After the death of the real Mirza-Schaffy in 1852, which was duly announced by the press, sundry efforts were made by Eastern travelers to visit his grave in Tiflis and gain those particulars concerning him and his writings which Bodenstedt was supposed to have selfishly withheld from the public. Of these, one of the most prominent was Professor H. Brugsch, secretary of the Prussian embassy to Persia in 1860, who in his book of travels thus descants on his futile efforts: "No one could inform us where the last earthly remains of a certain Mirza-Schaffy were laid to rest. We consoled ourselves with the reflection that neither mounds nor monuments are requisite to preserve a poet's fame, but that through his songs is his name transmitted to posterity. Yet even here we were doomed to disappointment. No one whom we encountered knew aught of the songs of the jovial, genial Mirza-Schaffy which in our German Fatherland have penetrated to the very life of the people."

Some years later the Russian imperial state counselor Berge, while chief of educational institutions in Caucasus, also made the matter a subject of investigation, and in the year 1870 gave the history thereof to the world in the Journal of the German Oriental Society. He tells of his vain efforts to learn something of the genius of Mirza-Schaffy in his own land, and the amusement he created by his queries concerning possible posthumous works, and finally settles the question beyond dispute concerning the authorship of the poems.

After this, Bodenstedt yielded to the solicitations of friends to give in the pages of the popular German magazine Daheim a correct version of the whole affair.

Let the reader present to his mind's eye a picture of the Eastern scribe, clad in the apparel before described, seated on the comfortable divan, with legs crossed after the fashion of the country, the long tschibuq caressingly held in one hand, the other uplifted, and with finger pointed to his brow, haranguing the German man of letters at his side on the advantages to be enjoyed under his tuition, and on the idle pretensions of those who call themselves learned without so much as comprehending the sacred languages. He cherished, however, the pious hope that in the course of time, thanks to his efforts, the enlightenment of the East might take effect in the West, which hope was strengthened by the encouraging fact that Bodenstedt was the fifth scholar who had felt the need of migrating to Tiflis to profit by his instructions. In his excess of national modesty the wise man of Gjaendsha only styled himself the first wise man of the East, but since the children of the West dwelt under a dark cloud of unbelief, it resulted as a matter of course that he must be the wisest of all men.

"I, Mirza-Schaffy," said he to his pupil, "am the first wise man of the East, consequently thou, as my disciple, art the second. But misunderstand me not. I have a friend, Omar Effendi, an extremely wise man, who verily is not third among the learned scribes of the land. Did not I live, and were Omar Effendi thy teacher, he would be first, and thou the second wise man."

On being asked what he should do if told that the wise men of the West would consider him as deficient in enlightenment as he did them, he rejoined, "What could I do but be amazed at their folly? What new thing can I learn from their opinions when they merely repeat my own?" Hence the song:

Shall I laugh or fall to wailing That the most of men so dumb are, Ever borrowed thoughts retailing, And in mother-wit so mum are?

No: thanksgiving heavenward rise That fools so crowd this generation, Else the wisdom of the wise Would be lost to observation.

Numerous rivals envied Mirza-Schaffy his lessons, for each of which he was paid a whole silver ruble—an unusually high tuition-fee. Most formidable among these was Mirza-Jussuf (Joseph), the wise man of Bagdad, who called one day on Bodenstedt and boldly informed him that the revered Mirza-Schaffy was an Ischekj ("an ass") among the bearers of wisdom—that he could not write properly, and could not sing at all. "And what is wisdom without song?" he exclaimed. "What is Mirza-Schaffy compared with me?" With bewildering eloquence he set forth his own superior accomplishments, dwelling largely on his name, which had been exalted by the Hebrew poet Moses as well as by the Persian poet Hafiz, and exerting himself to prove that the significance of a great name must be transmitted to all future bearers thereof. He was still speaking when a measured tread was heard in the ante-chamber, and Mirza-Schaffy himself drew near. He appeared to comprehend intuitively the cause of the guest's presence, for he cast on Jussuf, who had become suddenly stricken with modesty, a glance of withering contempt, and was about giving vent to his emotions when Bodenstedt interposed with the words, "Mirza-Schaffy, wise man of Gjaendsha, what have my ears heard? You undertake to instruct me, and you can neither write nor sing! You are an Ischekj among the bearers of wisdom: thus sayeth Mirza-Jussuf, the wise man of Bagdad."

Without deigning a word of reply, Mirza-Schaffy clapped his hands, a sign at which the servant usually brought him a fresh pipe, but this time he demanded his thick-soled slippers. With one of these he proceeded to so unmercifully belabor the wise man of Bagdad that the latter besought mercy with the most appealing words and gestures. But the chastiser was inexorable. "What?" said he. "I cannot sing, dost thou say? Wait, I will make music for thee! And I cannot write, either? Let it be, then, on thy head!" Whimpering and writhing beneath the blows accompanying these words, the wise man of Bagdad staggered toward the door and vanished from sight.

More calmly than might have been anticipated did Mirza-Schaffy return from the contest of wisdom, and promptly taking his usual seat on the divan, he began to exhort his German disciple to lend no ear to such false teachers as Jussuf and his fellows, whose name, he said, was legion, whose avarice was greater than their wisdom, and whose aim was to plunder, not teach, their pupils.

Later, Jussuf strove to win Bodenstedt by repeated messages, accompanied by songs in the most exquisite handwriting. Mirza-Schaffy's opinion concerning these compositions is embodied in quite a number of songs, of which space must be found for one:

Forsooth! is Mirza-Jussuf a very well-read man! Now searcheth he Hafiz, now searcheth the Koran, Now Dshamy and Chakany, and now the Guelistan. Here stealeth he a symbol, and there doth steal a flower, Here robbeth precious thoughts, and there a true word's power. He giveth as his own what has been said before, Transplanted! the whole world into his tedious lore; And proudly decketh he his prey with borrowed plumes, Then flauntingly that this is poetry assumes.

How differently lives and sings Mirza-Schaffy! A glowing star his heart to lighten paths of gloom, His mind a blooming garden, filled with sweet perfume, And in his rich creations no plagiarist is he: His songs are full of beauty, and perfect as can be.

Mirza-Schaffy himself was a miracle of skill in chirography: none could equal him in wielding the kalem. His aim was not to impart a precise regularity to the characters, but to indicate by the writing the matter and style. Proverbs or utterances of wisdom were indited by him in a firm, bold hand with unadorned simplicity; love-songs with delicate, clear-cut lines, attractive capricious curves, enigmatical, almost illegible minuteness, designed to set forth the type of female character. The chirography of the songs to wine and earthly pleasure is full of fire and flourish—that of the songs of lamentation neat, legible and unadorned. To impart this skill to his pupil was one of his most earnest endeavors.

One day, when inspired by choice wine and soothed by the fragrant fumes of his tschibuq, Mirza-Schaffy was moved to tell of the love his heart had cherished—love such as man had never before known. The object of his adoration was Zuleikha, daughter of Ibrahim, the chan of Gjaendsha. Her eyes, darker than the night, shone with a brighter glow than the stars of heaven: passing description were the graceful loveliness of her form, the dainty perfection of hands and feet, her soft hair long as eternity, and the sweet mouth whose breath was more fragrant than the roses of Schiraz. He who was destined to be her slave had watched her daily for six months—as she sat on the housetop at midday with her companions, or on moonlight evenings when she amused herself with the dancing of her slaves—before he received so much as a sign that she deemed him worthy of her regard. He rejoiced in the splendor of her countenance, but dared no more approach her than the sun in whose warm rays he might bask. By day he was compelled to exercise the utmost caution, as his life would have been in jeopardy had Ibrahim Chan descried him casting loving looks at Zuleikha, but in the evening he was safe to draw attention to himself, as after eight o'clock the old man never crossed his threshold. Then the flames of the lover's heart burst into song, and he gave utterance to a ghazel now of Hafiz, now of Firdusa, while still more frequently he sang his own songs.

Finally, Ibrahim Chan set forth on an expedition against the enemies of Moscow, and thus was afforded a rare opportunity for the enamored Mirza to present himself and his songs to the fair one's notice. One dark evening, when the ladies had failed to appear on the housetop, as Mirza-Schaffy was turning disappointed away he was accosted by a closely-veiled female, who, bidding him follow her, led the way to a secluded spot where interruption would be improbable, and thus addressed him: "I am Fatima, the confidential attendant of Zuleikha. My mistress hath gazed on thee with the eye of satisfaction. The resonance of thy voice hath delighted her ear, the purport of thy songs touched her heart. I am come of my own accord, without my lady's bidding, to let thee drink hope from the fountain of my words, because I wish thee well."

