CHAPTER II.

I had been at Breezy Brook, that beautiful summer resort which you all know, about a month: it was now July, and nothing had happened worth relating since my arrival. During the past winter I had not been idle—attending parties, balls and operas without number, but without success. This summer I made up my mind to be tranquil and to let events take their course, for, as Fortune had given me every other good, she would no doubt in time provide me with a good wife. I had therefore every reason to be patient.

I was in an unsociable mood one afternoon; so, taking a cigar and book, I sauntered up the mountain. There is an arbor halfway to its top, and I have a lounging-place near by, where the roots of an old tree make a comfortable nest just above a steep precipice, and the place is hidden from intruders by rocks and foliage. 'Tis a discovery of mine I pride myself upon, and I go there when I want to collect my thoughts and enjoy my own company.

Hardly had I made myself comfortable in my retreat when I heard voices in the arbor below. It was Mrs. Fluffy and her sister, Mrs. J.K.B. Stunner. I knew them in a moment, though they were not visible. Panting for breath, Mrs. F. invited the other to take a seat: she was very stout and soon tired. The sisters were examples of opposite schools of art. Mrs. Stunner, dark, hard and sharp-faced, was a widow with all her daughters "well settled" in life—i.e., married to wealthy husbands—and was considered "fortunate" among the matrons. Mrs. Fluffy was soft and florid, without an angular point, physically or mentally: much younger and prettier than her sister, she was always spoken of as "poor Mrs. Fluffy," though she was not badly off that I could see. She had two daughters "out" this season, and a third casting longing looks in the same direction.

Thinking they would move on shortly, as the arbor was only a halting-place for people walking to the summit, I lay snug and waited. Presently the widow, among other commonplaces, began to discuss the young ladies at The Brook.

"By the by, Sarah," she said, "I don't see that your girls are doing much this season: I really must say you do not seem to manage well at all. You may be playing a very deep game, but I can discover no signs of it, and there is little that escapes me in such matters."

"Oh, Jane!" panted Mrs. F., "if you only knew the trouble of having two daughters 'out' at once!"

"As if I didn't know!" snuffed Mrs. Stunner.

"True, true," replied Sarah in a conciliatory tone. "But you seemed to have so little anxiety."

"Seemed!" echoed the Stunner contemptuously. "Of course I seemed, and the difficulty it required to seem! Do you think I was so witless as to let my manoeuvres be seen? I wonder at you, Sarah!"

"Well, well," said the other, yielding the point, "I know you have a talent for such things, and can manage well, but I don't know what to do."

"I—should—think—you—did—not," replied her sister, tapping the ground slowly with her foot.

"What have I done that you should speak like that, Jane?" asked the meek Sarah, bridling up.

"Tell me," answered Jane after an ominous silence that was quite thrilling, "where is Eva at this moment?"

"Oh,", replied Sarah with a sigh of relief, "she is walking with Mr. Hardcash. You introduced him at the last ball."

"I introduced him to dance with, not to walk with," said Jane severely.

"Goodness me, sister! what's the difference?"

"She asks me 'What's the difference?' Are you a child? Why, just the difference between dancing and walking."

From the pause that followed I knew that Mrs. F. was looking with both her round eyes, intent on seeing it. I suppose she did not succeed, as her sister continued, emphasizing each word clearly, "Mr. Hardcash has not a penny," as if that at once explained the knotty question.

"Why did you introduce him if you don't approve of him?" asked Mrs. Fluffy, with a feeble attempt to throw the blame on her sister.

"Have I not told you? In a ball-room girls need plenty of partners—plenty of men about them. It makes them look popular and fascinating, and if the gentlemen are handsome and stylish-looking, so much the better. Mr. Hardcash is just the size to waltz well with Eva—he shows her off to advantage—but he is not a man to encourage afterward. She should not be seen walking or talking intimately with a gentleman who has less than ten thousand a year." Mrs. Stunner delivered this ultimatum with the tone of a just judge who will hear of no appeal.

"How can I know how much the gentlemen are worth?" said Sarah pettishly.

"It is your duty as a mother to discover it," replied the virtuous widow.

"But how?"

"The visitors' book will tell where a man is from; you can easily get acquainted with some old lady or gentleman from the same place; and—"

"What! and ask about them!"

"Nonsense! Speak of them, praise them if you wish, and let the others talk: you have only to be an interested listener" (here I could imagine Mrs. S. smiling grimly), "and you can soon hear enough. For instance, commence in this way: 'Fine fellow, Mr. T. from your part of the country.' As a general rule the old gentleman will then give you his whole history. Another time you may say, 'What a pleasant young man that Mr. B. is! but rather inclined to be wild, eh?' If he is you will soon know it. You can also cross-question the man himself. Speak of a little girl he has at home: if he blushes he is netted already, and lures are useless. See how he eats his dinner: that is a good test to judge his position by; not that a few gaucheries will matter if he is very wealthy—for a judicious mother-in-law can soon correct them—but for every impropriety he should have a thousand added to his income. Such things are so intolerable in a poor man!"

"I don't think Eva would obey me if I did interfere in her affairs," objected Mrs. Fluffy.

"Her affairs, indeed! It is your affair. Of course you want a son-in-law who can keep a comfortable house for you to live in. You have brought up Eva badly, Sarah, and there is one thing I must tell you about her—she is entirely too familiar and sisterly with gentlemen."

"She has a great many beaux," interrupted Mrs. F.

"It is one of her worst faults," continued Jane, not listening to her. "If a girl gets into those sisterly habits with a man, it will never come into his head to marry her. She may be his chief confidante; he will talk of his lady-love to her, and she may end by being first bridesmaid at his wedding, but nothing nearer. I don't approve of it. One of my maxims is, that a man ought not be well acquainted with the girl he is to marry until the ceremony is performed."

"Well, you cannot disapprove of Laura," said Mrs. Fluffy, trying to turn the conversation. "I left her in her room reading."

"'Disapprove' of her? The word is not strong enough for my feelings. Neither of your girls has the least bit of common sense; but I don't wonder, with such a mother! A girl who gets a reputation for being learned and saying brilliant things might just as well give up matrimony altogether. Men are either afraid of them or detest them: gentlemen don't like to puzzle their brains over a witticism, nor do they admire chaffing that is beyond their comprehension. Courtship should be made easy. My Jane was clever, and vexed me a great deal in consequence, daughters of that kind are so unmanageable: give me the most stupid in preference. It is pleasant to a husband to feel his superiority, to look down on his wife. The mediocre is the girl I take most delight in. There are so many mediocre men that they are sure to get suited without giving you much anxiety."

"Jane," exclaimed Mrs. Fluffy with a burst of admiration, "you are so clever I wonder you ever were married. Did Mr. Stunner appreciate that kind of women?"

"La! no. I had the sense to conceal my talents. Take my word for it, superior people as a class are never liked, unless they do as I did—conceal it, conceal it."

"I am glad I was not born talented: I fear I could not succeed in hiding it as you do." Mrs. F. was too stupid for sarcasm, else I should have thought—

"Now be frank with me, Sarah," broke in Mrs. Stunner, scattering my thoughts: "who is paying attention to Eva now?"

"Well," replied the other, appearing to recollect, "there is Mr. Rich: he asked her to ride with him."

"More than once?"

"No, not more, but it was only day before yesterday."

"Ah! he may ask her again: once means nothing. A gentleman may ask her for pastime, or to make some one else jealous, or out of good-nature, but to a girl properly brought up once is a chance—it is a good start." (Mrs. S.'s late husband was fond of racing.) "It rests entirely with her to make the once twice, the twice thrice, and so on; for if she is amusing and don't talk love, he will be sure to ask her again."

"'Don't talk love'? Why, Jane, you surprise me! I thought that was the proper thing to do."

"Just where people mistake. The most stupid man can talk love if he feels love. Let girls be agreeable, sweet and charming, but without especial effort to appear so, and when gentlemen are captivated they will do their own love-making."

"Dear me!" was the reply.

"Yes, I protest against young ladies throwing themselves at the head of every marriageable gentleman they see. They should think of the effect it will have."

"But they are so unworldly that they don't think of effect," said Mrs. Fluffy.

"Humph!" ejaculated the widow in a tone of incredulity.

"You seem to have a very poor opinion of women, Jane."

"They want to marry, all of them: you admit that, don't you?" asked Mrs. Stunner severely.

"I think not," objected Mrs. F. in a feeble voice. "There is Miss Furnaval: they say she has refused—"

"Then," interrupted her sister, not heeding her, "if they want to marry, why not take the proper means? It is inconceivable to me how women, after thinking about it all their lives, blunder into it in the end, just as if it was an entirely unforeseen event. A little good sense is requisite in everything, I think."

