Up another flight, and we stopped before a closed door.

"He is here," said Vera in a low, intense voice.

Lilly put her hand on her heart as if to stop its beating. As for me, I was only conscious of a feeling of burning curiosity.

Vera threw open the door. A young man was seated in the centre of the room, leaning on a table. His face was buried in his hands. "He will sit that way for hours," whispered his sister.—Then she said aloud, "Clement!"

He looked up; an angry flush rose to his face; with one bound he was at Vera's side, snatched the little cap from her head and tore it into shreds.

I was fearfully alarmed at this exhibition, and Vera looked deeply mortified. "He has never been so violent," she exclaimed; "and this was my fault: I had forgotten that I had on ze miserable little thing."—She fixed her eyes on him steadily and said, "Clement, I have brought some visitors to see you."

A gleam of something like reason crossed his face: he made a graceful bow. Lilly looked fascinated. He was a singularly handsome man, very dark, with glittering black eyes, and hair falling on his shoulders. On his head was a red velvet smoking-cap.

"They have brought something to show you, Clement," she went on, as slowly as if counting her words—"something that you have missed for many years."

She opened the box and flashed the earrings before his eyes. He started up, and in a voice of anguish he cried, "The star buttons!"

"He recognizes! he remembers!" cried Vera.

"Remember?" he exclaimed—"remember what? A ship ploughing the Gulf—" He stopped, pressed his hands madly to his forehead. "Down, down, demon pain!" Then the words came pouring out like a torrent: "Light breaks through the night. A ship crosses the Gulf: a woman begs me, for the sake of her I love, to go with her—to save her father. He is in prison, he has murdered a man, but he is old: she loves him—she kneels to me. I promised to help him escape: I did my best. I said Florine could wait. I left my trunk in an old man's counting-room. We laid our plans, but we failed in all. The father was shot like a dog; I was captured; I was sent up the country for trial. Months in prison: free at last to fly to Florine, to find my bride. Now, now, now, it comes to me. I was too late: Florine had been murdered by the Indians!"

He flung his arms above his head and fell to the floor. We were in a state of the wildest excitement.

"Oh, he is saved! I am sure of it!" cried Vera. "Go now, dear young ladies: he must not see you when he comes to himself. Ze carriage is waiting. I will see you again."

"But we leave New Orleans to-morrow," said Lilly.

"I will write to you. You are my friends for life."

Lilly hastily scribbled an address on a card. "Here is my address," she said: "you will surely write?"

"Yes, yes! Heaven bless you!" She seized Lilly's hand and kissed it. "You shall hear from me: you shall find that Vera Gardine is not ungrateful."

She hurried us out, closing the door behind us. The way was clear: we ran lightly through the halls, hardly daring to breathe until we were safely out of the house and in the carriage.

"Drive to the Catholic cathedral," said Lilly. The carriage-door was shut, and then we could give vent to our emotions. Lilly was half wild: she laughed and cried together. "Do you think he will get well?" she said: "do you think so?"

"How can I tell, Lilly? The buttons seemed to give him enough of a shock."

"Wasn't it wonderful? Oh, Stella, what a romance! It is all perfectly clear to me now."

"It's far from being clear to me."

"Why, don't you see: he met this woman on the boat and engaged with her in some desperate enterprise to save her father. He left the trunk at Uncle David's—"

"Yes, but why didn't he give a name or an address with the trunk?"

"I suppose he was so beside himself that he hardly knew what he was doing. You can see that he is of a very excitable temperament. Then the rest of it is easy to imagine. Poor, poor fellow! how he must have suffered! Didn't you think him very handsome, Stella?"

"Yes, very: he looked like the Corsair."

"Do you suppose he will ever get over it?"

"Get over what?"

"Poor Florine's death."

"Oh, never!" said I emphatically.

Lilly sighed a little, and said that she thought Vera ought never to marry, but to devote her life to consoling Clement for all he had suffered.

If Mrs. Long had thought us abstracted before, I don't know what she thought now. We scarcely spoke unless she addressed us, and then we made answers as wide of the mark as a boy's first shots. Only once Lilly roused to interest: Mrs. Long was speaking of the old French families of New Orleans, and Lilly said, "Oh, Mrs. Long, did you ever hear of the Gardines?"

"Yes, indeed," said the lady: "they're one of the oldest and best families. Vera Gardine is quite a belle in society, and Clement is a fine young man. He does not fritter away his time, as so many young men do, but works away like a good fellow at his plantation up on the Bayou Teche."

Lilly and I stole a look at each other. How we should have electrified good Mrs. Long had we told her all we knew about poor Clement Gardine!

We went back to Galveston, feeling that a whole world of experience had opened to us since we left it. We were not the same girls, and never could be again. Lilly flew into a passion when she found Uncle David wearing one of "C. G.'s" sacred shirts, and insisted that they should be done up at once in a parcel ready to send to Miss Gardine.

"I am determined to have them both come over and make us a visit," she said confidentially to me.

We had not been forbidden to tell the story at home, but while Aunt Nanny and Maum' Hepsey listened very sympathetically. Uncle David laughed a good deal, and said, "She's going to write to you, is she? Well, show me the letter when it comes."

We waited long for that letter, and at last it came; and when we had read it we knew exactly how a man might feel upon whom a rock fell out of a clear sky—that is, if he had time to feel anything. Here is the letter:

"MES CHERES DEMOISELLES: You will watch with your pretty eyes many days for the postman before that he bring you this lettre. And why? Because I am going to be very generous. You have gif me ze diamond: I will give you ze lesson. But it is not safe to gif it too soon; so I leave this lettre in charge of un ami, who is to mail it four weeks from zis day. My lesson is zis: 'Do not ever talk loud when you travel; do not keep secrets from your chaperone; and when you have a diamond hold on to it—gardez-le.' Do you understand, mes jolies et simples demoiselles? When you gave ze histoire of ze earrings to your Madame Long on ze steamer, 'Clement'—ha! ha!—heard it all. Clement—whose name is Jules—live very mooch by his wits; and he saw that these diamonds must be his—that you were two dear leetle geese—pardon!—ready to have ze feathers plucked. How to get at you he did not know: you were always with that chaperone with sharp eyes. It was I—Marie, Jules's little wife—who made up ze plan, so bold, so simple, so originale, ma foi! We had been in bad circumstance a long while: I was ze French maid chez Madame Gardine. Comprenez-vous? On ze ball-night Mademoiselle Vera was sick, but I was well. I took her ticket—I wore her belle robe—I went to ze ball for one dance, to meet you. My pretty romance turned your little heads. I have been on ze stage: I have not forgot how to act. I took you to ze Gardine house—ze madhouse, you know. Ze family were going out to dine, but we were too early. You saw Mademoiselle Vera at ze piano: you met madame in ze hall. It was for me an excited moment, but you suspected nothing. Jules did his part not ill: he won ze tears from your eyes. One of ze lace handkerchiefs I have kept, cheres demoiselles, as a souvenir: the others, with ze diamond earrings, were changed into money tout de suite. They sold for much money: we have been able to take a little trip, perhaps to Cuba, where we eat ices and drive along beautiful roads; perhaps to one gay Northern city, where we go to the play every night. Wherever it is we are happy—we think much of you. Jules calls you our sweet benefactors. And I tell you all this that you may know I spoke not false when I said, 'Vera Gardine will not be ungrateful'—a promise that you must own well kept by MARIE ZANETTI.

"P. S. And that pauvre 'C. G.!' we wonder mooch about him. Charmante mystere!"

Lilly fainted outright, and we had a time of it generally. In the midst of it all, Uncle David said dryly, "Well, Nanny, I suppose you may hand me over that bundle of shirts now."

* * * * *

It may be worth mentioning that years after we met the real Gardines, and very charming people we found them. And it is I who am now Mrs. Clement Gardine, and am living on my husband's Louisiana plantation. As for Lilly, she can laugh now as she thinks of the accomplished rogues who deceived us so nicely, but she has developed a pronounced hatred for the French language, and I don't believe any one could ever win her heart whose initials happened to be "C. G."

SHERWOOD BONNER.



AN ENGLISH TEACHER IN THE UNITED STATES.

