CHAPTER III.

HIGH ART.

The room into which Mr. Loretz conducted Leonhard seemed to our young friend, as he glanced around it, fit for the court of Apollo. Its proportions had obviously been assigned by some music-loving soul. It occupied two-thirds of the lower floor of the house, and its high ceiling was a noticeable feature. The furniture had all been made at the factory; the floor-mats were woven there; and one gazing around him might well have wondered to what useful or ornamental purpose the green willows growing everywhere in Spenersberg Valley might not be applied. The very pictures hanging on the wall--engraved likenesses of the great masters Mozart and Beethoven--had their frames of well-woven willow twigs; and the rack which held the books and sheets of music was ornamented on each side with raised wreaths of flowers wrought by deft hands from the same pliant material.

At the piano, in the centre of the room, sat Sister Benigna--by her side, Elise Loretz.

It seemed, when Elise's father entered with the stranger, as if there might be a suspension of the performance, but Loretz said, "Two listeners don't signify: we promise to make no noise. Sit down, sir: give me your bag;" and taking Leonhard's satchel, he retired with it to a corner, where he sat down, and with his elbows on his knees, his head between his hands, prepared himself to listen.

Sister Benigna said to her companion, "It is time we practiced before an audience perhaps;" and they went on as if nothing had happened.

And sitting in that cool room on the eve of a scorching and distracted day, is it any wonder that Leonhard composed himself to accept any marvel that might present itself? Once across the threshold of the Every-day, and there is nothing indeed for which one should not be prepared.

If in mood somewhat less enthusiastic than that of our traveler we look in upon that little company, what shall we see?

In the first place, inevitably, Sister Benigna. But describe a picture, will you, or the mountains, or the sea? It must have been something for the Spenersberg folk to know that such a woman dwelt among them, yet probably two-thirds of her influence was unconsciously put forth and as unconsciously received. They knew that in musical matters she inspired them and exacted of them to the uttermost, but they did not and could not know how much her life was worth to all of them, and that they lived on a higher plane because of those half dozen wonderful notes of hers, and the unflagging enthusiasm which needed but the name of love-feast or festival to bring a light into her lovely eyes that seemed to spread up and around her white forehead and beautiful hair like a supernatural lustre. There was a fire that animated her which nobody who saw its glow or felt its warmth could question. Without that altar of music--But why speculate on what she might have been if she had not been what she was? That would be to consider not Benigna, but somebody else.

She was accompanying Elise through Handel's "Pastoral Symphony." Elise began: "He is the righteous Saviour, and He shall speak peace unto the heathen." At the first notes Leonhard looked hastily toward the window, and if it had been a door he would have passed out on to the piazza, that he might there have heard, unseeing, unseen. While he sat still and looked and listened it seemed to him as if he had been engaged in foolish games with children all his life. He sat as it were in the dust, scorning his own insignificance.

The young girl who now sat, now stood beside her, must have been the child of her training. For six years, indeed, they have lived together under one roof, sharing one apartment. Within the hour just passed, that has been said by them toward which all the talk and all the action of the six years has tended, and the heart of the girl lies in the hand of the woman, and what will the woman do with it?

Perhaps all that Benigna can do for Elise has to-day been accomplished. It may be that to grow beside her now will be to grow in the shade when shade is needed no longer, and when the effect will be to weaken life and to deepen the spirit of dependence. Possibly sunlight though scorching, winds though wild, would be better for Elise now than the protecting shadow of her friend.

Looking at Elise, Leonhard feels more assured, more at home. She has a kindly face, a lovely face, he decides, and what a deliciously rich, smooth voice! She is rather after the willowy order in her slender person, and when she begins to sing "Rejoice greatly," he looks at her astonished, doubting whether the sound can really have proceeded from her slender throat. He is again reminded of Marion, but by nothing he hears or sees: poor Marion has her not small reputation as a singer in A----, yet her voice, compared with this, is as wire--gold wire indeed--wire with a _color_ of richness at least; while Elise's is as honey itself--honey with the flavor of the sweetest flowers in it, and, too, the suggestion of the bee's swift, strong wing.

Into the room comes at last Mrs. Loretz. It is just as Elise takes up the final air of the symphony that she appears. She would look upon her daughter while she sings, "Come unto Him, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and He shall give you rest. Take His yoke upon you, and learn of Him," etc. Chiefly to look upon her child she comes--to listen with her loving, confident eyes.

But on the threshold of the music-room she pauses half a second, perceiving the stranger by the window: then she nods pleasantly to him, which motion sets the short silvery hair on her forehead waving, as curls would have waved there had she only let them. She wears a cap trimmed with a blue ribbon tied beneath her chin, and such is the order of her comely gown and apron that it commands attention always, like a true work of art.

She sits down beside her husband, and presently, as by the flash of a single glance indeed, has taken the weight and measure of the gentleman opposite. She likes his appearance, admires his fine dark face and his fine dark eyes, wonders where he came from, what he wants, and--will he stay to tea?

Gazing at her daughter, she looks a little sad: then she smooths her dress, straightens herself, shakes her head, and is absorbed in the music, beating time with tiny foot and hand, and following every strain with an intentness which draws her brows together into a slight frown. Elise almost smiles as she glances toward her mother: she knows where to find enthusiasm at a white heat when it is wanted. With the final repetition, "Ye shall find rest to your souls," the dame rises quickly, and hastening to her daughter embraces her; then passing to the next room, she pauses, perhaps long enough to wipe her eyes; then the jingle of a bell is heard.

At the ringing of this bell, Sister Benigna rose instantly, saying, "Welcome sound!" Loretz also came forth from his corner. He was about to speak to Leonhard, when Benigna took up the trombone which was lying on the piano, and said, "I am curious to know how many rehearsals you have had, sir. It is time, Elise, that our trombonist reported."

Loretz, casting an eye toward his daughter, said, "Never mind Sister Benigna. Our quartette will be all right." Then he turned to Leonhard: it was not now that he felt for the first time the relief of the stranger's presence. "We are going to take food," said he: "will you give me your name and come with us?"

Leonhard gave his name, and moreover his opinion that he had trespassed too long already on the hospitality of the house.

To this remark Loretz paid no attention. "Wife," he called out, "isn't that name down in the birthday book--_Leonhard Marten?_ I am sure of it. He was a Herrnhuter."

"Very likely, husband," was the answer from the other room. "Will you come, good people?" The good people who heard that voice understood just what its tone meant, and there was an instant response.

"Come in, sir," said Loretz; and the invitation admitted no argument, for he went forward at once with a show of alacrity sufficient to satisfy his wife. "This young man here was looking for a public-house. They are full at the Brethren's, I hear. I thought he could not do better than take luck with us," he said to her by way of explanation.

"He is welcome," said the wife in a prompt, business-like tone, which was evidently her way. "Daughter!" She looked at Elise, and Elise brought a plate, knife and fork for "this young man," and placed them where her mother indicated--that is, next herself. Between the mother and daughter Leonhard therefore took refuge, as it were, from the rather too majestic presence opposite known as Sister Benigna. He should have felt at ease in the little circle, for not one of them but felt the addition to their party to be a diversion and a relief. As to Dame Anna Loretz, thoughts were passing through her mind which might pass through the minds of others also in the course of time should Leonhard prove to be a good Moravian and decide to remain among them. They were thoughts which would have sent a dubious smile around the board, however, could they have been made known just now to Elise and her father and Sister Benigna; and what would our young friend--from the city evidently--have looked or said could they have been communicated to him? Already the mind and heart of the mother of Elise, disconcerted and distracted for the moment by that untoward casting of the lot, had risen to a calm survey of the situation of things; and now she was endeavoring to reconcile herself to the prospect which imagination presented to the eye of faith, _If_ she had perceived in the unannounced appearing of the young gentleman who sat near her devouring with keen appetite the good fare before him, and apologizing for his hunger with a grace which ensured him constant renewal of vanishing dishes,--if she had perceived in it a manifestation of the will of Providence, she could not have smiled on Leonhard more kindly, or more successfully have exerted herself to make him feel at home.

And might not Mr. Leonhard have congratulated himself? If there was a "great house" in Spenersberg, this was that mansion; and if there were great people there, these certainly were they. And to think of finding in this vale cultivators of high art, intelligent, simple-hearted, earnest, beautiful!

CAROLINE CHESEBRO'.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

THE IRISH CAPITAL.

The metropolis of Ireland about the middle of the last century was the fourth in Europe in point of size. Since then it has made little progress in comparison with many others. Yet it is a large place, covering a great area, and holding a population which numbers some three hundred thousand souls.

It may further be said that notwithstanding the withdrawal, consequent on the Union, of the aristocratic classes from Dublin, the city has improved more in the last fifty years than at any previous period. Dublin, at the Union, and for some time after, was a very dirty place indeed. To-day, although, from that antipathy to paint common to the whole Irish nation--which can apparently never realize the Dutch proverb, that "paint costs nothing," or the English one, that "a stitch in time saves nine"--much of the town looks dingy, it is, as a whole, cleaner than almost any capital in Europe, so far as drainage and the sanitary state of the dwellings are concerned. And here we speak from experience, having last year, in company with detective officers, visited all its lowest and poorest haunts.

The cause of this sanitary excellence is that matters of this kind are placed entirely in the hands of the police, who rigorously carry out the orders given to them on such points. It is devoutly to be hoped that a similar system will ere long be in vogue in the towns of our own country.

The noblesse have now quite deserted the Irish capital. Besides the lord-chancellor, there is probably not a single peer occupying a house there to-day. Houses are excellent and very cheap. An immense mansion in the best situation can be had for a thousand dollars a year. The markets are capitally supplied, and the prices are generally about one-third of those of New York. Not a single item of living is dear. But, notwithstanding these and many other advantages, the place has lost popularity, has a "deadly-lively" air about it, and, it must be admitted, is in many respects wondrously dull, especially to those who have been used to the brisk life of a great commercial or pleasure-loving capital.

"Cornelius O'Dowd" paid a visit to Dublin in 1871 after a long absence, and said some very pretty things about it. Never was the company or claret better. Well, the fact was, that while the great and lamented Cornelius was there he was fêted and made much of. Lord Spencer gave him a dinner, so did other magnates, and his séjour was one prolonged feasting; but nevertheless the every-day life of the Irish capital is awfully and wonderfully dull, as those who know it best, and have the cream of such society as it offers, would in strict confidence admit. From January to May there is an attempt at a "season," during the earlier part of which the viceroy gives a great many entertainments. These are remarkably well done, and the smaller parties are very agreeable. But politics intervene here, as in everything else in Ireland, to mar considerably the brilliancy of the vice-regal court. When the Whigs are "in" the Tory aristocracy hold off from "the Castle," and _vice versâ_. Dublin is generally much more brilliant under a Tory viceroy, inasmuch as nine-tenths of the Irish peerage and landed gentry support that side of politics. The vice-reign of the duke of Abercorn, the last lord-lieutenant, will long be remembered as a period of exceptional splendor in the annals of Dublin. He maintained the dignity of the office in a style which had not been known for half a century, and in this respect proved particularly acceptable to people of all classes. Besides, he is a man of magnificent presence, and has a fitting helpmate (sister of Earl Russell) and beautiful daughters; and it was universally admitted that the round people had got into the round holes, so far as the duke and duchess were concerned.

The lord-lieutenant's levees and drawing-rooms take place at night, and are therefore much more cheerful than similar ceremonials at Buckingham Palace. His Excellency kisses all the ladies presented to him. The vice-regal salary is one hundred thousand dollars, with allowances, but most viceroys spend a great deal more. There are in such a poor country, where people have no sort of qualms about asking, innumerable claims upon their purses.

The office of viceroy of Ireland is one which prime ministers find it no easy task to fill. Just that kind of person is wanted for the office who has no wish to hold it. A great peer with half a million of dollars' income doesn't care about accepting troublesome and occasionally anxious duties, from which he, at all events, has nothing to gain. For some time Lord Derby was in a quandary to get any one who would do to take it, and it may be doubted whether the marquis of Abercorn would have sacrificed himself if the glittering prospect of a coronet all strawberry leaves (for he was created a duke while in office) had not been held before his eyes. The vice-regal lodge is a plain, unpretending building. It is charmingly situated in the Phoenix Park (1760 acres), and commands delightful views over the Wicklow Mountains. Within, it is comfortable and commodious. The viceroy resides there eight months in the year. He goes to "the Castle" from December to April. The Castle is "no great thing." It is situated in the heart of Dublin. Around it are the various government offices. St. Patrick's Hall is a fine apartment, but certainly does not deserve the name of magnificent, and is a very poor affair compared with the reception-saloons of third-rate continental princes.

The Dublin season culminates, so far at least as the vice-regal entertainments go, in the ball given here on St. Patrick's Day (March 17). On such occasions it is _de rigueur_ to wear a court-dress. Even those who venture to appear in the regulation trowsers admissible at a levee at St. James's are seriously cautioned "not to do it again."

Though Dublin is now deserted by the aristocracy, most of the _grand-seigneur_ mansions are still standing. Leinster House, built about 1760, and said to have served as a model for the "White House," was in 1815 sold by the duke to the Royal Dublin Society. Up to 1868 the duke of Leinster[1] was Ireland's only duke, and the house is certainly a stately and appropriate ducal residence.

It must, however, be confessed that there is something decidedly _triste_ and severe about this big mansion. A celebrated whilom tenant of it, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, appeared to think so, for in 1791 he writes to his mother, after his return from the bright and sunny atmosphere of America: "I confess Leinster House does not inspire the brightest ideas. By the by, what a melancholy house it is! You can't conceive how much it appeared so when first we came from Kildare. A country housemaid I brought with me cried for two days, and said she thought that she was in a prison." It was at Leinster House that "Lord Edward"--he is to this day always thus known by the people of Ireland, who never think it needful to add his surname--after having joined "the United Irishmen," had interviews with the informer Reynolds, who, it is believed, afterward betrayed him.

Lady Sarah Napier, mother of Sir William Napier, the well-known historian of the Peninsular War, and other eminent sons, was aunt to Lord Edward, being sister of his mother. These ladies were daughters of the duke of Richmond, and Lady Sarah was remarkable as being a lady to whom George III. was passionately attached, and whom, but for the vehement opposition of his mother and her _entourage_, he would have married. In a journal of this lady's I find the following interesting account of the search for her nephew: "The separate warrant went by a messenger, attended by the sheriff and a party of soldiers, into Leinster House. The servants ran to Lady Edward, who was ill, and told her. She said directly, 'There is no help: send them up.' They asked very civilly for her papers and for Edward's, and she gave them all. Her apparent distress moved Major O'Kelly to tears, and their whole conduct was proper."

Lady Edward Fitzgerald (whose husband had served under Lord Moira in America) was at Moira House on the evening of her husband's arrest. Writing from Castletown, county Kildare, two days after that event, Lady Louisa Connolly, Lord Edward's aunt, says: "As soon as Edward's wound was dressed he desired the private secretary at the Castle to write for him to Lady Edward and tell her what had happened. The secretary carried the note himself. Lady E. was at Moira House, and a servant of Lady Mountcashel's came soon after to forbid Lady Edward's servants saying anything to her that night." She continued, after Lord E.'s death, to reside at Moira House till obliged by an order of the privy council to retire to England, where she became the guest of her husband's uncle, the duke of Richmond.[2]

Lady Moira, who so kindly befriended Lady Edward, was unquestionably a very remarkable woman, and had considerable influence, politically and socially, in the Dublin of her day. Although an Englishwoman, she became in some respects _ipsis Hibernis Hibernior,_ and for a very long period prior to her death never quitted the soil of Ireland. Had the Irish aristocracy generally been of the complexion of those who assembled in the more intimate reunions at Moira House, the history of that country during the past century would have been a widely different one. The members of that brilliant circle were thorough anti-Unionists, and Lord Moira and his sons-in-law, the earls of Granard and Mountcashel, proved that they were not to be conciliated by bribes, either in money or honors, by entering their formal protest against that measure on the books of the Irish House of Lords.

When the delegates on behalf of Catholic claims came to London in 1792, it was this enlightened Irish nobleman who received them, and who, in the event of the minister declining to admit them, intended as a peer to have claimed an audience of the king. Lord Moira both in the English and Irish Houses of Peers denounced the oppressive measures of the government, and his opposition gave so much offence that the English general Lake was reported to hayer declared that if a town in the North was to be burnt, they had best begin with Lord Moira's, causing him so much apprehension that he removed his collection, which was of extraordinary value, from his seat, Moira Hall, in the county Down, to England.

The celebrated John Wesley visited Lady Moira at Moira House in 1775, "and was surprised to observe, though not a more grand, a far more elegant room than he had ever seen in England. It was an octagon, about twenty feet square, and fifteen or sixteen high, having one window (the sides of it inlaid throughout with mother-of-pearl) reaching from the top of the room to the bottom: the ceiling, sides and furniture of the room were equally elegant." It was here that two of the greatest members of their respective legislatures--Charles Fox and Henry Grattan--first met in 1777, and Moira House continued to be the scene of splendid entertainments up to the death of the first Lord Moira, in 1793. Wesley concludes his letter about Moira House by asking, "Must this too pass away like a dream?" Whether like a dream or no, it certainly has been signally the fate of this whilom proud mansion to pass from the highest to the very humblest almost at a bound. For some years after Lady Moira's death (in 1808) the house was kept up by the family, but in 1826 it was let to an anti-mendicity society. The upper story was removed, the mansion was stripped throughout of its splendid decorations--some of the furniture is now at Castle Forbes, the seat of the earl of Granard, Lady Moira's great-grandson, a worthy descendant--and the saloons which were wont to be thronged with the most brilliant and splendid society of the Irish metropolis in its heyday are now the abode of perhaps the very poorest outcasts who are to be found in the whole wide world.

The district in which Moira House stands has long ceased to be fashionable. The mansion stands close to the Liffey, a few yards back from the road. An elderly man who has charge of the mendicity institution for whose purposes the house is at present used, told me that he remembered it when kept up by the family, although its members were not actually residing there. What is now a fearfully dreary courtyard, where the outcasts of Dublin disport themselves, was then, he said, a fine garden with splendid mulberry trees, which he, being a favorite with the gardener, was permitted to climb--a circumstance which had naturally impressed itself on his childish memory. I told him that I had heard that long after the difficulties of the first marquis--who lent one hundred thousand pounds to George the Magnificent when that glorious prince was at the last gasp for _£ s. d_.--had compelled him to part with his large estates; in the county Down, he had retained possession of this mansion, and that it had even descended to the last marquis, whose wild career concluded when he was only six-and-twenty; but the old man thought it had passed from them long before. He remembered, he said, the last peer (with whom the title became extinct) coming to Dublin, because he had an interview with him about some furniture for his yacht, my informant being at that time in business, and he thought he should have heard if the property had been still retained. I asked if the marquis had exhibited any interest as to the old historical mansion of his family. "Not the slightest," he replied.

Hardy, in his well-known life of Lord Charlemont, says: "His (Lord Moira's) house will be long, very long, remembered: it was for many years the seat of refined hospitality, of good nature and of good conversation. In doing the honors of it, Lord Moira had certainly one advantage above most men, for he had every assistance that true magnificence, the nobleness of manners peculiar to exalted birth, and talents for society the most cultivated, could give him in his illustrious countess."

Powerscourt House, a really noble mansion in St. Andrew street, is now used by a great wholesale firm, but is so little altered that it could be fitted for a private residence again in a very brief time. The staircase is grand in proportion, and the steps and balustrades are of polished mahogany, the last being richly carved.

Tyrone House is now the Education Office, and Mornington House, where Wellington's father resided, and where or at Dangan--for it is a doubtful point--the duke was born, is also used for government purposes.

The great squares of Dublin are St. Stephen's Green, Rutland, Mountjoy, Merrion and Fitzwilliam Squares. The first of these dates from the latter half of the seventeenth century, and is probably in a far more prosperous condition now than it ever was before. If we are to judge by Whitelaw's history, it presented in 1819 an aspect such as no public square out of Dublin--the enclosure of Leicester Square, London, excepted--could present. "Of that kind of architectural beauty," he says, "which arises from symmetry and regularity, here are no traces." Some houses were on a level with the streets, others were approached by a grand _perron_. The proprietors were of all degrees: here was the great house of a lord, there a miserable dramshop. The enclosure consisted of no less than thirteen acres, making Stephen's Green the largest public square in Europe. It was simply a great treeless field, with an equestrian statue of George II. stuck in the middle of it. The principal entrance to the ground is described as "decorated with four piers of black stone crowned with globes of mountain granite, once respectable, but exhibiting shameful symptoms of neglect and decay." There had been a gravel walk called the "Beaux' Walk," from its having been a fashionable resort, "but," says Whitelaw, "the ditch which bounds it is now usually filled with stagnant water, which seems to be the appropriate receptacle of animal bodies in a disgusting state of putrefaction." At night this charming recreation-ground was illumined by twenty-six lamps, at a distance of one hundred and seventy feet from each other, stuck on wooden poles. Such an account of the grand square of Dublin does not make one surprised to learn that the main approach to it from the heart of the city was of a very miserable description.

In reading Whitelaw's history of Dublin it is impossible not to be struck with the fact that it records a degree of neglect and indifference on the part of the people and the local authorities to beauty, decency and order such as could scarcely be found in another country. In the centre of Merrion Square was a fountain of very ambitious expense and design, erected to the honor of the duke and duchess of Rutland, a lord and lady lieutenant. The fountain was only finished in 1791, but "from a fault in the foundation, or some shameful negligence in the construction, is already cracked and bulged in several places; and though intended as a monument to perpetuate the memory of an illustrious nobleman and his heroic father (the famous Lord Granby), is, after an existence of only sixteen years, tottering to its fall." Mr. Whitelaw continues: "Unhappily, _a savage barbarism that seems hostile to every idea of order or decency, of beauty and elegance, prevails among but too many of the lower orders_; and hence the decorations of almost every public fountain have been destroyed or disfigured: the figure, shamefully mutilated, of the water-nymph in this fountain has been reduced to a disgusting trunk, and the _alto relievo_ over it shows equal symptoms of decay, arising partly from violence, and partly, perhaps, from the perishable nature of the materials." Truly a forcible picture of art and the appreciation thereof in Ireland!

During the last century some Italians came to Dublin, who left their mark upon the interior decorations of rich men's houses. Many of the old houses retain the beautiful mantelpieces designed and executed by these accomplished artists. A leading house-fitter of Dublin has, however, bought up a good many, and they are finding their way to London, where it is to be hoped they may produce a revolution in taste, for London mantelpieces are, as a rule, hideous. Some of these specimens of art have been bought by wealthy Irishmen and transferred to their country-houses. One nobleman, Lord Langford, whose ancestral home was wrecked in the rebellion of 1798, has lately been restoring it, and bought up many of the Dublin mantelpieces.

The ornamentation of Belvedere House, in Gardener Row, is particularly elaborate and in wonderfully good repair.

Irish family history contains few sadder stories than that of the first countess of Belvedere. Lord Belvedere was a man of fashion who much frequented St. James's, and indeed owed his elevation, first to a barony and then to an earldom, to the favor of that highly uninteresting monarch, George II. Leaving his wife sometimes for long periods at Gaulston, a vast and dreary residence (since pulled down) in Westmeath, he betook himself to London, and Lady Belvedere at such times lived much with her husband's brother, Mr. Arthur Rochfort, and his family. It is said that some woman with whom Lord Belvedere had long been connected was determined to make mischief between him and his wife. Eight years after their marriage, Lady Belvedere was accused of adultery with Mr. Rochfort: in an action of _crim. con._ damages to the extent of twenty thousand pounds were given, and the defendant was obliged to fly the country. For many years he lived abroad, but at length ventured to return, when his brother caused him to be arrested, and he died in confinement, protesting to the last, as did Lady Belvedere, his innocence. For Lady Belvedere a terrible punishment for her alleged misdeeds was in store. Her husband quitted Gaulston for a cheerful retreat in another part of the county, and henceforth that gloomy mansion became the prison-house of the unhappy countess.

When her imprisonment commenced Lady Belvedere was twenty-five. For eighteen years she remained a prisoner. Her husband often visited Gaulston, but uniformly avoided all personal communication with her. Once she succeeded in speaking to him, but her entreaties were in vain, and thenceforward, whenever he was about the grounds at Gaulston, the attendant accompanying Lady Belvedere in her walks was instructed to ring a bell to give warning of her approach. At length, after twelve years of captivity, Lady Belvedere contrived to escape, but Lord Belvedere, who had been apprised of the fact, reached her father's house in Dublin before her, and she found that his representations had weighed so strongly with Lord Molesworth--who had married a second time--that orders had been given that she was not to be admitted. She then took a very unfortunate step by repairing to the house of her friends, the wife and family of the brother-in-law with whom she had been accused of being guilty of misconduct, Mr. Rochfort himself being in exile. She was presently seized and reconveyed to Gaulston, where a much more rigorous treatment was henceforth pursued toward her. At length her husband's death set her free.

Lady Belvedere passed the rest of her days in peace and comfort at the house of her daughter and son-in-law, Lord and Lady Lanesborough. She did not long survive her husband, and on her deathbed, after partaking of the holy communion, affirmed with a most solemn oath her perfect innocence of the crime for which she had suffered so much.

But perhaps in many respects Charlemont House has the most interesting recollections connected with it of all the _grand-seigneur_ mansions of the Irish metropolis. It was here that the first earl of Charlemont, the best specimen of a nobleman that Ireland has to boast of, passed the greater portion of his later life. Lord Charlemont's name is to be found in all the memoirs of eminent political and literary men of his time. He was the friend of Burke and Johnson, a popular member of _the_ club, and a munificent patron of literature and art. But more than all this, he stuck bravely to his country, and to no man in Ireland did the Stopford motto, _Patriæ infelici fidelis_, more correctly apply. Had more of his order been like him, what a different country might Ireland have been!

I found Charlemont House full of painters and glaziers. The mansion, which was retained _in statu quo_ by the late earl, although, for fifty years no member of the family had slept there, has now been sold to the government, and is being prepared for the accommodation of the survey department. The mouldings of the beautiful ceilings are still extant in some of the rooms, although what once was gilt is now white-wash. The library is much as it was, minus the very valuable collection of books, which were sold some time since by the present earl, and fetched a large sum, albeit many of the most valuable were destroyed in a fire which broke out at the auctioneer's where they were deposited in London.[3]

With his friend Edmund Burke, Lord Charlemont maintained a close correspondence. One of Burke's published letters relates to an American gentleman, Mr. Shippen, whom he was introducing to the hospitalities of Charlemont House, and whom he describes as very agreeable, sensible and accomplished. "America and we," he concludes, "are not under the same crown, but if we are united by mutual good-will and reciprocal good offices, perhaps it may do almost as well. Mr. Shippen will give you no unfavorable specimen of the New World."

From the middle of the last century Henrietta street,[4] on the north bank of the Liffey, was the residence of many of the leading members of the aristocracy. The street is a _cul-de-sac_, with the King's Inn (the Temple and Lincoln's Inn of Dublin) at the farther end. The houses are extremely spacious and richly ornamented; in fact, far finer in point of proportion and design than ordinary London houses of the first class.

Through the politeness of a gentleman who possesses half the street, I went over some of the houses, which are extremely spacious, and contain beautifully-proportioned rooms richly ornamented with carving and moulding. In what was formerly Mountjoy House I found a dining-room whose cornices and ceilings were of the most elegant design and execution. This house had seen many curious scenes. It was formerly the town-house of the earl of Blessington--whose second title was Viscount Mountjoy--to whom the whole street belonged. The founder of this family, Luke Gardiner, rose from a humble origin by energy and intrigue, and his son married the heiress of the Mountjoys. It was occupied up to 1830 by the last earl of Blessington, husband of the celebrated literary star. Soon after their marriage Lady Blessington accompanied her husband to Ireland, and he invited some of his friends who were ignorant of the event to dine at his house in Henrietta street. These latter were somewhat startled when he entered the room with a beautiful woman leaning on his arm whom he introduced as his wife. Among the guests was a gentleman who had been in that room only four years before, when the walls were hung with black, and in the centre, on an elevated platform, was placed a coffin with a gorgeous velvet pall, with the remains in it of a woman once scarcely surpassed in loveliness by the lady then present in bridal costume. This was the first Lady Blessington.