"They are not all anxious to marry," reiterated Mrs. Fluffy, gaining courage: "there's Miss Furnaval—"

"A great example to give one!" remarked her sister contemptuously. "She is making a fool of herself as fast as she can. Among all the young ladies who marry badly, the fascinating ones prosper the worst. No girl can refuse a good offer with impunity: a day of reckoning will come. Society has its laws, which must be obeyed: if not, gare! Mark my words," continued Mrs. Stunner solemnly: "Miss Furnaval has some outlandish un-society principles, and practically they will not work. Why, she is quite as well contented talking to a poor man as to a rich one, and she is always encouraging worthless, amusing, handsome fellows—talented men, instead of men whose position dispenses with the necessity of their having brains. Those fellows she has about her are the pests of society. If you hear of a runaway match, you may be sure it is with one of them; if a daughter is obstinate, you may be sure some ineligible jackanapes has prompted her to it. Blanche will end badly. She will fall in love with one of them some day, and finish by marrying him."

"If Miss Furnaval loves one of that kind of gentlemen, I don't see why she might not be happy with him."

"You don't see anything, Sarah. You don't see the nose on your face, though I see 'tis a very big one. I will make it evident to you. He will be poor, Blanche is rich: if she gives him her money, he will spend it. Never having had any of his own, he won't know how to take care of it. If, on the other hand, she don't give it to him, he will think she does not care for him—will get jealous, likely take to drink: your clever man always does. They will quarrel; then her clever husband will use his clever tongue to tease her, and his clever brain to thwart and provoke her—which a stupid man would never think of doing—and, worse than all, she will never get the least chance to have her own way in anything."

"Poor Blanche! I pity her," sighed Mrs. Fluffy.

"I don't, in the least," snapped the other. "Such an example will serve to make other girls more sensible. Only you take it as a warning to your own Eva."

After quite a long silence, in which I suppose Mrs. Fluffy was considering, she said pathetically, "I wish you would tell me what to do with Eva."

"Marry her as soon as possible," was the prompt and decided reply. "It is her second summer 'out,' and she should at least be engaged."

"I can do nothing. What do you advise, Jane?"

"In the first place, stop her being with such gentlemen as Mr. Hardcash."

"Eva is so high-spirited," groaned Mrs. Fluffy, "I fear she would not listen to me."

"You mean obstinate, Sarah. Tell her seriously that she has had two very gay seasons—that you can't afford another—that she must make up her mind now. Then think over all the most eligible gentlemen you know, and cultivate their acquaintance."

"Couldn't you help me, Jane?" asked the other timidly. "I shall not know what to do."

"Let me see," continued Mrs. S. in a musing tone. "If you had a country-house you could manage better. Elderly gentlemen are usually pleased with domestic attractions, and there are many little attentions that you and Eva could show them which in any other position would look like courting them. Then there would be no danger of competition. Indeed, if a pretty girl has a gentleman all to herself for a week or two at a romantic country-house, a wedding is sure to follow. But there must be no jarring, fretting, bad cooking or any household ill whatever—no talk of poor servants or dishonest grooms: everything must be couleur de rose."

"Jane, it appears to me you are talking very silly," said Mrs. Fluffy, glad of a chance to attack her superior sister. "You know I have no country-house, and I can't buy one just to marry Eva and Laura from."

"I merely said if you had. I thought you might be pleased to hear my theory," replied Mrs. Stunner stiffly, "The next best thing for you is to have a parlor here, get up picnics and drives, make card-parties with suppers—gentlemen so like to eat!—and do not spare expense when you have a good investment in view. You can limit the invitations to two or three gentlemen who are especially eligible: make these some little compliment, such as 'You will come of course—our little party would not be complete without you.' Contrive that they take care of the girls, and you can entertain the others. Occasionally include some young ladies in your evenings, so that the world may not say you are afraid of them, but don't let them become intimate."—Here Mrs. Stunner paused for breath.

"It sounds easy enough," said poor Mrs. F. dolefully.

"It is not easy at all," sharply replied her sister, "but if we manage well we sha'n't have to go through with it more than one summer."

"Then you will help me?"

"I suppose I must sacrifice myself for the good of the family," said the Stunner in an heroic tone, "but you must let me have my own way entirely."

"Oh yes, Jane—certainly. I am so much obliged!" replied Mrs. Fluffy with effusion.

"Then it is not necessary to explain my plans further: I shall be there and will manage."

"But whom do you think we should invite, Jane dear?" asked Mrs. F. anxiously.

"You spoke of Mr. Rich. I approve of him: I know he has twenty thousand a year. Yes, he shall be one."

"I am afraid Eva won't like him," Mrs. Fluffy timidly remarked.

"Eva shall not interfere with my plans, and don't you commence with such nonsense as liking and disliking; I won't have it," retorted Mrs. S. in a louder voice than she would have used had she known I was so near.

"But there might be some nicer gentleman just as wealthy, might there not?" suggested the weak sister.

"There is David Todd, with thirty thousand a year: I wonder if he would suit the dainty Eva?" said Mrs. Jane, sneering.

"I think she would like Mr. Highrank to be invited," observed pink Mrs. Fluffy, waiving the question.

I sat up and listened attentively when I heard my own name mentioned, not forgetful of the adage that listeners hear no good of themselves, but of course I had nothing to fear.

"More sensible than I thought Eva could be," the Stunner rejoined. "Forty thousand a year and entailed, so that he can't get through with it. I have observed him a good deal for several seasons, and I find that though he is such a fool, the sharpest girls can do nothing with him. When so many are after him I suppose no single one can have a fair chance. Yes, we will invite him, but I hope Eva will not think of falling in love with him unless he should propose. Indeed, I think a modest girl ought never to fall in love. It seems to me indecorous, at least before marriage—after, they can do as they like about it. You must warn Eva on the subject. If any other gentleman should ask for her, she must not refuse, because we could not count on Highrank making up his mind: I have an idea that he is too weak to form a resolution of any kind."

I thought the old woman must be bilious. "Me a fool!"—a philosopher rather. But I have always known that exalted worth is a fault in the estimation of narrow-minded people, who can't appreciate it. Little Eva has more sense—would like me to visit her: of course the poor child is in love with me. I wish I could tease that ridiculous old lady in some way. I have a confounded mind to run off with Eva. No, that, I fear, would please Aunt Stunner. But I am missing all her trash: better listen. It is really not worth getting heated over.

"The others I will see about," continued Aunt Jane. "It is very little consequence who they are. Only one thing: I won't have that Hardcash about: he and Eva have been entirely too much together."

"She is rough on Ned," thought I in ambush.

"I am afraid you won't be able to manage Eva, my dear Jane."

"Don't worry. When I have a duty to perform I go through with it. Let us walk on to the summit."

"Just as you like: I am sufficiently rested, and we can talk as we go."

There was a rustling of silk and a crunching of gravel, and all was quiet.

I lay there thinking for a long while: I wonder if my poor mother, were she living, would take as much trouble to procure me a wife as Mrs. Stunner is going to take to provide Eva with a husband. I wonder mothers don't help their sons to marry, and let their daughters help themselves. Girls are so much sharper about such things than men are. Everything is against us. I suppose women think they deceive us for our good, but they should continue to do so after marriage. 'Pon honor! I have seen the sweetest, most amiable girl turn as sour as could be a few months after the ceremony. The dressiest ones often get dowdy, the most musical can't abide music, the most talkative have the dumps. A man has no chance of judging how they are going to turn out. He is duped by the daughters, inveigled by their mothers, and, what is worse still, as soon as he is married they both undeceive him. It would not matter if a fellow was cheated if he never knew it, but that's where it hurts.

I shouldn't wonder if that pair of old plotters would catch me yet if I don't take care. I will tease them a bit, any way: I'll pay a deuced lot of attention to Eva, and keep the other fellows away. No man would try to win her if he thought I was serious.

Blanche Furnaval is an odd girl, I went on musing. They said she would end badly—hope she won't, though. Bewitching girl, but she don't seem to care if people admire her or not. I never can quite understand her. Once I wrote a few verses and gave them to her—compared her to an ice-covered stream, quiet on the surface, but all motion and tumult below. Well, she never even thanked me for them, though she said she liked that simile, it was so new. There was another couplet about her name—Blanche and snow and cold: when she read it she laughed and said, "Though my name means white, it does not mean cold. You know there are some white things that are very warm, Mr. Highrank—my ermine muff, for instance." But I made a clever answer. I said, "The muff looks cold, and so does Miss Blanche, but if I could be so fortunate as to touch the heart of either I might find warmth." "My muff has no heart," she answered, looking at me as if she did not understand. "And is its owner in the same condition?" I asked tenderly. (I make it a rule to speak tenderly to all girls, it is so sad for them to love me when I cannot return it.) "In a poetical sense I believe she is," she replied, "but for all practical purposes she has one that serves very well."

