In person, Signor Rossi is less strikingly handsome than is his rival, Salvini, but he possesses a singularly attractive and pleasing countenance. He is a Piedmontese, blue-eyed and fair-complexioned, with chestnut hair, the abundant locks of which are just touched with gray. He is tall and finely proportioned, with the chest of a Hercules and the hands and feet of a duchess. Off the stage he is peculiarly pleasing in manner, and is said to be a noble-hearted and generous gentleman, as well as an amiable and genial companion, singularly free from conceit and delighting in his art.

L.H.H.



BISHOP THIRLWALL'S PRECOCITY.

We do not remember to have seen in the various notices relative to the late Bishop Connop Thirlwall, the well-known historian, any mention of his precocity, which must have been almost without a parallel. Thirlwall came of a long line of clergymen. His father was chaplain to Dr. Percy (Percy's Reliques), bishop of Dromore, and in 1809 he published some specimens of the early genius of his son under the title of "Primitiae; or, Essays and Poems on Various Subjects, Religious, Moral and Entertaining. By Connop Thirlwall, eleven years of age. Dedicated by permission to the Bishop of Dromore." In the preface it is stated that at three years old Connop read English so well that he was taught Latin, and at four read Greek with an ease and fluency that astonished all who heard him. An accidental circumstance revealed his talent for composition when he was seven. Mrs. Thirlwall told her elder son, in her husband's absence, to write out his thoughts on a certain subject. Connop asked leave to do the same, and produced to her astonishment the following: "How uncertain is life! for no man can tell in what hour he shall leave the world. What numbers are snatched away in the bloom of youth, and turn the fine expectation of parents into sorrow! All the promising pleasures of this life will fade, and we shall be buried in the dust. God takes away a good prince from his subjects only to transplant him into everlasting joy in heaven. A good man is not dispirited by death, for it only takes him away that he may feel the pleasures of a better world. Death comes unawares, but never takes virtue with it. Edward VI. died in his minority, and disappointed his subjects, to whom he had promised a happy reign." These reflections were probably suggested by some sermon the boy had heard, but the composition is an extraordinary piece of work at such an age.

His effusions are on various themes, and comprise quite a pretty little poem, written when he was eleven, on Tintern Abbey. But perhaps the most remarkable circumstance of all is that this youthful prodigy lived to amply fulfill the promise of his youth, and proved as sagacious and moderate in the use of knowledge as he was marvelous in his powers of acquiring it. There is a remarkable tribute to these powers in John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, where he says: "The speaker with whom I was most struck, though I dissented from nearly every word he said, was Thirlwall, the historian, since bishop of St. David's, then a chancery barrister, unknown except by a high reputation for eloquence acquired at the Cambridge Union. His speech was in answer to one of mine. Before he had uttered ten sentences I set him down as the best speaker I had ever heard, and I have never since heard any one whom I placed above him."



FREAKS OF KLEPTOMANIA.

A few months ago England, more especially the part thereof contiguous to royal Windsor, was thrown into consternation by the report that a box had been discovered, sunk just below water-mark in the Thames, attached by a string to a tree, and containing a number of keys, which were believed to belong to doors leading to the royal jewel-coffers. The nine days' wonder which this intelligence, naturally enough, produced, has since had a curious explanation. They were not keys of the royal apartments at all, but Eton keys, the fruits of the kleptic propensities of an unfortunate Eton boy, who—like a very distinguished and noble member of Mr. Disraeli's cabinet, who is said even now not to be able to resist the temptation offered at cabinet councils by "Dizzy's" green kid gloves—had already paid the penalty for similar offences by being sent away. A most extraordinary instance of this propensity occurred a few years ago at a very wealthy nobleman's house in the north of England. During a visit there a lady's diamonds disappeared. There was great and general consternation, and the detective police were summoned from London. The jewels were subsequently discovered in a closet attached to the noble host's dressing-room.



LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Round my House: Notes of Rural Life in France in Peace and War. By Philip Gilbert Hamerton. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

The time has at last come when Englishmen and Americans seem disposed to study the character of the French people with some care and to judge it with impartiality. The overthrow of its military power did less to lower the nation in the eyes of foreigners than its subsequent course has done to raise it; and now that it is fairly entering on a new career in a mood and under auspices that cannot but awaken the strongest hopes, we have probably seen the last of the typical Frenchman of the Anglo-Saxon imagination—a being capable of the most frantic actions and incapable of a serious thought, a compound of frivolity and ferocity, the fit subject and facile instrument of a despotism that knew how to gratify his vanity while restraining his mad ebullitions. Among the excuses that might be offered for such misconceptions is the dearth of information in the literature of France itself in regard to the life and habits of the general mass of the population. In these days it is to novels that we chiefly go for pictures of character and manners, and French novels are almost exclusively devoted to pictures of Parisian manners. Balzac, it is true, has given us delineations of provincial life; but the delineations of Balzac are often more enigmatical than the problems of real life, and even if we could always accept the portraitures they give us as undistorted, they generally presuppose a knowledge on the part of the reader on those points on which the foreigner is most apt to be ignorant. In any case, we shall be best instructed by a writer who both understands our lack and is able to supply it, and these qualifications, with others scarcely less essential, Mr. Hamerton has brought to his task. He has thoroughly familiarized himself with French usages, but he has not lost his sense of the difference between them and those of his own land, and of the consequent necessity for explaining as well as describing, and of tracing peculiarities to their source. If he is free from the common prejudices of the foreign observer, he has not adopted the passions or the partialities of the native. He can write with fairness of different classes and factions, and can discriminate between ordinary impulses and actions and those that have their origin in strong excitement. Finally, he neither overloads us with facts and statistics nor seeks to amuse us with fancies or caricatures. He is always sober and always agreeable.