The last of the Irish noblesse in this street was Lady Harriet, widow of the Right Hon. Denis Bowes-Daly, on whom Grattan passed such warm eulogies, and who was the original of Lever's happiest creation, _The Knight of Gwynne_.

It has been a frequent subject of conjecture why the Phoenix Park was so called. The best explanation seems to be that on a site within its boundaries there formerly stood, close to a remarkable spring of water, an ancient manor-house. The manor was called Fionn-uisge, pronounced _finniské_, which signifies clear or fair water, and this term easily became corrupted into Phoenix. The land became Crown property in 1559, and was made into a park in 1662. It was immensely improved and put into its present shape by the earl of Chesterfield, author of the _Letters_--one of the best viceroys Ireland ever had--about 1743. The area is seventeen hundred and sixty acres. With the exception of Windsor and our own Fairmount, no public park in the world can compare with it. The ground undulates charmingly, the views are extensive and beautiful.

Grouped around the Phoenix Park are many beautiful seats: the finest is Woodlands. This belonged formerly to the Luttrells, a notorious family, the head of which was raised to the Irish peerage as earl of Carhampton. It was with a Lord Carhampton that his son declined to fight a duel, not at all because he was his father, but because he "did not consider him a gentleman." Early in the century, Woodlands, then known as Luttrellstown, became the property of Luke White, one of the most remarkable men that Ireland has produced. In 1778, Luke White was in the habit of buying cheap odds and ends of literature from a bookseller, named Warren, in Belfast to peddle about the country. In 1798 he loaned the Irish government, then in great difficulty, a million of pounds! Mr. Warren, who found him very punctual and exact, used to permit him to leave his pack behind his counter and call for it in the morning. No one would then have dreamed that the greasy bag was to lead to such results. By degrees, White scraped together some means. He used to take odd volumes to a binder in Belfast and employ him to get the "vol." at the beginning and end of an odd volume erased, so as to pass it off among the unwary as a perfect book, and generally furbish it up. Then he used to sell his literary wares by auction in the streets of Belfast. The knowledge he thus acquired of public sales procured him a clerkship with a Dublin auctioneer. He opened first a book-stall, and then a regular book-shop, in Dawson street, a leading thoroughfare of Dublin. There he became eminent. He sold lottery-tickets, speculated in the funds and contracted for government loans. In 1798, when the rebellion broke out, the Irish government was desperately in need of funds. They came into the Dublin market for a loan of a million, and the best terms they could get were from Luke White, who offered to take it at sixty-five pounds per one hundred pound share at five per cent.--not unremunerative terms.

At the time of his death, in 1824, he had long been M.P. for Leitrim, and his son was member for the county of Dublin. He left property worth a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars a year. Eventually almost the whole of it devolved on his fourth son, who some years ago was created a peer of the United Kingdom as Lord Annaly.

The family has probably spent more than a million and a half of dollars on elections. It has always been on the Liberal side. The present peer has property in about a dozen counties, and is lord-lieutenant of Langford, whilst his younger son holds the same high office in Clare.

The University of Dublin consists of a single college--Trinity. This edifice forms a prominent feature in the Irish metropolis. It stands in College Green, almost opposite to the Bank of Ireland, the former legislative chambers. Since the Union, Trinity College has been but little resorted to by men of the upper ranks of Irish society, although it has certainly contributed some very eminent men to the public service--notably, the late unfortunate governor-general, Lord Mayo, and Lord Cairns, ex-lord-chancellor of England. Trinity is one of the largest owners of real estate in the country. The fellowships are far better than those of the English universities. The provost, who occupies a large and stately mansion, has a separate estate worth some fifteen thousand dollars a year, which he manages himself.

Trinity has a very fine library. It is one of the five which by an act of Parliament has a right to demand from the publisher a copy of every work published. The origin of the library is quite unique. It dates from a benefaction by the victorious English army after its defeat of the Spaniards at Kinsale in 1603, when they devoted one thousand eight hundred pounds--a sum equivalent to five times that money at present rates--to establish a library in the university, being, it may be presumed, instigated by some eminent personage, who suggested that such a course would be acceptable to the queen, who had founded the university.

Dr. Chaloner and Mr. (afterward Archbishop) Ussher were appointed trustees of this donation; "and," says Dr. Parr, "it is somewhat remarkable that at this time, when the said persons were in London about laying out this money in books, they there met Sir Thomas Bodley, then buying books for his newly-erected library in Oxford; so that there began a correspondence between them upon this occasion, helping each other to procure the choicest and best books on moral subjects that could be gotten; so that the famous Bodleian Library at Oxford and that of Dublin began together."

The private collection of Ussher himself, consisting of ten thousand volumes, was the first considerable donation which the library received, and for this also, curiously enough, it was again indebted to the English army. In 1640, Ussher left Ireland. The insurgents soon after destroyed all his effects with the exception of his books, which were secured and sent to London. In 1642--when the troubles between King and Parliament had broken out--Ussher was nominated one of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, but having offended the parliamentary authorities by refusing to attend, his library was confiscated as that of a delinquent by order of the House of Commons. However, his friend, the celebrated John Selden, got leave to buy the books, as though for himself, but really to restore them to Ussher. Narrow circumstances subsequently caused him to leave the library to his daughter, instead of to Trinity. Cardinal Mazarin and the king of Denmark made offers for it, but Cromwell interfered to prevent their acceptance. Soon after, the officers and, soldiers of Cromwell's army then in Ireland, wishing to emulate those of Elizabeth, purchased the whole library, together with all the archbishop's very valuable manuscripts and a choice collection of coins, for the purpose of presenting them to the college. But when these articles were brought over to Ireland, Cromwell refused to permit the intentions of the donors to be carried into effect, alleging that he intended to found a new college, in which the collection might more conveniently be preserved separate from all other books. The library was therefore deposited in Dublin Castle, and so neglected that a great number of valuable books and manuscripts were stolen or destroyed. At the Restoration, Charles II. ordered that what remained of the primate's library should be given to the university, as originally intended.

One of the most extraordinary persons who ever occupied the position of provost, or indeed any position, was John Hely Hutchinson. He was a man of great ability, and perfectly determined to succeed, without being troubled with any very tiresome qualms as to the means he employed in the process. Such an officeholder as this man the world probably never saw. He was at the same time reversionary principal secretary of state for Ireland, a privy councilor, M.P. for Cork, provost of Trinity College, Dublin, major of the fourth regiment of horse, and searcher of the port of Strangford. When he was appointed provost--a situation always filled since the foundation by a bachelor--there was great indignation amongst the fellows, and to appease them he ultimately procured a decree permitting them to marry--a privilege which they, unlike their brethren at Oxford and Cambridge, enjoy to this day. His position as provost did not prevent his righting a duel with a Mr. Doyle, but neither was hurt. Mr. Hutchinson had a great dislike to a Mr. Shrewbridge, one of the junior fellows, who had shown opposition to him. Mr. Shrewbridge died, and the under--graduates attributed his death to the provost's having refused him permission to go away for change of air. A thoroughly Hiber-man _émeute_ was the consequence. The provost ordered that the great bell, which usually tolls for a fellow, should not toll, and that the body should be privately buried at six A.M. in the fellows' burial-ground. The students immediately posted up placards that the great bell _should_ toll, and that the funeral should be by torchlight. They carried the point. Almost all the students attended the corpse to the grave in scarfs and hatbands at their own expense, and when the funeral oration was pronounced they flew in wild excitement to the provost's house, burst open his doors and smashed the furniture to pieces. The provost had a hint given him, and with his family had retreated to his house near Dublin. It was subsequently stated on good authority that Mr. Shrewbridge could not in any case have recovered.

Any one who takes an interest in the most original writer--not to say, man--of the eighteenth century will not fail to find his way to "the Liberties," as that queer district is called which surrounds St. Patrick's Cathedral. Some years ago the present writer made his way into the great deserted deanery--the then dean resided in another part of the city--got the old woman in charge of the house to open the shutters of the dining-room, and gazed at the original portrait of Jonathan Swift, which hangs there an heirloom to his successors. Of the precincts of his cathedral he writes to Pope: "I am lord-mayor of one hundred and twenty houses,[5] I am absolute lord of the greatest cathedral in the kingdom, and am at peace with the neighboring princes--_i.e._, the lord-mayor of the city and the archbishop of Dublin--but the latter sometimes attempts encroachments on my dominions, as old Lewis did in Lorraine."

Again, he writes to Dr. Sheridan: "No soul has broken his neck or is hanged or married; only Cancerina is dead.[6] I let her go to her grave without a coffin and without fees."

St. Patrick's, which was, in a deplorable state during Swift's deanship, and indeed for a century after, is now restored to its original magnificence. Indeed, it may be doubted whether it is not in a condition superior to what it ever was. This superb work has been effected entirely by the princely munificence of the Guinness family, the great _stout_ brewers of Dublin; and Mr. Roe, a wealthy distiller, is now engaged in the work of restoring Christ Church, the other Protestant cathedral.

I paid a visit to the Bank of Ireland, the edifice on which the hopes of so many patriotic Irishmen have been centred, insomuch as it is the old Parliament-house. The elderly official who conducted us over the building took us first through the bank-note manufacturing rooms, where we espied in a corner a queer wooden figure draped in a queerer uniform. Demanding its history, he said that the clothes had belonged to an old servant of the establishment, and were discovered after his decease a few years ago. Formerly the Bank of Ireland was guarded by a special corps of its own, and the ancient retainer, who had been a member of this very commercial regiment, was proud of it, and had kept his dress as a cherished memorial. When George IV. came to Ireland, on his celebrated popularity-hunt, in 1821--previous to which no English monarch had visited Ireland since William III.--he graciously condescended to give the bank a military guard, which has since been continued. On the day I went I found a number of soldiers of the Scots Fusileer Guards occupying the guard-room. The officer on duty receives an allowance of two dollars and a half for his dinner. At the Bank of England he gets instead a dinner for himself and a friend, and a couple of bottles of wine.

The interior of the Parliament-house is almost the same as when Ireland had her own separate legislature. The House of Lords is in precisely the condition in which it was left in 1801. It is a large oak-paneled, oblong chamber of no particular beauty, and might very well pass for the dining-hall of a London guild. There is a handsome fireplace, and the walls are in great part covered with two fine pieces of tapestry representing the battle of the Boyne and the siege of Derry, King William, "of glorious, pious and immortal," etc., being of course the most conspicuous object in the foreground. The attendant stated that a special clause in the lease of the buildings, to the Bank of Ireland Company stipulated that the House of Lords was to remain _in statu quo_. Perhaps it may return some of these days to its former use. The House of Commons, a large stone hall of stately dimensions, is now the cash-office of the bank. There seemed nothing about it architecturally to call for special notice. I mooted the probability of the Parliament being restored, but found, rather to my surprise, that the attendant was by no means disposed to regard such a step with unqualified approval. It would be a blessing if the country was fit to govern itself, he said, or words to that effect, but looking at the religious dissension and political bitterness existing in the country, he feared that it wouldn't do yet a while; and I suspect he's right. Ireland is a house divided against itself: fifty years hence it may resemble Scotland. Meanwhile, there is no doubt whatever that a measure giving both Ireland and Scotland something in the nature of State legislatures would find favor with many English M.P.s, who greatly grudge having the valuable time of the imperial legislature wasted over a gas-bill in Tipperary or a water-works scheme for Dundee. The bank seemed to me to be guarded with extraordinary care. I went all over the roof, on which a guard is mounted at night. At "coigns of vantage" there is a bullet-proof palisading, with peepholes through which a volley of musketry might be poured. I should fancy that extra precautions have probably been taken since the Fenian _émeutes_ of the last ten years.

Dublin swarms with soldiers, constabulary and police. The metropolitan police is divided into six divisions, each two hundred strong. Its men are, I believe, beyond a doubt the very finest in the world in point of physique. Numbers of them are six feet two or three inches high, and they are broad and athletic in proportion. Indeed, the magnificence of some of them who are detached for duty at certain "great confluences of human existence" is such that you see strangers standing and gaping at the giants in sheer amazement. The metropolitan police is quite distinct from the constabulary, and under a different chief.

Outside the bank, in College Green, is the celebrated statue of William III. Its location has been more than once changed, and it is now placed where the officer on guard at the bank can keep an eye upon it. This fearful object, which would make a Pradier or Chantrey shudder, is painted and gilt annually. It has long served as a bone of contention between Protestant and Papist, and has come off very badly several times at the hands of the latter--a circumstance which probably accounts for one of the horse's legs being about a foot longer than the rest--half of that limb having been renewed after it had been lost in one of the many free fights in which this remarkable quadruped has seen service. The greatest proprietor of real estate in Dublin is the young earl of Pembroke, son of the late Right Hon. Sidney Herbert, so well known in connection with the Crimean war, who was created, shortly before his death, Lord Herbert of Lea. His estate, which is the most valuable in Ireland, comprises Merrion Square and all the most fashionable part of the Irish metropolis, and extends for several miles along the railway line running from Kingstown, the landing-place from England, to the capital. The property also includes Mount Merrion, a neglected seat about four miles from the city. This mansion, which might easily be made delightful, commands a charming view over the lovely bay, and is surrounded by a small but picturesque park containing deer. It was, with the rest of Lord Pembroke's estate, formerly the property of Viscount Fitzwilliam, who founded the Fitzwilliam Museum in the University of Cambridge.

Lord Fitzwilliam was a somewhat eccentric person. His nearest relation had displeased him by some very trivial offence, such as coming down late for dinner, so he determined to leave his estate to his distant cousin, Lord Pembroke. Falling ill, Lord Fitzwilliam, desired that Lord Pembroke might be summoned from London. Word came back that it was unfortunately impossible for him to leave England immediately. Presently news arrived from Dublin that Lord Fitzwilliam was dead, and had bequeathed all--the property is now three hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year--to Lord Pembroke, with remainder to his second son. By the death of the late Lord Pembroke the English and Irish properties have become united, and are to-day worth not less than six hundred thousand dollars a year! It is this young nobleman who has lately written _The Earl and The Doctor_.

REGINALD WYNFORD.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: The Fitzgeralds, of which family the duke of Leinster is chief, became Protestant in 1611, when George, sixteenth earl of Kildare, coming to the title and estates when eight years old, was given in ward, according to the custom of the time, to the duke of Lenox (then lord privy seal), who bred him a Protestant.]

[Footnote 2: In June, 1798, the corpse of Lord Edward Fitzgerald was conveyed from the jail of Newgate and entombed in St. Werburgh's church, Dublin, until the times would admit of their being removed to the family vault at Kildare. "A guard," says his brother, "was to have attended at Newgate the night of my poor brother's burial, in order to provide against all interruption from the different guards and patrols in the streets: it never arrived, which caused the funeral to be several times stopped on its way, so that the funeral did not take place until nearly two in the morning, and the people attending were obliged to stay in church until a pass could be procured to permit them to go out."]

[Footnote 3: Lord Charlemont had a seat called Marino, beautifully situated within a few miles of Dublin. There is within the grounds an exquisite building erected from designs of Sir William Chambers. It is a small villa, in its arrangements suggesting a _maison de joie_. The furniture is just as it was, and although sadly out of repair, the visitor can easily judge how exquisite the place must once have been. There is a superb mantelpiece, richly mounted in bronze and inlaid with lapis lazuli.]

[Footnote 4: The occupants of Henrietta street in 1784 included--the primate (Lord Rokeby); the earl of Shannon; Hon. Dr. Maxwell, bishop of Meath; the bishop of Kilmore; the bishop of Clogher; Right Hon. Luke Gardiner, M.P.; Viscount Kingsborough; Right Hon. D. Bowes-Daly, M.P.; Sir E. Crofton, Bart.

Twenty years later, Dublin was nearly deserted by the aristocracy on account of the Union. Up to that time nearly all the peers, except those really English, seem to have had residences in Dublin. In 1844, Lords Longford, De Vesci and Monck were the only peers who had houses there.]

[Footnote 5: The precincts, including a portion of the Liberties, were then entirely under the jurisdiction of the dean of St. Patrick's.]

[Footnote 6: It was a part of the grim and ghastly humor of this extraordinary man,

"Who left what little wealth he had To found a home for fools or mad, And prove by one satiric touch No nation wanted it so much,"

to give nicknames, of which Cancerina was one, to the poor old wretches he met in his walks, to whom he gave charity.

Amongst Cancerina's sisters in misery were Stompanympha, Pullagowna, Friterilla, Stumphantha.]

THE MAESTRO'S CONFESSION.

(ANDREA DAL CASTAGNO--1460.)

I.

Threescore and ten! I wish it were all to live again. Doesn't the Scripture somewhere say, By reason of strength men oft-times may Even reach fourscore? Alack! who knows? Ten sweet, long years of life! I would paint Our Lady and many and many a saint, And thereby win my soul's repose. Yet, Fra Bernardo, you shake your head: Has the leech once said I must die? But he Is only a fallible man, you see: Now, if it had been our father the pope, I should _know_ there was then no hope. Were only I sure of a few kind years More to be merry in, then my fears I'd slip for a while, and turn and smile At their hated reckonings: whence the need Of squaring accounts for word and deed Till the lease is up?... How? hear I right? No, no! You could not have said, _To-night_!

II.

Ah, well! ah, well! "Confess"--you tell me--"and be forgiven." Is there no easier path to heaven? Santa Maria! how can I tell What, now for a score of years and more, I've buried away in my heart so deep That, howso tired I've been, I've kept Eyes waking when near me another slept, Lest I might mutter it in my sleep? And now at the last to blab it clear! How the women will shrink from my pictures! And worse Will the men do--spit on my name, and curse; But then up in heaven I shall not hear.

I faint! I faint! Quick, Fra Bernardo! The figure stands There in the niche--my patron saint: Put it within my trembling hands Till they are steadier. So! My brain Whirled and grew dizzy with sudden pain, Trying to span that gulf of years, Fronting again those long laid fears. _Confess_? Why, yes, if I must, I must. Now good Sant' Andrea be my trust! But fill me first, from that crystal flask, Strong wine to strengthen me for my task. (That thing is a gem of craftsmanship: Just mark how its curvings fit the lip.)

Ah, you, in your dreamy, tranquil life, How can _you_ fathom the rage and strife, The blinding envy, the burning smart, That, worm-like, gnaws the Maestro's heart When he sees another snatch the prize Out from under his very eyes, For which he would barter his soul? You see I taught him his art from first to last: Whatever he was he owed to me. And then to be browbeat, overpassed, Stealthily jeered behind the hand! Why that was more than a saint could stand; And I was no saint. And if my soul, With a pride like Lucifer's, mocked control, And goaded me on to madness, till I lost all measure of good or ill, Whose gift was it, pray? Oh, many a day I've cursed it, yet whose is the blame, I say?

_His name_? How strange that you question so, When I'm sure I have told it o'er and o'er, And why should you care to hear it more?

III.

Well, as I was saying, Domenico Was wont of my skill to make such light, That, seeing him go on a certain night Out with his lute, I followed. Hot From a war of words, I heeded not Whither I went, till I heard him twang A madrigal under the lattice where Only the night before I sang. --A double robbery! and I swear 'Twas overmuch for the flesh to bear.

_Don't ask me_. I knew not what I did, But I hastened home with my rapier hid Under my cloak, and the blade was wet. Just open that cabinet there and see The strange red rustiness on it yet.

A calm that was dead as dead could be Numbed me: I seized my chalks to trace-- What think you?--_Judas Iscariot's face_! I just had finished the scowl, no more, When the shuffle of feet drew near my door (We lived together, you know I said): Then wide they flung it, and on the floor Laid down Domenico--dead!

Back swam my senses: a sickening pain Tingled like lightning through my brain, And ere the spasm of fear was broke, The men who had borne him homeward spoke Soothingly: "Some assassin's knife Had taken the innocent artist's life-- Wherefore, 'twere hard to say: all men Were prone to have troubles now and then The world knew naught of. Toward his friend Florence stood waiting to extend Tenderest dole." Then came my tears, And I've been sorry these twenty years.

Now, Fra Bernardo, you have my sin: Do you think Saint Peter will let me in?

MARGARET J. PRESTON.

MONSIEUR FOURNIER'S EXPERIMENT.

"_La transfusion parait avoir eu quelque succes dans ces derniers temps_."

A dejected man, M. le docteur Maurice Fournier locked the door of his physiological laboratory in the Place de l'École de Médecine, and walked away toward his rooms in the rue Rossini. At two-and-thirty, rich, brilliant, an ambitious graduate of l'École de Médecine, an enthusiastic pupil of Claude Bernard's, a devoted lover of science, and above all of physiology, yesterday he was without a care save to make his name great among the great names of science--to win for himself a place in the foremost rank of the followers of that mistress whom only he loved and worshiped. To-day a word had swept away all his fondest hopes. Trousseau, the keenest observer in all Paris, formerly his father's friend, now no less his own, had kindly but firmly called his attention to himself, and to the malady that had so imperceptibly and insidiously fastened itself upon him that until the moment he never dreamed of its approach. He had been too full of his work to think of himself. In any other case he would scarcely have dared to dispute the opinion of the highest medical authority in Europe; nevertheless in his own he began to argue the matter: "But, my dear doctor, I am well."

"No, my friend, you are not. You are thin and pale, and I noticed the other night, when you came late to the meeting of the Institute, that your breathing was quick and labored, and that the reading of your excellent paper was frequently interrupted by a short cough."

"That was nothing. I was hurried and excited, and I have been keeping myself too closely to my work. A run to Dunkerque, a week of rest and sea-air, will make all right again."

But the great man shook his head gravely: "Not weeks, but years, of a different life are needed. You must give up the laboratory altogether if you want to live. Remember your mother's fate and your father's early death--think of the deadly blight that fell so soon upon the rare beauty of your sister. Some day you will realize your danger: realize it now, in time. Close your laboratory, lock up your library, say adieu to Paris, and lead the life of a traveler, an Arab, a Tartar. For the present cease to dream of the future: strength is better than a professorship in the College of France, and health more than the cross of the Legion of Honor."

Fournier was at first surprised and incredulous: he became convinced, then alarmed. After some thought he was horribly dejected. At such a time an Englishman becomes stolid, a German gives up utterly, an American begins to live fast, since he may not live long; but he, being a Frenchman and a Parisian, had alternations--first, the idea of suicide, which means sleep; second, reaction, which is hopefulness.

He chose to react, and did it promptly. A little time, and the rooms in the Place de l'École de Médecine, opposite the bookseller's, displayed a card stuck on the entrance-door with red wafers, "_à louer_," the hammer of the auctioneer knocked down the comfortable furniture of the apartments in the rue Rossini, while that of the carpenter nailed up the well-beloved books in stout boxes, and the places that had known M. le docteur knew him no more. None but those who have experienced the pleasures of a life devoted to scientific research can understand how hard all this was to him. The fulfillment of long-cherished desires, the completion of elaborate systematic investigations, the realization of pet theories, the establishment of new principles,--all, all abandoned after so much toil and care. To struggle painfully through a desert toward some beautiful height, which, at first dimly seen, has grown clearer and clearer and always more splendid as he advances, and now at its very foot to be turned back by a gloomy stream in whose depths lurks death itself; to reach out his hand to the golden truth, fruit of much winnowing of human knowledge, and as he grasps the precious grains to be borne back by a grim spectre whose very breath is horrible with the noisome odors of the tomb; to choose an arduous life, and learn to love it because it has high aims, and then to give it up at once and utterly!--alas, poor Fournier!

"Nevertheless," he said as he turned his back on Paris, "even idle wanderings are better than dying of consumption."

Behold the student of science a wanderer--sailing his yacht among the islands of the Mediterranean; making long journeys through the wild mountain-regions and lovely valleys of untraveled Spain; stemming the historic current of the Nile; among the nomad tribes, in Arab costume riding an Arabian mare, as wild an Arab as the wildest of them; killing tigers in India, tending stock in Australia, chasing buffaloes in Western America,--everywhere avoiding civilization and courting Nature and the company of men who either by birth or adoption were the children of Nature. By day the winds of heaven kissed his cheeks and the sun bronzed them: at night he often fell asleep wondering at the star-worlds that gemmed the only canopy over his welcome blanket-couch.

His treatment of consumption was certainly a rational one, and perhaps the only one that is ever wholly successful. But, alas! few can take so costly a prescription.

How often had his studies led him to dissect the bodies of animals that had died in their dens in the Jardin des Plantes! Often in the first generation of cage-life, almost always in the second, invariably in the third, they grow dull, listless, the fire goes out of their eyes, the litheness out of their limbs: they forget to eat, they cough, and soon they die. Of what? Consumption. Once our fathers were wild and lived in the open air: they scarcely ever died, as we do, of consumption. Crowded cities, bad drainage, overwork, want of healthful exercise, stimulating food, dissipation,--these are human cage-life. If a man is threatened with consumption, let him go back to the plains and forests before it is too late.

Certainly the treatment benefited Fournier. By and by it did more--it cured him. The cough was forgotten, the cheeks filled out, the muscles became hard as bundles of steel wire, his strength was prodigious: he ate his food with a relish unknown in Paris, and slept like a child.

Nevertheless, his mind, trained to habits of thought and observation, was not idle. When a city was his home he had been a physiologist and had studied _man_: he made the world his dwelling-place, and wandering among the nations he became an ethnologist and began to study _men_.

A distinguished professor, writing of the influence of climate upon man, for the sake of illustration supposes the case of a human being whose life should be prolonged through many ages, and who should pass that life in journeying slowly from the arctic regions southward through the varying climates of the earth to the eternal winter of the antarctic zone. Always preserving his personal identity, this traveler would undergo remarkable changes in form, feature and complexion, in habits and modes of life, and in mental and moral attributes. Though he might have been perfectly white at first, his skin would pass through every degree of darkness until he reached the equator, when it would be black. Proceeding onward, he would gradually become fairer, and on reaching the end of his journey he would again be pale. His intellectual powers would vary also, and with them the shape of his skull. His forehead, low and retreating, would by degrees assume a nobler form as he advanced to more genial climes, the facial angle reaching its maximum in the temperate zone, only to gradually diminish as he journeyed toward the torrid, and to again exhibit under the equator its original base development. As he continued his journey toward the south pole he would undergo a second time this series of progressing and retrograding changes, until at length, as he laid his weary bones to rest in some icy cave in the drear antarctics,

Multum ille et terris jactatus et alto,

he would be in every respect, save in age and a ripe experience, the same as at the outset of his wanderings.

Extravagant as this illustration may appear, the professor goes on to say, philosophically, on the doctrine of the unity of the human race, it is not so; for what else than such an imaginary prolonged individual life is the life of the race? And what greater changes have occurred to our imaginary traveler than have actually befallen the human family?

The facts are patent. Under the equator is found the negro, in the temperate zones the Indo-European, and toward the pole the Lapp and Esquimaux. They are as different as the climates in which they dwell; nevertheless, history, philology, the common traditions of the race, revelation, point to their brotherhood.

How is it that climate can bring about such modifications in man? Is it possible that the sun, shining upon his face and his children's faces for ages, can make their skin dark, and their hair crisp and curly, and their foreheads low? Or that sunshine and shadow, spring-time and autumn, summer's showers beating upon him and winter's snows falling about his path, can make him fair and free? Or that the dreary night and cheerless day of many changeless arctic years can make him short and fat and stolid as a seal? Surely not. These avail much; but other influences, indirect and obscure in their workings, but not the less essentially climatic, are required. Food, raiment, shelter, occupation, amusement, influences that tell upon the very citadel and stronghold of life--and all in their very nature climatic, since they are controlled and modified by climate--are the means by which such changes are effected. The savage living in the open air, not trammeled with much clothing, anointing his skin with oil, eating uncooked food, delighting in the chase and in battle, and living thus because his surroundings indicate it, becomes swart and athletic, fierce, cunning and cruel--takes ethnologically the lowest place. Of literature, science, art, he knows nothing: for him will is justice, fear law, some miserable fetich God. Still, in his nature lie dormant all the capabilities of the noblest manhood, awaiting only favorable surroundings to call them into glorious being. It might shock the salt of the earth to reflect that some centuries of life among them and their fair descendants would make him like them.