Sometimes she would be invisible for two or three days together: no one would see her, either at meals or at the evening ball. When asked what she had been doing, she would smile that sweet smile of hers and say she had been enjoying herself. She was very talented, but not a bit ostentatious. To give you an example: It was rumored that she had a wonderful voice, and though we had been begging her to sing for at least a month, she steadily refused to gratify us. One day there was a queer old Italian chap came to The Brook for his health. He looked like an organ-grinder, and had been once actually on the stage. Well, do you know she allowed him to be introduced to her, and talked to him with as much deference as if he had been a prince, when she ought not have spoken to him at all, you know; and in that gibberish, too, that no one can understand. One evening, after entertaining him for about an hour, she walked with him the whole length of the room, not noticing any one, though every eye was upon her. He sat down at the piano which stood in a corner, struck a few chords, and then, with no coaxing whatever, she sang; and such a song! Her gray eyes grew dark, and her voice quivered, deepened, expanded into a melody that made you think the heavens had suddenly opened. Every other sound ceased; the doors and windows were filled with eager faces; the dancers ended in the middle of a quadrille, and the band came in a body to listen. I saw one fat Dutchman holding his fiddle in one hand while he wiped the tears from his eyes with the other. When the song was ended the old Italian took both her hands in his and kissed them, talking at the same time with impossible rapidity; and she smiled and looked as happy as if she had won a prize, turning her back on every one else who wished to congratulate her. It showed how very odd she was. The next evening I asked her to sing, and she flatly refused without the least excuse, saying, "No: a refusal will be a pleasant novelty in your life, Mr. Highrank."

ITA ANIOL PROKOP.

[TO BE CONTINUED]



THE STRANGER WITHIN THE GATES OF PARIS.

"Paris," once said Victor Hugo to me, "is the hostess of all the nations. There all the world is at home. It is the second best place with all foreigners—the fatherland first, and afterward Paris."

There was a great deal of truth in the observation, and especially is it true as regards Americans. By our natural sociability and versatility of temperament, by our love of all bright and pleasant surroundings, by our taste for pleasure and amusement, we assimilate more closely in our superficial characteristics to the French nation than we do to any other. Our Britannic cousins are too cold, too unsociable, too heavy for our fraternization, and mighty barriers of dissimilarity of language, of tastes, of customs and manners divide us from the European nation which of all others we most closely resemble in essential particulars—namely, the Northern Germans. The Prussians have been called—and that, too, with a good deal of truth—the Yankees of Europe; and if the term "Yankees" means, as it usually does in European parlance, the entire population of the United States, we citizens of the great republic have every right to feel proud of the comparison. Yet, with all our genuine respect and admiration for the Prussians, there are but few American tourists who take kindly to that people or their country. The lack of the external polish, the graceful manners and winning ways of the Parisians is severely felt by the chance tarrier within the gates of Berlin. We accord our fullest meed of honor to the great conquering nation of Europe, to its wonderful system of education, its admirable military discipline, and its sturdy opposition to superstition and ignorance in their most aggressive form. And yet we do not like Prussia or the Prussians. We scoff at Berlin, planted on a sandy plain and new with the thriving, aggressive newness of some of our own cities. We long for the soft shadows of antiquity, the dim twilight of past glories, to overhang our daily path as we journey onward through the storied lands of the ancient world. We have enough of bright progressive prosperity at home. Something of the feeling of the artist, who turns from the trim, elegant damsel arrayed in the latest fashion to paint the figure of a beggar-girl draped in picturesque rags, hangs about us as we travel. It is only to Paris—Paris beautiful in its strange blending of smoky ruins and splendid, freshly-erected mansions—that we can pardon the white glare of newly-opened streets, the Vandal desecration of antique landmarks, the universal sacrifice of old memories, historic associations and antique picturesqueness on that altar of modern progress whose high priest was Baron Haussmann and whose divinity was Napoleon III.

We love Paris, we Americans abroad, and we like the Parisians. One side of our affection grows and strengthens and sends forth new shoots with every passing day. The longer one lives in Paris the better one loves it. Its beauty becomes part and parcel of one's daily life. The mighty sweep of palace and arcade and museum and church, the plash of sunlit fountains, the rustle and the shimmer of resplendent foliage, the grace of statue, the grandeur of monument, the far-stretching splendor of brilliant boulevard and bustling street,—all these make up a picture whose lines are engraven on our heart of hearts. Often, passing along the street, some far-off vista, some effect of light and color, some single point of view, strikes on the sense with new and startling beauty, and we pause to gaze and to admire, and to exclaim for the thousandth time, How fair is Paris!

And she is so prodigal of her treasures, this goodly city! She lavishes them on all comers without fee or favor. All day long her princely art-galleries stand open to welcome the passing visitor. One comes and goes unhindered and unquestioned in church or museum, and even the service of guides and boats and cars to the sewers, and of official guides to the Catacombs, is given without compensation—nay more, all fees are strictly; forbidden. There is no city on earth that receives its guests with such splendid and lavish hospitality. Apart from one's board and lodging, it is possible for a stranger to come to Paris and to visit all its principal sights without the expenditure of a single sou. And for the persons who, prolonging their stay, wish in some sort to take up their permanent residence in Paris, things are smoothed and ironed and the knots picked out in the most wonderful way. Your board is dainty and your bed soft. Velvet-footed and fairy-handed beings minister to your wants. You are clothed as if by magic in garments of marvelous beauty. The very rustle of your letter of credit is as an open sesame to treasure-chambers to which Ali Baba's cavern was but a shabby cellar. And if, on the contrary, your means are limited and your wants but few, the science of living has been so exactly conned and is so perfectly understood that your franc-piece will buy you as many necessaries as ever your fifty-cent greenback did home, and that, too, in face of the fact that all provisions are now, owing to the war and the taxes, as dear, if not dearer than they are in Philadelphia. If a stranger comes to Paris and wishes to live comfortably and economically, there are plenty of respectable, well-situated establishments in the best section of the city where he can obtain a comfortable, well-furnished room and well-cooked, well-served meals, for eight to ten francs a day—such accommodations as five dollars would scarcely avail to purchase in Philadelphia or New York.

The whole secret of the matter is, that in France everybody understands the art of making the most out of everything. No scrap of food is wasted, no morsel cast aside, till every particle of nourishment it can yield is carefully extracted. The portions given to the guests at the minor hotels, where one lives en pension at so much per diem, are carefully measured for individual consumption. The slice of steak, the tiny omelette, the minute moulded morsels of butter, even the roll of bread and little sucrier and cream-jug placed before each person, have each been carefully gauged as to the usual dimensions of an ordinary appetite. Nothing is squandered and nothing is wasted. When one recalls the aspect of our hotel tables at home—the bread-plates left with their piles of cold, uneatable corn-bread, and heavy, chilled muffins and sodden toast uneaten, uncared-for and wasted; the huge steak, with its scrap of tenderloin carefully scolloped out, and the rest left to be thrown away; the broiled chicken—the legs scorned in favor of the more toothsome breast; the half-emptied plates of omelettes and fried potatoes,—one realizes how low prices for board in Paris are still compatible with the increased price of provisions, and why we must pay five dollars at home for accommodations for which we expend two here. The same wastefulness creeps into all the details of our hotel-life. If we want a glass of ice-water, for instance, we are straight-way supplied with a pitcher brimming over with huge crystal lumps of transparent ice. One-half the quantity would suffice for all actual purposes: the rest is left to melt and run to waste.

The fact is, that we citizens of the United States live more luxuriously than any other people on the face of the earth. On an average we dress better, fare better, sleep softer, and combat the cold in winter and the heat in summer with more scientific persistency, than do any of the so-called luxurious nations of Europe. Take, for instance, the matter of heating and lighting. A few of the leading hotels in Paris, and a small minority among the most expensive suites of private apartments, have gas introduced into all the rooms, but as a general thing it is confined to the public rooms, and the unfortunate wight who longs to see beyond the end of his nose is forced to wrestle with dripping candles and unclean lamps, known only by tradition in our native land. The gaslight, which is a common necessary in the simplest private dwelling in an American city, is here a luxury scarcely attainable save by the very wealthiest. And we do not know how precious our gaslight is till we have lost it. To sit in a dim parlor where four lighted candles struggle vainly to disperse the gloom, to dress for opera or ball by the uncertain glimmer of those greasy delusions, is enough to make one forswear all the luxuries of Paris, and flee homeward forthwith.

Then in winter comes the question of warmth. What is more delicious than to plunge from the iced-champagne atmosphere of a sparkling winter's day in America into the nest-like, all-pervading warmth of an American home? Here such comfort is wholly unknown. The cold, though less severe than with us, is damp, raw and insidious, and creeps under wraps with a treacherous persistency that nothing can shut out. The ill-fitting windows, opening in the old door-like fashion, let in every breath of the chill outer air. A fire is a handful of sticks or half a dozen lumps of coal. The calorifere, a poor substitute for our powerful furnaces, is a luxury for the very rich—an innovation grudgingly granted to the whims of the occupants of the most costly and fashionable of private apartments. Warmth, our cosy, all-pervading warmth, is a winter luxury that we leave behind us with the cheerful light of our universal gas-burners.

In summer we sorely miss the cold, pure ice-water of our native land, and we long for it with a thirst which vin ordinaire and Bavarian beer are powerless to assuage. The ill-tasting limestone-tainted water of Paris is a poor substitute for our sparkling draughts of Schuylkill or Croton. Ice-pitchers, water-coolers and refrigerators are unknown quantities in the sum-total of Parisian luxuries. The "cup of cold water," which the traveler in our country finds gratuitously supplied in every waiting-room and railway-station, every steamboat, every car and every hotel, is here something that must be specially sought for, and paid for at an exorbitant price. Ice can be purchased only in small quantities for immediate consumption. Ten cents for a few lumps swimming in water on a tepid plate is the usual tariff for this our American necessity, this rare Parisian luxury.

