"I don't ask you to do that at all. But I never found your advice to fail. And if you give me any hint as to what I should do, I will do it on my own responsibility."

"Then I won't. But this I will do: I will tell you as nearly as ever I can what she said, and you can judge for yourself."

Very cautiously indeed did Ingram set out on this perilous undertaking. It was no easy matter so to shut out all references to Sheila's surroundings that no hint should be given to this anxious listener as to her whereabouts. But Ingram got through it successfully; and when he had finished Lavender sat some time in silence, merely toying with his knife, for indeed he had eaten nothing. "If it is her wish," he said slowly, "that I should not go to see her, I will not try to do so. But I should like to know where she is. You say she is comfortable, and she has Mairi for a companion; and that is something. In the mean time, I suppose I must wait."

"I don't see, myself, how waiting is likely to do much good," said Ingram. "That won't alter your relations much."

"It may alter her determination. A woman is sure to soften into charity and forgiveness: she can't help it."

"If you were to ask Sheila now, she would say she had forgiven you already. But that is a different matter from getting her to resume her former method of life with you. To tell you the truth, I should strongly advise her, if I were to give advice at all, not to attempt anything of the sort. One failure is bad enough, and has wrought sufficient trouble."

"Then what am I to do, Ingram?"

"You must judge for yourself what is the most likely way of winning back Sheila's confidence in you, and the most likely conditions under which she might be induced to join you again. You need not expect to get her back into that square, I should fancy: that experiment has rather broken down."

"Well," said Lavender, "I sha'n't bore you any more just now about my affairs. Look after your dinner, old fellow: your starving yourself won't help me much."

"I don't mean to starve myself at all," said Ingram, steadily making his way through the abundant dishes his friend had ordered. "But I had a very good luncheon this morning with—"

"With Sheila," Lavender said quickly.

"Yes. Does it surprise you to find that she is in a place where she can get food? I wish the poor child had made better use of her opportunities."

"Ingram," he said after a minute, "could you take some money from me, without her knowing of it, and try to get her some of the little things she likes—some delicacies, you know: they might be smuggled in, as it were, without her knowing who had paid for them? There was ice-pudding, you know, with strawberries in it, that she was fond of—"

"My dear fellow, a woman in her position thinks of something else than ice-pudding in strawberries."

"But why shouldn't she have it all the same? I would give twenty pounds to get some little gratification of that sort conveyed to her; and if you could try, Ingram—"

"My dear fellow, she has got everything she can want: there was no ice-pudding at luncheon, but doubtless there will be at dinner."

So Sheila was staying in a house in which ices could be prepared? Lavender's suggestion had had no cunning intention in it, but here was an obvious piece of information. She was in no humble lodging-house, then. She was either staying with some friends—and she had no friends but Lavender's friends—or she was staying at a hotel. He remembered that she had once dined at the Langham, Mrs. Kavanagh having persuaded her to go to meet some American visitors. Might she have gone thither?

Lavender was somewhat silent during the rest of that meal, for he was thinking of other things besides the mere question as to where Sheila might be staying. He was trying to imagine what she might have felt before she was driven to this step. He was trying to recall all manner of incidents of their daily life that he now saw might have appeared to her in a very different light from that in which he saw them. He was wondering, too, how all this could be altered, and a new life begun for them both, if that were still possible.

They had gone up stairs into the smoking-room when a card was brought to Lavender.

"Young Mosenberg is below," he said to Ingram. "He will be a livelier companion for you than I could be. Waiter, ask this gentleman to come up."

The handsome Jew-boy came eagerly into the room, with much excitement visible on his face.

"Oh, do you know," he said to Lavender, "I have found out where Mrs. Lavender is—yes? She is at your aunt's house. I saw her this afternoon for one moment—" He stopped, for he saw by the vexation on Ingram's face that he had done something wrong. "Is it a mistake?" he said. "Is it a secret?"

"It is not likely to be a secret if you have got hold of it," said Ingram sharply.

"I am very sorry," said the boy. "I thought you were all anxious to know—"

"It does not matter in the least," said Lavender quietly to both of them. "I shall not seek to disturb her. I am about to leave London."

"Where are you going?" said the boy.

"I don't know yet."

That, at least, had been part of the result of his meditations; and Ingram, looking at him, wondered whether he meant to go away without trying to say one word to Sheila.

"Look here, Lavender," he said, "you must not fancy we were trying to play any useless and impertinent trick. To-morrow or next day Sheila will leave your aunt's house, and then I should have told you that she had been there, and how the old lady received her. It was Sheila's own wish that the lodgings she is going to should not be known. She fancies that would save both of you a great deal of unnecessary and fruitless pain, do you see? That really is her only object in wishing to have any concealment about the matter."

"But there is no need for any such concealment," he said. "You may tell Sheila that if she likes to stay on with my aunt, so much the better; and I take it very kind of her that she went there, instead of going home or to a strange house."

"Am I to tell her that you mean to leave London?"

"Yes."

They went into the billiard-room. Mosenberg was not permitted to play, as he had not dined in the club, but Ingram and Lavender proceeded to have a game, the former being content to accept something like thirty in a hundred. It was speedily very clear that Lavender's heart was not in the contest. He kept forgetting which ball he had been playing, missing easy shots, playing a perversely wrong game, and so forth. And yet his spirits were not much downcast.

"Is Peter Hewetson still at Tarbert, do you know?" he asked of Ingram.

"I believe so. I heard of him lately. He and one or two more are there."

"I suppose you'll look in on them if you go North?"

"Certainly. The place is badly perfumed, but picturesque, and there is generally plenty of whisky about."

"When do you go North?"

"I don't know. In a week or two."

That was all that Lavender hinted of his plans. He went home early that night, and spent an hour or two in packing up some things, and in writing a long letter to his aunt, which was destined considerably to astonish that lady. Then he lay down and had a few hours' rest.

In the early morning he went out and walked across Kensington Gardens down to the Gore. He wished to have one look at the house in which Sheila was, or perhaps he might, from a distance, see her come out on a simple errand? He knew, for example, that she had a superstitious liking for posting her letters herself: in wet weather or dry she invariably carried her own correspondence to the nearest pillar-post. Perhaps he might have one glimpse of her face, to see how she was looking, before he left London.

There were few people about: one or two well-known lawyers and merchants were riding by to have their morning canter in the Park; the shops were being opened. Over there was the house—with its dark front of bricks, its hard ivy, and its small windows with formal red curtains—in which Sheila was immured. That was certainly not the palace that a beautiful sea-princess should have inhabited. Where were the pine woods around it, and the lofty hills, and the wild beating of the waves on the sands below? And now it seemed strange and sad that just as he was about to go away to the North, and breathe the salt air again, and find the strong west winds blowing across the mountain-peaks and through the furze, Sheila, a daughter of the sea and the rocks, should be hiding herself in obscure lodgings in the heart of a great city. Perhaps—he could not but think at this time—if he had only the chance of speaking to her for a couple of moments, he could persuade her to forgive him everything that had happened, and go away with him—away from London and all the associations that had vexed her and almost broken her heart—to the free and open and joyous life on the far sea-coasts of the Hebrides.

Something caused him to turn his head for a second, and he knew that Sheila was coming along the pavement—not from, but toward the house. It was too late to think of getting out of her way, and yet he dared not go up to her and speak to her, as he had wished to do. She, too, had seen him. There was a quick, frightened look in her eyes, and then she came along, with her face pale and her head downcast. He did not seek to interrupt her. His eyes too were lowered as she passed him without taking any notice of his presence, although the sad face and the troubled lips told of the pain at her heart. He had hoped, perchance, for one word, for even a sign of recognition, but she went by him calmly, gravely and silently. She went into the house, and he turned away with a weight at his heart, as though the gates of heaven had been closed against him.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]



LAKESHORE RELICS.

