CHAPTER XIII.

Mr. Van Ness came beaming down through the lilacs to the arbor, and was received with much reverence by Mrs. Wilde. She was a devout woman, and Pliny Van Ness's name was in all the churches. They all sauntered back to luncheon presently, Mrs. Wilde and Jane going before, while Mr. Van Ness and the Russian princess walked more slowly through the woods, the foreigner talking with animation and many gestures of American trees, while the reformer listened benignly, ineffable calm in his smiling eyes.

"You followed me here purposely, Charlotte?" he said gently as she dilated eloquently on our autumnal foliage.

"No. I did not know that you were in New York. But I meant to call upon you soon. I have had no money from you since last August."

"Somebody, apparently, has filled my place as your banker," his placid eye sweeping over the costly dress and be-diamonded fingers.

"What is that to you?" with a sudden shrill passion. "Once you would have cared, Pliny. But that was years ago."

"Yes. Many years ago," buttoning his glove carefully. "A Russian princess, eh?" after a short pause. "You are playing higher than ordinary, Charlotte. You'll find it dangerous. I should advise you to keep to begging letters or the rôle of medium or literary tramp."

"One class is as ready to be humbugged as the other. Who knows that better than you?"

"In the religious and charitable work to which I have given up my life," deliberately measuring his words, "there are few impostors to be met. We usually detect fraud, with God's help, and do not suffer from it, therefore."

She stopped short, looking at him with blank amazement. Then walked on with a shrug: "Absolutely! He expects me to believe in him! He believes in himself! Can imposture go further than that?"

Mrs. Wilde, in the distance, caught sight of the two figures as they passed through a belt of sunlight, and smiled contentedly.

"I am so glad to bring poor madame under direct religious influence! Mr. Van Ness is speaking to her with great earnestness, I perceive."

The Princess Trebizoff scanned the great reformer as they walked, appraising him, from the measured solemn step to his calm humility of eye. She would have relished a passionate scene with him. After terrapin and champagne, there was nothing she relished so much as emotion and tears. But they had played up to each other so often! The tragedy in their relation had grown terribly stale! You could not, she felt, make Hamlet's inky cloak out of dyed cotton. But he would serve as audience.

"I'm growing very tired of good society," talking rapidly as usual. "Now, you always enjoyed a dead level, Pliny."

"Yes. There's no Bohemian blood in my veins. I was designed for respectability."

"So? I mean Ted shall be respectable," with sudden earnestness. "He is in a Presbyterian college. I should be glad if he'd go into the ministry. Yes, I should. Provided he had a call from God. I'll have no sham professions from Ted," her black eyes sparkling. "You did not ask for the boy. In your weighty affairs doubtless you forgot there was such a human being."

"No, indeed. In what institution have you placed Thaddeus?"

"No matter. He's out of your influence, thank God! He never heard your name. But as for me, I think I'll drop this princess business soon," meditatively. "I began down town," with a fresh burst of vivacity. "On the boarding-house keepers. Last December."

"You are Madame Varens! Is it possible?" turning to look at her. "The papers were filled with your exploits last winter."

"Precisely!" She had a joyous girlish laugh, infectious enough to draw a smile from Van Ness.

"You are really very clever, Charlotte," admiringly.

"I made a tour in the West just before that," excitedly, patting her hands together. "Agent for Orphans' Homes in the Gulf States. I wrote a letter of introduction from one or two bishops to the clergymen in their dioceses: that started me, and the clergy and press passed me through. What a mill of tea-drinkings and church-gossip I went through! But it was better fun than this."

Looking up, she happened to catch the cold, furtive glance with which he had listened, and kept her eye fixed on him curiously.

"Do you hate me so much as _that?_" she said with a long breath. "Well," frankly, "it must be intolerable to carry such a millstone about your neck as I am to you. You know I could pull you down any minute I chose," tossing her head and laughing maliciously. "No matter how high you had climbed. I often wonder, Pliny, why you do not rid yourself of me. It could be easily done."

The usually suave tone was harsh and hoarse as he began to speak. He coughed, and carefully modulated his voice before he said politely, "Yes. But it would involve exposure unless carefully managed. That is certain damnation. There is a chance of safety for the present in trusting to you. You were always good-natured, Charlotte. And," turning his watery eye full on her, "you loved me once."

"Possibly," coolly. "But last year's loves are as tedious reading as last year's newspapers. Better trust my good-nature. You show your shrewdness in that. I don't interfere with people. The world uses me very well. It's a hogshead that gives the best of wine--if you know how to tap it."

"You've tapped it with a will. You go through life perpetually drunk," he thought as she ran lightly before him up the steps. He habitually made such complacent moral reflections upon his companions to himself, and took spiritual comfort in them.

The hall was wide and sunny, made homelike by low seats and growing plants: it was occupied by half a dozen committee-men, who were waiting impatiently to see Mr. Van Ness. The princess seated herself, attentive, her head on one side like some bright-eyed tropical bird.

Van Ness, without even a glance toward her, took up his business of Christian financier. "Do not go, I beg," as the captain opened the inner door for Rhodes and the ladies to retire. "Our affairs are conducted in the eyes of the public. Sound integrity has no secrets to keep. That is our pride.--Ah, gentlemen?"

The captain was glad to stay. Surely, Jane would be impressed with the vast influence of this good man. Van Ness did not look at her once. But he saw nobody but her, and spoke directly to her ear.

Asylums, workingmen's homes, hospitals, in all of which he was a director, were brought up and dismissed with a few hopeful, earnest words. The vast system of organized charities through which the kindly wealthy class touch the poor beneath them was opened. Mrs. Wilde, a manager in many of them, joined in the discussion.

"What a useless creature I am!" thought Jane. "But the money," doggedly, "is mine, and I choose to give it to father if the whole world go hungry." She turned, however, from one representative of these asylums to the other with a baited look. Was it this one or that whom she had robbed?

"Now, as to Temperance City--_our_ city?" demanded a puffy little man importantly. "You are the fountain-head of information there. We look to you, Mr. Van Ness."

"You shall have the annual report next week.--Temperance City," turning to Rhodes, his balmy gaze aimed straight over her head, "is a scheme to protect people of small means in the churches, especially women, from wrecking their little all in unwise investments. It is a town on the line of the Pacific Railroad. Lots are only sold to colonists who are tee-totallers and members of some church. The stock is owned largely by the same class."

"Oh, almost altogether!" cried the little man enthusiastically. "Mr. Van Ness's name, as you will understand, gives it authority among all religious people. We distribute prospectuses at camp-meetings and at all sectarian seaside resorts. Shares go off this summer like hot cakes. There's nothing like religion, sir, to back up business enterprise. There's Stokes, for instance. His shoes are sold from New Jersey to Oregon on the strength of the hymns he has written."

"Yes," said the judge solemnly. "We used to keep religion too much in the chimney-corner--spoke of it with bated breath. But it's in trade now, sir. We hear every day of our Christian shoe-makers and railway kings and statesmen. The world moves!"

"Moves? Oh there's no lever like religion!" gasped the little man. "No advertisement to equal it. And a good man ought to succeed! Are the swindlers to take all the fat of the land? Does not the good Book say, 'To the laborers belong the spoils'?"

"But this is so charming to me!" cried the princess. "We foreigners have so few opportunities of looking into the workings of your politics and trade!"

Van Ness bowed respectfully.

"And the State Home for destitute children?" asked a raw-boned Scotch-Irishman. "We're interested in that here in New York. We've subscribed largely, as you're aware, Mr. Van Ness. May I ask when you wull begin the buildin'?"

"In the spring, I trust. If enough funds are collected."

"And hoo air the funds invested in the mean while?"

"Oh, in corner-lots in Temperance City."

The committee-men had hurried away to catch the next train: lunch was over, and Mr. Van Ness stood apart on the lawn under the drooping branches of a willow, when the princess tripped lightly out to him.

"You have an object in coming here? You had an object in bringing those men to-day and opening out your affairs. What is it?"

He regarded her composedly for a moment without answering: "You always erred, Charlotte, in ascribing your own skill in intrigue to me. It was a flattering mistake. What I am to others I am to myself."

She laughed, a merry, hearty laugh: "Yes, Pliny, because you are not satisfied with cheating the world and the God that made you into the belief that you are a Christian, but you parade in your godliness before yourself. There is not a spot within you sound enough for your real soul to lodge in. It is all like that," setting her foot viciously on a fallen apple. "Rotten to the core!"

A shadow of disgust passed over his handsome face. Van Ness had a fastidious taste. Her melodramatic poses had been familiar to him for years: they always had annoyed and bored him.

"What is it that brings you here? A woman?"

He hesitated a moment: "Yes."

"This yellow-haired girl? You mean to marry her?"

"I may marry her," cautiously.

Their eyes met. "I did not think you would push me so far," she said thoughtfully.

"It is to your interest not to interfere. You are mad, Charlotte. But you never lose sight of the dirty dollar in your madness."

"That is for Ted's sake," quietly. "I dislike that girl. She's so damnably clean! She's of the sort that would walk straight on and trample me under foot like a slug if she knew what I was. I owe her an old grudge, too. But that's nothing," laughing good-humoredly. "It was the most ridiculous scene! But it lost me a year's income. She nearly recognized me to-day. On the whole, I'll not interfere. Marry her. She deserves just such a punishment. By the way, there is my card. You can send the back payments that are due, to-morrow."

Van Ness received the card and command with a smile and bow, meant for the bystanders: "Of course, Charlotte, you understand that these payments must soon stop. I shall rid myself of any legal claims you have upon me before marrying another woman."

"Oh, I've no doubt you'll walk strictly according to law! You will not run the risk of a lawsuit, much less prosecution, even for Miss Swendon. You will have no trouble in gaining your freedom from me," shrilly.

"None whatever," stripping the leaves from a willow wand. She left him without a word, going to the house.

Mrs. Wilde had just summoned her carriage. "Where is the princess?" looking lazily around.

"Is Madame Trebizoff a guest in your house?" asked Jane suddenly.

"Yes."

"I will call her. I have something to say to her."

She went to meet her with the grave motherly firmness with which she would have gone to give a scolding to black Buff or a lazy chambermaid. The princess, crossing the grass, slender, dark, sparkling, had no doubt of her own smouldering passionate hate against her. It was the proper thing for Hagar to hate Sarah. Life was thin and insipid without great remorses, revenges, loves. The poor little creature was always aiming at them, and falling short. She was wondering now why Jane wore no jewelry. "Not an earring! Not a hoop on her finger! If I had her money!" glancing down at the blaze of rubies on her breast.

They met under a clump of lilacs.

"Stop one moment," said Jane, looking down at her not unkindly. "You must not let this go too far, you know."

"What do you mean?" The princess fixed her eye upon her, with a somewhat snaky light in it. Indeed, when she assumed that attitude toward Van Ness or any other man she could frighten and hold him at bay as if she had been a cobra about to strike. But the lithe dark body, the vivid color, the beady eye only reminded Jane oddly of a darting little lizard, and tempted her to laugh.

"No. You really must keep within bounds. Because I have my eye upon you. I can't let you cheat that good soul, who brought you here, to her damage."

The princess gasped and whitened as though a cold calm hand was laid on her miserable sham of a body.

"Do you know who I am?" stiffening herself into her idea of regal bearing.

"Not exactly. It does not matter in the least, either. I took your means of earning a living from you once, you told me, and I don't wish to do it again. I will not interfere as long as you hurt nobody."

The princess stared at her and burst into an hysteric laugh: "I believe, in my soul, you mean just what you say! You are the shrewdest or stupidest woman I ever saw! Do you sympathize with me? Do you feel for me?" tragically, "or are you trying to worm my secret from me?"

"Neither one nor the other," coolly. "I know your secret. You are no spirit and no princess. I shall pity you perhaps when you go to some honest work. Why," with sudden interest, "I can find steady work for you at once. A staymaker in the village told me the other day--"

"_I_ make stays!"

They both laughed. Jane's chief thought probably was how bony and sickly this poor woman was: her own solid white limbs seemed selfish to her for the instant. She took the twitching, ringed fingers in her hand.

"Play out your own play," she said good-humoredly. "You will not hurt anybody very seriously, I fancy."

They walked in silence to the house.

The princess bent forward in the carriage-window as they drove away to look back at her. "I wish my son knew such women as that!" she cried.

"Son?" said the startled Mrs. Wilde. "You have not spoken before to me of your son, madame."

"I have always kept him under tutors--at Leipsic."

She leaned back as they drove through the sunshine, her filmy handkerchief to her painted eyes, seeing nothing but an ugly, honest-faced boy hard at work in a bare Presbyterian chapel. He would never know nor guess the life of shame which his mother led! Her tears were real now.

She even had wild, visionary thoughts of a confession, of staymaking, of so many dollars a week regularly. But she remembered the time when some fussy, good women had put her in charge of a fashionable Kindergarten. There was a fat salary! The house was luxurious: the teachers did the work. But one night she had broken the finical apparatus to pieces, left a heap of bonbons for the children, scrawled a verse of good-bye with chalk on the blackboard, and taken to the road again without a penny.

REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

ALFRED DE MUSSET.

It is twenty years since the death of Alfred de Musset, a poet whose popularity and influence, both in his own country and out of it, can be compared only to Byron's. Not that the Frenchman is known in England as the Englishman is known in France, but the latter country may be called the open side of the Channel, and in establishing a comparison between the relative fame and familiarity of foreign names and ideas there and on the isolated side, it is proportion rather than quantity which must be kept in view. While Byron is out of fashion in his own country, the rage for Musset, which for a long time made him appear not so much the favorite modern poet of France as the only one, has subsided into a steady admiration and affection, a permanent preference. New editions of his works, both cheaper and more costly, are being constantly issued, portraits of him are multiplied, his pieces are regularly performed at the Théâtre Français, his verses are on every one's lips, his tomb is heaped with flowers on All Souls' Day. Until after his death it would have been easy to count those who knew even his name in this country and England: as usual in such matters, we preceded the English in our acquaintance with him. The freedom with which Owen Meredith and Mr. Swinburne helped themselves from his poems proves how unfamiliar the general public was with him ten years ago, but his distinction is now so well recognized in that island, so remote from external impressions, that some knowledge of his life and writings formed part of the French course last year in the higher local examinations of Cambridge University.

Alfred de Musset belongs to the class of poets whose inner history excites most curiosity, because his readers feel that there lies the spring of his power, the secret of his charm, as well as the key to the riddles and inconsistencies which his writings present: they are so imbued with the essence of a common humanity that the heart that beats, the tears which start, the blood which courses through them, keep time with our own. The desire to penetrate still further into the intimacy to which they admit us is quite distinct from the vulgar inquisitiveness which pursues celebrity, or merely notoriety, into privacy. His biography has lately been published by one who recognizes the true nature of this curiosity: Paul de Musset has reserved the right of telling his brother's story, regarding it, he says, "not only as a duty I owe to the man I loved best, and whose most intimate and confidential friend I was, but as a necessary complement to the perfect understanding of his works, for his work was himself."

The way in which this task has been performed is not entirely satisfactory, and many passionate admirers of the poet, the order of readers to whom it is dedicated, will feel disappointment and a regretful sense of its failing to fulfil what it undertook, increased by the conviction that, having been undertaken by the hand best fitted for it by natural propriety, it cannot be done again. The book bears the relation to what one desired and expected that a bare diary does to the journal, or memoranda to the lecture. It is a collection of notes on the life of Alfred de Musset, rather than a full memoir. This inadequacy arises principally from the biographer himself. Paul de Musset, the poet's elder and only brother, is a man of taste and cultivation, a judge of art, literature, music and the drama, a person of charming manners and conversation, dignified, kindly, courteous, easy: he was until middle age a busy, working man, whose leisure moments were occupied with writings that have found little favor, except the _Femmes de la Règence_ and the pretty child's story of _M. le Vent et Mme. la Pluie_, which latter has been translated. He was the devoted, unselfish friend and mentor of Alfred, to whose juniority and genius he extended an indulgence of which he needed no share for himself: in fact, he was the elder brother of the Prodigal in everything but want of generosity. A more amiable portrait cannot be imagined than the one to be drawn of him from the history of his intercourse with his brother and from Alfred's own letters and verses to him. This, however, was not the person to give us such an account and analysis of the life and character of Alfred de Musset as the subject called for: he has neither the necessary impartiality nor ability. He is now seventy years old, and although, like his brother, he has the gift of appearing a decade less than his age, he is forced to remember that the time must come when he will no longer be here to defend his brother's memory, which has suffered more than one cruel attack. Having once had to silence calumny under cover of fiction, he naturally wished to put his name beyond the reach of being further traduced. Whatever the shortcomings of the performance, it could not fail to be interesting. It is written in an easy, well-bred style, like the author's way of talking--not without a sense of humor, with touching pride in his brother's endowments, and tenderness toward faults which he does not deny. In place of comprehensive views and sound judgment of Alfred de Musset's genius and career, we have the knowledge of absolute intimacy and sympathy, candor, a hoard of reminiscences and details which could be gained from no other source, and, more than all, that certainty as to events and motives which can exist only where there has been a lifelong daily association without disguise or distrust.