When I landed in Boston, in January, 1874, it was neither to "make my fortune" nor to hunt buffaloes or bears in the neighborhood of that classic city. Nevertheless, just to show my readers that there is a measure of truth in the prevalent impressions here of John Bull's general ignorance and apathy as to what is going on in America, I willingly admit that not till I had been a few days resident in Cambridge did the unpalatable fact fully dawn upon me that the country was undergoing the ordeal of "hard times"—a phrase, by the way, which I have had dinned into my ears almost incessantly as far back as I can remember. Besides, although I could not help knowing that the States have been peopled by Europeans, I was hardly prepared to find Americans proper—the descendants of Revolutionary ancestors—in such an appalling minority; and it certainly surprised me to find that Ireland and Germany were responsible for so large a proportion of the population. When I walked in the streets or visited the stores or public buildings disillusion trod close on my heels: I was constantly accosting, or being accosted by, persons of Irish or German or other foreign nationality, who, though displaying characteristics that somehow distinguished them from their countrymen in Europe, did not fall in with my ideal of the American people. I do not mean precisely that they fell short of that ideal, but simply that "the shoe wouldn't fit," to use a common expression. I began at last, in my bewilderment, to inquire whether there were any Yankees in or about Boston, anyhow; and thus it transpired that after a few days "prospecting" I finally transferred myself and my fortunes from Boston to old Cambridge, where, it is needless to say, I found plenty of the genuine American article that had been the object of my quest.

After some time—in the course of which I succeeded in making myself known to three or four of the college professors and tutors—I was told by one of them of a gentleman who, he thought, might be able to help me in obtaining employment. He is a man of genius and good-nature, and through him I got really useful introductions. From this time there were no external difficulties in my way, beyond those experienced by many other men around me who had been on the lookout for vacancies for months before I had become one of their anxious number. But differences of training and experience remained to constitute real and very serious obstacles, although—and let me say it here, as I shall have plenty of occasion to grumble further on—the chief deterring or exclusive influence I ever suffered from in Boston or Cambridge was that of a kindness so much in excess of my capacity to make fair returns that I had often to flinch from accepting it. Literary and professional men in those twin-cities come nearer, to my thinking, to Wieland's cosmopolites (Die Abderiten) than any other class of people I know.

But let us to school. I may as well say at once that I never at any time, while in the United States, commanded salaries (or incomes) equal to some I had received in England; and I am now more than ever convinced of the fact that England offers an unequalled field for a teacher of ability and perseverance, always provided that he is as competent an authority on cricket and boating as he is on Greek particles and the working of the differential calculus. I speak, of course, simply of the ordinary university graduate, who (like myself), not being from patrician ranks or Mammon-blessed, must hew out a position for himself without any aid from the patronage of influential friends or relatives. Given a moderate amount of classical and mathematical stock in trade, together with correct personal habits and fair capacity for imparting instruction, and an English teacher who adds to these qualifications some skill in the chief bodily pastimes, may go on his way in peace: he shall have his reward. Let me add, however, that if he is a man of ramshackle tendencies, the offices of drill-sergeant, cricket-referee and supervisor of table-etiquette which he has to combine with his ordinary tutorial duties will in time become so irksome—especially if it is his lot to fall upon inferior schools—that he will be disposed to sacrifice all his pecuniary advantages and chances of unlimited promotion for the sake of a little peace of mind and unhampered leisure.

My readers are not to suppose that my object is to institute a full comparison between the schools of England and the United States: I have not the wide experience of American schools that would justify me in attempting such a task. For instance, although I have made a careful study of the working methods and interior economy of the common schools of the three American cities in which I have exercised my vocation—namely, Boston, New York and Philadelphia—I have never taught in the public schools; and any survey of the educational facilities of the country that leaves them out would resemble a performance of Hamlet with the role of the prince omitted. Nevertheless, my brief sojourn here has been a chequered and, in some respects, an amusing one; and any one who chooses to hear my record of it may add as much salt as he pleases, for I promise to be perfectly frank in my utterances.

I obtained my first pupils by answering a newspaper advertisement—I have already named the three cities which my experience covers—and they consisted of two young ladies, aged respectively eighteen and twenty-two years. Their education had been thoroughly neglected, or, rather, they had idled away the golden chances of their youth, and now their ignorance, for ladies of their social standing, was astonishing. But mark the anomaly: had they been Englishwomen of the same rank and similarly uneducated, they would have been uncouth and ungrammatical in speech, awkward in manner and dowdy in dress. There is no people upon whom the transforming, refining effects of a thorough training are so marked—because, it must be confessed, the native soil so much needs cultivation—as upon the English people. But these girls were ladylike in manner, tastefully dressed, and their speech was entirely free from the barbarisms of an uneducated Englishwoman's language: I hasten to add, however, that I would sooner have the Englishwoman for a pupil. Two Englishwomen who required assistance from a private tutor would submit in patience to a prolonged course of laborious and irksome work, all unmindful of the doings of society and the absorbing interests of the hour, so long as the ultimate object was some day attained. My fair Americans were undoubtedly intelligent, and even spasmodically hard-working, but their impatience of sustained, systematic work, combined with—or rather caused by—their devotion to social pleasures, not one of which they would forego on any consideration, prevented them from reaping any appreciable benefit. I instance their case, not because it was the first or the only one of the kind that fell into my hands, but because it revealed to me at the outset a trait of the American character—especially of the women—which confronted me at every turn of the road afterward; namely, a want of repose—a defect which would seem to be largely accountable for the insensibility manifested by a great portion of the American young women of the middle classes to the fact that they have advantages at school such as their sisters in England would accept in an ecstasy of gratitude.

About the middle of my first summer I was advised to try one of the school "agencies" that abound in the larger cities, especially in New York; and I accordingly registered myself in the best-known and most widely-recommended office. Perhaps it may be of interest to the reader unversed in such matters to learn what are the conditions on which an agent undertakes to introduce an applicant to persons wishing a teacher. To begin, the teacher fills up a "form of application" by naming his qualifications and references, and affixing his signature to the contract between him and the agent, the terms of which are as follows: "Registration for one year, two dollars in advance; commission, four and a half per cent. of salary or income for one year only—board, when included in compensation, to be rated at two hundred dollars for the school-year. This commission is due as soon as the engagement is made." In the printed receipt which is handed the applicant there is a curt, business-like recapitulation of all the conditions, in which occurs the following memorandum: "I shall give you notice of vacancies as they occur which, in my judgment, seem suited to your wishes and qualifications." The italics are my own. An admirable loophole of retreat, truly: "in my judgment"! When a despondent candidate wakes up morning after morning for months to read in the newspapers over the signature of his agent such an advertisement as this: "Engagements for the fall term now being made. Many teachers wanted. Capable persons should not delay in coming forward,"—it is no doubt consoling to him to infer that had the "judgment" perceived him to be suited for any of these presumably numerous vacancies, he would certainly have had the judgment's dictum to that effect.

In the course of a year I received notices of two vacancies. One was the principalship of a boarding-school somewhere in West Virginia, in which I should have to realize what income I might from the payments for board at a rate prescribed by the patrons of the establishment. The difficulty with me in this case was that before I came near the question, "What are the chances of success in such an undertaking?" the previous question presented itself as even more difficult: "Where am I to get the money with which to make the attempt?" The other vacancy was a mastership in a school in Portland, Oregon. My health has always been robust, especially since my deliverance from the Centennial and solar fervors of 1875 and 1876, and therefore I had no desire to try the paradisiacal climate of the uttermost West; but, nevertheless, I wrote twice, at an interval of a month, to the address with which I had been furnished, and at last received a letter from a bishop's wife, intimating that "there must be some mistake: no vacancy had occurred in that institution for many months." Quis declarabit? A mistake or a myth?

Now, as no American will deny that there are a few things which are better managed in England than in the United States, I submit that the method of bringing teacher and employer into communication by means of a professional agent is one of these things. At all events, there is nothing equivocal about the English method. Let the reader judge for himself from the following details: (1) The registration-fee is one shilling, not eight (two dollars). (2) The commission—generally five per cent.—is payable, not as soon as an engagement is made, but at the end of the first half year of service, and provided only that there is to be a continuance of the engagement: surely a beneficent provision for the poor teacher. (3) One cannot travel very far in Britain: for ten dollars one can go from London to John O'Groat's. (4) Vacancies are announced by bulletin in the office as they occur, and a notification is sent by post to distant registered candidates: secrecy in regard to the whereabouts and emoluments of a position is quite unnecessary, because the principals who patronize—or, rather, hire—the agent will employ teachers only through him. (5) A teacher is never asked the contemptible question, "How much salary do you expect?" The amount of salary attached, together with a description of the duties of the position, is set down in the notification. (6) The agent is simply an introducer: he of course has to be satisfied, before the registration of the applicant, that the latter is really a teacher and a man of character, but beyond that the "judgment" part of the business is relegated to the principal who receives the application.