The scant supply of water for ablution is another annoyance to the American traveler accustomed to the hot-and cold-water faucets introduced into private bed-rooms and hotel apartments, and the capacious bath-tubs and unlimited control of water in his native land. To be sure, one can get a bath in Paris, as well as anywhere else, by ordering it and waiting for it and paying for it; but the free use of water and its gratuitous supply in hotels, so entirely a matter of course with us, is here unheard of. As with ice-water, the bath is an American necessity, a Parisian luxury. However, the latest erected dwelling-houses here have had water-pipes and bath-tubs introduced. Wealth can command its bath here as well as its gaslight and its supplies of ice, but wealth only. The humblest abode of a Philadelphia mechanic contains comforts and conveniences which are wellnigh unattainable luxuries in all but the most splendid apartments of the most luxurious city of Europe.

Nor do all the delicate artifices of French cookery suffice wholly to replace for an American palate the dainties of his native land. The buckwheat cakes and waffles, the large, delicate-flavored, luscious oysters, the canvas-back ducks, the Philadelphia croquettes and terrapin, find no substitutes on this side of the water. The delicious shad and Spanish mackerel have no gastronomic rivals in these waters, and the sole must be accepted in their stead. We miss, too, our profusion and variety of vegetables, our stewed and stuffed tomatoes, green corn, oyster-plants and sweet potatoes. As for fruits, the smaller varieties are far more abundant and much finer here than they are with us. Strawberries, cherries, raspberries, gooseberries, apricots—all of great size and exquisite flavor—tempt and enchant the palate. But our rich profusion of tropical fruits, such as bananas and pineapples, is wholly unknown. Peaches are poor in flavor and exorbitant in price. As for meats, poultry is dearer in Paris than at home, a small chicken for fricasseeing costing six francs ($1.20 in gold), and a large one for roasting ten francs ($2). Beef and mutton are at about the same prices as in Philadelphia and New York. Butter costs from sixty to seventy cents a pound. One can easily see, therefore, that it takes all the skill and experience in domestic economy of Parisian housekeepers to maintain the prices of living at anything like its present standard in pensions and hotels. But, in truth, the general standard of French cooking has been much lowered since the war. A really sumptuous French dinner is no longer to be procured at any of the tables d'hote or the leading hotels, and if ordered at a first-class restaurant it will cost twice as much as it used to do.

Rents, though somewhat lowered from their former proportions, are still very high, a really elegant unfurnished suite of apartments costing from five thousand to ten thousand francs a year, according to location; and if furnished, nearly as much more. Two thousand francs is the lowest rent which economy, desirous of two or three bed-rooms, in addition to the parlor, kitchen and dining-room of an ordinary suite, can accomplish. There are now in process of construction in the suburbs of Paris several rows of houses built on the American plan, and it is hardly possible to tell how comfortable and home-like the neat separate abodes look to one who has been journeying round amid a series of "floors," each so like the others. To the casual visitor there is a despairing amount of sameness in the fitting-up of all French furnished apartments. The scarlet coverings on the furniture, the red curtains, the light moquette carpet with white ground and gay flowers, the white and gold of the woodwork, the gilt bronze clock and candelabra, the tables and cabinets in marquetry and buhl, are all precisely alike in each, and all wear the same hotel-like look and lack of individuality. Nobody here seems to care anything for home or home belongings. A suite of apartments, even if occupied by the proprietor, is not the shrine for any household gods or tender ideas: it is a place to rent out at so much per month should the owner desire to go on a journey. No weak sentimental ideas about keeping one's personal belongings from the touch and the usage of strangers ever troubles anybody's mind. Tables and chairs and carpets and curtains are just so many chattels that will bring in, if rented, just so much more income: around them gleams no vestige of the tender halo that surrounds the appurtenances of an American home.

The servant question is one that is just now of special interest to the American housekeeper in Paris. I have elsewhere spoken of some of the trials inflicted by these accomplished but often unprincipled domestics on their masters and mistresses, so will not expatiate further on the subject. I will merely specify as a special grievance the law that forces the employer who discharges a servant to inscribe on his or her character-book a good character: should the departing help have been sent away for gross immorality, theft or drunkenness, and should the master write down the real reason of the dismissal, he renders himself liable to an action for defamation of character. The person, therefore, who engages servants from their character-book has no real guarantee as to their worth. It is a well-known fact also that the intelligence offices in Paris are far more anxious to obtain places for bad servants than for good ones, because the former class return to them more frequently, and are consequently the better customers. As to the percentage exacted from grocers and provision-dealers by cooks and stewards—a percentage which of course comes indirectly out of the pocket of the master—the evil has become a crying one, but it is apparently irremediable. A provision-dealer opened not long since a shop in one of the most fashionable quarters of Paris, and sent round circulars to all the housekeepers in the neighborhood announcing his determination of paying no percentage to servants. The consequence was, that not one of the cooks would buy anything of him, and he has been forced to break up his establishment and depart. It is an impossibility to engage a first-class cook without according to her the privilege of doing all the marketing—a privilege by which she is enabled to more than double the amount of her wages at her employer's expense.

Among the other drawbacks of a residence abroad to an American woman is an absence of the kindly deference to which, by virtue of her womanhood alone, she is accustomed at home. The much-vaunted politeness of the French nation is the thinnest possible varnish over real impertinence or actual rudeness. None of the true, heartfelt, genuine courtesy that is so freely accorded to our sex in our own favored land is to be met with here. "A woman is weak and defenceless," argue, apparently, a large class of Parisians, "therefore we will stare her out of countenance, we will mutter impudent speeches in her ear, we will elbow her off the sidewalk, we will thrust her aside if we want to enter a public conveyance. Politeness is a thing of hat-lifting, of bowing and scraping, of 'Pardon!' and 'Merci!' It is an article to be worn, like a dress-coat and a white tie, in a drawing-room and among our acquaintances. We have the right article for that occasion—very sweet, very refined, very graceful, very charming indeed. But as for everyday use—nenni!" That deep, true and chivalrous courtesy that respects and protects a woman merely because she is a woman, and as such needs the guardianship of the stronger sex, is something of which they have never heard and which they do not understand. They will hand Madame la duchesse de la Haute Volee or Mademoiselle Trois-Etoiles into her carriage with incomparable grace, but they will push Mrs. Brown into the gutter, and will whisper in poor blushing Miss Brown's ear that she is "une fillette charmante."

And when a Frenchman is rude, his impoliteness is worse than that of other nations, because he knows better: he is rude with malice prepense. The lower classes have especially lost much of their courtesy since the Commune. I have seen a French workingman thrust a lady violently aside on a crowded sidewalk, with a scowl and a muttered curse that lent significance to the act. And the graceful, suave courtesy of the shopkeepers—how swiftly it flies out of the window when their hope of profit in the shape of the departing shopper walks out of the door!

Shortly before quitting the United States I went into one of our large public libraries to consult a voluminous work of reference. In the remote recess where the books were kept sat a gentleman intent on the perusal of a volume, his chair tipped back as far as it could be with safety inclined, and his feet resting on the table. "Horrid fellow!" I said to myself, glancing at the obtrusive members, and going forward to the bookcase in search of the work I wanted. It proved to be of somewhat ponderous dimensions, and higher than I could conveniently reach, so I stood on tiptoe and tugged vainly at it for a moment. My friend of the feet saw my dilemma, and down went his book, and he sprang to my assistance in an instant, "Allow me," he said; and in a moment the heavy tome was brought down, dusted by a few turns of his pocket-handkerchief and laid on the table for my accommodation. If he had but known it, there was mingled with my thanks a world of unuttered but heartfelt apologies for my former hard thoughts respecting his attitude. And therein lay the difference between the two nationalities. A Frenchman would have died rather than have made a library-table a resting-place for his feet, but he would have let a woman he did not know break a blood-vessel by her exertions before he would have rendered her the slightest assistance.

American women are too apt to accept all the courtesies offered them by strangers at home as their right, even neglecting to render the poor meed of thanks in return. But let them when in Paris try to get into an omnibus on a wet day, and being thrust aside by a strong-armed Frenchman they will remorsefully remember the seats accorded to them in crowded cars, and accepted thanklessly and as a matter of course. And when the lounger on the boulevards dogs their steps or whispers his insulting compliments in their shuddering ear, they will remember how they were guarded at home not by one protector, but by all right-minded mankind, and will thank Heaven that their brothers, their sons, their husbands "are not even as these are."

LUCY H. HOOPER.



OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

GYPSY MUSIC IN HUNGARY.