The family of Musset is old and gentle, and was adorned in early centuries by soldiers of mark and statesmen of good counsel--the sort of lineage which should bequeath high and honorable ideas, an inheritance of which neither Paul nor Alfred de Musset nor their immediate forbears were unworthy. A disposition to letters and poetry appears among their ancestry on both sides, beginning in the twelfth century with Colin de Musset, a sort of troubadour, a friend of Thibaut, count of Champagne, while the poet's paternal grandmother bore the name of Du Bellay, so illustrious in the annals of French literature. Alfred de Musset's parents were remarkable for goodness of heart and high principle: both possessed an ideality which showed itself with them in elevation of moral sentiments, and which passed into the imaginative qualities of their sons. From remoter relatives on both sides came a legacy of wit, promptness and point in retort, gayety and good spirits. Alfred de Musset was born on the 11th of December, 1810, in the old quarter of Paris, on the left bank of the Seine. The stories of his childhood--which are pretty, like all true stories about children--show a sensitive, affectionate, vivacious, impetuous, perverse nature, precocious observation and intelligence. He was one of those beautiful, captivating children whom nobody can forbear to spoil, and who, with the innocent cunning of their age, reckon on the effect of their own charms. He was not four years old when he first fell in love, as such mere babies, both girls and boys, occasionally do: these infantine passions exhibit most of the phenomena of maturer ones, and show how intense and absorbing a passion may be which belongs exclusively to the region of sentiment and imagination. Alfred de Musset's first love was his cousin, a young girl nearly grown up when he first saw her: he left his playthings to listen to her account of a journey she had made from Belgium, then the seat of war, and from that day, whenever she came to the house, insisted on her telling him stories, which she did with the patience and invention of Scheherazade. At last he asked her to marry him, and, as she did not refuse, considered her his betrothed wife. After some time she returned to her home in Liége: there were tears on both sides--on his genuine and excessive grief. "Do not forget me," said Clélia.--"Forget you! Don't you know that your name is cut upon my heart with a pen-knife?" He set himself to learn to read and write with incredible application, that he might be able to correspond with his beloved. His attachment did not abate with absence, so that when Clélia really married, the whole family thought it necessary to keep it a secret from her little lover, and he remained in ignorance of it for years, although he betrayed extraordinary suspicion and misgiving on the subject. He was a schoolboy of eight or nine before he learned the truth, and was at first extremely agitated: he asked tremblingly if Clélia had been making fun of him, and being assured that she had not, but that they had not allowed her to wait for him, and that she loved him like an elder sister, he grew calm and said, "I will be satisfied with that." The cousins seldom met in after-life, but preserved a tender affection for each other, which served to avert a lawsuit and rupture that threatened to grow out of a business disagreement between the two branches of the family. In 1852, Clélia came to Paris to be present at Alfred's reception by the French Academy. He had great confidence in her taste and judgment, and the last time they met he said to her, "If there should ever be a handsome edition of my works, I will have a copy bound for you in white vellum with a gold band, as an emblem of our friendship."

His first literary passion was the _Arabian Nights_, which filled the imagination of both brothers with magical lamps, wishing-carpets and secret caverns for nearly a twelvemonth, during which they were incessantly trying to carry out their fancies by constructing enchanted towers and palaces with the furniture of their apartment. The Eastern stories were superseded by tales of chivalry: Paul lit upon the _Four Sons of Aymon_ in his grandfather's library, and a new world opened before him in which he hastened to lose himself, taking his younger brother by the hand. The children devoured _Jerusalem Delivered_, _Orlando Furioso_, _Amadis de Gaule_, and all the poems, tales and traditions of knighthood on which they could lay hands. Their games now were of nothing but tilts and jousts, single combats, adventures and deeds of arms: the paladins were their imaginary playfellows. A little comrade, who charged with an extraordinary rush in the excitement of the tournament, generally represented Roland: Alfred, being the youngest and smallest of the three, was allowed to bear the enchanted lance, the first touch of which unseated the boldest rider and bravest champion--a pretty device of the elder brother's, in which one hardly knows whether to be most charmed with the poetic fancy or the protecting affection which it displayed. The delightful infatuation lasted for several years, undergoing some gradual modifications. Until he was nine, Alfred had been chiefly taught at home by a tutor, but at that age he was sent to school, where the first term dispelled his belief in the marvellous. His brother was by this time at boarding-school, and they met only on Sunday, when they renewed their knightly sports, but with diminished ardor. One day Alfred asked Paul seriously what he thought of magic, and Paul confessed his scepticism. The loss of this dear delusion was a painful shock to Alfred, as it is to many children. Who cannot remember the change which came over the world when he first learned that Krisskinkle _alias_ Santa Claus did not fill the Christmas stocking--that the fairies had not made the greener ring in the grass, where he had firmly believed he might have seen them dancing in the moonlight if he could only have sat up late enough? The Musset children fell back upon the mysterious machinery of old romance--trap-doors, secret staircases, etc.--and began tapping and sounding the walls for private passages and hidden doorways; but in vain. It was at this stage of the fever that _Don Quixote_ was given to them; and it is a singular illustration both of the genius of the book and the intelligence of the little readers that it put their giants, dwarfs and knights to flight. During the following summer they passed a few weeks at the manor-house of Cogners with an uncle, the marquis de Musset, the head of the family: to their great joy, the room assigned them had underneath the great canopied bedstead a trap leading into a small chamber built in the thickness of the floor between the two stories of the old feudal building. Alfred could not sleep for excitement, and wakened his brother at daybreak to help him explore: they found the secret chamber full of dust and cobwebs, and returned to their own room with the sense that their dreams had been realized a little too late. On looking about them they saw that the tapestry on their walls represented scenes from _Don Quixote:_ they burst out laughing, and the days of chivalry were over.

Alfred de Musset was nine years old, as we have said, when he began to attend the Collége Henri IV. (now Corneille), on entering which he took his place in the sixth form, among boys for the most part of twelve or upward. He was sent to school on the first day with a deep scalloped collar and his long light curls falling upon his shoulders, and being greeted with jeers and yells by his schoolmates, went home in tears, and the curls were cut off forthwith. He was an ambitious rather than an assiduous scholar, and kept his place on the bench of honor by his facility in learning more than by his industry; but it was a source of keen mortification to him if he fell behindhand. His talents soon attracted the attention of the masters and the envy of the pupils, the latter of whom were irritated and humiliated by seeing the little curly-pate, the youngest of them all, always at the head of the class. The laziest and dullest formed a league against him: every day, when school broke up, he was assaulted with a brutality equal to that of an English public school, but which certainly would not have been roused against him there by the same cause. He had to run amuck through the courtyard to the gate, where a servant was waiting for him, often reaching it with torn clothes and a bloody face. This persecution was stopped by his old playfellow, Orlando Furioso, who was two years his senior: he threw himself into the crowd one day and dealt his redoubtable blows with so much energy that he scattered the bullies once for all. Among their schoolmates was the promising duke of Orleans, who was then duc de Chartres, his father, afterward King Louis Philippe, bearing at that time the former title. He took a strong fancy to Alfred de Musset, which he showed by writing him a profusion of notes during recitation, most of them invitations to dinner at Neuilly, where he occasionally went with other school-fellows of the young prince. For a time after leaving school De Chartres--as he was called by his young friends--kept up a lively correspondence with Alfred, and when their boyish intimacy naturally expired the recollection of it remained fresh and lively in the prince's mind, as was afterward proved.

De Musset left college at the age of sixteen, having taken a prize in philosophy for a Latin metaphysical essay. His disposition to inquire and speculate had already manifested itself by uneasy questions in the classes of logic and moral philosophy; and although few will agree with his brother that his writings show unusual aptitude and profound knowledge in these sciences, or that, as he says, "the thinker was always on a level with the poet," nobody can deny the constant questioning of the Sphinx, the eager, restless pursuit of truth, which pervades his pages. He pushed his search through a long course of reading,--Descartes, Spinoza, Cabanis, Maine de Biran--only to fall back upon an innate faith in God which never forsook him, although it was strangely disconnected with his mode of life.

I have lingered over the early years of Alfred de Musset because the childhood of a poet is the mirror wherein the image of his future is seen, and because there is something peculiarly touching in this season of innocence and unconsciousness of self in the history of men whose after lives have been torn to pieces by the storms of vicissitude and passion. So far, he had not begun to rhyme--an unusual case, as boys who can make two lines jingle, whether they be poets or not, generally scribble plentifully before leaving school. At the age of fourteen he wrote some verses to his mother on her birthday, but it is fair to suppose that they gave no hint of talent, as they have not been preserved: it was only from his temperament that his destiny might be guessed. The impressions of his infancy were singularly vivid and deep, and acted directly upon his imagination: they are reflected in his works in pictures and descriptions full of grace or power. The ardent Bonapartism of his family, particularly of his mother, whom he loved and revered, took form from his recollections in the magnificent opening of the _Confession d'un Enfant du Siècle,_ which has the double character of a prose poem and a kindling oration, while by the volume and sonorous beauty of the phrase it reminds one of a grand musical composition. When he was between seven and eight years old his family passed the summer at an old country-place to which belonged a farm, and he and his brother found inexhaustible amusement among the tenants and their occupations. He never saw it again, but it is reproduced with perfect fidelity in the tale of _Margot_. The chivalric mania left, as Paul de Musset observes, a love of the romantic and fantastic, a tendency to look upon life as a novel, an enjoyment of what was unexpected and unlikely, a disposition to trust to chance and the course of events. The motto of the Mussets was a condensed expression of the gallant love-making, Launcelot side of knightly existence--_Courtoisie, Bonne Aventure aux Preux_ ("Courtesy, Good Luck to the Paladin;" or, to translate the latter clause more freely, yet more faithfully to the spirit of the original, "None but the Brave Deserve the Fair"). It came from two estates--_Courtoisie_, which passed out of the family in the last century, and _Bonne Aventure_, a property on the Loire, which was not part of Alfred's patrimony. The fairies who endowed him at his christening with so many gifts and graces must have meant to complete his outfit when they presented him with such a device, which might have been invented for him at nineteen. On leaving college he continued his education by studying languages, drawing, and music to please himself, and attempting several professions to satisfy the reasonable expectations of his father. He found law dry, medicine disgusting, and, discouraged by these failures, he fell into low spirits, to which he was always prone even at the height of his youthful joyousness--declared to his brother that he was and ever should be good for nothing, that he never should be able to practise a profession, and never could resign himself to being _any particular kind of man._ His talent for drawing led him to work in a painter's studio and in the galleries of the Louvre with some success, and for a time he was in high spirits at the idea of having found his calling, and pursued it while attending lectures and classes on other subjects. This uncertainty lasted a couple of years, during which he began to venture a little into society, of which, like most lively, versatile young people, he was extravagantly fond. His Muse was still dormant, but his love for poetry was strongly developed; a volume of André Chenier was always in his pocket, and he delighted to read it under the trees in the avenues of the Bois on his daily walk out of Paris to the suburb of Auteuil, where his family lived at that time. Under this influence he wrote a poem, which he afterward destroyed, excepting a few good descriptive lines which he introduced into one of later date. Meanwhile, he had been presented to the once famous Cénacle, the nucleus of the romantic school, then in the pride and flush of youth and rapidly increasing popularity; its head-quarters were at the house of Victor Hugo _facile princeps ordinis_ even among its chiefs. There he met Alfred de Vigny, Mérimée, Sainte-Beuve and others, whose talents differed essentially in kind and degree, but who were temporarily drawn together by similarity of literary principles and tastes. Their meetings were entirely taken up with intellectual discussions, or the reading of a new production, or in walks which have been commemorated by Mérimée and Sainte-Beuve, when they carried their romanticism to the towers of Notre Dame to see the sun set or the moon rise over Paris.

Stimulated by this companionship, Alfred de Musset began to compose. His first attempt at publication was anonymous, a ballad called "A Dream," which, through the good offices of a friend, was accepted by _Le Provincial,_ a tri-weekly newspaper of Dijon: it did not pass unnoticed, but excited a controversy in print between the two editors, to the extreme delight of the young poet, who always fondly cherished the number of the paper in which it appeared. At length, one morning he woke up Sainte-Beuve with the laughing declaration that he too was a poet, and in support of his assertion recited some of his verses to that keenly attentive and appreciative ear. Sainte-Beuve at once announced that there was "a boy full of genius among them," and as long as he lived, whatever Paul de Musset's fraternal sensitiveness may find to complain of, he never retracted or qualified that first judgment. The _Contes d'Italie et d'Espagne_ followed fast, and were recited to an enthusiastic audience, who were the more lenient to the exaggerations and affectations of which, as in most youthful poetry, there were plenty, since these bore the stamp of their own mint.

Alfred de Musset's first steps in life were made at the same time with his first essays in poetry. He was so handsome, high-spirited and gay that women did not wait to hear that he was a genius to smile upon him. His brother, who is tall, calls him of medium height, five feet four inches (about five feet nine, English measure), slender, well-made and of good carriage: his eyes were blue and full of fire; his nose was aquiline, like the portraits of Vandyke; his profile was slightly equine in type: the chief beauty of his face was his forehead, round which clustered the many-shaded masses of his fair hair, which never turned gray: the countenance was mobile, animated and sensitive; the predominating expression was pride. Paul relates without reserve how one married woman encouraged his brother and trifled with him, using his devotion to screen a real intrigue which she was carrying on, and that another, who was lying in wait for him, undertook his consolation. One morning Alfred made his appearance in spurs, with his hat very much on one side and a huge bunch of hair on the other, by which signs his brother understood that his vanity was satisfied. He was just eighteen. That a man of respectable life and notions like Paul de Musset should take these adventures as a matter of course makes it difficult for an American to find the point of view whence to judge a society so abominably corrupt. Thus at the age of a college-boy in this country he was started on the career which was destined to lead to so much unhappiness, and in the end to his destruction. Dissipation of every sort followed, debts, from which he was never free, and the habit of drinking, which proved fatal at last. To the advice and warnings of his brother he only replied that he wished to know everything by experience, not by hearsay--that he felt within him two men, one an actor, the other a spectator, and if the former did a foolish thing the latter profited by it. On this pernicious reasoning he pursued for three years a dissolute mode of life, which, thanks to the remarkable strength and elasticity of his constitution, did not prevent his carrying on his studies and going with great zest into society, where he became more and more welcome, besides writing occasionally. He translated De Quincey's _Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_, introducing some reveries of his own, but the work attracted no attention. During this period his father, naturally anxious about his son's unprofitable courses, one morning informed him that he had obtained a clerkship for him in an office connected with the military commissariat. Alfred did not venture to demur, but the confinement and routine of an office were intolerable, and he resolved to conquer his liberty by every effort of which he was capable. He offered his manuscripts for publication to M. Canel, the devoted editor of the romantic party: they fell short by five hundred lines of the number of pages requisite for a volume of the usual octavo bulk. He obtained a holiday, which he spent with a favorite uncle who lived in the provinces, and came back in three weeks with the poem of "Mardoche." He persuaded his father to give a literary party, to which his friends of the Cénacle were invited, and repeated his latest compositions to them, including "Mardoche." Here we have another example of manners startling to our notions: the keynote of these verses was rank libertinism, yet in his mother's drawing-room and apparently in the presence of his father, a dignified, reputable man, venerated by his children, this young rake declaimed stanzas more licentious than any in Byron's _Don Juan_. But it caused no scandal: the friends were rapturous, and predicted the infallible success of the poems, in which they were justified by the event. "Rarely," says Paul de Musset, "has so small a quantity of paper made so much noise." There was an uproar among the newspapers, some applauding with all their might, others denouncing the exaggeration of the romantic tendency: the romanticists themselves were disconcerted to find the "Ballade à la Lune," which they had taken as a good joke, turned into a joke against themselves. At all events, the young man was launched, and his vocation was thenceforth decided. In reading these first productions of Alfred de Musset's without the prejudice or partiality of faction, it cannot be denied that if not sufficient in themselves to ensure his immortality, they contain lines of finished beauty as perfect as the author ever produced--ample guarantee of what might be expected from the development of his genius.

He now began to be tired of sowing wild oats, and became less irregular in his mode of life. A lively, pretty little comedy called _Une Nuit Vénitienne_, which he wrote at the request of the director of the Odéon, for some inexplicable cause fell flat, which, besides turning him aside from writing for the stage during a number of years, discouraged him altogether for some time. Before he entirely recovered from the check he lost his father, who died suddenly of cholera in 1832. The shock left him sobered and calm, anxious to fulfil his duties toward his mother and young sister, whose means, it was feared, would be greatly diminished by the loss of M. de Musset's salary. Alfred resolved to publish another volume of poetry, and, if this did not succeed to a degree to warrant his considering literature a means of support, to get a commission in the army. He set himself industriously to work, and inspiration soon rewarded the effort: in six months his second volume appeared, comprising "Le Saule," "Vœux Stériles," "La Coupe et les Lèvres," "A quoi rèvent les jeunes filles," "Namouna," and several shorter pieces. Among those enumerated there are splendid passages, second in beauty and force to but a few of his later poems, the sublime "Nuits," "Souvenir," and the incomparable opening of "Rolla." Again he convoked the friends who three years before had greeted the _Contes d'Espagne_ with acclamation, but, to the unutterable surprise and disappointment of both brothers, there was not a word of sympathy or applause: Mérimée alone expressed his approbation, and assured the young poet that he had made immense progress. Perhaps the others took in bad part their former disciple's recantation of romanticism, which he makes in the dedication of "La Coupe et les Lèvres" after the following formula:

For my part, I hate those snivellers in boats, Those lovers of waterfalls, moonshine and lakes, That breed without name, which with journals and notes, Tears and verses, floods every step that it takes: Nature no doubt but gives back what you lend her; After all, it may be that they do comprehend her, But them I do certainly not comprehend.

The chill of this introduction was not carried off by the public reception of the _Spectacle dans un Fauteuil_ (as the new collection was entitled), which remained almost unnoticed for some weeks, until Sainte-Beuve in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ of January 15, 1833, published a review of this and the earlier poems, indicating their beauty and originality, the promise of the one and progress of the other, with his infallible discernment and discrimination. A few critics followed his lead, others differed, and discussions began again which could not but spread the young man's fame. The _Revue des Deux Mondes_ was now open to him, and henceforth, with a few exceptions, whatever he wrote appeared in that periodical. He made his entry with the drama of _Andrea del Sarto_, which is rife with tense and tragic situations and deeply-moving scenes. The affairs of the family turned out much better than had been expected, but Alfred de Musset continued to work with application and ardor. His fine critical faculty kept his vagaries within bounds: he knew better than anybody "how much good sense it requires to do without common sense"--a dictum of his own. Like every true artist, he took his subjects wherever he found them: the dripping raindrops and tolling of the convent-bell suggested one of Chopin's most enchanting _Preludes;_ the accidental attitudes of women and children in the street have given painters and sculptors their finest groups; so a bunch of fresh roses which De Musset's mother put upon his table one morning during his days of extravagant dissipation, saying, "All this for fourpence," gave him a happy idea for unravelling the perplexity of Valentin in _Les Deux Maîtresses;_ and his unconscious exclamation, "Si je vous le disais pourtant que je vous aime," which caused a passer-by in the street to laugh at him, furnished the opening of the _Stances à Ninon_, like Dante's

Donne ch'avete intelletto d'amore.

