CHAPTER VII.

"Gone! You don't mean that your mother and Mr. Guinness have gone to leave you for a month!" Mr. Muller was quite vehement with annoyance and surprise.

"At least a month," said Catharine calmly. "Mrs. Guinness always goes with my father on his summer journey for books, and this year she has--well, things to buy for me."

It was the wedding-dress she meant, he knew. He leaned eagerly in at the window, where he stood hoping for a blush. But none came. "Purl two and knit one," said Kitty to her crochet.

"I certainly do not consider it safe or proper for you to be left alone," he blustered mildly after a while.

"There is Jane," glancing back at the black figure waddling from the kitchen to the pump.

"Jane! I shall send Maria up to stay with you, Catharine."

"You are very kind! It is so pleasant to be cared for!" with a little gush of politeness and enthusiasm. "But dear Maria finds the house damp. I will not be selfish. You must allow me to be alone."

He looked at her furtively. Was there, after all, an obstinate, unbendable back-bone under the soft feathers of this his nestling dove? He was discomfited at every turn this evening. He had hoped that Kitty would notice that his little imperial had been retrimmed; and he had bought a set of sleeve-buttons, antique coins, at a ruinous price, in hopes they would please her. She looked at neither the one nor the other. Yet she had a keen eye for dress--too keen an eye indeed. Only last night she had spent an hour anxiously cutting old Peter's hair and beard, and Mr. Muller could not but remember that he was a handsome young fellow, and do what she would with Peter, he was old and beaked like a parrot. "Besides, he is only her stepfather," he reasoned, "and I am to be her husband: she loves me."

_Did_ she love him? The question always brought a pain under his plump chest and neat waistcoat which he could not explain; he thrust it hastily away. But he loitered about the room, thinking how sweet it would be if this childish creature would praise or find fault with buttons or whiskers in her childish way. Kitty, however, crocheted on calmly, and saw neither. The sun was near its setting. The clover-fields stretched out dry and brown in its warm light, to where the melancholy shadows gathered about the wooded creeks.

Mr. Muller looked wistfully out of the window, and then at her. "Suppose you come and walk with me?" he said presently.

Kitty glanced out, and settled herself more comfortably in her rocking-chair. "It is very pleasant here," smiling.

He thought he would go home: in fact, he did not know what else to do. The room was very quiet, they were quite alone. The evening light fell on Catharine; her hands had fallen on her lap; she was thinking so intently of her Mystery that she had forgotten he was there. How white her bent neck was, with the rings of brown hair lying on it! There was a deeper pink than usual on her face, too, as though her thoughts were pleasant. He came closer, bent over her chair, touched her hair with one chubby finger, and started back red and breathless.

"Did you speak?" said Kitty, looking up.

"I'm going home. I only wanted to say good bye."

"So soon? Good-bye. I shall see you to-morrow, I suppose?" taking up her work.

"Yes, Kitty--"

"Well?"

"I have never bidden you good-bye except by shaking hands. Could I kiss you? I have thought about that every day since you promised to marry me."

The pleasant rose-tinge was gone now: even the soft lips, which were dangerously close, were colorless: "You can kiss me if you want to. I suppose it's right."

The little man drew back gravely. "Never mind; it's no matter. I had made up my mind never to ask for it until you seemed to be able to give me real wifely love."

She started up. "I can do no more than I have done," vehemently. "And I'm tired of hearing of myself as a wife. I'd as soon consider myself as a grandmother."

Mr. Muller waited a moment, too shocked and indignant to speak: then he took up his hat and went to the door. "Good-night, my child," he said kindly, "To-morrow you will be your better self."

Kitty knew nothing of better selves: she only felt keenly that two months ago such rudeness would have been impossible to her. Why was she growing vulgar and weak?

The air stirred the leaves of the old Walnuts outside: the black-coated, dapper figure had not yet passed from under them. He was so gentle and pious and good! Should she run after him? She dropped instead into her chair and cried comfortably till a noise in the shop stopped her, and looking through the dusky books she saw a man waiting. She got up and went in hastily, looking keenly at his face to find how long he had been there, and how much he had seen. It wore, however, an inscrutable gravity.

Most of Peter's old customers sold to themselves during his absence, but this was a stranger. He stood looking curiously at the heaped books and the worn sheepskin-covered chair, until she was close to him: then he looked curiously at her.

"I have had some correspondence with Mr. Guinness about a copy of Quadd's _Scientific Catalogues_."

"Mr. Guinness is not at home, but he left the book," said Kitty, alertly climbing the steps. Bringing the book, she recognized him as Doctor McCall, who had once before been at the shop when her father was gone. He was a young man, largely built, with a frank, attentive face, red hair and beard, and cordial voice. It was Kitty's nature to meet anybody halfway who carried summer weather about him. "My father hoped you would not come for the book until his return," she said civilly. "Your letters made him wish to see you. You were familiar, he told me, with some old pamphlets of which few customers know anything."

"Probably. I could not come at any other time," curtly, engrossed in turning over the pages of his book. Presently he said, "I will look over the stock if you will allow me. But I need not detain you," glancing at her work in the inner room. Kitty felt herself politely dismissed. Nor, although Doctor McCall stayed for half an hour examining Peter's favorite volumes as he sat on his high office-stool and leaned on his desk, did he once turn his eyes on the dimpling face making a picturesque vignette in the frame of the open window. When he had finished he came to the door. "I will call for the books I have chosen in an hour;" and then bowed distantly and was gone.

He had scarcely closed the gate when the back door creaked, and Miss Muller came in smiling, magnetic from head to foot, as her disciples in Berrytown were used to allege.

"And what is our little dove afraid of in her nest?" pinching Kitty's cheek as though she had been a dove very lately fledged indeed. She had always in fact the feeling when with Kitty that through her she suffered to live and patted on the back the whole ignoble, effete race of domestic women. Catharine caught sight of her satchel, which portended a visit of several days.

"Pray give me your hat and stay with me for tea," she said sweetly.

Miss Muller saw through her stratagem and laughed: "Now, that is just the kind of finesse in which such women delight!" she thought good-humoredly, going into the shop to lay off her hat and cape. The next moment she returned. Her face was bloodless. The muscles of the chin twitched.

"Who has been here?" she cried, sitting down and rubbing her hands violently on her wrists. "Oh, Catharine, who has been here?"

Now Kitty, a hearty eater with a slow brain, and nerves laid quite out of reach under the thick healthy flesh, knew nothing of the hysterical clairvoyant moods and trances familiar to so many lean, bilious American women. She ran for camphor, carbonate of soda and arnica, bathed Miss Muller's head, bent over her, fussing, terrified, anxious.

"Is it a pain? Is it in your stomach? Did you eat anything that disagreed with you?" she cried.

"Eat! I believe in my soul you think of nothing but eating!" trying resolutely to still the trembling of her limbs and chattering of her teeth. "I was only conscious of a presence when I entered that room. Some one who long ago passed out of my life, stood by me again." The tears ran weakly over her white cheeks.

"Somebody in the shop!" Kitty went to it on tiptoe, quaking at the thought of burglars. "There's nobody in the shop. Not even the cat," turning back reassured. "How did you feel the Presence, Maria? See it, or hear it, or smell it?"

"There are other senses than those, you know," pacing slowly up and down the room with the action of the leading lady in a melodrama; but her pain or vision, whatever it was, had been real enough. The cold drops stood on her forehead, her lips quivered, the brown eyes turned from side to side asking for help. "When _he_ is near shall I not know it?" she said with dry lips.

Kitty stole up to her and touched her hand. "I'm so glad if you are in love!" she whispered. "I thought you would think it foolish to care for love or--or babies. I used to care for them both a great deal."

"Pshaw! Now listen to me, child," her step growing steadier. "Oh dear! Haven't you any belladonna? Or coffea? That would set me right at once. As for a husband and children, they are obstructions to a woman--nothing more. If my head was clear I could make you understand. I am a free soul. I have my work to do. Marriage is an accident: so is child-bearing. In nine cases out of ten they hinder a woman's work. But when I meet a kindred soul, higher, purer than mine, I give allegiance to it. My feeling becomes a part of my actual life; it is a spiritual action: it hears and sees by spiritual senses. And then--Ah, there is something terrible in being alone--_alone_! She called this out loudly, wringing her hands. Kitty gave a queer smile. It was incredible to her that a woman could thus dissect herself for the benefit of another.

"But she's talking for her own benefit," watching her shrewdly. "If there's any acting about it, she's playing Ophelia and Hamlet and the audience all at once.--Was it Doctor McCall you fancied was in the shop?" she asked quietly.

Miss Muller turned, a natural blush dyeing her face and neck: "He has been here then?--Oh, there! there he is!" as the young man came in at the gate. She passed her hands over her front hair nervously, shook down her lace sleeves and went out to meet him. Kitty saw his start of surprise. He stooped, for she was a little woman, and held out both his hands.

"Yes, John, it is I!" she said with a half sob.

"Are you really so glad to see me again, Maria?" She caught his arm for her sole answer, and walked on, nestling close to his side.

"It may be spiritual affinity, but it looks very like love," thought Kitty. It was a different love from any she had known. They turned and walked through the gate down into the shadow of the wooded creeks, the broad strong figure leaning over the weaker one. Kitty fancied the passion in his eyes, the words he would speak. She thought how she had noticed at first sight that there was unusual strength and tenderness in the man's face.

"There will be no talk there of new dresses or reformatory schools, I'm sure of that," she said, preparing to go to bed. She felt somehow wronged and slighted to-night, and wished for old Peter's knee to rest on. She had no friend like old Peter, and never would have.

REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

OVERDUE.

The beads from the wine have all vanished, Which bubbled in brightness so late; The lights from the windows are banished, Close shut is the gate Which yesterday swung wide in joyance, And beckoned to fate.