"Has, then, Zuleikha not closed her ear to the poorest of her slaves?" exclaimed the overjoyed Mirza. "And will my heart not be lacerated by the thorn of her displeasure? Allah min! Allah bir! The God of thousands is one only God! Great is His goodness and wonderful are His ways! What have I done that He hath guided the stream of my songs to the sea of beauty?"

Fatima told him he did well to prize the merciful goodness of Allah and the loveliness of her mistress, who was a "jewel in the ring of beauty, a pearl in the shell of fortune." Her noble lady, she said, would have given token of her favor before had not her virtuous modesty exceeded her beauty, and had she not feared the displeasure of her father, who tenderly loved her and would never consent to her stooping to a poor mirza. Then she proceeded to tell how Achmed Chan of Avaria, who was at the war with Ibrahim Chan, was suing for Zuleikha's hand, which was promised by the father should he return triumphant from the campaign. This would render prompt action desirable, and Fatima suggested that Mirza-Schaffy should appear on the following evening, when the call to prayer resounded from the minaret, before the garden with his choicest offering of song, to which, the messenger was ready to wager, would be accorded a rosebud. Intoxicated with joy, Mirza-Schaffy bestowed on the friendly Fatima his purse, his watch and all the valuables about him, also promising a talisman to cure a black spot on her left cheek; and they parted with the understanding that they should meet, again for further communication.

And here, in exemplification of the learned scribe's rejoinders to his pupil's queries concerning the significance of the thorn of displeasure and the rosebud, is introduced the song:

The thorn is token of rejection, Of disapproval and of scorn: If she to union hath objection, She giveth me as sign a thorn.

Yet if, instead, the maiden throws me A tender rosebud as a token, That fate propitious is it shows me, And bids me wait with faith unbroken.

But if a full-blown rose she tenders, Its open chalice is a token Which boldest hope in me engenders; Through it her love is clearly spoken.

On the ensuing evening Mirza-Schaffy presented himself promptly at the appointed place, prepared with a love-song which he knew none of womankind could resist. The evening was calm and clear, and on the housetop, alone with Fatima, was plainly discernible Zuleikha, her veil slightly drawn aside in token of favor. Taking courage, the enamored Mirza pushed back his cap in order to display his freshly shaven head, of whose whiteness he was excessively proud, and which he felt to be irresistible to maidens' eyes, and began to sing his song, having first cast a written copy folded about a double almond-kernel, as a keepsake at the feet of beauty. The song given at this point is excessively flowery, and declares the maiden's eyes to be brighter than those of the wild gazelle, her form more ethereal than the slender pine, and pronounces the wooer, his heart and his tuneful lay to be but slaves of her loveliness. This by way of preparation, the highest point of the offering being the concluding stanzas:

With faithful heart and hopefully Approach I now Love's sacred bower, And cast this wistful song at thee, This fragrant song, as question-flower.

Accept with joy or scornfully, Give my heart death or consolation, Cast rosebud, rose, or thorn at me, I humbly wait thy revelation.

Smilingly the maiden cast a rosebud at her waiting suitor, and for the first time fully displayed to him her beauteous face. From this moment new life dawned on our Mirza, and for six weeks he basked in the sunshine of felicity ere threatening clouds loomed up in his horizon. Then Ibrahim Chan returned from the war, and with him came his daughter's suitor. A troop of horsemen had been despatched to Avaria for the bridal gift, and on their return they were to conduct Achmed Chan and his chosen lady home. Prize combats and festivities were planned to celebrate the return of the heroes, and at Zuleikha's request a singing festival was likewise to take place. All the singers of the land were invited and bidden to prepare their choicest lays extolling the sovereign lady of the fete: to the victorious competitor would be accorded the right to break the instruments of his opponents.

Now was the time for Mirza-Schaffy to gather all his courage, for he knew the crisis of his destiny to be at hand. He arranged with Fatima that the day of the singing festival should be likewise that of his flight with Zuleikha, for he was troubled with no doubt concerning the success of his lyrical efforts. An Armenian who was about setting forth with a caravan was confided in, and engaged to reserve camels for and accord protection to the fugitives.

The minutes seemed like days, the hours like years, until the announcement was heralded that Ibrahim Chan had sallied forth with his guests to the prize combat, and that the ladies awaited the minstrels. They were assembled on the housetop, lovely matrons and maidens, and there was spread a large carpet on which set two players on the sass and tshengir, between whom each singer in turn took his place to sing his offering to the sound of strings. The handsomest boy in Gjaendsha was appointed to hand to each singer a silver plate, wherewith to conceal from the eye of beauty the emotions depicted in his countenance while singing. Twenty singers stood in a circle and stepped forth one after the other, Mirza-Schaffy, as the youngest of the number, coming last. All other emanations he felt to be faint sparks in comparison with the fire of his own. How could it be otherwise, considering the source of his inspiration? As he sang his heart swelled with ecstasy, and when he concluded there lay at his feet a full-blown rose. He was victor of the festival, yet so filled was he with thoughts of his beloved that he remembered not to break the instruments of the vanquished.

The flight was effected; the bride, although awaiting the coming of the bridegroom in bridal array, offering all due resistance as he led her from her home; indeed, so zealous was she to be faithful to the customs of her country that her cries would have roused the household had not the prudent Fatima interposed. On reaching the caravan a double security seemed to arise from the Armenian proving to be the accepted lover of Fatima; and Zuleikha, although deeming it a degradation for a daughter of Ali to unite her destinies with an unbeliever, was herself too strongly in the bondage of love to withhold her consent. Then how happy were they all! and what precautions were taken for their safety! Nevertheless, they were overtaken by the angry father and the outraged suitor of his choice. Zuleikha and Fatima were rudely snatched from the protection of their lovers, and the learned scribe—we blush to write it—received on the very soles which had borne him to the summit of bliss the ignominious blows of the bastinado.

From that day Mirza-Schaffy had felt indisposed to bestow his affections on mortal woman, and since the sun of his hopes had set dwelt serenely in the moonlight of remembrance. As Zuleikha, the embodiment of all virtue and beauty, had loved him, he believed himself to be an object of adoration to all feminine hearts, and grimly resolved that all womankind must suffer in expiation of his own sufferings.

During the winter there arrived another student from Germany, who, becoming acquainted with Bodenstedt, arranged to share with him the lessons in Tartar and Persian, which Mirza-Schaffy was pleased to call "hours of wisdom." In course of time other friends joined the circle, so that finally arose a formal divan, where the wise man of Gjaendsha discoursed less on personalities, dwelling chiefly on general effusions of wisdom, interspersed with many a song. One of the latter reads as though designed by Bodenstedt to indicate the relation borne by Mirza-Schaffy to his own productions:

Thou art of my song the begetter; Its drapery putteth my wand on; Thou yieldest the purest of marble, And I lay the sculpturing hand on.

Thou givest the spirit, the essence: Me for utt'rance alone mak'st demand on— Oft my power's deficient, and madly Thy crude thoughts I haste to expand on.

Sundry songs extolling the beneficence of wine and earthly pleasure arose at this period. Of these we find none more attractive than that which owed its origin to a conversation held in the divan of wisdom concerning certain Russians and Georgians who drank wine more freely than the camels drank water, yet had gained no inspiration therefrom:

From wine's fiery fascination From the goblet's mystic pleasure, Poison foams, and sweet refreshment, Beauty flows, and degradation, As the drinker's worth may measure, According to his brain's assessment.

In debasement deeply sunken Lies the fool, through wine's might captur'd: When he drinks becomes he drunken; When we drink we are enraptured. Sparkling gleams of wit, worth dreaming, Flash from tongues like angel's seeming, And with ardor we are teeming, And alone with beauty drunken.

Well resembles wine the shower Which to mire fresh mire amasses, But to fair fields brings a dower Rich in blessing as it passes.

One evening Bodenstedt discovered his worthy teacher singing before a house on whose roof sat a graceful maiden, and from the man's whole manner then and thereafter concluded that in the long-faithful heart had been at last replaced the image of Zuleikha. And so it proved. On the very evening when he was returning home with softened heart after the recital of the joys and sorrows of his first love, Mirza-Schaffy's attention had been arrested by a lovely maiden who, as he pushed back his cap—solely, of course, to cool his heated brow—gave incontestable evidences of being smitten with him. When he went to his couch that night sleep refused to visit his eyelids, and as he restlessly tossed to and fro, the image of Zuleikha haunting him with reproachful mien, his thoughts turned ever to the peerless maiden who menaced further fidelity to the old love. Ere morning dawned he had resolved to break the spell, and for several days avoided the locality of the fair enticer. But the attraction became finally too strong to resist. He went, he saw the maiden, and she bestowed on him a glance which rendered him her slave for life;

A wond'rous glance hath met my eyes: The magic of this moment rare Worketh for aye a fresh surprise, A miracle beyond compare.