We were sitting on the sand looking off over the blue water veiled with the soft haze of Indian summer. A point covered with pine trees stretched boldly out into the lake, its rocky cliffs rising perpendicularly eighty feet above the beach, a sheer precipice from whose summit a pebble dropped would strike the water below. On the west a stream came rippling over the stones between bluffs high and massive enough for a deep rapid river—bluffs of wild majesty worn into varied outlines, as though a mighty torrent had once surged between them, forcing the very rocks to crumble before its headlong career. But now only a gentle stream wandered through the broad bed, here shallow over the sand, there darkling in a still pool, now making a green willow-shaded island, and now a deep rock-bordered channel, doing its best with the various graceful devices of a happy little stream to compensate for the absence of the river, to whose former existence the cliffs bore silent witness and the pines testified in sighing lamentations all the day long. On the east the lake swept inland in a gradual curve to the piers and wharves of a city with a cloud of smoke hanging above its spires, and then outward again to a wooded point twelve miles away, the eastern boundary of the bay. Looking north, we could see only water, apparently as deep as the ocean: no land was visible on the Canadian horizon, no island to break the harmony—nothing but vessels sailing gayly toward the east or tacking patiently toward the west, some distinct and snowy, others dark in the distance, and all with the graceful rigging peculiar to the lake-craft. Although November was far advanced, the warm sunshine and soft breeze gave no indications of approaching winter: the leaves had fallen from the trees and lay in brilliant heaps upon the ground, and children running through the groves waded in their glowing masses and tossed them high in the air with many a shout and half-finished song. The bare branches basked motionless in the hazy warmth, and the brown and empty farm-lands expanded their broad breasts to the heat, the care of the crops well over, the last sheaf safely housed and their labors ended. Nature works hard in these Western fields, conquering them from the forest, redeeming them from the swamp and tending the delicate grain amid the rank growth of prairie-grass; but when the last load is driven home and the last leaf has fallen, then she rests, and the hazy atmosphere and peculiar stillness mark her repose. Indian summer! what is it? It is Nature's dolce far niente, her one holiday. Wise will he be who, working with her through the dreary winter, the budding spring, yes, and even the sultry summer, earns the right to rest with her in Indian summer, the vacation of the year.

We had come from the East to visit friends at the West, from a venerable village on the Atlantic Ocean to a new city on the Western lake-shore; and although we acknowledged that the country was advancing with the strides of a giant, we also maintained that the charm of old associations, the mystery of the past, the interest of stirring events, were all wanting, and therefore the West, prosperous as it was, could not be compared to the rock-bound coasts of New England or the beautiful shores of New York Bay, so filled with legends and adventures, memories of the past, battles and shipwrecks, all dating back before the first axe resounded in the Western wilderness. Everything here was new. There were no houses with the marks of Revolutionary bullets, no families of unbroken aristocratic descent from over the ocean, no traditions of Colonial times, no stories of danger, no interesting relics: a few tales of pioneer life, a few encounters with the Indians, composed the annals of the town; and the prosaic reality of its life was as new and glaring as the white paint on its houses.

These thoughts we expressed to Uncle John as he joined us on the beach, bringing the baskets containing our picnic dinner: over the sandwiches, cakes and native Catawba we dilated upon the subject, and invited him to visit us at Winthrop, where the very atmosphere was redolent with old associations and the beach a treasure-house of strange relics. Our quiet uncle smiled as we talked, and when we had finished our lunch and climbed the cliff he took us to a pleasant stone house and introduced us to its owner, a silver-haired gentleman of the old school, whose personal appearance and courtly manners filled us with admiration and respect. Living thus quietly on the lake-shore, this man of learning and science had spent many years absorbed in natural history and its kindred pursuits, in close communion with Nature, loved by his neighbors and honored by the naturalists of the whole country for his persevering industry and valuable discoveries. Surrounded by his birds, bees and flowers, the beautiful old man received us with kindly courtesy, and from him we heard a story of the past, authenticated by records and old letters, and illustrated by relics found on the beach below, washed up by the waves or exposed to view by the shifting of the sands. Deeply interested in the narrative, we yet found it hard to believe that the peaceful hazy lake and the little stream rippling over the bar had ever been the scene of the raging tempest, desolation and death described in the story. But as we drove homeward in the evening the sun went down in a lurid cloud, and a wind came driving up from the east, whirling the dry leaves in circles and blowing the dust in eddies at the corners of the streets. All night it raged over land and water, increasing to a gale as the pale dawn broke, lashing the lake into a sheet of foam, and growing colder and colder as the flying watery clouds obscured the sun and the dismal day waxed and waned. With our faces pressed against the window-panes we watched the fresh-water sea in its fury. Out in the offing several vessels were scudding under bare poles, and a steamer trying to make the harbor was blown over almost horizontally in the water before she reached the piers. Darkness fell and the wind howled over the city, changing to the north and bringing a storm of sleet and snow in its train, so that the ground was white when daylight broke, and the air so thick with the stinging hail that we could not see the lake. Anxiously we waited, but in vain: our thoughts were with the sailors out on the raging waters. Not until twilight did the atmosphere grow clear; and as an angry gleam of sunshine shot from under the heavy bank of clouds, we saw two schooners, one near the shore, the other out on the horizon, driving before the gale.

"Are they in danger, Uncle John?" we asked.

"Yes, I should say so, although I am no sailor."

"Why do not the tugs go out to help them?"

"Each one for himself, my two little nieces. The tugs could do nothing in such a sea."

Another night came, and after its long hours had passed the sky grew clearer and the gale abated: there was still a high wind and the dark lake looked threatening, but the worst was over, at least for the time. One of the schooners had disappeared, but the other was coming in under a rag of a sail, plunging and almost unmanageable. As she neared the shore a tug ventured out, and succeeded in reaching her safely, but close to the end of the pier a furious gust broke the fastenings and threw the vessel up on the stone foundation of an old wharf at the western side of the entrance, where she pounded to pieces in a few moments. The crew made desperate efforts to escape, and we could see their black forms clinging to the spars and the logs of the wharf between the waves. All possible aid was given, and all but one were saved: he, poor fellow! was washed out to sea and lost.

"A cruel lake!" exclaimed Ada. "Who would suppose that such a comparatively small body of water could rival the great ocean in danger?"

"In a storm navigation is more dangerous on our Western lakes than on the ocean," said Uncle John: "there is not space enough for safety, and the short waves and narrow channels require more skill than the broad sweep of the ocean. There is always a lee shore near, and you cannot run away from it, as you can at sea."

At noon the wind had somewhat subsided, and a faint sunshine gleamed through the ragged clouds. Driving out to the scene of our picnic a few days before, we stood on the edge of the cliff and watched the great waves come rolling in and dash against the rocks sixty feet in the air, so that our faces were wet with their spray. The little river was white with surf rushing in over the bar: not a leaf remained on the bare ground, the naked trees tossed their arms wildly to and fro, and the pines were coated with ice. A short distance to the west a boy pointed out some timbers floating in the surf. "Them's the schooner that come ashore last night," he explained. "This here beach is a bad place in a storm. The crew's all drownded: guess the bodies will be coming ashore in a few days." We turned away with a shudder. The story of the silver-haired professor came vividly back to our minds. We relate it in almost his own words, as it forms part of the unwritten history of ante-Revolutionary times, but vaguely known and appreciated by this busy generation.

In the spring of 1763 the great conspiracy of the North-western Indians, headed by Pontiac, the celebrated chief, made its first demonstration against the whites. By the influence and wisdom of Pontiac the attack was simultaneous upon every fort and post in the West, and the result successful for the conqueror and disastrous for the conquered. Had the Indians possessed many chiefs endowed with the energy and prudence of this remarkable red man, their history would not be merely a monotonous repetition of defeat and extermination. But it was not to be: the stars in their courses fought against Sisera. After the massacre, the British, awakened to the power of their savage foes, endeavored to send troops across the country to the relief of the garrisons at Forts Pitt and Detroit, the only posts which had escaped destruction; and in the fall of the same year a number of batteaux loaded with troops and supplies started from Albany, by way of the Mohawk, and after stopping at the fort on the Niagara River, entered Lake Erie, intending to coast along the southern shore to Detroit. One can easily imagine the scene. Six hundred regulars with their officers, a train of artillery and supplies, and the boatmen, who were probably the hardy, merry voyageurs, sailing over the placid lake covered with the purple haze of the Indian summer, camping on the beach at night, their fires shining through the silent forest where now towns and cities dot the shore. They passed the mouth of the Cuyahoga in safety, and steered northward to clear the bold headland covered with evergreens known as the Point-aux-Pins, when suddenly a gale came upon them, darkness fell, and, tossing on the furious waves, they knew not where to steer, even if their frail boats had not become unmanageable in the storm. Separated from each other, shipping water at every plunge, they drifted toward the shore, and finding the mouth of Rocky River close upon them, they made a desperate effort to enter, hoping to find a harbor where they could obtain shelter. The channel is very narrow, and but few of the boats succeeded in entering, the rest being cast upon the rocks, engulfed in the surf or stranded on the bar, where the waves soon tore them to pieces. In the darkness, amid the roaring of the winds and waters, the survivors rushed wildly to and fro, seeking to climb the perpendicular rock wet with spray, and falling headlong in the seething waves below. The only route to the plateau above was through a ravine within the point, and when the stormy morning broke, through this gully the dispirited soldiers climbed to the summit of the cliff, and, making a fire, dried their clothing and cooked a scanty meal. Here they remained during the storm, probably for three days, crowded within a circle of boulders, and relieving each other in the watch on the beach as the bodies of their drowned comrades came ashore—seventy men and three officers, Lieutenant Davidson, Lieutenant Paynter, and the surgeon, Dr. Williams of the Eightieth Regiment. When the storm ceased, the dead were buried, the remaining boats repaired, and the forlorn band started back down the lake, unable to render any assistance to the besieged garrison at Detroit on account of the loss of their ammunition and arms.