These fortunate dispositions were interrupted by a meeting which affected his character and genius more than any other event in his life. It is curious that Madame Sand and De Musset originally avoided making each other's acquaintance. She fancied that she should not like him, and he, although greatly struck by the genius of her first novel, _Indiana_, disliked her overloaded style of writing, and struck out in pencil a quantity of superfluous adjectives and other parts of speech in a copy which unluckily fell into her hands. Their first encounter was followed by a sudden, almost instantaneous, mutual passion--on his part the first and strongest if not the only one, of his life. The first season of this intimacy was like a long summer holiday. "It seemed," writes the biographer, "as if a partnership in which existence was so gay, to which each brought such contributions of talent, wit, grace, youth, and good-humor, could never be dissolved. It seemed as if such happy people should find nothing better to do than remain in a home which they had made so attractive for themselves and their friends.... I never saw such a happy company, nor one which cared so little about the rest of the world. Conversation never flagged: they passed their time in talking, drawing, and making music. A childish glee reigned supreme. They invented all sorts of amusements, not because they were bored, but because they were overflowing with spirits." But Paris became too narrow for them, and they fled--first to Fontainebleau, then to Italy. Musset's mother was deeply opposed to the latter project, foreseeing misfortune with the prescience of affection, and he promised not to go without her consent, although his heart was set upon it. The most incredible story in the biography is that Madame Sand actually surprised Madame de Musset into an interview, and, by appeals, eloquence, persuasion and vows, obtained her sorrowful acquiescence.

The lamentable story of that Italian journey has been told too often and by too many people to need repetition here. No doubt Paul de Musset has told it as fairly as could be expected from his brother's side: probably the circumstances occurred much as he sets them down. But he could not make due allowance for the effect which Alfred's dissolute habits had produced upon his character: he was but twenty-three, and had run the round of vice; he had already depicted the moral result of such courses in his terrible allegory of "La Coupe et les Lèvres:" the idea recurs throughout his works, conspicuously in the _Confession d'un Enfant du Siècle_, which is Madame Sand's best apology. But if his excesses had destroyed his ingenuousness, she destroyed his faith in human nature, and on her will ever rest the brand he set in the burning words of the "Nuit d'Octobre."

He returned to Paris shattered in mind and body, and shut himself up in his room for months, unable to endure contact with the outer world, or even that of the loving home circle which environed him with anxious tenderness. He could not read or write: a favorite piece of music from his young sister's piano, a game of chess with his mother in the evening, were his only recreations--his only excitement the letters which still came from Venice, for which he looked with a sick longing, at which one cannot wonder on reading them and remembering what a companionship it was that he had lost. Urged by his brother and his friend M. Buloz, the director of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, to try the efficacy of work, he completed his play of _On ne badine pas avec l'Amour_, already sketched, in which, of all his dramatic writings, the cry of the heart is most thrilling. Aided by this effort, he made a journey to Baden in September, five months after his miserable return to Paris. The change of air and scene restored him, and his votive offering for the success of his pilgrimage was the charming poem called "Une Bonne Fortune." Although he had determined not to see Madame Sand again, their connection was renewed, in spite of himself, when she came back from Italy: it lasted for a short period, full of angry and melancholy scenes, quarrels and reconciliations. Then he broke loose for ever, and went back to the world and his work.

This episode, of which I have briefly given the outline, was the principal event of Alfred de Musset's life, the one which marked and colored it most deeply, which brought his genius to perfection by a cruel and fiery torture, and left a lasting imprint upon his writings. Although he never produced anything finer than certain passages of "Rolla," which was published in 1833, yet previous to that--or more accurately to 1835, when he began to write again--he had composed no long poem of equal merit throughout, none in which the flight was sustained from first to last. The magnificent series of the "Nights" of May, December, August and October, the "Letter to Lamartine," "Stanzas on the Death of Malibran," "Hope in God," and a number of others of not less melody and vigor, but less exalted and serious in tone; several plays, among them _Lorenzaccio_, which missed only by a very little being a fine tragedy; the greater part of his prose tales and criticisms, including _Le Fils de Titien_, the most charming of his stories, and the _Confession d'un Enfant du Siècle_, which shows as much genius as any of his poems,--belong to the period from 1835 to 1840, his apogee. Of the last work, notwithstanding its unmistakable personal revelations--which, if they do not tell the author's story, at least reflect his state of mind--Paul de Musset says, what everybody who has read his brother's writings carefully will feel to be true, that neither in the hero nor any other single personage must we look for Alfred's entire individuality. In the complexity of his character and emotions, and the contradictions which they united, are to be found the eidolon of every young man in his collection, even "the two heroes of _Les Caprices de Marianne_, Octave and Cœlio," says Paul, "although they are the antipodes of one another." Neither is it as easy as it would seem on the surface to trace the thread of any one incident of his life through his writings. Although containing some irreconcilable passages, the four "Nights" appeared to have been born of the same impulse and to exact the same dedication: it is undeniably a shock to have their inconsistencies explained by hearing that while the "Nuits de Mai," "d'Août" and "d'Octobre" refer to his passion for Madame Sand, the "Nuit de Décembre" and "Lettre à Lamartine," which naturally belong to this series, were dictated by another attachment and another disappointment. I will not stop to moralize upon this: the story of De Musset's life is really only the story of his loves. His brother says that he was always in love with somebody: it was a necessity of his nature and his genius. Before he was twenty-seven, six different love-affairs are enumerated, without taking into account numerous affairs of gallantry; nor was the sixth the last. The "Nuit d'Octobre" was written two years and a half after his return from Italy, and its terrible malediction is the outbreak of the rankling memory of his wrong and suffering. It was psychologically in order that while his love (which does not die in an hour, like trust and respect) survived, it should surround its object with lingering tenderness, but that as it slowly expired indignation, scorn and the sense of injury should increase: this is their final utterance, followed by pardon, a vow of forgetfulness and farewell, but not a final farewell. That was spoken years afterward, in 1841, when, once again seeing by chance the forest of Fontainebleau, and about the same time casually encountering Madame Sand, he poured forth his "Souvenir," a poem of matchless sweetness and beauty, vibrating with feeling and most musical in expression--an exquisite combination of lyric and elegy. In this he calls her

Ma seule amie à jamais la plus chère.

Ten years after this, in one of the last strains of his unstrung harp, a fragment called "Souvenir des Alpes," the sad chord is touched once more: up to the end it answered faintly to certain notes. Long after their rupture and separation he said that he would have given ten years of his life to marry her had she been free; and it is deplorable that the most fervent and lasting affection of which he was capable should have been thrown back upon him in such sort.

Of marriage there were several schemes at different times: they fell through because he was averse to them himself, except one to which he much inclined, the young lady being pretty, intelligent, charming and the daughter of an old friend; but on the first advances it turned out that she was engaged to another man. His biographer regrets this deeply, convinced that such an alliance would have been his brother's salvation; but even if he could have been more constant to his wife than to his mistresses, the habit of intemperance was too confirmed to admit much hope of domestic happiness. The same may be opined in regard to the vague hopes which were destroyed by the death of the young duke of Orleans. When Louis Philippe came to the throne, De Musset made no attempt to approach the royal family on the pretext of the old school-friendship: it was the duke himself who renewed it in 1836 on accidentally seeing some unpublished verses of the poet's on the king's escape from an attempt at assassination. Louis Philippe himself did not like the sonnet, considering the use of the poetic _thou_ too familiar a form of address: he did not know who was the author; and when Alfred was presented to him at a court-ball took him for a cousin who was inspector of the royal forests at Joinville, and continued to greet him, under this mistake, with a few gracious words two or three times a year during the rest of his reign, while the poet's name was on the lips and in the heart of every one else. The duke's favor and friendliness ended only with his sad and sudden death.

Paul de Musset tells us that the years 1837 and 1838 were the happiest in his brother's life. The love-trouble which had wrung from him the "Nuit de Décembre" was a disappointment, but not a deception, and the parting had caused equal sorrow on both sides, but no bitterness. After no long interval appeared "a very young and very pretty person whom he met frequently in society, of an enthusiastic, passionate nature, independent in her position, and who bought the poet's books." An acquaintance, a friendship, a correspondence, a serious passion followed, and became a relation which lasted two years "without quarrel, storm, coolness or subject of umbrage or jealousy--two years of love without a cloud, of true happiness." Why did it not last for ever? The biographer does not give the answer. It is hinted in a letter to Alfred's friend, the duchesse de Castries, dated September, 1840, in his _Œuvres posthumes_: "I have told you how about a year ago an absurd passion, totally useless and somewhat ridiculous, made me break with all my habits. I forsook all my surroundings, my friends of both sexes, the current in which I was living, and one of the prettiest women in Paris. I did not succeed in my foolish dream, you must understand; and now I find myself cured, it is true, but high and dry like a fish in a grain-field." This is probably the clue, and the foolish dream was for a woman to whom his brother refers as having repelled Alfred's homage with harshness, and having called forth from him some short and extremely bitter verses beginning "Oui, femme," and another called "Adieu!" in which there prevails a tone of quiet but deep feeling. This is a sad story: he apparently united the volatility and vagrancy of fancy, the inconstancy of light shallow natures, with the ardor and intensity of passion and the capacity for suffering which belong to strong and steadfast ones. There was a childlike quality in his disposition, which showed itself in a sort of simplicity and spontaneousness in the midst of a corrupt existence, and still more in the uncontrollable, absorbing violence of his emotions: they swept over him, momentarily devastating his present and blotting out the horizon, but unlike the tempests of childhood their ravages did not disappear when the clouds dispersed and the torrents subsided. The life of debauchery which had preceded his journey to Italy was replaced, for some years, by a less excessive degree of dissipation, during which he lived with a fast set, who, however, were men of talent and accomplishments, the foremost among them being Prince Belgiojoso. The influence of the two fortunate years, 1837-38, not only the happiest but the most fertile of his short career, seems to have weakened these associations and led him into calmer paths. He had formed several friendships with women of a sort which both parties may regard with pride, in particular with the Princess Belgiojoso, one of the most striking and original figures of our monotonous time, and Madame Maxime Jaubert, a clever, attractive young woman with a delightful house, whom he called his _Marraine_ because she had given him a nickname. These women, and others--but these two above the rest--were sincerely and loyally attached to him with a disinterested regard which did not spare advice, nor even rebuke, or relax under his loss of health and brilliancy or neglect of their kindness, which nevertheless he felt and valued. His purest source of pleasure was in the talent of others, which gave him a generous and sympathetic enjoyment. The appearance of Pauline Garcia--now Madame Viardot--and Rachel, who came out almost simultaneously at the age of seventeen, added delight to the two happy years. He has left notices of the first performances of these artistes, the former in opera, the latter on the stage (for he was musical himself and a _connoisseur_) which are excellent criticisms, and have even more interest than when they appeared, now that the career of one has long been closed and that of the other long completed. His relations with Rachel lasted for many years, interrupted by the gusts and blasts which the contact of two such natures inevitably begets. She constantly urged him to write a play for her, and in the year after her _début_ he wrote a fragment of a drama on the story of Frédegonde, which she learned by heart and occasionally recited in private; but there were endless delays and difficulties on both sides, and the rest was not written. After various episodes and passages between them, De Musset was dining with her one evening when she had become a great lady and queen of the theatre, and her other guests were all rich men of fashion. One of them admired an extremely beautiful and costly ring which she wore. It was first passed round the table from hand to hand, and then she said they might bid for it. One immediately offered five hundred francs, another fifteen, and the ring went up at once to three thousand: "And you, my poet, why do not you bid? What will you give?" "I will give you my heart," he replied. "The ring is yours," cried Rachel, taking it off and throwing it into his plate. After dinner De Musset tried to restore it to her, but she refused to take it back: he urged and insisted, when she, suddenly falling on her knee with that sovereign charm of seduction for which she was as renowned as for her tragic power, entreated him to keep it as a pledge for the piece he was to write for her. The poet took the ring, and went home excited and wrought up to the resolve that nothing should interfere with the completion of his task. But it was the old story again--whims and postponements on Rachel's part, possibly temper and pique on his--until six months afterward, at the end of an angry conversation, he silently replaced the ring on her hand, and she did not resist. Four years later the compact was renewed, and although by this time De Musset had to all intents and purposes ceased to write, he struck off the first act of a play called _Faustina_, the scene of which was laid in Venice in the fourteenth century; but he put off finishing it, and finally let it drop altogether.

In December, 1840, Alfred de Musset was thirty years old, and on his birthday he had one of those reckonings with himself, which the most deliberately careless and volatile men cannot escape. At twenty-one he had held a similar settlement: he was then uncertain of his genius, dissatisfied with his way of life and with the use he made of his time: the result was his adoption of a more serious line of study and conduct, which had led him, in spite of interruptions and aberrations, to the brilliant display of his beautiful and splendid talents, the full exercise of his wonderful powers. Now another review of his past and survey of his future left him in a mood of discontent and depression. He felt that he could not always go on being a boy. The year behind him had been almost sterile, and marked by the loss of many of what he called his illusions. He had been implored and urged to write by his friends and editors, had made and broken promises without number to the latter, and had become involved in money difficulties to a degree which kept him in constant anxiety and torment. Yet he steadily rejected all his brother's affectionate advice and importunities to shake off the deepening lethargy. He would not write poetry because the Muse did not come of her free will, and he would never do her violence. He had forsworn prose, because he said everybody wrote that, and many so ill that he would not swell the number of magazine story-writers, who, he foresaw, were to lower the standard of fiction and style. In short, he always had an excuse for doing nothing, and although he hated above all things to leave Paris, and seldom accepted the invitations of his friends in the country, he now repeatedly rushed out of town to escape the visits of editors, who had become no better than duns in his eyes. When at home he shut himself in his room for days together in so gloomy a frame of mind that even his brother did not venture to break in upon him: he even made a furtive attempt at suicide one night when his despondency reached its lowest depth; it was foiled by the accident of Paul's having unloaded the pistols and locked up the powder and balls some time before. He grew morbidly irritable, and resented Paul's remonstrances, which, we may be sure, were made with all the tact and consideration of natural delicacy and unselfish affection, generally by laughing at the poor poet, which was the most effectual way of restoring his courage and good-humor. One morning he emerged from his seclusion, and with vindictive desperation threw before his brother a quantity of manuscripts, saying, "You _would_ have prose: there it is for you." It was the introduction to a sort of romance called _Le Poète déchu_, a wretched story of a young man of many gifts who finds himself under the necessity of writing for the support of his orphan sisters, and it described with harrowing eloquence the vain efforts of his exhausted brain. The extracts in the biography are painfully affecting and powerful, but the work was never finished or published. Such a state of things could not go on indefinitely, and De Musset fell dangerously ill of congestion of the lungs, brought on by reckless imprudence when already far from well: the attack was accompanied by so much fever and delirium that it was at first mistaken for brain fever. This illness redoubled the tenderness and devotion of his family and friends: his Marraine and Princess Belgiojoso took turns by his bedside, magnetizing the unruly patient into quiescence; but the person who exercised the greatest influence over him was a poor Sister of Charity, Sœur Marcelline, who was engaged to assist in nursing him. The untiring care, self-abnegation, angelic sweetness and serenity of this humble woman gained the attachment of the whole family, and established an ascendency over Alfred's impressionable imagination. She did not confine her office to her patient's physical welfare, but strove earnestly to minister to him spiritually. His long convalescence "was like a second birth. He did not seem more than seventeen: he had the joyousness of a child, the fancies of a page, like Cherubino in the _Marriage of Figaro_. All the difficulties and subjects of despair which preceded his malady had vanished in a rose-colored distance. He passed his days in reading interminable books--_Clarissa Harlowe_, which he already knew, the _Memorial of St. Helena_, and all the memoirs relating to the Empire. In the evening we all gathered about his writing-table to draw and chat, while Sœur Marcelline sat by knitting in bright worsteds. Auguste Barre, our neighbor, came to work at an album of caricatures in the style of Töppfer's, and we all amused ourselves with the comic illustrations: Alfred and Barre had the pencil, the rest of us composed a text as absurd as the drawings. Who will give us back those delicious evenings of laughter, jest and chat, when without stirring from home or depending on anything from without our whole household was so happy?" Alas! they were not of long duration. By and by Sister Marcelline went away, leaving her patient a pen on which she had embroidered, "Remember your promises." He was afflicted by her departure, and wrote some lines to her, who, as he said, did not know what poetry meant, but he could never be induced to show them, although he repeated them to Paul and their friend Alfred Tattet, who between them contrived to note down the four following verses:

Poor girl! thou art no longer fair. By watching Death with patient care Thou pale as he art grown: By tending upon human pain Thy hand is worn as coarse in grain As horny Labor's own.

But weariness and courage meek Illuminate thy pallid cheek Beside the dying bed: To the poor suffering mortal's clutch Thy hard hand hath a gentle touch, With tears and warm blood fed.

* * * * *

Tread to the end thy lonely road, All for thy task and toward thy God, Thy footsteps day by day. That evil must exist, we prate, And wisely leave it to its fate, And pass another way;

But thy pure conscience owns it not, Though ceaseless warfare is thy lot Against disease and woe; No ills for thee have power to sting, Nor to thy lip a murmur bring, Save those that others know.

De Musset held in peculiar sacredness and reverence whatever was connected with this good woman and his feeling for her: seventeen years after this illness the embroidered pen and a piece of her knitting were buried with him by almost his last request.

Seventeen years! a large bit of any one's life--more than a third of Alfred de Musset's own term--yet there is hardly anything to say about it. The "Souvenir," which was written about six months after his recovery, is the last poem in which all his strength, beauty and pathos find expression: he never wrote again in this vein: it was the last echo of his youth. He composed less and less frequently, and though what he wrote was redolent of sentiment, wit, grace and elegance, and some of the short occasional verses have a consummate charm of finish, the soul seems gone out of his poetry. His brother mentions a number of compositions begun, but thrown aside; there were projects of travel never carried out; he gradually gave up the society of even his oldest friends: everything indicated a rapid decline of the active faculties. Unhappily, that of suffering seemed only to increase--no longer the sharp anguish of unspent force which had wrung from him the passionate cries and plaintive murmurs of former years, but the dull numbness of hopelessness. His existence was monotonous, and the few occurrences which varied it were of a sad or unpleasant nature. His sister married and left Paris, and his mother subsequently went to live with her in the country, thus breaking up their family circle; Paul de Musset was absent from France for considerable spaces of time, so that for the first time Alfred de Musset was compelled to live alone. Friends scattered, some died: the Orleans family, for whom he had a real affection, was driven from France; he fancied that his genius was unappreciated--a notion which, strangely enough, his brother shared--and although he was the last man to rage or mope over misapprehension, the idea certainly added to his gloom. Through the good graces of the duke of Orleans he had been appointed librarian of the Home Office, a post of which he was instantly deprived on the change of government; but a few years later he was unexpectedly given a similar one in the Department of Public Education. In 1852 he was elected to the French Academy, that honor so limited by the small number of members, so ridiculed by unsuccessful aspirants, yet without which no French author feels his career to be complete. His plays were being performed with great favor, his poems and tales were becoming more and more popular, his verses were set to music, his stories were illustrated: but all this brought no cheer or consolation to the sick spirit. He lived more and more alone: the Théâtre Français, a silent game of chess at his café, the deadly absinthe, were his only sources of excitement. It is a comfort to learn that the last ray of pleasure which penetrated his moral dungeon, reviving for an instant the generous glow of enthusiasm, was the appearance of Ristori: inspired by her, he began a poetical address which he never finished, nor even wrote down, but a fragment of it was preserved orally by one or two who heard it:

For Pauline and Rachel I sang of hope, And over Malibran a tear I shed; But, thanks to thee, I see the mighty scope Of strength and genius wed.