A question, therefore, ask I thee— Pay heed, sweet life whom I adore— Was that fond glance bestowed on me? A token give, then, I implore.

And round thee could my strong arm cling, Might I to thee life consecrate, Loud jubilees my heart would sing, And these to thee I'd dedicate.

The first interview presents decidedly a comical side. By a confidential attendant Mirza-Schaffy was introduced on the roof disguised in female costume, his face and flowing beard modestly covered with a long veil. Luckily, he was not doomed long to such undignified concealment, for he soon managed, through his beauty and genius, to win favor in the eyes of the lady's mother, and she promised to intercede in his behalf with the stern old father. The latter, however, having eyes neither for beauty nor poetry, thought only to demand what means of support the bold intruder had to offer his daughter, and when he learned how small these were, withheld his consent until the suitor could secure a professorship in some institution of learning. Although loath to renounce his freedom, Mirza-Schaffy determined for Hafisa's sake to make application, as he had often been advised to do, at the Tiflis Gymnasium for the position of teacher of Tartaric. But, alas! there was prepared for our poor Mirza a humiliation second only to the bastinado. His reply was a portentous document in the Russian language, of which he could not read a word. Hafisa's father demanded sight of it, had it interpreted by a learned mullah, and it proved to be a summons for the applicant to appear at an appointed hour for examination. This was too much. Mirza-Schaffy, the first wise man of the East, the pride of his race, the pearl in the shell of poetry, to be examined in his own language! Hafisa's father declared his belief that the mirza's wisdom was as doubtful as his fortune, and the wise man himself began to wonder whether his wisdom had not gone "pleasuring in the dusk of the evening." Moreover, during the conference with the mullah certain revelations came to light concerning the lack of orthodoxy in the mirza's belief and the frequent slurs it was his wont to cast on the powerful mullahs; and this set the old father hopelessly against him, causing him to revoke all promise of possible consent. Such being the case, Mirza-Schaffy had no heart to brave the humiliation of an examination. Shortly after, however, he was honored with a call to the new school at Gjaendsha, and Hafisa's father dying about the same time, all obstacles were removed to a union with the maiden of his choice. And so with his bride he returned to his native place, and felt that the summit of earthly bliss was attained.

Friedrich Bodenstedt has been a very prolific author, having published several volumes of poetry, besides numerous romances, tales and miscellaneous works. He is one of a committee of poets and men of learning appointed not long since to retranslate the works of Shakespeare. At present he is adding to his well-earned laurels through his volume Aus dem Nachlasse Mirza-Schaffys. The book is divided into seven parts, the first of which is dedicated to love. Then there are songs of earthly pleasure, songs of consolation, sayings of wisdom, stories in rhyme of Eastern romance, a series of problems and a "bouquet of cypresses and roses."

AUBER FORESTIER.



TO CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN.

Look where a three-point star shall weave his beam Into the slumb'rous tissue of some stream, Till his bright self o'er his bright copy seem Fulfillment dropping on a come-true dream; So in this night of art thy soul doth show Her excellent double in the steadfast flow Of wishing love that through men's hearts doth go: At once thou shin'st above and shin'st below. E'en when thou strivest there within Art's sky (Each star must round an arduous orbit fly), Full calm thine image in our love doth lie, A Motion glassed in a Tranquillity. So triple-rayed, thou mov'st, yet stay'st, serene— Art's artist, Love's dear woman, Fame's good queen!

SIDNEY LANIER.



CHARLES KINGSLEY: A REMINISCENCE.

The heat of London in the midsummer of 1857, even to my American apprehension, was intense. The noise of the streets oppressed me, and perhaps the sight now and again of freshly-watered flowers which beautify so many of the window-ledges, and which seem to flourish and bloom whatever the weather, filled me the more with a desire for the quiet of green fields and the refreshing shade of trees. I had just returned from Switzerland, and the friends with whom I had been journeying in that land of all perfections had gone back to their home among the wealds and woods of Essex. I began to feel that sense of solitude which weighs heavily on a stranger in the throng of a great city; so that it was with keen pleasure I looked forward to a visit to Mr. Kingsley. A most kind invitation had come from him, offering me "a bed and all hospitality in their plain country fashion."

At four in the afternoon of a hot July day I started for Winchfield, which is the station on the London and Southampton Railway nearest to Eversley—a journey of an hour and a half. I took a fly at Winchfield for Eversley, a distance of six miles. My way lay over wide silent moors: now and then a quiet farmstead came in view—moated granges they might have been—but these were few and far between, this part of Hampshire being owned in large tracts. It was a little after six when I drew near to the church and antique brick dwelling-house adjoining it which were the church and rectory of Eversley. There were no other houses near, so that it was evidently a wide and scattered parish. Old trees shaded the venerable irregularly-shaped parsonage, ivy and creeping plants covered the walls, and roses peeped out here and there. Mr. Kingsley himself met me at the open hall-door, and there was something in his clear and cheerful tone that gave a peculiar sense of welcome to his greeting. "Very glad to see you," said he. Then taking my bag from the fly, "Let me show you your room at once, that you may make yourself comfortable." So, leading the way, he conducted me up stairs and along a somewhat intricate passage to a room in the oldest part of the house. It was a quaint apartment, with leaden casements, a low ceiling, an uneven floor—a room four hundred years old, as Mr. Kingsley told me, but having withal a very habitable look. "I hope you'll be comfortable here," said my host as he turned to go—"as comfortable as one can be in a cottage. Have you everything you want? There will be a tea-dinner or a dinner-tea in about half an hour." Then, as he lingered, he asked, "When did you see Forster last?"

"Six weeks ago," I said—"in London. He had just received news of the vacancy at Leeds, and at once determined to offer himself as the Liberal candidate. He went to Leeds for this purpose, but subsequently withdrew his name. I gather from his speech at the banquet his supporters gave him afterward that this was a mistake, and that if he had stood he would have been elected."

"Ah," said Kingsley, "I should like to see Forster in Parliament. He is not the man, however, to make head against the tracasseries of an election contest."

Some other talk we had, and then he left me, coming back before long to conduct me to the drawing-room. Two gentlemen were there—one a visitor who soon took leave; the other, the tutor to Mr. Kingsley's son. Mrs. Kingsley came in now and shook hands with me cordially, and I had very soon the sense of being at one with them all. Our having mutual friends did much toward this good understanding, but it was partly that we seemed at once to have so much to talk of on the events of the day, and on English matters in which I took keen interest.

India was naturally our first subject, and the great and absorbing question of the mutiny. I told what the London news was in regard to it, and how serious was the look of things. Kingsley said there must be great blame somewhere—that as to the British rule in India, no man could doubt that it had been a great blessing to the country, but the individual Englishman had come very far short of his duty in his dealings with the subject race: a reckoning was sure to come. Oakfield was mentioned—a story by William Arnold of which the scene was laid in India, and which contained evidence of this ill-treatment of the Hindoos by their white masters. Kingsley spoke highly of this book. I said I thought it had hardly been appreciated in England. Kingsley thought the reason was it was too didactic—there was too much moralizing. Only the few could appreciate this: the many did not care for it in a novel.

Our tea-dinner was announced: it was served in the hall. Mrs. Kingsley spoke laughingly of their being obliged to make this their dining-room. The talk at the table fell on American affairs. Sumner's name was mentioned. I said he was in London, and that I had had a long conversation with him a few days before. Would I give them his address? they asked: they must have a visit from him. I said he would be glad to visit them, I was sure, for when I told him I was coming here he said he envied me. He was at present engaged in a round of dinners—expected to go to France in August to stay with De Tocqueville, but would be again in England in the autumn. Kingsley spoke of Brooks's death—of the suddenness of it seeming almost a judgment. I said Brooks, as I happened to know, was thought a good fellow before the assault—that he really had good qualities, and was liked even by Northern men. "So we have heard from others," said Kingsley, "and one can well believe it. The man who suffers for a bad system is often the best man—one with attractive qualities." Charles I. and Louis XVI. were instances he gave to illustrate this. A recent article in the Edinburgh Review on slavery was spoken of. I said it had attracted a good deal of attention with us, because we saw immediately it could only have been written by an American. Of slavery Mr. Kingsley spoke in calm and moderate words. I told him his introductory chapter to Two Years Ago showed that he appreciated the difficulties with which the question was encumbered. He said it would be strange if he did not see these difficulties, considering that he was of West Indian descent (his grandfather had married a West Indian heiress). He admitted that the result of emancipation in the West Indies was not encouraging as it regarded the material condition of the islands, especially of Jamaica, and he was quite able to understand how powerfully this fact would weigh on our Southern planters, and how it tended to close their ears to all anti-slavery argument. They could hardly be expected to look beyond this test of sugar-production to the moral progress of the black race which freedom alone could ensure.