The goblet stands idle, untasted, Or, tasted, is tasteless to-night; The breath of the roses is wasted; In sackcloth bedight, The soul, in the dusk of her palace, Sits waiting the light.

Ah! why do the ships waft no token Of grace to this sorrowful realm? Must suns shine in vain, while their broken Rays clouds overwhelm? Tender Breeze, if some sail bear a message, Rule thou at the helm!

But if haply the ruler be coming, Drug the sea-sirens each with a kiss: Stroke the waves into calmest of humming Over ocean's abyss: Speed him soft from the shore of the stranger To the haven of this.

And the soul-bells in joyous revival Shall peal all the carols of spring; The roses and ruby wine rival Each other to bring, In the crimson and fragrance of welcome, Delight to the king.

MARY B. DODGE.

QUEEN VICTORIA AS A MILLIONAIRE.

Queen Victoria either is or ought to be a very wealthy woman. Her income was at the beginning of her reign fixed at £385,000 a year. This sum, it was understood, would, with the exception of £96,000 a year, be divided between the lord steward, the lord chamberlain and the master of the horse, the three great functionaries of the royal household. Of the residue £60,000 were to be paid over to the queen for her personal expenses, and the remaining £36,000 were for "contingencies." It is probable, however, that the above arrangements have been much modified, as time has worked changes.

The prince-consort had an allowance of £30,000 a year. The queen originally wished him to have £100,000, and Lord Melbourne, then prime minister, who had immense influence over her, had much difficulty in persuading her that this sum was out of the question, and gaining her consent to the government's proposing £50,000 a year to the House of Commons, which, to Her Majesty's infinite chagrin, cut the sum down nearly one-half.

During the happy days of her married life the expenditure of the court was very much greater than it has been since the prince's death. Emperors and kings were entertained with utmost splendor at Windsor. During the emperor of Russia's visit, for instance, and that of Louis Philippe, one or two hundred extra mouths were in one way or another fed at Her Majesty's expense. The stables, too, were formerly filled with horses--and very fine ones they were--whereas now the number is greatly reduced, and many of those in the royal mews are "jobbed"--_i.e._ hired by the week or month, as occasion requires, from livery stables. This poverty of the master of the horse's department excited much angry comment on the occasion of the princess Alexandra's state entry into London.

But besides the previously-mentioned £60,000 a year, and what residue may be unspent from the rest of the "civil list," as the £385,000 is called, Queen Victoria has two other sources of considerable income. She is in her own right duchess of Lancaster. The property which goes with the duchy of Lancaster belonged originally to Saxon noblemen who rose against the Norman Conqueror. Their estates were confiscated, and in 1265 were in the possession of Robert Ferrers, earl of Derby. This nobleman took part with Simon de Montfort in his rebellion, and was deprived of all his estates in 1265 by Henry III., who bestowed them on his youngest son, Edmund, commonly called Edmund Crouchback, whom he created earl of Lancaster. From him dates the immediate connection between royalty and the duchy. In 1310, Thomas, second earl of Lancaster, son of Edmund Crouchback, married a great heiress, the only child of De Lacy, earl of Lincoln. By this alliance he became the wealthiest and most powerful subject of the Crown, possessing in right of himself and his wife six earldoms, with all the jurisdiction which under feudal tenure was annexed to such honors. In 1311 he became involved in the combination formed by several nobles to induce the king to part with Piers de Gaveston. The result of this conspiracy was that the unhappy favorite was lynched in Warwick Castle. The king, Edward II., was at first highly incensed, but ultimately pardoned the conspirators, including the earl of Lancaster; but that very imprudent personage, subsequently taking up arms against his sovereign, was beheaded.

In 1326 an act was passed for reversing the attainder of Earl Thomas in favor of his brother Henry, earl of Lancaster. Earl Henry left a son and six daughters. The son was surnamed "Grismond," from the place of his birth. He greatly distinguished himself in the French wars under Edward III., and was the second knight companion of the Order of the Garter, Edward "the Black Prince" being the first. Ultimately, to reward his many services, Edward III. created him, about 1348, duke of Lancaster, and the county of Lancaster was formed into a palatinate or principality. This great and good nobleman who seems to have been the soul of munificence and piety, died in 1361, leaving two daughters to inherit his vast possessions, but on the death of the elder without issue the whole devolved on the second, Blanche, who married John of Gaunt (so called because born at Ghent in Flanders, in March, 1340), son of Edward III. He was created duke of Lancaster, played a prominent part in history, and died in 1399, leaving a son by Blanche--Henry Plantagenet, surnamed Bolingbroke, from Bullingbrook Castle in Lincolnshire, the scene of his birth. He became King Henry IV., and thus the duchy merged in the Crown, and is enjoyed to-day by Queen Victoria as duchess of Lancaster.

Her revenue from this source has been steadily increasing. Thus in 1865 it was £26,000; in 1867, £29,000; in 1869, £31,000; in 1872 £40,000. The largest of these figures does not probably represent a fifth of the receipts of John of Gaunt, but the duchy of Lancaster, like that of Cornwall, suffered far a long time from the fraud and rapacity of those who were supposed to be its custodians. Managed as it now is, it will probably have doubled its present revenue before the close of the century.[B]

The other source is still more strictly personal income. On the 30th of August, 1852, there died a gentleman, aged seventy-two, of the name of John Camden Neild. He was son of a Mr. James Neild, who acquired a large fortune as a gold- and silversmith. Mr. James Neild was born at Sir Henry Holland's birthplace, Knutsford, a market-town in Cheshire, in 1744. He came to London, when a boy, in 1760, the first year of George III.'s reign, and was placed with one of the king's jewelers, Mr. Hemming. Gradually working his way up, he started on his own account in St. James's street, a very fashionable thoroughfare, and made a large fortune. In 1792 he retired. He appears to have been a man of rare benevolence and some literary ability. He devoted himself to remedying the condition of prisons, more especially those in which persons were confined for debt: indeed, his efforts in this direction would seem to have rivaled those of Howard, for in the course of forty years Mr. Neild visited most of the prisons in Great Britain, and was for many years treasurer, as well as one of the founders, of the society for the relief of persons imprisoned for small debts. He described his prison experiences in a series of papers in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, which were subsequently republished, and highly praised by the _Edinburgh Review_. Mr. Neild had three children, but only one, John Camden Neild, survived him. This gentleman succeeded to his father's very large property in 1814.

Mr. James Neild had acquired considerable landed estate, and was sheriff of Buckinghamshire in 1804. His son received every advantage in the way of education, graduated M.A. at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was subsequently called to the bar. He proved, however, the very reverse of his benevolent father. He was a miser born, and hid all his talents in a napkin, making no use of his wealth beyond allowing it to accumulate. From the date of the death of his father, who left him £250,000, besides real estate, he had spent but a small portion of his income, and allowed himself scarcely the necessaries of life. He usually dressed in a blue coat with metal buttons. This he did not allow to be brushed, inasmuch as that process would have worn the nap. He was never known to wear an overcoat. He gladly accepted invitations from his tenantry, and would remain on long visits, because he thus saved board. There is a story of how a benevolent gentleman once proffered assistance, through a chemist in the Strand, in whose shop he saw what he supposed to be a broken-down old gentleman, and received for reply, "God bless your soul, sir! that's Mr. Coutts the banker, who could buy up you and me fifty times over." So with Mr. Neild: his appearance often made him an object of charity and commiseration, nor would it appear that he was at all averse to being so regarded. Just before railway traveling began he had been on a visit to some of his estates, and was returning to London. The coach having stopped to allow of the passengers getting refreshment, all entered the hotel except old Neild. Observing the absence of the pinched, poverty-stricken-looking old gentleman, some good-natured passenger sent him out a bumper of brandy and water, which the old niggard eagerly accepted.

A few days before his death he told one of his executors that he had made a most singular will, but that he had a right to do what he liked with his own. When the document was opened it was found that, with the exception of a few small legacies, he had left all "to Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, begging Her Majesty's most gracious acceptance of the same, for her sole use and benefit, and that of her heirs." Probably vanity dictated this bequest. To a poor old housekeeper, who had served him twenty-six years, he left nothing; to each of his executors, £100. But the queen made a handsome provision for the former, and presented £1000 to each of the latter; and she further raised a memorial to the miser's memory.

The property bequeathed to her amounted to upward of £500,000; so that, supposing Her Majesty to have spent every penny of her public and duchy of Lancaster incomes, and to have only laid by this legacy and the interest on it, she would from this source alone now be worth at least £1,000,000. Be this as it may, even that portion of the public which survives her will probably never know the amount of her wealth, for the wills of kings and queens are not proved; so that there will be no enlightenment on this head in the pages of the _Illustrated London News_.

Both Osborne House in the Isle of Wight, and Balmoral, were bought prior to Mr. Neild's bequest. These palaces are the personal property of Her Majesty, and very valuable: probably the two may, with their contents, be valued at £500,000 at the lowest. The building and repairs at these palaces are paid for by the queen herself, but those of all the palaces of the Crown are at the expense of the country, and about a million has been expended on Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle during the present reign.

The claims made on the queen for charity are exceedingly numerous. They are all most carefully examined by the keeper of her privy purse, and help is invariably extended to proper objects. But whilst duly recognizing such calls upon her, the queen has never been regarded as open-handed. Her munificence, for example, has not been on the scale of that of the late queen Adelaide, the widow of William IV. It is to be remembered that her father suffered all his life from straitened circumstances, and indeed it was by means of money supplied by friends that the duchess of Kent was enabled to reach England and give birth to its future sovereign on British soil. Although the duke died when his daughter was too young to have heard from him of these pecuniary troubles, she was no doubt cautioned by her mother to avoid all chance of incurring them; and a circumstance in itself likely to impress their inconvenience on her memory was that one of the first acts of her reign was to pay off, principal and interest, the whole of her father's remaining liabilities.