Ah keep them long! The heart which breathes the prayer When genius calls has ever made reply, Bear smiling home to Italy the fair, A flower from our sky.

* * * * *

They tell me that in spite of grief and wrong, And pride bent earthward by a tyrant's heel, A noble race, though crushed and conquered long, Has not yet learned to kneel.

Rome's godlike dwellers of a bygone age, The marble, porphyry, alabaster forms, Still live: at night, to speech upon the stage, An ancient statue warms.

* * * * *

What was the cause of De Musset's unhappiness and impotence? His brother tries to account for them by an enumeration of the distresses and annoyances mentioned above, and others of the same order; but when one remembers how the poet's great sorrows, his father's death and the betrayal of his affection by the first woman he really loved, had given him his finest conceptions in verse and prose, it is impossible to accept so insufficient an explanation. Nor can we allow that De Musset sank into a condition of puerile impatience and senile querulousness. Judged by our standard, all the Latin races lack manhood, as we may possibly do by theirs: De Musset was only as much more sensitive than the rest of his countrymen as those of the poetic temperament are usually found to be in all countries. Nor had he seen his talent slowly expire: the spring did not run dry by degrees: it suddenly sank into the ground. He had made a fearful mistake at the outset, which he discovered too late if at all. Considering what life is sure to bring to every one in the way of trial and sorrow, it is not worth while to go in search of emotions and experience which are certain to find us out; nor is it in the slums of life that its meaning is to be sought. He had foretold his own end in the prophetic warning of his Muse:

Quand les dieux irrités m'ôteront ton génie, Si je tombe des cieux que me répondras-tu?

His light was not lost in a storm-cloud nor eclipse, but in the awful Radnorok, the Götterdämmerung, when sun and stars fall from a blank heaven. His health and habits constantly grew worse--he had organic disease of the heart--but his existence dragged on until May 1st, 1857, when an acute attack carried him off after a few days' illness. He died in his brother's arms, and his last words were, "Sleep! at last I shall sleep." He had killed himself physically and intellectually as surely as the wages of sin are death.

But let not this be the last word on one so beloved as a poet and a man. Mental qualities alone never endear their possessor to every being that comes into contact with him, and Alfred de Musset was idolized by people who could not even read. There was not a generous or amiable quality in which he was wanting: he had an inextinguishable ardor for genius and greatness in every form; he was tender-hearted to excess, could not endure the sight of suffering, and delighted in giving pleasure; his sympathy was ready and entire, his loyalty of the truest metal. "He never abused anybody," says his brother, "nor sacrificed an absent person for the sake of a good story." He loved animals and children, and they loved him in return.

He can never cease to be the poet of the many, for he has melody, sentiment, passion, all that charms the popular ear and heart--a personality which is the expression of human nature in a language which, as he himself says, few speak, but all understand. He can never cease to be the poet of the few, because, while his poems are a very concentration and elixir of the most intense and profound feelings of which we are all capable, they give words to the more exquisite and intimate emotions peculiar to those of a keener and more refined susceptibility, of a more exalted and aërial range. Sainte-Beuve says somewhere, though not in his final verdict on De Musset, that his chief merit is having restored to French literature the wit which had been driven out of it by the sentimentalists. His wit is indeed delightful and irresistible, but it is not his magic key to souls. In other countries every generation has its own poet: younger ears are deaf to the music which so long charmed ours; but De Musset will be the poet of each new generation for a certain season--the sweetest of all, because, as has been well said, he is the poet of youth. And if doubt breathes through some of his grandest strophes, Faith finds her first and last profession in the lines--

Une immense espérance a traversé la terre; Malgré nous vers le ciel il faut lever les yeux.

SARAH B. WISTER.

THE BEE.

What time I paced, at pleasant morn, A deep and dewy wood, I heard a mellow hunting-horn Make dim report of Dian's lustihood Far down a heavenly hollow. Mine ear, though fain, had pain to follow: _Tara!_ it twang'd, _tara-tara!_ it blew, Yet wavered oft, and flew Most ficklewise about, or here, or there, A music now from earth and now from air. But on a sudden, lo! I marked a blossom shiver to and fro With dainty inward storm; and there within A down-drawn trump of yellow jessamine A bee Thrust up its sad-gold body lustily, All in a honey madness hotly bound On blissful burglary. A cunning sound In that wing-music held me: down I lay In amber shades of many a golden spray, Where looping low with languid arms the Vine In wreaths of ravishment did overtwine Her kneeling Live-Oak, thousand-fold to plight Herself unto her own true stalwart knight.

As some dim blur of distant music nears The long-desiring sense, and slowly clears To forms of time and apprehensive tune, So, as I lay, full soon Interpretation throve: the bee's fanfare, Through sequent films of discourse vague as air, Passed to plain words, while, fanning faint perfume, The bee o'erhung a rich unrifled bloom: "O Earth, fair lordly Blossom, soft a-shine Upon the star-pranked universal vine, Hast naught for me? To thee Come I, a poet, hereward haply blown, From out another worldflower lately flown. Wilt ask, _What profit e'er a poet brings?_ He beareth starry stuff about his wings To pollen thee and sting thee fertile: nay, If still thou narrow thy contracted way, --Worldflower, if thou refuse me-- --Worldflower, if thou abuse me, And hoist thy stamen's spear-point high To wound my wing and mar mine eye-- Natheless I'll drive me to thy deepest sweet, Yea, richlier shall that pain the pollen beat From me to thee, for oft these pollens be Fine dust from wars that poets wage for thee. But, O beloved Earthbloom soft a-shine Upon the universal jessamine, Prithee abuse me not, Prithee refuse me not; Yield, yield the heartsome honey love to me Hid in thy nectary!" And as I sank into a suaver dream The pleading bee-song's burthen sole did seem, "Hast ne'er a honey-drop of love for me In thy huge nectary?"

SIDNEY LANIER.

"OUR JOOK."

"Königin," said I, as I poked the fire, "what do you think of the people in the house?"

On second thoughts it was not "Königin" that I said, for it was only that night that she received the title. It is of no consequence what I did call her, however, for from that time she was never anything but Königin to me.

We began to "talk things over," as we had a way of doing; and very good fun it was and quite harmless, provided the ventilator was not open. That had happened once or twice, and got us into quite serious scrapes. People have such an utterly irrational objection to your amusing yourself in the most innocent way at what they consider their expense.

Königin and I had come to the boarding-house that very day. We were by ourselves, for our male protectors were off "a-hunting the wild deer and following the roe"--or its Florida equivalent, whatever that may be--and we did not fancy staying at a hotel under the circumstances. Now, we had taken our observations, and were prepared to pronounce our opinions on our fellow-boarders. One after another was canvassed and dismissed. Mr. A. had eccentric table-manners; Miss B. wriggled and squirmed when she talked; Mrs. C. was much too lavish of inappropriate epithets; Mr. X.'s conversation, on the contrary, was quite bald and bare from the utter lack of those parts of speech; Miss Y. had a nice face, and Mrs. Z. a pretty hand.

Just here Königin suddenly burst out laughing. "Really," she said, "we go about the world criticising people as if we were King Solomon and the queen of Sheba."

"'Die Königin von Seba,'" said I. "That, I suppose, is you and our motto should be, 'Wir sind das Volk und die Weisheit stirbt mit uns.'"

I was not at all sure of the accuracy of my translation, but its appropriateness was unquestionable.

"What do you think of the Englishman, Königin?" I asked, giving the fire another poke, not from shamefacedness, but because it really needed it, for the evening was damp and chilly.

"I like him," said Königin decidedly.

Königin and I were always prepared with decided opinions, whether we knew anything about the subject in hand or not.

"He has a fine head," Königin went on, "quite a ducal contour, according to our republican ideas of what a duke ought to be. I like the steady intense light of his eyes under those straight dark brows, and that little frown only increases the effect. Then his laugh is so frank and boyish. Yes, I like him very much."

"He has a nice gentlemanly voice," I suggested--"rather on the 'gobble-gobble' order, but that is the fault of his English birth."

This is enough of that conversation, for, after all, neither of us is the heroine of this tale. It is well that this should be distinctly understood at the start. Somehow, "the Jook" (as we generally called him, in memory of Jeames Yellowplush) and I became very intimate after that, but it was never anything more than a sort of _camaraderie_. Königin knew all about it, and she pronounced it the most remarkable instance of a purely intellectual flirtation which she had ever seen; which was all quite correct, except for the term "flirtation," of which it never had a spice.

One of the Jook's most striking peculiarities, though by no means an uncommon one among his countrymen, was a profound distrust of new acquaintances and an utter incapacity of falling into the free and easy ways which prevail more strongly perhaps in Florida than in any other part of America. There really was some excuse for him, though, for, not to put it too strongly, society is a little mixed in Florida, and it is hard for a foreigner to discriminate closely enough to avoid being drawn into unpleasant complications if he relaxes in the slightest degree his rules of reserve. Besides which, the Jook was a man of the most morbid and ultra refinement. "Refinement" was the word he preferred, but I should have called it an absurd squeamishness. He could make no allowance for personal or local peculiarities, and eccentricities in our neighbors which delighted Königin and me and sent us into fits of laughter excited in his mind only the most profound disgust. Therefore, partly in the fear of having his sensibilities unpleasantly jarred upon, partly from the fear of making objectionable acquaintances whom he might afterward be unable to shake off, and partly from an inherent and ineradicable shyness, he went about clad in a mantle of gloomy reserve, speaking to no one, looking at no one--"grand, gloomy and peculiar." It was currently reported that previous to our arrival he had never spoken to a creature in the boarding-house, though he had been an inmate of it for six weeks. For the rest, he was clever and intelligent, with frank, honest, boyish ways, which I liked, even though they were sometimes rather exasperating.

It was not quite pleasant, for instance, to hear him speak of Americans in the frank and unconstrained manner which he adopted when talking to us. We could hardly wonder at it when we looked at the promiscuous crowd which formed his idea of American society. Refined and well-bred people there certainly were, but these were precisely the ones who never forced themselves upon his notice, leaving him to be struck and stunned by fast and hoydenish young ladies, ungrammatical and ill-bred old ones, and men of all shades of boorishness and swagger, such as make themselves conspicuous in every crowd. Unluckily, both Königin and I have English blood in our veins, and the Jook could not be convinced that we did not eagerly snatch at the chance thus presented of claiming the title of British subjects. It is quite hopeless to attempt to convince Englishmen that any American would not be British if he could. Pride in American citizenship is an idea utterly monstrous and inconceivable to them, and they can look on the profession of it in no other light than that of a laudable attempt at making the best of a bad case. Therefore, the Jook persisted in ignoring our protestations of patriotic ardor, and in paying us the delicate compliment of considering us English and expressing his views on America with a beautiful frankness which kept us in a frame of mind verging on delirium.

What was to be done with such a man? Clearly, but one thing, and I sighed for one of our American belles who should come and see and conquer this impracticable Englishman. At present, things seemed quite hopeless. There was no one within reach who would have the slightest chance of success in such an undertaking. Though outsiders gave me the credit of his subjugation, I knew quite well that there not only was not, but never could be, the necessary tinge of sentimentality in our intercourse. We were much too free and easy for that, and we laughed and talked, rambled and boated together, "like two babes in the woods," as Königin was fond of remarking.

It was in Florida that all this took place--in shabby, fascinating Jacksonville, where one meets everybody and does nothing in particular except lounge about and be happy. So the Jook and I lounged and were happy with a placid, unexciting sort of happiness, until the day when Kitty Grey descended upon us with the suddenness of a meteor, and very like one in her bewildering brightness.

Kitty was by no means pretty, but, though women recognized this fact, the man who could be convinced of it remains yet to be discovered. You might force them to confess that Kitty's nose was flat, her eyes not well shaped, her teeth crooked, her mouth slightly awry, but it always came back to the same point: "Curious that with all these defects she should still be so exquisitely pretty!"

Really, I did not so much wonder at it myself sometimes when I saw Kitty's pale cheeks flush with that delicious pink, her wide hazel eyes deepen and glow, her little face light up with elfish mirth, and her round, childish figure poise itself in some coquettish attitude. Then she had such absurd little hands, with short fingers and babyish dimples, such tiny feet, and such a wealth of crinkled dark-brown hair--such bewitching little helpless ways, too, a fashion of throwing herself appealingly on your compassion which no man on earth could resist! At bottom she was a self-reliant, independent little soul, but no mortal man ever found that out: Kitty was far too wise.

Of course, as soon as I saw Kitty I thought of the Jook. Would he or wouldn't he? On the whole, I was rather afraid he wouldn't, for Kitty's laugh sometimes rang out a little too loud, and Kitty's spirits sometimes got the better of her and set her frisking like a kitten, and I was afraid the modest sense of propriety which was one of the Jook's strong points would not survive it. However, I concluded to risk it, but just here a sudden and unforeseen obstacle checked my triumphant course.

"Mr. Warriner," I said sweetly (I was always horribly afraid I should call him Mr. Jook, but I never did), "I want to introduce you to my friend, Miss Grey."

The Jook looked at me with his most placid smile, and replied blandly, "Thank you very much, but _I'd rather not_."

Did any one ever hear of such a man? I understood his reasons well enough, though he did not take the trouble to explain them: it was only exclusiveness gone mad. And he prided himself upon his race and breeding, and considered our American men boors!

After that I nearly gave up his case as hopeless, and devoted myself to Kitty, whom I really believe the Jook did not know by sight after having been for nearly a week in the same house with her.

Kitty once or twice mildly insinuated her desire to know him. "He has such a nice face," she said plaintively, "and such lovely little curly brown whiskers! He is the only man in the house worth looking at, but if I happen to come up when he is talking to you, he instantly disappears. He must think me _very_ ugly."

It was really very embarrassing to me, for of course I could not tell her that the Jook had declined the honor of an introduction. I knew, as well as if she had told me so, that Kitty in her secret heart accused me of a mean and selfish desire to keep him all to myself, but I was obliged meekly to endure the obloquy, undeserved as it was. Königin used to go into fits of laughter at my dilemma, and just at this period my admiration of the Jook went down to the lowest ebb. "He is a selfish, conceited creature!" I exclaimed in my wrath. "I really believe he thinks that bewitching little Kitty would fall in love with him forthwith if he submitted to an introduction. Oh, I _do_ wish he knew what we thought of him! _Why_ doesn't he listen outside of ventilators?"

"My dear," said Königin, still laughing, though sympathetic, "it strikes me that we began by making rather a demi-god of the man, and are ending by stripping him of even the good qualities which he probably does possess."

Well! things went on in this exasperating way for a week or so longer. Of course I washed my hands of the Jook, for I was too much exasperated to be even civil to him. Kitty was as bright and good-natured as ever, ready to enjoy all the little pleasures that came in her way, though now and then I fancied that I detected a stealthy, wistful look at the Jook's impassive face.

It was lovely that day, but fearfully hot. The sun showered down its burning rays upon the white Florida sands, the sky was one arch of cloudless blue, and the water-oaks swung their moss-wreaths languidly over the deserted streets. We had been dreaming and drowsing away the morning, Königin, Kitty and I, in the jelly-fish-like state into which one naturally falls in Florida.

Suddenly Kitty sprang to her feet. "I can't stand this any longer," she said: "I shall turn into an oyster if I vegetate here. Please, do you see any shells sprouting on my back yet?"

"What do you want to do?" I asked drowsily. "You can't walk in this heat, and if you go on the river the sun will take the skin off your face, and where are you then, Miss Kitty?"

"I can't help that," retorted Kitty in a tone of desperation. "I don't exactly know where I shall go, but I think in pursuit of some yellow jessamine."

I sat straight up and gazed at her: "Are you mad, Kitty? Has the heat addled your brain already? You would have to walk at least a mile before you could find any; and what's the good of it, after all? It would all be withered before you could get home."

"Can't help that," repeated Kitty: "I shall have had it, at all events. Any way, I'm going, and you two can finish your dreams in peace."

It was useless to argue with Kitty when she was in that mood, so I contented myself with giving her directions for reaching the nearest copse where she would be likely to find the fragrant beauty.

Two hours later Königin sat at the window gazing down the long sandy street. Suddenly her face changed, an expression of interest and surprise came into her dreamy eyes: she put up her glass, and then broke into a laugh. "Come and look at this," she exclaimed; and I came.

What I saw was only Kitty and the Jook, but Kitty and the Jook walking side by side in the most amicable manner--Kitty sparkling, bewitching, helpless, appealing by turns or altogether as only she could be; the Jook watching her with an expression of amusement and delight on his handsome face. And both were laden with great wreaths and trails of yellow jessamine, golden chalices of fragrance, drooping sprays of green glistening leaves, until they looked like walking bowers.

"How on earth--" I exclaimed, and could get no further: my feelings choked me.

Kitty came in radiant and smiling as the morning, bearing her treasures. Of course we both pounced upon her: "Kitty, where did you meet the Jook? How did it happen? What did you do?"

"Cows!" said Kitty solemnly, with grave lips and twinkling eyes.

"Cows? Cows in Florida? Kitty, _what_ do you mean?"

"A cow ran at me, and I was frightened and ran at Mr. Warriner. He drove the cow off. That's all. Then he walked home with me. Any harm in that?"

"Now, Kitty, the idea! A Florida cow run at you? If you had said a pig, there might be some sense in it, for the pigs here do have some life about them; but a cow! Why, the creatures have not strength enough to stand up: they are all starving by inches."