Our pleasant meal being over, we strolled out on the lawn and sat down under one of the fine old trees, where we continued our talk about slavery. Mr. Kingsley said he could quite believe any story he might hear of cruelty practiced upon slaves. He knew too well his own nature, and felt that under the influence of sudden anger he would be capable of deeds as violent as any of which we read. This, of course, was putting out of view the restraints which religion would impose; but it was safe for no man to have the absolute control of others.

He left us to go into the house, and Mrs. Kingsley then spoke of his parochial labors. She wished I could spend a Sunday with them—"I should so like you to see the congregation he has. The common farm-laborers come morning and afternoon: the reason is, he preaches so that they can understand him. I wish you could have been with us last Sunday, we had such an interesting person here—Max Mueller, the great linguist and Orientalist. But we can't have pleasant meets here: we have only one spare room."

"How old is Max Mueller?" I asked.

"Twenty-eight, and he scarcely looks to be twenty-two."

"How long has Mr. Kingsley been here?" I asked.

"Fifteen years—two years as curate, and then the living becoming vacant, it was given to him."

She told me a funeral was to take place directly—that of a poor woman who had been a great sufferer. "Ah, here it comes," she said.

There was the bier borne on men's shoulders and a little company of mourners, the peasantry of the neighborhood, the men wearing smock-frocks. They were awaiting the clergyman at the lichgate. Mr. Kingsley appeared at the moment in his surplice, and the procession entered the churchyard, he saying as he walked in front the solemn sentences with which the service begins. It was the scene which I had witnessed in another part of Hampshire some years before, when the author of The Christian Year was the officiating clergyman. Mrs. Kingsley and I joined the procession and entered the church. It was a small, oddly-arranged interior—brick pavements, high-backed pews, the clerk's desk adjoining the reading-desk, but a little lower. Mr. Kingsley read the service in a measured tone, which enabled him to overcome the defect in his utterance noticeable in conversation. At the grave the rest of the office was said, and here the grief of the poor mourners overcame them. The family group consisted of the husband of the deceased, a grown-up daughter and a son, a boy of fifteen. All were much moved, but the boy the most. He cried bitterly—a long wail, as if he could not be comforted. Mr. Kingsley tried to console him, putting his arm over his shoulders. He said words of sympathy to the others also. They went their way over the heath to their desolate home. Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley spoke of the life of toil which had thus ended, and of the patience with which long-continued bodily pain had been borne. It was clear that the popular author was first of all a parish priest.

We now went into his study, where he lighted a long pipe, and we then returned to a part of the lawn which he called his quarter-deck, and where we walked up and down for near an hour. What an English summer evening it was!—dewy and still. Now and then a slight breeze stirred in the leaves and brought with it wafts of delicate odors from the flowers somewhere hidden in the deep shadows, though as yet it was not night and the sweet twilight lay about us like a charm. He asked if I knew Maurice. I did slightly—had breakfasted with him six weeks before, and had seen enough of him to understand the strong personal influence he exerted. "I owe all that I am to Maurice," said Kingsley, "I aim only to teach to others what I get from him. Whatever facility of expression I have is God's gift, but the views I endeavor to enforce are those which I learn from Maurice. I live to interpret him to the people of England."

A talk about the influence of the Oxford writers came next: on this subject I knew we should not agree, though of course it was interesting to me to hear Mr. Kingsley's opinion. He spoke with some asperity of one or two of the leaders, though his chief objection was to certain young men who had put themselves forward as champions of the movement. Of Mr. Keble he spoke very kindly. He said he had at one time been much under the influence of these writings. I mentioned Alexander Knox as being perhaps the forerunner of the Oxford men. "Ah," he said, "I owe my knowledge of that good man to Mrs. Kingsley: you must talk with her about him." We joined the party in the drawing-room, and there was some further conversation on this subject.

At about ten o'clock the bell was rung, the servants came in, prayers were said, and the ladies (Mrs. Kingsley and their daughter's governess) bid us good-night. Then to Mr. Kingsley's study, where the rest of the evening was spent—from half-past ten to half-past twelve—the pipe went on, and the talk—a continuous flow. Quakerism was a subject. George Fox, Kingsley said, was his admiration: he read his Journal constantly—thought him one of the most remarkable men that age produced. He liked his hostility to Calvinism. "How little that fellow Macaulay," he said, "could understand Quakerism! A man needs to have been in Inferno himself to know what the Quakers meant in what they said and did." He referred me to an article of his on Jacob Boehme and the mystic writers, in which he had given his views in regard to Fox.

We talked about his parish work: he found it, he said, a great help to him, adding emphatically that his other labor was secondary to this. He had trained himself not to be annoyed by his people calling on him when he was writing. If he was to be their priest, he must see them when it suited them to come; and he had become able if called off from his writing to go on again the moment he was alone. I asked him when he wrote. He said in the morning almost always: sometimes, when much pushed, he had written for an hour in the evening, but he always had to correct largely the next morning work thus done. Daily exercise, riding, hunting, together with parish work, were necessary to keep him in a condition for writing: he aimed to keep himself in rude health. I asked whether Alton Locke had been written in that room. "Yes," he said—"from four to eight in the mornings; and a young man was staying with me at the time with whom every day I used to ride, or perhaps hunt, when my task of writing was done."

A fine copy of St. Augustine attracted my attention on his shelves—five volumes folio bound in vellum. "Ah," he said, "that is a treasure I must show you;" and taking down a volume he turned to the fly-leaf, where were the words "Charles Kingsley from Thomas Carlyle," and above them "Thomas Carlyle from John Sterling." One could understand that Carlyle had thus handed on the book, notwithstanding its sacred associations, knowing that to Kingsley it would have a threefold value. My eye caught also a relic of curious interest—a fragment from one of the vessels of the Spanish Armada. It lay on the mantelpiece: I could well understand Kingsley's pleasure in possessing it.

At the breakfast-table the next morning we had much talk in regard to American writers. Kingsley admitted Emerson's high merit, but thought him too fragmentary a writer and thinker to have enduring fame. He had meant that this should be implied as his opinion in the title he gave to Phaethon—"Loose Thoughts for Loose Thinkers"—a book he had written in direct opposition to what he understood to be the general teaching of Emerson. I remarked upon the great beauty of some of Emerson's later writings and the marvelous clearness of insight which was shown in his English Traits. Kingsley acquiesced in this, but referred to some American poetry, so called, which Emerson had lately edited, and in his preface had out-Heroded Herod. Kingsley said the poems were the production of a coarse, sensual mind. His reference, of course, was to Walt Whitman, and I had no defence to make. Of Lowell, Mr. Kingsley spoke very highly: his Fable for Critics was worthy of Rabelais. Mr. Froude, who is Kingsley's brother-in-law, had first made him acquainted with Lowell's poetry. Hawthorne's style he thought was exquisite: there was scarcely any modern writing equal to it. Of all his books he preferred the Blithedale Romance.

We talked of Mr. Froude, whom Kingsley spoke of as his dearest friend: he thought Froude sincerely regretted ever having written the Nemesis of Faith. Mr. Helps, author of Friends in Council, he spoke of as his near neighbor there in Hampshire, and his intimate friend. Mr. Charles Reade he knew, and I think he said he was also a neighbor: his Christie Johnston he thought showed high original power. Mrs. Gaskell we talked of, whose Life of Charlotte Bronte had just then been published: Mr. Kingsley thought it extremely interesting and "slightly slanderous." He told me of the author of Tom Brown's School-days, a copy of which, fresh from the publishers, was lying on his table. Mr. Hughes is now so well known to us I need only mention that Mr. Kingsley spoke of him as an old pupil of Arnold's and a spiritual child of Maurice. He spoke most warmly of him, and offered me a letter of introduction to him. I could not avail myself of this, having so little time to remain in London.