In the fall of the next year, 1764, General Bradstreet with three thousand men opened a campaign against the Indians on Lake Erie, and after various successes and defeats started in batteaux from Sandusky Bay to coast down the lake, his forces consisting of British regulars, provincials and a large body of Indian allies. It is probable that the beautiful autumn weather peculiar to the Western lakes deceived him as it had deceived Major Wilkins in the preceding year, for when a sudden gale overtook him, surprised and confused, he ran the boats ashore on an open beach, where twenty-five were broken into fragments by the surf, and six cannon, together with most of the ammunition and baggage, were lost. This open beach was within a mile of the scene of the previous year's disaster. As before, the storm continued three days, and many of the men were lost, swept away by the waves and overcome with hunger and fatigue. When the skies cleared, Bradstreet reviewed his diminished forces, and after burying the remaining cannon and ammunition, started onward with the regulars in the batteaux which had escaped the storm, leaving the provincials and Indians to make their way by land, on foot and without provisions, four hundred miles through the forest as best they could. These provincials came from New York, Connecticut and New Jersey, and were commanded by Major Israel Putnam, afterward major-general in the United States army. The story of their terrible journey is unwritten, but it is known that many died of slow starvation and fatigue along the route, which led through swamps and thickets, with deep rivers barring their path; and not until the last of December did they reach the forts, after having been twelve weeks in the wilderness. The number of those who perished in the wreck or died on the journey is not recorded, but it was so large as to occasion petitions to the government—an unusual proceeding at that early date.

These are the narratives as compiled from authorities most vague and diverse, and yet, when taken together, most indisputable. At that time, before the Revolution, when, save a narrow belt on the Atlantic coast, the whole country was a forest, authentic news was rare, and records carelessly kept, if kept at all. Soldiers marching hundreds of miles through a wilderness had no time to compose elaborate journals, and had something else to think of than the curiosity of posterity. When a man lives in a state of uncertainty as to his scalp, we cannot expect from him systematic habits of writing; and therefore we are compelled to call upon the earth and sea for information concerning these early adventures. Generously have they responded, producing silent witnesses who tell the tale of disaster with a melancholy fidelity more real than the printed page.

From time to time after heavy storms portions of the old batteaux have been thrown up on the Rocky River beach. One of these fragments was a bow-stem chafed and water-soaked, the iron ring-bolt secured by a nut—both covered with rust. From its appearance it had evidently been for a long time buried in the sand. In ploughing a field on the bottom-lands the nails, rudder-hangings, bow-ring and other irons of a boat were discovered, together with a heap of ashes: having been cast high and dry upon the shore by the waves, no doubt this batteau was burned to keep it from falling into the enemy's hands.

In 1842, during a severe gale, the sand-bar shifted its position at the mouth of the river, and from the quantity of gun-flints, brass musket-guards, musket-barrels and bayonets washed ashore it became evident that one of the submerged boats had been uncovered and broken up, after having been in the sand nearly a century.

The beach beyond Rock River, although a good fishing-ground, has been abandoned on account of the hidden obstacles which cut and break the nets: these are without doubt portions of Bradstreet's batteaux; and concealed in the same locality are probably some of the cannon, as six-pound cannon balls have been discovered there. Along this beach many relics have been found, and every storm washes up new ones: bayonets, muskets and bullets are to be seen in most of the houses of the neighborhood, preserved as curiosities. Silver teaspoons have been found in several places: they are of antique design, heavily moulded, and engraved with various initials. No doubt they belonged to the British officers. An ancient and elaborately finished sword was discovered on the beach, with the hilt terminating in a lion's head of solid silver: the guard was also of silver.

On the land, traces of the soldiers are numerous. In one of the ravines leading up from the narrow beach a bayonet was found firmly thrust into the clay about six feet from the bottom, which had evidently been used as a fixture by which the soldiers drew themselves up to the top of the bank; and on the plateau a circle of boulders with the ashes of a fire was found in ploughing, together with a case-knife. Near by the blade of a surgeon's amputating knife was discovered in the soil; and this relic, perhaps the most indisputable one yet found, probably belonged to Surgeon Williams of Wilkins's expedition, lost on the point in 1763.

A mound not far from the locality of the camp-fire had long been avoided by the settlers on account of the human bones within it. Recent investigations have shown it to be composed of skeletons arranged in tiers, with earth thrown over the whole, and the skulls have been identified as those of Anglo-Saxons, with a few Indian skulls mixed among them. Here, then, the survivors buried their dead comrades, English soldiers left behind, cold and still, on the shores of the Western lake. No doubt as the boats started from the point there were some who looked back at the new mound with sad regret for such a burial-place. But what difference will it make when the earth and sea give up their dead? He who made us will keep us in safety, no matter where we lie.

The route of the provincials and Indians left by Bradstreet to find their way by land is marked by various objects dropped at the start or soon after. A stack of bayonets covered with soil and rubbish was found piled systematically at the foot of a tree, forgotten perhaps, or else left behind as too heavy for the long journey. A musket barrel was also found enclosed in a fork of a tree by the growth of the wood: it had been placed in an inclined position, and had remained undisturbed until the tree had completely enveloped it. A number of gun-flints, a peck or more, were ploughed up on the high ground back of the lake, also a sword and bayonets. Farther on, French and English coins bearing the date of 1714 were found, and in another locality a silver teaspoon and some pennies of 1749: these articles were probably thrown down in discarded clothing or knapsacks.

Every year discoveries are made of articles thrown up by the waves, washed out of the cliffs or ploughed up in the fields. Many of these relics are in the possession of the silver-haired professor, who has studied the localities and invested the point with a legendary interest rare in this busy West. When we recall the early date of these expeditions, the great loss of life, the tragic scenes on the shore, and the terrible journey of the provincials through the forest, we must feel that the story with its silent illustrations is as worthy of a place in American history as many other events of less interest, whose minutest details have been described over and over again in the current literature of the day.

In the words of the venerable professor: "The correctness of my conclusions will be confirmed by an examination of the peculiar and dangerous character of these localities during a storm, and of the manner in which these vestiges must have been lost; and a more complete comprehension of the terrific scenes attendant on those disasters would thereby be gained, together with a full conception of the horrors of the catastrophe. Few of the present generation know that either of these events have occurred: fewer still are aware of the pecuniary loss and human suffering they involved."

CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON.



OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

A FRIEND OF MY CHILDHOOD.

I suppose I must have pulled the bell very hard that day, for otherwise I don't think she would have kept me waiting twenty minutes, as she did. She was only my mother's servant-woman, whose duty was to wait upon the dinner-table and the door, the latter function being the more onerous one. Looking back at my conduct over the lapse of eighteen years, I am disposed to acknowledge that she was right in the abstract in punishing the inconsiderate impatience which made me keep the door-bell upon a continuous ring till I was let in. But how wrong did the event prove her! Scarcely was I warmed up to my work, when, turning my head, I saw a tall gentleman with broad shoulders and a round face, whose look, at first one of inquiry, and perhaps bewilderment as he tried to distinguish the house he was in search of from among a dozen, all characterized by that unity of design which in Philadelphia strikes forcibly the intelligent foreigner, suddenly changed to one of amusement, not, I thought then, unmixed with approval, as he caught sight of me at my reprehensible employment. And as I rang with a persistency which nothing can now call from me, he stood on the bottom step (for it was my mother whom he had come to see) with that expression in which I found so little discouragement, still looking forth from those great eyes of his, which had pierced deeply and sternly so many of the false and hollow things of this world, and which now, not, I am sure, for the first time, were bent kindly down upon a rude boy and his ruder pranks. How little did the latter know about the tall gentleman, and how little too would he have cared even if he had known all there was to know about him:—known that then the age was beginning to recognize its philosopher, whose lessons, sharp and bitter enough at first, were to make it better and truer and purer, if such a thing were possible of accomplishment.