A good deal of sympathy is felt in England for the prince of Wales in reference to his money-matters. His mother's withdrawal from representative functions throws perforce a great deal of extra expense upon him, which he is very ill able to bear. He is expected to subscribe liberally to every conceivable charity, to bestow splendid presents (here his mother has always been wanting), and in every way to vie with, if not surpass, the nobility; and all this with £110,000 a year, whilst the dukes of Devonshire, Cleveland, Buccleuch, Lords Westminster, Bute, Lonsdale and a hundred more noblemen and gentlemen, have fortunes double or treble, no lords and grooms in waiting to pay, and can subscribe or decline to subscribe to the Distressed Muffin-makers' and Cab-men's Widows' Associations, according to their pleasure, without a murmur on the part of the public.

About five years ago the press generally took this view of the subject, and a rumor ran that the government fully intended to ask for an addition to the prince's income; but nothing was done. We have reason to believe that the hesitation of the government arose from the well-grounded apprehension that it would bring on an inquiry as to the queen's income and what became of it. Opinion ran high among both Whigs and Tories that if Her Majesty did not please to expend in representative pomp the revenues granted to her for that specific purpose, she should appropriate a handsome sum annually to her son. It may be urged, "Perhaps she does so," and in reply it can only be said that in such case the secret is singularly well kept, and that those whose position should enable them to give a pretty shrewd guess at the state of the case persist in averring the contrary. However, it will no doubt be all the better for the royal family in the end. The queen is a sagacious woman. She no doubt fully recognizes the fact that the British public will each year become more and more impatient of being required to vote away handsome annuities for a succession of princelings, whilst at the same time it may look with toleration, if not affection, upon a number of gentlemen and ladies who ask for nothing more than the cheap privilege of writing "Royal Highness" before their names. If, then, Queen Victoria be by her retirement and frugality accumulating a fortune which will make the royal family almost independent of a parliamentary grant in excess of the income which the Crown revenues represent, she is no doubt acting with that deep good sense and prudence which are a part of her character. And here we may just explain that the Crown revenues are derived from the property which has always been the appanage of the English sovereign from the Norman Conquest. For a long time past the custom has been to give this up to the country, with the understanding that it cannot be alienated, and to accept, in lieu thereof, a parliamentary grant of income. This Crown property is of immense value. It includes a large strip of the best part of London. All the clubs in Pall Mall, for instance, the Carlton, United Service, Travelers', Reform; Marlborough House, The Guards Club, Stafford House, Carlton House Terrace, Carlton Gardens--which pay the highest rents in London--stand on Crown land; as do Montague House, the duke of Buccleuch's, Dover House, etc. But this property suffers very much from the fact of its being inalienable. It can only be leased. The whole of the New Forest is Crown land, and it is estimated that if sold it would fetch millions, whereas it is now nearly valueless. If the royal family could use their Crown lands, just as those noblemen who have received grants from sovereigns use theirs, it would be the wealthiest in England, and would have no need to come to Parliament for funds.

Half of the people who howl about the expense of royalty know nothing about these Crown lands, which really belong to royalty at least as much as the property of those holding estates originally granted by kings belongs to such proprietors, and if exception were taken to such tenures scarcely any title in England would be safe.

Taking her, then, for all in all, Queen Victoria is not only the best, but probably the cheapest, sovereign England ever had; and her people, although inclined, as is their wont, to grumble that she doesn't spend a little more money, feel that she has so few faults that they can well afford to overlook this. Deeply loved by them, she is yet more respected.

REGINALD WYNFORD.

FOOTNOTES:

[B] How the revenues of the duchy of Cornwall have grown under the admirable management instituted by the late prince-consort, who discovered that peculation and negligence were combining to dissipate his eldest son's splendid heritage, the following will show. In 1824 the gross revenue had fallen to £22,000: in 1872 it was nearly £70,000! Loud were the howls of the peculators against "that beastly German" when His Royal Highness took it in hand. But "he knew he was right," and had his reward. When the prince of Wales came of age, instead of having from £13,000 to £14,000, net, a year from his duchy, as the last prince of Wales had, there was a revenue of £50,000 a year clear, and cash enough to buy Sandringham. The income is now increasing at the rate of about £3000 a year, on the average. By net revenue is meant the clear sum which goes into the prince's pocket. Of course his father's prudence and energy saved the country a large sum, which it would otherwise have been compelled to vote for maintaining the prince's establishment.

George IV. had on his marriage, when prince of Wales, £125,000 a year, besides his duchy revenues, £28,000 for jewelry and plate, and £26,000 for furnishing Carlton House. The present prince of Wales has nothing from the country but £40,000 a year, and his wife has £10,000 a year. No application has ever been made for money to pay his debts or to assist him in any way.

CRICKET IN AMERICA

Cricket is the "national game" of England, where the sport has a venerable antiquity. Occasional references to the game are found in old books, which would place its origin some centuries back. The most ancient mention of the game is found in the _Constitution Book of Guildford_, by which it appears that in some legal proceedings in 1598 a witness, then aged fifty-nine, gave evidence that "when he was a scholar in the free schoole at Guldeford he and several of his fellowes did runne and plaie there at _crickett_ and other plaies." The author of _Echoes from Old Cricket Fields_ cites the biography of Bishop Ken to show that he played cricket at Winchester College in 1650, one of his scores, cut on the chapel-cloister wall, being still extant; and the same writer reproduces as a frontispiece to his "opusculum" an old engraving bearing date 1743, in which the wicket appears as a skeleton hurdle about two feet wide by one foot high, while the bat is the Saxon _crec_ or crooked stick, with which the game was originally played, and from which the name cricket was doubtless derived.

In England the game is universally played: all classes take equal interest in it, and it is a curious fact that on the cricket-ground the lord and the laborer meet on equal terms, the zest of the game outweighing the prejudice of caste. The government encourages it as a physical discipline for the troops, and provides all barracks with cricket-grounds. Every regiment has its club, and, what is odd, the navy furnishes many crack players. It is the favorite _par excellence_ at all schools, colleges and universities; every county, every town and every village has its local club; while the I Zingari and its host of rivals serve to focus the ubiquitous talent of All England. The public enjoy it, merely as spectators, to such a degree that a grand match-day at Lord's is only second in point of enthusiasm to the Derby Day. Special trains carry thousands, and the field presents a gay picture framed in a quadrangle of equipages. It is sometimes difficult, even by charging large admission-fees, to keep the number of spectators within convenient limits. Notwithstanding the motley assemblage which a match always attracts, so unobjectionable are the associations of the cricket-field that clergymen do not feel it unbecoming to participate in the diversion, either as players, umpires or spectators.

In this country, while cricket is known in a few localities, it has never been generally adopted. In New York a few English residents have for years formed the nucleus of a somewhat numerous fraternity, and the announcement that an _American Cricketer's Manual_ will be published in that city during the present season indicates that home interest in the sport is on the increase. But the chief thriving-place of native American cricket is conceded to be Philadelphia, and it will be interesting, perhaps, to take a retrospect of the progress of the game in this city.

Tradition carries us back as far as the year 1831 or 1832, when cricket was first played on the ground of George Ticknor, Esq., west of the old bridge below Fairmount, by a few Englishmen, who shortly afterward organized themselves under the name of the Union Club. Some of our older native cricketers remember taking their first lessons from the three brothers, George, Prior and John Ticknor, who, with Joseph Nicholls, William Richardson, John M. Fisher, John Herrod, George Parker, Samuel Dingworth, Jonathan Ainsworth, John Kenworthy and George Daffin, met on Saturday afternoons and holidays. In subsequent years a few enthusiastic spirits practiced with home-made bats on the Camden common, and thence we trace the feeble but growing interest in the game, until in 1854 the Philadelphia Cricket Club was organized, with J. Dickinson Sergeant (who still fills the office) as president, William Rotch Wister as secretary, and Hartman Kuhn (third), James B. England, Morton P. Henry, Thomas Hall, Thomas Facon, Dr. Samuel Lewis, William M. Bradshaw, Henry M. Barlow, R. Darrell Stewart, S. Weir Mitchell and (last, but not least) Tom Senior among its founders. Then came the Germantown Club, of native American boys, organized in 1855, whose highest ambition, for many years, was to play the Philadelphia Club, "barring Tom Senior," then the only fast round-arm bowler in the country. Next came the Olympian, the Delphian, the Keystone Cricket Clubs, and a host of lesser lights, whose head-quarters were at West Philadelphia; and soon after the now famous Young America Cricket Club was formed by the lamented Walter S. Newhall, partly as a training-club for the Germantown. Well did it fulfill its purpose until the breaking out of the war, when the members of the Germantown Club changed the bat for the sabre almost in a body, and the club went out of existence.

With calmer times the old love of cricket came back, and through the energy of Mr. Charles E. Cadwalader the Germantown Club was reorganized, and the _esprit de corps_ was such that before the club had taken the field the roll showed more than twice its former numbers. Through the spirit of its patrons, and especially by the kindness of H. Pratt McKean, Esq. (part of whose country-seat was tendered for a cricket-ground), the new life of the Germantown Cricket Club was successfully inaugurated on the 17th of October, 1866, by a victory in its opening match with the St. George Club of New York. That was a red-letter day, when Major-General Meade, on behalf of the ladies of Germantown, and amid the huzzas of thousands of its friends, presented to the club a handsome set of colors, and, hoisting them to the breeze, alluded in his own graceful style to the memories of the past, and the achievements which he predicted the future would witness on this magnificent cricket-field.

But what is cricket? Descriptions of lively things are apt to be dull, and it is indeed no easy task to render a detailed description of cricket intelligible, much less entertaining, to the uninitiated. The veriest enthusiast never thought the forty-seven "laws of cricket" light reading, and, resembling as they do certain other statutes whose only apparent design is to perplex the inquiring layman, they would, if cited here, be "caviare to the general."