"Can't help that," said Kitty. "Must have thought I was good to eat, then, I suppose. I thought she was going to toss me, but I don't think it would be much more agreeable to be eaten. Mr. Warriner is my preserver, anyhow, and I shall treat him _'as sich_.'"

Kitty looked so mischievous and so mutinous that there was evidently no use in trying to get anything more out of her, and after standing there a few minutes fingering her blossoms and smiling to herself, she danced off to dress for tea.

"Selfish little thing, not to offer us one of those lovely sprays!" I exclaimed, but Königin laughed: "My dear, they are hallowed. Our touch would profane them."

Königin always saw further than I did, and I gasped: "Königin! you don't think--"

"Oh no, dear, not yet. Kitty is piqued, and wants to fascinate the Jook a little--just a little as yet, but she may burn her fingers before she gets through. Looks are contagious, and--did you see her face?"

Such a brilliant little figure as slipped softly into the dining-room that evening, all wreathed and twisted and garlanded about with the shining green vines, gemmed with their golden stars. Head and throat and waist and round white arms were all twined with them, and blossoming sprays and knots of the delicately carved blossoms drooped or clung here and there amid her floating hair and gauzy black drapery. How did the child ever make them stick? How had she managed to decorate herself so elaborately in the short time that had elapsed since her return? But Kitty had ways of doing things unknown to duller mortals.

Not a word had Kitty for me that evening, but for her father such clinging, coaxing, wheedling ways, and for the Jook such coy, sparkling, artfully-accidental glances, such shy turns of the little head, such dainty capricious airs, that it was delicious to watch her. Königin and I sat in a dark corner for the express purpose of admiring her delicate little manœuvres. As for her father, good stolid man! he was well used to Kitty's freaks, and went on reading his newspaper in such a matter-of-fact way that she might as well have wheedled the Pyramid of Cheops. The Jook, however, was all that could be desired. The shyest of men--shy and proud as only an Englishman can be--he could not make up his mind to walk directly up to Kitty, as an American would do, as all the young Americans in the room would have done if Kitty had let them. But Kitty, flighty little butterfly as she seemed, had stores of tact and finesse in that little brain of hers, and the power of developing a fine reserve which had already wilted more than one of the young men of the house. For Kitty was none of your arrant and promiscuous flirts who count "all fish that come to their net." She was choice and dainty in her flirtations, but, possibly, none the less dangerous for that.

The Jook hovered about the room from chair to sofa, from sofa to window-seat, finding himself at each remove one degree nearer to Kitty.

"He is like a tame canary-bird," whispered Königin. "Let it alone and it will come up to you after a while, but speak to it and you frighten it off at once."

And when at length he reached Kitty's side, how beautiful was the look of slight surprise, not _too_ strongly marked, and the half-shy pleasure in the eyes which she raised to him; and then the coy little gesture with which she swept aside her draperies and made room for him. Half the power of Kitty's witcheries lay in her frank, childish manner, just dashed with womanly reserve.

Well! the Jook was thoroughly in the vortex now: there was no doubt about that. Kitty might laugh as loud as she pleased, and he only looked charmed. Kitty might frisk like a will-o'-the wisp, and he only admired her innocent vivacity. Even the bits of slang and the Americanisms which occasionally slipped from her only struck him as original and piquant. How would it all end? That neither Königin nor I could divine, for Kitty was not one to wear her heart upon her sleeve. It was very little that we saw of Kitty in these days, for she was always wandering off somewhere, boating on the broad placid river or lounging about "Greenleaf's" or driving--always with the Jook for cavalier, and, if the excursions were long, with her father to play propriety. When she did come into our room, she was not our own Kitty, with her childish airs and merry laughter. This was a brilliant and volatile little woman of the world, who rattled on in the most amusing manner about everything--except the Jook. About him her lips never opened, and the most distant allusion to him on our part was sufficient to send her fluttering off on some pressing and suddenly remembered errand. Yet this reserve hardly seemed like the shyness of conscious but unacknowledged love. On the contrary, we both fancied--Königin and I--that Kitty began to look worried, and somehow, in watching her and the Jook, we began to be conscious that a sort of constraint had crept into her manner toward him. It could be no doubt of his feelings that caused it, for no woman could desire a bolder or more ardent lover than he had developed into, infected, no doubt, by the American atmosphere. Sometimes, too, we caught shy, wistful glances at the Jook from Kitty's eyes, hastily averted with an almost guilty look if he turned toward her.

"What can it mean, Königin?" I said. "She looks as if she wanted to confess some sin, and was afraid to."

"Some childish peccadillo," said Königin. "In spite of all her woman-of-the-world-ishness the child has a morbidly sensitive conscience, and is troubled about some nonsense that nobody else would think of twice."

"Can it be that she has only been flirting, and is frightened to find how desperately in earnest he is?"

"Possibly," replied Königin. "But I fancy that she is too well used to that phase of affairs to let it worry her. Wait a while and we shall see."

We couldn't make anything of it, but even the Jook became worried at last by Kitty's queer behavior, and I suppose he thought he had better settle the matter. For one evening, when I was keeping my room with a headache, I was awakened from a light sleep by a sound of voices on the piazza outside of my window. It was some time before I was sufficiently wide awake to realize that the speakers were Kitty and the Jook, and when I did I was in a dilemma. To let them know that I was there would be to overwhelm them both with confusion and interrupt their conversation at a most interesting point, for the Jook had evidently just made his declaration. It was impossible for me to leave the room, for I was by no means in a costume to make my appearance in the public halls. On the whole, I concluded that the best thing I could do would be to keep still and never, by word or look, to let either of them know of my most involuntary eavesdropping.

Kitty was speaking when I heard them first, talking in a broken, hesitating voice, which was very queer from our bright, fluent little Kitty: "Mr. Warriner, you don't know what a humbug you make me feel when you talk of 'my innocence' and 'unconsciousness' and 'lack of vanity,' and all the rest of it. I have been feeling more and more what a vain, deceitful, hypocritical little wretch I am ever since I knew you. I have been expecting you to find me out every day, and I almost hoped you would."

"What _do_ you mean, Miss Grey?" asked the Jook in tones of utter amazement, as well he might.

"Oh dear! how shall I tell you?" sighed poor Kitty; and I could _feel_ her blushes burning through her words. Then, with a sudden rush: "Can't you see? I feel as if I had _stolen_ your love, for it was all gained under false pretences. You never would have cared for me if you had known what a miserable hypocrite I really was. Why, that very first day I wasn't afraid of the cow--she didn't even look at me--but I saw you coming, and--and--Helen wouldn't introduce you to me--and it just struck me it would be a good chance, and so I rushed up to you and--Oh! what will you think of me?"

"Think?" said the Jook: "why, I think that while ninety-nine women out of a hundred are hypocrites, not one in a thousand has the courage to atone for it by an avowal like yours. Not that it was exactly hypocrisy, either."

The poor blundering Jook! Always saying the most maddening things under the firm conviction that it was the most delicate compliment.

Kitty was too much in earnest to mind it now, though. "Do you know," she went on, "that from the very first day I came into the house I was determined to captivate you?--that every word and every look was directed to that end? I have been nothing but an actress all through. I have done it before, hundreds and hundreds of times, but I never felt the shame of it until now--because--because--"

"Because you never loved any one before? Is that it, Kitty?" said the Jook tenderly.

"Oh, I don't know," said Kitty desperately. "How can I tell? But it's all Helen's fault. If she had introduced you to me in a rational way, I should never have gone on so. But she wouldn't, and I was piqued--"

"I must exonerate Miss Helen," interrupted the Jook. "She wanted to introduce me, and I declined. I am sure I don't know why--English reserve, I suppose. I had not seen you then, you know, and some of the people here are such a queer lot that I rather dreaded new acquaintances."

"Not Helen's fault?" wailed Kitty. "Oh, this is stolen--oh, poor Helen!"

Naturally, the Jook was utterly bewildered, but as for me I sprang up into a sitting posture, for the meaning of Kitty's behavior had just flashed upon me. Absolutely, the poor little goose thought that in accepting the Jook, as she was evidently dying to do, she would be robbing me of my lover. And she never guessed at my own little romance, tucked away safely in the most secret corner of my heart, which put any man save one quite out of the question for me. If I had stopped to think, I suppose I should not have done what I did, but in my surprise the words came out before I thought: "Good gracious, Kitty my dear! do take the Jook if you want him! _I_ don't."

I could not help laughing when I realized what I had done. A little shriek from Kitty and a _very_ British exclamation from the Jook, a slight scuffle of chairs and a sense, rather than sound, of confusion, announced the effect of my words.

I waited for their reply, but dead silence prevailed, so I was obliged to speak again. "You needn't be alarmed," I said, peering cautiously through the chinks in the blinds, for I had approached the window by this time. "I didn't mean to listen, but I couldn't get out of the way, and I never intended to let you or any one else know that I had heard your conversation. I'm awfully sorry that I have disturbed you, but, as I am in for it now, I might as well go on."

There I stopped, for I didn't exactly know what to say, and I hoped that one of them would "give me a lead." I could just catch a glimpse of their faces in the moonlight. The Jook was staring straight at the window-shutter behind which I lurked, and the wrath and disgust expressed in his handsome features set me off into a silent chuckle. I was sorry for Kitty, though. Her face drooped as if it were weighed down by its own blushes, and the long lashes quivered upon the hot cheeks.

"Ah, really, Miss Helen," spoke the Jook at last, "this is a most unexpected pleasure. Ah, really, you know, I mean--"

It was not very lucid, but it was all I needed, and I replied suavely, "Oh yes, I understand. You never asked me, and never had the faintest idea of doing so. Otherwise, we should not have been such good friends. All I want is to enforce the fact on Kitty's mind.--And now, Kitty, my dear, if you are quite satisfied on this point, I will dress and go down stairs.--Don't disturb yourselves, pray!" for both of them showed signs of moving. "You can finish your conversation to much better advantage where you are, and this little excitement has quite cured my headache."

I wonder how in the world they ever took up the dropped stitches in that conversation? They did it somehow, though, for when they reappeared Kitty was the prettiest possible picture of shy, blushing, shamefaced happiness, while the Jook was fairly beaming with pride and delight. It was a case of true love at last: there was no doubt about that--such love as few would have believed that a flighty little creature like Kitty was capable of feeling. It was wonderful to see how quickly all her little wiles and coquetries fell off under its influence, just as the rosy, fluttering leaves of the spring fall off when the fruit pushes its way. I don't believe it had ever struck her before that there was anything degrading in this playing fast and loose with men's hearts which had been her favorite pastime, or in beguiling them by feigning a passion of which she had never felt one thrill. It was not until Love the magician had touched her heart that the honest and loyal little Kitty that lay at the bottom of all her whims and follies was developed. The very sense of unworthiness which she felt in view of the Jook's straightforward and manly ardor was the surest guarantee for the perfection of her cure.

A truce to moralizing. Kitty does not need it, nor the Jook either. If he is not proud of the bright little American bride he is to take back with him to the "tight little isle" of our forefathers, why, appearances are "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked."

HENRIETTA H. HOLDICH.

COMMUNISM IN THE UNITED STATES.

Nowhere in the history of the world have we any example of successful communism. The ancient Cretan and Lacedemonian experiments, the efforts of the Essenes and early Christians, the modified communities of St. Anthony and several orders of monks, the schemes of the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century, together with all the experiments of modern times, have proved essential failures. Setting out with ideas of perfection in the social state, and undertaking nothing less than the entire abolition of the miseries of the world, the communists of all times have lived in a condition the least ideal that can be imagined. The usual course of socialistic communities has been to start out with a great flourish, to quarrel and divide after a few months, and then to decrease and degenerate until a final dispersion by general consent ended the attempt. During the short existence of nearly all such communities the members have lived in want of the ordinary comforts of life, in dispute about their respective rights and duties, at law with retiring members, and battling with the wilds and malarias of the countries in which alone anything like practical communism has been usually possible. The most successful (so far as any of these attempts can be called successful) have been those communities which have been founded on a religion and which have consisted entirely of members of one faith. But all political communism has utterly failed, and the name is little more than a synonym for the most egregious blunders, excesses and crimes of which visionary and unpractical people can be guilty.

The United States seem ill suited for the spread of communistic ideas, notwithstanding they contain almost the only socialistic communities to be found anywhere. Though the people are free to live in common if they desire, and although land and every facility are offered on easy terms for the realization of communism--which is not the case in Europe (and which is, therefore, the reason why the New World is chosen for communistic experiments)--yet there is felt no need of communism here. There are neither the political nor the social inducements for it which exist in Europe, and all efforts to excite an enthusiasm on the subject have invariably failed. Almost the only agitators are foreigners, and nearly all the existing communities are composed of foreigners. Of these, two only are political, the Icarian and the Cedar Vale, while the rest are religious.

The Icarian Community in Adams county, Iowa, about two miles from Corning, a station on the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad, is the result of an effort to realize the communistic theory of M. Cabet, a French writer and politician of some note. It is perhaps the most just and practical of all communistic systems; for the reader will remember that social systems are as numerous in France as religious systems are in this country, and take much the same place in the passions and bigotries of the people of France, where there is but one religion, as our various sects do here, where there are so many. The system of M. Cabet differs from the others in much the same manner as our religious sects differ from one another; which is not of much importance to the outside world, as they all contain the one principle of a community of goods. M. Cabet first promulgated his system in the shape of a romance entitled _A Voyage to Icaria_, in which he represented the community at work under the most favorable circumstances and in a high degree of prosperity. According to his system, all goods are to be held in common, and all the people are to have an equal voice in the disposal of them. Each is to contribute of labor and capital all that he can for the common good, and to get all that he needs from the common fund. "From each according to his ability--to each according to his wants," is the formula of principles. The practical working of the community will further illustrate the system.

In 1848, M. Cabet, with some three thousand of his followers, sailed from France for New Orleans, intending to take up land in Texas or Arkansas on which to establish a community, having the promise that he would soon be followed by ten thousand more of his disciples. After spending several months in reconnoitring, during which half of his followers got discontented and left him, he settled with about fifteen hundred at Nauvoo, Illinois, where they bought out the property of the Mormons, who had recently been driven from that place. There they commenced operations, establishing a saw- and grist-mill, and carrying on farming and several branches of domestic manufacturing. In a little while they sent out a branch colony to Icaria, in Adams county, Iowa, where they purchased, or entered under the Homestead Act, four thousand acres of land. In this place likewise they built a mill and went to farming and carrying on the more simple trades. In a little while, however, a quarrel arose in the principal community at Nauvoo in regard to the use and abuse of power, when, after a rage of passion not unlike that which they had exhibited in the Revolution of 1848 in France, M. Cabet, with a large minority, seceded and went to St. Louis, where they expected to form another and more perfect community. They never formed this community, however, and were soon dispersed. The community at Nauvoo, being now harassed with debts and with lawsuits growing out of the withdrawal of M. Cabet and his party, repaired to their branch colony at Icaria, where they have been ever since. Here they had likewise frequent disputes and withdrawals, often giving rise to lawsuits and a loss of property, until in 1866, when the writer first visited them, they were reduced to thirty-five members. Since that time they have picked up a few members, mostly old companions who had left them for individual life, until now they have about sixty in all. They own at present about two thousand acres of land, of which three hundred and fifty are under cultivation. They have good stock, consisting of about one hundred and twenty head of cattle, five hundred sheep, two hundred and fifty hogs and thirty horses. They still have their saw- and grist-mill, now run by steam, but give most of their time to farming. They preserve the family relation, and observe the strictest rules of chastity. Each family lives in a separate house, but they all eat at a common table. By an economic division of labor one man cooks for all these persons, another bakes, another attends to the dairy, another makes the shoes, another the clothes; and in general one man manages some special work for the whole. No one has any money or need of any. All purchases are made from the common purse, and each gets what he needs. The government is a pure democracy. The officers are chosen once a year by universal (male) suffrage, and consist of a president, secretary (and treasurer), director of agriculture and director of industry. They have no religion, but, like most of the European communists, are free-thinkers. They are highly moral, however, and much esteemed by their neighbors. Some of them are quite learned, and all of them may be pronounced decidedly heroic for the terrible privations they have undergone in order to realize their political principles, to which they are as strongly and sincerely devoted as any Christian to his religion.

Such is a sketch of the most perfect system and most successful experiment of political communism in the United States--not very encouraging, it will be confessed. The other example of political communism is the Cedar Vale Community in Howard county, Kansas, which needs only to be mentioned here, as it has as yet no history. It was commenced in 1871, and is composed of Russian materialists and American spiritualists. They have a community of goods like the Icarians, and in general their principles are the same. They had only about a dozen members at last accounts. Another and similar community was established in 1874 in Chesterfield county, Virginia, called the "Social Freedom Community," its principles being enunciated as a "unity of interest and political, religious and social freedom;" but we cannot discover whether it is yet in existence, as at last accounts it had only two full members and eight probationers. It will be seen from these examples that the prospects of political communism are far from promising. Its principal power has always been as a sentiment, and it can be dreaded only as an appeal to the destitute and lawless to rise in acts of violence. It has been powerful in France in revolutions, riots and mobs, and in this country in aiding the late strikers in their work of destruction.

The other existing communities are founded on some religious basis, being efforts on the part of their founders to secure their religious rights or to live with those of the same faith in closer relations. And although their measures have been similar in many respects to those of the political communists, they have resorted to them not on account of any political principles, but because they believed them to be commanded by Scripture or to grow out of some peculiarity of religious faith or duty. Most of them have been formed after the model of the society of the apostles, who had their goods in common, and because of their example. None, so far as we know, have ever proposed to establish communities by force or to have the whole people embraced in them. Held together by their peculiar religious principles, they have been far more successful (especially when under some shrewd leader whom they believed to have a spiritual authority) than when actuated purely by reason.