The arctic savage clad in furs and eating blubber does not differ essentially from his brother of the tropics. So much of his food is necessarily converted into heat that he cannot afford to lead so active a life; but he also, like him of the tropics, partakes with his surroundings in color. The one, living amid snowclad scenery, where the sparse vegetation is gray and grayish-green, and the birds and animals almost as white as the snow over which they wander, is pale, etiolated. The other, under a vertical sun, surrounded by a lush and lusty growth, whose flowers for variety and intensity of color are beyond description, and in which birds of brightest plumage and black and tawny beasts make their home, has the most marked supply of pigment--is dark-hued, black, in short a negro. Between these two extremes is the typical man, fair of face, with expanded brow and wavy hair, well fed, well clad, well housed, wresting from Nature her hidden things and making her mightiest forces the workers of his will; heaping together knowledge, cherishing art, reverencing justice, worshiping God. How startling the contrast between brothers!

Such changes do not take place in a few generations. For their completion hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years must elapse. The descendants of the blacks who were carried from Africa to America as slaves two centuries and a half ago, save where their color has been modified by a mixed parentage, are still black. Already the influence of new climatic surroundings and of association has wrought great changes upon them: they are no longer savages. But their complexion is as dark as that of their kidnapped forefathers. Their original physical condition remains almost unaltered, and with it many mental characteristics: their love of display and of bright colors, their fondness for tune and the power of music to move them, their weird and fantastic belief in ghosts and spirits, in signs, omens and charms, and many other traits, still bear witness to their savage origin. But even these are fading away, and these men are slowly but not the less surely becoming civilized and _white_.

The point of departure for every structural change in a living organism lies in the apparatus by which nutrition is maintained; and this in the higher classes is the blood. Most complex and wonderful of fluids, it contains in unexplained and inscrutable combination salts of iron, lime, soda and potassa, with water, oil, albumen, paraglobulin and fibrinogen, which united form fibrine--in fact, at times, some part of everything we eat and all that goes to form our bodies, which it everywhere permeates, vitalizes and sustains. Borne in countless numbers in its ever-ebbing and returning streams are little disks, flattened, bi-concave, not larger in man than one-three-thousandth of an inch in diameter, called red corpuscles, whose part it is to carry from the lungs to the tissues pure oxygen, without which the fire called life cannot be sustained, and back from the tissues to the lungs carbonic acid, one of the products of that fire; and larger, yet marvelously small, bodies called leucocytes or white corpuscles, whose precise origin and use to this day, in spite of all the labor that has been spent upon their study, remain unknown. But that which makes the blood wonderful above all other fluids is its vitality. Our common expression, "life's blood," is no idle phrase. The blood is indeed the very throne of life. If its springs are pure and bountiful, if its currents flow strong and free, muscle, bone and brain grow in symmetry and power, and there is cunning to devise and the strong right arm to execute. But if it be thin and poor, and its circulation feeble and uncertain, the will flags, the mind is weak and vacillating, the muscles grow puny, and the man becomes an unresisting prey to disease and circumstance. If it escape through a wound, strength ebbs with it, until at length life itself flows out with the unchecked crimson stream. Thus, then, by acting upon the blood, climate has wrought and is working such changes upon man. But why are constantly-acting causes so slow in producing their effects? How is it that countless generations must pass away before purely climatic causes, potent as they are, begin to manifest themselves in physical changes in the races of men exposed to them?

Fournier, physiologist, as I have said, by the education of the schools, but by the broader education of his travels sociologist and ethnologist, devoted himself again to science, and framed this hypothesis: _Climatic influences, acting upon man, bring about physical changes exceedingly slowly, because they are resisted by an inveterate habit of assimilation. This habit pertains either to the blood or the tissues, possibly to both, probably to the blood alone_.

To establish an hypothesis experiment is necessary. Physiology is a science of experiment. Hence the frequent uncertainty of its results, since no two observers conduct an experiment in exactly the same manner--certainly no two ever institute it under precisely the same conditions. Nevertheless, let us not decry science. Out of much searching after truth comes the finding of truth--after long groping in darkness one comes upon a ray of light.

An experiment was necessary. To the ingenious mind of Fournier an elaborate one occurred. If he could perform it, not only would his hypothesis be established and confirmed beyond all cavil, but a, field of scientific research also be opened such as was yet undreamed of. However, for this experiment subjects were needed. Brutes, beasts of the field? Not so: that were easy to achieve. Human beings, two living, healthy men, one white, one black, were the requirements. Impossible! The experiment could never be performed: its requirements were unattainable. O tempora! O mores! Alas, for the degeneracy of the age! In the days of the Roman emperors men were fed, literally fed, to wild beasts in the arena--Gauls, Scythians, Nubians, even Roman freedmen when barbarians were scarce. This to amuse the populace alone. Frightful waste of life! In India, a thousand lives thrown away in a day under the wheels of Juggernaut; in Europe, tens of thousands to gratify the imperious wills of grasping monarchs; in America, hundreds to sate the greed of railroad corporations. And now not two men to be had for an experiment of untold value to science, that would scarcely endanger life in one of them, and in the other would necessitate only the merest scratch! To what are we coming? No one complains that tattooed heads are going out of fashion--that the king of the Cannibal Isles no longer flatters a ship's master by inquiring which head of all his subjects is ornamented most to his fancy, and the next day sending him that head as a souvenir of his visit to the anthropophagic shores. It is well that the custom is dead. But is there not danger of drifting too far even toward the shore of compassion? May it not be that there is something wrong with the bowels of mercy when criminals are executed barbarously, while science needs their lives, or at least an insight into the method of their dying; when precise examination of the manner of nerve and blood supply to the organs of a superannuated horse is heavily finable; when charitable but perchance too enthusiastic societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals push their earnestness even to interference with scientific researches, because, forsooth! they jeopardize the lives of rabbits, guinea-pigs and dogs? The legend _Cave canem_ bears a deeper meaning now than it did in the inlaid pavements of Pompeian vestibules. We dare not trample it under foot.

Five years passed, and with restored health back came the old desires in redoubled force. Fournier longed to return to civilization and to work. The life that had been so delightful while it did him good became utterly unbearable when he had reaped its full benefit. I am tempted to quote a line about Europe and Cathay, but refrain: it will recur to the reader. He burned to renew the labors he had abandoned, to take up again the work he had laid down to do battle with disease, now that disease was vanquished. Thus the year 1863 found him in the city of Charleston, homeward bound in his journey around the world.

While still in the wilds west of the Mississippi he could have shaped his course northward and readily proceeded directly by steamer from New York to Europe. But a determined purpose led him to choose a different course, though he was well aware that it would involve indefinite delay in reaching Paris, and great personal risk. The life he had been leading made him think lightly of danger, and years would be well spent if he could accomplish the plans that induced him to go into the disorganized country of the South.

He straightway connected himself with the army as surgeon, and solicited a place at the front. He wanted active service. In this he was disappointed. Charleston, blockaded and beseiged, was in a state of military inaction. Save the occasional exchange of shot and shell at long range between the works on shore and those which the Unionists had erected and held upon the neighboring islands and marshes, nothing was done, and for nearly a year Fournier experienced the irksomeness of routine duty in a wretchedly arranged and appointed military hospital. Nevertheless, the time was not wholly wasted. From a planter fleeing from the anarchy of civil war he procured a native African slave, one of the shipload brought over a few years before in the Wanderer, the last slave-ship that put into an American harbor. This man he made his body-servant and kept always near him, partly to study him, but chiefly to secure his complete mental and moral thraldom. An almost unqualified savage, Fournier avoided systematiclly everything that would tend to civilize him. He taught him many things that were convenient in his higher mode of life, and taught him well, but of the great principles of civilization he strove to keep him in ignorance; and more, he so confused and distorted the few gleams of light that had reached that darkened soul that they made its gloom only the more hideous and profound. He wanted a man altogether savage, mentally, morally and physically. Instead of teaching him English or French, he learned from him many words of his own rude native tongue, and communicated with him as much as possible in that alone, aided by gesture, in which, like all Frenchmen, he possessed marvelous facility of expression. In the unexplored back-country of Africa the negro had been a prince, and Fournier bade him look forward to the time when he would return and rule. He always addressed him by his African name and title in his own tongue. He took him into the wards of his hospital, and taught him to be useful at surgical operations and to care for the instruments, that he might become familiar with them and with the sight of blood, which at first maddened him. Once he gave him a drug that made his head throb, and then bled him, with almost instant relief. He affected an interest in the amulets which hung at his neck, and besought him to give him one to wear. He committed to his care, with expressions of the greatest solicitude, a strong box, brass bound and carefully locked, which he told him contained his god, a most potent and cruel deity, who would, however, when it pleased him, give back the life of a dead man for _blood_. This box contained a silver cup, with a thermometer fixed in its side; a glass syringe holding about a third of a pint; a large curved needle perforated in its length like a tube, sharp at one end, at the other expanded to fit accurately the nozzle of the syringe; a little strainer also fitting the syringe; and last, a small bundle of wires with a handle like an egg-beater.

For the rest, this savage was crooked, ill-shapen and hideous. His skin was as black as night; his head small, the face immensely disproportionate to the cranium; his jaws massive and armed with glittering white teeth filed to points; his cheeks full, his nose flat, his eyes little, deep-set, restless, wicked. The usage he received from his new master was so different from his former experience with white men, and so in accord with his own undisciplined nature, that it called forth all the sympathies of his character. He soon loved the Frenchman with an intensity of affection almost incomprehensible. It is no exaggeration to say that he would have willingly laid down his life to gratify his master's slightest wish. The latter's knowledge was to him so comprehensive, his power so boundless and his will so imperious and inflexible, that he feared and worshiped him as a god.

Fournier looked upon his monster with satisfaction, and longed for a battle. His wish was at last gratified. On the Fourth of July, 1864, an engagement took place three miles north-west of Legaréville, near the North Edisto River. A force of Union soldiery had been assembled from the Sea Islands and from Florida, massed on Seabrook Island, and pushed thence up into South Carolina. The object of this expedition was unknown; indeed, as nothing whatever was accomplished, the strategy of it remains to this day unexplained. However, forewarned is forearmed. Every movement was watched and reported by the rebel scouts; all the troops that could be spared from Charleston were sent out to oppose the invaders; roads were obstructed; bridges were destroyed, batteries erected in strong positions, everything prepared to impede their progress. Our story needs not that we should dwell upon the sufferings of the Union soldiers on that futile expedition, from the narrow, dusty roads, the frequent scarcity of water, the intense heat. With infinite fatigue and peril they advanced only five or six miles in a day's march. Many died of sunstroke, and many fell by the way utterly exhausted. There was occasional skirmishing; but one actual battle. To that the troops gave the name of "the battle of Bloody Bridge." Picture a slightly undulating country covered with thick low forest; a narrow road that by an open plank bridge crosses a wide, sluggish stream with marshy banks, and curves beyond abruptly to the right to avoid a low, steep hill facing the bridge; crowning this hill an earth-work, rude to be sure, but steep, sodded, almost impregnable to men without artillery to play upon it; within, two cannon, for which there is plenty of ammunition, and six hundred Confederate soldiers, fresh, eager, determined; on the road in front of the battery, but just out of range of its guns, the Union forces halting under arms, the leaders anxious and discouraged, the men exhausted, careworn, wondering what is to be done next, heartily sick of it all, yet willing to do their best; in the thicket on both sides the road, not sheltered, only covered, within pistol-shot of the enemy, six hundred United States soldiers, a Massachusetts colored regiment, one of the first recruited, without cannon, over-marched, overheated, a forlorn hope, _sent forward to take the battery_! These men, stealthily assembling there among the trees and bushes, are ready. Not one of them carries a pound of superfluous weight. Their rifles with fixed bayonets, a handful of cartridges, a canteen of water, are enough. They wear flannel shirts and blue trowsers; numbers are bareheaded, some have cut off the sleeves of their shirts: they know there is work before them. Many kneel in prayer; comrades exchange messages to loved ones at home, and give each other little keepsakes--the rings they wore or brier pipes carved over with the names of coast battles; others--perhaps they have no loved ones--look to the locks of their pieces and await impatiently the signal to advance. The officers--white men, most of them Boston society fellows, old Harvard boys who once thought a six-mile pull or a long innings at cricket on a hot day hard work, and knew no more of military tactics than the Lancers--move about among them, speaking to this one and to that one, calling each by name, jesting quietly with one, encouraging another, praising a third, endeavoring to inspire in all a hope which they dare not feel themselves.

But hark! The signal to move. Quickly they form in the road, and with a shout advance at a run, their dusky faces glistening in that summer sun and their manly hearts beating bravely in the very jaws of death. Now the bridge trembles beneath their steady tread: the foremost are at the hill, yet no sign of life in the battery. Only the smooth green bank, the wretched flag in the distance, and those guns charged with death looking grimly down upon them and waiting. On they come, nearer and nearer, and now some are on the hill and begin to climb the steep that forms the defence, slowly and with difficulty, using at times their rifles as aids like alpenstocks. Not a word is spoken. It is hard to understand how so many men can move with so little noise. The silence is that which precedes all dreadful noises. It is ominous, terrible. Scarcely twenty feet more, and the foremost will reach the rampart. Haste! haste! The day is won!

Suddenly a figure in gray leaps upon the breastwork: he waves his sword, utters a short quick word of command, and disappears. It is enough. The sleeping battery awakes. The silence becomes hideous uproar. The smooth green line of the sod against the sky is lined with marksmen, and in an instant fringed with fire. Then the cannon bellow and the breezeless air is dense with smoke. The attacking column hesitates, trembles, makes a useless effort to advance, and then falls back beyond the bridge. The officers endeavor to rally their men and renew the attack at once, but in vain: flesh and blood cannot stand in such a storm. Nevertheless, the brave fellows--God bless their memory!--halt at length, and form and charge once more. And so again and again and again; every time in vain and with new losses, until at last they cannot rally, but retreat, broken and bleeding, to the main body of the expedition, carrying with them such of the wounded and dead as they can snatch from under the fire of the rebel riflemen. Such was the battle of Bloody Bridge, and well was it named. Five times that gallant regiment charged the battery, and when the smoke of battle cleared away the sun shone down upon a piteous sight--blood dyeing the green of that sodded escarp--blood in great clots upon the rocks and stumps of the rugged hill below--blood poured plenteously upon the dusty road, making it horrible with purple mire--blood staining the bridge and gathering in little pools upon the planks, and dripping slowly down through the cracks between them into the sluggish stream, where it floated with the water in great red clouds, toward which creatures dwelling in slimy depths below came up lazily, but when they tasted it became furious and fought among themselves like demons--blood drying in hideous networks and arabesques upon the railing of the bridge--blood upon the fences, blood upon the trembling leaves of the bushes by the wayside--blood everywhere! And everywhere the upturned faces and torn bodies of men who had dared to do their duty and to die: side by side the white, who led and the black who followed--all set and motionless, but all wearing the same expression of brave but hopeless determination. That was a brave charge at Balaklava, but, trust me, there have been Balaklavas that are yet unsung.

So the expedition went back, and its brigades were redistributed to the Sea Islands and to Florida; but why it was ever sent out, and why that regiment was sent forward to take the battery without artillery and without reinforcements, God, who knoweth all things, only knows. And God alone knows why there must be wars and rumors of wars, and why men made in his image must tear each other like maddened beasts.

In this battle, heavy as the losses were, the Confederates took but one prisoner. At the third charge a tall, broad-shouldered captain, who seemed, like another son of Thetis, almost invulnerable, darted impetuously ahead of his men and reached the summit of the defence. Useless bravery! In an instant a volley point blank swept away the charging men behind him, and a gunner's sabrethrust bore him to the ground within the works, where he lay stunned and bleeding beside the gun he had striven so hard to take. The man who had captured him, wild with excitement and maddened with the powder that blackened him and the hot blood which jetted upon him, sprang down, spat upon him, spurned him with his foot, and would have dashed out his brains with the heavy hilt of his clubbed sword had not a strong hand grasped his uplifted wrist.

It was Fournier, who had watched the battle with an interest as intense as that of the most ardent Southerner in the battery, though widely different in character. His interest was that of the naturalist who stands by eager and curious to see a rustic entrap some _rara avis_ that he desires to study, to use for his experiment. Better for the bird: it can suffer and die. Afterward what matter whether it stand neatly stuffed and mounted, a voiceless worshiper, in some glass mausoleum, or slowly moulder in a fence corner until its feathers are wafted far and wide, and only a little tuft of greener grass remains to its memory? As our naturalist's game was nobler and destined for more important study, so it was capable of lifelong suffering more subtle and intense. Perhaps Fournier had not fully considered, in his eagerness to prove his hypothesis, the dangers to the subjects of his experiment. Perhaps his mind was so intent upon the physical aspect of the questions that he had overlooked some of the intellectual and moral elements involved in the problem, and did not realize the enormities that would result should he succeed. On the other hand, perhaps he saw them, realized them fully, and was the more deeply fascinated with the research because of its leading into such gloomy and mysterious regions of speculation. Let us do him justice. Science was his god, and this idolater was willing to endure any labor and privation and to assume any responsibility in her service. Would that more who worship a greater God were as devoted!

He was a physiologist, and was simply engaged in an experimental investigation, yet in its progress he had already uncivilized a man whose eyes were beginning dimly to see the truth, had poisoned his mind with lies, and had hurled him into depths of Plutonian ignorance inconceivably more profound than his original estate; and now he was about to debase another fellow-creature of his own race, to tamper with his manhood, to confuse his identity, to render him among his own kindred and people perhaps tabooed, ostracised, despised--perhaps an object of pity. If he should succeed? Surely he had not come thus near success to suffer his splendid Yankee captain to be brained there before his eyes. Like a hawk he had watched every incident of the fight, and was on the alert to act the part of surgeon toward any who might be either wounded in the battery or taken prisoner. He had even resolved, in case of the capture of the place, to represent his peculiar position to the United States officer in command, and to beg of him permission to make his experiment upon a wounded rebel.

The gunner turned fiercely upon him, but dropped his arm and sheathed his sabre at his question, and then walked back to his gun abashed, for he was, after all, a brave and chivalrous man.

Fournier simply asked: "Do Confederate soldiers _murder_ prisoners of war?" And added, "He is a wounded man--leave him to me."

Then he knelt down beside him and examined his wound, and though he strove to be calm he trembled with excitement as he tore open the blue blouse and felt the warm blood welling over his fingers. It was a simple wound through the fleshy part of the shoulder: a strand of saddler's silk and a few strips of sticking-plaster would have sufficed to dress it, but the Frenchman smiled when he wiped away the clots and saw the blood spurting from two or three small divided arteries.

Then he called his African, and they carried the wounded man back to a tent, and laid him on a bed of moss and cypress boughs, and left him there to bleed, while he went out into the air, and walked about, and tossed his hat and shouted with excitement like a madman. But the battle raged, and the gunners charged their guns and fired, and charged and fired again, and the men along the breastwork grew furious with the slaughter and the fiery draughts they took from their canteens through lips blackened with powder and defiled with grease and shreds of cartridge-paper; and no one noticed the doctor's mad conduct nor the savage standing guard before the tent; nor did any other save those two in the whole battery--no, not even the gunner who had captured him--give a thought to the prisoner who lay bleeding there, until the battle was over.

And this prisoner, what of him? Any one, looking upon him as he lay upon the cypress boughs, would have known him to be thoroughbred. Everything about him proclaimed it. His face, manly but gentle, his figure, great in stature and strength, yet graceful in outline like a Grecian god, the very dress and accoutrements he wore, which were neat, strong, expensive, but without ornament, showed him to be a gentleman. And Robert Shirley was a gentleman. Probably no man in all the States could have been found who would have presented a greater contrast to the man standing guard outside the tent than this man who lay within it; and for that reason none who would have been so welcome to Fournier. As the one was a pure savage, the other was the realization of the most illustrious enlightenment; the one fierce, cunning, undisciplined, the other gentle, frank, considerate; as the one was hideous, ill-formed and black as night, so the other was radiant with manly beauty and fair as the morning. Each among his own people sprang from noble stock; the one a prince, the other the descendant of the purest Puritan race, which knew among its own divines and judges brave captains, and farther back a governor of the colony. But the guard and his people were at the foot of the scale, the guarded at the top. The blood flowing out upon the cypress bed was the best blood of America. It was blue blood and brave blood. Generation after generation it had flowed in the veins of fair women and noble men, and had never known dishonor. Yet Fournier let it flow. More, he was delighted that it continued to flow.

Presently, however, he sobered down, and began to prepare for his work. He placed a large caldron of water over a fire; he brought basins, towels and his case of surgical instruments, and placed them in the, tent, and with them the case which he had taught the African to believe contained his god. While thus busied he did not neglect the subject of his experiment. His watchful eye noted everything--the mass, of clots growing like a great crimson fungus under the wounded shoulder, the deadly pallor, the dark circles forming around the sunken eyes, the blanched lips, the transparent nostrils, the slow, deep respiration. From time to time he felt the wounded man's pulse and counted it carefully. _Ninety_--he went out again into the open air; _one hundred_--"The loss of blood tells," he muttered, and began to rearrange his appliances and busy himself uneasily with them; _one hundred and thirty beats to the minute _--"He is failing too fast: I must stop this bleeding" said the experimenter. Then he cleansed the wound, and tied the arteries, and bound it up. But the loss of blood had been so great that the heart fluttered wildly and feebly in its efforts to contract upon its diminished contents, and Fournier, anxious, and pale himself almost as his victim, trembled when his finger felt in vain for the bleeding artery and caught only a faint tremulous thrill, so feeble that he scarcely knew whether the heart was beating at all or not. In terror he threw the ends of the little tent and fanned him, and moistened his lips, and gave him brandy, and hastened to begin the experiment for which he had waited so long and for which both subjects were at last ready.

He told his savage that the Yankee was dying, but that he had communed with his god, who would let him live if blood was given in return. Then he reminded him of the time when he lost blood, and that it had done him no harm. The African, trained for this duty with so much care, did not fail him, but bared his arm and gave the blood. The god was brought forth and caught it, and the sacrifice began. As the silver, bowl floated in a basin of water so warm that the thermometer in its side marked ninety-eight degrees of Fahrenheit, Fournier stirred the blood flowing into it quickly with the bundle of wires, to collect the fibrine and prevent the formation of clots; he then drew it into the syringe through the strainer, and forced it through the perforated needle, which he had previously thrust into a large vein in Shirley's arm, carefully avoiding the introduction of the slightest bubble of air. Time after time he filled his syringe and emptied it into the veins of the wounded man, until at length he saw signs of reaction. The color came, the breathing became more natural, the pulse became slower, fuller, regular. By and by he moved, sighed, opened his eyes and spoke.

He asked a question: "What has happened?"

While he had been lying there much had happened. Life and death had battled over him, and life had triumphed. When he recovered from the effects of his fall and found himself bleeding, he tried to rise and stanch the flow, but, already exhausted, he fell back almost fainting from the effort. He called repeatedly for help, but his only reply was the hideous face of his guard, silently leering at him for a moment, then disappearing without a word, At last it occurred to him that he had been left there to die, and he roused all his energies to his aid. How we strive for our lives! But Shirley accomplished nothing, he could not even raise his hand to the bleeding shoulder, with every effort the blood flowed more copiously. His mind was rapidly becoming benumbed like his body, which shivered as though it were mid winter. Darkness came over his eyes, and as he listened to the din of the battle he fell into a dreamy state that soon passed into seeming unconsciousness again. Nevertheless, while the doctor came and went and did his work, and the savage scowled at him, yet gave his life's blood to save him, though he lay like a dead man and saw them not, nor heard them, nor even felt the needle in his flesh, his mind was not idle. Strange doubts and fears, wild longings and regrets, sweet thoughts of long-forgotten happiness, and fair visions of the future, busied his brain. Memory unrolled her scroll and breathed upon the letters of his story that lapse of time and press of circumstance had made dim, till they grew clear, and with himself he lived his life again, and nothing was lost out of it or forgotten. There was his mother's face again, with the old, old loving smile upon her lips and the tender mother-love in the depths of her beautiful blue eyes--lips that had so oven kissed away his childish tears, and had taught him to say at evening, "Our Father" and "Now I lay me down to sleep," eyes that had never looked upon him without something of the heavenly light of which they were now so full. There before him, bright and clear as ever, were the scenes of his boyhood--the school-forms defaced with many a rude cutting of names and dates, the master knitting his shaggy brows and tapping meaningly with his ruler upon the awful desk while some white haired urchin floundered through an ill-learned task and his classmates tittered at his blunders. Dear old classmates! How their faces shone and gladdened as they chased the bounding football! How merrily they flushed and glowed when the clear frosty air of the Northern winter quivered with the ring of their skates upon the hard ice! How soberly side by side they solved problems and looked up _sesquipedalia verba_ in big lexicons! And how happily the late evening hours wore away as they read _Ivanhoe_ and the _Leather Stocking Tales_ by the fireside with shellbarks and pippins!

Then the college days flew by with all their romance and delight. Again there were bells ringing to morning prayers, recitations and lectures, examinations and prizes, speeches and medals, and the glorious friendships, pure, earnest, almost holy. Would there were more such friendships in the outer, wider world! Commencement with its "pomp and circumstance," its tedious ceremony and scholarly display, its friends from home--mothers, sisters, sweethearts, all bright eyes and fond hearts, its music and flowers, its caps, gowns, dress-coats and "spreads," and, last and worst of all, its sorrowful "good-byes," some of them, alas! for ever! Once more he trembled as he rose to make his commencement speech, but slowly, as he went on, his voice grew steady and his manner calmer, for, lad as he was, and tyro at "orations," he was in earnest. "May my light hand forget its cunning, O my brother! may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, O ye oppressed! if ever there comes to me an opportunity to help you win your way to freedom and I fail you!" He, the aristocrat of his class, had chosen to speak "Against Caste," and though he spoke with the enthusiasm of an untried man, it was with devoted honesty of purpose, of which his earnestness was witness, and of which his future was to give ample proof. Again in vision he stood before that assembly and spoke for the lowly and oppressed. "Let every man have place and honor as he proves himself worthy. Make the way clear for all."

Through the bewilderment of applause that greeted him as he finished he saw only the glad, smiling face of Alice Wentworth nodding approval of the rest, hundreds though they were, he saw nothing. Her congratulation was enough.

Then came tenderer scenes, and Alice Wentworth was to be his wife. Another change, and he is in the midst of ruder scenes. There is war, civil war, and he is a soldier, once more he seems to be in Virginia, and there are marches and counter-marches, camps and barracks, battles and retreats, and all the great and little miseries of long campaigns. The silver leaflets of a major are exchanged for the golden eagles of a colonel, and all the time, amid sterner duties, he finds time to write to Alice Wentworth, and never a mail comes into camp but he is sure of letters dated 'Home' and full of words that make him hopeful and brave, "'Home!' Yes hers and mine too, if home's where the heart is!'" he thinks, and he loves her more dearly every day.

Negro troops are raised, and, true to his principles and to himself, he resigns his commission to take a lower rank in a colored regiment. Now the scenes grow dim, confused sounds far off disturb him, low music, familiar yet strange, now distant, now at his very ear, attracts him, a weird, shadowy mist encloses him, concealing even the things which were visible to the mind's eye, and memory and thought have almost ceased. Yet while all else fades away, clear and beautiful before him are two faces that cannot be forgotten--his mother's face, and that other, which he loves, if that can be, even more. Thus, with the 'Our Father' not on his lips, but fixed in his mind, he feels himself drifting away--drifting away like a boat that has broken its moorings and drifts out with the ebbing tide--whither?

But the rich, warm, lusty blood of the African quickly does its work. The heart, which had almost ceased to beat, because there was not blood enough for it to contract upon, reacted to the stimulus, and as it revived and sent the new life pulsating through all the body the whole man revived, and again:

The fever called _living_ burned in his brain.