But that he was tall I did know, and my standard of eminence was a purely physical one. Five feet eight I did not despise, but six feet alone commanded absolute and genuine respect; and he, I believe, stood six feet one. The presumption which could keep such a height of perfection waiting at the front door shocked me beyond expression. No, not beyond expression, for the triumphant yell with which the hapless servant-girl was greeted when at last she admitted me, and I burst in exclaiming, "You have kept the tall gentleman waiting half an hour!" must have given, I think, some adequate idea of my feelings. To that incident may I not justly look back with satisfaction? Am I not right in taking pride to myself for having amused for so long a time one whose momentary attention the witty and the wise have thought it no slight thing to have gained? And—who knows?—perhaps he himself did not altogether forget it, and with the two sturdy Buben on the Rhine-boat, and those little men he used to meet at Eton or on the play-ground of the Charterhouse, may not the American boy also have found a place in his kindly memory? But I wish it clearly understood that I did not force myself upon his acquaintance: no lion-hunting can be laid to my charge. On the contrary, after giving him a glance of approbation for proving such an effectual weapon to me in subduing my enemy in the gate—or rather the enemy whose offence was that she was anywhere but in the gate—I did not, I can truly say, bestow another thought upon him till I was sent for to afford him, at his own special request, the honor of knowing me. Were there no servants in the kitchen to be tormented? No cats in the back yard to be chased with wild halloo? No rowdy boys in the alley with whom to fraternize over pies of communistic mud? No little sister up stairs much nicer than any tall gentleman, even though he might have come from across the ocean and be thought a great deal of by the grown-up people, that I should go out of my way to see him, and abandon my cherished pursuits to listen to him talking of what I did not understand, and did not believe was worth understanding? No: my position was a high one, and I kept to it, for, though I gave up my occupations a little while and went down to the parlor, it was simply because politeness and filial obedience were the ruling motives of my conduct. Of the first formal introduction to my friend I have but a shadowy recollection. He said, I think, that he wanted to know the impetuous little boy he had met outside; but nothing more which I can recall. My own share in the conversation has entirely faded from my memory: it is probable indeed that I had no share in it at all, being less at my ease in the conventional sphere of a drawing-room than in the more unconstrained atmosphere of a back alley. Yet in hours of depression, when, in spite of the most sincere desire to think favorably of mankind, I cannot fail to notice that I am not appreciated as I should be by the undiscerning world, and my soul seeks consolation and forgetfulness from higher sources, I half believe that when he went back to his own country, and spoke there, as I have heard he did very often, of the pleasant people he had met here, of the American friends he valued so much, it was perhaps not without an arriere-pensee of his noisy acquaintance of the doorstep in Locust street.

The intercourse so tempestuously begun was threatened with an early extinction, for my newly acquired friend returned soon after this to his home, where were the two little girls whom he was fond of describing while saying that he would not dare to bring them to this country, lest they should come to despise the simple muslin gowns with which they were then quite content; home to the toil of the hard-worked brain, the steady labor of the untiring pen, which was to give us before it rested for ever nothing indeed like his earlier works, but much which we shall not willingly let die; home to England, in truth, but only that, having written the story of certain of its kings, as he had before written the worthier history of some of its unsceptred monarchs, whose sovereign sway is over our spirits still, he might come again across the ocean to greet all who should wish to hear him tell of the Britain of a century past, when our own history had as yet scarcely seen the conclusion of its opening chapter; giving as he did, so minute, life-like details relating to the great men of that time, whose familiar names were to most of his hearers not much more than names, but which, thanks in great part to him, are now as household words. And so we met, and being two years older, I was accorded the honor of becoming one of his auditors, going with my mother to hear each of his lectures. We sat in a box on one side of the stage in Concert Hall, and at this moment I recall the tall, dignified figure standing before the desk on which were placed his notes, and the crowded room full of indistinguishable attentive faces. I sometimes fancy too that I cannot have forgotten what are now favorite passages from those lectures—passages read and re-read, and then read again, till they are known almost by heart. I cannot acknowledge to myself that I do not remember his voice and look, and the tribute of listening silence which waited upon him while he spoke.

One at least of these evenings is well remembered. Its distinguishing feature was my being tipped. My mother and I had gone on this occasion quite early to our places—half an hour or three-quarters before the time when the lecture should begin—and we found the lecturer already at his post. He, with head thrown back, had been walking with long strides up and down the little waiting-room, and talking in bright spirits to my mother, when a sudden thought seemed to strike him, and diving into one of his pockets he brought out a sovereign—perhaps it was a five-dollar gold piece—and insisted upon giving it to me; but the proposal produced at once a most severe parental resistance, while I disinterestedly looked on—a resistance apparently quite unlooked for by "my illustrious friend," who had much trouble in explaining that this species of beneficence was a thing of course in England. But American pride was silenced at last, though not convinced, as will be seen, for it planned on the spot a compromise which should reconcile the differences of national feeling, though I was induced to suppose that the sovereign was as far out of my reach as ever; and being then, as I said before, above or below such things, I turned all my attention to the lecture, which began soon afterward, and whose subject, the royal bugbear of patriotic schoolboys of that time, I imagined I knew all about. It was therefore with astonished awe that I heard the peroration, when the speaker said, appealing directly to us all: "O brothers speaking the same dear mother-tongue! O comrades! enemies no more, let us take a mournful hand together as we stand by this royal corpse and call a truce to battle! Low he lies to whom the proudest used to kneel once, and who was cast lower than the poorest—dead whom millions prayed for in vain. Driven off his throne, buffeted by rude hands, with his children in revolt, the darling of his old age killed before him untimely—our Lear hangs over her breathless lips and cries, Cordelia! Cordelia! stay a little!

Vex not his ghost: oh, let him pass! He hates him That would upon the rack of this tough world Stretch him out longer.

Hush, strife and quarrel, over the solemn grave! Sound, trumpets, a mournful march. Fall, dark curtain, upon his pageant, his pride, his grief, his awful tragedy." This view of the subject was altogether new.

The compromise just spoken of—and I must bring to an end my story, already too long—consisted in the expenditure of the five-dollar piece in two of the books written by the bestower of that inflammatory coin. I open the volumes of Pendennis and Vanity Fair which have been lying at my elbow, and across the title-page of each I see written, in curiously small and delicate hand, "—— ——, with W. M. Thackeray's kind regards. April, 1856." These were the books.

H. R.

HAMLET IN A FRENCH DRESS.

If any one, on a rainy day or a lonely evening, wishes to drive away the blue devils by the perusal of some laughter-compelling volume, we can recommend for the purpose no better reading than the tragedy of Hamlet done into French verse by the Chevalier de Chatelain, a gentleman well known as a very successful translator of English poetry. With singular good sense and feeling he has selected, not the play as Shakespeare wrote it, but the stage-version thereof, as the foundation of his work. For which Heaven be praised! for what he has done is sufficient, in all conscience. Not that his translation is totally devoid of merit. On the contrary, some passages are admirably rendered, and give the sense and sound of the original in a manner really remarkable when the difference between the two languages is considered. But there is such a calm conviction on M. de Chatelain's part that he is doing his work faultlessly, that, in view of the ludicrous errors, additions and variations with which his text abounds, the effect is irresistible.

For instance, to begin at the beginning, the phrase

Looks it not like the king?

is translated

C'est le roi tout crache.

And in the same scene—

Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life Extorted treasure in the womb of earth, For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,

is rendered—

Si, prevaricateur, tu volas des tresors Par ton ordre enfouis dans le sein de la terre, De tels fails vous font faire ecole buissoniere A vous autres esprits.

In the next scene we are treated to a small specimen of M. de Chatelain's genius as an emendator of Shakespeare. For no one can consider this passage a translation of the text:

Venez, Dame, venez. Ce J'y consens si doux, Si spontane de Hamlet m'enchante et m'enivre. C'est pour moi le charmant feuillet d'un charmant livre.

That charming page of a delightful book will, we think, be sought for in the original in vain. Still more delicious is the interpellation into Hamlet's first soliloquy of the following lines, referring to the "unweeded garden":

Ces jours qu'on nous montre superbes Sont un vilain jardin, rempli de folles herbes, Qui donnent de l'ivraie et certes rien de plus, Si ce n'est les engins du cholera morbus.

Angels and ministers of grace, defend us! When did Hamlet talk about the cholera morbus?

Passing over some minor variations, we come to the brief closing soliloquy of the scene:

My father's spirit in arms! all is not well; I doubt some foul play: would the night were come!

