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, jardineros and dueno amistad and sacar 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.

THE END