We have all, at some time or other, felt our curiosity and interest excited by the bands of wandering gypsies whom we may sometimes have come upon in their encampments pitched in some remote or sequestered wood or dell—wild-looking men and women and dark, ragged children grouped about fires over which hang kettles suspended from stakes arranged in a triangle; mongrel curs which seem to share their masters' instinctive distrust of strangers; and donkeys browsing near the tilted carts which convey the tribe from one place to another. We feel a sort of traditional repulsion for these people, almost amounting to dread, for stories of children stolen by gypsies, and of their dark, mysterious ways, have taken root in our infant minds along with those of ghosts and goblins, robbers and Indians. There are, it is true, romantic associations connected with them, and we try to fancy a Meg Merrilies in the swarthy old woman who examines the lines of our hand and tells us the past, present and future—sometimes with a startling consistency and probability. But few of us would have supposed that this race of vagabonds and outcasts had ever risen much above their traditional occupation of tinkering, far less that any portion of it had displayed original artistic genius. We have, however, from Robert Franz the composer a most interesting account of the wonderful music of the Hungarian gypsies or Tziganys, which he had several opportunities of hearing during a visit to a friend in Hungary. He had been much impressed in his youth by the wandering apparitions of these people in the streets of Kiev, and by the strange, wild dances of their women, whose outlandish garb was rendered still more effective by the pieces of red stuff cut into hearts and sewed all over their skirts. "These caravans of strange beings, who preserve under every sky their dreamy laziness, their rebellion against the yoke, their love of solitude," had always possessed an irresistible charm for him, and he had never understood the scorn and disgust of which they were the object.

Being informed of the arrival of a gypsy band within eight or ten miles of his friend's chateau, he took his immediate departure for the forest where they had made their temporary home. The sun was going down when he reached the camp. It was in an open glade, where the ground was trampled down, in some places blackened by fire, and covered with fragments of coarse pottery, wooden bowls, bones, parings, etc. The gypsies were there pell-mell—men, women and children, horses, dogs and wagons. The men, lounging about in various attitudes, were smoking: all had a look of careless nobility about them, an air of melancholy, and eyes which burned with slumbering passion. Old women were cowering about the fires, surrounded by children whose meagre limbs were frankly displayed to view. Tall girls, with Oriental eyes, firm and polished cheeks, and vigorous forms, stood facing the horizon, and were distinctly defined against the blue of the sky. Some wore scarlet gowns, bodices covered with metallic ornaments, embroidered chemisettes and a profusion of glass trinkets. In the centre was one, taller by a head than her companions, her face of a fine and delicate oval unknown amongst us, with magnetic, disquieting eyes which suggested splendid vices; a black turban confined her black locks; a chemisette of dazzling whiteness half opened on her breast; she wore, as a necklace, twisted five or six times about her neck, a long chaplet of yellow flowers, clusters of which she held in her hands. The red rays of the setting sun flashed with fantastic effect upon the scene: then night fell, and in the flickering glare of the fires gleaming eyes, white teeth and mobile hands emerged from the gloom.

Franz had expressed his wish to hear their music, but for a while all was silent. Suddenly a strange, prolonged note vibrated through the air like a sigh from the supernatural world; another followed; then after a pause a majestic but sombre melody was developed. The sounds swelled like an immense choral, with incomparable purity and nobleness, fraught with memories of ruins and tombs, of lost liberty and love. Another pause, and some strophes of unbridled gayety burst forth; then again the principal phrase, detaching itself like a flower from its stem, among myriads of winged notes, clusters of vaporous sounds, long spirals of transparent fioritures. Still the violins grew bolder and more impetuous. Franz rose from his seat while watching these men standing with their violins pressed against their breasts, as if they were pouring their life's blood into them: he felt oppressed with anguish, when, by an ingenious inversion, the gloomy theme was transformed into a graceful, poetic melody. The sounds passed away rapidily like sparks, then were extinguished for a moment. A ferocious violence animated the last measures, and the gypsies laid down their bows. But, divining a sympathetic listener, they recommenced and played on till the night was far advanced. At length they ceased, and Franz left the camp, carrying with him the revelation of a hitherto unknown art.

Three principal features (he tells us) determine the character of Tzigany music—its intervals, not used in European harmony, its peculiar rhythms, and its Oriental fioritures or grace-notes. In the minor scale the Tziganys take the fourth augmented, the sixth diminished and the seventh augmented. It is by the frequent augmentation of the fourth that the harmony acquires a wonderfully audacious and disquieting character. The educated musician at first thinks he hears false notes, but the law of their harmonies is to have no law. Their abundance is incalculable, and the solemn and intoxicating effects resulting from the rapid and beautiful transitions cannot be imagined. As for the grace-notes, they give to the ear a pleasure like that which Moorish architecture gives to the eye: the architects of the Alhambra painted on each of their bricks a graceful little poem; the gypsies adorn each note with melodious designs and luxuriant embroideries. But (we quote M. Franz throughout) who shall describe the impalpable flame of Tzigany sentiment, the strange, subjugating charm of which is a vital animation almost adequate to life itself? or the mysterious equilibrium which reigns in this undisciplined art between the sentiment and the form? Mystery of genius, which bears in itself its inexplicable power of emotion, and which science and taste in vain deny!

When Franz again heard Tzigany music it was under very different circumstances. A fete was given by a Hungarian gentleman, of which this music was to be one of the attractions, the most distinguished performers being Farkas Miska and Remenyi Ede. The arrival of the latter on the morning after the first evening concert (the fete seems to have lasted some days) was announced to M. Franz by a great noise, a banging of doors and windows and moving of furniture in the room next his own. It at length ceased, and he was just getting to sleep again when some one knocked at his door, and a pretty, fair-haired boy entered, who announced himself as Ptolemyi Nandor, the fervent disciple of Remenyi Ede, who, he said, had just arrived and was about to take possession of the adjoining apartment.

"Well, sir, is it to inform me of your name and your fervor that you have come to prevent me from sleeping?"

"No," said the boy decidedly: "it is to ask you to dress yourself and go out for a walk."

To the astonished exclamation of M. Franz he replied that his master wished to practice, beginning early, and that it annoyed him to have any one hear him.

"Go to the devil, you and your master!" naturally shouted our composer.

The boy became purple. "What!" he said, "send him to the devil?—him, the great violinist, the successor of Czemak, of Bihary!"

"Is your master a gypsy?"

"No, but he is the only living violinist who possesses the authentic tradition of gypsy music."

"I love this music; therefore I will get up and go down to the garden."

"Oh no, sir: go into the fields. See!" and he opened the window, "every one has left the castle." And actually the master of the house and his guests were all defiling through the garden-gate, having had only three hours' sleep. M. Franz soon joined them, and heard from them the story of Remenyi.

At the age of seventeen he had been attached to the person of Goergey during the Hungarian war. Leaving his country with the emigration, he had shared the exile of Count Teleki, Sandor and others; then passed some time at Guernsey, where he knew Victor Hugo. He had afterward performed with brilliant success in London, Hamburg, etc., and his renown, after his return to Hungary, went on increasing. He traveled about the country in every direction, astonishing nobles and peasants, and playing with the same enthusiasm and poetry in barns as in palaces. On hearing this our author slipped back to the garden, where he hid himself to listen to Remenyi, who, to his great disgust, was playing a concerto of Bach's.

At breakfast, Remenyi appeared, a very commonplace-looking man, full of his own praises, and always speaking himself in the third person. "Remenyi practiced well this morning," said he.

"Yes, a concerto of Bach's!" Franz.

Thereupon Remenyi asked for his violin, and they heard a marvelous specimen of real Tzigany inspiration. Vanity disappeared—passion, nerve and sentiment took its place. He had all the qualities demanded by science, together with those of imagination. It was the passionate inspiration of genius. After his performance was over, he went gravely to the mantelpiece, stopped the clock, and said to the master of the house, "Let this hand mark for ever the hour when Remenyi played at your house."

M. Franz taking no pains to disguise; his admiration, Remenyi, gratified by it, invited him to accompany him home. Wherever he went he received a perfect ovation. At one place he ordered a pair of boots, which were sent home, paid for by the municipality. Art is a national glory in Hungary, especially that of the gypsies, which has taken root in the very heart of the soil.

Remenyi's house at Rakos-Palota, near Pesth, is a long, rambling building, the courtyard of which is given up to chickens, ducks and pigs. M. Franz says the poplars before the door look like exclamation-marks, and he thinks they are planted there to serve as such. There are heaps of rare and precious objects of every imaginable description—all gifts—but the ones which the owner shows with most pride are his Hungarian sabre and a pair of boots which Liszt wore when a child.

The question is often discussed in Hungary whether the national Hungarian music is the production of Tzigany genius, or whether the gypsies are only the exponents of what properly belongs to Hungary itself. The gypsies are proved to have been in Hungary as early as the thirteenth century, and their musicians were celebrated in the sixteenth, some of their names still living in the memory of the people. What has been preserved of genuine old Hungarian music (some melodies of Timody Stephens) has no charm save its antiquity. These and other facts—but, above all, the impression produced on him by the music itself—have convinced M. Franz that the gypsy faculty is one not only of execution, but creation. Gypsy art proceeds from the sentiment, the genius, of the Tzigany race. It is too strange, its elements are too wild, to be the exclusive product of a thoughtful, wise, believing, practical and civilized people; but the Hungarians have understood this art—they have surrounded it with love and respect. Gaining new life, warmth and vigor from the welcoming applause of Hungary, it belongs to her by virtue of her admiration and sympathetic tears.

