerged after many centuries; but despite an extensive system of

drainage the land was never dry enough for serious cultivation. In rainy

years it was even covered with water, making, with the three lakes, a

sheet nearly twenty-five miles square.

The great work celebrated last August was no less than the changing the

bed of the Aar and the lowering of the three lakes mentioned. The Aar in

this region is about the size of the Seine at Paris or of the Hudson at

Troy, but it is subject to sudden floods that are the terror of dwellers

and property-owners along its borders. A Swiss colonel named La Nicca

was the author of the grand scheme for reclaiming Seeland. The

proposition he made was accepted in 1867, and, thanks to the sacrifices

of the citizens in the communes and cantons immediately interested, and

also to a heavy national subsidy, the enterprise was commenced, and so

vigorously and ably prosecuted that in ten years it was finished.

To-day the Aar, turned out of its ancient bed near Aarsberg, runs nearly

west instead of north-east toward Soleure, and empties into Lake Bienne

near its middle. The new bed or canal made for this river is over five

and a half miles long, and some of the way it is three hundred and

twenty-eight feet deep. But this is only a part of the work. Another

vast canal, also over five and a half miles long, at the eastern

extremity of the lake, not far from the pretty village of Bienne,

receives the overflow not only of Lake Bienne, but of Neufchatel and

Morat, which are all three connected by broad canals, and are now in

communication with the Rhine by steam navigation. The canal at the

eastern extremity of Lake Bienne opens into the Aar some seven miles

below where that river was cut off. It is in fact the bed of the river

Thiele, deepened and reconstructed.

The deepening of the bed of the Thiele, the natural outlet of Lake

Bienne, was effected according to principles that would ensure the

lowering of the water-level of all the three lakes some ten feet! Thus a

vast territory of swampy land, which once bore only reeds, now yields

abundant harvests of grain and fruits. Of course the lowering of these

three lakes had to be effected gradually, for the volume of water

removed--no less than three thousand two hundred and eighty million

cubic feet--represents a stupendous force. By this enterprise the whole

plain of Seeland has become higher than the surface of the lakes, and

consequently drains into them naturally. Already a beautiful village,

Witzwyl, has sprung up, surrounded by some seven hundred and fifty

thousand acres of fine arable land reclaimed from a forbidding,

malaria-exhaling marsh.

M. H.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

The Ceramic Art: A Compendium of the History and Manufacture of

Pottery and Porcelain. By Jennie J. Young. New York: Harper &

Brothers.

"More crockery!" exclaims one aweary of the ceramic craze. "And the

biggest book of all!--the winding-up shower, let us hope," quoth another

non-sympathizer.

This portly octavo, with its four hundred and sixty-four wood-cuts, a

seemingly exhaustive compend of the subject, may indeed be accepted as

the peroratory rain destined to give the soil its last preparation for

the rich growth to follow under a clear and sunny sky. What pen and

print can do to perfect the requisite conditions for a Periclean age of

pottery must by this time have been done. The case is summed up and

stated. The issue rests with the jury of millions who use and admire

burnt clay. Their wants, their sense of beauty and their purse will

render the verdict. We might more safely and properly say that they will

render a number of verdicts, all in their way and sphere just and true,

since in no one of the arts so much as in this of all times and all

nations is it so difficult to subject the infinitude of styles and

fancies to one rigid canon. That the Greek vase is an absolute exemplar

in grace and elegance of form every one hastens to concede. But who

would hesitate to give up a part of what the Greeks have bequeathed us

rather than lose the marvellous filigree in clay of "Henri Deux," the

rich realism of Palissy or the wild and delightful riot of line and

color and unequalled delicacy of manipulation presented to us by the

Japanese? One and the same eye, as highly and soundly educated as you

please, may be charmed almost equally by works of each of these schools

and of others not here named; and that almost without wishing to see the

peculiar merits of each combined and merged in one. A perfect eclectic

vase is not to be expected, if desired, any more than a fruit or a wine

which shall unite the best flavors of all orchards or all vintages. What

can be done is to strive in that direction, as the French cook seeks, by

"composing," to attain in one supreme _plat_ the _ne plus ultra_ of

sapidity. We shall not be able, any more than he, to reach that climax

or to dull the charm of variety. The fusing of the Greek brain and the

Oriental eye and finger in the alembic of Western Europe and the New

World will still continue to be attempted.