Fournier, under one pretext or another, but really by the force of his relentless will, kept his victim by him for years after their escape from the South. He noted from time to time certain curious changes that took place in his physical nature, and recorded his observations with scientific precision in a book kept for the purpose, for the renewal of life had entailed results of an extraordinary character, as the reader may have already anticipated. At length he wrote 'My hypothesis is verified, it has become a theory. My theory is proved, it is a physiological law. _Climatic influences, acting upon man, bring about physical changes exceedingly slowly, because they are resisted by an inveterate habit of assimilation which pertains to the blood._'

That day Shirley was free. His rescuer had finished his experiment.

Alice Wentworth had never believed that her lover was dead. She had heard all with a troubled heart, but while his distant kinsmen, who were heirs-at-law, put on the deepest mourning and grew impatient of the law's delay, she simply said, "I will wait until there is some proof before I give him up! Proof! proof! Shall I be quicker than the law to give up every hope?" And in her heart she said, "He is not dead." Even when years had passed and the war was over, and her agent had searched everywhere and found no trace of him, she did not cease to hope that he would yet appear. So, when at length a letter came, it was welcome and expected. Not surprise but joy made her start and tremble as the old familiar superscription met her eyes.

Such a letter!--filled with the spirit of his love, breathing in every word the tender, passionate devotion of an earlier day, and yet so sad. Tears dropped down through her smiles of joy and blurred the lines she read at first, but smiles and tears alike ceased as she read on. He had written many, many times, but he knew she had not got his letters. He had been a prisoner--not only prisoner of war, but afterward prisoner to a man whose will was iron. It could hardly be explained. This man had not only saved his life, but he had also rescued him from the horrors of a Southern prison--would God he had let him die!--and they had been living together in a ranch in a far off Mexican valley.

Then the letter went on:

"In my heart I am unchanged; my love for you is ever the same; yet I am no longer the Robert Shirley whom you knew. That has come upon me which will separate me from you for ever: I cannot ask you now to be my wife. You are free. It is through no fault of mine. It is my burden, the price of life, and I must bear it. God bless you and give you all happiness!

"ROBERT SHIRLEY:"

When she had read it all she bowed her head and wept again, and the face that had grown more and more beautiful with the years of waiting was radiant. Who can fathom the depths of a woman's love? Who can follow the subtle workings of a woman's thought? Who can comprehend a woman's boundless faith? Her course was clear. If misfortune had befallen him, if he were maimed, disfigured, crazed, even if he were loathsome to her eyes, she loved him, and she must see him: she would see him and speak to him, and love him still, even if she could not be his wife. What would she have done if she could have guessed the truth? As it was, she wrote upon her card, "If you love me, come to me," and sent it to him. And in answer to the summons he stood before her--not disfigured, not maimed, not crazed, not loathsome in any way, yet irrevocably separated from her for Dr. Fournier's experiment had succeeded, and Robert Shirley was a mulatto!

CORNELIUS DEWEES.

A VISIT TO THE KING OF AURORA.

(FROM THE GERMAN OF THEODORE KIRSCHOFF.)

On the Oregon and California Railroad, twenty-eight miles south of the city of Portland in Oregon, lies the German colony of Aurora, a communist settlement under the direction of Doctor William Keil. In September, 1871, I made a second journey from San Francisco to Oregon, on which occasion I found both time and opportunity to carry out a long-cherished desire to visit this colony, already famous throughout all Oregon, and to make the acquaintance of the still more famous doctor, the so-called "king of Aurora." During the years in which I had formerly resided in Oregon, and especially on this last journey thither, I had frequently heard this settlement and its autocrat spoken of, and had been told the strangest stories as to the government of its self-made potentate. All reports agreed in stating that "Dutchtown," the generic appellation of German colonies among Americans, was an example to all settlements, and was distinguished above any other place in Oregon for order and prosperity. The hotel of "Dutchtown," which stands on the old Overland stage-route, and is now a station on the Oregon and California Railroad, has attained an enviable reputation, and is regarded by all travelers as the best in the State; and as to the colony itself, I heard nothing but praise. On the other hand, with regard to Doctor Keil the strangest reports were in circulation. He had been described to me in Portland as a most inaccessible person, showing himself extremely reserved toward strangers, and declining to give them the slightest satisfaction as to the interior management of the prosperous community over which he reigned a sovereign prince. The initiated maintained that this important personage had formerly been a tailor in Germany. He was at once the spiritual and secular head of the community: he solemnized marriages (much against his will, for, according to the rules of the society, he was obliged to provide a house for every newly-married couple); he was physician and preacher, judge, law-giver, secretary of state, administrator, and unlimited and irresponsible minister of finance to the colony; and held all the very valuable landed property of the settlement, with the consent of the colonists, in his own name; and while he certainly provided for his voluntarily obedient subjects an excellent maintenance for life, he reserved to himself the entire profits of the labor of all and the value of the joint property, notwithstanding that the colony was established on the broadest principles as a communist association.

I had a great desire to see this original man--a kindred spirit of the renowned Mormon leader, Brigham Young--with my own eyes, and, so to speak, to visit the lion in his den. From Portland, where I was staying, the colony was easily accessible by rail, and before leaving I made the acquaintance of a. German life-insurance agent of a Chicago company--Körner by name--who, like myself, wished to visit Aurora, and in whom I found a very agreeable traveling companion. He had procured in Portland letters of introduction to Doctor Keil, and had conceived the bold plan of doing a stroke of business in life insurance with him; indeed, his main object in going to Aurora was to induce the doctor to insure the lives of the entire colony--that is to say, of all his voluntary subjects--in the Chicago company, pay, as irresponsible treasurer of the association, the legal premiums, and upon the occurrence of a death pocket the amount of the policy.

My fellow-traveler had great hopes of making the doctor see this project in the light of an advantageous speculation, and accordingly provided himself amply with the necessary tables of mortality and other statistics. It had been carefully impressed upon us in Portland always to address the _ci-devant_ tailor, now "king of Aurora," as "Doctor," of which title he was extremely vain, and to treat him with all the reverence which as sovereign republicans we could muster; otherwise he would probably turn his back on us without ceremony.

On a pleasant September morning the steam ferry-boat conveyed us from Portland across the Willamette River to the dépôt of the Oregon and California Railroad, and soon afterward we were rushing southward in the train along the right shore of that stream--here as broad as the Rhine--the rival of the mighty Columbia. After a pleasant and interesting journey through giant forests and over fertile prairies, some large, some small, embellished here and there with farms, villages and orchards, we reached Oregon City, which lies in a romantic region close to the Willamette: then leaving the river, we thundered on some miles farther through the majestic primitive forest, and soon entered upon a broad, wood-skirted prairie, over which here and there pretty farm-houses and groves are scattered; and presently beheld, peeping out from swelling hills and standing in the middle of a prosperous settlement embowered in verdure, the slender white church-tower of Aurora, and were at the end of our journey.

Our first course after we left the cars was to the tavern, standing close to the railroad on a little hill, whither the passengers hurried for lunch. This so-called "hotel," the best known and most famous, as has already been said, in all Oregon, I might compare to an old-fashioned inn. The long table with its spotless table-cloth was lavishly spread with genuine German dishes, excellently cooked, and we were waited on by comely and neatly-dressed German girls; and though the dinner would not perhaps compare with the same meal at the club-house of the "San Francisco" I must confess that it was incomparably the best I ever tasted in Oregon, in which region neither the cooks nor the bills of fare are usually of the highest order.

Dinner being over, we made inquiry for Doctor Keil, to whom we were now ready to pay our respects. Our host pointed out to us the doctor's dwelling-house, which looked, in the distance, like the premises of a well-to-do Low-Dutch farmer; and after passing over a long stretch of plank-road, we turned in the direction of the royal residence. On the way we met several laborers just coming from the field, who looked as if life went well with them--girls in short frocks with rake in hand, and boys comfortably smoking their clay pipes--and received from all an honest German greeting. Everything here had a German aspect--the houses pleasantly shaded by foliage, the barns, stables and well-cultivated fields, the flower and kitchen-gardens, the white church-steeple rising from a green hill: nothing but the fences which enclose the fields reminded us that we were in America.

The doctor's residence was surrounded by a high white picket-fence: stately, widespreading live-oaks shaded it, and the spacious courtyard had a neat and carefully-kept aspect. Crowing cocks, and hens each with her brood, were scratching and picking about, the geese cackled, and several well-trained dogs gave us a noisy welcome. Upon our asking for the doctor, a friendly German matron directed us to the orchard, whither we immediately turned our steps. A really magnificent sight met our eyes--thousands of trees, whose branches, covered with the finest fruit, were so loaded that it had been necessary to place props under many of them, lest they should break beneath the weight of their luscious burden.

Here we soon discovered the renowned doctor, in a toilette the very opposite of regal, zealously engaged in gathering his apples. He was standing on a high ladder, in his shirt sleeves, a cotton apron, a straw hat, picking the rosy-cheeked fruit in a hand-basket. Several laborers were busy under the trees assorting the gathered apples, and carefully packing in boxes the choicest of them--really splendid specimens of this fruit, which attains its utmost perfection in Oregon. As soon as the doctor perceived us he came down from the ladder, and asked somewhat sharply what our business there might be. My companion handed him the letters of introduction he had brought with him, which the doctor read attentively through: he then introduced my humble self as a literary man and assistant editor of a well-known magazine, who had come to Oregon for the special purpose of visiting Dr. Keil, and of inspecting his colony, of which such favorable reports had reached us. Without waiting for the doctor's reply, I asked him whether he were not a relative of K----, the principal editor of the magazine to which I was attached. I could scarcely, as it appeared, have hit upon a more opportune question, for the doctor was evidently flattered, and became at once extremely affable toward us. The relationship to which I had alluded he was obliged unwillingly to disclaim. I learned from him that his name was William Keil, and that he was born at Bleicherode in Prussian Saxony. He now left the apple-gathering to his men, and offered to show us whatever was interesting about the colony: as to the life-insurance project, he said he would take some more convenient opportunity to speak with Mr. Körner about it.

The doctor, who after this showed himself somewhat loquacious, was a man of agreeable appearance, perhaps of about sixty years of age, with white hair, a broad high forehead and an intelligent countenance. Sound as a nut, powerfully built, of vigorous constitution and with an air of authority, he gave the idea of a man born to rule. He seemed to wish to make a good impression on us, and I remarked several times in him a searching side-glance, as though he were trying to read our thoughts. He sustained the entire conversation himself, and it was somewhat difficult to follow his meaning: he spoke in an unctuous, oratorical tone, with extreme suavity, in very general terms, and evaded all direct questions. When I had listened to him for ten minutes I was not one whit wiser than before. His language was not remarkably choice, and he used liberally a mixture of words half English, half German, as uneducated German-Americans are apt to do.

While we wandered through the orchard, the beauty and practical utility of which astonished me, the doctor, gave us a lecture on colonization, agriculture, gardening, horticulture, etc., which he flavored here and there with pious reflections. He pointed out with pride that all this was his own work, and described how he had transformed the wilderness into a garden. In the year 1856 he came with forty followers to Oregon, as a delegate from the parent association of Bethel in Missouri, in order to found in the far West, then so little known, a branch colony. At present the doctor is president both of Aurora and of the original settlement at Bethel: the latter consists of about four hundred members, the former of four hundred and ten.

When he first came into this region he found the whole district now owned by his flourishing colony covered with marsh and forest. Instead, however, of establishing himself on the prairies lying farther south, in the midst of foreign settlers, he preferred a home shared only with his German brethren in the primitive woods; and here, having at that time very small means, he obtained from the government, gratis, land enough to provide homes for his colonists, and found in the timber a source of capital, which he at once made productive. He next proceeded to build a block-house as a defence against the Indians, who at that time were hostile in Oregon: then he erected a saw-mill and cleared off the timber, part of which he used to build houses for his colonists, and with part opened an advantageous trade with his American neighbors, who, living on the prairie, were soon entirely dependent on him for all their timber. The land, once cleared, was soon cultivated and planted, with orchards: the finer varieties of fruit he shipped for sale to Portland and San Francisco, and from the sour apples he either made vinegar or sold them to the older settlers, who very soon made themselves sick on them. He then attended them in the character of physician, and cured them of their ailments at a good round charge. This joke the good doctor related with especial satisfaction.

By degrees, the doctor continued to say, the number of colonists increased; and his means and strength being thus enlarged, he established a tannery, a factory, looms, flouring-mills, built more houses for his colonists, cleared more land and drained the marshes, increased his orchards, laid out new farms, gave some attention to adornment, erected a church and school-houses, and purchased from the American settlers in the neighborhood their best lands for a song. He did everything systematically. He always assigned his colonists the sort of labor that they appeared to him best fitted for, and each one found the place best suited to his capabilities. If any one objected to doing his will and obeying his orders, he was driven out of the colony, for he would endure no opposition. He made the best leather, the best hams and gathered the best crops in all Oregon. The possessions of the colony, which he added to as he was able, extended already over twenty sections (a section contains six hundred and forty acres, or an English square mile), and the most perfect order and industry existed everywhere.

Thus the doctor; and amid this and the like conversation we walked over an orchard covering forty acres. The eight thousand trees it contained yielded annually five thousand bushels of choice apples and eight thousand of the finest pears, and the crop increased yearly. The doctor pointed out repeatedly the excellence of his culture in contrast with the American mode, which leaves the weeds to grow undisturbed among the trees, and disregards entirely all regularity and beauty. He, on the contrary, insisted no less on embellishment than on neatness and order; and this was no vain boast. Carefully-kept walks led through the grounds; verdant turf, flowerbeds and charming shady arbors met us at every turn; there were long beds planted with flourishing currant, raspberry and blackberry bushes, and large tracts set with rows of bearing vines, on which luscious grapes hung invitingly. Order also reigned among the fruit trees: here were several acres of nothing but apples, again a plantation of pears or apricots, beneath which not a weed was to be seen: the hoe and the rake had done their work thoroughly. Everything was in the most perfect order: the courtgardener of a German prince might have been proud of it.

We seated ourselves in a shady arbor, where the doctor entertained us further with an account of his religious belief. He had, he said, no fixed creed and no established religion: there were in the colony Protestants, Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, indeed Christians of every name, and even Jews. Every one was at liberty to hold what faith he pleased: he preached only natural religion, and whoever shaped his life according to that would be happy. After this he enlarged on the prosperity of the colony, which was founded on the principles of natural religion, and prosed about humility, love to our neighbor, kindness and carrying religion into everything; and then back he came to Nature and himself, until my head was perfectly bewildered. I had given up long before this, in despair, any questions as to the interior organization of the colony, for the doctor either gave me evasive answers or none at all. His colonists, he asserted, loved him as a father, and he cared for them accordingly: both these assertions were undoubtedly true. The deep respect with which those whom we occasionally met lifted their hats to "the doctor"--a form of greeting by no means universal in America--bore witness to their unbounded esteem for him. Toward us also they demeaned themselves with great respect, as to noble strangers whom the doctor deigned to honor with his society. As to his care for them, no one who witnessed it could deny the exceedingly flourishing condition of the settlement. Whether, however, in all this the doctor had not a keen eye to his own interest was an afterthought which involuntarily presented itself.

As we left the orchard, the doctor pointed out to us several wheat-fields in the neighborhood, cultivated with true German love for neatness, which formed, with the pleasant dwellings adjoining, separate farms. The average yield per acre, he observed, was from twenty-five to forty bushels of wheat, and from forty to fifty of oats. He then took us into a neighboring grove, to a place where the pic-nics and holiday feasts of the colony are held: here we paused near a grassy knoll shaded by a sort of awning and surrounded by a moat. This, which bears the name of "The Temple Hill," forms the centre of a number of straight roads, which branch out from it into the woods in the shape of a fan. Not far from it I noticed a dancing ground covered by a circular open roof, and a pavilion for the music.

"At our public feasts," said the doctor, "I have all these branching roads lighted with colored lanterns, and illuminate the temple, which, with its brilliant lamps, makes quite an imposing spectacle. When we celebrate our May-day festival it looks, after dark, like a scene out of the _Arabian Nights_; and when, added to this, we have beautiful music and fine singing, and the young folks are enjoying the dance, it is really very pleasant. But none are permitted to set foot on the Temple Hill, nor can they do it very easily if they would. Do you know the reason, gentlemen?" Körner opined that it might be on account of the ditch, which would be difficult to pass, in which view I agreed. "Exactly so," remarked the doctor. "This Temple Hill has an especial significance: it represents the sovereign ruler of the people, on whose head no one may tread: on that account the ditch is there."

After a walk of several hours we returned to the doctor's house, where he invited us to take a glass of homemade wine. As we had been informed that the sale and use of wine and spirits were strictly forbidden in the colony, this invitation was certainly an unprecedented exception. The wine, of which two kinds were placed before us--one made of wild grapes, and the other of currants--was very good, and was partaken of in the doctor's office. Here Mr. Körner again brought forward his life-insurance project: the doctor gave him hopes that he would go into it, but he wished to give the matter due consideration, and to subject the advantages and disadvantages of the speculation to a strict investigation, before giving a definite answer; and with this ended our visit to the "king of Aurora."

Before leaving the colony we obtained considerable information from the members as to their interior organization and government, the results of which, as well as what I further learned respecting Doctor Keil, I will state briefly.

Should any one wish to become a member of the colony, he must, in the first place, put all his ready money into the hands of Doctor Keil: he will then be taken on trial. If the candidate satisfies the doctor, he can remain and become one of the community: should this, however, not be the case, he receives again the capital he paid in, but without interest. How long he must remain "on probation" in the colony, and work there, depends entirely on the doctor's pleasure. If a member leaves the community voluntarily--a thing almost unheard of--he receives back his capital without interest, together with a _pro rata_ share of the earnings of the community during his membership, as appraised by the doctor.

All the ordinary necessaries of life are supplied gratuitously to the members of the community. The doctor holds the common purse, out of which all purchases are paid for, and into which go the profits from the agricultural and industrial products of the colony. If any member needs a coat or other article of clothing, flour, sugar or tobacco, he can get whatever he wants, without paying for it, at the "store:" in the same way he procures meat from the butcher and bread from the baker: spirits are forbidden except in case of sickness. The doctor also appoints the occupation of each member, so as to contribute to the best welfare of the colony--whether he shall be a farmer, a mechanic, a common laborer, or whatever he can be most usefully employed in; and the time and talents of each are regarded as belonging to the whole community, subject only to the doctor's judgment. If a member marries, a separate dwelling-house and a certain amount of land are assigned him, so that the families of the settlement are scattered about on farms. The elders of the colony support the doctor in the duties of his office by counsel and assistance.

The lands of the colony are collectively recorded in Doctor Keil's name, in order, as he says, to avoid intricate and complicated law-papers. It would, however, be for the interest of the colonists to make, a speedy change in this respect, so that the members of the community, in case of the doctor's death, might obtain each his share of the lands without litigation. Should the doctor's decease occur soon, before this alteration is made, his natural heirs could claim the whole property of the colony, and the members would be left in the lurch. He does not appear, however, to be in great haste to effect this change, though it ought to have been done long ago. It is always said among the colonists, naturally enough, that all the ground is the common property of the community. Whether the doctor fully subscribes to this opinion in his secret heart might be a question.

Doctor Keil is at the same time the religious head and the unlimited secular ruler of the colony of Aurora, and can ordain, with the consent of the elders (who very naturally uphold his authority), what he pleases. A life free from care and responsibility, such as the members of the community (who, for the most part, belong to the lower and uncultivated class) lead--a life in regard to which no one but the doctor has the trouble of thinking--is the main ground of the undisturbed continuance of the colony. The pre-eminent talent for organization, combined with the unlimited powers of command, which the doctor--justly named "king of Aurora"--possesses, together with the inborn industry peculiar to Germans, is the cause of the prosperity of the settlement, which calls itself communistic, but is certainly nothing more than a vast farm belonging to its talented founder. It has its schools, its churches, newspapers and books--the selection and tendency of which the doctor sees to--and no lack of social pleasures, music and singing. Taken together with an easily-procured livelihood, all this satisfies the desires of the colonists entirely, and the good doctor takes care of everything else.

ELIZABETH SILL.

GRAY EYES.

I have always counted it among the larger blessings of Providence that a woman can bear up year after year under a weight of dullness which would drive a man of the same mental calibre to desperation in a month.

I had no idea what a heavy burden mine had been until one day my brother asked me to go to sea with him on his next voyage. He and his wife were at the farm on their wedding-tour, and only the happiness of a bridegroom could have led him to hold out to me this way of escape. Christian's heart when he dropped his pack was not lighter than mine. Butter and cheese are good things in their way--the world would miss them if all the farmers' daughters went suddenly down to the sea in ships--but it is possible to have too much of a good thing, and such had been my feeling for some years.

So suddenly and completely did my threadbare endurance give way that if Frank had revoked his words the next minute, I must have gone away at once to some crowded place and drawn a few deep breaths of excitement before I could have joined again the broken ends of my patience.

No bride-elect poor in this world's goods ever went about the preparations for her wedding with more delicious awe than I felt in turning one old gown upside down, and another inside out, for seafaring use. There was excitement enough in the departure, the inevitable sea-changes, and finally the memory of it all, to keep my mind busy for a few weeks, but when we settled into the grooves of a tropical voyage, wafted along as easily by the trade winds as if some gigantic hand, unseen and steady, had us in its grasp, my life was wholly changed, and yet it bore an odd family resemblance to the days at the farm. It was a pleasant dullness, because, in the nature of things, it must soon have an end.

I went on deck to look at a passing ship about as often as I used to run to the window at the sound of carriagewheels. One can't take a very intimate interest in whales and the other seamonsters unless one is scientific. Time died with me a slow but by no means a painful death. I used to fold my hands and look at them by the hour, internally rollicking over the idea that there was no milk to skim or dishes to wash, or any earthly wheel in motion that required my shoulder to turn it. I spent much time in a half-awake state in the long warm days, out of sheer delight in wasting time after saving it all my life.

So it came about that I slept lightly o' nights. Every morning the steward came into the cabin with the first dawn of day to scour his floors before the captain should appear. He had a habit of talking to himself over this early labor, and one morning, more awake than usual, I found that he was praying. "O Lord, be good to me! I wasn't to blame. I would have helped her if I could. O Lord, be good to me!" and other homely entreaties were repeated again and again.

He was a meek, bowed old negro, with snowy hair, and so many wrinkles that all expression was shrunk out of his face. He was an excellent cook, but he waited on table with a manner so utterly despairing that it took away one's appetite to look at him.

For many mornings after this I listened to his prayers, which grew more and more earnest and importunate. I could not think he had done any harm with his own will. He must have been more sinned against than sinning.

He brought me a shawl one cool evening as if it were my death-warrant, and I said, in the sepulchral tone that wins confidence, "Pedro, do you always say your prayers when you are alone?"

"Yes, miss, 'board _this_ ship."

"What's the matter with, this ship?"

"I s'pose you don't have no faith in ghosts?"

"Not much."

"White folks mostly don't," said Pedro with aggravating meekness, and turned into his pantry.

I followed him to the door, and stood in it so that he had no escape: "What has that to do with your prayers?"

"This cabin has got a ghost in it."

I looked over my shoulder into the dusk, and shivered a little, which was not lost on Pedro. He grew more solemn if possible than before: "I see her 'most every morning, and if my back is to the door, I see her all the same. She don't never touch me, but I keep at the prayers for fear she will."

"Do you never see her except in the morning?"

"Once or twice she has just put her head out of the door of the middle state-room when I was waitin' on table."

"In broad daylight?"

"Sartin. Them as sees ghosts sees 'em any time. Every morning, just at peep o' day, she comes out of that door and makes a dive for the stairs. She just gives me one look, and holds up her hand, and I don't see no more of her till next time."

"How does she look?" I almost hoped he would not tell, but he did.

"She's got hair as black as a coal, kind o' pushed back, as if she'd been runnin' her hands through it; she has big shiny eyes, swelled up as she'd been cryin' a great while; and she's always got on a gray dress, silvery-like, with a tear in one sleeve. There ain't nothin' more, only a handkerchief tied round her wrist, as if it had been hurt."

"Is she handsome?"

"Mebbe white folks'd think so."

"Why does she show herself to you and no one else, do you suppose?"

"Didn't I tell you the reason before?"

"Of course you didn't."

"Well, you see, she looked just so the last time I seen her alive. I must go and put in the biscuit now, miss."

I submitted, knowing that white folks may be hurried, but black ones never; and I could not but admire the natural talent which Pedro shared with the authors of continued stories, of always dropping the thread at the most thrilling moment.

"Who was she?" said I, lying in wait for him on his return.

"She was cap'n's wife, miss--a young woman, and the cap'n was old, with a blazing kind of temper. He was dreffle sweet on her for about a month, and mebbe she was happy, mebbe she wa'n't: how should I know about white folks' feelin's? All of a suddent he said she was sick and couldn't go out of the middle state-room. The old man took in plenty of stuff to eat, but he never let me go near her. We was on just such a v'y'ge as this, only hotter. The cap'n would come out of that room lookin' black as thunder, and everybody scudded out of his sight when he put his head out of the gangway.

"He was always bad enough, but he got wuss and wuss, and nothin' couldn't please him. Sometimes I'd hear the poor thing a-moaning to herself like a baby that's beat out with loud cryin' and hain't got no noise left. She was always cryin' in them days. Once the supercargo (he was a cool hand, any way) give me a bit of paper very private to give to her, and I slipped it under the door, but the old man had nailed somethin' down inside, an' he found it afore she did. Then there was a regular knockdown fight, and the supercargo was put in irons. The old man was in the middle room a long time that day, talkin' in a hissin' kind of a way, and the missus got a blow. Just after that a sort of a white squall struck the ship, and the old man give just the wrong orders. You see, he was clean out of his head. He got so worked up at last that he fell down in a fit, and they bundled him into his state-room and left him, 'cause nobody cared whether he was dead or alive. The mate took the irons off the supercargo first thing, and broke open the middle room. The supercargo went in there and stayed a long time, whispering to the missus, and she cried more'n ever, only it sounded different.

"Toward night the old man come to, and begun to ask questions--as ugly as ever, only as weak as a baby. 'Bout midnight I was comin' out of his room, and I seen the missus in a gray dress, with her eyes shinin' like coals of fire, dive out of her room and up the stairs, and nobody never seen her afterward. The next morning the supercargo was gone too, and I think they just drownded themselves, 'cause they couldn't bear to live any more without each other. Mebbe the mate knew somethin' about it, but he never let on, and I dunno no more about it; only the old man had another fit when he heard it, and died without no mourners."

"It might be she was saved, after all," I said, with true Yankee skepticism.

"Then why should I see her ghost, if she ain't dead-drownded?"

"Did you never find anything in the state-room that would explain?"

"Well, I did find some bits of paper, but I couldn't read writin'."

"Oh, what did you do with them?" I insisted, quivering with excitement.

"You won't tell the cap'n?"

"No, never."

"You'll give 'em back to me?"

"Yes, yes--of course."

"Here they be," he said, opening his shirt, and showing a little bag hung round his neck like an amulet. He took out a little wad of brown paper, and gave it jealously into my hand.

"I will give it back to you to-night," I said with the solemnity of an oath, and carried it to my room.

It proved to be a short and fragmentary account of the sufferings which the "missus" had endured in the middle room, written in pencil on coarse wrapping-paper, and bearing marks of trembling hands and frequent tears. I thought I might copy the papers without breaking faith with Pedro. The outside paper bore these words:

"Whoever finds this is besought for pity's sake, by its most unhappy writer, to send it as soon as possible to Mrs. Jane Atwood of Davidsville, Connecticut, United States of America."

Then followed a letter to her mother:

Dearest Mother: If I never see your blessed face again, I know you will not believe me guilty of what my husband accuses me of. I married Captain Eliot for your sake, believing, since Herbert had proved faithless, that no comfort was left to me except in pleasing others. I meant to be a good wife to Captain Eliot, and I believe I should have kept my vow all my days if the most unfortunate thing had not wakened his jealousy. Since then he has been almost or quite crazed.