Perhaps the most successful of these religious communities is that of the "True Inspirationists," known as the Amana Community, in Iowa, seventy-eight miles west of Iowa City, on the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad. These are all Germans, who came to this country in 1842, and settled at first near Buffalo, New York, on a tract of land called Ebenezer, from which they are sometimes known as "Ebenezers." This tract comprised five thousand acres of land, including what is now a part of the city of Buffalo. In 1855 they moved to their present locality in Iowa. They pretend to be under direct inspiration, receiving from God the model and general orders for the direction of their community. The present head, both spiritual and temporal, is a woman, a sort of sibyl who negotiates the inspirations. Their business affairs are managed by thirteen trustees, chosen annually by the male members, who also choose the president. They are very religious, though having but little outward form. There are fourteen hundred and fifty members, who live in seven different towns or villages, which are all known by the name of Amana--East Amana, West Amana, etc. They have their property for the most part in common. Each family has a house, to which food is daily distributed. The work is done by a prudent division of labor, as in the Icarian community. But instead of providing clothing and incidentals, the community makes to each person an allowance for this purpose--to the men of from forty to one hundred dollars a year, to the women from twenty-five to thirty dollars, and to the children from five to ten dollars. There are public stores in the community at which the members can get all they need besides food, and at which also strangers can deal. They dress very plainly, use simple food, and are quite industrious. They aim to keep the men and women apart as much as possible. They sit apart at the tables and in church, and when divine service is dismissed the men remain in their ranks until the women get out of church and nearly home. In their games and amusements they keep apart, as well as in all combinations whether for business or pleasure. The boys play with boys and the girls with girls. They marry at twenty-four. They own at present twenty-five thousand acres of land, a considerable part of which is under cultivation. They have, in round numbers, three thousand sheep, fifteen hundred head of cattle, two hundred horses and twenty-five hundred hogs. Besides farming, they carry on two woollen-mills, four saw-mills, two grist-mills and a tannery. They are almost entirely self-supporting in the arts, working up their own products and living off the result. In medicine they are homœopathists.

The "Rappists" or Harmony Society at Economy, Pennsylvania, is composed of about one hundred members, being all that remain of a colony of six hundred who came from Germany in 1803. They were called Separatists or "Come-outers" in their own country, and much persecuted on account of their nonconformity with the established Church. They landed in Baltimore, and some of them who never found their way into the community, or who subsequently withdrew, settled in Maryland and Pennsylvania, where they are still known as a religious sect. Those who remained together purchased five thousand acres of land north of Pittsburg, in the valley of the Conoquenessing. In 1814 they moved to Posey county, Indiana, in the Wabash Valley, where they purchased thirty thousand acres of land, and in 1824 they moved back again to their present locality in Pennsylvania. In 1831 a dissension arose among them, and a division was effected by one Bernard Mueller--or "Count Maximilian" as he called himself--who went off with one-third of the members and a large share of the property, and founded a new community at Phillips, ten miles off, on eight hundred acres of land, which, however, soon disbanded on account of internal quarrels.

The peculiarity of this community is that there is no intercourse between the sexes of any kind. In 1807 they gave up marriage. The husbands parted from their wives, and have henceforth lived with them only as sisters. They claim to have authority for this in the words of the apostle: "This I say, brethren, the time is short; it remaineth that both they that have wives be as though they had none," etc. They teach that Adam in his perfect state was bi-sexual and had no need of a female, being in this respect like God; that subsequently, when he fell, the female part (rib, etc.) was separated from him and made into another person, and that when they become perfect through their religion the bi-sexual nature of the soul is restored. Christ, they claim, was also of this dual nature, and therefore never married. They believe that the world will soon come to an end, and that it is their duty to help it along by having no children, and so putting an end to the race as well as the planet.

Their property is all held in common and managed by a council of seven, from whom the trustees are chosen. From four to eight live in each house, men and women together, who regard each other as of the same sex, and are never watched. Each household cooks for itself, although there is a general bakery, from which bread is taken around to the houses as they have need. The members are fond of music and flowers, but they discard dancing. Though Germans, they have ceased to use tobacco; which loss, it is said, the men feel more heavily than that of the wives. They make considerable wine and beer, which they drink in moderation. They are said to be worth from two millions to three millions of dollars, and speculate in mines, oil-wells, saw-mills, etc., doing very little hard work, and hiring laborers from without to take their places in all drudgery. They are engaged principally in farming and the common trades, and supply nearly everything for themselves. They are nearly all aged, none of them being under forty except some adopted children. All are Germans and use the German language.

The Shakers are the oldest society of communists in the United States. The parent society at Mount Lebanon, New York, was established in 1792, being the outgrowth of a religious revival in which there were violent hysterical manifestations or "shakes," from which they took their name. In this revival one Ann Lee, known among them as "Mother Ann," was prominent. This woman, of English birth, emigrated to Niskayuna, New York, about seven miles north-west of Albany, where she pretended to speak from inspiration and work miracles, so that the people soon came to regard her as being another revelation of Christ and as having his authority. Being persecuted by the outside world, her followers, after her death, formed a community in which to live and enjoy their religion alone and: undisturbed. Their principles may be summed up as special revelation, spiritualism, celibacy, oral confession, community, non-resistance, peace, the gift of healing, miracles, physical health and separation from the world. Like the Rappists, they neither marry nor have any substitute for marriage, receiving all their children by adoption. They live in large families or communes, consisting of eighty or ninety members, in one big house, men and women together. Each brother is assigned to a sister, who mends his clothes, looks after his washing, tells him when he needs a new garment, reproves him when not orderly, and has a spiritual oversight over him generally. Though living in the same house, the sexes eat, labor and work apart. They keep apart and in separate ranks in their worship. They do not shake hands with the opposite sex, and there is rarely any scandal or gossip among them, so far as the outside world can learn. There are two orders, known as the Novitiate and the Church order, the latter having intercourse only with their own members in a sort of monkish seclusion, while the others treat with the outside world. The head of a Shaker society is a "ministry," consisting of from three to four persons, male and female. The society is divided into families, as stated above, each family having two elders, one male and one female. In their worship they are drawn up in ranks and go through various gyrations, consisting of processions and dances, during which they continually hold out their hands as if to receive something. The Shakers are industrious, hard-working, economical and cleanly. They dress uniformly. Their houses are all alike. They say "yea" and "nay," although not "thee" and "thou," and call persons by their first names. They confine themselves chiefly to the useful, and use no ornaments. There are at present eighteen societies of Shakers in the United States, scattered throughout seven States. They number in all two thousand four hundred and fifteen persons, and own one hundred thousand acres of land. Their industries are similar to those of the Rappists and True Inspirationists, and are somewhat famed for the excellence of their products. The Shakers are nearly all Americans, like the Oneidans, next mentioned, and unlike all other communistic societies in the United States.

The Perfectionists of Oneida and Wallingford are perhaps the most singular of all communists. They were founded by John Humphrey Noyes, who organized a community at Putney, Vermont, in 1846. In 1848 this was consolidated with others at Oneida in Madison county, New York. In 1849 a branch community was started at Brooklyn, New York, and in 1850 one at Wallingford, Connecticut, all of which have since broken up or been merged in the two communities of Oneida and Wallingford. Their principles are perfectionism, communism and free love. By "perfection" they mean freedom from sin, which they all claim to have, or to seek as practically attainable. They claim, in explaining their sense of this term, that as a man who does not drink is free from intemperance, and one who does not swear is free from profanity, so one who does not sin at all is free from sin, or morally perfect. Their communism is like that of the Icarians, so far as property is concerned, this being owned equally by all for the benefit of all as they severally have need; which state they claim is the state of man after the resurrection. But they have a community not only of goods, but also of wives; or, rather, they have no wives at all, but all women belong to all men, and all men to all women; which they assert to be the state of Nature, and therefore the most perfect state. They call it complex marriage instead of simple, and it is both polygamy and polyandry at the same time. They are enemies of all exclusiveness or selfishness, and hold that there should be no exclusiveness in money or in women or children. Their idea is to be in the most literal sense no respecters of persons. All women and children are the same to all men, and _vice versâ_. A man never knows his own children, and the mothers, instead of raising their children themselves, give them over to a common nursery, somewhat after the suggestion of Plato in his _Republic_. If any two persons are suspected of forming special attachments, and so of violating the principle of equal and universal love, or of using their sexual freedom too liberally, they are put under discipline. They are very religious, their religion, however, consisting only in keeping free from sin. They have no sermons, ceremonies, sacraments or religious manifestations whatever. There are no public prayers, and no loud prayers at all. Their method of discipline is called "criticism," and consists in bringing the offender into the presence of a committee of men and women, who each pass their criticisms on him and allow him to confess or criticise himself. The least sign of worldliness or evidence of impropriety is enough to subject one to this ordeal. They are very careful about whom they admit to their community, as there are numerous rakes and idlers who make application on the supposition that it is a harem or Turkish paradise. None are admitted who are not imbued with their doctrine of perfection, and who do not show evidences of it in their lives. In a business point of view, they are comparatively successful, the original members having contributed over one hundred thousand dollars' worth of property, which has not depreciated. They engage in farming, wine-raising and various industries, and are known in the general markets for their products.

The Separatists at Zoar, Ohio, about halfway between Cleveland and Pittsburg, are a body of Germans who fled from Würtemberg in 1817 to escape religious persecution. They are mystics, followers of Jacob Böhm, Gerhard, Terstegen, Jung Stilling and others of that class, and considerably above the average of communists in intellect and culture. They were aided to emigrate to this country by some English Quakers, with whom there is a resemblance in some of their tenets. They purchased fifty-six hundred acres of land in Ohio, but did not at first intend to form a community, having been driven to that resort subsequently in order to the better realization of their religious principles. They now own over seven thousand acres of land in Ohio, besides some in Iowa. They have a woollen-factory, two flour-mills, a saw-mill, a planing-mill, a machine-shop, a tannery and a dye-house; also a hotel and store for the accommodation of their neighbors. They are industrious, simple in their dress and food, and very economical. They use neither tobacco nor pork, and are homœopathists in medicine. In religion they are orthodox, with the usual latitude of mystics. They have no ceremonies, say "thou" and "thee," take off their hats and bow to nobody except God, refuse to fight or go to law, and settle their disputes by arbitration. At first they prohibited marriage and had their women in common, like the Perfectionists. In 1828, however, they commenced to break their rules and take wives. Now they observe the marriage state. Their officers are elected by the whole society, the women voting as well as the men.

The Bethel and Aurora communities--the former in Shelby county, Missouri, forty-eight miles from Hannibal, and the latter in Oregon, twenty-nine miles south of Portland, on the Oregon and California Railroad--were founded in 1848 by Dr. Kiel, a Prussian mystic, who practised medicine a while in New York and Pittsburg, and subsequently formed a religious sect of which these communists are members. He was subsequently joined by some of "Count Maximilian's" people, who had left Rapp's colony at Economy, which this closely resembles except as to celibacy. He first founded the colony in Missouri, where he took up two thousand five hundred and sixty acres of land, and established the usual trades needed by farmers. In 1847 there were the inevitable quarrel and division. In 1855 he set out to establish a similar community on the Pacific coast. The first settlement was made at Shoalwater Bay, Washington Territory, which was, however, subsequently abandoned for the present one at Aurora. There are now about four hundred members at Aurora, who own eighteen thousand acres of land, and have the usual shops and occupations of communists mentioned above, carrying on a considerable trade with their neighbors. The members of both communities are all either Germans or Pennsylvania Dutch, and thrive by the industry and economy peculiar to those people. Their government is parental, intended to be like God's. Kiel is the temporal and spiritual head. Their religion consists in practical benevolence, the forms of worship being Lutheran. They are thought to be exceedingly wealthy, but if their property were divided among them there would be less than three thousand dollars to each family, which, though more than the property of most other communities would average, is but small savings for twenty years. They preserve the usual family relations.

The Bishop Hill Community, in Henry county, Illinois, was formed by a party of Swedes who came to this country in 1846 under Eric Janson, who had been their religious leader in the Old World, where they were greatly persecuted on account of their peculiar religious views. They suffered great hardships in effecting a first settlement, some of them going off, in the interest of the community, to dig gold in California, and others taking to stock-raising and speculating. In this they were quite successful, so that jobs and speculations became the peculiar work of this community. They took various public and private contracts; among others, one to grade a large portion of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad and to build some of its bridges. In 1859 they owned ten thousand acres of good land, and had the finest cattle in the State. In 1859, however, the young people became discontented and wished to dissolve the community. They divided the property in 1860, when one faction continued the community with its share. In 1861 this party also broke up, separating into three divisions. In 1862 these again divided the property after numerous lawsuits. A small fraction, I believe, still continues a community on the ruins. In this community the families lived separately, but ate all together. They had no president or single head, the business being transacted by a board of trustees. Their religion was their principal concern.

Such are the strictly communistic societies in the United States. It will be seen that they are each of such very peculiar views that they are specially fitted by their very oddity for a life in common, and specially disqualified from the same cause to extend or embrace others; for while their community of oddity makes them, by a necessarily strong sympathy, fit associates to be together, it separates them by an impassable gulf from the appreciation and sympathy of the rest of mankind, who are interested only in the ordinary common-sense concerns of life.

Besides these, there are several other colonies which, though not communistic, have grown out of an attempt to solve some of the questions raised by socialism. They are for the most part co-operative. The following are the principal: The Anaheim colony in California, thirty-six miles from Los Angelos, which was formed by a large number of Germans in 1857, who banded together and purchased a large tract of land, on which they successfully cultivate the vine in large quantities. The property is held and worked all together, but the interests are separate, and will be divided in due time. Vineland, New Jersey, on the railroad between Philadelphia and Cape May, is another. It was purchased and laid out by Charles K. Landis in 1861 as a private speculation, and to draw the overcrowded population of Philadelphia into the country, where the people could all have comfortable homes and support themselves by their own labor. Some fifty thousand acres of land were purchased, and sold at a low rate and on long time to actual settlers and improvers. As a result, some twelve thousand people have been drawn thither, who cultivate all this tract and work numerous industries besides. No liquors are allowed to be sold in the place, so that the population is exceptionally moral as well as industrious, and offers a model example of low rates and good government. A successful colony exists also at Prairie Home in Franklin county, Kansas, which was founded by a Frenchman, Monsieur E.V. Boissière. It is designed to be an association and co-operation based on attractive industry; a large number of persons contributing their capital and labor under stringent laws, the proceeds to be divided among them whenever a majority shall so desire. I might mention other associations of this kind, which are, in fact, however, only a variety of partnership or corporation.

It strikes me, however, that this is the only practical remedy for the evils which are aimed at by the communists, as far as they are remedial by social means. If a number of working people, with the capital which their small savings will amount to (which is always large enough for any ordinary business if there be any considerable number of them), can be induced to organize themselves under competent leaders, and work for a few years together as faithfully as they ordinarily do for employers, they might realize considerable results, and get the advantage of their own work instead of enriching capitalists. But the difficulty is, that this class have not, as a rule, learned either to manage great enterprises or to submit to those who are wisest among them, but break up in disorder and divisions when their individual preferences are crossed. The first lesson that a man must learn who proposes to do anything in common with others (and the more so if there be many of them) is to submit and forbear. With a little schooling our people ought, to a greater extent than at present, to be able to co-operate in large numbers in firms and corporations where the members and stockholders shall themselves do all the work and receive all the profits, and so avoid the two extremes of making profits for capitalists and paying their earnings to officers and directors.

AUSTIN BIERBOWER.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

NOTES FROM MOSCOW.

JUNE 1 (May 20, Russian style), 1877.

This diversity in the matter of dates is unpleasantly perplexing at times. With every sensation of interest and pleasure I set myself about the task of describing, I must at once begin to reckon. Twelve days' difference! Yes, I have already grasped that fact, but then in which direction must the deduction begin?--backward or forward? Such is the question that instantly arises, and if we are at the fag end of one month and the beginning of another, the amount of reckoning involved seems somewhat inadequate to the occasion. The Russian clergy, it is said--those, at any rate, of the lowest class, designated as "white priests," many of them peasants by birth and marvellously illiterate--have ever been averse to any change being made in the calendar, in order that their seasons of fasting and feasting may not be disturbed.

_Apropos_ of priests and priesthood. Whilst quietly at work yesterday morning my attention was suddenly called off, first by a hurried exclamation, and then the inharmonious--ah, how utterly discordant!--ding-donging of church-bells. "Listen!" fell upon my ear: "one of the secular priests belonging to St. Gregory's church died two days ago, and is to be buried this morning. They are still saying masses over his body, the church is packed, and it is a sight such as you may possibly not have an opportunity of again witnessing." In half an hour we were within the church-walls. The place was already thronged, and the air close almost to suffocation. Never can one forget that peculiar heat, the sort of indescribable vapor, that arose, and the perspiration that streamed down the faces of all present, each of whom, from the oldest to the youngest, carried a lighted candle. After many vigorous efforts, and occasional collisions with the flaring tapers, the wax or tallow dropping at intervals upon our cloaks, we found ourselves at last in the centre of the edifice, immediately behind a dozen or more officiating priests clad in magnificent robes, before whom lay their late confrère reposing in his coffin, and dressed, according to custom, in his ecclesiastical robes. Tall lighted candles draped with crape surrounded him, and the solemn chant had been going on around him ever since life had become extinct. The dead in Russia are never left alone or in the dark. Relays of singing priests take the places of those who are weary, and friends keep watch in an adjoining room. The Russian temperament inclines to the strongest manifestation of the inmost feelings, and the method here of mourning for the dead is exceptionally demonstrative. The corpse of the old priest lay surrounded by what was of bright colors or purest white, the coffin being of the last-mentioned hue. Black was utterly proscribed. The face and hands were half buried in a lacy texture, whilst on the brow was placed a label, "fillet-fashion," on which was written "The Thrice Holy," or _Trisagion_--"O Holy God! O Holy Mighty! O Holy Immortal! have mercy upon us!"

Chant after chant ascended for the repose of his soul. The deacon's deep bass voice rose ever and anon in leading fashion, the other voices following suit. There was of course no instrumental music. This Russian singing is curiously unique--of a character wholly different from any heard elsewhere. It is weird in the extreme, and, if the expression be permissible, gypsy-like. The deacons' voices are of wonderful capability, the popular belief being that they are specially chosen on account of this peculiar power. At last there came a pause. Not only the priests' and deacons' voices, but those of the chanting men and boys--alike unsurpliced and uncassocked, lacking, therefore, much of the attraction offered by a service in the Western Catholic Church--had all at once ceased to be heard. All were now pressing forward to kiss the dead priest--his fellow-priests first, and then, duly in order, all his relations and friends. "The last kiss" it is termed--a practice, it would seem, derived from the heathen custom, of which we find such frequent mention. None, if possible, omit the performance of this duty, all seeking to obtain the blessing or benefit, supposed to be thereby conferred. Some, however, are obliged to content themselves with merely kissing the corners of the coffin.