But come with us, in imagination, on a bright May-day to a great match--say on the Germantown cricket-ground. You will find a glorious stretch of velvet turf, seven acres of living carpet, level and green as a huge billard-table, skirted on the one hand by a rolling landscape, and hedged on the other by a row of primeval oaks. Flags flaunt from the flag-staffs, and the play-ground is guarded by guidons. The pavilion is appropriated to the players, and perchance the band: the grand stand is already filling with spectators. Old men and children, young men and maidens, are there--the latter "fair to see," and each predicting victory for her favorite club. For it must be known that on the Germantown ground party spirit always runs high among the belles, many of whom are good theoretical cricketers, and a few of whom always come prepared with blanks on which to keep the neatest of private scores. During the delay which seems inseparable from the commencement of a cricket-match some of the players, ready costumed in cricket apparel, "take care," if they do not "beware," of the aforesaid maidens; others, impatient for the call of "time," like jockeys cantering before the race, disport themselves over the field, practicing bowling, batting, and, in ball-players' parlance, "catching flies." The whole picture is one of beauty and animation, and that spirit must indeed be dull which does not yield to the exhilarating influences of such a scene.

Cricket is usually played by eleven players on each side, the tactics of each party being directed by a captain. Two umpires are appointed, whose decrees, if sometimes inscrutable, are always irreversible, and whose first duty it is to "pitch the wickets." Having selected the ground, they proceed to measure accurately a distance of twenty-two yards, and to erect a wicket at either extremity. Each "wicket" consists of three wooden "stumps," twenty-eight inches long, sharpened at the bottom, whereby they may be stuck perpendicularly in the ground, and grooved at the top, in order to receive two short sticks or "bails," which rest lightly across their tops. When pitched, the wickets face each other, and each presents a parallelogram twenty-seven inches high by eight inches broad, erect and firm-looking, while in fact the lightest touch of the ball or any other object would knock off the bails and reduce it to its elements. Each of these wickets is to be the _locus in quo_ not only of a party rivalry, but also of an exciting individual contest between the bowler and the batsman, the former attacking the fortress with scientific pertinacity, and the "life" of the latter depending on its successful defence. The "popping-crease" and the "bowling-crease" having been white-washed on the turf--the one marking the batsman's safety-ground, and the other the bowler's limits--all is now ready for play. The captains toss a copper for choice of innings, and the winner may elect to send his men to the bat. He selects _two_ representatives of his side, who, having accoutred themselves with hand-protecting gloves and with leg-guards, take position, bat in hand, in front of each wicket. All the eleven players on the _out_ side are now marshaled by their captain in their proper positions as fielders, one being deputed to open the bowling. For a few moments the new match ball--than which, in a cricketer's estimation,

A carbuncle entire, as big as thou art, Were not a richer jewel--

is passed round among the fielders, just to get their hands in; which ball, we may mention, is nine inches in circumference, weighs five and a half ounces, is in color not unlike a carbuncle, and nearly as hard. The umpires take their respective position, and at the word "Play!" the whole party, like a pack of pointers, strike attitudes of attention, more or less graceful, and the game begins.

The _bowler_, stepping briskly up to his crease, delivers the ball, and, whether it be a "fast round-arm" or a "slow under-hand," his endeavor is so to bowl it that the ball shall elude the batsman's defence and strike the wicket. The _batsman_ endeavors, first and foremost, to protect his wicket, and, secondly, if possible, to hit the ball away, so that he may make a run or runs. This is accomplished when he and his partner at the other wicket succeed in changing places before the ball is returned to the wicket by the fielders.

The several ways in which a batsman may be put out are these: 1. "Bowled out," if the bowler succeeds in bowling a ball which evades the batsman's defence and strikes the wicket. 2. "Hit wicket," if the batsman, in playing at the ball, hits his wicket accidentally with his bat or person. 3. "Stumped out," if the batsman, in playing at a ball, steps out of his ground, but misses the ball, which is caught by the wicket-keeper, who with it puts down the wicket before the batsman returns his bat or his body within the popping-crease. 4. "Caught out," if any fielder catches the ball direct from the striker's bat or hand before it touches the ground. 5. "Run out," if the batsman, in attempting to make a run, fails to reach his safety-ground before the wicket to which he is running is put down with the ball. 6. "Leg before wicket," if the batsman stops with his leg or other part of his body a bowled ball, whose course in the opinion of the umpire was in a line with the wickets, and which if not so stopped would have taken the wicket.

At every ball bowled, therefore, the batsman must guard against all these dangers: he must, without leaving his ground, and avoiding "leg before wicket," play the ball so that it will not strike the wicket and cannot be caught. Having hit it away, he can make a run or runs only if he and his partner can reach their opposite wickets before the ball is returned by the fielders and a wicket put down. All the fielders are in active league against the batsman, whose single-handed resistance will be of little avail unless he exceeds mere defence and adds his quota of runs to the score of his side. To excel in this requires, in addition to a scientific knowledge of the game, cool presence of mind, a quick eye, a supple wrist, a strong arm, a swift foot and a healthy pair of lungs. Thus the nobler attributes of the man, mental and physical, are brought into play. As the Master in _Tom Brown's School-days_ remarks: "The discipline and reliance on one another which cricket teaches are so valuable it ought to be an unselfish game. It merges the individual in the eleven: he does not play that he may win, but that his side may."

Four balls, sometimes six, are said to constitute an "over," and at the completion of each over the bowler is relieved by an alternate, who bowls from the opposite wicket, the fielders meantime crossing over or changing places, so as to preserve their relative positions toward the active batsman for the time being. Any over during which no runs are earned from the bat is said to be a "maiden" over, and is scored to the credit of the bowler as an evidence of good bowling. In addition to the runs earned on hits there are certain "extras," which, though scored as runs in favor of the _in_ side, are not strictly runs, but are imposed rather as penalties for bad play by the outs than as the result of good play by the ins. Thus, should the bowler bowl a ball which, in the opinion of the umpire, is outside the batsman's reach, it is called a "wide," and counts one (without running) to the batsman's side; should the bowler in delivering a ball step beyond the bowling-crease, or if he jerks it or throws it, it is a "no ball," and counts one (without running) to the batsman's side; but if the batsman hits a no ball he cannot be put out otherwise than by being "run out." If he makes one or more runs on such a hit, the no ball is condoned, and the runs so made are credited as hits to him and his side. The umpire must take especial care to call "no ball" instantly upon delivery--"wide ball" as soon as it shall have passed the batsman, and not, as a confused umpire once called, "No ball--wide--out." Again, should a ball which the batsman has not touched pass the fielders behind the wicket, the batsmen may make a run or runs, which count to their side as "byes:" should the ball, however, missing his bat, glance from the batsman's leg or other part of his body, and then pass the fielders, the batsmen may make a run or runs, which count to their side as "leg-byes."

The game thus proceeds until each batsman of the _in_ side is in turn put out, except the eleventh or last, who, having no partner to assume the other wicket, "carries out his bat," and the innings for the side is closed. The other side now has its innings, and, _mutatis mutandis_, the game proceeds as before. Usually two innings on each side are played, unless one side makes more runs in one innings than the other makes in both, or unless it is agreed in advance to play a "one-innings match."

So much for the matter-of-fact details of the game of cricket. To enter into the more interesting but less tangible combination of science, chance and skill to which cricket owes not a little of its fascination, would extend this article far beyond its assigned limits. The science of "length-balls" and "twisting lobs," the skill in "forward play" or "back play," the chances of "shooters" and "bailers," are balanced in a happy proportion, and to a cricketer form a tempting theme. But we must content ourselves by referring those disposed to pursue the subject to such books as _The Cricket Field_, _The Theory and Practice of Cricket_, _Felix on the Bat_, _Cricket Songs and Poems_, and to other similar English publications on the game, which are so numerous that if collected they would make quite a cricket library.

Nor can we here refer to the incidental pleasures which a cricket-match affords independently of participation in the game itself. These are depicted, from a lady's point of view, by Miss Mitford in _Our Village_; where a pretty bit of romance is interwoven with a description of a country cricket-match, the very recollection of which draws from the graceful authoress this admission: "Though tolerably eager and enthusiastic at all times, I never remember being in a more delicious state of excitation than on the occasion of that cricket-match. Who would think that a little bit of leather and two pieces of wood had such a delightful and delighting power?"

And this sentiment is echoed by scores of the fair spectators at our home matches. When, for example, during the last international match at Germantown, one of the English Gentlemen Eleven said to a lady, "We were told we should have a fine game at Philadelphia, but, really, I had no idea we should be honored by the presence of so many ladies," her reply expressed the sentiments of a numerous class: "Oh, I used to come to a match occasionally _pour passer le temps_. At first the cricket seemed to me more like a solemn ceremonial than real fun, but now that I understand the points I like the game for its own sake; and as for a match like this, I think it is perfectly lovely!" Another of the English Eleven--a handsome but modest youth--on being escorted to the grand stand and introduced to a party of ladies, became so abashed by unexpectedly finding himself in the midst of such a galaxy of beauties (and, as a matter of course, the conscious cynosure of all eyes) that, blushing to suffusion, and forgetting to lift his hat, he could only manage to stammer out, "Aw, aw--I beg pardon; but--aw--aw--I fancy there's another wicket down, and I must put on my guards, you know;" whereupon he beat a hasty retreat.[C]

A game which has for centuries in England afforded healthful recreation to all classes must needs possess some value beyond that of mere physical exercise. Not that we would undervalue the latter advantage. Improvement in health usually keeps pace with improvement in cricket. Mr. Grace, the "champion cricketer of the world," is hardly less a champion of muscular physique: he sought in vain for a companion to walk to town, late at night, from the country-seat of the late Mr. Joshua Francis Fisher, where the cricketers, after a long day's play, had been entertained at dinner--a distance of more than ten miles. We heartily concur in the favorite advice of a physician, renowned alike for his social wit and professional wisdom, who prescribed "a rush of blood to the boots" to all professional patients and head-workers--men who, happening to possess brains, are prone to forget that they have bodies. In no way can this inverse apoplexy be more healthfully or pleasantly induced than by a jolly game of cricket. That the sport is adapted to American tastes and needs we are convinced, and that it may find a _habitat_ throughout the length and breadth of our land is an end toward which we launch this humble plea in its interest.