Thus Shakespeare, and thus M. de Chatelain:

Le spectre de mon pere—arme! Vraiment ca cloche! Je flaire, je le crains, quelqu' anguille sous roche!

Doubtless Hamlet did "smell a rat," but this is the first intimation we have had of his scenting an eel.

Thus Hamlet addresses the ghost:

Mais oh dis moi, pourquoi tes ossemens par chance Deposes dans la tombe, out brise leurs liens, Pour te jeter ici comme une langue aux chiens.

Probably the "ponderous and marble jaws" suggested this extraordinary comparison.

In the next, act, evidently thinking that poor Ophelia has been neglected by her creator, M. de Chatelain makes Polonius speak of her to the king and queen as "un vrai morceau de roi"—a gentle method of suggesting that she is worthy of the distinguished honor of a royal alliance. But the fair Ophelia is destined to suffer nearly as unkind treatment from the hands of her French usher as she endures from her princely lover. We give entire the translation of her beautiful lament, which begins—

O what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!

and which M. de Chatelain thus renders:

Oh! quelle triste fin pour si grande epopee Le soldat, l'erudit, l'oeil, la langue et l'epee, Tout cela culbute—perdu. Le noble espoir, La fleur de ce pays—le plus riant miroir De la mode toujours;—le plus parfait modele De gout;—des observes la plus fine dentelle— Entierement a bas! oui, sans ressource a bas! Et moi qui dans ses voeux trouvais tant de soulas, Qui du miel de ses vers ai suce la musique, De sa raison je vois descendre la tunique Sur moi, malheur!... C'est comme au lointain le tin-tin De la cloche ... de pres qui se change en tocsin. De tout ce que j'ai vu conserver souvenance Et voir ce que je vois! Quelle desesperance!

We are at a loss which to admire most—Ophelia sucking the music from Hamlet's honeyed verses, or the "sweet bells" whose tin-tin changes to a tocsin, or the comparison of Hamlet to fine lace, or the "melancholy ending to a grand epic."

The passage—

We shall obey, were she ten times our mother,

is thus translated:

Nous obeirons, plutot dix fois qu'une. N'est elle pas notre mere?

M. de Chatelain confesses in a note that his translation is not in accordance with the text, but he adds: "Nous ne concevons pas la penee ainsi exprimee." It is a good thing for Shakespeare that he has found a French commentator who understands what he meant to say better than he did himself.

Ophelia's first exclamation in the mad scene, "Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?" is translated,

De Danemarck ou donc est la reine jolie?

Such an epithet applied to the middle-aged and matronly Gertrude, the mother of the thirty-years'-old Hamlet, is pretty—very pretty, indeed. A few pages farther on the "bonny-sweet Robin" of Ophelia's song is supposed by the translator to be a bird, as he thus renders the passage:

Car le gentil Robin n'est un oiseau de proie, Il fait tout ma joie!

It is also exceedingly amusing to note how the old adjective "whoreson" bothers M. de Chatelain, who seems to consider it a word of weight and meaning. The "whoreson dead body" of the gravediggers' scene is turned into "le cadavre des enfants de nos meres;" and in like manner that "whoreson mad fellow Yorick" is presented to us as "un fou ne d'une fille a la morale elastique."

The tragedy of Hamlet by Ducis does no wrong to the manes of Shakespeare, for though the title-page declares that it is "imitated from the English," nothing is left of Shakespeare's play save the names and the fact that Hamlet's father had been murdered before the action of the drama begins. Hamlet is the reigning king of Denmark, Claudius is first prince of the blood and father of Ophelia, and Polonius is an ordinary conspirator. There is no ghost and no gravedigger. Ophelia does not go mad, there is no fencing-scene, and Hamlet, after declaiming through innumerable pages in the set style of French classic tragedy, solemnly stabs Claudius, and then declares that as he is a king he must consent to live for the good of his people.

L. H. H.

ANECDOTES OF PUBLIC WORTHIES.

GEORGE WASHINGTON. One day, in a fit of abstraction the juvenile George cut down Bushrod's favorite cherry tree with a hatchet. His purpose was to cut—and run.

But the old gentleman came sailing round the corner of the barn just as the future Father of his Country had started on the retreat.

"Look here, sonny," thundered the stern old Virginian, "who cut that tree down?"

George reflected a moment. There wasn't another boy or another hatchet within fifteen miles. Besides, it occurred to him that to be virtuous is to be happy. Just as Washington senior turned to go in and get his horsewhip, our little hero burst into tears, and, nestling among his father's coat-tails, exclaimed, "Father, I cannot tell a lie. It must have been a frost."

"My son, my son," stammered the fond parent as he made a pass for his off-spring, "when you get to be first in war and first in peace, just cover your back-pay into the Treasury, and the newspaper press will respect you!"

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Early in the war a party of distinguished gentlemen from New England called on Mr. Lincoln to urge the appointment of a certain Mr. Brown to the post of quarter-master. The President, who was amusing himself by splitting portions of the staircase of the White House into rails, received them cordially. They stated their errand in an earnest but respectful tone, and calmly awaited his answer. Mr. Lincoln, drawing himself up to his full height and clapping the spokesman of the party on the shoulder, began to tell a story about a dog-fight he once saw in Kentucky.

By and by it had gradually grown dark: several hours had passed away, and neither dog appeared to get killed or to gain any advantage over the other. One by one the party had dropped out, till the leader (who did not wish to disturb Mr. Lincoln's hold on his shoulder) was left alone, trying to conceal a yawn and to look interested. Suddenly, Mr. Lincoln, with that peculiar smile on his countenance which Mr. Carpenter can talk about, but can't paint, remarked, "By the way, my friend, I'm sorry for Brown, but I gave that appointment to the other man yesterday."

DANIEL WEBSTER. The following anecdote of the great Massachusetts statesman has never before appeared in print:

One day, Clay, Webster and Calhoun met upon the steps of the Capitol. Mr. Clay ventured to remark, in his most affable style, that it looked like rain. Calhoun looked wise, but said nothing. Evidently he took in the whole situation at a glance. It was a crisis for Webster. Carefully laying his thumb behind the third brass button of his blue coat, he gazed from out of those cavernous eyes and grandly uttered these prophetic words: "No, gentlemen, the American people will never forsake the Constitution. We shall have fair weather."

And so it proved.

ALONZO SAVAGE. This time it was the pupil who put the question. The Sabbath-school teacher encouraged her children to bring each a Scripture question to be propounded to the class. Alonzo Savage said he would like to be told why St. Stephen was like a thanksgiving raisin? He allowed it was because they stoned him.

That boy has grown up and entered on a career of usefulness. He gets steady wages as a railroad brakeman, and last week he celebrated his golden wedding. All because Alonzo was faithful at Sabbath-school.

SARSFIELD YOUNG.

THE CANADIANS.

A New York oracle, discoursing lately upon Canadian affairs, concludes that American ideas are pervading that region because the people speak of "baggage" and take the right hand in driving on the road. Having traveled somewhat in Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and "the Island," I have never heard the term "baggage" used there except by Americans, as they call people from the States. The word is invariably "luggage" in hotels, steamers and stage-wagons. On the road all the people in those provinces whom I met took the left hand, and if any one should attempt to deviate from this old custom of England, he would surely come to grief. When Canadians take greenbacks at par, or make their morning porridge of corn instead of oats, perhaps they may be ready for those other innovations.

What causes the curious difference between the people on the two sides of the boundary-line? for a difference exists in customs, in appearance and in the tones of the voice. It has been a favorite theory that the New England thinness of fibre and sharpness of voice came from the harsh climate and piercing winds; but in Canada the climate is more severe, and the winds are as piercing, yet the faces and forms of the people are rounder and more robust, and their voices, especially those of the women, have a soft and mellow intonation very different from those of their cousins in New England. The customs and habits are also different. In Canada one sees little of the hurried life of the States, always at high pressure. The people take life more easily than we do, and look less anxious. Do these differences arise from different political institutions, and are the burdens of life greater in a republic than under a monarchy?

C.

NOTES.