Many of the numerous _stichera_, as they are termed--poetically-worded prose effusions--made use of in the course of the service are curiously quaint. I quote two or three, of which I have since procured a translation: "Come, my brethren, let us give our last kiss, our last farewell, to our deceased brother. He hath now forsaken his kindred and approacheth the grave, no longer mindful of vanity or the cares of the world. Where are now his kindred and friends? Behold, we are now separated! Approach! embrace him who lately was one of yourselves."--"Where now is the graceful form? Where is youth? Where is the brightness of the eye? where the beauty of the complexion? Closed are the eyes, the feet bound, the hands at rest: extinct is the sense of hearing, and the tongue locked up in silence."

The words succeeding these are supposed to emanate from the lips of the dead, lying mute before the eyes of all present: "Brethren, friends, kinsmen and acquaintance, view me here lying speechless, breathless, and lament. But yesterday we conversed together. Come near, all who are bound to me by affection, and with a last embrace pronounce the last farewell. No longer shall I sojourn among you, no longer bear part in your discourse. Pray earnestly that I be received into the Light of life."

The absolution having been pronounced by the priest, a paper is placed in the dead man's hand--"The Prayer, Hope and Confession of a faithful Christian soul." This is accompanied by another prayer containing the written words of absolution. This custom has given rise to the belief in the minds of many foreigners that such missives are presented in the light of passports to a better world; but the idea seems to be as erroneous as it is absurd. Moreover, I believe that, strictly speaking, the custom is one of national origin, and that the Church has had nothing to do with its adoption.

All the lighted tapers having been taken away by one of the attendants, the coffin with its gilded ornaments was removed slowly from its resting-place, and placed upon an enormous open bier or hearse, extensively mounted and heavily ornamented with white watered silk, purple and gilt draperies, a gilt crown surmounting all. The base of the ponderous vehicle was alone permitted to boast a fringe of deep black cloth--as if, however, for the sole purpose of hiding the wheels. The six horses, three abreast, were also enveloped in black cloth drapery touching the ground on either side. Right and left of the coffin itself, and mounted therefore considerably aloft, stood two yellow _stoicharioned_ (or robed) deacons, wearing the _epimanikia_ and _orarion_--the former being a portion of the priestly dress used for covering the arms, and signifying the thongs with which the hands of Christ were bound; the latter a stole worn over the left shoulder. The head of each deacon was adorned with long waving hair, and each carried a censer in his hand. They faced each other, keeping watch together over the dead. A procession of priests, duly robed, began to move, preceded by censer-bearers and singing men and boys.

The point whence the procession started--Mala Greuzin, situated at the extreme east end of Moscow--lay several miles away from the cemetery for which they were all _en route;_ and this veritably ancient Asiatic city had to be traversed at an angle in this solemn fashion, seventy or eighty carriages following. From the beginning to the end of the prescribed route Muscovites lined the road on either side, and it is fair to add that I never beheld more respect shown even to royalty itself. All was quietness, the general expression of sympathy and respect being permitted to find vent only in excessive gesticulation and genuflection. Not a head remained covered, not a single person by whom the procession passed permitted it to do so without crossing himself several times from forehead to chest and from shoulder to shoulder.

At the first church which the procession reached, the bells of which had begun to toll--clash rather--long before it came in sight, the entire party halted. A bell was rung by one of those in advance, and then all waited. The priests and their various acolytes clustered reverently by the hearse, the followers and spectators standing at a respectful distance, but nevertheless taking part in the service. After first incensing the hearse, themselves and all around, further prayers were said and chanted: then a signal was given and all moved on again, only, however, to again pause on the route, for at every church we passed--and we must have encountered at least thirty or forty, if not more, seeing that such sacred edifices rise upon one's view in Moscow at wellnigh every three or four minutes' space--the ceremony was repeated. No sooner had one set of bells ceased to sound in our ears than another took its place, and again all halted, and then again all marched onward. Every window as the cortége passed along was thrown open, and figures bent forward ever and anon, enacting their wonted part in the pageant. And the pageant, be it remembered, was, after all, only one of frequent occurrence.

Only the week before I had had the privilege of watching this identical old priest baptize the child of one of the most ancient nobles here, the ceremony being performed not in a church, but at the nobleman's house. One godfather and one godmother are all that are required, the latter of whom holds the infant. On the godmother also a large share of duty devolves, there being certain gifts which she is bound by national custom to offer for acceptance on the occasion. Often, therefore, the duty of selecting a female sponsor becomes a somewhat invidious one. A handsome dress to the mother, no matter in what rank of life; a delicate lace cap to the main object of the occasion; a lace chemise for the same highly-honored small individual; and an elaborate silk pocket handkerchief to the officiating priest,--these, when of the best quality, and they are invariably so, mount up somewhat as regards price, seeing that everything is marvellously dear here in the matter of dress. The godfather, standing immediately in front of the large font brought specially for the purpose from the adjacent church, and at the right hand of his fellow-sponsor, simply presents a small golden cross, to be worn, it is supposed, ever afterward. Immediately behind the font, and facing the entire audience--for a large circle of friends had been invited to witness the ceremony--was placed the "holy picture" of the household, without which in Russia no homestead, whether belonging to rich or poor, is considered complete, and before which a lighted oil lamp ever stands burning--a "picture of God," as the Russian children are taught from their earliest years to call it. Before this the priests bowed on entering.

The mode of baptism was immersion, after several exorcisms had been read and the priest had thrice blown in the infant's face, signing him, also thrice, on the forehead and breast. Three tall lighted candles were affixed to the font, and others were held by the god-parents, except when they marched round the font in procession three times during "the chrism," when the candles were laid down. The chrism consists in anointing the infant's forehead, breast, shoulders and middle of the back with holy oil, after which comes the service, when the forehead, eyes, nostrils, mouth, ears, breast, hands and feet are again anointed, but this time with the holy unction prepared once a year, on Monday in Holy Week, within the walls of the Kremlin, and consecrated by the metropolitan in the cathedral of the Annunciation on Holy Thursday. Then comes the concluding act, when the priest cuts off a small portion of the child's hair in four different places on the crown of the head, encloses it in a morsel of wax and throws it into the font, as a sort of first-fruits of that which has been consecrated.

S.E.

A DAY AT THE PARIS CONSERVATOIRE.

It was ten o'clock in the morning when we drove up to the door of the world-famous institution, but, early as it was, an animated throng already filled the wide marble-paved entrance-hall--former pupils in elegant attire; girl aspirants for future honors, accompanied by the inevitable mamma with the invariable little hand-bag; young men and old; celebrated dramatists and well-known actors, visitors, critics, etc.--all passing to and fro or engaged in conversation while awaiting the hour for taking their seats. Passing through these, we ascend a narrow staircase that gives one good hopes of a martyr's death should the theatre chance to catch fire, and we instal ourselves in a narrow and by no means comfortable box in the dress-circle. The theatre of the Conservatoire, though not very large, is very elegantly and artistically decorated in the Pompeian style, the stage being set with a single "box scene," as it is technically called, which is never changed, as plays are never acted there. Here take place the far-famed concerts du Conservatoire, for which tickets are as hard to obtain as are invitations to the entertainments of a duchess, all the seats being owned by private individuals. But what we are now here to witness is the competition in dramatic declamation, tragic and comic. The jury occupy a box in the centre of the dress-circle and opposite to the stage. This terrifying tribunal is enough to try the nerves of the stoutest aspirant for dramatic honors, comprising as it does among its members such powers in the land as Legouvé, Camilla-Doucet, Alexandre Dumas, the directors of the Comédie Française and the Odéon, and the great actors Got and Delaunay. An elderly gentleman comes forward on the stage and reads from a printed paper the name of each competitor and those of his or her assistants, and that of the play from which the scene that is to be represented is chosen. Each pupil selects a scene, and the persons who in French technical parlance are to "give the reply" (_i.e._ to take the other characters in the scene) are chosen from among the ranks of the pupil's fellow-competitors. Lots are drawn to decide the place that each one is to occupy on the programme, the first place and the last being considered the least desirable. Printed bills are distributed among the audience giving a list of the competitors, with the names of the plays from which they have chosen scenes, and (horrible innovation for the lady pupils!) the age of each one as well.

The competition is opened by M. Levanz, a young man of thirty, who took a second prize last year, and who has chosen the closet-scene from _Hamlet_ (the translation of the elder Dumas) as his _cheval de bataille_. He has a marked Germanic countenance, decidedly the reverse of handsome, yet mobile and expressive: his voice is good, his figure tall and manly. He has evidently seen Rossi in Hamlet, and models his conception of the character on that grand impersonation. Next comes M. Bregaint in a scene from _Andromaque:_ he is so bad, so _very_ bad, that the audience are moved to sudden outbursts of hilarity by his grand tragic points. He is succeeded by a boy of sixteen, tall and graceful, with a fine tragic face of the heroic Kemble mould, and great blue-gray eyes that dilate or contract beneath the impulses of the moment--a born actor from head to foot. He fairly thrills the audience in the great scene of the duke de Nemours from _Louis XI_. This youth, M. Guitry, is undoubtedly, if his life be spared, the coming tragedian of the French stage. Then we have the first one of the lady competitors, Mademoiselle Edet, a tall, awkward girl of eighteen, with a flat face and Chinese-like features, dressed up in a gown of cream-yellow foulard trimmed with wide fringe and made with a loose jacket, whereon the fringes wave wildly in the air as she flings her arms around in the tragic love-making of Phèdre. Two or three others of moderate merit succeed, and then comes Mademoiselle Jullien, who gives the great scene of Roxane in _Bajazet_ with so much intelligence of intonation and grace of gesture that the audience are moved to sudden applause. She is rather too short and of too delicate a physique for tragedy, but her face is expressive, her eyes fine, and there are intellect and talent in every tone and movement. She is nearly twenty-nine years of age, so has not much time to waste if she is to make her mark in her profession. Last on the list of tragic aspirants comes a gentleman of thirty-one, M. Aubert, who goes through a scene from _Hamlet_ in a very tolerable manner. He was in the army, was doing well and was rising in grade when, seized by the theatrical mania, he relinquished his profession and turned his attention to the stage. Thus far, he has proved, practically speaking, a failure: he has won no prizes, and no manager will engage him. This is his last chance, as his age will prevent him, by the rules of the Conservatoire, from taking part in any future competition.

The tragedy concours ended, a recess of an hour is proclaimed, and there is a rush to the refreshment-tables and a great consumption of sandwiches and cakes, of coffee and water (known as "mazagran") and of _vin ordinaire_. Under that vestibule pass and repass the literary luminaries of modern France. Here is Henri de Bornier, the author of _La Fille de Roland_, a quiet, earnest-looking gentleman, with clear luminous eyes and the smallest hands imaginable. Here comes Francisque Sarcey, the greatest dramatic critic of France and one of the most noted of her Republican journalists, broad-shouldered, black-eyed and stalwart-looking. Yonder stand a group of Academicians--Legouvé, Doucet, Dumas--in earnest conversation with Édouard Thierry, the librarian of the Arsénal. The handsome, delicate, aristocratic-looking gentleman who joins the group is M. Perrin, the director of the Comédie Française, the most accomplished and intelligent theatrical manager in France. There is an elderly, reserved-looking gentleman beside him who looks like a solemn _savant_ out on a holiday. It takes more than one glance for us to recognize in him the most accomplished light comedian of our day, that embodiment of grace, vivacity, sparkling wit and unfading youth, who is known to the boards of the Comédie Française by the name of Delaunay. There are other minor luminaries, too numerous to mention.

We go up stairs and resume our seats, and the competition of comedy is begun. Scene succeeds to scene and competitor to competitor: the day wears on, and flitting clouds from time to time obscure the dome, bringing out the glare of the footlights that have been burning all day in a singularly effective manner. Of the nineteen competitors, the deepest impression is made by M. Barral, who plays a scene from _L'Avare_ magnificently; by Mademoiselle Carrière, who reveals herself as a sparkling and intelligent soubrette; and by Mademoiselle Sisos, a genuine _comédienne_, only sixteen years of age and as pretty as a peach. It is six o'clock when the last competitor has said his say, and then the jury retire to deliberate respecting the awards. What a flutter there must be among the young things whose future destiny is now swaying in the balance, for success means fortune, and failure a disheartening postponement, and to the elder ones downright and disastrous ruin of all their hopes! Half an hour passes, and then, after what seems a weary period of suspense, the box-door is thrown open and the jury resume their seats. Ambroise Thomas, the president of the Conservatoire, strikes his bell and a dead silence ensues. In a full sonorous voice he begins: "Concours of tragedy, men's class. No prizes.--Usher, summon M. Guitry." The gifted boy comes forward to the footlights. "M. Guitry, the jury have awarded to you a _premier accessit_." He bows and retires amid the hearty applause of the audience. "Women's class.--Usher, call Mademoiselle Jullien." She comes out pale and agitated, the slight form quivering like a wind-swept flower in her robes of creamy cashmere. Is it the Odéon that awaits her--the second prize? for in her modesty she had only hoped for a _premier accessit._ "Mademoiselle Jullien, the jury have awarded to you the first prize." The first prize! Those words mean to her an assured career, a brilliant future, the doors of the Comédie Française flung wide open to receive her. She falters, trembles, bows profoundly, and goes off in a very passion of hysterical weeping. Then come the comedy awards. M. Barral gets a first prize, as is his just due, as does also Mademoiselle Carrière. "Usher, call Mademoiselle Sisos." She comes forward, her great brown eyes dilated with excitement, her cheeks burning like two red roses, a mass of faded white roses clinging amid the rumpled gold of her hair--a very bewitching picture of childish grace and beauty. "Mademoiselle Sisos, the jury have awarded to you a second prize." She laughs and blushes, and brings her hands together with a childlike gesture of delight. "Oh, merci!" she cries, and drops a courtesy, and then away she goes--happy little creature, thus consecrated artiste at sixteen! The other awards are given, the jury leave their box, and the audience disperse. The friends of the competitors crowd around the stage-door, and each of the successful ones is seized by the hand and congratulated and embraced, the youthful Guitry being especially surrounded. Two or three more years of study will land this gifted boy on the boards of the Comédie Française. The queen of the day, Mademoiselle Jullien, has stolen away overcome by excess of emotion, which, though joyful, is still exhausting to her delicate frame. Finally, everybody retires, the doors are closed, and the long, exciting _séance_ has come to an end at last.

L.H.H.

BRIGHAM YOUNG AND MORMONISM.

Brigham Young's career is a valuable commentary on that of Mohammed, and will hereafter be a standard citation with explorers of the natural history of religions. It might be more proper to go back of Young, and adhere to Joe Smith as the figure-head of the Mormon dispensation. How Smith would have turned out had he lived, and whether he would have made as much of Utah as the man upon whose shoulders his mantle fell, is not easy to say; but his was a less robust character, the enthusiast in him too far obscuring the organizer and commander. The Church is the thing to look at, rather than its leaders, when we consider duration--the soil rather than the plough. Why has Mohammed's creation lasted longer and spread wider than that of Charlemagne or Tamerlane? And is Smith's to have the like fortune, or to die out like those of Münster and Joanna Southcote?

The Mormon "revelation" has been before the world more than forty years. In twenty-two years from his first vision Mohammed had reduced all Arabia under his religious and political sway. Young's dominions have not expanded territorially. His faith cannot be said to exist outside of Utah. His converts are compelled to go thither for the exercise of their religion. Salt Lake City is not a Mecca, the goal of a passing pilgrimage, but the one and only possible abiding-place of those who profess its creed. A system thus localized is in danger of being stifled. Especially is this the case when its seat is exposed to invasion by a swelling current of non-sympathizers or open enemies. These may be repelled or prevented from improving their foothold by the firmness, unity and numerical predominance of the invaded. So it has happened at Salt Lake. The Mormons hold all the serviceable soil, and it is difficult for the "Gentiles" to effect a lodgment. Until they do, they must occupy, even in their own eyes, somewhat the position of adventurers. They cannot hope to secure the respect of the industrious sectaries who own and till the soil, and who are taught to count them aliens and persecutors. Irrigation is here the only means of successful agriculture. It involves great outlay of capital and labor, and creates great fixedness of tenure. Newcomers are thus additionally discouraged.

Thus entrenched in a well-provisioned citadel, welcoming all the new levies it can win, and amply able to provide for them, Mormonism bids fair to make a prolonged stand. To emerge from a defensive position and strike for unlimited sway is what it cannot, to judge by all precedents, expect. It will be compelled, in fact, to lighten itself of some dead weights in order to maintain its actual situation. Polygamy must go, and the absolute power of the priesthood be modified. With some such adaptations it may continue a reality for generations to come. And time is a great sanctifier. A creed that lives for one or two centuries is by so much the more likely to live longer. Youth is the critical period with religions, as with animals and plants and nations. Through that period Mormonism is passing with flattering success. That such a lusty juvenile will, by favor of the mellowing effect imposed on all creeds by early years of toil, trouble and experience, reach a middle age of presentable decency, is not a more unlikely supposition than the worthy Vermont clergyman would have pronounced, half a century ago, the idea that his _jeu d'esprit_ would become the Bible of sixty thousand industrious, well-ordered English-speaking people in the heart of the American continent.

E.C.B.

THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN IN INDIA.

According to a report sent to our Commissioner of Education at Washington four years ago, there were then in India one thousand girls' schools supported by the government and some five hundred missionary schools devoted to female education. Besides these, there has sprung up during the last few years a new field for the women-educators in that country. This is the teaching of women in their homes. It is called _zenana-work._ The _zenana_ is the women's apartment in the house--the _harem_ of the Turks. Women have been sent from England and from America for this special object, and their labors are meeting with encouraging success. They are constantly gaining admission to new families, which from caste or other causes are opposed to sending their young women to the regular schools. Some of the zenana-teachers are regularly-educated physicians.

For the government schools each province has a director of public instruction, with inspectors of divisions and subdivisions. These directors are "gentlemen of high qualification and well paid." It is a notable fact that in one of the provinces the office of director is filled by a Christian woman--a foreigner no doubt, though the report does not say.

At Dehra, at the foot of the Himalaya Mountains, there is a high school for girls organized on the plan of the Mount Holyoke Seminary. Here English is spoken, and the pupils are carried through a course of training that may justly be termed _high_. One of the pupils of this school has lately been appointed by the government to go to England and qualify herself as a physician, under a contract to return and serve the government by taking charge of a hospital and college for training young women as midwives and nurses.