Trade, the great amalgamator, is promoting this end. Chinese porcelain

has long been sent to Japan for decoration, the resemblance between the

styles of the two countries, due primarily to race, being thus

increased. American biscuit is sent to England for the like purpose; and

we read with more surprise that the unfinished ware of Dresden seeks

ornamentation in the same country, whence it is returned to be placed

upon the market as true Meissen. A firm of New Yorkers, again, have

migrated to France and built up the beautiful fabric of Limoges with the

aid of French artists. The craftsmen of Japan and China are year by year

borrowing Western forms and methods, as comparison of the ancient and

modern work of those nations will show clearly enough.

While national idiosyncrasies the most opposite and the most widely

separated in every sense ally themselves in behalf of progress,

individual effort is encouraged by the reflection that no walk of art

offers a more open field to original genius. Della Robbia, Bernart,

Palissy and Wedgwood each found his own material and created his own

school. Neither of them possessed the facilities, educational or

mechanical, now at the command of hundreds. Neither had as wide or as

eager a market for his productions as the coming artist in clay may

command. Surely, such an artist is at this moment maturing his powers in

some one of the scores of training institutions which have sprung up,

under public or private auspices, within the past quarter of a century.

Thorwaldsen was not a man of great originative genius, and nothing at

all of a potter, troubling himself little about hard or soft paste or

this or the other glaze; but he infused the love of classic form into

the bleakest corners of Scandinavia, and made her youth modellers of

terra-cotta into shapes unexcelled by any imitators of the antique. The

prize awaits him who should, upon such knowledge and discipline, graft a

study of Oriental designs, an eye for color, an independent fancy, and

such minute precision of manual dexterity as seems the hardest thing of

all for the Western to acquire. He will not have, like his great

forerunners, to invent his material. Science does not repress, it

invites and assists him. It offers him mineral colors and modes of

graduating heat unknown to them. All the secrets of porcelain are open

to him; and were they not, Europe did all her best things in ceramics

before she was able to make a porcelain teacup. He may find room for

improvement in material too. Pottery is the most durable of fabrics so

long as it is not broken. But it is fragile, as bronze is not. Why may

not that defect be remedied, as other defects have been by the Japanese

and our bank-note printers in that particularly evanescent texture,

paper? Some day, perhaps, burnt clay will be held together by threads of

asbestos as greenbacks are by threads of silk and the sun-burned

Egyptian bricks were by straw. Malleable glass we have already. Why not

malleable faience?

The book before us presents the art, its history, its processes and its

results in a manner every way satisfactory. Its account is full without

being prolix. The author's taste is catholic enough. The different

styles are placed before the reader side by side, with an evident

purpose to do justice to all of them. There is little of the jargon of

the connoisseur. Marks are curtly dismissed with the sound dictum that

"the art and not the mark should be studied." Much use is made of the

engravings, which are more closely connected with the text than,

unfortunately, is generally the case in illustrated works. They are

strictly illustrations of it, and serve as good a purpose in that way as

cuts without the aid of color could well do. Nothing is more difficult

to reproduce than a first-class work in clay or porcelain. Color,

drawing, form, surface and texture present a compound of difficulties

not to be completely overcome by the resources of the graver, the camera

and the printer in colors. Only on the shelves of the museum can it be

studied understandingly. It must speak for itself. The chromo undertakes

to duplicate, with more or less success, the painting in oil or fresco,

but the vase is a picture and something more. It is the joint product of

the painter and the sculptor, and the substance whereon they bestow

their labor has a special and varying beauty of its own.