Self-deception and superstition nowhere reign more supremely, at least in civilized communities, than among the wretched devotees of the gaming-table, who are ever promising themselves to quit the mad pursuit, ever flattering themselves that the next coup will be their last, and always expecting that some quite supernatural piece of luck in that final coup will secure the long-sought fortune. Some time ago we referred in a "Note" to the fanciful combinations which the gamesters of Europe had been making, in their play, on the numerals connected with the death of Napoleon III. M. de Villemessant in his last work gives a very ludicrous instance of the extent to which a superstitious gambler can carry his belief in presentiments, in theories of luck and in prognostications. He tells us that a certain Paris vaudevillist was persuaded that if a man unexpectedly found a piece of money when destitute, it would bring him good luck. Accordingly, before setting foot in a gambling-house he never failed to hide—from himself—a coin in the bottom of a pocket, where he was fully determined to forget it. When he had lost his all (except, of course, the aforesaid lucky piece) he would put on his overcoat, tie up his comforter, seize his umbrella, and open the door, when, all of a sudden, his hand happening to be thrust by mere chance into his watch-fob, would, wonderful to relate! hit upon the very piece whose existence he had pledged himself never to suspect save in the case of direst need. "What a streak of luck!" he then regularly exclaimed. "I can't be mistaken, can I? It isn't a louis, any way? By George, it is! Well, if this isn't luck alive!" Then our good vaudevillist would hurry back, deposit his umbrella, unroll his muffler, shed his overcoat, throw his lucky louis on the cloth—and lose it! After all, incredible as this story seems, M. Villemessant's vaudevillist is but a type of a great class of men who deceive themselves by devices which in others they would pronounce monstrosities of silliness, and who hug their delusions with a gravity none the less profound from their own half consciousness of the sham.

* * * * *

It was a theory, we believe, of that profound philosopher, Mr. Weller senior, that turnpike-keepers were confirmed misanthropes, who, after a bitter experience in life, had sought that occupation as a means of venting their spleen against everybody who should come their way. We have never observed in our own experience—more limited, it is true, than the meditative Tony's—that the milk of human kindness is specially sour in the breasts of tollgate-keepers; nevertheless, there are few occupations in which a man delighting to worry his fellow-creatures in a small way could more effectually do so. The pike-keeper inflicts daily a legion of infinitesimal annoyances. He stops people who are in a hurry, and forces them to find change for the toll—stops them in the fierce sun, in the drenching rain, in the thick of a snow-storm or at dead of night. He puts an ignoble end to the excited trotting-match on the road: he alike mercilessly pulls up Paterfamilias hurrying for the doctor and the city man struggling to catch the train. Often, though the toll itself is a trifle, yet the loss of those two minutes which would have saved the appointment or caught the train, nay, even the bore of pulling off one's gloves and pulling out one's wallet with the mercury below zero, tries the traveler's temper. The emancipation of highways from all taxes levied upon wayfarers is a mark of modern civilization. The mediaeval plan was to extort a toll from every luckless traveler in the name of baron or bandit. In our day Algerine corsairs, Italian brigands, Chinese pirates and Mexican guerillas have continued the thievish custom of "tributes," and not long ago even Montana Indians established themselves on the leading roads and levied tolls from the passers-by. The civilized differs from the savage or feudal practice in rendering an equivalent for the contributions exacted—that is, it provides from their proceeds a stout bridge or a smooth turnpike, and keeps it steadily in repair. But the county or State should take care of highways and bridges without putting an impost on travel. Especially in the suburbs of cities is the preservation of tolls a relic of commercial barbarism. In New England they have gradually become almost extinct, cities or counties having bought the franchises originally granted to private companies. These petty exactions upon the freedom of travel ought to cease everywhere.

* * * * *

It is well known that many persons who scrupulously refrain from perusing Lord Byron's Don Juan, yet enjoy witnessing Mozart's opera of Don Giovanni, following the libretto with assiduity, and laughing with special heartiness at Leporello's song as it rehearses the adventures of his master. In the same way, many who are rather shocked at Camille, find no trouble in listening to La Traviata, and weep for the woes of Favorita when that opera thrown into the form of an English novel excites their censure or disgust. The fact is, that the Italian language, like the cloak of charity, covereth a multitude of sins. Never did it cover them more strikingly than in an instance recounted by L'Eclipse. The present French government, according to that paper, lately prohibited the theatre of La Porte Saint-Martin from playing Le Roi s'amuse of Victor Hugo, a piece familiar to Frenchmen in its reading edition for two-score years. The edict seems to have been rather arbitrary, since, whatever its morality, at least the play could give no political offence, there being but the remotest kind of comparison possible between the court of Francis I. and the government of Marshal MacMahon. But be this as it may, on the very day after its prohibition of Le Roi s'amuse the government inserted in its budget a subvention of a hundred thousand francs for the Theatre Italien, whose favorite performance is Rigoletto. Now, Rigoletto is only a bad Italian translation of Le Roi s'amuse; so that the droll spectacle was offered of the government prohibiting one theatre, at a great loss, from playing the very same piece which next day it offered another theatre twenty thousand dollars for playing in Italian! The Eclipse satirically suggests that the secret must be that "entrer par la fenetre" becomes harmless as entrare per la finestra, and "donner la main" is innocent as "donare la mano" and that Italian purifies everything. If this be so, could not the Paris journalists borrow a useful hint from the affair, and avoid suspension by the government through the simple device of turning into Italian verses, of the operatic sort, those passages of the editorial articles which if printed in French would provoke the censor's ire?

* * * * *

During the recent disgraceful squabble and riot of the monks around Jerusalem there was one incident that should especially pain all lovers of art. This was the destruction of the two pictures by Murillo in the Bethlehem church that fell a victim to ecclesiastical fury. They were true Murillos, and masterpieces; and, what is worse, having been despatched to the church immediately on their execution, and there retained, it is believed that they have never been engraved. They were unusually well preserved, too, for, on being placed in the oratory of La Creche, both canvases had been covered with glass to protect them from candle-smoke. One of the subjects was the Nativity, the other the Adoration of the Magi. In reading with involuntary indignation and disgust of this barbarous instance of iconoclasm, one is reminded of what Thackeray wrote on the same scene and topic nearly thirty years ago. In his Journey from Cornhill to Cairo, speaking of the leading Christian sects in and around Jerusalem, he says: "These three main sects hate each other; their quarrels are interminable; each bribes and intrigues with the heathen lords of the soil to the prejudice of his neighbor. Now it is the Latins who interfere, and allow the common church to go to ruin, because the Greeks purpose to roof it; now the Greeks demolish a monastery on Mount Olivet, and leave the ground to the Turks, rather than allow the Armenians to possess it. On another occasion, the Greeks having mended the Armenian steps which lead to the (so-called) Cave of the Nativity at Bethlehem, the latter asked for permission to destroy the work of the Greeks, and did so. And so round this sacred spot, the centre of Christendom, the representatives of the three great sects worship under one roof, and hate each other!" The church of La Creche is, as its name implies, the church of "The Manger" (i. e., the reputed place of the nativity of Christ); and to this spot, and the furious wrangles of which it has been the scene, we may therefore apply the exclamation which Thackeray makes regarding the tomb of Christ: "What a place to choose for imposture, good God!—to sully with brutal struggles for self-aggrandizement or shameful schemes of gain!" The Germans had the grace to try to spare with their bombs the spire of Strasburg cathedral; religious fanaticism in the Middle Ages directed itself to the destruction of "pagan" art, no matter how beautiful; but in these enlightened days for ecclesiastical fury to take up the barbarous role of destruction, which even savage war discards, is pitiable indeed.

* * * * *

Comeliness becomes every day more and more an affair of chemistry. Science has now found what bids fair to be a very "glass of fashion"—not a metaphorical, but a literal glass, at least for lean people. The chemical properties of each color in the solar spectrum have long been known, and of late years it has also been discovered that plants may be made to thrive wonderfully in green-houses constructed of blue or violet panes, the production of such nurseries being sometimes doubled or trebled by this device. But the experiment has been pushed further, for some English chemists maintain that rooms provided with violet windows, or even with hangings of that color, will fatten the occupants! Shakespeare's "glass wherein the noble youth did dress themselves" was not so practical a possession as this. Surely, hereafter those who would divest themselves of their lean and hungry look may grow obese at will, and turn the scale at the very pound required; and this, too, by no such regimen as the Oriental one of rice and indolence, but merely by passing a season under a violet dome or a blue crystal green-house. Such a remedy is good tidings for all the wan, the haggard and the wizened of society, and for those "whom sharp misery has worn to the bone." Henceforth there need be no "starvelings," "elf-skins" or "dried neat's tongues" of leanness for the Falstaffs to mock. And the fat men, too, the "huge hills of flesh," shall they not have their complementary color in their windows to make them thin? Let the compassionate Bantings look to it.



LITERATURE OF THE DAY

A Simpleton: A Story of the Day. By Charles Reade. New York: Harper & Brothers.