E.C.R.



THE "GIORNO DEI MORTI."

We all know that the second of November is All Souls' Day, and that it is the day dedicated in the Roman calendar to the commemoration of all those who have departed "in the faith." And few who have traveled on the continent of Europe are not aware that the day is observed in all Southern countries with a degree of devotion which the greater part of the communities in question are not in the habit of according to any other of the ordinances of the Church. But to observe the manifestation of this devotion in its most striking forms, to seize all the more picturesque developments and presentations of it, the "Giorno dei Morti" must be passed at Rome.

It is a curious fact—one of the many of a similar order which illustrate the moral specialties of the Latin populations—that hundreds of thousands of people of both sexes, who neither believe, nor affect to believe, the doctrines of the orthodox Church, and who are in the habit of utterly disregarding all her prescriptions and teaching, should nevertheless, as often as this sad anniversary comes round, behave as if they were to all intents and purposes good Catholics. It will be said, perhaps, that the feelings to which the special character of the commemoration appeals are so common to all human hearts that the manifestation of them on any customary occasion is in no degree to be wondered at. But I do not think that this will suffice to explain the phenomenon—at least as it may be witnessed here in Italy. Other church ordinances might be pointed out of which the same thing might be said, but which are not similarly observed. The real cause of the phenomenon I take to be that this population is—as it was of old, and as it always has been through all outward changes—pagan. I put it crudely for the sake of putting it shortly, for this is not the place to trouble the readers of a few paragraphs of "Gossip" with a dissertation in support of the assertion. The innate paganism of these people, born of the beauty of the climate and of all external Nature, and of the sensuous proclivity to live and breathe and have their being in the present and the visible which results therefrom, first forcibly shaped their early Christianity into moulds which assimilated it to pagan observances and modes of thought, and still remains ready to resume more and more of its old empire as the authority of Church beliefs waxes feeble. The very striking and singular scene which was to be witnessed in the great Roman cemetery outside the Porta di San Lorenzo on the second day of November was to all intents and purposes pagan in its spirit and meaning. And it is curious to observe in this, as in so many other instances, how the use of words supplies illustrations of national peculiarities and specialties of character. The Church has dedicated the day in question to the commemoration "omnium animarum"—of all souls. And we others, people of a Teutonic race, have taken and used the phrase in its proper Christian sense: we talk of "All Souls' Day." But with the peoples of the Latin stock all thought or question of "souls" is very speedily lost sight of. With them the day is simply the "Giorno dei Morti"—the day of the dead. And their observance of it is to all intents and purposes what it might have been two thousand years ago.

The very ancient church of San Lorenzo, one of the four extramural basilicas, is situated some ten minutes' walk outside the gate of the same name on the road to Tivoli; and around and behind this church is the vast cemetery to which all the Roman dead are carried. It was first used as an extramural cemetery at the time of the first French occupation, but has been very greatly extended since that time. Clergy, nobles and monks were at first, and as long as Papal rule lasted, exempted from the decree which forbade interment within the city. Now all must be taken to San Lorenzo, and the greatly increased population of the city has already very thickly filled an immense area. The first thing that strikes the visitor to this huge necropolis is the very marked division between the poor and the rich quarters of this city of the dead. The fashionable districts are quite as unmistakably divided and separated from those occupied by "the lower classes" as they are in any city of the living; as is perhaps but right and natural in the case of a population among which it is held that the condition and prospects of the dead may be very materially influenced by a quantum sufficit of masses said for them, and where these can be purchased in any quantity for cash. A very large parallelogram, for the most part surrounded by cloisters, is first entered from the gates which open on the road. But this has been but little used as yet. Beyond it, to the right, is the vast space occupied by the graves of the multitude. Let the reader picture to himself a huge flat space extending as far as the eye can see, thickly planted with little black wooden crosses, with inscriptions on them in white letters. The sameness of all these fragile memorials produces a strange and depressing effect. The undistinguished thousands of them make all the space seem black spotted with white. They are ugly; and the poverty of these bits of painted stick, incapable of resisting the effects of the weather, seems sordid in the extreme. In the graves of this part of the cemetery all are in truth equal. To the left of the vast cloister-surrounded square which has been mentioned the scene is a very different one. There, immediately behind the eastern end of the basilica, the soil rises in a very steep bank to a height greater than that of the church. To the space on the top of this bank a handsome and garden-decorated flight of step leads; and there the "Upper Ten" take their dignified rest, and their dust is perfectly safe from all danger of being mingled with that of less distinguished mortality. This higher ground is called the Pincetto—as who should say the "Little Pincian"—a name adapted from that of the celebrated promenade of the gay and fortunate in life, with a suggestion of meaning so satirical that it might seem to have been given to the "fashionable" quarter of the dead city by the united sneers of all the ghosts who haunt the undistinguished graves below. In this aristocratic quarter there is of course no monotonous uniformity. The monuments, some of freestone and some of marble, are of every conceivable form and degree of splendor, and death is made to look pretty and coquettish by the introduction of numerous weeping willows and other such botanical helps to sentiment. The great majority of the inscriptions are in Latin, for Pius IX., so long as his power lasted, absolutely forbade the use of any other language; which was a measure of very questionable judiciousness, seeing that a large crop of Latinity by no means creditable to Italian scholarship has been the result. It would have been better to stick to good Della-Cruscan Italian, or to have employed some English school-usher to come here as resident reviser of Roman Latinity. Inelegant and even ungrammatical inscriptions, however, do not interfere with the general picturesqueness of the spot, or with its singular adaptation to show to advantage the remarkable scene enacted there on the last "Giorno dei Morti."

The cemetery had been visited by great numbers of persons, bringing chaplets and flowers, during the day, both in the aristocratic and the plebeian quarters, but it was at night that the crowd was greatest and the scene most striking. The night, as it so chanced, was a dark one, which did not make the scene by any means less strange and weird-looking. The greater number of visitors, especially in the poor quarter of the dead city, were women. Such is always the case, whether it be that the female mind is more generally accessible to gentle thoughts of and yearnings over their lost ones, or whether the explanation be simply that, as is especially the case here, women, having less to occupy their leisure either in the way of business or amusement, are more eager to seek any emotion or occasion which may serve to break the flat monotony of their lives.

Certainly the scene in the cemetery on the evening of the "Day of the Dead" was one calculated to make an impression not to be readily forgotten by any mere looker-on who witnessed it. Nor was that presented by the road from the gate to the cemetery less remarkable in its way. It is an ugly, disagreeable bit of road, between high walls, deep with mud in wet, and with dust in dry weather, as was the case on the present occasion, and without the smallest vestige of a pathway for foot-passengers; so that the motley crowd, with their lights and chaplets and flowers, had to make their way amid a cloud of dust and among the carriages of those bound for the "Pincetto" as best they might. But it was the general apparent mood and temper of mind in which these pilgrims, bound on so sad an errand, seemed to be performing their self-imposed task that was especially noteworthy. It might be supposed that a certain degree of reverential self-concentration, or at least of quietude, would have been the characteristic of a crowd bound on such an errand. There was not the smallest symptom of anything of the sort. It is true that many visit the cemetery on the evening in question who have not recently lost any relative or friend, going thither merely as performing an act of devotion or of amusement, or, as is usually the case with all devotion in this country, of both combined. But the greater number of the pilgrims is composed of those who have buried their dead within the preceding year. Yet, as I have said, there was observable in the bearing of the crowd not only no reverential feeling, but not even that amount of quietude which the most careless body of people of our race would have deemed it but decent to assume on such an occasion. Laughter might have been heard, though not perhaps very much. But the noise was astonishing—noise of incessant chatter in tones which bespoke anything but the tone of mind which might have been expected. The truth is, that he who expects to find in the people of this race the sentiment of awe or reverence under any circumstances whatever does not know them. It is not in them. The capacity for it is not in them. It is not a question of more or less education, or of this or that condition of life. The higher and the lower classes, the clergy and the laity, are equally destitute of the capacity for feeling or comprehending the sentiment which makes so large a part of the lives of the people of a different race. To me the observation, far from being suggested by what met my eye on the occasion in question, is the outcome of more than a quarter of a century's experience of Italian ways and thoughts. But the exhibition of the peculiarity on that occasion was very striking. Doubtless there was many a mother among that throng whose heart had been wrung, whose very soul had been struck chill within her, by the loss of the child on whose grave she was about to place the humble tribute of common flowers which she carried in her hand. No doubt many a truly-sorrowing husband and yet more deeply-stricken wife were on the way to visit the sod beneath which their hopes of happiness had been buried with their lost ones. But whatever might have been in their hearts was not manifested by any token of reverential feeling. There were tears, there were even sobs occasionally to be heard, but there was neither reverence nor what we should deem decency of behavior.