Now we hardly expect all the readers of _Lippincott's Magazine_ forthwith to become cricketers, but we venture to suggest, by way of moral, that some of them may take a hint from Mr. Winkle, who, when asked by Mr. Wardle, "Are you a cricketer?" modestly replied, "No, I don't play, _but I subscribe to the club here_."

ALBERT A. OUTERBRIDGE.

FOOTNOTES:

[C] The following extract from the diary of Mr. Fitzgerald, captain of the English Gentlemen Eleven of 1872, has been published in England, and will be read with interest:

"_Sept 21, 1872._ Philadelphia, seventh match. Lost the toss. Ground fair to the eye, and immense attendance. The bowling and fielding on both sides quite a treat to the spectators. Total for the English Twelve (first innings), 105. Not considered enough, but a good score against such bowling and fielding--quite first-class.

"_Sept. 24._ Second innings. With but 33 to get, the Twelve looked sure of victory, but a harder fight was never yet seen. Bowling and fielding splendid; excitement increasing. Fall of Hadow--ringing cheers. Advent of Appleby--fracture of Francis. Seven down for 29. Frantic state of Young America. The English captain still cheerful, but puffing rather quickly at his pipe. Six 'maidens' at each end. The spell broken by splendid hit of 'the tormentor.'

"This was the best and most closely-contested match of the campaign, and the scene presented at the finish would lose nothing in excitement and interest by comparison with 'Lord's' on a grand match-day."

A book of _Transatlantic Cricket Notes_ has been announced in England as in preparation by Mr. Fitzgerald.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

IRISH AGENTS.

The Irish papers mentioned a few months ago the death of Mr. Stuart Trench, whose _Realities of Irish Life_ excited so much attention three years ago. Mr. Trench was the most eminent of a class of men peculiar to Ireland, and growing out of the unfortunate condition of that country. He was an agent, which means overlooker and manager of the estates of absentee landlords.

In England, except on very extensive properties, landlords do not employ an agent of this sort, and even where they do his duties are of a very different character. There the landlords, being nearly always in the country, if not on their estates, look after their business themselves, and have merely an overlooker, who does not occupy the position of a gentleman, to superintend and report to them what may be needful, whilst the rents are collected by a solicitor. This is the case in Scotland also.

But in Ireland this would never do. Even where the landlord is resident he almost always has an agent, to save himself the great trouble which would otherwise be entailed on him, while to the non-resident an agent is imperatively necessary.

Most Irish property is still subdivided into very small farms, and this is in itself a source of constant trouble. The tenants get into arrear or become hopelessly insolvent: they very often refuse to quit their holdings nevertheless, and have to be coaxed, bought or turned out, as the case may be; which several processes have to be accomplished by the agent. Then he is compelled to see in many cases that they don't exhaust the land by a repetition of the same crops, and in fact to superintend, either by himself or his sub-agents, in a hundred ways which would never be necessary in England, where the farms are large and their holders of a different class.

He also represents the landlord socially, and is frequently the great man of the district, duly invested with magisterial and other county offices. The office of agent has therefore in Ireland had a high social standing, and agencies are eagerly sought by the younger sons of gentlemen, and even noblemen.

There are three or four estates whose agencies are regarded as special prizes, and of these Mr. Trench held one, the marquis of Lansdowne's. That nobleman--who is descended from the ancient Fitzmaurices, earls of Kerry, and the celebrated _savant_ Mr. William Petty, who first surveyed Ireland, and took the opportunity of helping himself pretty freely to some very nice "tit-bits" as "refreshers" by the way--has a very extensive property in Queens county and the wild maritime county of Kerry, in which his ancestors were in bygone days a sort of kings.

Probably Lord Lansdowne's agency was worth to Mr. Trench quite $5000 a year, equal in Kerry, where living is still very cheap, to $15,000 in New York City; and he had two or three other agencies in addition.

On the smaller properties the agent is usually paid five per cent., on the large by fixed salary. The best agency of all is that of Lord Pembroke, who owns the most valuable portion of Dublin and a great deal of adjoining land.

When the duties and risks of an agent are considered, he can by no means be regarded as highly paid. Very many agents have lost their lives, and others are exposed to continual danger. They are sometimes harsh, tyrannical and overbearing, but far less so now, when railroad, press and telegraph let light in upon all parts of the country, than formerly, when they were left to themselves, and as long as the rents were duly paid no heed was taken of their operations.

To do an agent's work well great firmness and knowledge of the Irish character is required, and in some districts in the West a knowledge of the Irish language is very desirable and absolutely requisite.

When an agency becomes vacant a proprietor receives innumerable applications for the vacant office, often from persons ludicrously ignorant of its duties. Thus, some time ago a seeker of such an office accompanied his application--he was a retired army officer--by a sketch of a sort of watch-tower whence he proposed to watch the tenantry, and fire upon them as occasion required! With few exceptions the agents on large estates are gentlemen bred to the business, whose fathers have been agents, and have thus early become initiated into the mysteries of the office.

Many Irish landlords are, and still more used to be, very much in the hands of their agents, of whom they have borrowed money, and further depend on for support in elections. Instances are by no means wanting of men now holding high rank as country gentlemen whose fathers and grandfathers grew rich out of estates confided to them to manage by negligent, reckless landlords, who gradually fell completely into the meshes of their managers.

RANDOM BIOGRAPHIES.

JULIUS CÆSAR. An ancient Roman of celebrity. He advertised to the effect that he had rather be first at Rome than second in a small village. He was a man of great muscular strength. Upon one occasion he threw an entire army across the Rubicon. A general named Pompey met him in what was called the "tented field," but Pompey couldn't hold a Roman candle to Julius. We are assured upon the authority of Patrick Henry that "Cæsar had his Brutus." The unbiased reader of history, however, will conclude that, on the contrary, Brutus rather _had_ Cæsar. This Brutus never struck me as an unpleasant man to meet, but he did Cæsar. After addressing a few oral remarks to Brutus in the Latin language, Cæsar expired. His subsequent career ceases to be interesting.

JOHN PAUL JONES. An American naval commander who sailed the seas during the Revolution, with indistinct notions about gold lace or what he should fly at the main. He was fond of fighting. He would frequently break off in the middle of a dinner to go on deck and whip a British frigate. Perhaps he didn't care much about his meals. If so, he must have been a good _boarder_.

LUCREZIA BORGIA. Daughter of old Mr. Borgia, a wealthy Italian gentleman. Lucrezia was one of the first ladies of her time. Beautiful beyond description, of brilliant and fascinating manners, she created an unmistakable sensation. It was a burning sensation. Society doted upon her. Afterward it anti-doted.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. A philosopher and statesman. When a boy he associated himself with the development of the tallow-chandlery interest, and invented the Boston dip. He was lightning on some things, also a printer. He won distinction as the original _Poor Richard_, though he could not have been by any means so poor a Richard as McKean Buchanan used to be. Although born in Boston and living in Philadelphia, he yet managed to surmount both obstacles, and to achieve considerable note in his day. They show you the note in Independence Hall.

MARK TWAIN. A humorous writer of the nineteenth century. As yet, I have not had the honor of his acquaintance, but when I do meet him I shall say something jocose. I know I shall. I have it. My plan will be to inveigle him into going over a ferry to "see a man." As we pass up the slip on the other side, I shall draw out my flask, impromptu-like, with the invitation, "Mark, my dear fellow, won't you take something?" He will decline, of course, or else he isn't the humorist I take him for. I shall then consider it my duty to urge him. Fixing my eye steadily upon him, so he can understand that I am terribly in earnest, I shall proceed to apostrophize that genial victim as follows:

"Take, I give it willingly, For invisibly to thee, Spirits, Twain, have crossed with me."

Then I presume we shall go and "see a man."

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. The man who discovered America two points off the port-bow. One day, in his garden, he observed an apple falling from its tree, whereupon a conviction flashed suddenly through his mind that the earth was round. By breaking the bottom of an egg and making it stand on end at the dinner-table, he demonstrated that he could sail due west and in course of time arrive at another hemisphere. He started a line of emigrant packets from Palos, Spain, and landed at Philadelphia, where he walked up Market street with a loaf of bread under each arm. The simple-hearted natives took him out to see their new Park. On his second voyage Columbus was barbarously murdered at the Sandwich Islands, or rather he would have been but for the intervention of Pocahontas, a lovely maiden romantically fond of distressed travelers. After this little incident he went West, where his intrepidity and masterly financial talent displayed itself in the success with which he acquired land and tobacco without paying for them. As the savages had no railroad of which they could make him president, they ostracized him--sent him to the island of St. Helena. But the spirit of discovery refused to be quenched, and the next year we find him landing at Plymouth Rock in a blinding snow-storm. It was here that he shot an apple from his son's head. To this universal genius are we indebted also for the exploration of the sources of the Nile, and for an unintelligible but correspondingly valuable scientific report of a visit to the valley of the Yellowstone. He took no side in our late unhappy war; but during the Revolution he penetrated with a handful of the _garde mobile_ into the mountain-fastnesses of Minnesota, where he won that splendid series of victories which, beginning with Guilford Court-house, terminated in the glorious storming of Chapultepec. Ferdinand and Isabella rewarded him with chains. Genoa, his native city, gave him a statue, and Boston has named in his honor one of her proudest avenues. One day he rushed naked from the bath, exclaiming, "Eureka!" and the presumption is that he was right. He afterward explained himself by saying that he cared not who made the laws of a people, so long as he furnished their ballots. Columbus was cruelly put to death by order of Richard III. of England, and as he walked to the scaffold he exclaimed to the throng that stood around him, "The world moves." The drums struck up to drown his words. Smiling at this little by-play, he adjusted his crimson mantle about him and laid his head upon the block. He then drank off the cup of hemlock with philosophic composure. This great man's life (which, by the way, was not insured) teaches the beautiful moral lesson that an excess of virtue is apt to be followed by a redundancy of happiness, and that he who would secure the felicity of to-day must disdain alike the evanescent shadows of yesterday and the intangible adumbrations of the morrow.