In a preface to the English edition of this book Mr. Reade grapples with the charge of plagiarism so often urged against his stories, and, justifying his habitual course by precedents, forestalls the search of the detectives in the present case by proclaiming the sources from which incidents and descriptions have been gathered. Having treated of many matters beyond the range of his personal knowledge and experience, he has necessarily had recourse to the writings of other men, and by citing his authorities he not only clears himself of the suspicion of surreptitious borrowing, but establishes the truthfulness, or at least the plausibility, of what might otherwise have been considered improbable inventions. This frankness, which, after all, sheds no new light upon his method of composition, seems to have had the happy, if undesigned, effect of throwing his critics off the true scent. The real plagiarism in A Simpleton lies not in the details, but in the conception. The "situation" which leads to all the embroilments and developments is the apparently ill-assorted union of a man of science and genius, absorbed in the labors of investigation and discovery, practical in his views of life and upright in all his actions, with an ill-trained and unintellectual beauty, whose perfections of form and face, pretty coquetry, studied artlessness and sweet recognition of the value of masculine knowledge and strength as the proper stay of feminine weakness and the proper organ of the feminine will, assail the superior being just at that point where his perceptions are weakest, and lead him an easy captive. When we add that this Samson is a young medical man, marked out for the highest honors of his profession, and that his career is temporarily blighted at the outset through the extravagance, silliness and deception of his wife, we have given an outline which no reader of Middlemarch will require to have paralleled. Dr. Christopher Staines is matched and contrasted with Rosa Lusignan, precisely as Lydgate is matched and contrasted with Rosamond Vincy. There is even a further resemblance in the minor pairing and natural dissonance of Phebe Dale and Reginald Falcon in the one book and of Mary Garth and Fred Vincy in its predecessor; while Lady Cicely Treherne, though her simplicity, unlike that of Dorothea, is merely assumed, is almost as unworldly as that heroine, makes a similar use of her wealth and social advantages, stands in much the same relation to the other characters, serves them in the same manner, and ends by marrying her Will Ladislaw under the designation of a "mercurial Irish gentleman" not further introduced to the reader. It will be understood that it is not the characters, in the proper sense of the word, that Mr. Reade has borrowed. In fact, George Eliot's characters are too intimately associated with their surroundings, the circumstances in which they are placed enter too largely as elements into their nature, to allow of their being transplanted without losing all identity. And on the other hand, Mr. Reade, for a reason to be mentioned hereafter, is quite incapable of borrowing characters—still using the word in its most rigid meaning: the characters in his books are always in an emphatic sense his own. The plot, too, and the action of the one book, bear as little resemblance to those of the other as an exhibition of fireworks bears to the "after-glow" of an Alpine sunset. It is, as we have said, the "situation" which Mr. Reade has taken, and this with a palpable purpose, as if, after reading Middlemarch, he had said: "Ha! here is a good idea; but George Eliot, with her commonplace, humdrum way of treating things, has missed the effects of which it was capable. I, Charles Reade, who see beneath the surface, besides being a master of pyrotechnics, will work up the theme in that flashing, whizzing, startling, dazzling way which shall reveal its full proportions as well as my own transcendent powers." Accordingly, while Rosamond continues to be Rosamond throughout, each fresh exhibition of her traits only showing their natural growth or furthering the reader's knowledge of them, Rosa passes through the swift transformations which a "Hey, presto!" is quite sufficient to announce. In the early part of the book she is an embodiment of silliness, levity and selfishness—in the latter part she is reason, self-devotion and passionate love personified. As for Dr. Staines, there is no need of any apotheosis in his case: as the hero of the book he must perforce be that renowned prestidigitateur whom Mr. Reade long since presented to an admiring audience as the principal performer in his troupe. It is needless, therefore, to say that he goes through the programme with the highest dexterity and eclat, displaying the marvelous knowledge, encountering the terrific dangers, achieving the prodigies which belong to his part, without the least falling off in vivacity or suppleness. When he finally hurls his treacherous friend from a cottage window and impales him on the garden railings, who can withhold the well-merited applause?

It may seem paradoxical to say of a very successful novel-writer that he has mistaken his vocation, yet such, we think, is Mr. Reade's case. For the novelist, as for the dramatist, an essential combination is that of a strong individuality with an equal endowment of the imitative faculty. This union is found, perhaps, in its perfection only in Shakespeare. Shakespeare's personages bear the double stamp of their own individuality and of their creator's. In their appropriate diversity their origin is still apparent. Their fidelity to Nature is never that of literal copies. When Lear says, "Undo this button," we are thrilled with the reality of the trait, but we do not suspect it of having been borrowed from real life. On the contrary, it glows with the heat of that imaginative power whose office it is to transfuse reality—to seize truth in its essence and idealize it in form. Descending to two writers in whom this combination is also strong, we may notice how, nevertheless, the balance inclines to one side or the other. There are many passages of Jane Austen which read like transcripts of actual conversations: one might suppose them to have been done by a skillful reporter. In George Eliot's books, on the other hand, the spontaneity of the actors is checked by the brooding, analytical spirit of the author: their verisimilitude is perfect, but their dramatic capabilities do not always have the free play necessary to their complete exhibition and appropriate effect. Turning now to Mr. Reade, we find that in him one element of this combination—the power of impersonation—is utterly lacking. His own individuality protrudes itself at every point. His characters are all identical in essence—all imbued with the confidence, the unflagging ardor, the impetuosity and extravagance of the same ideal. It is in vain that he labels them with different designations: no sooner do they begin to speak and move than every tone and gesture reveals the familiar type. The poor, mean-spirited creature intended to contrast with the hero turns out to be only his pale reflection. Distinctions of sex and age, of race and education, are merely superficial. High or low, good or bad, they are all equally knowing and equally self-willed. The women may talk of bonnets, but their lofty and fiery souls glow through the twaddle. The children have an infantile prattle, but the schoolmaster, overhearing it, would at once remark that it was only that boy Reade holding one of his strange colloquies with himself.

With this incapacity to understand the diverse springs of human action, Mr. Reade is clearly no novelist in the true sense of the term. He is, however, an admirable describer and a capital story-teller. He is consequently always entertaining and secure of his reader. Yet, inasmuch as he professes to relate and describe only actual facts, we cannot but regret that he should have adopted a form which is ill suited to this object, and which makes him a mere retailer of other people's observations. In the book before us he paints the interior of Africa from somebody else's information: had he gone thither himself his picture would have had great value. So, too, he is continually instructing us about the processes used in the arts and manufactures; but his knowledge being gained at second hand and crammed for the occasion, we mistrust the teacher. If he would apply himself to such matters, and give us the results of his experience, our gain would be great. He could not, of course, as now, traverse the whole field; but what his teaching might lose in superficial extent would be more than made good by its greater accuracy and reliability. He might select, for instance, the useful art of coopering. We know his powers, we appreciate his genius. It is safe to say that a cask made in accordance with his directions, after he had served a short apprenticeship, would not only be fair to see and easy to handle, but would also hold water. This is more than we should venture to affirm of the plot of any of his novels.

The Fishing Tourist. By Charles Hallock. New York: Harper & Brothers.

I Go A-Fishing. By W. C. Prime. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Mr. Hallock tells us in his preface that his province is to write an anglers' guide without embellishment. It would have been well if he had adhered to this plan. After some pages of high-flown periods he informs us that twenty-six years ago fly-fishing was in its infancy, being scarcely known in America, and but little practiced in England. If he had asserted that fly-fishing was scarcely known among his "green hills" at that period, and but little practiced in Hampshire county, the statement need not have been impugned; but hundreds of books have been written upon this art in England since the time of Dame Juliana Berners, and in America fifty years ago there existed many such practitioners as Fay, Eckley and Bethune.