Reverting again to my first summer, I have a little incident to relate: One evening I was introduced to a middle-aged, sharp-looking little man, who, I was informed, was the principal of a flourishing college in a Western State—a college in a town, both of which he had himself founded. This gentleman and I managed to spend the evening together pleasantly enough, but my astonishment was great next morning when I received a letter from him offering me a situation in his establishment. I had an interview with him, and concluding from all the appearances that the location was a healthy and civilized one, the school a prosperous one, and himself an energetic, cultivated gentleman, I was on the point of accepting, when it suddenly occurred to me that in my anxiety to learn whether the position was desirable in other respects not a word had been said on the subject of salary. My expressing a wish to be enlightened upon this important particular produced an immediate hitch in the negotiations, but the practical upshot was that the greater part of my salary was to consist virtually of unreclaimed land! Since that magnificent occasion I have regarded with magnanimous forbearance requisitions emanating from that portion of the West.

At last, however, my answer to an advertisement was successful, and in September I was duly installed as teacher of the classics in a school of some fifty boys in one of the three cities I have mentioned. The following extract from the principal's letter of engagement will show what is naturally the chief difficulty an English teacher has to encounter in his search for an employer in the United States: "On the whole, I think the most favorably of you out of some forty applicants; the only fear I have arising from the well-known fact that American lads are so unlike those of the old country, and require different methods of discipline."

The salary, though a moderate one—not by a third equal to salaries in English schools of the same grade—was yet reasonable; and when it is added that it was a day-school; that there was held only one session of five hours, with a roomy interval for lunch, gymnastics and music; that each teacher had a large, well-furnished and cleanly-kept room to himself—a luxury which is rare in the best English schools; that each department was under the charge of a separate teacher, who was never required to step out of his own special walk—another school-virtue not common in English schools; that the principal fulfilled my ideal of a calm, judicious and discriminating headmaster,—it is no wonder that I began to congratulate myself upon having at last fallen upon a school that furnished a combination of what I consider the best features of both the English and Scotch schools, to the exclusion of all that is detestable and soul-harassing in either. "No more for me," I soliloquized, "of presiding magisterially at the odious dinner-table, at which not a whisper is tolerated, and even the irrepressible chuckle over some accident to the earthenware is accounted a crime; no more of solemn marching in procession on Sunday morning and evening to some fantastic, farcical 'High Church,' whose funereal-mummeries served only to mask the furtive deviltries of the brisker members of my charge; no more onsets at tea-time, when returned home with the boys from an exhausting walk, of infuriated farmers demanding vengeance for rifled orchards and shattered fences; no more morning calls from elderly maiden ladies in neighboring summer boarding-houses, reporting a hail of shot from ubiquitous catapults during the night-watches; no more sitting up o' nights, when on duty for the day, reading with the drones against the approaching Oxford or Cambridge 'local,' and rushing stealthily up stairs every now and then to pounce upon the perpetrators of hideous catcalls." All this I had escaped from, and more. And now what a contrast! Saturdays and Sundays were my own, and I could worship in the Hebrew or Mohammedan temple, just as I chose; and for the rest of the week I should have all day, after four hours' pleasant culling of Horatian and Homeric flowers, to devote to some abstruse study, perhaps local politics.

As if any one should expect perfection or perfect satisfaction (which is the same thing) in this wicked, cross-grained world! First of all, although it came last of all, it transpired toward the end of the year that the school was not paying, and the teachers (of whom there were by far too many) were warned that they would have to be satisfied with half salaries during the remainder of the school-year. This blow did not fall very heavily on any one but myself, as all the other teachers had engagements in other schools, as well as friends and relatives throughout the city. The boys were very fickle: a succession of bad averages on their weekly reports would send them off in high dudgeon to some other school; and though there were fresh accessions taking place from time to time, the frequent interchanging was injurious alike to the tone of the school and to the school exchequer. There were, too, one or two bad boys who should have been expelled, but whose expulsion would have lost to the school their independent sympathizers as well, and so would have seriously embarrassed the finances. An American principal with a bevy of "free and independent" youths to cater for is in an inconceivably different position from his English confrere, who is empowered to read his pupils' weekly letters to their parents and to send a policeman in pursuit of any runaway malcontent among them. From the moment an English boy leaves his father's house he is under the complete control of his principal, and consequently a ruinous veering about from school to school is effectually prevented, while the retention of a decidedly vicious boy would obviously be a most unprofitable policy. I have seen a rich English parent bring back his truant offspring to be soundly flogged in presence of his grinning schoolmates—an ugly spectacle, and now happily a rare one in England; but the reverse of the picture, though far less shocking, is by no means pleasantly suggestive. I have heard an American lady express her surprise to a principal, with unmistakable tartness in her tone, that her son, who was at once the idlest and most troublesome boy in his class, always brought home averages of sixty or seventy, "when young A——, who lives next us, and is considered quite a slow boy, receives ninety and over every time. Don't you think there must be some mistake, or—or unfairness—in the marking?"

Only ten of my sixteen boys had been in the school before that year, and of those ten only four had passed through the regular curriculum of the school from the primary department to the graduating class. Those four were notably the most advanced and the only thoroughly-grounded boys of the sixteen. A few of the others had attended nearly all the private schools in the city, while two of them had been oscillating between the public and private schools for years at their own sweet wills, and could never decide whether the commercial or classical department of the school in question was the one for which they were best fitted. It may well be understood, therefore, what a medley my classes presented, and how unlikely it was, in the face of all these drawbacks, that their acquirements should be above mediocrity. On the score of natural abilities, however—in quickness of perception, facility in generalization, readiness and coherence of expression, and clearness of head generally—it would not be at haphazard one could find an equal number of boys in any English school to match them.

As to the vexed subject of discipline, my experience leads me to say that, provided I was left to my own way, I would rather manage a class of twenty American boys than of twenty English. The common cry about Young America's disrespect for authority or worth seems to me to be founded on a misconception, when, indeed, it is anything but the wailing of ignorance or cant. I am strongly possessed of a belief that American children know intuitively where respect is really due, and that there they fully and unhesitatingly award it. I at least have found among them a more genuine, spontaneous sentiment of regard for their teachers than either in England or Scotland—a sentiment utterly free from the cringing submissiveness which too often passes muster in England as a juvenile virtue. However feared—and, accordingly, respected—an English teacher may be by his scholars, he is nevertheless an ogre to most of them—to the aristocrat a plebeian pedagogue to whom he must defer, just as, when he is a little older and sports a scarlet tunic, he must submit to the unlettered sergeant-major who teaches him his goose-step; to the rich parvenu more intolerable still, as the pruner of his obtrusive vulgarities of speech and manner, the index of his social inferiority and the standing menace to his innate rudeness, that is only intensified by his consciousness of wealth; to the poor man's son essentially a "schoolmaster"—a wielder of the ferule and a bloodless automaton, to whom, as Southey wrote,

The multiplication-table is his creed, His paternoster and his decalogue;

to only the emancipated and discerning few what he really is at his best—their greatest earthly friend and benefactor. All I have seen of American schoolboys impresses me that the feeling which dictates their bearing toward their teachers is born of a clear-sighted and intuitive appreciation of superior knowledge, worth or experience, and not of conventional observance or necessity. It is generally said abroad that American children are unruly, forward and irreverent toward their parents and elders; and one reason assigned is that parents are careless of teaching their children the little ceremonies and graduated formalities of speech, "in which," as an English bishop recently alleged in an after-dinner speech, "there is embodied so much wholesome discipline that a careful attendance to the practice of them gives the young man or woman an advantage not offered by any other method of training." Spartan, but indigestible! A keener observer than the bishop—the heresiarch Thackeray—wrote in his Philip: "I never saw people on better terms with each other, more frank, affectionate and cordial, than the parents and the grown-up young folks in the United States;" and certain it is that the description is applicable to the intercourse between teachers and pupils.

The faults of the latter are aimlessness and impatience; and their misfortune—which is largely responsible for those faults—is that they are too soon allowed to plunge into the quagmire called by euphemism "society," and often whelmed in its sorry pleasures and petty ambitions—too soon, also, invested with the right to manage their own affairs and to choose their own associates, advisers, and even instructors; in a word, permitted to breathe the invigorating spirit of the Declaration of Independence before their constitutions are fitted for its reception. This may sound trite enough, but I see no other way of accounting for the intellectual—and, alas! moral—failure of so many of the brilliantly-gifted lads whom I have known and loved in these United States.