In the pages devoted to the history of American pottery we confess that

we have been chiefly attracted by its antiquities. The specimens given

of remains from all parts of the two continents show at a glance their

common origin. They all come unmistakably from the hands of the same

Indian, civilized or savage. The Moquis, the Mound-builders, the Aztecs

and the Peruvians all wrought their mother, Earth, into the same

fashion, and adorned her countenance, purified by fire, with scrolls and

colors in the same taste. The pigments employed have proved as lasting

as those in the Egyptian tombs, and the forms are often as graceful as

in a majority of the Phoenician vessels found in Cyprus. In the

representation of the human head the Peruvian artist, so far as we may

judge from these relics, excelled his rival of Tyre and Sidon.

That this will become a handbook on the subject of which it treats

cannot be doubted. If we might venture to suggest an amendment to the

second edition, it would be the addition to the illustrations of two or

three figures carefully executed in colors--Greek, Japanese and Sevres.

Like unto Like. By Sherwood Bonner. (Library of American Fiction.)

New York: Harper & Brothers.

Sherwood Bonner has been singularly happy in her choice of a subject for

this, her first novel. She has broken new ground on that Southern soil

which seemed already for literary purposes wellnigh worn out, and she

has touched upon a period in the struggle between North and South which,

so far as we know, has been little treated by novelists. The antagonists

are represented not in the smoke of battle, but at that critical and

awkward moment when the first steps toward reconciliation are being

made. A proud but sociable little Mississippi town is shown in the act

of half-reluctantly opening its doors to the officers of a couple of

Federal regiments stationed within its bounds. The situation is

portrayed with much spirit and humor, as well as with the most perfect

_good_-humor. Thoroughly Southern as the novel is, it is not narrowly

so: its pictures of Southern society are drawn from within, and show its

writer's sympathy with Southern feeling, yet its tone, even in touching

on the most tender spots, is entirely dispassionate, and at the same

time free from any apparent effort to be so.

The first chapter introduces us to a triad of charming girls, whose

careless talk soon turns upon the soldiers' expected arrival in Yariba

and the proper reception to be given them by the Yariba damsels. Betty

Page, Mary Barton and Blythe Herndon are, in a sense, typical girls, and

represent the three orders in which nearly all girlhood may be

classified--namely, frivolous girls, good girls, and clever girls or

girls with ideas. Ideas are represented by Blythe Herndon, whose

outspoken verdict in favor of tolerance and forgetfulness of the past

draws upon her the patriotic indignation of Miss Betty Page. How long

the fair disputants preserve the jewel of consistency forms the _motif_

of the book. Betty dances and flirts, neglects her loyal young Southern

lover--who, we hope, is consoled by Mary--and finally surrenders to a

handsome moustache and the Union with a happy unconsciousness of any

abandonment of her principles. Blythe, with her ardent nature and

youthful attitude of intolerance toward intolerance, is easily attracted

by the intellectual freedom which appears to open before her in the

conversation of an enthusiastic New England radical. Her mind is,

however, not wholly thrown off its balance by this vision of culture:

she awakens to the fact that the breach is wider than she had at first

dreamed, and shrinks from the sacrifice not only of prejudice, but of

first principles and affections, which is demanded of her. Lovers who

are separated by hereditary or political strife have ever been a

favorite theme with poet and romancer. In the majority of instances

these unhappy beings have regarded the barrier between them as a useless

obstacle erected by a perverse Fate in the way of their happiness. But

Mr. Roger Ellis adheres with narrow obstinacy to the least article of

his broad political creed, without a particle of consideration for the

different one in which Blythe has been nurtured. He flourishes the

American flag in his conversation in true stump-orator style, kisses

black babies in the street--when, as Betty Page remarks, no man was ever

known to kiss a white baby if he could help it--and refuses to eat

without the company at table of a little black _protege_.

Plot there is none in _Like unto Like_, and of incident very little.