The matter of this volume was collected during a fixed residence of several years in one of the central provinces of France. No doubt Mr. Hamerton had a previous acquaintance with the country and with its language far exceeding that of the mere tourist, and his wife, it appears, is a Frenchwoman, the daughter of an ex-prefet. But he makes few allusions to any former experiences, and draws no comparisons between the conditions of life or the characteristics of the people in different provinces. This is perhaps to be considered a defect in the book, though it might not have possessed the same attractiveness had its scope been wider. It is an advantage, too, that the locality was not one which excites curiosity by its strongly marked features or abnormal types. Travelers often seem to imagine that they have only to tell us about Brittany or Gascony to win our interest, whereas it is precisely such regions that have the least novelty for us, just as the scenery of the Scottish Highlands has been made more familiar to Americans than that of almost any other part of Britain. Mr. Hamerton's house, as he gives us clearly to understand, though he suppresses names, was in the neighborhood of Autun. The situation was a strictly rural one, but with easy access to the town and the feasibility of reaching Paris, Lyons or Geneva in a night's journey by rail. It had, he writes, "one very valuable characteristic in great perfection—namely, variety. There was nothing in it very striking at first sight, but we had a little of everything." It was in an elevated plain about fifteen miles in diameter and nearly circular, girt by a circus of hills rising fifteen hundred feet above the general level. A trout stream ran through the property. There were pretty estates around of about two hundred acres each, with houses in general of modest dimensions and architecture, though occasionally aspiring to the dignity of chateaux. Roman and mediaeval remains, with architecture of different periods, were to be found in the city, as well as a public library and art-gallery, cafes and the inevitable cercle. The flora, owing to the diversities of elevation, was varied, and while vineyards clothed the foot of the slopes and gigantic old chestnuts looked down on them from above, the vegetation of the hill-tops was that of Lancashire or Scotland. It follows, of course, that the pursuits and habits of the population were correspondingly various, and there was ample opportunity for studying the different classes of society, from the noblesse to the peasants. The results of this study are presented, not in the form of labored analyses, but in easy and flowing sketches, sometimes in the form of narrative, always full of illustrative details, and winning without much discussion or argument a ready assent to the author's conclusions. Many statements in the book will, of course, not be new to generally well-informed readers, but it is not often that they come with the same force and freshness from direct observation, and still more rarely is their relation to each other or their bearing on the subject to which they relate so clearly and correctly indicated. Among the points on which Mr. Hamerton has thus thrown a stronger light are the characteristics and position of French ladies, divided, "in this part of the world," he writes, "into two distinct classes: the home women and the visiting women—les femmes d'interieur, and les femmes du monde; the exact theory of the mariage de convenance, which is popularly but wrongly considered as based on mere mercenary motives; and the mental condition of the peasant, with his natural quickness of intellect and his stupendous ignorance, his adherence to tradition and ingrained superstitiousness, and his suspicion of the nobles and tendency to emancipate himself from clerical influence. It is France in a state of transition that Mr. Hamerton paints, and his anticipations have already to some extent been justified by events. "My hope for France is," he says, "that a system of regularly-working representative government may be the final result of the long and eventful revolution, and that this form of government may give the country certain measures which it very greatly needs. A thorough system of national education is one of them, a real religious equality is another. These would never be conceded by a French monarchy of any type with which past experience has made the country familiar.... The only chance of real representation lies in the Republic."



BOOKS RECEIVED.

Improved Diary, or Marginal Index-Book of Daily Record: a Diary provided with Marginal Indices so arranged that any day of the year may be referred to at once, and the various subject-matters recorded in it may be arranged for ready reference, together with Calendars, Interest Table, etc. Devised and arranged by M.N. Lovell. Published exclusively by the Erie Publishing Co., Erie, Pa.

The Review of Gen. Sherman's Memoirs. Examined Chiefly in the light of its own Evidence. By C.W. Moulton. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co.

The Chevalier Casse-Cou: The Search for Ancestors. Translated from the French original. By Thomas Picton. New York: R.M. De Witt.

Proceedings of American Association for the Cure of Inebriates, held at Hartford, Conn., Sept. 28, 1875. Baltimore: Wm. K. Boyle & Sons.

Brief Biographies. Vol. II. English Radical Leaders. By R.J. Hinton. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Foot Notes; or, Walking as a Fine Art. By Alfred Barren. Wallingford, Conn.: Wallingford Printing Co.

Circulars of Information of the Bureau of Education. No. 7. Washington: Government Printing-office.

In Doors and Out; or, Views from the Chimney-corner. By Oliver Optic. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

Among my Books. (Second Series.) By Jas. Russell Lowell. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.

The Reading Club and Handy Speaker, No. 3. By George M. Baker. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

Her Dearest Foe. (Leisure-Hour Series.) By Mrs Alexander. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Pebbles from Old Pathways. By Minnie Ward Patterson. Chicago: C.J. Burroughs & Co.

Bridge and Tunnel Centres. By John B. McMaster. New York: D. Van Nostrand.

Safety Valves. By Richard H. Buel, C.E. New York: D. Van Nostrand.

Guido and Lita. By the Marquis of Lorne. New York: Macmillan & Co.

The Asbury Twins. By Sophie May. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

Sea-Weed and Sand: Poems. By Ben Wood Davis.

THE END