I might proceed to give a few illustrations of this resultless restlessness, this dissipation of the youthful forces, to which I have alluded; but there is one phase of my experience here which goes further to prove its prevalence and baneful effects than a thousand instances derived from my knowledge of boys in school or in the closer contact of private tuition. From time to time there appear in the "Instruction" column of the daily newspapers advertisements like the following: "Wanted, lessons in the evenings by a gentleman of neglected education;" "Wanted, lessons in grammar and conversation (sic) by a married couple." It was by answering such advertisements as these that I fell upon the most satisfactory portion of my labors in this country, and met with pupils of both sexes the memory of whom will be to me a source of pride as well as of pleasure as long as I live. Ladies and gentleman of good social standing they were, who, bitterly regretting neglected early opportunities, had the moral courage to "go to school"—with the wise meekness and receptiveness engendered in fine natures by ultimate self-disparagement—even when their avocations seemed to preclude the possibility of sustained and fruitful study. But when I contemplate a long array of such pupils (covering a period of three years)—from the young banker's clerk or embryo lawyer chagrined with himself because of the poor figure he cut at last week's party, and commendably determined to try and remedy his defects, to the mature business- or even professional-man, humiliated because his accomplished wife's every sentence made him feel ashamed of his squandered youth, and so constrained, at the eleventh hour, to employ a private tutor—it is difficult for me not to recognize that in a country where the children enjoy so many privileges, where they are taught regularly, systematically, patiently, conscientiously—where, in short, everything is taught, and everything is taught well—there must be some mistake in the exercise of the parental guardianship that creates and fosters the aimlessness and impatience which prevent so many of the children from reaping adequate benefit from their noble heritage.

One thing that occasioned me a good deal of trouble and anxiety in my first school was the system of "marking" for each lesson with a view to obtaining a weekly average standard. Not that I was unused to the method, but I had never before seen it pushed to such an extent nor pursued on exactly the same principle. A boy would be marked up by his various teachers in about a dozen subjects during the week, and on Friday a printed slip would be handed him showing his weekly average in each subject and in all the subjects taken together. An average of 95 per cent. was quite common; 80 was not in high favor; 70 was shaky, while 60 was quite bad. A quarter's experience of it convinced me that the thing was a piece of abominable red tape: I do not mean in theory, but in the results of its working in that particular case. I had seen boys and men in school and college in England and Scotland obtain "first-class honors" with a mark of 75, and I now marvelled how it happened that boys who had but a faint idea of what hard work really meant were able to produce such brilliant results, more especially when so much of their time and attention was devoted to the preparation of orations and dialogues, and even to the rehearsal of private theatricals (the principal would have gone crazy had any one presumed to call them by that name in his hearing) for the approaching "entertainment," two of which treats were offered "by the school" (a great deal in those three words) to the public during the year. I may mention that on these two occasions it was the part of the principal to ascend the stage during the entr'acte and read off from a paper he held in his hand a few particulars regarding those precious averages which seemed in the speaker's and hearers' minds to be exactly commensurate with the standing and progress of the pupils.

My marking made me for some time rather unpopular; and beginning at last to follow the time-honored injunction, "When you are in Rome do as the Romans do," I hoisted my boys from the sixties and seventies to the more plausible eighties and nineties. It was, no doubt, an unprincipled thing to do, but I soothed my outraged conscience with the thought that I was making a martyr of myself—that when the examination-week arrived the examiners' reports would confound me by exposing the difference between my paper and their gold. The examination-week did arrive, of course, and I found that I was to be myself the examiner of my classes. Let not the reader think that I would be pleasantly satiric when I say that not till then did I fully awake to the fruitful meaning of the expression, "American independence." And neither let him infer that I take such a school to be a representative American high-class school: I only say that it is a fair representative of a class of schools that is both numerous and popular in the cities I have named above. Here, indeed, was an application of the sui-juris principle that, though it certainly eased my feeling of apprehension and doubt as to the probable results of the examination, yet filled me with a vague sense of dissatisfaction. And the reason is not far to seek: my English training would naturally have the effect of making me look for a verdict on my work not to my own notebook, nor even to the principal's returns, but to some higher and extra-mural authority who should test the attainments of the pupils and the efficiency of the school by a searching and impartial examination.

In English middle-class schools the advent of the "Oxford and Cambridge Schools Examination Board" is regarded with no small anxiety by principals, masters and scholars alike. It marks an epoch in their lives, and is the only period of the year in which there is anything like a rapprochement between them, as if in the presence of some imminent crisis. The eccentric jackanapes who is by turns the butt and witling of the school stands for once consciously on equal terms with his principal, and can for once even "cheek" the school-bully with perfect impunity. All is excitement, anticipation, preparation and much consuming of midnight oil. Perhaps a very brief account, in conclusion, of the methods of procedure in these examinations may interest the reader; and in case he should think that my object in offering my sketch is to draw an invidious comparison between the English and American methods of examination, I refer him to an animated and interesting correspondence in the April issue of the Nation between President Eliot of Harvard and Professor Adams of Michigan University—a discussion in which the former gentleman enthusiastically claims for the English method a degree of excellence which the most ardent home advocates of the system—who know its working faults as well as its positive advantages—would hesitate to claim for it.

The English board holds two kinds of examinations: First, examinations of schools for the benefit of schools exclusively, and having no effect to admit individuals to the universities or to exempt them from subsequent examinations, whether at the universities or elsewhere; second, examinations of individuals for certificates which give exemption from the entrance-examinations at Oxford and Cambridge, from the earliest examinations of the university course, and from the preliminary examinations of certain professional bodies. The examinations cover thirty-four different and carefully-specified subjects (no candidate taking the whole), and on the average two hours are allowed for writing answers to the questions in each subject; the examinations last from eight to twelve days, and are held three times in the year; and the schedule of days, subjects and hours for each year is published nearly a year in advance. The decision of the board is upon the individual: "Has he passed a satisfactory examination in a sufficient number of subjects?" and the board takes no account whatever of the opinions and certificates of school-authorities concerning the individual. A printed report is annually made by the board, showing the name of each person who obtained a certificate, the subjects in which he satisfied the examiners, and the school from which he came. The examinations are conducted in writing for all the subjects, but for a few subjects oral examinations are superadded. The questions are printed; they are the same for every candidate in any given subject; and they are made public when the examinations are over. In order to secure uniformity of standard at the examinations, the results obtained at the different places of examination are compared by the central board of examiners. Each candidate pays a fee of two pounds, and from these fees each examiner is liberally paid for every day of service spent in setting questions, attending the examinations and looking over the answers of candidates.

There never was a method of examination without its drawbacks, and the chief weakness of the English system is that it tends to excite a spirit of rivalry which is apt to resort for aid to cramming processes. As yet, however, the examinations have been conducted in such a manner that the special "cramming-schools"—of which there are not a few—have very generally come to grief, even when they have had successes before the examiners for the civil service.

D. C. MACDONALD.



OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

THE RUSSIAN PRESS.

In its present form Russian journalism is a kind of geological diagram, the primary strata being typified by the ministerial organs (the Russian Invalid and the Northern Bee) and their shadow the Journal de St. Petersbourg; the transition period by the Voice (Golos) and the Moscow Gazette; and the more advanced ages by the Russian World (Russki Mir). The last, although dating back only to the Franco-German war, has already made itself conspicuous for the exceptional accuracy of its information, the wide range of its topics and the frank and manly tone of its criticism. Thanks to it and to its two great forerunners above mentioned, the utterances of Russian journalism carry with them more weight than they would otherwise do—a result materially aided by the decay of the censorship, the worst and meanest legacy of Russia's dark ages, which has lately had a chance of showing itself as absurd as it is hateful under the congenial guidance of General Schidlovski. The rulers of the empire have begun to perceive that it is hardly worth while to hire men at exorbitant prices to deface articles which they cannot read and condemn books which they cannot understand; and the common sense of Russia has long since revolted against a system which is still as uselessly and childishly vexatious as when pilloried in imperishable language a century ago by Beaumarchais.

This is a great deal, but it is not enough. Like many other native institutions, Russian journalism is merely a fine fragment. Russia has a multitude of ships, but no navy; a number of ministers, but no government; a host of journals, but no press. The Russian daily papers (with the exception of an occasional "double edition" on the part of the Bourse Gazette) consist of a single broadsheet, the large type of which reduces its contents to a minimum. Fully one-half of this limited space is usually occupied with advertisements and official announcements, while even the few remaining columns are often deplorably misused. One detestable custom, originally borrowed from France, is that of "padding" a journal with tenth-rate novels, pointless anecdotes and would-be humorous feuilletons, such as the weakest "comic annual" would decline without thanks. Another failing of Russian journalism is its fondness for the tu-quoque style of argument, retorting every mention of Poland by an allusion to Ireland. But, despite all this, there is much hope for the future of Russian journalism. It is no slight gain that, in a country which has long been regarded as the very incarnation of truth-stifling despotism, any journal should be found to speak as the Golos recently spoke on the question of Russia's naval forces: "The Crimean war, which tried so severely the qualities of our army, cannot be said to have tested those of our fleet, inasmuch as it never gave itself a chance of being tested. At the first approach of the enemy it hastened to shelter itself behind the forts of Cronstadt, whence it never emerged till the close of the war. Now, if the sole use of the navy upon which we yearly expend millions of roubles be to shrink out of harm's way at the first sign of danger, we might just as well have no navy at all."