Within the cemetery "distance lent enchantment to the view." As seen from the cloister which surrounds the great square, as has been mentioned, the outlook over the "poor quarter" of the vast burial-ground was very striking. Amid the wilderness of black crosses, which extends farther than eye could see, numerous figures were flitting hither and thither, many of them with lights in their hands. In the farther distance, where the figures were invisible, the lights could still be seen mysteriously, as it seemed, moving over the closely-ranged graves like corpse-candles, as the old superstition termed the phosphoric lights which may in certain states of the atmosphere be seen in crowded graveyards. In the foreground, where the figures could be distinguished, many were seen on their knees in the damp and malarious evening air at the graves of their lost relatives. But not even in the bearing these could anything of real earnestness be traced. They were performing a routine duty, of which no doubt their own consciences and their friends and neighbors would have disapproved the omission; and that was all. Nevertheless, the picturesqueness of the general effect was perfect, and it appealed to the imagination of a looker-on in a manner which to many minds, more intent on sensational emotions than on discrimination of social characteristics, would have caused the above remarks to appear sadly ill-timed and out of place.

The scene which was meantime being enacted on the Pincetto, where the wholly separated resting-places of the "Upper Ten" protest so successfully against the leveling notion that in death all are equal, I might have suggested many a mordant epigram to the cynically-minded visitor. I fear that there is often something provocative of cynicism in sundry of the aspects of fashionable devotion, but on such an occasion as the present it could hardly be otherwise. Rachels in Parisian bonnets and sweeping silk skirts, muttering over their rosaries for their children on splendid cushions borne in due state by attendant plush-clothed ministers, were contrasted in these realms of the universal Leveler somewhat too strongly with the scene one had just left in the (physically and socially) lower regions of the cemetery. Of course hearts that beat beneath silken bodices may be wrung as bitterly as those that serge covers. I am speaking only of those outward manifestations which contributed to complete the strangeness of the general spectacle which I had come out to see. The better tending of the aristocratic portion of the cemetery, and the greater space between the graves and their monuments, made it of course easier and less disagreeable to pass among them and to note the bearing of individual mourners. If the former scene had presented much that was indecorously formal, here all was decorously formal. The routine, cut-and-dry nature of the duty being performed exercised in either case its property of numbing natural feeling, or at least the appearance of it.

On the whole, the experience offered by a visit to the great Roman cemetery on the evening of the "Giorno dei Morti" is a singular and curious one, as will be admitted, I think, by any one who may be tempted by my example to go and see it.

T.A.T.



MR. MILL'S MOTHER.

The publication of the late Mr. John Mill's Theism (writes a correspondent from England) has again brought forward its author and his peculiarities as subjects of general conversation. Not content with having talked these matters pretty well over some months ago, people are at this moment discussing them with not a whit less of interest than if they were brand-new. But it is what Mr. Mill has omitted to tell us in his Autobiography, quite as much as what he has there told us, that excites popular curiosity about him. How came it that a man whose admiration of his wife was hardly distinguishable from idolatry should never once mention his mother? Thousands have asked, and have asked in vain, who she was, and whether she could have been so entirely insignificant as to deserve being passed over, without even so much as an allusion to her, by her very philosophic son. These questions, and others connected with them, I might answer at length. However, the few facts I shall here state will perhaps be no less welcome than a long detail. The wife of James Mill, and mother of John Mill, was a Miss Burrows, daughter of a Dr. Burrows who superintended an asylum for the insane at Islington. She died in London about twenty years ago, having outlived her husband not quite that period. Her children were nine in number, of whom four daughters are still living—two in England and two in France. She was not what would be reckoned a conspicuously intellectual woman, and yet she by no means deserved the heartless slight which was put on her memory by her son. Indeed, such a slight could have its justification in little short of utter worthlessness; and Mrs. James Mill was not only esteemed, but beloved, by a large circle of friends. On the appearance of the Autobiography her daughters were, naturally enough, not a little indignant at finding their mother as much ignored in it as if she had never existed, and were inclined, at first, to supplement, publicly, their brother's account of himself by certain disclosures not exactly of a character to exalt him in the estimation of the world. Suffice it to say here that for many years before his death he had been estranged from his family; and this estrangement was attributed, by those who had the best opportunities of judging, to the sinister influence of his wife. This is all that I am disposed to communicate at present, but I should not be at all surprised if we were to know, by and by, much more of the private life of John Mill than we as yet know.



NOTES.

There has recently emerged into notice, from her hiding-place in one of the outskirts of London, an ancient woman whose surroundings forcibly illustrate the persevering vitality of even the insanest forms of religious belief. Joanna Southcott and her fanaticisms we are apt to associate with Dr. Faustus, alchemy, and persons and things of that kind, as belonging to an age with which we have no personal concern. Yet this is a mistake. The followers of the fatidical Joanna may still be counted by thousands in Great Britain, particularly in its metropolis; and their acknowledged head, in strict accordance with the fitness of things, is a woman. She is a very old woman, too, her age symbolizing, perhaps, the longevity to which her crazy superstition is destined. Elizabeth Peacock is the name of this relic of the past. For many years she itinerated as a preacher, and at the great age of one hundred and three her health is still vigorous. Modern priestesses, however, not unlike the prophets of antiquity, are subject to be scanted of due honor, or, at all events, of what is more essential than this as contributing to keep soul and body from parting company prematurely. The fact of her being in a state of destitution was notified not long ago to the magistrate of the Lambeth police-court, and that unappreciative functionary, while consenting to subscribe, with others, for her relief, openly expressed his conviction that she would be best off in the workhouse. Altogether, the old creature is a bit of a curiosity. She has had three husbands, and the last of them, whom she married in 1852, killed himself only the other day, possibly from finding the twofold burden of domestic predication and a helpmeet of five score too much for his nerves. If sane, the ungrateful fellow ought, in all reason, to have had the grace to survive her; for when he undertook matrimony, as he had nothing to turn his hand to, she instructed him herself in the art and mystery of cooperage. At that time, so robust a specimen of anility was she, she could pitch an empty cask across the street, and her credulity is as strong at this moment as her arm was of yore. We conclude, from her story, that the proper stuff for making prophetesses of the baser sort has, even in our day, only to be looked for to be discovered.

* * * * *

Our countrymen have lately learned to admire, in its Western transformation, the extremely clever Rubaiyat of Omer Khayyam. And they are certainly much in the right in so doing. The sterling merits of the Persian original are preserved with striking fidelity in the English version of the poem, which, for the rest, has gone far to prove that the acceptableness among us of Oriental poetry may depend very largely on the skill with which it is transplanted into our language. The translator of the Rubaiyat is Mr. Edward FitzGerald, of Woodbridge in Suffolk. Mr. FitzGerald's ancient family one may learn all about from Burke's Landed Gentry, and that he was born in 1809, and that he married Lucy, daughter of Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where among his contemporaries and friends were the present poet-laureate and Mr. Spedding, the editor of Bacon. The London Catalogue names three works as by Mr. FitzGerald. These, as we find from inspection of the works themselves, are as follows: 1. Euphranor, a Dialogue on Youth, 1851 (it reached a second edition, increased by an Appendix, in 1855); 2. Polonius: A Collection of Wise Saws and Modern Instances, 1852; 3. Six Dramas of Calderon, 1853. These dramas are translations, in prose and verse, of The Painter of his Own Dishonor, Keep your Own Secret, Gil Perez the Gallician, Three Judgments at a Blow, The Mayor of Zalamea, and Beware of Smooth Water. In none of these volumes, however, except the last is there any indication of its authorship but there Mr. FitzGerald's name is given in full. The date of his metrical translation of Salaman and Absal, from the Persian, we are not at this moment, able to specify. Add, as printed by him, but not published, two other small volumes of translations—one, of the Agamemnon of AEschylus; and the other, of two of Calderon's plays, Life is a Dream and The Wonderful Magician. Finally, we have to mention an unprinted verse-translation, The Bird Parliament, from the Persian Mantiq-ut-tair by Attar. Mr. Allibone knows nothing of Mr. FitzGerald, and he is similarly passed over in silence by the compiler of Men of the Time. Everything that he has produced is uniformly distinguished by marked ability; and, such being the case, his indifference to fame, in this age of ambition for literary celebrity, is a phenomenon which deserves to be emphasized.



LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

The French Humorists from the Twelfth to the Nineteenth Century. By Walter Besant, M.A. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Had Mr. Besant given us definitions of "humor" and "humorist," we might possibly not have been satisfied with them, but they would at least have enabled us to understand what sense he attaches to the words, and what principle determined him in selecting the writers embraced in his category. In the first page of his book he speaks of humor as "a branch" of satire; in the second he identifies French satire as the "esprit gaulois;" in the third he tells us that "the French type for satire and humor has preserved one uniform character from generation to generation;" and in his last page he claims superiority for the French over the English humorists, on the ground that "Rabelais has a finer wit than Swift," that "we have no political satire so good as the Satyre Menipee," "no English humor comparable for a moment with that of the fabliaux," "no letter-writer like Voiture," "no teller of tales like La Fontaine," and "no chansonnier like Beranger." Now, it is evident that this is a comparison not of French and English humorists, but of certain classes of writers in the two languages in reference to their manifestation of humor. We have no fabulist like La Fontaine, no song-writer equal to Beranger; but then we do not think of citing our fables and songs as the highest examples of English humor. It would be easy to array a list of names as a set-off against that of Mr. Besant. But this is needless. Humor, in the sense in which the word is commonly understood, may almost be said to be a distinctive quality of English literature, which is pervaded by it in a far greater degree than that of any other people. It is a leading trait in all the great English novelists, from Fielding to Thackeray and George Eliot, without excepting Richardson, in whom it is least conspicuous; it is the chief attribute of our finest essayists, from Addison to Charles Lamb; it is harmoniously blended with the fresh and simple pathos of Chaucer and with the passionate moodiness of Carlyle: it holds equal sway with the tragic element in the world created by Shakespeare. When Mr. Besant says that "there is no English humor comparable for a moment with that of the fabliaux," we are forced to suppose either that he uses the word "humor" in some unexplained and inexplicable sense, or that he leaves out of the account what would generally be considered the greatest of humorous productions. The puzzle increases when we find him omitting all mention of Le Sage, while excusing himself for the omission, from lack of space, of Rousseau! A list of humorous works which should exclude Gil Blas to make room for Emile or Le Contrat Social, might itself, one would think, act as a provocative on the esprit gaulois.

These mysteries are not the only ones in Mr. Besant's volume to which we have to confess our inability to discover a key. In closing his remarks on Montaigne he touches with undissembled irony the question whether he was a Christian, and, after contrasting the tone and sentiments of the Essais with those of the Gospels, bids us "remember that we are not in the nineteenth century, but in the sixteenth, that Montaigne died in the act of adoration, and cease to ask whether the man was a Christian;" adding, "Christian? There was no better Christian than Montaigne in all his century." It appears, therefore, that the sixteenth century, instead of being, as we had supposed, one in which the Reformation had brought with it a revival of religious earnestness and a reaction against religious formalism, and in which on the battle-field, in the dungeon and at the stake, as well as through voluntary exile and the relinquishment of property, thousands in every country testified to the fervor and sincerity of their religious convictions, was in truth, like the eighteenth century, one in which a prevailing skepticism or indifference paid to dead but not yet dethroned creeds its light homage of affected "adoration." Mr. Besant informs us that "to the men of culture the rival parties were but two political sides." How many men of culture could be cited in support of this assertion? We grant him Montaigne, but it was precisely because the case of Montaigne was an exceptional one in the age of Erasmus and More, of Calvin and Coligny, that the question in regard to him has not seemed altogether idle.

It appears from another passage that Mr. Besant has an easy method of arriving at a judgment in regard to the character or general aspect of an historical epoch. From the details in regard to food, dress and furniture which he finds in the works of Eustache Deschamps, a satirical poet of the fourteenth century, he infers that the bourgeois life of that period was "comfortable, abundant and cheery." "History," he says, "paints this as the worst and most disastrous period that Europe had ever seen; yet here, in the most real poet of the century, we see how life, as a whole, went on in the usual way. For when a great pestilence strikes a country, it slays its thousands and goes away. Time quickly heals the wounds of grief, and the world goes on as before. Then come the English to sack and destroy. Nature heals their wounds, too, by the recurring seasons, and the world goes on as before. I am inclined to think that life, on the whole, was generally pleasant for a well-to-do Frenchman of the period." Mr. Besant, it will be seen, concedes that evils are evils while they last, that war and pestilence are not pleasant things to the victims, and that the comfortable and cheery life of the fourteenth century suffered some interruptions from these causes. But then it was still, he insists, an agreeable life "on the whole," since "the recurring seasons" healed the wounds and the grief, and left the survivors to enjoy existence "in the usual way." This, it must be owned, is a very comfortable and cheery philosophy—for those who preach it. We do not see that they need ever complain of "bad times," since they can always be sure that the recurring seasons will bring alleviation to the survivors. It may also be admitted that, as there is no age in which the recurring seasons do not bring relief, so there has been none when war and pestilence and similar evils did not interrupt the usual course of life. There is, however, this difference, that in some ages these evils last longer than in others, the wounds are deeper, the victims more numerous, the intermissions less frequent, the relief tardier, the survivors fewer. Such an age in France was the period of the English invasions, comprising a great portion of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. That life was then, "on the whole," anything but comfortable and cheery is attested by records and evidence of all kinds, against which the mention of weddings and christenings, of gold-embroidered mantles and robes of silk, in the pages of a court poet will, we apprehend, count for very little, especially as the sufferers do not appear to have solaced themselves with reflections on the sure effects of the recurring seasons. Deschamps himself was unable, it seems, to get his pension paid; and if he died, as Mr. Besant tells us, about 1409, the chances, we think, are that however he may have denounced luxury as the "crying evil" of his time, his death was the result of starvation.

Mr. Besant, it will be perceived, is one of those writers who indulge in haphazard assertions without troubling their heads with the facts that conflict with them. A glaring instance of his tendency to exaggeration and wild speculation will be found in his estimate of Rabelais, whom he first vaunts as "a great moral teacher," "a teacher the like of whom Europe had not yet seen," and then denounces as having "destroyed effectually, perhaps for centuries yet to come, earnestness in France," declaring that "no writer who ever lived has inflicted such lasting injury on his country," and that "it would have been better for France if his book, tied to a millstone, had been hurled into the sea." These opinions are contradictory of each other, since it is impossible that a writer who so perverted men's minds should also have been, in any proper sense of the term, a great moral teacher; they are inconsistent with Mr. Besant's account of the "unbroken lines of writers," of whom Rabelais was one, but not the first, all having the same characteristics, all "irreverent," having "no strong convictions," "like children for mockery, mischief and lightness of heart;" and finally, they are so improbable in themselves, and so unsusceptible of proof, that, uttered as they are with the solemnity of communications from an unseen world, they produce much the same impression on us as the disclosures with which Mr. Robert Dale Owen is favored by his "materialized" visitants.

We might cite other examples to prove that Mr. Besant is not a safe guide either in his general speculations or in his critical judgments. He is an agreeable narrator, showing a close familiarity with the topics he handles, and an enthusiasm which, if it sometimes degenerates into mere fume, adds on the whole to the liveliness of his writing. His translations in verse are remarkable for their ease and finish. The book may be read with pleasure, but not, we fear, with equal profit. The chapters that deal with the least known works and writers are the most satisfactory. On Montaigne and Moliere Mr. Besant has nothing to say which is likely to incite the reader to a fresh study of their works, which ought to be the effect of every fresh discourse on a great author.

* * * * *

Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland A.D. 1803. By Dorothy Wordsworth. Edited by J.C. Shairp, LL.D. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

The special charm of this book lies in the fact that it is not a book—that there was no thought in the writer's mind of printer's ink, no vision of publicity or fame, no solicitude to propitiate critics or win the sympathy of the "gentle reader." Or one might say it was a book of the primitive kind, written on the bark of trees by some shy dryad, unconcious translator into speech of the rustlings and whisperings of the woodland. It is, as the editor observes, an "effortless narrative," with "no attempt at fine or sensational writing, ... at that modern artifice which they call word-painting," but recording with "vivid exactness" what was seen and felt by the writer and her companions on a journey through regions then little frequented by tourists and unsmirched by the eloquence of guide-books. That the travelers were William and Dorothy Wordsworth and (for a part of the way) S.T. Coleridge, that scenes and incidents here first sketched in the sister's sober prose were afterward memorialized and moralized in the brother's verse, and that many of the spots described were about to become famous with and through Scott—a meeting with whom formed the fitting close to the tour,—these are circumstances that of course invest the journal with a deeper interest and have called wider attention to its unobtrusive beauty. But its chief attractiveness lies in the Doric simplicity not only of the style but of the matter. An outlandish Irish car was the conveyance; the appearance of the party was not such as to attract notice unless by the quaintness of their garb or their awkward management of the horse, "now gibbing and backing over a bank, now reduced to a walk, with one of the poets leading him by the head;" and they themselves were in search of nothing more notable than such wayside objects as might serve to feed contemplation. On one occasion, having turned aside to visit the duke of Hamilton's picture-gallery, they were told by the porter, after he had scanned them over, that they ought not to have come to the front door, and were directed to an obscure entrance at the corner of the house, where they seated themselves humbly on a bench while waiting for admittance, which was finally refused. They were mortified, but had a deeper pang in the grounds around Bothwell Castle, for here they were "hurt to see that flower-borders had taken place of the natural overgrowings of the ruins, the scattered stones and wild plants." Sometimes at an inn they were made to perceive how little consideration they were entitled to by being lodged in inferior rooms while better ones were vacant; but to compensate for this, in the wilder parts of the country they were greeted with the hospitality which their mere condition as strangers was still sufficient to call forth. The descriptions given of the people have at least an equal interest with those of the scenery. We have a succession of pictures in which, as Principal Shairp remarks, "man is seen against a great background of Nature and solitude." The book is one not to be read and laid away, but to be kept near at hand, and made a frequent companion and familiar friend.

THE END