I knew we had a supercargo of whom Captain Eliot spoke highly. He kept his room for a month from sea-sickness, and when he came out it was Herbert. Of course I knew him, every line of his face had been so long written on my heart. I strove to treat him as if I had never seen him before, but the old familiar looks and tones were very hard to bear. If Herbert could only have submitted patiently to our fate! But it was not in him to be patient under anything, and one evening, when I was sitting alone on deck, he must needs pour out his soul in one great burst, trying to prove that he had never deserted me, but only circumstances had been cruel. I longed to believe him, but I could only keep repeating that it was too late.

When I went down, Captain Eliot dragged me into the middle state-room, and gave vent to his jealous feelings. He must have listened to all that Herbert had said. His last words were that I should never leave that room alive. I had a wretched night, and the first time I fell into an uneasy sleep I started suddenly up to find my husband flashing the light of a lantern across my eyes. "Handsome and wicked," he muttered--"they always go together."

I begged him to listen to the story of my engagement to Herbert, and he did listen, but it did not soften his heart. If he ever loved me, his jealousy has swallowed it up.

I have been in this room just a week. My husband does not starve or beat me, but his taunts and threats are fearful, and his eyes when he looks at me grow wild, as if he had the longing of a beast to tear me in pieces.

* * * * *

_May_ 10. I placed a copy of the paper that is pinned to this letter in a little bottle that had escaped my husband's search, and threw it out of my window.

I am Waitstill Atwood Eliot, wife of Captain Eliot of the ship Sapphire. I have been kept in solitary confinement and threatened with death for four weeks, for no just cause. I believe him to be insane, as he constantly threatens to burn or sink the ship. I pray that this paper may be picked up by some one who will board this ship and bring me help.

Of course it is a most forlorn hope, but it keeps me from utter despair.

20. Herbert tried to communicate with me by slipping a paper under the door, but I did not get it, and he has been put in irons. Captain Eliot boasts of it. I wish he would bind us together and let us drown in one another's arms, as they did in the Huguenot persecution.

28. A little paper tied to a string hung in front of my bull's-eye window to-day: I took it in. The first officer had lowered it down: "Captain Eliot says you are ill, but I don't believe it. If he tries violence, scream, and I will break open the door. I am always on the watch. Keep your heart up."

This is a drop of comfort in my black cup, but my little window was screwed down within an hour after I had read the paper.

_June_ 10. My spirit is worn out: I can endure no more. I have begged my husband to kill me and end my misery. I don't know why he hesitated. He means to do it some time, but perhaps he cannot think of torture exquisite enough for his purpose.

11. My husband came in about four in the afternoon, looking so vindictive that my heart stood still. He gradually worked himself into a frenzy, and aimed a blow at my head: instinct, rather than the love of life, made me parry it, and I got the stroke on my wrist.

I screamed, and at the same moment there was a tumult on deck, and the ship quivered as if she too had been violently struck. Captain Eliot rushed on deck, and began to give hurried orders. I could hear the first officer contradict them, and then there was a heavy fall, and two or three men stumbled down the cabin stairs, carrying some weight between them.

_Later_. My husband is helpless, and Herbert has been with me, urging me passionately to trust myself to him in a little boat at midnight. He says there are several ships in sight, and one of them will be almost sure to pick us up. He swears that he will leave me, and never see me again (if I say so), so soon as he has placed me in safety, but he will save me, by force if need be, from the brute into whose hands I fell so innocently. If the ship does not see us, it is but dying, after all.

Good-bye, mother! I pray that this paper will reach you before Captain Eliot can send you his own account, but if it does not, you will believe me innocent all the same.

This was the last, and I folded up the papers as they had come to me. That night I read them all to Pedro.

"They was drownded--I knew it," said Pedro; and nothing could remove that opinion. A ghost is more convincing than logic.

Our voyage wore on, with one day just like another: my brother looked at the sun every day, and put down a few cabalistic figures on a slate, but his steady business was reading novels to his wife and drinking weak claret and water.

The sea was always the same, smiling and smooth, and the "man at the wheel" seemed to be always holding us back by main strength from the place where we wanted to go. I had a growing belief that we should sail for ever on this rippling mirror and never touch the frame of it. It struck me with a sense of intense surprise when a dark line loomed far ahead, and they told me quietly that that line meant Bombay.

It seemed a matter of course to my brother that the desired port should heave in sight just when he expected it, but to me the efforts that he had made to accomplish this tremendous result were ridiculously small.

"I have done more work in a week, and had nothing to show for it at last," said I, "than you have seemed to do in all this voyage."

"Poor sister! don't you wish you were a man?"

"Certainly, all women do who have any sense. I hold with that ancient Father of the Church who maintained that all women are changed into men on the judgment-day. The council said it was heresy, but that don't alter my faith."

"I shouldn't like you half as well if you had been born a boy," said Frank.

"But I should like myself vastly better," said I, clinging to the last word.

Bombay is a city by itself: there is none like it on earth, whatever there may be in the heaven above or in the waters under it. From Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy's hospital for sick animals to the Olympian conceit of the English residents, there are infinite variations of people and things that I am persuaded can be matched nowhere else. I felt myself living in a series of pictures, a sort of supernumerary in a theatre, where they changed the play every night.

One of the first who boarded our ship was Mr. Rayne, an old friend of Frank's. He insisted on our going to his house for a few days in a warm-hearted way that was irresistible.

"Are you quite sure you want _me_?" I said dubiously. "Young married people make a kind of heaven for themselves, and do not want old maids looking over the wall."

"But you _must_ go with us," said Frank, man-like, never seeing anything but the uppermost surface of a question.

"Not at all. I'm quite strong-minded enough to stay on board ship; or, if that would not do in this heathen place, the missionaries are always ready to entertain strangers. A week in the missionhouse would make me for ever a shining light in the sewing circle at home.

"A woman of so many resources would be welcome anywhere. For my part, an old maid is a perfect Godsend. The genus is unknown here, and the loss to society immense," said Mr. Rayne.

"But what shall I do when Mrs. Rayne and my sister-in-law are comparing notes about the perfections of their husbands?"

"Walk on the verandah with me and convert me to woman suffrage."

Mr. Rayne had his barouche waiting on shore, and drove us first to the bandstand, where, in the coolness of sunset, all the Bombay world meet to see and to be seen. When the band paused, people drove slowly round the circle, seeking acquaintance. Among them one equipage was perfect--a small basket-phaeton, and two black ponies groomed within an inch of their lives. My eyes fell on the ponies first, but I saw them no more when the lady who drove them turned her face toward me.

She wore a close-fitting black velvet habit and a little round hat with long black feather. Her hair might have been black velvet, too, as it fell low on her forehead, and was fastened somehow behind in a heavy coil. Black brows and lashes shaded clear gray eyes--the softest gray, without the least tint of green in them--such eyes as Quaker maidens ought to have under their gray bonnets. Little rose colored flushes kept coming and going in her cheeks as she talked.

All at once I thought of Queen Guinevere,

As she fled fast thro' sun and shade, With jingling bridle-reins.

"Mr. Rayne, do you see that lady in black, with the ponies?"

"Plainly."

"If I were a man, that woman would be my Fate."

"I thought women never admired each other's beauty."

"You are mistaken. Heretofore I have met beautiful women only in poetry. Do you remember four lines about Queen Guinevere?--no, six lines, I mean:

"She looked so lovely as she swayed The rein with dainty finger-tips, A man had given all other bliss, And all his worldly worth for this, To waste his whole heart in one kiss Upon her perfect lips.

"I always thought them overstrained till now."

"I perfectly agree with you," said Mr. Rayne: "I knew we were congenial spirits." Then he said a word or two in a diabolical language to his groom, who ran to the carriage which I had been watching and repeated it to the lady: she bowed and smiled to Mr. Rayne, and soon drew up her ponies beside us.

"My wife," said Mr. Rayne with laughter in his eyes.

Mrs. Rayne talked much like other people, and her beauty ceased to dazzle me after a few minutes; not that it grew less on near view, but, being a woman, I could not fall in love with her in the nature of things.

When the music stopped we drove to Mr. Rayne's house, his wife keeping easily beside us. When she was occupied with the others Mr. Rayne whispered, "Her praises were so sweet in my ears that I would not own myself Sir Lancelot at once."

"If you are Sir Lancelot," I said, "where is King Arthur?"

"Forty fathoms deep, I hope," said Mr. Rayne with a sudden change in his voice and a darkening face. I had raised a ghost for him without knowing it, and he spoke no more till we reached the house.

It was a long, low, spreading structure with a thatched roof, and a verandah round it. A wilderness of tropical plants hemmed it in. But all appearance of simplicity vanished on our entrance. In the matted hall stood a tree to receive the light coverings we had worn; not a "hat tree," as we say at home by poetic license, but the counterfeit presentment of a real tree, carved in branches and delicate foliage out of black wood. The drawing-room was eight-sided, and would have held, with some margin, the gambrel-roofed house, chimneys and all, in which I had spent my life. Two sides were open into other rooms, with Corinthian pillars reaching to the roof. Carved screens a little higher than our heads filled the space between the pillars, and separated the drawing-room from Mrs. Rayne's boudoir on the side and the dining-room on the other.

The furniture of these rooms was like so many verses of a poem. Every chair and table had been designed by Mrs. Rayne, and then realized in black wood by the patient hands of natives.

Another side opened by three glass doors on a verandah, and only a few rods below the house the sea dashed against a beach.

After dinner I sat on the verandah drinking coffee and the sea-breeze by turns. The gentlemen walked up and down smoking the pipe of peace, while Mrs. Rayne sat within, talking with Rhoda in the candlelight. Opposite me, as I looked in at the open door, hung two Madonnas, the Sistine and the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception. In front of each stood a tall flower-stand carved to imitate the leaves and blossoms of the calla lily. These black flowers held great bunches of the Annunciation lily, sacred to the Virgin through all the ages. Mrs. Rayne had taken off the close-buttoned jacket, and her dress was now open at the throat, with some rich old lace clinging about it and fastened with a pearl daisy.

"Have you forgiven me the minute's deception I put upon you?" said Mr. Rayne, pausing beside me. "If I had not read admiration in your face, I would have told you the truth at once."

"How could one help admiring her?"

"I don't know, I'm sure: I never could."

"She has the serenest face, like still, shaded water. I wonder how she would look in trouble?"

"It is not becoming to her."

"Are you sure?"

"Quite."

"Your way of life here seems so perfect! No hurry nor worry--nothing to make wrinkles."

"You like this smooth Indian living, then?"

"_Like it_! I hope you won't think me wholly given over to love of things that perish in the using, but if I could live this sort of life with the one I liked best, heaven would be a superfluity."

"It is heaven indeed when I think of the purgatory from which we came into it," said Mr. Rayne, throwing away his cigar and carrying off my coffee-cup.

"Do you know anything of Mrs. Rayne's history before her marriage?" I said to Frank as I joined him in his walk.

"Nothing to speak of--only she was a widow."

"Oh!" said I, feeling that a spot or two had suddenly appeared on the face of the sun.

"That's nothing against her, is it?"

"No, but I have no patience with second marriages."

"Nor first ones, either," said Frank wickedly.

"But seriously, Frank--would you like to have a wife so beautiful as Mrs. Rayne?"

"Yes, if she had Rhoda's soul inside of her," said Frank stoutly.

"I shouldn't."

"Why not?"

"Because all sorts of eyes gloat on her beauty and drink it in, and in one way appropriate it to themselves. Mr. Rayne is as proud of the admiration given to his wife as if it were a personal tribute to his own taste in selecting her. A beautiful woman never really and truly belongs to her husband unless he can keep a veil over her face, as the Turks do."

"I knew you had 'views,'" said Mr. Rayne behind me, "but I had no idea they were so heathenish. What is New England coming to under the new rule? Are the plain women going to shut up all the handsome ones?"

"I was only supposing a case."

"Suppositions are dangerous. You first endure, then dally with them, and finally embrace them as established facts."

"I was only saying that if I am a man when I come into the world next time (as the Hindoos say), I shall marry a plain woman with a charming disposition, and so, as it were, have my diamond all to myself by reason of its dull cover."

"Jealousy, thy name is woman!" said Mr. Rayne. "When the Woman's Republic is set up, how I shall pity the handsome ones!"

"They will all be banished to some desert island," said Frank.

"And draw all men after them, as the 'Pied Piper of Hamelin' did the rats," said Mr. Rayne.

"What are you talking about?" said Mrs. Rayne, joining us at this point.

"The pity of it," said her husband, "that beauty is only skin deep."

"That is deep enough," said Mrs. Rayne.

"Yes, if age and sickness and trouble did not make one shed it so soon," said I ungratefully.

"Don't mention it," said Mrs. Rayne--"'tis bad enough when it comes. Do you remember that Greek woman in _Lothair,_ whose father was so fearfully rich that she seemed to be all crusted with precious stones?"

"Perfectly."

"To dance and sing was all she lived for, and Lothair must needs bring in the skeleton, as you did, by reminding her of the dolorous time when she would neither dance nor sing. You think she is crushed, to be sure, only Disraeli's characters never are crushed, any more than himself. 'Oh then,' she says, 'we will be part of the audience, and other people will dance and sing for us.' So beauty is always with us, though one person loses it."

She gave a little shrug of her shoulders, which made her pearls and velvet shimmer in the moonlight. She looked so white and cool and perfect, so apart from common clay, that all at once Queen Guinevere ceased to be my type of her, and I thought of "Lilith, first wife of Adam," as we see her in Rossetti's fanciful poem:

Not a drop of her blood was human, But she was made like a soft, sweet woman.

We all went to our rooms after this, and in each of ours hung a full-length swinging mirror; I had never seen one before, except in a picture-shop or in a hotel.

"Truly this is 'richness'!" I said, walking up and down and sideways from one to the other.

"I had no idea you had so much vanity," said Frank, laughing at me, as he has done ever since he was born.

"Vanity! not a spark. I am only seeing myself as others see me, for the first time."

"I always had a glass like that in my room at home," said my sister-in-law, with the least morsel of disdain in her tone.

"Had you? Then you have lost a great deal by growing up to such things. A first sensation at my age is delightful."

Next day Rhoda and I were sitting with Mrs. Rayne in her dressing-room, with a great fan swinging overhead. We all had books in our hands, but I found more charming reading in my hostess, whose fascinations hourly grew upon me.

She wore a long loose wrapper, clear blue in color, with little silver stars on it. I don't know how much of my admiration sprang from her perfect taste in dress. Raiment has an extraordinary effect on the whole machinery of life. Most people think too lightly of it. Somebody says if Cleopatra's nose had been a quarter of an inch shorter, the history of the world would have been utterly changed; but Antony might equally have been proof against a robe with high neck and tight sleeves. Mrs. Rayne's face always seemed to crown her costume like a rose out of green leaves, yet I cannot but think that if I had seen her first in a calico gown and sitting on a three-legged stool milking a cow, I should still have thought her a queen among women.

While I sat like a lotos-eater, forgetful of home and butter-making, a servant brought in a parcel and a note. Mrs. Rayne tossed the note to me while she unfolded a roll of gray silk.

Dear Guinevere: I send with this a bit of silk that old Fut'ali insisted on giving to me this morning. It is that horrid gray color which we both detest. I know you will never wear it, and you had better give it to Miss Blake to make a toga for her first appearance in the women's Senate. LANCELOT.

"With all my heart!" said Mrs. Rayne as I gave back the note. "You will please us both far more than you can please yourself by wearing the dress with a thought of us. I wonder why Mr. Rayne calls me 'Guinevere'? But he has a new name for me every day, because he does not like my own."

"What is it?"

"Waitstill. Did you ever hear it?"

"Never but once," I said with a sudden tightness in my throat. I could scarcely speak my thanks for the dress.

"I should never wear it," said Mrs. Rayne: "the color is associated with a very painful part of my life."

"Do you suppose water would spot it?" asked Rhoda, who is of a practical turn of mind.

"Take a bit and try it."

"Water spots some grays" said Mrs. Rayne with a strange sort of smile as Rhoda went out, "especially salt water. I spent one night at sea in an open boat, with a gray dress clinging wet and salt to my limbs. When I tore it off in rags I seemed to shed all the misery I had ever known. All my life since then has been bright as you see it now. It would be a bad omen to put on a gray gown again."

"Then you have made a sea-voyage, Mrs. Rayne?"

"Yes, such a long voyage!--worse than the 'Ancient Mariner's.' No words can tell how I hate the sea." She sighed deeply, with a sudden darkening of her gray eyes till they were almost black, and grasped one wrist hard with the other hand.

A sudden trembling seized me. I was almost as much agitated as Mrs. Rayne. I felt that I must clinch the matter somehow, but I took refuge in a platitude to gain time: "There is such a difference in ships, almost as much as in houses, and the comfort of the voyage depends greatly on that."

"It may be so," she said wearily.

"My brother's ship is old, but it has been refitted lately to something like comfort. It's old name was the Sapphire."

This was my shot, and it hit hard.

"The Sapphire! the Sapphire!" she whispered with dilated eyes. "Did you ever hear--did you ever find--But what nonsense! You must think me the absurdest of women."

The color came back to her face, and she laughed quite naturally.

"The fact is, Miss Blake, I was very ill and miserable when I was on shipboard, and to this day any sudden reminder of it gives me a shock.--Did water spot it?" she said to Rhoda, who came in at this point.

I thought over all the threads of the circumstance that had come into my hand, and like Mr. Browning's lover I found "a thing to do."

The next morning I made an excuse to go down to the ship with my brother, and there, by dint of pressure, I got those stained and dingy papers into my possession again. I had only that day before me, for we were going to a hotel the same evening, and the Raynes were to set out next day for their summer place among the hills, a long way back of Bombay. Our stay had already delayed their departure.

This was my plot: Mrs. Rayne had been reading a book that I had bought for the home-voyage, and was to finish it before evening. I selected the duplicate of the paper which "Waitstill Atwood Eliot" had put in a bottle and cast adrift when her case had been desperate, and laid it in the book a page or two beyond Mrs. Rayne's mark. It seemed impossible that she could miss it: I watched her as a chemist watches his first experiment.

Twice she took up the book, and was interrupted before she could open it: the third time she sat down so close to me that the folds of her dress touched mine. One page, two pages: in another instant she would have turned the leaf, and I held my breath, when a servant brought in a note. Her most intimate friend had been thrown from her carriage, and had sent for her. It was a matter of life and death, and brooked no delay. In ten minutes she had bidden us a cordial good-bye, and dropped out of my life for all time.

She never finished _my_ book, nor I _hers_. I had had it in my heart, in return for her warm hospitality, to cast a great stone out of her past life into the still waters of her present, and her good angel had turned it aside just before it reached her. I might have asked Mr. Rayne in so many words if his wife's name had been Waitstill Atwood Eliot when he married her, but that would have savored of treachery to her, and I refrained.

Often in the long calm days of the home-voyage, and oftener still in the night-watches, I pondered in my heart the items of Mrs. Rayne's history, and pieced them together like bits of mosaic--the gray eyes and the gray dress, the identity of name, the indefinite terrors of her sea-voyage, the little touch concerning Lancelot and Guinevere, her emotion when I mentioned the Sapphire. If circumstantial evidence can be trusted, I feel certain that Pedro's ghost appeared to me in the flesh.

ELLA WILLIAMS THOMPSON.

REMINISCENCES OF FLORENCE.

I had six months more to stay on the Continent, and I began for the first time to be discontented in Paris. There was no soul in that great city whom I had ever seen before, but this alone would hot have been sufficient to make me long for a change, except for an accident which unluckily surrounded me with my own countrymen. These I did not go abroad to see; and having lived almost entirely in the society of the French for over two years, it was with dismay that I saw my sanctum invaded daily by twos and threes of the aimless American nonentities who presume that their presence must be agreeable to any of their countrymen, and especially to any countrywoman, after a chance introduction on the boulevard or an hour spent together in a café.

"Seeing these things," I determined to leave Paris, and the third day after found me traveling through picturesque Savoy toward Mont Cenis. All the afternoon the rugged hills had been growing higher and whiter with snow, and now, just before sunset, we reached the railway terminus, St. Michel, and were under the shadow of the Alps themselves.

The previous night in the cars I had found myself the only woman among some half dozen French military officers, who paid me the most polite attention. They were charmed that I made no objection to their cigarettes, talked with me on various topics, criticised McClellan as a general, and were enthusiastic on the subject of our country generally. About midnight they prepared a grand repast from their traveling-bags, to which they gave me a cordial invitation. I begged to contribute my _mesquin_ supply of grapes and brioches, and the supper was a considerable event. Their canteens were filled with red wines, and one cup served the whole company. They drank my health and that of the President of the United States. Afterward we had vocal music, two of the officers being good singers. They sang Beranger's songs and the charming serenade from _Lalla Rookh_. I finally expressed a desire to hear the Marseillaise. This seemed to take them by surprise, but one of the singers, declaring that he had _"rien à refuser à madame"_ boldly struck up,

Allons, enfants de la patrie, Le jour de gloire est arrivé;

but his companions checked him before he had finished the first stanza. The law forbade, they said, the production of the Marseillaise in society. We were a society: the guard would hear us and might report it.

"Vous voyez, madame," said the singer, "n'il n'est pas défendu d'être voleur, mais c'est défendu d'être attrapé" (It is not against the law to be a thief, but to be caught.)

My traveling--companions reached their destination early in the morning, and, very gallantly expressing regrets that they were not going over the Alps, so as to bear mer company, bade me farewell.

From the rear of the St. Michel hotel, called the Lion d'Or, I watched the preparations for crossing Mont Cenis. Three diligences were being crazily loaded with our baggage. The men who loaded them seemed imitating the Alpine structure. They piled trunk on trunk to the height of thirty feet, I verily believe; and if some one should nudge my elbow and say "fifty," I should write it down so without manifesting the least surprise.

When the preparations were finished the setting sun was shining clearly on the white summits above, and we commenced slowly winding up the noble zigzag road. Rude mountain children kept up with our diligences, asked for sous and wished us _bon voyage_ in the name of the Virgin.

The grandeur, but especially the extent and number, of the Alpine peaks impressed me with a vague, undefinable sense, which was not, I think, the anticipated sensation; and indeed if I had been in a poetic mood, it would have been quickly dissipated by the mock raptures of a young Englishman with a poodly moustache and an eye-glass. He called our attention to every chasm, gorge and waterfall, as if we had been wholly incapable of seeing or appreciating anything without his aid. As for me, I did not feel like disputing his susceptibility. I was suffering an uneasy apprehension of an avalanche--not of snow, but of trunks and boxes from the topheavy diligences ahead of us. However, we reached the top of Mont Cenis safely by means of thirteen mules to each coach, attached tandem, and we stopped at the queer relay-house there some thirty minutes. Here some women in the garb of nuns served me some soup with grated cheese, a compound which suggested a dishcloth in flavor, yet it was very good. I will not attempt to reconcile the two statements. After the soup I went out to see the Alps. The ecstatic Briton was still eating and drinking, and I could enjoy the scene unmolested. I crossed a little bridge near the inn. The night was cold and bright. Hundreds of snowy peaks above, below and in every direction, some of their hoary heads lost in the clouds, were glistening in the light of a clear September moon, and the stillness was only broken by a wild stream tumbling down the precipices which I looked up to as I crossed the bridge. It was indeed an impressive scene--cold, desolate, awful. I walked so near the freezing cataract that the icicles touched my face, and thinking that Dante, when he wrote his description of hell, might have been inspired by this very scene, I wrapped my cloak closer about me and went back to the inn.

The diligences were ready, and we commenced a descent which I cannot even now think of without a shudder. To each of those heavily-laden stages were attached two horses only, and we bounded down the mountain-side like a huge loosened boulder. Imagine the sensation as you looked out of the windows and saw yourself whirling over yawning chasms and along the brinks of dizzy precipices, fully convinced that the driver was drunk and the horses goaded to madness by Alpine demons! I have been on the ocean in a storm sufficiently severe to make Jew and Christian pray amicably together; I have been set on fire by a fluid lamp, and have been dragged under the water by a drowning friend, but I think I never had such an alarming sense of coming destruction as in that diligence. I think of those sure-footed horses even now with gratitude.

We arrived at Susa a long time before daylight. At first, I decided to stay and see this town, which was founded by a Roman colony in the time of Augustus. The arch built in his honor about eight years before Christ seemed a thing worth going to see; but a remark from my companion with the eye-glass made me determine to go on. He said he was going to "do" the arch, and I knew I should not be equal to witnessing any more of his ecstasies.

My first astonishment in Italy was that hardly any of the railroad officials spoke French. I had always been told that with that language at your command you could travel all over the Continent. This is a grave error: even in Florence, although "Ici on parle français" is conspicuous in many shop-windows, I found I had to speak Italian or go unserved. I had a mortal dread of murdering the beautiful Italian language; so I wanted to speak it well before I commenced, like the Irishman who never could get his boots on until he had worn them a week.

I stopped at Turin, then the capital of Italy, only a short time, and hurried on to Florence, for that was to be my home for the winter. It was delightful to come down from the Alpine snows and find myself face to face with roses and orange trees bearing fruit and blossom. Here I wandered through the olive-gardens alone, and gave way to the rapturous sense of simply being in the land of art and romance, the land of love and song; for there was no ecstatic person with me armed with _Murray_ and prepared to admire anything recommended therein. Besides, I could enjoy Italy for days and months, and therefore was not obliged to "do" (detestable tourist slang!) anything in a given time. I was free as a bird. I knew no Americans in Florence, and determined to studiously avoid making acquaintances except among Italians, for I wished to learn the language as I had learned French, by constantly speaking it and no other.

The day following my arrival in Florence I went out to look for lodgings, which I had the good fortune to find immediately. I secured the first I looked at. They were in the Borgo SS. Apostoli, in close proximity to the Piazza del Granduca, now Delia Signoria. I was passing this square, thinking of my good luck in finding my niche for the winter, when, much to my surprise, some one accosted me in English. Think of my dismay at seeing one of the irrepressible Paris bores I had fled from! He was in Florence before me, having come by a different route; and neither of us had known anything about the other's intention to quit Paris. He asked me at once where I was stopping, and I told him at the Hotel a la Fontana, not deeming it necessary to add that I was then on my way there to pack up my traveling-bag and pay my bill. As he was "doing" Florence in about three days, he never found me out. The next I heard of him he was "doing" Rome. This American prided himself on his knowledge of Italian; and one day in a restaurant, wishing for cauliflower _(cavolo fiore)_, he astonished the waiter by calling for _horse. "Cavallo"!_ he roared--"_Portéz me cavallo!_" "Cavallo!" repeated the waiter, with the characteristic Italian shrug. "_Non simangia in Italia, signore_" (It is not eaten in Italy, signore). Then followed more execrable Italian, and the waiter brought him something which elicited "_Non volo! non volo!_" (I don't fly! I don't fly!) from the American, and "_Lo credo, signore_" from the baffled waiter, much to the amusement of people at the adjacent tables.

I liked my new quarters very much. They consisted of two goodly-sized rooms, carpeted with thick braided rag carpets, and decently furnished, olive oil provided for the quaint old classic-shaped lamp, and the rooms kept in order, for the astounding price of thirty francs a month. Wood I had to pay extra for when I needed a fire, and that indeed was expensive; for a bundle only sufficient to make a fire cost a franc. There were few days, however, even in that exceptional winter, which rendered a fire necessary. The _scaldino_ for the feet was generally sufficient, and this, replenished three times a day, was included in the rent.

One of my windows looked out on olive-gardens and on the old church San Miniato, on the hill of the same name. Mr. Hart, the sculptor, told me that those rooms were very familiar to him. Buchanan Read, I think he said, had occupied them, and the walls in many places bore traces of artist vagaries. There were several nice caricatures penciled among the cheap frescoes of the walls. All the walls are frescoed in Florence. Think of having your ceiling and walls painted in a manner that constantly suggests Michael Angelo!