I must mention, as showing further Mr. Kingsley's state of mind toward Maurice, that he had named his son after him. He spoke of the boy as being intended for the army: the family, he said, had been soldiers for generations. "That is the profession England will need for the next five-and-twenty years." Of Forster he said, "What a pity he had not been put in the army at the age of eighteen!—he would have been a general now. England has need of such men." I note this as showing the curious apprehension of war which he, an Englishman, felt eighteen years ago, and which he expressed to me, an American. How little either of us thought of the struggle which men of English blood were to engage in in three years from that time! How little I could dream that one of the decisive battles of the world was so soon to be fought in my own State, Pennsylvania!

Our morning was spent in all this varied talk, walking partly on the lawn, partly in the study. His pipe was still his companion. He seemed to need to walk incessantly, such was his nervous activity of temperament. He asked me if it annoyed me for him to walk so much up and down his study. The slight impediment in his speech one forgot as one listened to the flow of his discourse. He talked a volume while I was with him, and what he said often rose to eloquence. There was humor too in it, of which I can give no example, for it was fine and delicate. But what most impressed me was his perfect simplicity of character. He talked of his wife with the strongest affection—wished I could remain longer with them, if only to know her better. Nothing could be more tender than his manner toward her. He went for her when we were in the study, and the last half hour of my stay she sat with us. She is one of five sisters who are all married to eminent men.

It occurs to me to note, as among my last recollections of our talk, that I spoke of Spurgeon, whom I had heard in London a short time before, and was very favorably impressed with. I could not but commend his simple, strong Saxon speech, the charm of his rich full voice, and above all the earnest aim which I thought was manifest in all he uttered. Mr. Kingsley said he was glad to hear this, for he had been told of occasional irreverences of Spurgeon's, and of his giving way now and then to a disposition to make a joke of things. Not that he objected altogether to humor in sermons: he had his own temptations in this way. "One must either weep at the follies of men or laugh at them," he added. I told him Mr. Maurice had spoken to me of Mr. Spurgeon as no doubt an important influence for good in the land, and he said this was on the whole his own opinion. He told me, however, of teaching of quite another character, addressed to people of cultivation mainly, and to him peculiarly acceptable. His reference was to Robertson's Sermons: he showed me the volume—the first series—just then published. The mention of this book perhaps led to a reference by Mr. Kingsley to the Unitarians of New England, of whom he spoke very kindly, adding, in effect, that their error was but a natural rebound from Calvinism, that dreary perversion of God's boundless love.

But I had now to say good-bye to these new friends, who had come to seem old friends, so full and cordial had been their hospitality, and so much had we found to talk of in the quickly-passing hours of my visit. Mr. Kingsley drove me three miles on my way to Winchfield. His talk with me was interspersed with cheery and friendly words to his horse, with whom he seemed to be on very intimate terms. "Come and see us again," he said as we parted: "the second visit, you know, is always the best."

ELLIS YARNALL.



OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

A WOMAN'S OPINION OF PARIS AND THE PARISIANS.

I have now lived in Paris two consecutive years, and during this time the question has often been put to me, "How do you like Paris and the Parisians?" That question I will now try to answer.

Like Paris? Of course I do—heartily and truly. Cold indeed must the heart be that does not find space in its depths for a true affection for the fair queen-city which welcomes all strangers so kindly and hospitably, which has a smile for all, and which at the wide banquet of her bounty sets forth food for every phase of mental hunger. Do you wish to study? Her libraries lie open to your research—her monuments, her galleries, her public institutions are given to your inspection, freely and without price. Do you seek amusement? Paris, in that respect, is like the rollicking heroine of Barbe-Bleu: there is none like Boulotte, "quand il s'agit de batifoler." Do you wish to hide yourself in depths of unbroken quiet? There are in her very heart lonely streets where scarce a cart ever penetrates, and in her suburbs green shaded nooks where the spirit of Solitude reigns supreme.

Life runs on such smooth and well-oiled wheels for all humanity in Paris that half the cares that torture us are cast aside as soon as we enter her precincts. Take, for instance, the grand question of housekeeping. Fancy living in a land where all the servants are skilled and civil, if not all trustworthy and honest; where washing-days and ironing-days and baking-days are unknown; where there are no staircases to sweep down and no front-door steps to scour; where rents and eating and all other household expenses may be gauged in accordance with one's purse. If you wish to entertain, you may give a soiree that will cost ten dollars if you cannot afford to give a ball that costs five thousand. Nothing is de rigueur in Paris. It is neither incumbent upon you to be housed splendidly nor to feast sumptuously—to drive your own carriage nor to entertain an army of servants. "Do the best you can" is the motto of Parisian life. And so it often happens that in a small room, up half a dozen flights of stairs, with a cup of tea for sole refreshment and music or conversation for sole amusement, one will find some of the pleasantest society in Paris. You do not get champagne and boned turkey and the German, but you hear sometimes a little music, such as one pays untold gold to hear at the opera, or a fragment of declamation by some noted elocutionist, or a new poem fresh from the pen of some celebrated writer. And you have always conversation; that is to say, the wit and sparkle of the wittiest and brightest nation on the face of the earth. In a world that is becoming more and more a Paradise of Fools the charm of sheer brain and brightness is irresistible. To live in such an intellectual centre is in itself delightful. Paris is a veritable Foire aux Idees. Its criticism, keen as the sword of Saladin, overwhelming as the battle-axe of Coeur de Lion, is in itself a study. It is not so much the intellectual productions of Paris as the comments they call forth that are at once instructive and fascinating.

When we turn from the world of intellect to that of ordinary life the same charm haunts our footsteps. Everything is so well done, so gracefully and so winningly presented! The exquisite perfume of refinement hangs about every trivial detail. Your washerwoman is a lady, and your coalman a Chesterfield. If a Frenchman is ever rude, he is rude with malice prepense and aforethought. He knows better, we may be sure. Patrick may err on the score of politeness from ignorance, but Alphonse is a beast only because he chooses to be bestial. All the traditions of his race run counter to his conduct when he forgets the supreme suavity that should characterize a Gaul.

And yet it is possible for an American—or rather an Anglo-Saxon—to live for years in the midst of this brilliant, polished, fascinating people, and never to feel specially interested in them, either individually or nationally. What is the reason? Why is it that, loving Paris like a second home, we do not take the Parisians to our hearts as brothers and sisters, or at least as dear first cousins? The causes are many and various. In the first place, the Parisians do not like us. The popularity which Americans were said to possess in Paris has vanished with the Empire—that is, if it really existed. It probably was nothing more at any time than the courtesy shown by an astute sovereign of a nation of shopkeepers to a nation of purchasers. To-day Americans are not popular in Parisian society. It is almost impossible that they should be. Our ideas, our social customs, our notions of right and wrong, are diametrically opposed to all the social theories of France. Our girls, with their free frank ways and their liberty of speech and action, are so many disreputable horrors in Parisian eyes. Madame la Comtesse de St. Germain would as soon think of taking her daughters to see Schneider as of permitting them to associate with young ladies who are allowed to receive morning calls from gentlemen without the presence of their parents—who call the male friends of their childhood by their first names—and who are suffered to witness Faust at the opera and La Haine at La Gaite. Americans, especially wealthy ones, usually draw around them a vast circle of French acquaintances, it is true, but these are mostly sponges and adventurers, well born and well bred, it may be, but decidedly, to use a vulgar but expressive American idiom, "on the make." Of the pure and inner sanctuary of French society scarce a glimpse is afforded to these alien eyes. It would not amuse them very much if it were, for, by all accounts, this hallowed inner circle is as dull as it is exclusive. The charm of French society is to be found in those salons which are frequented by the kings of Parisian Bohemia—journalists, poets, dramatists, artists—wherein the Republic is queen and Victor Hugo a god.

Two great and ineradicable defects underlie the brightness and fascination of the external part of French character—namely, selfishness and insincerity. Perfect in manner, in dress, in grace, in suavity, in sweetness it may be, the French are utterly and wholly unreliable. They resemble the phantom woman in the story told by Leigh Hunt, that was only a suit of clothes, with no face beneath the hood and no body inside of the robes; or rather those malignant spirits that look like fair women when seen in front, but when seen from behind show only as hollow shells.