Of course, in a country containing a population of over one hundred and fifty-one millions, one thousand public schools for girls, supplemented as these are by missionary schools of many denominations, are inadequate to meet the needs of the people. There is an increasing demand in all the provinces for schools and colleges; and the native young men especially are eagerly seeking the educational advantages of the colleges and universities, because they know that these are a sure road to preferment. "The government takes care to give employment to those who wish it."

The difficulties in the way of female education in India are well expressed in a late letter from one of the most distinguished native reformers, Baboo Keshub Chunder Sen of Calcutta. "No words of mine," he says, "would convey to you an adequate idea of the great obstacles which the social and religious condition of the Hindoo community presents in the way of female education and advancement. In a country where superstition and caste prejudices prevail to an alarming extent, where widows are cruelly persecuted and prevented from remarrying, where high-caste Hindoos are allowed to marry as many wives as they like without undertaking the responsibility of protecting them, and where little girls marry at a most tender age and sacrifice all prospects of healthy physical and mental development, it will take centuries before any solid and extensive reform is achieved."

Until recently, scarcely one woman in ten thousand learned to read or acquired any of the accomplishments common to women of Christian countries. Occasionally, women of vicious lives in cities, having leisure, became quite learned, and this made learning a shame for women of irreproachable reputation. Moreover, Hindoo husbands declared, and believed, that if you taught a woman to read she would be sure in time to have illicit relations with some one. Ignorance was innocence, the safeguard of both rank and chastity.

The missionaries, who were the first to attempt the amelioration of the people, had to commence with the lowest castes or classes, those having nothing to lose; and even then the teachers had to pay the girls a small copper coin daily for attending school. Even the government schools in some places pay the girls for attending, but they are much more popular than the missionary schools, because, according to the Rev. Joseph Warren in the report mentioned, the parents are not afraid that their girls will become Christians by attending them; and he adds that the government teachers and books are "all positively heathen or quite destitute of all religion." In some parts of the country the government schools secure the attendance of high-caste girls by allowing them to be placed behind a curtain, and thus screened from the eyes of the male teacher or inspector, as all the women of such classes are screened from male visitors. Even the physician sees only a hand protruded from under a curtain, and by the touch of this, with a few unsatisfactory answers to his questions, he is supposed to be able to know what the malady is, and how to prescribe for it.

M.H.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Birds and Poets: with other Papers. By John Burroughs. New York: Hurd & Houghton.

A duodecimo that discourses on equal terms of Emerson and the chickadee, and unites Carlyle and the author's cow with a cement or filling-in indescribable in variety and in the comminution of materials, need not be held to strict account in the matter of neatness or accuracy of title. The closing article, headed "The Flight of the Eagle," is the most remarkable of the collection. Who would suspect, under such a heading, an elaborate eulogy of Walt Whitman? The writer is obviously more at home among the song-birds than among the Raptores, unless he be the discoverer of some new species of eagle characterized by traits very unlike those of other members of the genus. It were to be wished that he had left out the disquisition on Whitman, for it is a jarring chord in his little orchestra of lyric and ornithologic song. He might have kept it by him till the longer growing of his critical beard, and then, if still a devotee at that singular shrine, have expanded it into a volume or two explanatory of the imagination, animus and metre of his favorite bard.

The feathered warblers have always been popular with the featherless, who are indebted to them for no end of similes and suggestions. What would poetry be without the skylark, the nightingale, the dove and the eagle? It is far yet from having exhausted them. It cannot be said to have approached them in the right way--on the most eloquent and interesting side. It forgets that each species of bird stands by itself, and has its special life and history as truly as man. We counted thirty-nine kinds in a grove the centre whereof was our delightful abode for two-thirds of the past summer, each endowed with its separate outfit of language, ways and means of living, tastes and political and social notions. In each, moreover, individualism showed itself--if not to our apprehension as articulately, yet as indubitably, as among the race which considers them to have been all created for its amusement and advantage. It does not take long, superficial as is our acquaintance with their vernacular and the workings of their little brains, to single out particular specimens, and perceive that no two "birds of a feather" are exactly alike. A particular robin will rule the roost, and assert successfully for his mate the choice of resting-places above competing redbreasts. It is a particular catbird, identified, it may be, by a missing feather in his tail, that heads the foray on our strawberries and cherries. We recognize afar off either of the pair of "flickers," or yellow-shafted woodpeckers, which have set up their penates in the heart of the left-hand garden gatepost. The wren whose modest tabernacle occupies the top of the porch pilaster we have little difficulty in "spotting" when we meet her in a joint stroll along the lawn-fence. Her ways are not as the ways of other wrens. She has a somewhat different style of diving into the ivy and exploring the syringa. A new generation of doves has grown up since the lilacs were in bloom, and nothing is easier than to distinguish the old and young of the two or three separate families till all leave the grass and the gravel together and hie to the stubble-fields beyond our ken. Of the one mocking bird who made night hideous by his masterly imitations of the screaking of a wheel-barrow (regreased at an early period in self-defence) and the wheezy bark of Beppo, the superannuated St. Bernard, there could of course be no doubt. There was none of his kind to compare him with--not even a mate, for "sexual selection" could not possibly operate in face of so inharmonious a love-song. His isolation had its parallel in the one white guinea-fowl that haunted the shrubbery like a ghost, much more silent and placid than it would have been in society, and its antitype in the hennery, where individuality of course ran riot among the Brahmas, Dominicas and Hamburgs--hens that would and would not lay, that would and would not set, that would and would not scratch up seeds, and presented generally as great a variety of vagaries as of feathers. So, when we turned our back at last on lovely Boscobel, itself shut out, as the common phrase goes, "from the world" by serried ramparts of maple, elm, acacia and catalpa, we knew well that that enceinte of leafage enclosed many little worlds of its own--winged microcosms, epicycles of the grand cycle of dateless life which man in his humility assumes to be merely a subsidiary appendage of his own orbit.

Birds should be studied seriously. The naturalists will tell us more about them, and interest us more, than the poets. Mr. Bryant makes fun of the bobolink, and turns into an aimless whistle the solemn oration on domestic matters uttered by that small but energetic American to his mate. The waterfowl he treats more gravely and respectfully, but he still makes it only a part of the landscape and the theme, without ascribing any intelligent purpose to its flight. The bird, proceeding steadily and calmly to its business, may well have confounded its versifier with his fellow the fowler, and looked upon him, too, as regretting only that it was out of gunshot. Audubon or Wilson would have noted more sensibly the floating figure, far above "falling dew," and the earth-bound mortal who was evidently afraid of rheumatics and calculating whether he could walk home before dark. The bird, they would have been perfectly aware, was neither "wandering" nor "lost," and no more in need of the special interposition of a protecting Providence than they or Mr. Bryant. They would infer its motives, its point of departure and its destination, the character of the friends it left behind or sought--whether it was carrying out a plan of the day or bound on an expedition covering half the year. Its species would have been plain to them at half a glance, and its scientific name would have replaced the vague designation of "waterfowl." Its life, habits and habitat winter and summer, would have unrolled before them, and the dogs-eared and rain-stained note-book sprung open for a new entry. The poet, on the other hand, got happily home without injury to his health (for he is still hale half a century after the fact), lit the gas, nibbed the quill pen of the day, and sent down to us what must be confessed a pleasanter memorandum than we should have had from the forest-students. These, brave and ardent fellows! have long been asleep beneath the birds.

Mr. Burroughs is half poet, half naturalist in his way of looking at Nature, and steers clear of the poetic vagueness in regard to species. A passing description of the brown thrush as "skulking" among the bushes hits that bird to the life. Some remarks on page 119 would seem to be applied by a slip of the pen to the crow blackbird, instead of the cowbird, which has always enjoyed the distinction of being the only American species that disposes of its offspring after the fashion of the cuckoo and Jean Jacques Rousseau. The chapter on Emerson contains some acute remarks, but the warmest tribute to Emerson is the book itself, in which that writer's influence is everywhere patent both in style and thought. Mr. Burroughs has a happy facility of expression, and could well afford by this time to discard the Emersonian props and stand on his own merits.

The Life of Edgar Allan Poe. By W.F. Gill. Illustrated. New York: Dillingham.

Griswold's memoir of Poe has been actually beneficial to the reputation of its subject, contrary to its obvious design. It has caused a thorough sifting of all accessible records of the poet's short and dreary life, and elicited many reminiscences from men of mark who were in one way or another personally associated with him. We know now, more certainly than we might have done but for Griswold's effort to prove the opposite, that Poe was not expelled in disgrace from the University of Virginia, but bore himself well there as a student and a man; that he deliberately went to work and procured his being dropped from the rolls of West Point by building up with venial faults the requisite sum of "demerits," after having repeatedly and in vain sought permission to withdraw from the control of a system of discipline so unsuited to his temperament; that, so far from being intemperate, a single glass of wine sufficed to bring on something like insanity; that, instead of neglecting his family, he devoted himself to them with a very rare exclusiveness, and wore down his health by watching at the bedside of his sick wife; that he was as faithful to his business as to his domestic obligations; and that, wholly disqualified for battling with the world, he managed to keep his necessarily troubled life at least unstained. We know, moreover, that he did not appoint Griswold his literary executor, and that the document used by the latter as a means of deriving from that assumed office an opportunity of vindictive defamation was drawn up after the poet's death by Griswold himself. To the controversy thus excited we are indebted for the illumination of one or two poems relinquished by the critics as hopelessly, if not intentionally, obscure. _Ulalume_, for example, held by some to be a mere experiment on the jingling capacity of words and the taste of readers for grappling with insoluble puzzles, is pronounced by one familiar with his most intimate feelings at the time of its composition a sublimated but distinct reflex of them and of the circumstances which gave them color.

Could Poe's pen have cleared itself from the morbid influences which fixed it in a peculiar path, we might have missed some of his finest and most subtle poems and some prose efforts which we could better spare. But his wonderful powers of analysis would have been serviceable upon a broader and more practical field. He had an insight into the laws of language and of rhythm equalled by no one else in our day. What is most mysterious in the forms and relations of matter had a special charm for him. None could trace it more acutely; and his powers, matured by more and healthier years and applied in their favorite direction, were quite equal to results like those attained by his predecessor Goethe, the savant of poets. He died a few years older than Burns and Byron, but more of a boy than either. The man Poe we never saw. The best of him was to come, and it never came. Poe had, however, what he is not always credited with--the sincerity and earnestness of maturity. He was anything but a mere propounder of riddles. Had he lived to our day, his office would have been to aid science, so wonderfully advanced in the intervening third of a century, in solving some of its own. And in addition to that possible work we should have been none the poorer in the treasures of poetry he actually gave us.

Olivia Raleigh. By W.W. Follett Synge. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co.

In the few choice words of introduction to the American reprint Mrs. Annis Lee Wister admirably characterizes this charming novel. It is indeed like a "clear, pure breath of English air:" from the first page to the last it is redolent of the health of an "incense-breathing morn." There are no dark scenes here, leaving on the reader a feeling of degradation that such things can be--no impossible villain weaving a web of intricate or purposeless villainy--but all is fresh and genuine, and we close the volume with a sense of gratitude that such a story is possible.

Even if this be not in itself a recommendation sufficient to enlist the interest of novel-readers, _Olivia Raleigh_ is something more: it is a work of art: there is in it nothing crude or hasty or ill-digested. Around the four or five prominent characters all the interest centres, and the attention is not distracted by any wearisome episodes that have nothing to do with the main story. The characters are admirably thought out, and reveal themselves more by their actions than by any microscopical analysis of motives. They pass before us like veritable human beings, and what they are we learn from what they do. The transformation of one of the characters from a gay, debonnair bachelor past middle age into a penurious miser of the Blueberry-Jones type is bold, and in less skilful hands would be a blemish, but Mr. Synge has amply justified it, and admirably uses it to cement the structure of his plot. There is no weakness in any chapter, and as we read so secure do we feel in the author's strength that, had he chosen to end the story in sorrow and not in joy, we should submit as though to an inflexible decree of Fate.

Les Koumiassine. Par Henry Gréville. Paris: Plon.

It is always interesting to watch the course of French fiction, because while the novel is in all countries at the present time the favorite form of expression of those writers who eschew scientific work on the one side and stand aloof from poetry on the other, in France, which is noticeably the country where theories are put into practice as well as invented, all sorts of literary methods have their clever defenders, who furnish examples of what they preach. Since Balzac and George Sand died, the post of leading novelist has been vacant, although there has been no lack of writers of the second or third, and especially of still lower, rank. Octave Feuillet still produces occasionally a clever piece of workmanship; Cherbuliez at intervals writes a novel which proves how lamentable a thing is the possession of brilliancy alone apart from the seriousness of character, or of some sides of character, which must exist alongside of even high intellectual qualities in order that the man may make a lasting impression on his time. Great gifts frittered away on meaningless trifles are as disappointing as possible, and are the more disappointing in proportion to the greatness of the gifts; so that the decadence of Cherbuliez--or, if this is too severe, his lack of improvement after his brilliant beginning--is a very melancholy thing. Zola is among the younger men, the head of a number of enthusiasts who revel in the exact study of social ordure, and who threaten to destroy fiction by ridding it of what makes its life--imagination, that is--and substituting for it scientific fact. Theuriet is an amiable but by no means a powerful writer, who so far has contented himself with following different models without striking out any special path of his own.

Henry Gréville is a new author, who has reached by no means the highest, yet a very respectable, place--such as would be a source of gratification to most people. The name signed to her novels is the _nom-de-plume_ of a lady who, as is also apparent from her work, has lived long enough in Russia to become familiar with the people and their ways. _Les Koumiassine_ is a story of Russian life, treating of a rich family whose name gives the title to the novel. The family is one of great wealth, and consists of the Count Koumiassine and his wife, their two children--one a boy of nine or ten, the other a girl half a dozen years older--and a niece of about seventeen. The plot concerns itself with the efforts of the countess to give her niece, whom she values much less than her daughter, a suitable husband. The poor girl is bullied and badgered after the most approved methods of domestic tyranny, and her high-spirited struggle against adverse circumstances makes the book as readable as one could wish. After all, the family is a microcosm, and furnishes frequent opportunity for the practice of good or bad qualities; and the cleverest novel-writers have chosen just this subject which seems so bald to the romantic writer. The contest in this case is a long one, and is hotly contested, and the imperiousness of the countess and the graceful courage of the girl are excellently well described. The other characters too are clearly put before the reader, so that those who exercise care in their choice of French novels may take up this one with the certainty that they will be entertained, and, what is rarer, innocently entertained. For in a large pile of French novels it would be hard to find so pretty a story so well told as is the intimacy between the two young girls, the cousins, who in their different ways circumvent Fate in the person of the countess. Their amiability and jollity and loyalty to each other give the book an air of attractive truthfulness and refinement which well replaces the priggishness generally to be found in innocuous French fiction. More than this, the plot is intelligently handled, and no person is introduced who is not carefully studied. In this respect of careful execution the author resembles Tourgueneff, whose friend and disciple she is. Like him, and like those who have been affected by his influence, she gives attention to the minor characters and comparatively insignificant incidents, so that the book makes a really lifelike impression. This is not a story of great passion, but it deals very cleverly with the less open waters of domestic strife. While what it shows of human nature in general is the most important thing, what is shown of Russian life is of great interest. The position of the countess, and the habit of her mind with its over-bearing self-will and ingenious self-approval, are studies possible, of course, anywhere, but pretty sure to be found especially in a land like Russia, where the habit of command was until recently so strongly fostered by the existence of serfdom. The condition of those who are exposed to this aggressive imperiousness is clearly illustrated in the numerous dependants who make their appearance in this story. But it is the countess who is the best drawn and most impressive personage. She is really lifelike, and yet not a commonplace figure.

_Books Received_.

Disease of the Mind: Notes on the Early Management, European and American Progress, Modern Methods, etc., in the Treatment of Insanity, with especial reference to the needs of Massachusetts and the United States. By Charles F. Folsom, M.D. Boston: A. Williams & Co.

Cicero's Tusculan Disputations; also Treatises on The Nature of the Gods, and on The Commonwealth. Literally translated by C.D. Yonge. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Shakespeare: The Man and the Book. Being a collection of Occasional Papers on the Bard and his Writings. Part I. By C.M. Ingleby, M.A. London: Trübner & Co.

Shakespeare's Comedy of a Midsummer Night's Dream. Edited with Notes by William J. Rolfe, A.M. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Four Irrepressibles; or, The Tribe of Benjamin: Their Summer with Aunt Agnes, what they Did, and what they Undid. Boston: Loring.

The Magnetism of Iron Vessels, with a Short Treatise on Terrestrial Magnetism. By Fairman Rogers. New York: D. Van Nostrand.

Virgin Soil. By Ivan Tourgueneff. From the French by T.S. Perry. (Leisure-Hour Series.) New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Personal Appearance and the Culture of Beauty. By T.S. Sozinsky, M.D., Ph.D. Philadelphia: Allen, Lane & Scott.

An English Commentary on the Tragedies of Euripides. By Charles Anthon, LL.D. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Strength of Men and Stability of Nations. By P.A. Chadbourne, D.D., LL.D. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Eighth Annual Report of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts. Boston: Albert J. Wright. State Printer.

The Antelope and Deer of America. By John Dean Caton, LL.D. New York: Hurd & Houghton.

G.T.T.; or, The Wonderful Adventures of a Pullman. By Edward E. Hale. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Until the Day Break. By Mrs. J.M.D. Bartlett ("Birch Arnold"). Philadelphia: Porter & Coates.

Other People's Children. By the author of "Helen's Babies." New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Poet and Merchant. By B. Auerbach. (Leisure-Hour Series.) New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Mental Education. By J. Edward Cranage, M.A., Ph.D. London: Bemrose & Sons.

Beautiful Edith, the Child-Woman. (Loring's Tales of the Day.) Boston: Loring.

Aliunde; or, Love Ventures of Tom, Dick and Harry. New York: Charles P. Somerby.

Ideals made Real: A Romance. By George L. Raymond. New York: Hurd & Houghton.

Lola. By A. Griffiths. (Leisure-Hour Series.) New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Kilmeny: A Novel. By William Black. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Winstowe: A Novel. By Mrs. Leith-Adams. New York: Harper & Brothers.