S. Y.

THE CRIES OF THE MARCHANDS.

The other morning I was lying quietly in bed, waiting for the bonne to fetch my café noir, when a most extraordinary sound caught my ear. The cries of Paris marchands early in the morning are curious enough usually, but this one exceeded in quaintness all that I had heard since my arrival. Between the words "Chante, chante, Adrienne!" a horrible braying broke forth, resounding through our quiet faubourg in a manner which brought many a _bonnet de nuit_ to the windows. I got up to see what was the matter.

"Chante, chante, Adrienne!" re-echoed again over the smooth asphalte.

By this time a crowd of gamins--the gamins are always up, no matter how early--had gathered in the middle of the street around the object of the disturbance. It was a marchand of vegetables in a greasy blouse, leading an ass. There was a huge pannier on the ass's back full of kitchen vegetables, which the marchand was crying and praising to our sleepy faubourg. With an economy worthy of Silhouette, the scamp had taught Adrienne--for that was the beast's name--to bray every time he said "Pommes de terre, de terre--terre!" As often as he said this, or "Chante, Adrienne, chante!" Adrienne would switch her tail and _chante_ lugubriously, setting the whole neighborhood in commotion. So adroitly had he trained the creature--with her thigh-bones sticking in peaks through her hide, and a visage of preternatural solemnity--that when her master but lifted his finger Adrienne would go through her part with admirable gravity, thus helping her lord to get his daily bread. I laughed till the bonne came with my coffee, and was glad to see the pannier gradually emptying as the grotesque procession defiled through our street, with a rear-guard of exhilarated urchins poking at poor meek Adrienne in a manner the most _méchant_. And so on they went till the peasant and his invaluable assistant were quite out of hearing.

There is no end to the originality of the Parisians. If you but go to a kiosque to get a _Figaro_, the white-capped marchande has something clever to say. The rain, the air, the clouds, the sun are full of _esprit_ for her--are to her banques de France, upon which she has an unlimited credit--_credit fonder_, if you will, _credit mobilier_, or what not. The _conducteur_ who stands behind his omnibus and obligingly helps you in, says _Merci_! with an accent so exquisite that it is like wit or poetry or music, utterly throwing you into despair after your months and months of travail and dozens and dozens of louis lavished on incompetent professors.

"Pronounce that for me, please," said I one day to a gentleman who had just spoken some word whose secret of pronunciation I had been trying to filch for weeks--some delicate little jewel of a word, faint as a perfume, expressive as only a tiny Parisian word can be--and he did so in the politest manner in the world, adding some little witticism which I do not recall. Whereupon I went home and instantly dismissed my "professor."

But to return to our theme, the cries of the marchands. It would take a pen like Balzac's, as curiously versatile, as observant, as full of individual ink, to catch all the shades of these odd utterances. You may recollect as you lay in your sweet English bed in London, just as the fog was lifting over the great city early in the morning, the distinct individuality of the voices which, although you did not see their owners, told each its story of sunrise thrift and industry as it cried to you the early peas or the wood or the melons of the season. You may remember, too, how perplexing, how fantastic, many of those cries were, making it impossible for you to understand what they meant, or why a wood-huckster, for example, should give vent to such lachrymose sentimentality in vending his fagots. But quite different is the Paris marchand. With a physiognomy of voice--if the expression be pardoned--quite as marked as the cockney's, what he says is yet perfectly clear, often shrewd, gay, cynical, sometimes even spiced with jocularity, as if it were pure fun to get a living, and the world were all a holiday.

Some years ago a marchand was in the habit of visiting our neighborhood whose specialty it was to vend _baguettes_, or small rods for beating carpets, tapestry and padded furniture. His cry was--"Voilà des baguettes! Battez vos meubles, battez vos tapis, battez vos _femmes_ pour UN sou!"

It is said that as this gay chiffonnier went one morning by the fish-markets uttering this jocose cry, a squad of those formidable _poissardes_, the fishwomen of Paris, got after him, and administered a sound thrashing with his own baguettes. Such is the vengeance of the French-woman!

But there is a curious pathos in many of these cries--queer searching tones which go to the heart and set one thinking; tones that come again in times of revolution, and gather into the terrible roar of the Commune. I sometimes wonder if they ever sell anything, those strange sad voices of the early morning struggling up from the street. They are the voices of Humanity on its mighty errand of bread and meat. Some dozen or so traverse our quarter through the day--some of feeble old women, full of sharp complaint; some of strong, quick-stepping men; some of little children with faint modest voices, as if unused to the cruel work of getting a living. It is these poor people who walk from Montmartre to Passy in the morning, and in the evening fish for drowned dogs or pick up corks along the canal of the Porte St. Martin. For a dog it is said they get a franc or two, and corks go at a few sous a hundred.

Such is an inkling of the life-histories wafted through our summer windows by the voices of the street. Well, the sun is brilliant, the Champs are crowded with the world, the jewelers of the Palais Royal are driving a thriving trade, the great boulevards are margined by long lines of absinthe drinkers. Who cares? Only it is a little disagreeable in the early morning to have one's sleep broken by the pathos of life. Let us sleep well on our wine, and dine to-morrow at the Grand Hotel. We shall forget the misery of these patient voices which visit us with their prayer for subsistence every day.

G. F.

THE ANGEL HUSSAR.

I think some of the best talks I have had in my life have been with chance companions on whom I have happened in the course of a roving life--sometimes in a restaurant, sometimes in the railroad-car or steamboat, and not unfrequently in the smoking-room of a hotel.

If you have ever been in Dublin, you know Dawson street, and in Dawson street the Hibernian Hotel. I am not prepared to endorse all the arrangements of that hostelry, nor indeed of any other in that part of the United Kingdom called Ireland: I have suffered too much in them. Still, I will say that the Hibernian is to be praised for a really comfortable and handsome smoking-room, containing easy-chairs deservedly so called, and a capital collection of standard novels. One raw evening in the spring of 1871 I sauntered in, and found some gentlemanlike-looking fellows there, who proved pleasant company, and presently a remarkably _distingué_-looking young man, with an unmistakably military cut, came in and sat down near me. We fell to talking. He was quartered at the Curragh, and was up in Dublin _en route_ for the Newmarket spring meeting. He told me that he made some £700 a year by the turf. "I've a cousin, you see, who is a great sporting man, and thus I'm 'in with a stable,' and get put up to tips," he said. "But for this the turf would be a very poor thing to dabble in." And this led to a talk about officers' lives and their money-affairs. "Oh," he said, "you've no notion of the number who go to utter grief. Why now, I'll tell you what happened to me last season in London. I was asked to go down and dine with some fellows at Richmond; and being awfully late, I rushed out of the club and hailed the first hansom I could see with a likely horse in Pall Mall. I scarcely looked at the man, but said, 'Now I want to get down to the Star and Garter by eight: go a good pace and I'll pay you for it.' Well, he had a stunning good horse, and we rattled away at a fine rate; and when I got out I was putting the money into his hand, when he said, 'Don't you know me, B----?' I looked up in amazement, and in another moment recognized a man whom I had known in India as the greatest swell in the ---- Hussars, the smartest cavalry corps in the service, and who, on account of his splendid face and figure, went by the sobriquet of 'the Angel Hussar.'

"Well, it gave me quite a shock. 'Good Heavens, H----!' I said, 'what in the world does this mean?' 'Mean, old fellow? It means that I'd not a farthing in the world, and didn't want to starve. It's all my own cursed folly. I've made my bed, and must lie on it.' I pressed a couple of sovereigns into his hand, and made him promise to call on me next day. He came and gave me the details of his descent, the old story of course--wine and its alliterative concomitant, conjoined with utter recklessness." "Well, and could you help him?" "I'm glad to say I could. I got him the place of stud-groom to a nobleman in the south of Ireland: he's turned over a new leaf, is perfectly steady, and doing as well as possible."

* * * * *

NOTES.