And the tradespeople, the bourgeoisie—your dressmaker, your milliner, your tailor, your butcher and baker and candlestick-maker—skilled and suave and generally charming—O heaven and earth! how they do lie! Not occasionally, not when hard-pressed, not when truth will not do as well, but persistently, calmly, eternally. "I swear to you, monsieur," will your Parisian say, "that your work shall be done in two hours," Esteem yourself fortunate if it is finished in two days: very probably two weeks will see it still uncompleted. Send for a workman to execute some little job about your house. "He will come at once—yes, at once." Days roll round, and he never comes at all. Your dressmaker agrees to make you a dress for a certain price: your bill comes home for half as much again. An American in Paris ordered an extra door-key, giving the original key as a pattern. The key was to cost four francs. Here is a copy of the bill as presented:

Francs. For taking off lock (a process wholly unnecessary, by the by), 1-1/2 For putting it on again, 1-1/2 Workman's time, 1 Journey from shop (about half a square), 1 Key, 4 _ Total 9

Another American sent for a bell-hanger to inspect an electric bell which was thought to be out of order, but which proved on inspection to be all right. He got a bill of five francs, whereof one item ran thus: "For looking at the bell, 2 francs." He had not touched the thing, be it borne in mind.

I cannot refrain from here making answer to a remark too often heard from American lips, that America is as immoral as France—that American society is every whit as depraved as the French. It is not. The immorality of America is as a festering wound on an otherwise healthy body: the immorality of France is like a scrofulous taint that poisons the whole life-current. One gets weary and heartsick with the old eternal song, the everlasting theme, which is sung and told and dramatized and written about and painted—that flies in your face at every corner and stares up at you from every inch of printed paper, every square of colored canvas, in the whole nationality. And to sum up at last this, "a woman's opinion," I will freely state that the longer I live in France the more I admire the Parisians and the less I like them.

L.H.H.



THE COLLEGIO ROMANO.

The Collegio Romano was always worth a visit, because it contained the celebrated Kircherian Museum and the admirable observatory presided over by Father Secchi, the world-celebrated astronomer. But these are matters sufficiently treated of by the guide-books, and may be left to them. Of the story of the enormous building they have less to tell, though there is much of curious interest to be told. But neither is that my object on the present occasion. My purpose is to speak of the strangely-changed fortunes and destinies of the old historic pile, and of what it now is and is to be. But little in Rome, as we all know, has remained unchanged in these strange latter days. But few things—at least few material things—have experienced such a change as the Collegio Romano. The "Collegio Romano" was in fact nothing more than the principal convent of the Jesuits. The establishment was founded immediately after the institution of the order, and mainly by the care and energy of Saint Francisco Borgia, the third general of the order. The present building, however, was raised in the pontificate of Gregory XIII. by the Florentine architect Ammanati, the first stone having been laid in 1582. It is an enormous mass of building—enormous even among the huge structures for which Rome above all other cities is remarkable—situated near the church of the Gesu and not far from the Piazza di Venezia. There is nothing remarkable in its outward appearance save the vast size, the object of the builders having evidently been only to adapt it in a business-like way to the purposes to which it was destined. These included not only the provision of a residence for the fathers of the order resident in Rome, and for the all-but all-powerful general of the terrible order—the "Black Pope," as the Romans were wont to call him—but also all the locale necessary for a very large educational establishment, whence the building took its name.

The Jesuits, like all other members of the almost innumerable monastic establishments in Rome, have, as we all know, been turned out of their homes, their property has been—or rather is being—sold, and the convents have become national property. Many of these are vast buildings, but no one of them is to be compared with the great Jesuit convent, which was the central home and head-quarters of the "Company of Jesus." And a memorable day it was in Rome, and a very singular sight, when, the dreaded fathers of the terrible "Company" having taken their departure, the few remaining goods and chattels in the convent were sold by public auction. Few and not of much value were the articles to be sold; for the fathers are not men to take no heed of those shadows which coming events cast before them, and they had long foreseen that their day in Rome was at an end, and had contrived to leave as little as might be to the spoiler. None the less was it a strange sight, as I say, to see the profanum vulgus of the buyers of old furniture, and the still more numerous herd of the curious, looking on with very diversified feelings—some with bitterness enough in their hearts—pushing and tramping through those noble corridors and vast halls and secret cells, on which no profane gaze had rested for more than three hundred years.

There has been abundance of doubt, but no difficulty, in disposing of the great number of buildings which have thus come into the possession of the nation. Many of the smaller convents have been sold in the same manner as the other property of the ousted communities. But this has not been done—and indeed could hardly have been done—in the case of the larger buildings; and there has been a competition very much in the nature of a scramble for the appropriation of them by the heads of the several governmental departments. That of Public Instruction, now worthily represented by Signor Bonghi, has succeeded in laying hands on perhaps the grandest prize of all, the great Jesuit establishment of the Collegio Romano; and, looking to the uses to which it is being put by Signor Bonghi, it may, I think, be said that it could not have been better bestowed. Under his auspices it is intended to assume, and is indeed rapidly assuming, the functions of the still vaster pile of building in Great Russell street, London, known to all the world as the British Museum, as will be seen from the following statement of the purposes it is intended to serve and of the various matters to be housed in it.

On the ground-floor there is already established a "Museo Scolastico-Pedagogico"—a museum of all the means and appurtenances that are used, or have been used, in different countries for the ends and purposes of instruction. This is the idea and the creation of Signor Bonghi; and it will, I think, be admitted that it is a very happy one and likely to be fruitful in good results. A visit to it is more interesting than might perhaps at first sight be imagined. I may mention that on asking the very competent and enlightened director of the establishment what people he considered to have done most and as foremost in the work of educating the masses, he said that the Germans had done most theoretically and in the way of thinking on the philosophy of the matter, but that the Americans had done most practically in the way of improving the material means for popular education.

On the first and second floors the great national library, the "Biblioteca Vittorio Emmanuele," is—or, it would perhaps be more accurate to say, will be—placed and made accessible to the public. At Florence there exists the celebrated Magliabecchian Library, which when Florence became the capital of Italy was called the National Library—somewhat ungratefully, it will probably be thought, to the learned and indefatigable collector who gave his life and his means to the formation of it, and then bequeathed it to his native city. And I am inclined to believe that this library is still, for all the general working purposes of a nineteenth-century student, the best in Italy. In Rome, when the Eternal City in its turn became the capital of a New Italy, there existed nothing that deserved to be called a national library, and the present minister of Public Instruction set about doing what was possible to supply the want. The Company of Jesus possessed a fine and valuable library, containing about one hundred and seventy thousand volumes. This, when the Jesuits were turned out, was declared national property, and it forms the nucleus of the new Victor Emmanuel Library. While the Jesuits inhabited their old home it was arranged in one very fine hall built in the form of a cross, which will continue to be one of the principal receptacles, in the new establishment. It was in the middle of 1874 that the Italian government took possession of this collection. To this have been added forty-eight other libraries, the former property of the suppressed convents of the city and provinces of Rome. They were placed for the nonce in the cells which had been inhabited by the Jesuit fathers. The mass of books thus collected amounts to about four hundred thousand volumes. It will be seen at once that the labor of reducing to order, classifying and arranging such a confused mass must be truly herculean. But the first librarian of the Victor Emmanuel Library, Signor Carlo Castellani, well known in the literary world as a palaeographer of great eminence, is laboring at the colossal task with an energy and a zeal that have already accomplished much, and is daily making sensible advances in the work. It is, however, also evident that four hundred thousand volumes thus collected must include an immense number of duplicates; and, worse still, that (as may be readily supposed from the sources whence the books have come) one special branch of general literature will be represented in very undue proportion. Of course, the greater portion of the conventual libraries was theological. It may be presumed that classical and (old) historical literature will be found to exist, the former in tolerable completeness (so far as regards old and in many cases now obsolete editions), and the latter in considerable abundance. But of modern literature little or nothing can be expected, even of Italian, and still less of any other language. Among the number of volumes which has been mentioned there are some seven or eight thousand manuscripts, and perhaps an equal number of the editions of the fifteenth century, which go far to make the library an interesting one to the learned and to the student and lover of bibliography, but are of very little avail toward rendering the collection worth much as a national working library. The question then arises, What means has Italy of procuring such a library for her capital? Something may be probably expected from the liberality of her Parliament in furtherance of this great national object. But for the present, in the depressed (though improving) state of the Italian finances, this cannot be much. There exists in Italy a law similar to that on the same subject in England, by which every publisher is obliged to deposit one copy of every book published in the national library. But this copy at present is sent to the Magliabecchian Library at Florence. Signor Castellani hopes that the privilege may be transferred, as seems but reasonable, to Rome. But I do not see why it should be necessary thus to impoverish Florence to enrich the capital. In England the law requires eleven copies which are distributed to the great libraries of the three kingdoms. It is true that this exaction has sometimes been complained of, and it is said that in the case of very costly illustrated works the tax is a very heavy one, and that in some instances it has operated to make the production of certain books impossible. And perhaps it may be reasonable to make some regulation by which such works should be exempted from the obligation. But in ordinary cases the tax is an almost inappreciable one, and, such as it is, must of course fall ultimately on the writers and readers of books—mainly on the latter—for the benefit of which classes libraries exist. It seems to me, therefore, that a somewhat larger number of copies than one or two might reasonably and advantageously be exacted from publishers. And if three or four copies were delivered to the great Roman library, there would be the means of effecting very advantageous exchanges with other countries. I asked Signor Castellani what increase in the number of volumes the locale now at the disposal of the library would be capable of accommodating. He said that there would be room for about seven hundred thousand volumes, evidently a quite inadequate provision for the future. Many years will not elapse before the measure which is now demanded at the British Museum—viz., the removal of all the various collections housed there to other localities, and the dedication of the entire building to the library—will become necessary at the old Collegio Romano. Vast as the building is, the entirety of it is not at all too large for the Roman library of the future. Or—since we are allowing our thoughts to consider events which cast their shadows before as if they were accomplished facts—may it not perhaps be found better some of these days to move the whole of the present collection to the Vatican, to be united with the colossal and almost unknown hoards there buried in one collection? As it is, a new reading-room, after the model of that existing at the National Library in Paris, is about to be built in the courtyard of the Collegio Romano. The classification, arrangement and methods of working the library will be copied in great measure from those introduced by Mr. Panizzi at the British Museum. Unlike the liberal practice of the great German libraries, no volume will be on any account permitted to leave the library. I was sorry to find that in one all-important respect the Roman practice as regards the national library will differ from that of London. The collection is being catalogued in slips, to be kept, after the fashion of booksellers, in boxes made for the purpose, and there is no present intention of making any catalogue in volumes accessible to the public. Of course it is impossible to allow the public to have access to the slips; and all who have ever really used a great library know but too well that a library the catalogue of which is not accessible to the student is at least half useless. Even putting aside the numerous cases in which an inquirer knows of the existence of such or such a work, but is not aware of the author's name, and cannot therefore ask for or obtain the book in question, it happens more often than not that a person inquiring on any given subject finds his best guide to the available sources of information in the catalogue.