After some weeks spent in looking at the art-wonders in Florence, I visited many of the studios of our artists. That of Mr. Hart, on the Piazza Independenza, was one of the most interesting. He had two very admirable busts of Henry Clay, and all his visitors, encouraged by his frank manner, criticised his works freely. Most people boldly pass judgment on any work of art, and "understand" Mrs. Browning when she says the Venus de' Medici "thunders white silence." I do not. I am sure I never can understand what a thundering silence means, whatever may be its color. These appreciators talked of the "word-painting" of Mrs. Browning.

They sit on their thrones in a purple sublimity, And grind down men's bones to a pale unanimity.

I suppose this is "word-painting." I can see the picture also--some kings, and possibly queens, seated on gorgeous thrones, engaged in the festive occupation of grinding bones! Oh, I degrade the subject, do I? Nonsense! The term is a stilted affectation, perhaps never better applied than to Mrs. Browning's descriptive spasms. Still, she was undoubtedly a poet. She wrote many beautiful subjective poems, but she wrote much that was not poetry, and which suggests only a deranged nervous system. I have a friend who maintains from her writings that she never loved, that she did not know what passion meant. However this may be, the author of the sonnet commencing--

Go from me! Yet I feel that I shall stand Henceforward in thy shadow,

deserves immortality.

But to return to Mr. Hart's studio. One of the most remarkable things I saw in Florence was this artist's invention to reduce certain details of sculpture to a mechanical process. This machine at first sight struck me as a queer kind of ancient armor. In brief, the subject is placed in position, when the front part of this armor, set on some kind, of hinge, swings round before him, and the sculptor makes measurements by means of numberless long metal needles, which are so arranged as to run in and touch the subject: A stationary mark is placed where the needle touches, and then I think it is pulled back. So the artist goes on, until some hundreds of measurements are made, if necessary, when the process is finished and the subject is released. How these measurements are made to serve the artist in modeling the statue I cannot very well describe, but I understood that by their aid Mr. Hart had modeled a bust from life in the incredible space of two days! I further understood that Mr. Hart's portrait-busts are remarkable for their correct likeness, which of course they must be if they are mathematically correct in their proportions. Many of the artists in Florence have the bad taste to make sport of this machine; but if Mr. Hart's portrait-busts are what they have the reputation of being, this sport is only a mask for jealousy. Mr. Hart was extremely sensitive to the light manner Mr. Powers and others have of speaking of this invention. One day he was much annoyed when a visitor, after examining the machine very attentively for some time, exclaimed, "Mr. Hart, what if you should have a man shut in there among those points, and he should happen to sneeze?"

The Pitti Palace was one of my favorite haunts, and I often spent whole hours there in a single salon. There I almost always saw Mr. G----, a German-American, copying from the masters; and he could copy too! What an indefatigable worker he was! Slight and delicate of frame, he seemed absolutely incapable of growing weary. He often toiled there all day long, his hands red and swollen with the cold, for the winter, as I have before remarked, was unusually severe. For many days I saw him working on a Descent from the Cross by Tintoretto--a bold attempt, for Tintoretto's colors are as baffling as those of the great Venetian master himself. This copy had received very general praise, and one day I took a Lucca friend, a dilettante, to see it. Mr. G---- brought the canvas out in the hall, that we might see it outside of the ocean of color which surrounded it in the gallery. When we reached the hall, Mr. G---- turned the picture full to the light. The effect was astounding. It was so brilliant that you could hardly look at it. It seemed a mass of molten gold reflecting the sun. "Good God!" exclaimed G----, "did I do that?" and an expression of bitter disappointment passed over his face. I ventured to suggest that as everybody had found it good while it was in the gallery, this brilliant effect must be from the cold gray marble of the hall. G---- could not pardon the picture, and nothing that the Italian or I could say had the least effect. He would hear no excuse for it, and, evidently quite mortified at the début of his Tintoretto, he hurried the canvas back to the easel. The sister of the czar of Russia was greatly pleased with this copy, and proposed to buy it, but whether she did or not I forgot to ascertain.

Alone as I was in Florence, cultivating only the acquaintance of Italians, yet was I never troubled with _ennui_. I read much at Vieussieux's, and when I grew tired of that and of music, I made long sables on the Lung Arno to the Cascine, through the charming Boboli gardens, or out to Fiesole. Fiesole is some two miles from Florence, and once on my way there I stopped at the Protestant burying-ground and pilfered a little wildflower from Theodore Parker's grave to send home to one of his romantic admirers. Fiesole must be a very ancient town, for there is a ruined amphitheatre there, and the remains of walls so old that they are called Pelasgic in their origin; which is, I take it, sufficiently vague. The high hill is composed of the most solid marble; so the guidebooks say, at least. This is five hundred and seventy-five feet above the sea, and on its summit stands the cathedral, very old indeed, and built in the form of a basilica, like that of San Miniato. From this hill you look down upon the plain beneath, with the Arno winding through it, and upon Florence and the Apennine chain, above which rise the high mountains of Carrara. Here, on the highest available point of the rock, I used to sit reading, and looking upon the panorama beneath, until the sinking sun warned me that I had only time to reach the city before its setting. I used to love to look also at works of art in this way, for by so doing I fixed them in my mind for future reference. I never passed the Piazza della Signoria without standing some minutes before the Loggia dei Lanzi and the old ducal palace with its marvelous tower. Before this palace, exposed to the weather for three hundred and fifty years, stands Michael Angelo's David; to the left, the fountain on the spot where Savonarola was burnt alive by the order of Alexander VI.; and immediately facing this is the post-office. I never could pass the post-office without thinking of the poet Shelley, who was there brutally felled to the earth by an Englishman, who accused him of being an infidel, struck his blow and escaped.

I made many visits to the Nuova Sacrista to see the tombs of the two Medici by Michael Angelo. The one at the right on entering is that of Giuliano, duke of Nemours, brother of Leo X. The two allegorical figures reclining beneath are Morning and Night. The tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici, duke of Urfrino, stands on the other side of the chapel, facing that of the duke de Nemours. The statue of Lorenzo, for grace of attitude and beauty of expression, has, in my opinion, never been equaled. The allegorical figures at the feet of this Medici are more beautiful and more easily understood than most of Michael Angelo's allegorical figures. Nevertheless, I used sometimes, when looking at these four figures, to think that they had been created merely as architectural auxiliaries, and that their expression was an accident or a freak of the artist's fancy, rather than the expression of some particular thought: at other times I saw as much in them as most enthusiasts do--enough, I have no doubt, to astonish their great author himself. I believe that very few people really experience rapturous sensations when they look at works of art. People are generally much more moved by the sight of the two canes preserved in Casa Buonarotti, upon which the great master in his latter days supported his tottering frame, than they are by the noblest achievements of his genius.

The Carnival in Florence was a meagre affair compared with the same fête in Rome. During the afternoon, however, there was goodly procession of masks in carriages on the Lung' Arno, and in the evening there was a feeble _moccoletti_ display. The grand masked ball at the Casino about this time presents an irresistible attraction to the floating population in Florence. I was foolish enough to go. All were obliged to be dressed in character or in full ball-costume: no dominoes allowed. The Casino, I was told, is the largest club-house in the world; and salon after salon of that immense building was so crowded that locomotion was nearly impossible. The floral decorations were magnificent, the music was excellent, and some of the ten thousand people present tried to dance, but the sets formed were soon squeezed into a ball. Then they gave up in despair, while the men swore under their breath, and the women repaired to the dressing-rooms to sew on flounces or other skirt-trimmings. Masks wriggled about, and spoke to each other in the ridiculously squeaky voice generally adopted on such occasions. Most of their conversation was English, and of this very exciting order: "You don't know me?" "Yes I do." "No you don't." "I know what you did yesterday," etc., etc., _ad nauseam._ How fine masked balls are in sensational novels! how absolutely flat and unsatisfactory in fact! There was on this occasion a vast display of dress and jewelry, and among the babel of languages spoken the most prominent was the beautiful London dialect sometimes irreverently called Cockney. I lost my cavalier at one time, and while I waited for him to find me I retired to a corner and challenged a mask to a game of chess. He proved to be a Russian who spoke neither French nor Italian. We got along famously, however. He said something very polite in Russian, I responded irrelevantly in French, and then we looked at each other and grinned. He subsequently, thinking he had made an impression, ventured to press my hand; I drew it away and told him he was an idiot, at which he was greatly flattered; and then we grinned at each other again. It was very exciting indeed. I won the game easily, because he knew nothing of chess, and then he said something in his mother-tongue, placing his hand upon his heart. I could have sworn that it meant, "Of course I would not be so rude as to win when playing with a lady." I thought so, principally because he was a man, for I never knew a man under such circumstances who did not immediately betray his self-conceit by making that gallant declaration. Feeling sure that the Russian had done so, when we placed the pieces on the board again I offered him my queen. He seemed astounded and hurt; and then for the first time I thought that if this Russian were an exception to his sex, and I had _not_ understood his remark, then it was a rudeness to offer him my queen. I was fortunately relieved from my perplexing situation by the approach of my cavalier, and as he led me away I gave my other hand to my antagonist in the most impressive manner, by way of atonement in case there _had_ been anything wrong in my conduct toward him.

One day during the latter part of my stay in Florence I went the second time to the splendid studio of Mr. Powers. He talked very eloquently upon art. He said that some of the classic statues had become famous, and deservedly so, although they were sometimes false in proportion and disposed in attitudes quite impossible in nature. He illustrated this by a fine plaster cast of the Venus of Milo, before which we were standing. He showed that the spinal cord in the neck could never, from the position of the head, have joined that of the body, that there was a radical fault in the termination of the spinal column, and that the navel was located falsely with respect to height. As he proceeded he convinced me that he was correct; and in defence of this, my most cherished idol after the Apollo Belvedere, I only asked the iconoclast whether these defects might not have been intentional, in order to make the statue appear more natural when looked at in its elevated position from below. I subsequently repeated Mr. Powers's criticism of the Venus of Milo in the studio of another of our distinguished sculptors, and he treated it with great levity, especially when I told him my authority. There is a spirit of rivalry among sculptors which does not always manifest itself in that courteous and well-bred manner which distinguishes the medical faculty, for instance, in their dealings with each other. This courtesy is well illustrated by an anecdote I have recently heard. A gentleman fell down in a fit, and a physician entering saw a man kneeling over the patient and grasping him firmly by the throat; whereupon the physician exclaimed, "Why, sir, you are stopping the circulation in the jugular vein!" "Sir," replied the other, "I am a doctor of medicine." To which the first M.D. remarked, "Ah! I beg your pardon," and stood by very composedly until the patient was comfortably dead.

While Mr. Powers was conversing with me about the Venus of Milo, there entered two Englishwomen dressed very richly in brocades and velvets. They seemed very anxious to see everything in the studio, talked in loud tones of the various objects of art, passed us, and occupied themselves for some time before the statue called California. I heard one of them say, "I wonder if there's anybody 'ere that talks Hinglish?" and in the same breath she called out to Mr. Powers, "Come 'ere!" He was at work that day, and wore his studio costume. I was somewhat surprised to see him immediately obey the rude command, and the following conversation occurred:

"Do you speak Hinglish?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"What is this statue?"

"It is called California, madam."

"What has she got in 'er 'and?"

"Thorns, madam, in the hand held behind the back; in the other she presents the quartz containing the tempting metal."

"Oh!"

We next entered a room where there was another work of the sculptor in process of formation. Mr. Powers and myself were engaged in an animated and, to me, very agreeable conversation, which was constantly interrupted by these ill-bred women, who kept all the time mistaking the plaster for the marble, and asked the artist the most pestering questions on the _modus operandi_ of sculpturing. I was astonished at the marvelous temper of Mr. Powers, who politely and patiently answered all their queries. By some lucky chance these women got out of the way during our slow progress back to the outer rooms, and I enjoyed Mr. Powers's conversation uninterruptedly. He showed me the beautiful baby hand in marble, a copy of his daughter's hand when an infant, and had just returned it to its shrine when the two women reappeared, and we all proceeded together. In the outer room there were several admirable busts, upon which these women passed comment freely. One of these busts was that of a lady, and they attacked it spitefully. "What an ugly face!" "What a mean expression about the mouth!" "Isn't it 'orrible?"

"Who is it?" asked one of them, addressing Mr. Powers.

"That is a portrait of my wife," said the artist modestly.

"Your wife!" repeated one of the women, and then, nothing abashed, added, "Who are you?"

"My name is Powers, madam," he answered very politely. This discovery evidently disconcerted the impudence even of these visitors, and they immediately left the studio.

As the day approached for my departure I visited all my old haunts, and dwelt fondly upon scenes which I might never see again. My dear old music-master cried when I bade him farewell. Povero maestro! He used to think me so good that I was always ashamed of not being a veritable angel. I left Florence when

All the land in flowery squares, Beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind, Smelt of the coming summer.

My last visit was with the maestro to the Cascine, where he gathered me a bunch of wild violets--cherished souvenir of a city I love, and of a friend whose like I "ne'er may look upon again."

MARIE HOWLAND.

THE SOUTHERN PLANTER.

While Philadelphia hibernates in the ice and snow of February, the spring season opens in the Southern woods and pastures. The fragrant yellow jessamine clusters in golden bugles over shrubs and trees, and the sward is enameled with the white, yellow and blue violet. The crocus and cowslip, low anemone and colts-foot begin to show, and the land brightens with waxy flowers of the huckleberry, set in delicate gamboge edging. Yards, greeneries, conservatories breathe a June like fragrance, and aviaries are vocal with songsters, mocked outside by the American mocking-bird, who chants all night under the full moon, as if day was too short for his medley.

New Orleans burgeons with the season. The broad fair avenues, the wide boulevards, famed Canal street, are luxuriant with spring life and drapery. Dashing equipages glance down the Shell Road with merry driving-and picnic-parties. There is boating on the lake, and delicious French collations at pleasant resorts, spread by neat-handed mulatto waiters speaking a patois of French, English and negro. There spring meats and sauces and light French wines allure to enjoyments less sensual than the coarser Northern climate affords.

The unrivaled French opera is in season, the forcing house of that bright garden of exotics. Other and Northern cities boast of such entertainments, but I apprehend they resemble the Simon-Pure much as an Englishman's French resembles the native tongue. In New Orleans it is the natural, full-flavored article, lively with French taste and talent, and for a people instinct with a truer Gallic spirit, perhaps, than that of Paris itself. It is antique and colonial, but age and the sea-voyage have preserved more distinctly the native _bouquet_ of the wine after all grosser flavors have wasted away. The spectacle within the theatre on a fine night is brilliant, recherché and French. From side-scene to dome, and from gallery after gallery to the gay parquette, glitters the bright, shining audience. There are loungers, American and French, blasé and roué, who in the intervals drink brandy and whisky, or anisette, maraschino, curçoa or some other fiery French cordial. The French loungers are gesticulatory, and shoulders, arms, fingers, eyes and eyebrows help out the tongue's rapid utterance; but they are never rude or boisterous. There are belles, pretty French belles, with just a tint of deceitless rouge for fashion's sake, and tinkling, crisp, low French voices modulated to chime with the music and not disharmonize it; nay, rather add to the sweetness of its concord.

And there is the Creole dandy, the small master of the revels. There is nothing perfumed in the latest box of bonbons from Paris so exquisite, sparkling, racy, French and happy in its own sweet conceit as he is. He has hands and feet a Kentucky girl might envy for their shapely delicacy and dainty size, cased in the neatest kid and prunella. His hair is negligent in the elegantest grace of the perruquier's art, his dress fashioned to the very line of fastidious elegance and simplicity, yet a simplicity his Creole taste makes unique and attractive. He has the true French persiflage, founded on happy content, not the blank indifference of the Englishman's disregard. It becomes graceful self-forgetfulness, and yet his vanity is French and victorious. In the atmosphere of breathing music and faint perfume he looks around the glancing boxes, and knows he has but to throw his sultanic handkerchief to have the handsomest Circassian in the glowing circle of female beauty. But he does not throw it, for all that. His manner plainly says: "Beautiful dames, it would do me much of pleasure if I could elope with you all on the road of iron, but the _bête noir_, the Moral, will not permit. Behold for which, as an opened box of Louvin's perfumeries, I dispense my fragrant affection to you all: breathe it and be happy!" Such homage he receives with graceful acquiescence, believing his recognition of it a sweet fruition to the fair adorers. He accepts it as he does the ices, wines and delicate French dishes familiar to his palate. Life is a fountain of eau sucrée, where everything is sweet to him, and he tries to make it so to you, for he is a kindly-natured, true-hearted, valiant little French gentleman. His loves, his innocent dissipations, his grand passions, his rapier duels, would fill the volumes of a Le Sage or a Cervantes. In the gay circles of New Orleans he floats with lambent wings and irresistible fine eyes, its serenest butterfly, admired and spoiled alike by the French and American element.

At this early spring season a new atom of the latter enters the charmed circle, breaking its merry round into other sparkles of foam. A well-formed, stately, rather florid gentleman alights at the St. Charles, and is ushered into the hospitalities of that elegant caravansary. There is something impressive about him, or there would be farther North. He is American, from the strong, careless Anglo-Saxon face, through all the stalwart bones and full figure, to the strong, firm, light step. He will crush through the lepidoptera of this half-French society like a silver knife through _Tourtereaux soufflés à la crême_. He brings letters to this and that citizen, or he is well known already, and "coloneled" familiarly by stamp-expectant waiters and the courteous master of ceremonies at the clerk's desk. He calls, on his bankers, and is received with gracious familiarity in the pleasant bank-parlor. Correspondence has made them acquainted with Colonel Beverage in the way of business: they are glad to see him in person, and will be happy to wait on him. He makes them happy in that way, for they do wait upon him satisfactorily. There is a little pleasant interchange of news and city gossip, and of something else. There is a crinkling of a certain crispy, green foliage, and the colonel withdraws in the midst of civilities.

He next appears on Canal street, by and beyond the Clay Monument, with occasional pauses at clothiers', and buys his shirts at Moody's, as he has probably often sworn not to do, because of its annoyingly frequent posters everywhere. He enters jewelers' shops and examines trinkets--serpents with ruby eyes curled in gold on beds of golden leaves with emerald dews upon them; pearls, pear-shaped and tearlike, brought up by swart, glittering divers, seven fathom deep, at Tuticorin or in the Persian Gulf; rubies and sapphires mined in Burmese Ava, and diamonds from Borneo and Brazil. Is he choosing a bridal present? It looks so; but no, he selects a splendid, brilliant solitaire, for which he pays eight hundred dollars out of a plethoric purse, and also a finger-ring, diamond too, for two hundred and fifty dollars. The jewelers are polite, as the bankers were. He must be a large cotton-planter, one of a class with whom a fondness for jewels serves as a means of dozing away life in a kind of crystallization. He otherwise adorns his stately person, till he has a Sublime Porte indeed, the very vizier of a fairy tale glittering in barbaric gems and gold. His taste, to speak it mildly, is expressed rather than subdued--not to be compared with the quiet elegance of your husband or lover, madam or miss, but not unsuited to his showy style, for all that. As the crimson-purple, plume-like prince's feather has its own royal charm in Southern gardens beside the pale and placidlily, so these luxuriant adornments, do not misbecome his full and not too fleshy person. There is a certain harmony in the Oriental sumptuousness of his attire, like radiant sunsets, appropriate to certain styles of man and woman. Let us humble creatures be content to have our portraits done in crayon, but the colonel calls for the color-box.

So adorned and radiant, this variety of the American aloe floats into the charmed circle of New Orleans society--that lively, sparkling epitome and relic of the old régime. He has good letters and a fair name, and mingles in the Mystick Krewe, that curious club, possible nowhere else, that has raised mummery into the sphere of aesthetics. Perhaps he has worn the gray, perhaps the blue. It is only in the very arcana of exclusive passion it makes much difference. But gray or blue, or North or South in birth, he is in every essential a Southerner, as many, like S.S. Prentiss, curiously independent of nativity, are. He is well received and courteously entreated. He has his little suppers at Moreau's, and knows the ways of the place and names of the waiters. He has his promenades, his drives, his club visits, is seen everywhere--a brilliant convolvulus now, twining the espaliers of that Saracenic fabric of society; to speak architecturally, its very summer-house. He visits the opera and gives it his frank approval, but confesses a preference for the old plantation-melodies. He crushes through the meshes of the Creole dandies, not offensively, but as the law of his volume and momentum dictates, and they yield the _pas_ to his superior weight and metal. They are civil, and he is civil, but they do not like one another, for all that. That Zodiac passed, they continue their own summery orbit of charm and conquest. He tends toward the aureal spheres and the green and pleasant banks of issue. The colonel is not here for pleasure, though he takes a little pleasure, as is his way, seasonably; but he means business, and that several thirsty, eager cotton-houses of repute know.

Of course they know. It came in his letters and distills in the aroma of his talk. It may even have slipped into the personals of the _Pic_ and _Times_ that Colonel Beverage has taken Millefleur and Rottenbottom plantations on Red River, and is going extensively into the cultivation of the staple. The colonel is modest over this: "not extensively, no, but to the extent of his limited means." In the mean while he looks out for some sound, well-recommended cotton-house.

This means business. In the North the farmer raises his crop on his own capital, and turns it over unencumbered to the merchant for the public. The credit system prevails in the agriculture of the South, and brings another precarious element into the already hazardous occupation of cotton-growing. A new party appears in the cotton-merchant. He is not merely the broker, yielding the proceeds, less a commission, to the planter. Either, by hypothecation on advances made during the year, he secures a legal pre-emption in the crop, or, by initiatory contract, he becomes an actual partner of limited liability in the crop itself. He agrees to furnish so much cash capital at periods for the cultivation and securing of the crop, which is husbanded by the planter. The money for these advances he obtains from the banks; and hence it is that in every cotton-crop raised South there are three or more principals actually interested--the banker, the merchant and the planter. This condition of planting is almost invariable. Even the small farmer, whose crop is a few bags, is ground into it. In his case the country-side grocer and dealer is banker and merchant, and his advances the bare necessaries. In this blending of interests the curious partnership rises, thrives, labors and sometimes falls--the planter, as a rule, undermost in that accident.

The Millefleur and Rottenbottom plantations are famous, and a hand well over the crops raised under such shrewd, experienced management as that of Colonel Beverage is a stroke of policy. Therefore, as the bankers and jewelers have been polite, so now the cotton-merchants are civil; but the colonel is shy--an old bird and a game bird.

Shy, but not suspicious. He chooses his own time, and at an early day walks into the business-house of Negocier & Duthem. They are pleased to see the colonel in the way of business, as they have been in society, and the pleasure is mutual. As he expounds his plans they are more and more convinced that he is a plumy bird of much waste feather.

He has taken Rottenbottom and Millefleur, and is going pretty well into cotton. He thinks he understands it: he ought to. Then he has his own capital--an advantage, certainly. Some of his friends, So-and-so--running over commercial and bankable names easily--have suggested the usual co-operation with some reputable house, and an extension, but he believes He will stay within limits. He has five thousand dollars in cash he wishes to deposit with some good firm for the year's supplies. He believes that will be sufficient, and he has called to hear their terms. All this comes not at once, but here and there in the business-conversation.

The reader will perceive one strong bait carelessly thrown out by the auriferous or folliferous colonel--the five thousand dollars cash in hand. The immediate use of that is a strong incentive to the house. They covet the colonel's business: they think well of the proposed extension. Cotton is sure to be up, and under practical, experienced cultivation must yield a handsome fortune. The result is foreseen. The cotton-house and the colonel enter into the usual agreement of such transactions. The colonel leaves his five thousand dollars, and draws on that, and for as much more as may be necessary in securing the crop.

The commercial reader North who has had no dealings South will smile at the credulous merchant who entrusts his credit to such a full-blown, thirsty tropical pitcher-plant as the colonel, who carries childish extravagances in his very dress; but he will judge hastily. We have seen this gaudy efflorescence pass over the curiously-wrought enameled gold-work, opals, pearls and rubies, and adorn himself with solid diamonds. The careful economist North puts his superfluous thousands in government bonds, or gambles them away in Erie stocks, because he likes the increase of Jacob's speckled sheep. The Southerner invests his in diamonds because he likes show, and diamonds have a pretty steady market value. There is method, too, in the colonel's associations, and all his acquaintance is gilt-edged and bankable.

His business is now done, and he does not tarry, but wings his way to Millefleur and Rottenbottom, where he moults all his fine feathers. He goes into fertilizers, beginning with crushed cotton-seed and barnyard manure, if possible, before February is over. He follows the shovel-plough with a slick-jack, and plants, and then the labor begins to fail him. He talks about importing Chinese, and writes about it in the local paper. He is sure it will do, as he is positive in all his opinions. He is true pluck, and tries to make new machinery make up for deficient labor. He buys "bull-tongues," "cotton-shovels," "fifteen-inch sweeps," "twenty-inch sweeps," "team-ploughs with seven-inch twisters," and a "finishing sweep of twenty-six inches." He hears of other inventions, and orders them. The South is flooded with a thousand quack contrivances now, about as applicable to cotton-raising as a pair of nut-crackers; but the colonel buys them. He is going to dispense with the hoe. That is the plan; and by that plan of furnishing a large plantation with new tools before Lent is over the five thousand dollars are gone. But he writes cheerfully. It is his nature to be sanguine, and to hope loudly, vaingloriously; and he writes it honestly enough to his merchant--and draws. The labor gets worse and worse. In the indolent summer days the negro, careless, thriftless, ignorant, works only at intervals. Perhaps the June rise catches him, and there is a heavy expense in ditching and damming to save the Rottenbottom crop. Maybe the merchant hears of the army-worm and is alarmed, but the colonel writes back assuring letters that it is only the grasshopper, and the grasshopper has helped more than hurt--and draws. Then possibly the army-worm comes sure enough, and cripples him. But he keeps up his courage--and draws. The five thousand dollars appear to have been employed in digging or building a sluice through which a constant current of currency flows from the city to Rottenbottom and Millefleur. The merchant has gone into bank, and the tide flows on. At last the planter writes: "The most magnificent crop ever raised on Red River, just waiting for the necessary hands to gather it in!" Of course the necessary sums are supplied, and at last the crop gets to market. It finds the market low, and declining steadily week by week. The banks begin to press: money is tight, as it is now while I write. The crop is sacrificed, for the merchant cannot wait, and some fine morning the house of Negocier & Duthem is closed, and Colonel Beverage is bankrupt.

And both are ruined? No. We will suppose the business-house is old and reputable: the banks are obliging and creditors prudently liberal, and by and by the firm resumes its old career. As for the colonel, the reader sees that to ruin him would be an absolute contradiction of nature. His friends or relations give him assistance, or he sells his diamonds, and soon you meet him at the St. Charles, as blooming, sanguine and splendiferous as ever. No, he cannot be ruined, but his is not an infrequent episode in the life of a Southern Planter.

WILL WALLACE HARNEY.

* * * * *

BABES IN THE WOOD.

I had two little babes, a boy and girl-- Two little babes that are not with me now: On one bright brow full golden fell the curl-- The curl fell chestnut-brown on one bright brow.

I like to dream of them that some soft day, Whilst wandering from home, their fitful feet Went heedlessly through some still woodland way Where light and shade harmoniously meet;

And that they wandered deeper and more deep Into the forest's fragrant heart and fair, Till just at evenfall they dropped asleep, And ever since they have been resting there.

After their willful wandering that day Each is so tired it does not wake at all, Whilst over them the boughs that sigh and sway Conspire to make perpetual evenfall.

And I, that must not join them, still am blest, Passionately, though this poor heart grieves; For memories, like birds, at my behest, Have covered them with tender thoughts, like leaves.

EDGAR FAWCETT.

MY CHARGE ON THE LIFE-GUARDS.

Now that our little international troubles about consequential damages and the like are happily settled, and there is no danger that my revelations will augment them in any degree, I think I may venture to give the particulars of an affair of honor which I once had with a gigantic member of Her Britannic Majesty's household troops.