There is an old story that Augustus, being once asked by a veteran soldier for his aid in a lawsuit, told the petitioner to go to a certain advocate. "Ah," replied the soldier, "it was not by proxy that I served you at Actium!" So struck, continues the tradition, was Augustus with this response, that he personally took charge of the soldier's cause, and gained it for him. Possibly it may be on the theory that his subjects "do not serve him by proxy" when he needs their services that the Austrian kaiser even to this day holds personal audiences with his people regarding their private desires or grievances. Evidently traditional, this custom is so singular as to merit a more general notice than it habitually receives: indeed, its existence might be doubted by the foreign reader, did not a Hungarian journal, _Der Osten_, furnish a detailed description of it. The only prerequisite to an audience would seem to be the lodging of the subject's name and rank with one of the emperor's secretaries, who thereupon appoints the day and hour for his appearance at the palace. If the emperor has been long absent from Vienna, his next audience-day is always a trying one, as the waiting-room is then crowded with hundreds of both sexes, and all ranks and ages. They are in ordinary dress, too, so that the imperial ante-chamber presents a motley and picturesque scene--the gold-broidered coat of the minister of state and the brilliant uniform of the army mingling with the citizen's plain frock, with the Tyrolean or Styrian hunter's jacket, with the _bunda_ of the Hungarian, with the long, fur lined linen overcoat of the Polish peasant; while the rustling silks of the elegant city lady are side by side with the plain woolen skirt of the farmer's wife. Each of these in regular turn, as written on the list from which he calls them, a staff-officer ushers into the emperor's study. There the petitioner states his case. The emperor listens without interruption, then receives the written statements and documents, sometimes asks a question, but generally dismisses the visitor with a simple formula of assurance that a decision will be duly rendered. There is evidently much form in the matter, as if it were but the empty perpetuation of some ancient ceremony designed to show that the monarch is the father of all his people, and hence is personally interested in their individual troubles. But yet it appears that the emperor _does_ listen to the harangues, for he is occasionally known to affix his initials to some documents; which act is always interpreted as a good sign, it being equivalent to a special recommendation to the secretaries, indicating that _primâ facie_ the cause has seemed to the sovereign to be just. However, the precaution of a written statement is always taken, because it would be impossible for him to remember all the oral explanations. Only a few weeks after each of these audiences the suitors are individually notified of the result. The emperor's sense of etiquette does not allow him to give any sign of impatience during the interview, though some of the visitors are as long-winded and importunate as Mark Twain pretends to have been at one of President Grant's receptions. The emperor answers the German, Hungarian, Tzech, Croat or Italian each in the suitor's own tongue. It is quite possible that in the preliminary registry of the names and condition of suitors care is taken that the emperor shall not be subjected to too great annoyance from any abuse of this curious and interesting privilege.

Among the canonizations of the past few months a notable place must be assigned to that of the beatified Benoît Labre. That he was faithful in doctrine needs hardly be said, but it was his manner of life which procured him this posthumous honor, in order that those who read of his career may rank him among those saints who, as in Tickell's line, have both "taught and led the way to heaven," and may seek to imitate his example. The decree of canonization, in reciting his characteristic virtues, says that though of very honorable birth, yet, scorning earthly things as dross, he clothed himself in rags, and ate and drank only what chanty gave him. His shelter was the Coliseum or the doorways or desert places of Rome. He washed not, neither did he yield to the effeminacy of the comb; his hair and nails grew to what length Nature wished: in short (for some of the additional details are better fancied than described), he so utterly neglected his person that he became an object of avoidance to many or all. But his neglected body was after death placed under a glass shrine in the church of the Madonna del Monti. The decree calls upon others to follow the example of the blessed Benoît, or at least as far as the measure of spiritual strength in each will allow; but we apprehend that many will modestly confess that the peculiar virtues of the saint are inimitable.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Little Hodge. By the author of "Ginx's Baby." New York: Dodd & Mead.

The pamphlet has changed since the days of Swift and Dr. Johnson, and the modern method, which seeks to influence opinion by means of a short, pointed story, is certainly a gain in persuasiveness and pictorial vigor. It is hard to say what the dean of Saint Patrick's would have thought of _The Battle of Dorking_, or _Ginx's Baby_, or _Lord Bantam_, or _Little Hodge_, by the author of the last two of these. The dean's ferocity of expression no modern writer can allow himself; and the engine of a tremendous intellect is by no means apparent, as it was in his work, behind the efforts of our modern pamphleteers. But the nerves of pity, when exquisitely touched, are as apt to influence action as the feelings of hate or scorn, and Swift's proposal, from the depths of his bleeding heart, to fat and eat the Irish children, was no more adapted to produce reformed legislation than is the picture in _Little Hodge_ of the ten deserted children starving under the thatch, the eldest girl frozen and pallid, the father shot by a gamekeeper, after having failed to support his motherless brood. Swift would have put in some matchless touches, but the picture seems adapted to our day of average, mechanical commonplace. It has a nerve of tenderness in it which will work upon the gentler souls of our communities. The father of _Little Hodge_ is represented as an honest field-laborer, working for Farmer Jolly at nine shillings a week. The birth of his manikin baby and the accompanying death of his wife increase his cares past bearing. He thereupon commits three crimes in succession: he applies to Jolly for an increase of pay, he joins the agrarian movement of a year ago, and he attempts to run away and find work elsewhere. He is inexorably, minutely and witheringly punished for these several acts, and at last gets his only chance of comfort in a violent death, leaving his poor problems unsolved and his children naked and starving. Such a picture, if drawn by a foreigner, would arouse English indignation from shore to shore; but it is home-drawn. The only foreign delineation is in the author's Jehoiachin Settle, a stage Yankee, whose avocation is planting English children in Canada after the manner of Miss Rye. Settle is a preposterous failure, but every other limb of the writer's argument is strong and operative.

At His Gates. By Mrs. Oliphant. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co.

The author of _Miss Marjoribanks_, who is said to keep writing first a good novel and then a poor novel in careful alternation, will leave her friends in some doubt as to which category she means her last story to be placed in, for it is impossible to call it poor, and conscience-rending to call it good. It is long, and depicts many persons, of whom only one, Mr. Burton's cynical wife, is at all original. Mr. Burton aforesaid, a pompous business-man, places "at his gates," just outside his villa walls, the widow of a man whom he has used as a catspaw. The catspaw was a guileless artist, whom Burton has tempted to take a directorship in his bank when the latter was about to break, he himself retiring in time. The poor painter, in despair, jumps into the water, and his wife, who is proud and aristocratic, is condemned to be the pensioner and neighbor of a vulgar villain, every favor from whom is a conscious insult. Presently the tables are turned. Whether the asphyxiated artist really comes undrowned again, and returns rich from America, nothing could persuade us to tell, as we disapprove of the premature revelation of plots. But the tiresome Burton, at any rate, is bound to come to grief, and his headstrong young daughter to run off with his partner in atrocity, a man as old as her father, and his wife to adapt her cold philosophy to a tiny house in the best part of London. There is one scene, worth all the rest of the book, where this lady tries to bargain with her son, whom she is really fond of, for a manifestation of his love: she is about to yield to his opinion that she should give up her own private settlement to the creditors of her ruined husband, and then, just as she is consenting to this sacrifice, not disinterestedly but maternally, the boy blurts out his passion for a _parvenu_ girl, the lost painter's daughter in fact--a rival whom he introduces to her in the moment of her supreme tenderness. She simply observes, "You have acted according to your nature, Ned--like the rest." If there were ten such chapters in the book as the one containing this scene, the novel would be something immortal, instead of what it is--railway reading of exceptional merit. It forms the first of a "Library of Choice Fiction" projected by Messrs. Scribner, Armstrong & Co., of which it forms a very encouraging standard of interest.

Memoirs of Madame Desbordes-Valmore. By Sainte-Beuve. With a Selection from her Poems. Translated by Harriet W. Preston. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Sainte-Beuve, with whom the art of female biography seems to have died, and who has given us so many softly touched and profoundly understood portraits, is here engaged with one of his own personal friends and contemporaries. This is no study of a heroine long dead, and draped in the obsolete and winning costume of the Empire or the Revolution, but of an anxious woman concerned with the hardship and grime of our own day, "amid the dust and defilement of the city, on the highway, always in quest of lodgings, climbing to the fifth story, wounded on every angle." Only sympathy and a poetic touchstone could bring out the essence and sweetness of a nature so unhappily disguised; but Sainte-Beuve, discarding with a single gesture her penitential mask and hood, finds Madame Desbordes-Valmore "polished, gracious, and even hospitable, investing everything with a certain attractive and artistic air, hiding her griefs under a natural grace, lighted even by gleams of merriment." The poor details of her life he contrives to lose under a purposed artlessness of narrative and a caressing superfluity of loyal eulogy. We learn, however, that Mademoiselle Desbordes was born at Douai in 1786, and died in Paris in 1859. Daughter of a heraldic painter, the necessities of her family obliged her to make a voyage, as a child, to Guadeloupe, in the hope of receiving aid from a rich relative, and a little later to go upon the stage. In the provinces, and occasionally at Paris, she played in the role of _ingénue_ with an exquisite address, succeeding because such a part was really a natural expression of herself: she thus won the abiding friendship of the great Mars, who turned to the young comédienne a little-suspected and tender side of her own character. Mademoiselle Desbordes' artistic charm was infinite, and she controlled with innocent ease the fountain of tears, whitening the whole parterre with pocket-handkerchiefs when she appeared as the Eveline, Claudine and Eulalie of French sentimental drama. But she felt keenly the social ostracism which was still strong toward the stage of 1800, and bewailed in her poetry the "honors divine by night allowed, by day anathematized." In 1817 she married an actor, M. Valmore, who subsequently disappeared into obscure official life, accepting with joy a position as catalogue-maker in the National Library. Her relatives, and even her eldest daughter, received small government favors, while her own little pension, when it came, was so distasteful that for a long time she could not bring herself to apply for the payments. She was a confirmed patriot, shrank from the favors of the throne, was ill for six weeks after Waterloo, and hailed with delight the revolution of '48, which for some time stopped her pension and impoverished her. After twenty years of the stage she retired into the greater privacy of literature, and published various collections of verse which struck a note of pure transparent sentiment rare in the epoch of Louis Philippe. She had, in an uncommon degree, the gift of intelligent admiration: her addresses to the great men of her time appear to be as far as possible from a spirit of calculation or self-interest, but they secured her an answering sympathy all the more valuable as it was never bargained for. Michelet said, "My heart is full of her;" Balzac wrote a drama at her solicitation; Lamartine, taking to himself a published compliment which she had intended for another, replied with twenty beautiful stanzas; Victor Hugo wrote to her, "You are poetry itself;" Mademoiselle Mars, when past the age of public favor, took from her the plain counsel to retire with kindness and actual thanks; Dumas wrote a preface for her; Madame Recamier obtained her pension; the brilliant Sophie Gay, now Madame Émile de Girardin, wrote of her poetry, "How could one depict better the luxury of grief?" M. Raspail, the austere republican, called her the tenth muse, the muse of virtue; and Sainte-Beuve himself, thinking less of her literary life than of her family life and manifold compassions, terms her the "Mater Dolorosa of poetry." His memoir, however, is valuable for its own grace as much as for the modest sweetness of its subject: without his friendly eloquence the name of Madame Desbordes-Valmore would not have got beyond a kind of personal circle of native admirers, nor the present translator have rendered for foreign ears the whispering story of her pure deeds and the plaintive numbers of her verse.