When Mr. Hallock treats of the natural history of his favorite fishes he is equally unfortunate; which is the less remarkable since he gets his science from W. H. Herbert, a writer who knew little of American ichthyology. As a specimen of the methods of that "cautious student," as our author calls him, Herbert, pretending to quote from Agassiz, who in his Tour to Lake Superior described a new salmon of that lake under the name of Salmo Siskowet, calls it Salmo Siskowitz, and this mistake Hallock repeats. Again, Herbert writing of the great northern pickerel, calls it "Esox lucioides, Agassiz;" the fact being that Professor Agassiz describes it in his Lake Superior as Esox boreas. This mistake of Herbert has been perpetuated by most of the popular writers, Norris, Roosevelt, etc. Mr. Hallock calls the sea-trout Salmo trutta, again copying Herbert, while all naturalists now give it the name bestowed upon it by Hamilton Smith, Salmo Canadensis, it being very distinct from Salmo trutta, which is a European species. Mr. Hallock writes of the "toag of Lakes Pepin, Moosehead and St. Croix." Now, Lake Pepin contains no large gray trout; in fact, with the exception of Salmo fontinalis, its fishes are all of the Western type. He also mentions "the common lake-trout of New York and New England, Salmo confinis, DeKay," which is identical with the toag, just mentioned. Dr. A. L. Adams of the British army, in a recent work on the Natural History of New Brunswick, calls it "the togue or toladi, Salmo confinis, DeKay, the gray-spotted lake-trout." Mr. Hallock asserts that Salmo Sebago is a monster brook-trout, like those of the Rangely lakes. Dr. Adams states that this name, Salmo Sebago, was applied to the Schoodic salmon, Salmo Gloveri, by Girard, in 1853; the species being first observed in that lake, where it is now said to be extinct.

As a guide-book, The Fishing Tourist is not without value, for a work on this plan was needed. An unfortunate spirit of exaggeration seems, however, to pervade the narrative. What remarkable good luck a man must have who kills a four-pound trout at Bartlett's! How fortunate is he who can make an average of two-pound trout in a New Hampshire river! Our experience teaches us that it is dangerous to guarantee that no trout under ten ounces will be found in the Tabasintoc, though one might say that of the Novelle, another New Brunswick river. When Mr. Hallock states that the trout in the "Big Woods" of Wisconsin are lamentably ignorant of the angler's wiles, he must be referring to a remote period: we find them now very wide awake, and meet almost as many anglers on Rush River as on the Raquette.

Mr. Prime's book is a very pleasant one. Evidently the work of a scholar, it indulges in none of those spasmodic efforts of eloquence which are the joy of the newspaper correspondent. Perhaps there is something too much of the Iskander Effendi and the Sea of Galilee to be congruous with the St. Regis and Franconia Notch, but the dialogue is natural, the fishing adventures are painted with a modest brush, the trout are not incredibly large or numerous, and the whole tone of the book is well suited to summer reading, when, on your return from a long tramp by the river-side, you wish to take your ease in the society of a sympathizing author. Mr. Prime treats of well-known resorts, the much-whipped St. Regis lakes and the depleted streams of Connecticut and New Hampshire, but even among these familiar scenes he is able to find something new, or at least they are described in a fresh and lively way. The book is worthy to rest on the same shelf with Walton, Davy, Wilson, and the other classics of the angler's library. There are some sketches of fly-fishing in European waters which will be interesting to American anglers, and there is much pleasant talk about old books.

Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market. By Walter Bagehot. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co.

In England, as in America, notes are a legal tender, the Bank of England notes corresponding in that respect to our greenbacks. An American banker is safe if he have enough greenbacks to pay all probable demands, though the value of these changes as our government chooses to enlarge or contract the issue. The number of attainable bank-notes is not so elastic, however, in England as with us: the issue department of the Bank of England is limited, by an act of Parliament passed in 1844, to fifteen millions of pounds. For the last few years that bank, in addition to its fifteen millions in notes, has retained something like twenty millions in coin. It has not uniformly, though, been so rich: three times since 1847 its banking department has been reduced to a figure of three million pounds or under. On these occasions "Peel's Act" has been suspended to tide over the affairs of the embarrassed bank, and its business could not have survived if the law had not been broken. The bank which has thus three times practically given out in a quarter of a century is, however, so thoroughly protected by prestige, by national and international confidence, that it is the custodian of the reserves belonging to all Lombard street and to all the country banks of England, as well as those of Scotch and Irish bankers. And "since the Franco-German war," says Mr. Bagehot, "we may be said to keep the European reserve also." All great communities have at times to pay large sums in cash, and of that cash a great store must be kept somewhere. Formerly, there were two such stores in Europe: one was the Bank of France, and the other the Bank of England. But since the suspension of specie payments by the Bank of France its use as a reservoir of specie is at an end: no one can draw a cheque on it and be sure of getting gold for it. Accordingly, the whole liability for such international payments in cash is thrown on the Bank of England. The accumulations secured ultimately by this bank represent a remarkable share of the national wealth. England is the only European country where small savers commit their money to custody: France has never recovered from the timidity consequent on Law's failure, and still hoards its petty sums in stockings; Holland and Germany have never felt secure from invasion. England alone trusts its whole gain to a bank, and demands interest for it. The vast amount of idle gold distributed through the homes of France and Germany is not tangible, is not money "of the money market." The hoards of France can only be tempted from their torpor by a vast national misfortune and by a great loan in French securities. But the English money is borrowable money. The British are bold lenders, and even if they were not so, the mere fact that their money lies in a bank makes it far more obtainable. Millions in the hand of a banker are a power, whereas distributed through a nation they cannot be asked for, and are no power at all. It is thus that Lombard street stands ready to lend to all civilized or partly civilized governments at different rates, and builds railways in indigent states all over the world. For, though "English bankers are not themselves very great lenders to foreign countries, they are great lenders to those who lend." Rude and poor countries and undeveloped! colonies find in Lombard street a fund into which they may dip at a suitable premium, and thus possess a chance of material felicity which was never the privilege of any previous epoch. This vast machine, however, the legacy of unnumbered years, is not an ideally perfect custodian of the wealth entrusted to it. The reforms called for by a long experience are what the most important part of Mr. Bagehot's volume is devoted to. Some permanent and skilled authority to rule the bank is the principal novelty suggested; but the French plan will not do for England. The direct appointment of a governor by the Crown would not lessen the difficulty. The American law, saying that each national bank shall have a fixed proportion of cash to its liabilities, Mr. Bagehot considers one of many reforms which the English could not adopt if they would: "in a sensitive state of the British money-market the near approach to the legal limit of reserve would be a sure incentive to panic." The difficulties of remodeling such an institution as the Bank of England are the most curiously developed portion of Mr. Bagehot's treatise, where all is curiously and intelligently handled. The book is interesting to outsiders as well as to professionals.

Wau-Ban: The Early Day in the North-west. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.

This is a reprint, in a condensed and convenient form, of a work written some twenty years ago by Mrs. John H. Kinzie of Chicago. It is a real contribution to the early history of the North-west, and contains enough of romantic adventure to form the basis of half a dozen novels. The story of the massacre of Chicago in 1812 is one of the most thrilling in American history, and it is here told by an eye-witness. Still, it is difficult to realize that sixty years ago a wagon-load of children were tomahawked by Indians in what is now the heart of the great City of the Lakes.

The family of Kinzie had certainly a remarkable history, beginning with the female ancestor who was captured by savages in the early history of the country, through that generation who were the founders of Chicago, down to the living representative of the family, who in 1830 entered one hundred and sixty acres of the present town at the government price, one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre, and only paid for one hundred, thinking, as he said, that that quantity of land would be all he should ever want or could find a use for. The rejected portion is now worth from two to three millions of dollars. A hundred years hence, when Chicago will perhaps contain a million or two of inhabitants, the name of this family of pioneers will be as memorable as that of Winthrop in Boston or Stuyvesant in New York.



Books Received.

De Witt's Acting Plays: No. 142. Dollars and Cents: A Comedy. By L. J. Hollenius.—No. 145. First Love: A Comedy. From the French of Eugene Scribe. By L. J. Hollenius. New York: R. M. De Witt.

Memoirs of the Founding and Progress of the United States Naval Observatory. By Professor J. E. Nourse, U.S.N. Washington Government Printing-Office.

America Picturesque: A Visit to the Academy. By Henry Blackburn, late editor of "London Society." New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Expression: Its Anatomy and Philosophy. By Sir Charles Bell, K. H. Illustrated. New York: S.R. Wells.

The Mystery of Metropolisville. By Edward Eggleston. Illustrated. New York: Orange Judd & Co.

Bits of Talk about Home Matters, By H. H., author of "Bits of Travel." Boston: Roberts Brothers.

The Lawrences: A Twenty-Years' History. By Charlotte Turnbull. New York: American News Co.

The Forty-five Guardsmen. By Alexandre Dumas. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers.

Lars: A Pastoral of Norway. By Bayard Taylor. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.

The New York City "Ring." By S. J. Tilden. New York: Press of John Polhemus.

Poems of the Plains. By William Darwin Crabb. Cambridge: Riverside Press.

Woman's Wrong. By Mrs. Eiloart. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers.

Adventures of Kwei, the Chinese Girl. By Myra. Boston: Henry Hoyt.

THE END