My guardian had a special veneration for England in general and for Oxford in particular, and I was brought up and sent to Yale with the full understanding that St. Bridget's, Oxon., was the place where I was to be "finished." I left Yale at the end of Junior year and crossed the ocean in the crack steamer of the then famous Collins line. I do not believe any young American ever had a more favorable introduction to England than I had, and the wonder is that, considering the philo-Anglican atmosphere in which I was educated, I did not become a thorough-paced renegade. I was, however, blessed with a tolerably independent spirit, and kept my nationality intact throughout my university course.

Like Tom Brown, I felt myself drawn to the sporting set, and, as I was always an adept at athletics, soon won repute as an oarsman, and was well satisfied to be looked upon as the Yankee champion sundry amateur rowing-and boxing-matches, as well as in the lecture-room. Of course, I was the mark for no end of good-natured chaff about my nationality, but was nearly always able, I believe, to sustain the honor of the American name, and so at length graduated in the "firsts" as to scholarship, and enjoyed the distinguished honor of pulling number four in the "'Varsity eight" in our annual match with Cambridge on the Thames. Moreover, I stood six feet in my stockings, had the muscle of a gladiator, and was physically the equal of any man at Oxford.

After the race was over my special cronies hung about London for a few days, usually making that classical "cave" of Evans's a rendezvous in the evening. Two or three young officers of the Guards were often with us, and one night, when the talk had turned, as it often did, on personal prowess, the superb average physique of their regiment was duly lauded by our soldier companions. At length one of them remarked, in that aggravatingly superior tone which some Englishmen assume, that any man in his troop could handle any two of the then present company. This provoked a general laugh of incredulity, and two or three of our college set turned to me with--"What do you say to that, Jonathan?"

"Nonsense!" said I. "I'll put on the gloves with the biggest fellow among them, any day."

This somewhat democratic readiness to spar with a private soldier led to remarks which I chose to consider insular, if not insolent, and I replied, supporting the principle of Yankee equality, until, losing my temper at something which one of the ensigns said, I delivered myself in some such fashion as this: "Well, gentlemen, I'm only one Yankee among many Englishmen, but I will bet a hundred guineas, and put up the money, that I will tumble one of those mighty warriors out of his saddle in front of the Horse Guards, and ride off on his horse before the guard can turn out and stop me."

Of course my bet was instantly taken by the officers, but my friends were so astounded at my rashness that I found no backers. However, my blood was up, and, possibly because Evans's bitter beer was buzzing slightly in my head, I booked several more bets at large odds in my own favor. As the hour was late, we separated with an agreement to meet and arrange details on the following day, keeping the whole affair strictly secret meanwhile.

I confess that my feelings were not of the pleasantest as I sat at my late London breakfast somewhere about noon the next day, and I was fain to admit to my special friend that I had put myself in an awkward, if not an unenviable, position. However, I was in for it, and being naturally of an elastic temperament, began to cast about for a cheerful view of my undertaking. In the course of the day preliminaries were arranged and reduced to writing with all the care which Englishmen practice in such affairs of "honor." I only stipulated that I should be allowed to use a stout walking-stick in my encounter; that I should be kept informed as to the detail for guard; that I should be freely allowed to see the regiment at drill and in quarters; and that I should select my time of attack within a fortnight, giving a few hours' notice to all parties concerned, so as to ensure their presence as witnesses.

Every one who has ever visited London has seen and admired the gigantic horsemen who sit on mighty black steeds, one on either side of the archway facing Whitehall, and who are presumed at once to guard the commander-in-chief's head-quarters and to serve as "specimen bricks" of the finest cavalry corps in the world. Splendid fellows they are! None of them are under six feet high, and many of them are considerably above that mark. They wear polished steel corselets and helmets, white buck-skin trowsers, high jack-boots, and at the time of which I write their arms consisted of a brace of heavy, single-barreled pistols in holsters, a carbine and a sabre. The firearms were, under ordinary circumstances, not loaded, and the sabre was held at a "carry" in the right hand. This last was the weapon against which I must guard, and I accordingly placed a traveling cap and a coat in the hands of a discreet tailor, who sewed steel bands into the crown of one and into the shoulders of the other, in such a way as afforded very efficient protection against a possible downward cut.

Besides attending to these defensive preparations, I at once looked about for a competent horseman with military experience who could give me some practical hints as to encounters between infantry and cavalry, and, singularly enough, was thrown in with that gallant young officer who rode into immortality in front of the Light Brigade at Balaklava a few years afterward. I learned that he was a superb horseman, was down upon the English system of cavalry training, and was using pen and tongue to bring about a change. A sudden inspiration led me to take him into my confidence, as the terms of our agreement permitted me to do. He caught the idea with enthusiasm. What an argument it would be in favor of his new system if a mere civilian unhorsed a Guardsman trained after the old fashion! For a week he drilled me more or less every day in getting him off his horse in various ways, and I speedily became a proficient in the art, he meanwhile gaining some new ideas on the subject, which were duly printed in his well-known book.

Well, to make my story short, I gave notice to interested parties on the tenth day, put on my steel-ribbed cap and my armor-plated coat, and with stick in hand walked over to a hairdresser's with whom I had previously communicated, had my complexion darkened to a Spanish olive, put on a false beard, and was ready for service. I had arranged with this tonsorial artist, whose shop was in the Strand near Northumberland House, that he should be prepared to remove these traces of disguise as speedily as he had put them on, and that I should leave a stylish coat and hat in his charge, to be donned in haste should occasion require. I next engaged two boys to stand opposite Northumberland House, and be ready to hold a horse. These boys I partially paid beforehand, and promised more liberal largess if they did their duty. Preliminaries having been thus arranged, I strolled down Whitehall, feeling very much as I did years afterward when I found myself going into action for the first time in Dixie.

It was early afternoon on a lovely spring day. The Strand was a roaring stream of omnibuses and drays, carriages were beginning to roll along the drives leading to Rotten Row, and all London was in the streets. I was assured that at this hour I should find a big but father clumsy giant on post; and there he was, sure enough, sitting like a colossal statue on his coal-black charger, the crest of his helmet almost touching the keystone of the arch under which he sat, his accoutrements shining like jewels, and he looking every inch a British cavalryman. I walked past on the opposite side of Whitehall, meeting, without being recognized, all my aiders and abettors in this most heinous attack on Her Majesty's Guards. I then crossed the street and took a good look at my man. He and his companion-sentry under the other arch were aware of officers in "mufti" on the opposite sidewalk, and kept their eyes immovably to the front. Evidently nothing much short of an earthquake could cause either to relax a muscle. The little circle of admiring beholders which is always on hand inspecting these splendid horsemen was present, of course, with varying elements, and I had to wait a few minutes until a small number of innocuous spectators coincided with the aphelion of the periodical policeman.

It was not a pleasant thing to contemplate that tower of polished leather, brass and steel, with a man inside of it some forty pounds heavier than I, and think that in a minute or so we two should be engaged in a close grapple, whose termination involved considerable risk for me physically as well as pecuniarily. However, there was, in addition to the feeling of apprehension, a touch of elation at the thought that I, a lone Yankee, was about to beard the British lion in his most formidable shape, almost under the walls of Buckingham Palace.

I looked my antagonist carefully over, deciding several minor points in my mind, and then at a favorable moment stepped quietly within striking distance, and delivered a sharp blow with my stick on his left instep, as far forward as I could without hitting the stirrup. The man seemed to be in a sort of military trance, for he never winced. Quick as thought, I repeated the blow, and this time the fellow fairly yelled with rage, astonishment and pain. I have since made up my mind that his nerve-fibre must have been of that inert sort which transmits waves of sensation but slowly, so that the perception of the first blow reached the interior of his helmet just about as the second descended. At all events, he jerked back his foot, and somehow, between the involuntary contraction of his flexor muscles from pain and the glancing of my stick, his foot slipped from the stirrup. This, as I had learned from my instructor, was a great point gained, and in an instant I had him by the ankle and by the top of his jack-boot, doubling his leg, at the same time heaving mightily upward.

As I gave my whole strength to the effort I was dimly aware of screams and panic among the nursery--maids and children who were but a moment before my fellow-spectators. At the same time I caught the flash of the Guardsman's sabre as he cut down at me after the fashion prescribed in the broadsword exercise. Fortune, however, did not desert me. My antagonist had not enough elbow-room, and his sword-point was shivered against the stone arch overhead, the blade descending flatways and harmlessly upon my well-protected shoulder just as, with a final effort, I tumbled him out his saddle.

The recollection of the ludicrous figure which that Guardsman cut haunts me still. His pipeclayed gloves clutched wildly at holster and cantle as he went over. Down came the gleaming helmet crashing upon the pavement, and with a calamitous rattle and bang the whole complicated structure of corselet, scabbard, carbine, cross-belts, spurs and boots went into the inside corner of the archway, a helpless heap.

That started the horse. The noble animal had stood my assault as steadily as if he had been cast in bronze, but precisely such an emergency as this had never been contemplated in his training, as it had not in that of his master, and he now started forward rather wildly. I had my hand on the bridle before he had moved a foot, and swung myself half over his back as he dashed across the sidewalk and up Whitehall. The Guards' saddles are very easy when once you are in them, and I had reason, temporarily at least, to approve the English style of riding with short stirrups, for I readily found my seat, and ascertained that I could touch bottom with my toes. As I left the scene of my victory behind me I heard the guards turning out, and caught a glimpse as of all London running in my direction, but by the time that I had secured the control of my horse I had distanced the crowd, and as we entered the Strand we attracted comparatively little notice. In driving, the English turn out to the left instead of to the right, as is the custom here, and I was obliged to cross the westward-bound line of vehicles before I could fall in with that which would bring me to my boys. I decided to make a "carom" of it, and nearly took the heads off a pair of horses, and the pole off the omnibus to which they were attached, as I dashed through. Turning to the right, I soon lost the torrent of invective hurled after me by the driver and conductor of the discomfited 'bus, and in less than two minutes--which seemed to me an age, for the pursuit was drawing near--I reached my boys, dropped them a half sov. apiece, which I had ready in my hand, and bolted for my hairdresser's, the boys leading the horse in the opposite direction, as previously ordered.

It was none too soon, for as I ran up stairs I saw three or four policemen running toward the horse, and there was a gleam of dancing plumes and shining helmets toward Whitehall. My false beard and complexion were changed with marvelous rapidity, and, assuming my promenade costume, I sauntered down stairs and out upon the sidewalk in time to see the whole street jammed with a crowd of excited Britons, while the recaptured horse was turned over to the Guardsmen, and the two boys were marched off to Bow street for examination before a magistrate.

A private room and an elaborate dinner at the United Service Club closed the day; and I must admit that my military friends swallowed their evident chagrin with a very good grace. Of course I was told that I could not do it again, which I readily admitted; and that there was not another man in the troop whom I could have unhorsed--an assertion which I as persistently combated. The affair was officially hushed up, and probably not more than a few thousand people ever heard of it outside military circles.

How I escaped arrest and punishment to the extent of the law I did not know for many years, for the duke of Wellington, who was then commander-in-chief, had only to order the officers concerned under arrest, and I should have been in honor bound to come forward with a voluntary confession.

My giant was sent for to the old duke's private room the day after his overthrow, and questioned sharply by the adjutant, who, with pardonable incredulity, suspected that bribery alone could have brought about so direful a catastrophe. The duke was from the first convinced of the soldier's, honesty and bravery, and presently broke in upon the adjutant's examination with--"Well, well! speak to me now. What have you to say for yourself?"

"May it please yer ludship," said the undismayed soldier, "I've never fought a civilian sence I 'listed, an' yer ludship will bear me witness that there's nothing in the cavalry drill about resisting a charge of foot when a mon's on post at the Horse Guards."

This speech was delivered with the most perfect sincerity and sobriety, and although it reflected upon the efficiency of the army under the hero of Waterloo, the Iron Duke was so much impressed by the affair that he sent word to Lieutenant-Colonel Varian, commanding the regiment, not to order the man any punishment whatever, but to see that his command was thereafter trained in view of possible attacks, even when posted in front of army head-quarters.

CHARLES L. NORTON.

PAINTING AND A PAINTER.

Charles V. once said, "Titian should be served by Caesar;" and Michael Angelo, we read, was treated by Lorenzo de' Medici "as a son;" Raphael, his contemporary, was great enough to revere him, and thank God he had lived at the same time. In England, in France, in Germany, in Italy, in Spain at this day, the poet and the painter stand hedged about by the divinity of their gifts, and the people are proud to recognize their kingship.

Has "Reverence, that angel of the world," as Shakespeare beautifully says, forgot to visit America? Or must we consider ourselves less capable yet of delicate appreciation, such as older nations possess? Or are we over-occupied in gaining possession of material comforts and luxuries, and so forget to revere our poets and painters till it is too late, and the curtain has fallen upon their unobtrusive and often struggling earthly career? What a millennium will have arrived when we learn to be as _faithful_ to our love as we are sincere!

Questions like these have been asked also in times preceding ours. Alfred de Musset wrote upon this subject in 1833, in Paris: "There are people who tell you our age is preoccupied, that men no longer read anything or care for anything. Napoleon was occupied, I think, at Beresina: he, however, had his _Ossian_ with him. When did Thought lose the power of being able to leap into the saddle behind Action? When did man forget to rush like Tyrtaeus to the combat, a sword in one hand, the lyre in the other? Since the world still has a body, it has a soul."

Monsieur Charles Blanc writes: "In order to have an idea of the importance of the arts, it is enough to fancy what the great nations of the world would be if the monuments they have erected to their faiths, and the works whereon they have left the mark of their genius, were suppressed from history. It is with people as with men--after death only the emanations of their mind remain; that is to say, literature and art, written poems, and poems inscribed on stone, in marble or in color."

The same writer, in his admirable book, _Grammaire des arts du dessin,_ from which we are tempted to quote again and again, says: "The artist who limits himself simply to the imitation of Nature reaches only _individuality_: he is a slave. He who interprets Nature sees in her happy qualities; he evolves _character_ from her; he is master. The artist who idealizes her discovers in her or imprints upon her the image of _beauty_: this last is a great master.... Placed between Nature and the ideal, between what is and what must be, the artist has a vast career before him in order to pass from the reality he sees to the beauty he divines. If we follow him in this career, we see his model transform itself successively before his eyes.... But the artist must give to these creations of his soul the imprint of life, and he can only find this imprint in the individuals Nature has created. The two are inseparable--the type, which is a product of thought, and the individual, which is a child of life."

With this excellent analysis before us, we will recall one by one some of the best-known and most interesting works of W.M. Hunt, a painter who now holds a prominent place among the artists of America. We will try to discover by careful observation if the high gifts of Verity and Imagination, the sign and seal of the true artist, really belong to him: if so, where these qualities are expressed, and what value we should set upon them.

First, perhaps, for those readers remote from New England who may never have seen any pictures by this artist, a few words should be said by way of describing some characteristics of his work and the limitations of it; which limitations are rather loudly dwelt upon by connoisseurs and lovers of the popular modern French school. Artists discern these limitations of course more keenly even than others, but their tribute to verity and ideal beauty as represented by this painter is too sincere to allow caviling to find expression. This limitation to which we refer causes Mr. Hunt to allow _ideal suggestions_, rather than pictures, to pass from his studio, and makes him cowardly before his own work. It recalls in a contrary sense that saying of the sculptor Puget: "The marble trembles before me." Mr. Hunt trembles before his new-born idea. His swift nature has allowed him in the first hour of work to put into his picture the tenderness or rapture, the unconscious grace or tempestuous force, which he despaired at first of ever being able to express. In the flush of success he stops: he has it, the idea; the chief interest of the subject is portrayed before him; the delicate presence (and what can be more delicate than the thoughts he has delineated?) is there, and may vanish if touched in a less fortunate moment. But is this lack of fulfillment in the artist entirely without precedent or parallel? Had not Sir Joshua Reynolds a studio full of young artists who "finished off" his pictures? Were not the very faces themselves painted with such rapidity and want of proper method as to drop off, on occasion, entirely from the canvas, as in case of the boy's head, in being carried through the street? Hunt is of our own age, and would scorn the suggestion of having a hand or a foot painted for him, as if it were a matter of small importance what individual expression a hand or a foot should wear; but who can tell for what future age he has painted the wise, abrupt, kind, persistent, simple, strong old Judge in his Yankee coat; or the genial, resolute, hopeful, self-sacrificing governor of Massachusetts; and the Master of the boys, with his keen, loving, uncompromising face? These are pictures that, when children say, "Tell us about the Governor who helped Massachusetts bring her men first into the field during our war," we may lead them up before and reply, "He was this man!" So also with the portraits of the Judge, of the Master of the boys, of the old man with clear eyes and firm mouth, and that sweet American girl standing, unconscious of observation, plucking at the daisy in her hat and guessing at her fate.

Hurry, impatience and a worship of crude thought are characteristics of our present American life. Hunt is one of us. If these faults mark and mar his work, they show him also to be a child of the time. His quick sympathies are caught by the wayside and somewhat frayed out among his fellows; but nevertheless one essential of a great painter, that of _Verity_, will be accorded to him after an examination of the pictures we have mentioned.

But truth, character, skill, the many gifts and great labor which must unite to lead an artist to the foot of his shadowy, sun-crowned mountain, can then carry him no step farther unless ideal Beauty join him, and he comprehend her nature and follow to her height. Again we quote from Charles Blanc--for why should we rewrite what he says so ably?--"All the germs of beauty are in Nature, but it belongs to the spirit of man alone to disengage them. When Nature is beautiful, the painter _knows_ that she is beautiful, but Nature knows nothing of it. Thus beauty exists only on the condition of being understood--that is to say, of receiving a second life in the human thought. Art has something else to do than to copy Nature exactly: it must penetrate into the spirit of things, it must evoke the soul of its hero. It can then not only rival Nature, but surpass her. What is indeed the superiority of Nature? It is the life which animates all her forms. But man possesses a treasure which Nature does not possess--thought. Now thought is more than life, for it is life at its highest power, life in its glory. Man can then contest with Nature by manifesting thought in the forms of art, as Nature manifests life in her forms. In this sense the philosopher Hegel was able to say that the creations of art were truer than the phenomena of the physical world and the realities of history."

Now, thought in the soul of the true artist for ever labors to evolve the beautiful. This is what the thought of a picture means to him--how to express beauty, which he finds underlying even the imperfect individual of Nature's decaying birth. To the high insight this is always discernible. None are so fallen that some ray of God's light may not touch them, and this possibility, the faith in light for ever, radiates from the spirit of the artist, and renders him a messenger of joy. No immortal works have bloomed in despondency: they may have taken root in the slime of the earth, but they have blossomed into lilies.

We call this divine power to discern beauty in every manifestation of the Deity, imagination. As it expresses itself in painting, it is so closely allied with what is highest and holiest in our natures that painting has come to be esteemed a Christian art, as contrasted in its development subsequent to the Christian era with the less human works of sculpture. "Christianity came, and instead of physical beauty substituted moral beauty, infinitely preferring the expression of the soul to the perfection of the body. Every man was great in its eyes, not by his perishable members, but by his immortal soul. With this religion begins the reign of painting, which is a more subtle art, more immaterial, than the others--more expressive, and also more individual. We will give some proofs of it. Instead of acting, like architecture and sculpture, upon the three dimensions of heavy matter, painting acts only upon one surface, and produces its effects with an imponderable thing, which is color--that is to say, light. Hegel has said with admirable wisdom: 'In sculpture and architecture forms are rendered visible by exterior light. In painting, on the contrary, matter, obscure in itself, has within itself its internal element, its ideal--light: it draws from itself both clearness and obscurity. Now, unity, the combination of light and dark, is color.' The painter, then, proposes to himself to represent, not bodies with their real thickness, but simply their appearance, their image; but by this means it is the mind which he addresses. Visible but impalpable, and in some sense immaterial, his work does not meet the touch, which is the sight of the body: it only meets the eye, which is the touch of the soul. Painting is then, from this point of view, the essential art of Christianity.... If the painter, like Phidias or Lysippus, had only to portray the types of humanity, the majesty of Jupiter, the strength of Hercules, he might do without the riches of color, and paint in one tone, modified only by light and shade; but the most heroic man among Christians is not a demigod: he is a being profoundly individual, tormented, combating, suffering, and who throughout his real life shares with environing Nature, and receives from every side the reflection of her colors. Sculpture, generalizing, raises itself to the dignity of allegory--painting, individualizing, descends to the familiarity of portraiture."

Let us now return to consider William Hunt's pictures from this second point of view. The gift of Verity having been already assumed, can we also discern that higher power of Imagination whose crown and seal is the Beautiful. To decide this question we have, unhappily, to consider his work as lyrical, rather than dramatic, and for this reason we must study his power under disadvantage. That he possesses dramatic power will hardly be denied by those who know his "Hamlet," "The Drummer-Boy," and "The Boy and the Butterfly;" but the exigencies of life appear to prevent him from occupying himself with compositions such as filled years in the existence of the old painters.

Portraiture being the highest and most difficult labor to which an artist can aspire, to this branch of art Hunt has chiefly confined himself, and from this point of view he must be studied. We do not forget, in saying this, his angel with the flaming torch, strong and beautiful and of unearthly presence, nor the shadowy, half-portrayed figures which dart and flit across his easel; but as we may _understand_ the power of Titian from his portraits, yet never revel in it fully until we look upon "The Presentation" or "The Assumption"--never comprehend the painter's joy or his divine rest in endeavor until the achievement lies before us--we must speak of Hunt only from the work to which he has devoted himself, and not do him the injustice to predict dramas he has never yet composed.

First, pre-eminently appears that worship for moral beauty which suffers him to fear no ugliness. This power allies him with keen sympathy to every living thing. He sees kinship and the immortal spark in each breathing being. The soul of love goes out and paints the dark or the suffering or the repellant faithfully, bringing it in to the light where God's sunshine may fall upon it, and men and women, seeing for the first time, may help to wipe away the stain. This tendency he shares with the great French painter Millet, whom he loves to call Master, and with Dore, whose terrible picture of "The Mountebanks" should call men and women from their homes to penetrate the fastnesses of vice and strive to heal the sorrows of their kind.

This love of moral beauty, which forces painters to paint such pictures, was never in any age more evident. Hunt in his beggar-man, in his forlorn children, and other pictures of the same class, unfolds a beauty that men should be thankful for.

On the other hand, his love of beauty and his power of expressing it should be studied in its _direct_ influence. The beauty of flesh and blood, even the loveliness of children, seems to have slight hold upon him, compared with the significance of character and the lustre with which his imagination endows everything. This lustre is a distinguishing power with him. The depth to which he sees and feels causes him to give higher lights and deeper shadows than other men. White flowers are not only white to him--they shine like stars. His pictures give a sense of splendor.

In his sketch of the poor mother cuddling her child, it is the feeling of rest, the mother's sleeping joy, the relaxed limbs, the folding embrace, which he has given us to enjoy. These are the beauty of the picture--not rounded flesh, nor graceful curves, nor fair complexion; and so with the singing-girls: they are not beautiful girls, but they are simple--they love to sing, they are full of tenderness and music. We might go over all his pictures to weariness in this way. The young girl plucking at the daisy as she stands in an open field must, however, not be omitted. The natural elegance of this portrait renders it peculiarly, we should say, such a one as any woman would be proud to see of herself. Doubtless this young girl, like others, may have worn ear-rings and chains and pins and rings, but the artist knew her better than she knew herself, and has portrayed that exquisite crown of simplicity with which, it should seem, Nature only endows beggars and her royal favorites.

In all the ages since Hamlet was created there appears never to have been an era in which his character has excited such strong and universal interest as in America at this time. William Hunt has thrown upon the canvas a figure of Hamlet beautiful and living. There is no suggestion of any actor in it. Hamlet walks new-born from the painter's brain. His "cursed spite" bends the youthful shoulders, and the figure marches past unmindful of terrestrial presences.

One other picture will illustrate more clearly, perhaps, than everything which has gone before, this gift of imagination. In "The Boy and the Butterfly," now on the walls of the Century Club-house, the loveliness of the child, the power of action, the subtle management of color and light, are all subordinated to the ideas of defeat and endeavor. Energy, the irrepressible strength of the spirit upheld by a divine light of indestructible youth, shines out from the canvas. The boy who cannot catch the butterfly is transmuted as we stand into the Soul of Beauty reaching out in vain for satisfaction, and ready to follow its aspiration to another sphere.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

WILHELMINE VON HILLERN.

German literature, despite its extraordinary productiveness and its possession of a few great masterpieces, is far from being rich in the department of belles-lettres, especially in works of fiction. It has no list of novelists like those which include such names as Fielding, Scott and Thackeray, Balzac, Hugo and Sand. In fact, there is scarcely an instance of a male writer in Germany who has devoted himself exclusively to this branch of literature, and has won high distinction in it. It has been cultivated with success chiefly by a few writers of the other sex, whose delineations have gained a popularity in America only less than that which they enjoy at home--in part because the life which they depict has closer internal analogies to our own than to that of England or of France, still more perhaps because the pictures themselves, whatever their intrinsic fidelity, are suffused with a romantic glow which has long since faded from those of the thoroughly realistic art now dominant in the two latter countries.

In none of them is this characteristic more apparent than in the works of Wilhelmine von Hillern, which bear also in a marked degree the stamp of a mind at once vigorous and sympathetic, and are thus calculated to awaken the interest of readers in regard to the author's personal history.

Her father, Doctor Christian Birch, a Dane by birth and originally a diplomatist by profession, held for many years the post of secretary of legation at London and Paris. He withdrew from this career on the occasion of his marriage with a German lady connected with the stage in the triple capacity of author, manager and actress. Madame Birch-Pfeiffer, as she is commonly called, was one of the celebrities of her time, and her dramatic productions still keep possession of the stage. Soon after the birth of her daughter, which took place at Munich, she was invited to assume the direction of the theatre of Zurich. Here Wilhelmine passed several years of her childhood, separated from her father, whose engagements as a political writer retained him in Germany, and scarcely less divided from her mother, whose duties at this period did not permit her to give much attention to domestic cares. Without companions of her own age, and left almost wholly to the charge of an invalid aunt, she led a monotonous existence, which left an impression on her mind all the more deep from its contrast with the life which opened upon her in her eighth year, when Madame Birch-Pfeiffer was summoned to Berlin to hold an appointment at the court theatre.

In the Prussian capital the family was again united, and became the centre of a social circle embracing many persons connected with dramatic art and literature. Devrient, Dawison and Jenny Lind were among the visitors whose conversation was greedily listened to by the little girl while supposed to be immersed in her lessons or her plays. Under such influences it would have been strange if even a less active brain had not been fired with aspirations, which took the form of an irresistible impulse when, at thirteen, Wilhelmine was allowed for the first time to visit the theatre and witness the acting of Dawison in Hamlet and other parts. Henceforth all opposition had to give way, and in her seventeenth year she made her _début_ as Juliet at the ducal theatre of Coburg. Two qualities, we are told, distinguished her acting: a strong conception worked out in the minutest details, and an intensity of passion which knew no restraint, and at its culminating point overpowered even hostile criticism. Subsequently careful training under Edward Devrient and Madame Glossbrenner enabled her to bring her emotions under better control, repressing all tendency to extravagance; and, greeted with the assurance that she was destined to become the German Rachel, she entered upon her career with a round of performances at the principal theatres of Germany, including those of Frankfort, Hamburg and Berlin.

These triumphs were followed by the acceptance of a permanent engagement at Mannheim, which, however, had hardly been concluded when it gave place to one of a different kind, followed by her marriage and sudden relinquishment of the vocation embraced with such ardor and pursued for a short period with such brilliant promise. Dawison is said to have remarked that by her retirement the German stage had lost its last genuine tragic actress.