Light, often sparkling, conversations and charming bits of description

follow each other in ready succession like beads upon a string. Lack of

incident is atoned for by charm of writing, and in the vivacity of the

scenes the reader disregards the slenderness of the connecting thread,

or perhaps forgets to look for it. The style is easy and pleasant, while

free from the slips to which "easy writers" are so prone. Of bright,

witty sayings a number could easily be gathered as samples, but the

readers would still have to be referred to the book for many more.

Perhaps the main charm of _Like unto Like_ lies in its description of

the quaint life in Southern provincial towns, where the people "all talk

to each other as if they were members of one family," where married

ladies are still called by their friends "Miss Kate," "Miss Janey," or

"Miss Ada," and where, "when a youth and maiden promise to marry each

other, they become possessed immediately with a wild desire to conceal

their engagement from all the world." There clings to the book a

suggestion of that Southern accent which in the mouth of a pretty woman

has such a piquant foreign sound.

His Heart's Desire: A Novel. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.

We can complain of no lack of plot or paucity of incidents in _His

Heart's Desire_. Were the material less ably handled we should suggest

an unnecessary redundancy, but we hesitate to pronounce superfluous

anything which is so exactly fitted, so neatly dove-tailed into the main

structure, as is each incident and character in the present novel. About

a dozen individual and more or less finished personages contribute their

life-histories to the book, yet each of these lives has some bearing

upon that of the heroine, Nora St. John, and notwithstanding these

intricacies the plot never becomes confused. It has been too firmly

grasped by the author's mind to be a puzzle to the reader's. Its various

ramifications are never allowed to get into a "snarl:" the mystery all

turns upon a single point which we will not spoil the reader's pleasure

by mentioning, and, arrived at the last pages, the various threads of

the story unwind themselves easily and naturally like a single coil. The

same skill is displayed in the management of the characters. Though

drawn with unequal power, many of them being seized with much vividness,

whilst others must be accounted failures, they are well grouped.

Numerous as the figures are, they never crowd or jostle each other, and

elaborated as they are in many cases, all are subordinate to that of

Nora, whose character and story stand out in a strong relief not easy to

obtain upon so varied a background. This character is finely conceived

and drawn with real power, being impressive by the very truth of the

rendering, for she is not invested with any strikingly heroic qualities.

A strong, passionate nature made cold by suffering and the constant

struggle to keep the secret of her one season of passion from rising

again to confront her--a woman of forty, who has no longer any illusions

or pleasure, in whose character intense pride is the only motive-power

left, and even pride is weary of its loneliness and the assaults made

upon it--Nora excites interest, and even pity, by her position and by

the aspect of a strong nature under subdued but real suffering. In the

later pages of the book, and notably in the scene with Mr. Sistare, in

which revelations are made by both, the changes gradual or sudden in her

feelings and thought are portrayed with the delicacy of light and shade,

the picturesqueness and self-forgetfulness, with which a fine actress

renders a part. This dramatic quality is perhaps the most striking trait

in _His Heart's Desire_. Many of its scenes are intensely dramatic, full

of passion, striking in situation, and showing a rather rare

accomplishment--that of conducting a dialogue which shall be equally

brilliant on both sides without resembling a monologue.

In praising this novel so highly we do not forget its faults. But,

though perhaps as numerous as its merits, they are by no means equal to

them in importance. Something of naturalness and simplicity has been

sacrificed to the exigences of the plot; and, while the higher truth is

adhered to in the principal scenes and characters, some of the minor

ones appear to us rather highly colored. By distributing the fatal gift

of beauty with a less lavish hand the author might, we think, have

subdued this color: a few commonplace figures would have added to the

naturalness of the scene.

Sensational the book may be pronounced from a glance through its chain

of incidents, yet neither by its tone nor its writing does it belong to

the class which we call sensational. Its tone is earnest and sincere,

grave social questions being handled with a purity and feeling which

makes the book, in spite of its apparent unconsciousness of purpose, a

distinctly moral one.