I have not left myself room, I fear, to say anything on the present occasion of the other highly interesting collections which are at present lodged, or in the course of being placed, under the all-sheltering roof of the Collegio Romano. I must content myself with simply enumerating them, with the hope of giving some account of them at some future time. I may briefly state, then, that the celebrated Kircherian Museum, formed toward the close of the sixteenth century by the learned Jesuit father Kircher, still occupies the rooms on the ground-floor, with a somewhat improved arrangement, which it occupied when the fathers of the Company inhabited the building. The collection of ancient Roman marbles discovered in the excavations of the buried city of Ostia have been brought thence, and arranged in rooms also on the third floor—a fact which strikes one as not a little to the credit of the handiwork of Ammanati, the Florentine architect. Also on the third floor there is an exceedingly interesting collection, of which I hope to speak somewhat more at length another time. It is called a palaeo-ethnographical museum, and consists of a large collection of the implements of all sorts of the people belonging to the pre-historic period, together with a similar gathering of articles used by the uncivilized races of the present day. The interest of such a comparative study as is here suggested is, as may be readily understood, very great. On the fourth floor there is a very considerable collection of objects illustrating Italian art of the ante-Roman period, and also a Museum of Industrial Art, conceived on the plan of the English School of Art at South Kensington.

T.A.T.



TRADES UNIONISM IN ITS INFANCY.

In these days of trades unionism and strikes an account of the germ of such associations in this country is not without interest. So far back as 1806 a remarkable trial arising out of such a combination took place before the recorder of Philadelphia and a jury. It lasted three days and excited extraordinary interest. Jared Ingersoll and Joseph Hopkinson were counsel for the prosecution, and Caesar A. Rodney and Walter Franklin for the defence.

The defendants, eight in number, were indicted for not being content to work at the usual prices, but contriving to increase and augment them, and for endeavoring to prevent by threats, menaces and other unlawful means other artificers from working at the usual rate, and uniting into a club or combination to make and ordain unlawful and arbitrary rules to govern those engaged in their trade, and unjustly exact great sums of money by means thereof.

The evidence went to show in the clearest manner that a system of frightful thralldom had been put in force. A witness named Harrison stated that when he reached the United States in 1794 he found this system of terrorism prevalent. He went to work for a Mr. Bedford, and presently got a hint that if he did not join the association of journeymen shoemakers he was liable to be "scabbed," which meant that men would not work in the same shop, nor board or lodge in the same house, nor would they work at all for the same employer. The case of this man seemed exceptionally hard. He made shoes exclusively, and when "a turn-out came to raise the wages on boots" he remonstrated, pleading that shoes did not enter into the question, and urging that he had a sick wife and a large family. But it was all to no purpose. He then resolved that he would turn a "scab" unknown to the association, and continue his work; but having a neighbor whom it was impossible for him to deceive, he went to him and said that he knew his circumstances, and that his family must perish or go to "the bettering-house" unless he continued to work. This neighbor, Swain, replied that he knew his condition was desperate, but that a man had better make any sacrifice than turn a "scab" at that time. He presently informed against him, and Mr. Bedford (his employer) was warned that he must discharge his "scabs." He refused, saying that, "Let the consequence be what it might, we should sink or swim together." However, one Saturday night, when all but Harrison and a man named Logan had left him, Bedford's resolution gave way, and he exclaimed, "I don't know what the devil I am to do: they will ruin me in the end. I wish you would go to the body and pay a fine, if not very large, in order to set the shop free once more." The fine offered was refused, and Mr. Bedford's shop remained "under scab" for a year. Still, Mr. Bedford, who must have been a very plucky fellow, would not give Harrison up, but removed in 1802 to Trenton. Harrison stated that although he could not, had Mr. Bedford given him up, have got work anywhere else, and that he might have ground him down to any terms, yet he (Bedford) very nobly always gave him full price. At length, by paying a fine, Harrison became reconciled to his persecutors, and Bedford's shop was once more free.

William Forgrave said that "the name of a 'scab' is very dangerous: men of this description have been hurt when out at night." He had been threatened, and joined the association from fear of personal injury. A vast deal more of evidence was given and eloquent speeches delivered by counsel, but the foregoing gives the sum and substance of the case.

In the course of the summing up Recorder Levy said: "To make an artificial regulation is not to regard the excellence of the work or quality of the material, but to fix a positive and arbitrary price, governed by no standard, but dependent on the will of the few who are interested.... What, then, is the operation of this kind of conduct upon the commerce of the city? It exposes it to inconveniences, if not to ruin: therefore it is against the public welfare. How does it operate upon the defendants? We see that those who are in indigent circumstances, and who have families to maintain, have declared here on oath that it was impossible for them to hold out. They were interdicted from all employment in future if they did not continue to persevere in the measures taken by the journeymen shoemakers. Does not such a regulation tend to involve necessitous men in the commission of crimes? If they are prevented working for six weeks, it might lead them to procure support for their wives and children by burglary, larceny or highway robbery."

The jury found the defendants "guilty of a combination to raise their wages," and the court sentenced them to pay a fine of eight dollars each, with costs of suit, and to stand committed till paid.



MORAL TRAINING IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

One of our popular clergymen, in a late Sunday discourse upon the Bible in the public schools, labored to show that the question was a very unimportant one. because none were much interested in it except infidels and politicians—a sufficiently absurd position for a professed teacher of the people to assume. Doubtless it is a folly to fan into flame the slumbering embers of a quarrel, but it is a greater folly to pretend, in the face of the common sense of the people, that all signs of fire are extinguished or never existed where there is so much inflammable material about and the "wind of doctrine" running high.

This question of secular education for our public schools is in fact one of the most difficult of solution. Chicago has met it in a summary manner by excluding the Bible from all her free schools, but this does not settle the question, because both believers and unbelievers in the various creeds of the churches admit that there should be provision made for the training of the moral faculties of the children in our public schools. Many of them, especially in cities and large manufacturing centres, come out of the dark alleys where intemperance, poverty and ignorance tend to arrest the development of their higher sentiments. For the unfortunate children of such homes the sessions of the public school afford the only glimpse of a better life, the only chance for moral and aesthetic culture. Protestants, as a rule, honestly believe that the reading of the Bible at the opening of school tends to waken and develop the moral aspirations of the child. Just as honestly and conscientiously do Catholics disbelieve in the efficacy of Bible reading, while they boldly condemn secular education as a principle. Father Muller, priest of the congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, in his work upon public school education, published three years ago in Boston, says: "The language of the Vicar of Christ in regard to godless education is very plain and unmistakable".... "Our Holy Father, Pope Pius IX., has declared that Catholics cannot approve of a system of educating youth unconnected with the Catholic faith and the power of the Church".... "The voice of common sense, the voice of sad experience, the voice of Catholic bishops, and especially the voice of the Holy Father, is raised against and condemns the public school system as a huge humbug, injuring and not promoting personal virtue and good citizenship, and as being most pernicious to the Catholic faith and life and all good morals. A pastor, therefore, cannot maintain the contrary opinion without incurring guilt before God and the Church. He cannot allow parents to send their children to such schools of infidelity. He cannot give them absolution and say, Innocens sum."