Besides the journals above named, the Moscow Son of the Fatherland and two others published in the capital (the Birjeviya Vedomosti, or Bourse Gazette, and the Peterburgskiya Vedomosti, or St. Petersburg Gazette), though now eclipsed by their younger rivals, formerly held a high place among Russian dailies. The Russian magazines cannot be dealt with in the limited space of the present article: it must suffice to mention the two most important—namely: the Russki Vestnik (Russian Courier) and the Vestnik Yevropi (Courier of Europe). Several of M. Tourgueneff's later stories have made their first appearance in the pages of the latter, which, numbering among its contributors some of the foremost writers in Russia, and combining, like the Revue des Deux Mondes, the functions of a review with those of a magazine, is in every way the worthy successor of its now defunct forerunner, the Sovremennik (Contemporary), formerly owned and edited by the poet Nekrassoff.[B]

The comic element of Russian journalism is represented by the Iskra (Spark) and Budilnik (Alarm-Bell), the latter having the superiority in pictorial illustrations, though the savage and personal cast of its satire, together with its imprudent fondness for political allusions, has more than once all but occasioned its suppression. Both journals are published weekly, and both have a considerable circulation, though it must be owned that their title of "comic" is for the most part a sad misnomer. That the Russians are naturally devoid of humor no reader of Gogol or Griboiedoff, Pushkin, Kriloff or Tourgueneff, can believe; but the comic journals themselves have fallen far too much into the hands of the Imperial University, whose literary style is a combination of the humor of the cider-cellars with the verbal fluency of Billingsgate. Under such auspices the ill-starred periodicals naturally oscillate between insipid propriety and labored coarseness. For a month or two the talented contributors go smoothly on in their career of untranslatable pleasantry, till some special atrocity calls forth the fatherly admonition of the police. Immediately a reaction ensues, filling the objectionable columns with harmless sneers at the weather and other safe objects of attack, until the effect of the warning has died away, and all goes on as before.

Those of our readers who were in Russia a few years ago must remember the famous caricature of "National Music," representing the various journals as a band of musicians. In the foreground stands the minister of police as bandmaster, regulating the time with the flourish of his baton: on his right is the Russian Invalid (the government organ) with a trombone, on his left the Military Gazette with a kettledrum. Immediately below, the Moscow Gazette, in the person of its celebrated chief, M. Katkoff, is playing in a reckless, haphazard fashion upon an enormous bass fiddle. Close by are the two leading comic journals, the one tinkling a triangle, the other blowing the pandean pipes. Farther on the Voice (Golos) is bawling through a speaking-trumpet, and the Bourse Gazette flourishing a tambourine, a host of minor performers being loosely sketched in the background; while far in the distance a hand outstretched from a cloud of mist is tolling a cracked church-bell, symbolical of M. Kerzen's famous Kolokol (Bell), at that time in the zenith of its sinister renown; and Russia, as a young lady in a ball-dress, is vainly attempting, with a look of dismay, to close her ears against the uproar.

Equally clever and equally audacious is a more recent travesty of the well-known scene in Dante's Inferno where Bertrand de Born, a noted sower of sedition, comes forth with his severed head in his hands. In the Russian version the renowned editor of the Moscow Gazette is seen hobbling along with a cannon-ball labelled "Police Surveillance" at his ankle, and carrying by the hair his own head, which is so drawn as to bear a grotesque likeness to an inkstand with a pen in each ear. The text of Dante is thus travestied:

And by the hair he with despairing look Upheld his head, which cried to me, "Oh woe! Himself is his own inkstand! Thus are two In one tormented."

The backwardness of the Russian press, attributed to so many different causes, is really due to one very simple one—the want of readers. Among a population of whom only nine per cent. can read, and who neither know nor care what passes in the world of politics, the existence of free public opinion, or indeed of any opinion at all, can hardly be expected; and thus, while no country contains such frantic republicans as Russia, no government is more absolutely secure. Upon that tremendous passivity the utmost efforts of such men as Netchaieff and Bakounin fall like a pellet on the hide of an elephant. The popular cries which madden other races are utterly meaningless to the docile, unemotional "mujik," loyal and conservative to the very marrow of his bones.

But the vivifying of these petrified millions may safely be left to the influence of time. The provincial schools recently established may be trusted to do their work, however slowly; and the "educated Russia" dreamed of by Alexander I. may yet crown the age of Alexander II. Those who, like the writer, have lived in the villages of the interior, and have seen the Russian peasant as he really is, cannot but have hopes of his future, in the teeth of the hasty and one-sided observers who love to depict him as a brute with the single human attribute of dishonesty. The ignorance, sluggishness and intemperance of the mujik belong to the system under which he has been reared: his frank hospitality, cheery good-humor and simple child-like piety are all his own. To raise these brave, simple natures out of the unwholesome darkness which has so long imprisoned them is a noble and Christian work; as far above the mere material emancipation of 1861 as the soul is above the body.

D. K.

A MIDSUMMER NOON'S PHANTASM.

"Ghosts? No, I don't believe in ghosts: I have seen too many of them," is a very fair thing on one of the oldest of subjects. My case is different. I have been trying all my life to believe in ghosts, and saw my first four days ago. Toward noon I fell into a doze—very short and slight it must have been—over my book. No one was in the room, and the door was closed. The book was held up in the usual position, a little below the level of the eye, in the right hand. I awoke—if the word can be applied to what was so very slight a slumber—and saw limned with perfect distinctness against the page the head of a girl or boy six or eight years old, blue-eyed, light-haired, and fair but not clear in complexion. It was below life-size, not more than four inches in height. Only the head was visible, without anything below the jaw. At first it seemed perfectly solid, but the lines of print, which were still held up as in reading, gradually showed themselves through the fading apparition until it entirely died away. This happened in about a third of a minute, the beautiful little face continuing the whole time to gaze at me with a calm but not sad expression. It was not in full front, the right side being turned to me in what is called a three-quarter position. The light which illuminated it did not come from the window, which was directly behind me and gave all the light there was in the room, and yet the impression was in no respect that of a picture. Not for a moment did this interpretation occur to me, strongly as did the evanescent character of the head militate against the idea of reality. The fading was most rapid at the occiput, and may be said to have begun there, extending to the right and upward. There was no background or accessory of any kind, the head being quite isolated and detached, objectively as subjectively.

The lineaments were not those of any one of my acquaintance, and recalled no countenance I had ever seen. If the appearance suggested a young member of the family, it was not because of resemblance, but from his being frequently in my mind, and apt to be associated with any alarm due to the tinge of superstition from which none of us are wholly free. For the reason already given it could not have been a reminiscence of a picture. The shading and coloring were too exact for anything painted. My easel was, it is true, near by, on the opposite side of me, and on it were two heads of nearly the size of that I describe; but they were hard-featured old saints of a deep mahogany hue, relieved by a very dark background, and therefore the exact antipodes of my shadowy visitant. On these I had been painting an hour or two before; and that is the solitary connection conceivable between the spectre and anything tangible. The reader will perhaps be inclined to set it down as having been complementary to them. I do not think it was; but were it so, the point mainly craving explanation remains untouched—that what I saw was with the waking eye. It may have come from the land of dreams, or from a remote outlying province of it, but its perceptible existence was entirely in the realm of actualities. I was not conscious, and had no recollection, of having had a dream. It is true that, according to a theory necessarily and in its nature incapable of being sustained by positive proof, we may have unconscious dreams, and be always dreaming when asleep without knowing it. Persons who rise at night, take pen and paper and solve problems which had been the worry of their waking hours, and return to their couch still asleep, present cases analogous to mine in so far as their unconscious mental activity leaves an outcome and expression obvious to the senses. Another parallel would be that of a sleep-walking artist who should when in a state of somnambulism execute a picture. But neither case would be identical in principle with mine. The artist and the mathematician would both have executed in their sleep what they had laid the foundation of when awake. I, on the other hand, would, should I transfer my aerial sitter to canvas, simply paint what I saw when wide awake, just as in undertaking to reproduce any other face from memory, whether observed once for twenty seconds or frequently and for longer periods.