_Books Received._

Books for Bright Eyes, embracing "On the Farm," "More Happy Days,"

"Mountain-Tops," "One Day in our Long Vacation." By Mrs. M. E.

Miller. New York: American Tract Society.

Cross's Eclectic Short-hand: A New System, adapted both to general

use and to verbatim reporting. By J. George Cross, A. M. Chicago:

S. C. Griggs & Co.

The Waverley Dictionary: An Alphabetical Arrangement of all the

Characters in Sir Walter Scott's Waverley Novels. By May Rogers.

Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Co.

The French Revolution. By Hippolyte Adolphe Taine. Translated by

John Durand. (First Volume.) New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Maximum Stresses in Framed Bridges. By Professor William Cain,

A. M., C. E. (Van Nostrand's Science Series.) New York: D. Van

Nostrand.

The Ethics of Positivism: A Critical Study. By Giacomo Barzellotti,

Professor of Philosophy, Florence. New York: Charles P. Somerby.

Grammar-Land; or, Grammar in Fun for the Children of

Schoolroom-shire. By M. L. Nesbitt. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

The Family Christian Almanac for 1879. By Professor George W.

Coakley. New York: American Tract Society.

American Colleges: Their Students and Work. By Charles F. Thwing.

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

A Story or Two from an Old Dutch Town. By Robert Lowell. Boston:

Roberts Brothers.

Life and Adventure in Japan. By E. Warren Clark. New York: American

Tract Society.

Cupid and the Sphinx. By Harford Flemming. New York: G. P. Putnam's

Sons.

The Old House Altered. By George C. Mason. New York: G. P. Putnam's

Sons.

The Wisdom of Jesus, the Son of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus. Boston:

Roberts Brothers.

Handsome Harry. By Sarah E. Chester. New York: American Tract

Society.

Thanatopsis. By William Cullen Bryant. New York: G. P. Putnam's

Sons.

Modern Frenchmen. By Philip Gilbert Hamerton. Boston: Roberts

Brothers.

What is the Bible? By J. T. Sunderland. New York: G. P. Putnam's

Sons.

Six to One: A Nantucket Idyl. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Sibyl Spencer. By James Kent. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Songs of Italy. By Joaquin Miller. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This is the name given from time immemorial to that part of Biscay

that extends from Bilbao to the eastern boundaries of the province of

Santander. It contains fifteen thousand inhabitants, and abounds in

minerals, fruit and grain. The original Basque language, owing to the

constant intercourse with Castile, has yielded to the Spanish, which,

however, is mixed with many Basque words and expressions.

[2] That is, a similarity of the final vowel or last two vowels. Thus,

jardin_e_r_o_s and du_e_n_o_ amist_a_d and sac_a_r are considered to

rhyme.

[3] The word _ciego_, "blind man," is also used to denote the blind

ballad-singers with whom the country abounds.

[4] The first four of the above-mentioned volumes, together with the

_Libro de los Cantares_, have been published by Brockhaus in his

_Colleccion de Autores Espanoles_, Leipzig, vols. vi., xviii., xix.,

xxvi., and xxxiii.

[5] Special awards of objects of art to competitors in the trials of

agricultural implements in the field:

McCormick (grand prize), binding reaper, United States.

Wood, binding reaper, United States.

Osborne, binding reaper, United States.

Johnston, reaper, United States.

Whiteley, mower, United States.

Dederick, hay-press, United States.

Mabille, Chicago hay-press, France.

Meixmoron-Dombasle, gang-plough, France.

Deere, gang-plough, United States.

Aveling & Porter, steam-plough, England.

Albaret, electric light for field-work at night, France.

[6] The cut shows a smaller crane, which has a fixed jib for use on a

permanent or temporary track.

[7] Why this unfortunate fish should be so distinguished I have never

been able to learn, but the saying is universal in the French army.

[8] This is a paraphrase rather than a translation, the patois of the

original being impossible to render exactly.

End of Project Gutenberg's Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878, by Various