According to the American Annual Cyclopaedia for 1875, the Roman Catholic Church has in the United States 1 cardinal, 8 archbishops, 54 bishops, 4872 priests, 4731 churches, 1902 chapels, 68 colleges, 511 academies, and a lay membership numbering over 6,000,000. This shows a great and increasing prosperity of that Church in this country; yet our institutions have nothing to fear from that prosperity unless the principles of Catholicity support the "one-man power" against the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, the foundation-principle of republicanism. Patriotic Catholic citizens claim that there is no conflict. They love their Church and their country, and will labor to preserve peace and harmony. Yet how can harmony be maintained while a large and increasing number of our tax-paying citizens, accepting their Church and its head as infallible, are forced by their spiritual allegiance to send their children to Catholic schools, though at the same time paying taxes to support those "godless" public schools condemned by the infallible Church? To take the ground that these two powers, the Catholic Church and our government, do not conflict, because one is a spiritual and the other a civil power, is simply absurd. We see that they do conflict. The pope interferes with the civil rights of our citizens when—as, for example, in his encyclical letter of December 8, 1874—he commands all Catholics to treat the liberty of speech, of the press, of conscience and of worship, the separation of Church and State and the secular education of youth, as "reprobatas, proscriptas, atque damnatas."



THE EARLIEST PRINTED BOOKS.

A recent lecture of the Rev. Dr. Storrs in New York, before the Society for the Advancement of Science and Art, must have been very interesting to an ordinary audience, but for one composed of professed promoters of learning it could hardly have been sufficiently exact to give general satisfaction if the newspaper reports of it were at all correct. They represent the lecturer as saying that an immense number of books date back to 1450. Now, the first printed book bearing a date is the Psalter of Fuest and Schoeffer, 1457. A portion of the Bible was printed by Gutenberg and Fuest in 1450, but the work was so expensive and so imperfect that it was abandoned. In 1452, after Schoeffer joined the firm, another Bible is supposed to have been printed, but no copy of it is known to exist. Of course it is well known that many of the earliest printed books are without date, but none could have been printed before 1450; and there is no proof, we believe, that the Bible said to be of 1455 bore that or any date. In that year the firm of Gutenberg, Fuest and Schoeffer dissolved. L. Gregoire in his Dictionnaire Encyclopedique, published in Paris in 1817, says that there are only three or four copies of the Fuest Bible known to exist. Dr. Storrs, however, says, without giving his authority, that there are fifteen.

The sole idea of the early printers was to imitate exactly the manuscript characters of the scribes. The initial letters of the Bibles and the numbers of the chapters were therefore added with a pen in blue and red ink alternately; and there is not the slightest doubt that these first books were palmed off upon an unsuspecting public as manuscripts. All the servants or employes of Fuest and Schoeffer were put under solemn oath to divulge nothing of the secret concerning printing. It is to the policy which the first printers exerted to conceal their art that we owe the tradition of the Devil and Dr. Faustus. Fuest having printed off quite a number of Bibles, and had the large initial letters added by hand, he took them to Paris and sold them for about fifty dollars apiece. The scribes demanded about ten times that sum, and they earned the money, for it must have been an herculean task to copy, as they did, every letter of the Bible with such exquisite care, and then draw and illuminate the heads of the chapters and the initial letters. It was a marvel how this new man could produce these ponderous books at so low a rate. And then the uniformity of the letters and the pages increased the wonder, until the cry of "sorcerer" was raised: complaints before the magistrates were made against him, his lodgings were searched and a great number of copies were found and confiscated. The populace in their ignorance and superstition declared that he was in league with the devil, and that the red ink with which the books were embellished was his blood. It is a satisfaction to know that the Parliament of Paris passed an act to discharge the sorcerer from all prosecution in consideration of the usefulness of his art.

M.H.



FLOWERS VS. FLIES.

An Irish clergyman is said to have discovered last autumn a charming antidote to flies, which it is only a pity he could not have lighted on rather earlier in the season. Having occasion to change his abode, he sent on his window-plants, calceolarias and geraniums, to that which he intended to occupy several days before he went himself, and immediately found that he was pestered with flies, whereas previously he had enjoyed perfect immunity from the nuisance. A more agreeable remedy cannot be conceived. Next autumn let our windows be a blaze of brilliancy, so that all visitors to the Centennial may say, at all events, "There are no flies in Philadelphia."



LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Shakespeare Hermeneutics; or, The Still Lion. Being an Essay towards the Restoration of Shakespeare's Text. By C.M. Ingleby, M.A., LL.D. London: Truebner & Co.

Setting aside those who care merely to see a play on the stage, it may be said that of Shakespeare there are readers and readers; and both classes have rights and privileges which should be treated with deference. The reader who studies every line should not fleer at him who studies not at all. Have we not a right to read a play of Shakespeare's through in two short hours, surrendering ourselves, unvexed by logic or grammar, to the enchantment which scenes and phrases and words conjure up as they glide through our minds? When all the atmosphere is tremulous with airs from heaven or blasts from hell, must we, forsooth! stop and philosophically investigate what Hamlet means by a "dram of eale"? Must we lose a scruple of the sport by turning aside to find out what Malvolio means by the "lady of the Strachey"? If Timon chooses to invite Ullorxa to his feast, are we to bar the door because no one ever heard the name before? No: let us have our Shakespeare (is he not as much ours as yours?) free from all notes, on a page purified from the musty cobwebs of black-letter pedants. We want no jargon of bickering critics to drown the music that sings at Heaven's gate. Give us those immortal plays just as Shakespeare wrote them, that we may read them without let or hinderance.

But, fair and softly, is not this the very point at which we are striving? With all our twistings and turnings, our patchings and piecings, have we aught else in view than to decipher just what Shakespeare wrote? Where are Shakespeare's exact words to be found? Not in the so-called Quartos; for they are said by Shakespeare's intimate and dear friends to have been "maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious impostors," and taken down perhaps from the lips of some of the actors, bribed by stoops of liquor at Yaughan's (and from the gibberish here and there set down it is to be feared that the potations were at times pottle deep). Nor can we take the Folio in which all his dramas were first collected: Shakespeare never saw a line of it; for seven years he had been hid in death's dateless night when that volume was printed. What, then, is to be done? The Quartos and Folios are all the authority we have, and none of them present what can be held to have been undeniably Shakespeare's exact words. In dealing with the text we must never for a moment forget that there stands, and will for ever stand, as interpreters between us and Shakespeare, a crew of dishonest actors or of more or less ignorant compositors. Is such a text, thus transmitted, to be held in reverence so deep that not a syllable is to be changed for fear of the cry that we are tampering with the words of Shakespeare? Is the curse in his epitaph on the mover of his bones to hang over his text? Small reverence for Shakespeare does it betoken, in our opinion, to believe this. Rather, let us regard these pages of the Folio as what they virtually are in so many cases—namely, as but little better than our modern proof-sheets. And they should be dealt with accordingly by a modern critic; but only on one condition precedent: he must be Shakespeare's peer. In default of this we can only humbly erase here, and reverently suggest there, summoning to our aid all possible knowledge, lest in plucking up the tares we pluck up the wheat also.

And this is really all that textual criticism for the last hundred and forty years has aimed at—merely to get at what Shakespeare really wrote. We know that he could not write sheer nonsense, and yet at times sheer nonsense mows at us from his printed page. Those who clamor for Shakespeare's text, pure and simple, divested of all notes and annotations, have no idea how much thought and time have been expended on every line,—nay, on every word, on every comma,—in the text of any good modern edition of his dramas, and with the single aim, be it remembered, of revealing exactly what the poet wrote.

It must not, however, be thought that since the original texts of Shakespeare's plays are so corrupt, any criticaster has good leave to expunge or expand at will, under a roving commission to hack and hew wheresoever and howsoever it may please him, under the plea of restoring the text. On the contrary, since we cannot fulfill the condition precedent of being Shakespeare's peers, we must exercise the greatest caution in changing a reading of the Quartos or Folios, lest in condemning the text as corrupt we pass judgment on our own wit.