Memoir of a Brother. By Thomas Hughes, Author of "Tom Brown's School-days." London: Macmillan & Co.

Here is a book that was never meant to be dissected and analyzed by critics and reviewers. It is not hard to imagine the "discomfort and annoyance" which the writer has (he tells us) felt in consenting to give to the public a memoir compiled for a private family circle. Still, on the whole, it is altogether well, and there is good reason to call attention to it, for there is much benefit in the book for many readers. It is the loving record of a life that, from first to last, never challenged the world's attention--that was connected with no great movement or event, political, theological or social; but a life, all the same, that was lived with a truth, an earnestness and a straightness that won the affection and respect of all who came within its influence, and will, or we are much mistaken, glow warmly in the hearts and memories of just all whose eyes now light upon this story of it.

How many boys--ay, and grown men and women too--got up from _Tom Brown's School-days_ consciously the better from the reading of it! But there was withal a vague feeling of incompleteness, an unsatisfied longing. The story left off too soon. One wanted to know more of Tom after his school-days. And then, it was, after all, a novel, a fiction. One would have liked to come across that Tom, and perhaps felt half afraid that he might not readily be found outside the cover of the volume. It is true that that longing to know something of the hero's after-life which is one accompaniment of the perusal of a thoroughly good work of fiction was, in the case of Tom Brown, partially gratified. Everybody had the chance of seeing _Tom Brown at Oxford_, and watching their old favorite's course through undergraduate days to that haven and final goal of fiction-writers, marriage. But there he is lost to view for good and all, and one is left to the amiable hypothesis that he lived happy all his days, without being either shown how he managed to do so, or taught how we might manage to do likewise.

Now this _Memoir of a Brother_ may be said just to supply the want that we have here endeavored to indicate. It is the whole life--the child life, the school-boy life, the college life and the adult, responsible life in the world and as a family head--of a real flesh-and-blood, actualized Tom Brown; and it stands out depicted with an intense naturalness of coloring that charms one more than the laborious effects of imaginative biography.

George Hughes, the subject of the memoir before us, was the eldest son of a Berkshire squire, and little more than a year older than his brother and biographer. Very pleasant is the glimpse of child life in an English county forty years ago that is given in the story of his first years. From the first he showed the calm fearlessness, the practicality and the helpfulness which seem to have been among his most prominent characteristics. These qualities, and with them a rigorous conscientiousness, a sensitive unselfishness, and--no trifling advantage in these or any other days--a splendid _physique_, he took with him, and preserved alike unaltered, through Rugby, Oxford and after years. Little wonder that the possessor of such gifts became a Sixth-form boy and football captain at his public school, and achieved boating and cricketing successes, an honorable degree, and the repute of being the most popular man of his day at the university. Most people who take an interest in boat-racing, and many who do not, have heard of that famous race upon the Thames at Henley, in which a crew of _seven_ Oxford oarsmen snatched victory from a (not _the_) Cambridge "eight;" but not everybody knows--for the feat was done now thirty years ago, and names are lost while the memory of a fact survives--that George Hughes pulled the stroke-oar of that plucky seven-oared boat.

Oxford days over, and after a three-years' spell of private tutoring--a not uncommon temporary resort of English graduates while they are making up their minds as to what profession or business to take up for life--we find George Hughes settled in London, reading law in Doctors' Commons. By this time his biographer, who has been close by his side, and following his lead in work and play, through all the years of school and college life, is at work in London too, and the two brothers are again together under one roof. The similarity, one may almost say identicality, of the circumstances of their bringing up might, but that such things, luckily, don't always go by rule, have led one to expect to find in them, now full-grown and thoughtful men, something like a coincidence of sympathies and opinions. Nothing of the sort. George is by temperament and conviction a Tory of the kindly, old-fashioned school: his younger brother has become an advanced Liberal, an enthusiastic promoter of workingmen's associations, and a leading spirit among the so-called Christian Socialists. Needless to add that, though never for one moment sundered one from the other in heart or affection by differences of opinion, the two could not work together in this field. Downright, practical George has his objections, and states them. Listen: "'You don't want to divide other people's property?' 'No.' 'Then why call yourselves Socialists?' 'But we couldn't help ourselves: other people called us so first.' 'Yes, but you needn't have accepted the name. Why acknowledge that the cap fitted?' 'Well, it would have been cowardly to back out. We borrow the ideas of these Frenchmen, of association as opposed to competition, as the true law of industry and of organizing labor--of securing the laborer's position by organizing production and consumption--and it would be cowardly to shirk the name. It is only fools who know nothing about the matter, or people interested in the competitive system of trade, who believe or say that a desire to divide other people's property is of the essence of Socialism.' 'That may be very true, but nine-tenths of mankind, or, at any rate, of Englishmen, come under one or the other of these categories. If you are called Socialists, you will never persuade the British public that this is not your object. There was no need to take the name. You have weight enough to carry already, without putting that on your shoulders.... The long and short of it is, I hate upsetting things, which seems to be your main object. You say that you like to see people discontented with society as it is, and are ready to help to make them so, because it is full of injustice and abuses of all kinds, and will never be better till men are thoroughly discontented. I don't see these evils so strongly as you do, don't believe in heroic remedies, and would sooner see people contented, and making the best of society as they find it. In fact, I was bred and born a Tory, and I can't help it.'" However, our biographer tells us, "he (George) continued to pay his subscription, and to get his clothes at our tailors' association till it failed, which was more than some of our number did, for the cut was so bad as to put the sternest principles to a severe test. But I could see that this was done out of kindness to me, and not from sympathy with what we were doing."

After a few years of law-work in the ecclesiastical courts, the call of a domestic duty took George Hughes--not, one may well imagine, without a severe struggle--from the active practice of his profession, and bade him be content thenceforward with home life. Idle or inactive of course a man of prime mental and bodily vigor could not be. The violoncello, farming, volunteering, magistrate's work, getting up laborers' reading-rooms and organizing Sunday evening classes for the big boys in his village, gave outlets enough for his superfluous energies. And meanwhile he was now become a pater-familias, and had boys of his own to send to Rugby, and to encourage and advise in their school-life by letters which--and it is paying them a high compliment to say so--are almost as good as those which his father had, thirty years before, addressed to him at the same place. It is impossible to overestimate the advantage to a school-boy of having a father who can appreciate and sympathize with boyish thoughts and aims, and knows how to use his natural mentorship wisely. We shall be much surprised if readers do not find the letters from George's father to him, and his to his own boys, among the most attractive parts of this book. Like most men who care heartily for anything, George Hughes always continued to feel a strong interest in public affairs, though circumstances had "counted him out of that crowd" who do the outside working of them. He had a considerable gift of rhyming, and that incident of the ex-prince imperial's "baptism of fire" with which the late Franco-Prussian war opened drew from him some vigorously indignant lines. Here are a few of them:

By! baby Bunting, Daddy's gone a-hunting, Bath of human blood to win, To float his baby Bunting in, By, baby Bunting,

What means this hunting? Listen, baby Bunting-- Wounds--that you may sleep at ease, Death--that you may reign in peace, Sweet baby Bunting.

Yes, baby Bunting! Jolly fun is hunting. Jacques in front shall bleed and toil, You in safety gorge the spoil, Sweet baby Bunting.

Perpend, my small friend, After all this hunting, When the train at last moves on, Daddy's gingerbread _salon_ May get a shunting.

It is not our place here to do more than record how that suddenly, in the early summer of last year, the true strong man was struck down by inflammation of the lungs and passed away. What the loss must be to all whom his influence touched the pages before us sufficiently attest. It is perhaps well, though, that no life can be faithfully lived in the world without leaving such sore legacies of loss behind it.

* * * * *

_Books Received._

The Relation of the Government to the Telegraph; or, a Review of the Two Propositions now Pending before Congress for Changing the Telegraphic Service of the Country. By David A. Wells. With Appendices. New York.

The Country Physician. An Address upon the Life and Character of the late Dr. Frederick Dorsey. By John Thomson Mason. Second edition. Baltimore: William K. Boyle.

Addresses delivered on Laying the Cornerstone of an edifice for the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, October 30, 1872. Philadelphia: Collins.

Mysteries of the Voice and Ear. By Prof. O. N. Rood, Columbia College, New York. With Illustrations. New Haven: C. C. Chatfield & Co.

The Poems of Henry Timrod. Edited, with a Sketch of the Poet's Life, by Paul H. Hayne. New York: E. J. Hale & Son.

Modern Leaders: Being a Series of Biographical Sketches. By Justin McCarthy. New York: Sheldon & Co.

The Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier. Household edition. Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co.

The Earth a Great Magnet. By Alfred Marshal Mayer, Ph. D. New Haven: C. C. Chatfield & Co.

The Two Ysondes, and Other Verses. By Edward Ellis. London: Basil Montagu Pickering.

Jesus, the Lamb of God. By Rev. E. Payson Hammond. Boston: Henry Hoyt.

Social Charades and Parlor Operas. By M. T. Calder. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

The Yale Naught-ical Almanac for 1873. New Haven: C. C. Chatfield & Co.

Julia Reid: Listening and Led By Pansy. Boston: Henry Hoyt.