It is usual to explain the common stories of phantoms by attributing them to ocular illusion, aided or not aided by the imagination or by particular conditions of the bodily or mental health. The eye, of course, is never quite proof against deception, but there needs some little material for it; and in my case there was absolutely none—no waving sheet or trees or clouds, nothing but the printed page; and that was visible, unchanged except by the utterly inharmonious and contrasted image before it. My imagination was not affected before, at the time, or after. My pulse may have been a little quickened for the moment, for I did not accept the appearance as a matter of course, as we do everything, however preposterous, in a dream, but, on the contrary, quite recognized its abnormal character. I know of no existing cause of especial or temporary liability to any delusion of the kind. In short, though I have not—and had not when I continued after the disappearance to contemplate, without moving a muscle, the book against which the head had been projected, and coolly reflect upon what I had seen—the slightest belief that it was supernatural, I should be compelled, if called on in court, to swear that I had seen what must be provisionally named a spectre. "If I stand here, I saw it!"

E. C. B.

THE BIRTHPLACE OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

As the traveller is whirled along over the great stretch of railway between Liverpool and London, he passes (about midway) through Nuneaton, a busy little manufacturing town, situated in a most delightful and fruitful part of the "Garden Land." About two miles from this town (which the gifted authoress has dubbed "Milby" in her Scenes of Clerical Life), on the broad smooth highway leading to the ancient and renowned city of Coventry, stands the house where Marian Evans was born. It is a large brick building, surrounded by a well-stocked and pleasant garden, devoid of ornament, but highly suggestive of comfort and convenience—such a house as our forefathers used to build fifty years ago, when comfort was not sacrificed to appearance, and when the owner had more to do with the design than the architect.

Robert Evans, the father of the renowned authoress, was bailiff to Lord Howe and to Sir Roger Newdigate—father of the present M. P. of that name, who is such an earnest champion of Protestantism as it is reflected in the Church of England, and who has made such earnest but as yet fruitless endeavors to have a bill passed for the periodical visitation and inspection of the monastic and conventual institutions of Great Britain. Her brother, Isaac P. Evans, still occupies that responsible position, and resides in the old homestead. The country around Mrs. Lewes's early home is rich in historic associations. Not far away is Bosworth Field, and in another direction are the ruins of Astley Castle, within whose strong walls Lady Jane Grey passed a portion of her brief, chequered life. Near the castle stands—or stood—a tree in which her father, the duke of Suffolk, took refuge when pursued by the emissaries of the sanguinary queen. A small table used by him while concealed in the huge hollow trunk is still preserved.

There are several very ancient churches in the vicinity of the residence where George Eliot passed her early days. The parish church of Nuneaton, to which she alludes in her Scenes of Clerical Life, is a grand structure, six hundred years old, with a massive embattled tower containing a chime of eight melodious bells; and Coton (Shepperton) Church, which in her girlhood she attended with her parents, is perhaps still more ancient, as it is certainly more weatherbeaten and venerable in appearance. The writer's parents have often seen the future authoress sitting in the antiquated, high-peaked family pew and taking part with grave attention in the service.

In Atteborough, a village in the same neighborhood, there resided an eccentric character named Joe Liggens. He had received a university education, but, lacking application and industry, had chosen no pursuit in life, and passed his time in lounging around his native village and frequenting the tap-room of its alehouse, where, surrounded by an admiring crowd, he puffed away at his long pipe, removing it from his lips only when he deigned to express an opinion upon some subject of debate and give his open-mouthed hearers the benefit of his wisdom and erudition. When Scenes of Clerical Life first appeared in Blackwood's Magazine, describing places and persons familiar to the villagers, they naturally wondered who the author could be, and decided at last that it could be no other than Joe Liggens. Had he not been to Oxford? Didn't he know Latin and all sorts of things? And wasn't he acquainted with the scenes and personages described in the new book? No one else could be thought of combining these various and essential qualifications. When Joe was questioned on the subject he merely smiled and said nothing—the strongest confirmatory proof, and an exhibition of the modesty inherent in genius. In recognition of the honor he had conferred upon his native place, a subscription was started for the impecunious Joe, and a goodly sum was on the point of being presented to him when the real name of "George Eliot" was revealed, and Joe Liggens found himself treated as an impostor by those who had thrust upon him undeserved honors.

W. B.

THE FATE OF SOUTH JERSEY.

The Camden and Atlantic, the Philadelphia and Atlantic City, the New Jersey Southern, and some minor railroads, pass through portions of New Jersey long known as the "Jersey Barrens." They are all new roads, comparatively speaking, but they have wonderfully stimulated the enterprise that has created so many flourishing villages that ten years ago had never been heard of. Vineland, the fairest and most flourishing village in the country, as well as the largest, is only about fifteen years old. Its population is six thousand. Forbidding-looking swamps, giving rise to swarming myriads of mosquitoes and to malaria through their dank, decaying vegetation, have been converted into flourishing cranberry-meadows, and the dry land into fine vineyards and fruit-orchards surrounding homes of every grade of elegance, from the simple vine-covered cottage to the costly villa with carefully-kept evergreen hedges enclosing exquisite lawns, statues, fountains and rare flowers. The extent of these hedges is estimated at seventy-five miles.

But this prosperous reclamation of the waste lands of South Jersey has already received a check from an insidious but terrible enemy, destined to undo the labor of years unless promptly and wisely attacked. This enemy is drought, traceable directly to the destruction of the forests. Formerly, glass-manufacturing companies established themselves in well-wooded regions, used the forests for their furnaces, and when these were exhausted migrated to new places to repeat the work of devastation. Then the settlers "cleared up" the land extensively, and since the railroads have been built the burning of the woods along their routes by cinders from the locomotives has been terribly frequent, and often extensive. A conductor on the Camden and Atlantic stated last year that he had counted fifteen forest-fires during one trip from Camden to the sea.

Yet nothing is done to prevent these ever-recurring calamities. The citizens complain, mourn over the destruction, grumble at the railroads, and thank God when the fires are at a safe distance from their own homes. When personally threatened, they turn out, men, women and children, aided by terror-stricken and sympathizing neighbors, and "fight the fire" by felling trees and clearing away the inflammable matter in the path of the fire. Sometimes a whole neighborhood will struggle for days together without respite as only the desperate can. Many of these fires, it is said, are due to the wilful mischief of boys and others. Hundreds of acres are destroyed every year. Along the Camden and Atlantic almost every tract of woodland has been burned over once or more.

The effect of the decrease of the rainfall in South Jersey is already serious. The water-supply in Vineland, Hammonton and other places is constantly lowering: all the wells except those that were dug very deep at first have had to be lowered at least two feet.

The most practical step at present toward arresting the destruction of woodlands is no doubt the organization of forest-protecting and planting societies like those in Germany, which have now so far secured the aid of the legislative power that no landowner can cut down one of his own forest trees without the consent of the authorities. This seems like tyranny, but it is really that wisdom which recognizes the good of the whole community as paramount to any private consideration.

M. H.

THE SAFFAH COBBLESTONES.

Le Devoir gives some interesting information about the wonderful stones of Saffah, now on exhibition in the Asia Minor department of the Museum of the Louvre. This department has lately been reopened to the public, after being closed six months for internal improvements. Visitors pass before the cases containing these ordinary-looking cobblestones, and wonder why they should be there instead of in the street, where they seem to belong. But these ordinary-looking stones are, in the eyes of scholars, among the most precious objects of history: they are covered with writings in some unknown, and even unheard-of, tongue. Some of the writing is fine, some coarse: sometimes the lines are straight, from right to left, and sometimes they wind about, like the trail of a serpent, in every direction. Saffah is a desert plain in Syria extending east from the lakes of Damascus, and a part of it is covered with these curious stones. Antiquaries like Renan, Ganneau, De Vogue, Waddington and Pierret are sorely puzzled over the writing on them, for the character resembles none that has yet been deciphered. They will not, however, abandon the task, for antiquaries are Patience personified; and we shall one day know the history, language, manners and customs of a race whose very existence up to the present time has not even been suspected.

M. H.

FOOTNOTES:

[B] The published statistics of the Russian press are manifestly untrustworthy; but the post-office returns of St. Petersburg show that 82,000 copies of daily and 40,000 of weekly papers, with 50,000 copies of monthly periodicals, are yearly sent to the provinces. The largest circulation (26,000) belongs to M. Katkoff's Moscow Gazette (Moskovskiya Vedomosti). Besides the native journals, 17 German papers, 5 French, 4 Polish, 2 Tartar and 1 Hebrew are published in Russia. Of English papers, the Manchester Guardian, thanks to the number of Lancashire workmen in the interior, has the widest circulation: the Times comes second, the Illustrated London News third.



LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

The Atlantic Islands as Resorts of Health and Pleasure. By S. G. W. Benjamin. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Invalids and pleasure-seekers have here a guidebook to the summer and winter resorts of the North Atlantic, from the desolate rocks called the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the ever-bland Madeira and the over-bright Bahamas. The varied company of the isles embraces even Wight, where Cockney consumptives go to get out of the mist, and the Norman group consecrated to cream and Victor Hugo. The author's good descriptive powers are assisted by a number of drawings, many of which are finely done and well discriminate the local character of the different places, latitudes and circumstances of life. He does not appear to be much of a valetudinarian himself, or he would hardly have been able to venture on and report for our benefit so wide a range of travel and experience; but his preference obviously is for the island most thoroughly tempered to the needs of an enfeebled constitution, and which welcomes most wooingly those whose first craving is to keep alive—Madeira. Such of us as associate their earliest recollections of the name with the annual cask of wine will read with interest that though the wine, thanks to the oidium or some malady of that sort, is a thing of the past, the spot retains many other charms ample to justify a trip to its shores by a more roundabout way than the slow and direct or costly and circuitous routes laid down by Mr. Benjamin. Teneriffe ranks close to Madeira, and the Valley of Orotava, scooped out of the flank of the famous peak, is recommended as simply perfection for sufferers from "pulmonary complaints, rheumatism or neuralgia," and beneficial even in Bright's disease. The thermometer in this happy valley stops at fifty-eight degrees in winter, and averages from sixty-eight to seventy-two degrees in summer. Should you find this temperature too inclement, you can descend to the port at its mouth and luxuriate in a range of sixty-four to eighty degrees. Where we write the figure at this moment is ninety degrees in the shade, and those semi-tropical outposts of the anciently-known world seem arctic.

Bermuda, New York's onion- and potato-garden, is presented to us in a less fascinating light, owing possibly, in part, to the fact that Mr. B. does not like onions, and was nearly stifled on his return by the odor of that nutritious esculent under battened hatchways. But he sees a great deal to delight sound travellers, and objects mainly in behalf of the sick to the climate, which is only a modification of that of the continent, with an extra tempest or two thrown in. In protesting against the antiquated mode of landing maintained by Bermudan conservatism, he thinks a more modern, rational and convenient plan would be hooted down by the wharf-mob in the spirit of "Demetrius the coppersmith." We believe the Ephesian was a maker of silver images, though Alexander may have been actuated by a like motive in opposing Paul's proceedings as not good for trade.

Speaking of landing-places, that of Columbus is transferred, in a notable note on the Bahamas, from Cat Island to Watling's Island. The former has no lake, as the latter has; and Columbus insists on a lake. He also went in one day with oars around the north end—a feat impossible in one case and easy in the other. Watling, for this and other reasons dwelt on by English surveyors, is on the new maps rebaptized San Salvador, in rectification of euphony not less than of historic truth. If now equally successful inquiry could be brought to bear on the identity of the Discoverer's bones, claimed alike by Hayti and Cuba, it would be an additional comfort to the lovers of fact.

Steam-service is steadily growing more frequent, regular and expeditious, and the next generation of Americans will doubtless pack their portmanteaus as lightly for the Canaries, the Loffodens and the Galapagos as that now in being does for Appledore or Mount Desert. For individual health, relaxation or enjoyment, not more than for the general invigoration and well-being of the race, we need to be on easier terms with the sea. The old maritime spirit, so striking to the eyes of Burke, seems to have died out from among us. If we are to have a brilliant and assured future, we must not look for it wholly to the land. It may not rise sheer, Britain- and Aphrodite-like, from the breast of ocean, but it must yet rest partly upon that most solid of supports, the ever-shifting wave.

The Principles of Light and Color. By Edwin D. Babbitt. New York: Babbitt & Co.

Were we to open this book about the middle we should be disposed to set it down, on the strength of its latter half, as a contribution to the literature of the Pleasantonian (or blue-glass) school of natural philosophy. This impression would be humored by the bluish tint of the paper upon which it is printed. But an inspection of the entire work would show that it is something more comprehensive and ambitious, not to say more interesting and suggestive. It is the product of a bold and original, if not exactly close and systematic, thinker—one who, with a longer and severer experimental training in the fields he has chosen for exploration, would command the respectful attention of leading scientific men. He begins with the reflection that, "in spite of the wonderful achievements of experimental scientists, no definite conceptions of atomic machinery, or the fundamental processes of thermal, electric, chemical, physiological or psychological action, have been attained." He proposes to remedy this failure, and to carry the natural sciences to their "basic principles." He proceeds to speculate with great ingenuity on the nature of light, the form, relations and movements of atoms, the action of electricity upon them, the constitution of the atmosphere, mode of creation of the solar system, and the rationale of chemical affinity. From these lofty regions he stoops to his conclusion in the new science of "chromo-therapeutics." He undertakes to define and explain the alleged effects upon mind, soul and body of all the colors of the spectrum. Among these colors he assigns the place of honor to blue, that tint emanating from the frontal portion of the brain in rays visible to certain finely-organized individuals, and being associated with the highest intellectual faculties. Red belongs to the opposite pole of the cerebral sphere, and holds special relations with the grosser part of man's abstract nature. In this mysterious region of inquiry he joins hands with some questionable allies, such as the Spiritualists, the phrenologists and the mesmerizers. The power of the clairvoyants he does not doubt. Indeed, he claims to have used it himself, and to have fattened on it, his present weight of one hundred and eighty pounds having been attained, he tells us, together with perfect health, by the judicious employment of "these subtler agencies." One is tempted to ask, in view of such a result, why waste time on the color-cure when the mesmeric system succeeds so admirably?

Should we demur to these eccentricities of an enthusiastic savant, he would perhaps point us to similar excesses in some of the acknowledged lights of intellectual progress, and cite as a recent instance of the madness of too much learning the ascription, by the brilliant yet matter-of-fact and practical Tyndall, of almighty "potency" to matter. Of course we should reply that Tyndall was a sincere and earnest student, and not a charlatan or a fanatic; whereto our author might respond, and respond justly, in sharp disclaimer of the latter brace of characters. He seems to be sincere: he can read and think, and does both, as the first part of his book, and much of the rest of it, show. He would have escaped the imputation we have suggested as not unapt to be cast upon him, secured a full hearing in a more respectable quarter, and gained higher aid in the development of his ideas, had he been less hasty in forming and stating some of his ultimate conclusions and the practical application of them. Many very able men who have preceded him in scientific labor, and who do not believe that "the bowels will be aroused into animation" by the exhibition of "a small strip of yellow glass three inches in depth, bordered by its affinitive violet," to the umbilical region, or that "Major Buckley developed one hundred and forty-eight persons so that they could read sentences shut up in boxes or nuts," would listen attentively to what he has to say on the anatomy of an atom, metachronism and "chromatic attraction."

Around the World in the Yacht Sunbeam. By Mrs. Brassey. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Some of the best books of travel we have had lately have been written by women. Their way of looking at new things, even if superficial—which is not by any means always a safe assumption—is pleasant and refreshing after the more sober, philosophic and blue-booky style of comment we are accustomed to be favored with by observers of the other sex. Many valuable trivialities are lost by the effort to go deeper than the surface. The phases of life, manners and scenery which strike one in a rapid tour are perhaps most instructive, and certainly most entertaining, when reproduced just as they appear. The light female touch, which revolts at figures and documents, is well suited to that work, if work it can be called. The male traveller, we know, does much of his research when he gets home, keeping up, however, with a view to that end, a solemnly didactic frame of mind all the time he is abroad. He is thus apt to give us less of what he sees than of what he thinks—an error into which a woman is less prone to fall. She is less critical, less ashamed of being startled and pleased, and more frank and naive in her confession of it. She resembles in this respect the delightful voyagers of the Middle Ages—the Polos, Batutas and Mandevilles—who were too much occupied with the novelty of everything they saw to bore us with their opinions, and who were untrammelled by the slightest idea of publishing a resume of political, religious or economic conclusions when they got home. What an infinitesimal proportion of us understand even our own country! Why, then, obscure and flatten our impressions of foreign lands by supposing, and preparing to make others believe, that we can understand them after a cursory study of a few weeks or months?

Mrs. Brassey is not a literary woman. She has no "mission," and makes no pretensions to culture. She simply chronicles a tour made in her husband's yacht, accompanied by two or three young children and as many friends. But she has good sense, good temper and character, and what she writes fully justifies her husband's prefatory statement, that "the voyage would not have been undertaken, and assuredly it would never have been completed, without the impulse derived from her perseverance and determination." Unprepared by special study, and quite devoid of science, she yet notes well, and interests us in, the animals, plants, human occupants and natural phenomena generally of the countries visited. And without any command or affectation of imagery or fine language she is very graphic in her descriptions of sea and shore. Her account of a visit to the great Hawaian volcano is one of the best we have ever read, being simple, terse and vivid, without the overloading with detail that spoils so many of the pen-pictures of the day.

The trip was made in eleven months of 1876-77. The route lay from Chatham to Madeira, Rio, the river Plate, Valparaiso (through the Straits of Magellan), the Society and Sandwich Islands, Yokohama, Hong-Kong, Singapore, Ceylon, Aden, Alexandria, Malta, and so on back to England. It thus threaded a large part of the tropical world, and we are led to perceive a greater variety in tropical life and scenery than we are in the habit of realizing. The rapidity of movement facilitated this, as it brought the different points more closely together, and made what there was of contrast more striking. Not that the movements of the party were uniformly hurried either, for weeks were spent in Rio, the Pampas, Chili and Japan, and sufficient stoppages made at many other places. The slow passage through the stormy Straits makes us acquainted with the savages of the Land of Fire and their picturesque country, decidedly more damp than fiery. Japan was reached in the season of ice and snow, and the author, wrapped in furs and ulsters, was puzzled by the native contempt of the thermometer as shown in their wooden-walled houses with paper partitions and the popular passion for the lightest possible raiment. We join in her amazement at the proceedings, on a frosty morning, of the propellers of her jenrishka—or, as it is punningly termed, pull-man-car—who, compelled by law to wear their clothes in town, deliberately stopped when they struck the country and divested themselves of almost the last stitch—a performance paralleled in the opposite hemisphere by a party of Fuegians, man, wife and son, who came off in a canoe to trade, and stripped themselves utterly of their one garment of fine sea-otter skins in exchange for beads and tobacco. The author seems to have armed herself against surprises of this and all other kinds, and to have set out prepared to accept outlandish ways as they came, and look on the bright and reasonable side of everything. She manifests no national prejudice, whether against savage or civilized people, and commends frankly American carriages, railways, tramways, calicoes and canned fruits wherever she meets them; and that is, for one or another item of the list, nearly everywhere. Our manufacturers will read with interest the compliments recorded as paid by their customers, actual and possible, in the Pacific and Indian Oceans to the superior merit of their fabrics as compared with those of Manchester.

Altogether, should Mrs. Brassey's yacht be ready for another circumnavigation before ours, we do not know that we should refuse the offer of a spare berth.

Art-Education. A Lecture by General William Birney. Delivered February 6, 1878, before the Washington Art-Club. Washington: Art-Club.

This brochure is mainly a sketch of the consequences to industrial art of the English Exhibition of 1851, or a consideration of the fruits of the South Kensington Art-School. The humiliation of England in that Exhibition is well known, and the way in which she profited by the bitter lesson is full of instruction to this country. Thoughtful Americans, whether directly concerned in the welfare of laboring men or not, remember uneasily the troubles of last year, listen with compassion to whatever sounds of distress come from the assemblies of those who call themselves "workingmen," and look with anxiety for evidence of returning prosperity and contentment. All Americans worth mentioning are workers and are in sympathy with labor. If any "workingmen" think that there is a large or powerful class in this country opposed to the interests of labor, they should at once dismiss the notion, and look further for the cause of their troubles. Considerate people see that the "workingmen" should take a wider view of their situation than most of them seem to do; that they should look above and beyond the ranks of partisans for the light they need; that they should listen to those who will discuss their problem with the coolness, the disinterestedness, the unhesitating honesty which characterize the leading scientists of the day in other fields of inquiry. Such are the speakers and writers they should invite to their assistance. Instead of wasting their breath in expressions of self-admiration, in threadbare platitudes about the nobility and rights of labor, in appeals to the omnipresent politician, in complaints against labor-saving machinery, in talk about the Eight-Hour law, it would be more encouraging if they would try to supplant foreign workmen by simply excelling them in workmanship, and try to find employment by the creation of new industries. Higher education in industrial art is the stepping-stone to this.

As the depression is the result of a combination of causes, it is not probable that a panacea exists. Complete restoration will come from several remedies, each having its due effect in its own time and place. But perhaps the most potent of all, one indispensable to thorough and lasting prosperity, is thus revealed by General Birney:

"Although the United States has not hitherto directed her attention to art, her manifest destiny is to do so. The necessity of events will compel it. We have entered upon a long peace, in which we shall have to compete with civilized nations for the supply of the markets of the world. A population of forty millions cannot exist in comfort when they sell to the world nothing but agricultural implements, sewing-machines, revolvers, clocks, corn, cheese and cheap cottons, and buy everything else from it. The end of that course must be national ruin.

"For self-preservation, we must manufacture: we must have skilled labor. The rapid increase of scientific knowledge makes art a necessity. As science throws men out of employ, art must provide employment. The scientist and artist must walk hand in hand. The invention of labor-saving machinery for the farmer, enabling one man to do the work which formerly required ten, is rapidly driving men from the country to the cities. The invention of other machinery is rapidly throwing large numbers of workmen out of employ. Political causes are adding to this evil. How to put the unemployed millions to work is the problem of the day. The salvation of the country depends upon its solution. The nation stands before each public man demanding that he shall read the riddle or be destroyed.

"One of the helps to a solution, if not a solution, is the introduction of skilled labor. It takes but a few men to fashion a ton of iron into bars, but a thousand are not too many to work it into watch-springs. Five men can make all the coarse pottery used in this District: it takes five hundred to make its decorated ware and porcelain. Rough hand-labor is being superseded by machinery. But the demand is greater than ever before for skilled labor, both to manage the machinery and to take the product where machinery has left it and fashion it into value by the art of the decorator. Such a workman plies his handiwork at his own house, teaching his sons the secrets of his trade. He is the necessary coadjutor of the machine-owner, and has no need to resort to the brutal methods of Molly Maguires and trades-unions to get a fair reward for his labor. Let demagogues rant about our danger from competition with the pauper labor of Europe! We never were, and never will be, injured by that. What we should fear is the skilled labor of well-paid, cultured and educated artisans."

The French, who won so easy a victory over the English in 1851 in the manufacture of whatever directly augments the luxury and elegance of life, now fear that England will overcome France on her own ground. An able Parisian, criticising the Exhibition of 1878, and acknowledging the facts it reveals, asks the French government to send, at the public expense, a hundred workmen every year to Great Britain as a means of keeping French artisans abreast of British and holding their own in the markets. Ours is not a paternal government. If it should send a hundred men to England, half of them might be political bummers, whose chief study would be, not how to learn to work for the benefit of their countrymen, but how to live without work. The American people are as individuals supposed to take care of their own business. Do our trades-unions and labor-clubs and workingmen's associations send a hundred picked men abroad every year for study and practice? Are they too conceited or ignorant to realize what most concerns them? Thousands of foreign subjects are earning money from us, while thousands of our countrymen are suffering. This is not the fault of those foreign workmen, nor of the American purchasers of their artistic work, nor of our government. It is in a great degree because Americans have not the skill and taste to take up material where machinery leaves it, and lay it down beautified by the touch of real art. An "appeal to the ballot-box," the sovereign remedy of a true American for every ill; the enactment that two and two shall make five, which is about what the Eight-Hour law amounts to; the declaration by statute that so much of one metal shall equal so much of another metal,—has there not been enough of this? Would not a few hundred well-educated emissaries of our trades-unions and labor associations kept in the technical schools and workshops abroad be of rather more value? "How many of the graduates of the South Kensington Art-School, and artisans whose ability is traceable to it, might have been induced to try here the fine work which now, in England, is making the French tremble for their laurels, by a judicious use of the money which public halls, meetings, brass bands, processions, delegations, disturbances, transparencies, lobbyists, blather-skites and strikes have cost the 'workingmen' of America?"



Books Received.

The Army of the Republic: Its Services and Destiny. By Henry Ward Beecher.—How to Spend the Summer; Where to Go; How to Go; How to Save Money. (Christian Union Extras.) New York: Christian Union Print.

Sensible Etiquette of the Best Society, Customs, Manners, Morals and Home Culture. Compiled from the best authorities. By Mrs. H. O. Ward. Philadelphia: Porter & Coates.

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