Since her marriage Madame von Hillern has resided at Freiburg, in the grand duchy of Baden, where her husband holds a legal position analogous to that of the judge of a superior court. Her social life is one of great activity, though much of her time is given to superintending the education of her two daughters. But the abounding energy of her nature made it inevitable that her artistic instincts, repressed in one direction, should seek their full development in another. Literature was naturally her choice. Her first work, _Doppelleben_, appeared in 1865, and though defective in construction, owing to a change of plan in the process of composition, served to give assurance of her powers and to inspire her with the requisite confidence. Three years later _Ein Arzt der Seele_, of which a translation under the title of _Only a Girl_ has been widely circulated in America, established her claim to a high place among the writers of her class. Her third work, _Aus eigener Kraft (By his own Might)_, met with equal success, securing for its author a large circle of readers on both sides of the Atlantic ready to welcome the future productions of her pen. The qualities which distinguish her writings are vigor of conception, sharpness of characterization, a moral earnestness pervading the judgments and reflections, and an ardor, sometimes too exuberant, which gives intensity to the delineation even while exciting doubts of its fidelity. Similar qualities had characterized her acting, and they spring from a nature which a close observer has described as clear in perception yet swayed by fantasy; strong of will yet impulsive as quicksilver; finding enjoyment now in animated discussion, now in impetuous riding, now in absolute repose; full of maternal tenderness, yet fond of splendor and the excitements of society; a nature, in short, abounding in contrasts, but substantially that of a true, noble and lovable woman.

HIS NAME?

(_An incident of the Boston fire_.)

I.

--Oh the billows of fire! With maëlstrom-like swirl, Their surges they hurl Over roof--over spire, Mad--masterless--higher,-- Till with rumble--crack--crash, Down boom with a flash, Whole columns of granite and marble;--see! see! Sucked in as a weed on the ocean might be, Or engulfed as a sail In the hurricane riot and wreak of the gale!

II.

Ha! yonder they rush where the death-dealing stream, Over-pent, waits their gleam, To shiver the city with earthquake!--Who, _who_ Will adventure, mid-flame, and unfasten the screw,-- Set the fiend loose, and save us so?--Fireman, you, _You_ willing?--Would God you might hazard it!-- Nay, The red tongues are licking the faucets now: Stay! --Too late,--'tis too late! If ruin comes, wait Its coming: To go, is to perish:--Hold! Hold! You are young,--I am old,-- You've a wife, too--and children?--O God! he is gone Straight into destruction! The pipes, men! On, on, Play the water-stream on him,--full--faster--the whole! And now--Christ save his soul!

III.

--I stifle--I choke; And _he_,--Heaven grant that he smother in smoke Ere the fearful explosion comes. Hark! What's the shout? --_Is he saved_?--_Is he out?_ --Did he compass his purpose,--the Hero?--_(One_ name To-night we shall write on the records of fame,-- The perilous deed was so noble!) Why here On my cheek is a tear, Which not a whole city in ashes could claim! --His name, now: _Can nobody tell me his name?_

M. J. P.

UNPUBLISHED LETTER FROM LORD NELSON TO LADY HAMILTON.

[It has been a matter of congratulation that the destruction by the Boston fire was confined to buildings and other property representing simply the wealth of the city, and did not extend to its monuments or its artistic and literary treasures. The exceptions are, in fact, comparatively small in amount, yet they are such as must excite a general regret. The contents of the studios in Summer street, and the collection of armor, unique in this country, bequeathed by the late Colonel Bigelow Lawrence to the Boston Athenaeum, and temporarily deposited at 82 Milk street, could not perish without awaking other feelings besides that of sympathy with their past or prospective possessors. A similar loss was that of many of the books and manuscripts amassed by the historian Prescott, and comprising the collections pertaining to the Histories of the Conquest of Mexico and Peru and of Philip II. The manuscripts were comprised in some thirty or forty folio volumes, and consisted of copies or abstracts of documents in the public archives and libraries of Europe, in the family archives of several Spanish noblemen, and in private collections like that at Middle Hill. The printed books, of which there were perhaps a thousand, included many of great value and not a few of extreme rarity. A large mass of private correspondence was also consumed. We are not yet informed whether the same fate has befallen a small but very choice collection of autographs, embracing letters written or signed by Ferdinand and Isabella, Charles V., Pope Clement VII., Prospero Colonna, the Great Captain, and other sovereigns and eminent personages of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Very few modern autographs were included in this collection, the only examples, we believe, being notes written by Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and the duke of Wellington, and a longer letter addressed by Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton. This last, which we are permitted to print from a copy made some time ago, is not exactly a model of composition, but it is very characteristic, and shows the strength of that enthrallment which led him, despite his natural kindness of heart, to risk the lives of his men in order to communicate with the object of his passion.]

SUNDAY NIGHT, Feb. 15, 9 o'clock [1801].

MY DEAR AMIABLE FRIEND: Could you have seen the boat leave the ship, I am sure your heart would have sunk within you. _I would not have given sixpence for the lives of the men_: a tremendous wave broke and missed upsetting the boat by a miracle. O God, how my heart thumped to see them safe! Then they got safe on shore, and I had given a two-pound note to cheer up the poor fellows when they landed; _but I was so anxious to send a letter for you._ I knew it was impossible for any boat to come off to us since Friday noon, when the boat carried your letters enclosed for Napean, and she still remains on shore. Only rest assured I always write, and never doubt your old and dear friend, who never yet deserved it. The gale abates very little, if anything, and it is truly fortunate that our fleet is not in port, or some accident would most probably happen; but both St. George and this ship have new cables, which is all we have to trust to; but if my friend is true I have no fear. I can take all the care which human foresight can, and then we must trust to Providence, who keeps a lookout for poor Jack. I cannot, my dear friend, afford to buy the three pictures of the "Battle of the Nile," or I should like very much to have them, and Mr. Boyden cannot afford to trust me one year. If he could, perhaps I could manage it. I have desired my brother to examine the four numbers of the tickets I bought with Gibbs. I hope he has told you. I dare say in the office here is the numbers of the tickets my agents have bought for the ensuing lottery. I hope we shall be successful. I hope you always kiss my godchild for me: pray do, and _I will repay you ten times when we meet_, which I hope will be very soon. Monday morning. It is a little more moderate, and we are going to send a boat, but at present none can get to us, and, therefore, I send this letter No. (1) to say we are in being. I hope in the afternoon to be able to get letters, and, if possible, to answer them. Kiss my godchild for me, bless it, and Believe me ever yours,

NELSON AND BRONTE.

"WHITE-HAT" DAY.

On one of the last days in September we were the astonished recipients of a singular and mysterious invitation from a member of the New York Board of Brokers. The note contained words like these: "Come to the Exchange on Monday, September 30th: white hats are declared confiscated on that day."

It would have puzzled Oedipus or a Philadelphia lawyer to trace the connection between white hats and stocks, to tell what Hecuba was to them or they to Hecuba, and why they should be more interfered with by the New York Stock Exchange on the 30th of September than upon any other day. It is true that during the last summer some slight political bias was supposed to be hidden beneath that popular headpiece irreverently styled "a Greeley plug," but then stocks are not politics, nor would any but a punster trace an intimate connection between hats and polls. A story has gone through the papers, to be sure, about an unfortunate deacon who found it impossible to collect the coppers of the congregation in a Greeley hat, but then slight excuses have been made available on charitable occasions before the present election, and we decline to accept the sentiment of that congregation as unmixed devotion to the Republican candidates. They did not wish to Grant their money, that was all.

And then, again, unlike the miller of the old conundrum, men generally wear _white_ hats to keep their heads cool; with which laudable endeavor why should the Stock Exchange wish to interfere? One never hears of a "corner" in hats. And then, too, was it the bulls or the bears who objected to them? Bulls, we all know, have an aversion to scarlet drapery, but Darwin, in his studies of the feeling for color among animals, has omitted any references to a horror of white hats even among the most accomplished of the anthropoid apes.

Pondering all these problems, and many more, our puzzled trio went to the Stock Exchange on the last day of September. We were conducted into the safe seclusion of the Visitors' Gallery, from which coign of vantage we could look down unharmed upon the frantic multitude below. The room is large and very lofty, its prevailing tint a warm brown, relieved by bright decorations of the Byzantine order. Across one end runs a small gallery for visitors, without seats, and some twenty feet above the floor, and opposite the gallery is a raised platform, with a long table and majestic arm-chairs for the president and other officers of the Board. High on the wall above these elevated dignitaries glitters in large gold letters the mystic legend, "New York Stock Exchange." On the left of the platform stands a large blackboard, whereon the fluctuations in stocks are recorded, and around the sides of the room are displayed various signs bearing the names of different stocks (like the banners of the knights in royal chapels), beneath which eager groups collect. At the lower end of the room, under the Visitors' Gallery, are seats whereon weary brokers may repose after the brunt of battle. In the centre of the upper end of the vast apartment is a long oval cock-pit--if it may be so called--of two or three degrees, with a table in the lowest circle. It is so arranged as to give the brokers, standing upon the graded steps, full opportunity to see and to be seen. On the table, in singular contrast with the spirit of the place, was a large and beautiful basket of flowers. Anything more painfully incongruous it would be difficult to imagine. The poor flowers seemed to wear an air of patient suffering as they wasted their sweetness on that (literally) howling wilderness.

It was just after ten, and the doors had been open but a few moments when we entered the gallery, already quite full of ladies and gentlemen--generally very young gentlemen, anxious to learn from the glorious example of their elders. The floor below us was fast being strewn with torn bits of paper, which have to be swept up several times a day. Eager groups were gathered under the various signs upon the walls and pillars, apparently playing the Italian game of _morra_, to judge by the quick gestures of their restless fingers. Some were scribbling cabalistic signs on little bits of paper, and almost all were howling like maniacs or wild beasts half starved. The only place I was ever in at all to be compared with it in volume and variety of noise is the parrot-room in the London Zoological Gardens. Bedlam and Pandemonium I have not visited--as yet--and consequently cannot speak from personal experience. But the parrots in that awful house in Regent's Park are capable of making more hideous noises in a given moment than any other wild beasts in the world, except brokers. Here the human animal comes out triumphantly supreme.

To add to the refreshing variety of the din, long, lanky youths in gray sauntered about like the keepers of the carnivora, and bawled incessantly till they were red in the face. These, we were told, were the pages, who reported the state of the market and delivered orders and commissions. To the uninitiated they were a fraud and a delusion, but so was the whole thing. A crowd of men, walking about or standing in groups, note-book in hand, talking eagerly or yelling unintelligible nonsense at the top of their voices, and gesticulating with the fury of madmen, while in and around the crowd strolled those extraordinary pages, calmly shouting full in the brokers' faces,--this, we were told, was "business!" This is the mysterious occupation to which our friends, countrymen and lovers devote so large a portion of their time and thoughts. At this strange diversion millions of dollars change hands in a few hours, and bulls and bears in this little nest agree to make things generally uncomfortable and uncertain for the outside world.

But where were the white hats, and what of their daring wearers? As the crowd thickened, they began to shine out upon the general blackness in obvious distinction. At first, the howling multitude, eager for filthy lucre, took no particular notice of them beyond an occasional hurried poke or pat, but this delusive mildness did not long continue. After the first fifteen or twenty minutes, during which the favorite stocks had been danced up and down a few times, like so many crying babies, the appetite of the hundred-headed hydra abated a little, and the general attention to business relaxed. Suddenly--no one knew whence or wherefore--up rose a white hat in the air, high above the heads of the people, and a bareheaded individual was seen struggling wildly in the arms of the mob, who set up ironical cheers at his unavailing efforts to regain his flying headpiece. It rose and fell faster and farther than any fancy stock of them all, now soaring to the vaulted roof, now being kicked along the dusty floor.

Press where ye see my white hat shine amidst the ranks of war,

seemed to be the sentiment of the occasion, as the unruly mob swayed and struggled about the dilapidated victim of their sport. In one corner stood a quiet, dignified gentleman, talking sedately to a little knot of friends. He wore a tall white "stove-pipe" of the most obnoxious kind. In a twinkling it was seized and sent flying toward the roof with its softer predecessor. Its owner gave one glance over his shoulder, and "smiled a sickly smile," while it was very evident that

The subsequent proceedings interested him no more.

The fun grew fast and furious, the air was literally darkened with flying hats of every shape and size, but all white. The stout tall beavers were converted into footballs till their crowns were kicked out and their brims torn off, when they were seized upon as instruments for further torture. Some innocent member of the large fraternity, now, to use a nautical phrase, scudding under bare _polls_, was pounced upon, and over his unfortunate head the crownless hat was drawn till the ragged remnant of its brim rested upon his shoulders. One poor creature was thus bonneted with at least three tiers of hats, and was last seen on the edge of the cockpit struggling with imminent suffocation.

At the height of the howling, scuffling, kicking and fighting a short diversion was effected. A tall and portly broker appeared upon the scene in an entire suit of new broadcloth. It was unmistakably new, its brilliancy quite undimmed. Instantly a rush was made for him by the fickle crowd. They swept him, as by some mighty wave, into the centre of the room: they turned him round and round like a pivoted statue, and examined him and patted him approvingly on every side. Then they made a large ring round him and gave him three cheers. Not content with this, with one sudden impulse they rushed at him again, and tried to lift him upon the table, that they might see him better. But this the portly broker resisted: he fought like a good fellow, and the crowd, tired of struggling with a man of so much weight, gave one final cheer and went back to the chase of the white hats.

We stayed about half an hour to watch these elegant and refined diversions: at the end of that time our patience and the white hats were giving out together. The din was deafening and the dust was rapidly rising. The floor was strewn with scraps of papers and the mangled remains of felt and beaver. Brimless hats and hatless brims, linings, bands, rent and tattered crowns, and ragged fragments of the fray, were all over the place. A writhing victim in gray, masked by a crownless hat, was struggling upon the table to the evident danger of those unhappy flowers; the president was calling across the tumult in stentorian tones; but the tumult refused to fall, and the imperturbable pages were bawling upon the skirts of the crowd with stolid pertinacity. The noise was terrific, the confusion indescribable.

We are often told that women are unfitted for business pursuits. If this was business, I should say decidedly they were. My acquaintance with women has been large and varied, but I have yet to see the woman whom I consider qualified to be a member of the New York Board of Brokers. I have been present at many gatherings composed entirely of women, from the "Woman's Parliament" to country sewing-societies, but never, even in that much-abused body, the New York Sorosis, have I seen a crowd of women, however excited, however frolicsome, however full of fun, capable of playing football with each other's bonnets even upon April Fools' Day. I am convinced that not even Miss Anthony or Mrs. Stanton would have hesitated to admit, had she been present on the auspicious occasion above recorded, that there are limits even to woman's sphere. Let her preach and practice, and sail ships, and make horse-shoes, and command armies, if she will, let her vote for all sorts of disreputable characters to be set over her, if she choose, but let her recognize the fact that between her and the gentle amenities of the New York Stock Exchange there is a great gulf fixed, which only the superior being man, with his lordly intellect, his keen morality and his exquisite and unvarying courtesy, can bridge over.

K.H.

MR. SOTHERN AS GARRICK.

One hundred and thirty-five years ago two young men came up to London to try their fortune: half riding, half walking, the young fellows made their journey. One was thick-set, heavy and uncouth, and years afterward became known to men and fame as Samuel Johnson: the other was bright, slender, active, and was called David Garrick. Some ten years later, just before the battle of Culloden, a Dutch vessel, having crossed the Channel, landed at Harwich. There was on board an apparent page, in reality a young Viennese girl disguised in male attire, who journeyed up to London too, where she soon made her appearance as a dancer at the Hay-market Theatre: there she achieved great success, and became talked about as "La Violette." She was under the patronage of the earl and countess of Burlington, and finally became Mrs. Garrick. It is said that she was the daughter of a respectable citizen of Vienna--that she had been engaged to dance at the palace with the children of the empress Maria Teresa, but that, her charms proving too attractive to the emperor, the empress had packed her off to London with letters of recommendation to persons of quality there. It seems more probable, however, that she was am actress at Vienna, and simply crossed the sea to try her fortune in England. Becoming fascinated with Garrick's acting, she married him after refusing several more brilliant offers, and in spite of the opposition of her kind patroness, Lady Burlington, who wished her to marry so as to secure higher social position. This match gave rise to much romantic gossip. It was said that a wealthy young lady had fallen in love with the great actor one night in _Romeo_--that he had been induced by her father to come to the house and break the charm by feigning intoxication: some versions had it that he came disguised as a physician. A popular German comedy was written upon it, and still later Mr. Robertson dramatized it for the English stage, and produced a play in which we have lately had an opportunity of witnessing the fine acting of Mr. Sothern. Garrick was certainly fortunate among actors: he not only achieved high professional fame, but he accumulated a large private fortune and lived a happy domestic life in a splendid home filled with choice works of art. The traveler abroad who is favored with an invitation to the Garrick Club, may there see the picture of the great actor "in his habit as he lived," looking down nightly on a collection of the most renowned wits and authors of the metropolis; and to crown all, when Mr. Sothern acts--were it not for his moustache--we might suppose we saw the man himself alive before us.

Concerning Mr. Sothern's acting, it affords a fine example of that quality--so very difficult of attainment, it would seem--perfect _repose_; and by repose we do not mean torpidity or sluggishness or inattention, as opposed to clamorous ranting, but we mean the complete subordination of subordinate parts; so that, if we may use the illustration, the gaudiness of the frame is not allowed to over-power and destroy the effect of the picture. Everything is clear, distinct and well marked: the forcible passages come with double effect in contrast with preceding serenity. The actor's manner is not confined behind the footlights: it diffuses itself, as it were, among his audience until it seems as if they too were acting with him. This arises from the perfection of the picture he presents, and that perfection is the result of careful avoidance of everything that is unnatural. There is no _unnecessary_ exertion put forth, no palpable straining after effect: he strives to hold the mirror up to Nature, not Art, and in Nature there is much repose between the tempests. Old players say that the most difficult thing to teach a tyro is to stand still, and some actors never learn it.

Careful attention to costume is another trait exhibited by Mr. Sothern. He might easily make his first appearance as David Garrick in the wealthy merchant's house in ordinary walking-dress, which could be readily retained when he returns to the dinner-party to which he causes himself to be invited. Instead of that, he appears in the full riding-dress of the period--boots, spurs, whip, overcoat and all. This is rapidly changed in time for the dinner-scene for a full-dress suit, complete in every point--powdered hair, white silk stockings, and a little _brette_, or walking rapier, peeping out from under the coat skirt, not slung in a belt as heavier swords, but supported by light steel chains fastened to a _chatelaine_, which slips behind the waistband and can be taken off in a moment. In the last scene, where he goes out to fight the duel, his dress is changed again, and dark silk stockings are donned as more appropriate.

The last point we shall mention here about Mr. Sothern is his scrupulous attention to the minor business of the stage: when he is not speaking himself, his looks act. It is said of Macready that he began to be Cardinal Richelieu at three o'clock in the afternoon, and that it was dangerous to speak to him after that time. When Mr. Sothern plays Lord Dundreary, if he is addressed on any subject during the progress of the play, he answers in his Dundreary drawl, so as not to lose his personality for a minute. The letter from his brother "Tham" he has written out and reads; not that he does not know every word by heart, for he must have read it a hundred times, but because he wants to _turn over_ at the proper place. We all know what he has made of that part. A play in which there is absolutely nothing of a plot, which would fall dead from the hands of an inferior actor, becomes with Mr. Sothern as popular as _Rip van Winkle_ is with Jefferson to play the sleepy hero. It is to be observed that the three essentials for good acting just mentioned--repose of manner, strict attention to dress, and strict attention to minor details of stage-business--may be acquired by any actor of average intellect who will devote proper time and study to the task: they are not, like a fine figure, a handsome face or a sonorous voice, adventitious gifts of Fortune which may be bestowed on one mortal and denied to another. Mr. Sothern owes his success, evidently, to long and careful preparation of his parts. In David Garrick he leaves but two points at which criticism can carp: his pathos somehow lacks sufficient tenderness, his love-making seems too devoid of passion. When young Garrick won the heart of La Violette, he put more fire into his speech and manner than Mr. Sothern exhibits at the close of the last act. He is represented as always loving Ida Ingot, but at first conceals and suppresses his love: when the avowal comes at last, it should be like the bursting forth of a volcano, hot, fiery and irresistible.

M. M.

NOTES.

Sir Richard Wallace evidently aims to make himself, in a small way, the Peabody of Paris. A cynic might maintain that his gifts were a trifle sensational, and shaped with a view to procure the greatest amount of notoriety at the price; but that they are frequent, and that they show a hearty love for Paris on the Englishman's part, none can deny. It was Sir Richard who not long ago gave about five thousand dollars to the use of the Paris poor; it was he who, in the late hunting-season, is said to have proposed to supply the city hospitals with fresh game--whether of his own shooting or of that of his compatriots does not appear; it is he, in fine, who has furnished to Paris eighty street-fountains, costing in the factory six hundred and seventy-five francs each, or a total of fifty-four thousand francs (say ten thousand eight hundred dollars), the expense of setting them up being undertaken by the city. These drinking-jets are in the main like those so familiar in American cities, and are provided, of course, with tin cups attached by iron chains--"_à la mode Anglaise_" add the French papers in an explanatory way. Now, the extraordinary fact concerning these fountains is, that no sooner had the first installment of nine been put up than all the tin cups, or "goblets," as the Parisians call them, were stolen. They were renewed, and again disappeared in a trice. In short, within fifteen days no less than forty-seven of these goblets were made way with, despite their strong fastenings--that is, an average of over five cups to each fountain. What the sum-total of plunder has been since the first fortnight, or whether the fountains are still as useless as spiked cannon or tongueless bells, we have yet to learn.

Now comes a contrast. The countrymen of Sir Richard claim that in London from time immemorial not a single cup was ever stolen from the public fountains. So tempting a theme for generalization could not be resisted by the Paris newspaper philosophers, who have deduced from this theft of the cups a broad distinction between the British loafer and the French loafer, declaring that the former "respects any collective property which he partly shares," while the latter does not even draw this distinction, but grabs whatever he can lay his hands on. "The luck of the Wallace fountains," cries one moralizer, "shows how hard it is to reform the Paris _gamin_ so long as the law contents itself with its present measures. If the state does not speedily educate children found straying in the street, it is all up with the present generation." Thereupon follows a disquisition on the part which Paris children played in the Commune. "Now, the child," adds our newspaper Wordsworth, "is the man viewed through the big end of the opera-glass;" and he points his moral, therefore, with the need of compulsory education. "One of the first duties incumbent on the Chamber at the next session will be the solution of this question. Let it take as a perpetual goad the fate of the Wallace goblets. You begin by stealing a cup of tin--you end by firing the Tuileries or plundering the Hôtel Thiers." There is a droll mingling of Isaac Watts and Victor Hugo in this _dénoûment_, and despite its practical good sense one is amused at the evolution of a grave discourse from so trivial a text as the Wallace drinking-cups.

* * * * *

To people of a statistical rather than a sentimental turn, the mathematics of marriage in different countries may prove an attractive theme of meditation. It is found that young men from fifteen to twenty years of age marry young women averaging two or three years older than themselves, but if they delay marriage until they are twenty to twenty-five years old, their spouses average a year younger than themselves; and thenceforward this difference steadily increases, till in extreme old age on the bridegroom's part it is apt to be enormous. The inclination of octogenarians to wed misses in their teens is an every-day occurrence, but it is amusing to find in the love-matches of boys that the statistics bear out the satires of Thackeray and Balzac. Again, the husbands of young women aged twenty and under average a little above twenty-five years, and the inequality of age diminishes thenceforward, till for women who have reached thirty the respective ages are equal: after thirty-five years, women, like men, marry those younger than themselves, the disproportion increasing with age, till at fifty-five it averages nine years.

The greatest number of marriages for men take place between the ages of twenty and twenty-five in England, between twenty five and thirty in France, and between twenty-five and thirty-five in Italy and Belgium. Finally, in Hungary the number of individuals who marry is seventy-two in a thousand each year; in England it is 64; in Denmark, 59; in France, 57, the city of Paris showing 53; in the Netherlands, 52; in Belgium, 43; in Norway, 36. Widowers indulge in second marriages three or four times as often as widows. For example, in England (land of Mrs. Bardell) there are 66 marriages of widowers against 21 of widows; in Belgium there are 48 to 16; in France, 40 to 12. Old Mr. Weller's paternal advice, to "beware of the widows," ought surely to be supplemented by a maxim to beware of widowers.

SHAKESPEARE, in one of his most famous madrigals, draws a vivid contrast between youth and age, which, he declares, "cannot live together:"

Youth like summer morn, Age like winter weather, Youth like summer brave, Age like winter bare: Youth is hot and bold, Age is weak and cold.

Science, which ruthlessly destroys so much poetry by its mattock and spade, its scales, foot-rules and gauges, must now, we should judge, take grave exception to the preceding bit of poesy and to the thousand repetitions of its sentiment by the bards of all ages. By means of a thermometer lately constructed to register with exactitude the degree of heat in the human body, it is found, after numerous experiments under varying circumstances, that the instrument marks 37.08° of heat on an average for persons between twenty-one and thirty years of age, while it marks 37.46° for people aged eighty. In face of this fact what becomes of the "fervors of youth" and the "chills of age"? The highest average temperatures in the human body, as indicated by this gauge, are those which exist from birth to puberty--that is to say, 37.55° and 37.63°. From the latter epoch the heat gradually lowers, to rise again with the first approach of old age. Thus childhood shows the highest temperature, old age the next, and middle life the lowest. We may add that the greatest variations in the temperature of the body between health and sickness are only a few tenths of a degree, according to this measurement; for, the normal condition being 37.2° or 37.3°, an increase to 38° would mark a burning fever, and a decrease to 36° would note the icy approach of death. Hereafter, though we may graciously excuse to poetic license the assertion that

Crabbed Age and Youth Cannot live together,

we must yet sternly protest that the reason assigned--namely, that "youth is hot and age is cold"--is contradicted by the facts of science.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

The Life of Charles Dickens. By John Forster. Vol. II. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co.

Beginning with Dickens's return from America in 1842, this volume covers a period of less than ten years, the most productive, and apparently the happiest, of his life. It brings out in even stronger relief than the preceding volume his strong individuality, a trait which, whether it attracts or repels--and on most persons we think it produces alternately each of these effects--is full of interest, worthy of study and fruitful of suggestions. Its superabundant energy seemed to create demands in order that it might expend itself in satisfying them. Its persistence was toughened by failure as much as by success. Its vivacity, verging upon boisterousness, was incapable of being chilled. Its strenuousness knew no lassitude, and needed no repose. In play as in work, in physical exercise as in mental labor, in all his projects, purposes and performances, Dickens seems to have been in a perpetual state of tension that allowed of no reaction. His was a mind not morbidly self-conscious, but ever aglow with the consciousness of power and the ardor of its achievement, in-sensible of waste and undisturbed by critical introspection.

The excitement into which he was thrown by the composition of his books exceeds anything of the kind recorded in literary history, and stands in strong contrast with the self-contained tranquillity with which Scott performed an equal or greater amount of labor. Yet it does not, like similar ebullitions in other men, suggest any notion of weakness or of a talent strained beyond its capacity. It was coupled with an enormous facility of execution and the ability to pass with undiminished freshness from one field of action to another. It sprang from the intensity with which every idea was conceived, and which belonged equally to his smallest with his greatest undertakings. "The book," he writes of the _Chimes_, "has made my face white in a foreign land. My cheeks, which were beginning to fill out, have sunk again; my eyes have grown immensely large; my hair is very lank, and the head inside the hair is hot and giddy. Read the scene at the end of the third part twice. I wouldn't write it twice for something.... Since I conceived, at the beginning of the second part, what must happen in the third, I have undergone as much sorrow and agitation as if the thing were real, and have wakened up with it at night. I was obliged to lock myself in when I finished it yesterday, for my face was swollen for the time to twice its proper size, and was hugely ridiculous." The little book was written at Genoa; and having finished it, he must make a winter journey to London, "because," as he writes to Forster, "of that unspeakable restless something which would render it almost as impossible for me to remain here, and not see the thing complete, as it would be for a full balloon, left to itself, not to go up." A further reason was to try the effect of the story upon a circle of listeners, to be assembled for the purpose: "Carlyle, indispensable, and I should like his wife of all things; _her_ judgment would be invaluable. You will ask Mac, and why not his sister? Stanny and Jerrold I should particularly wish. Edwin Landseer, Blanchard perhaps Harness; and what say you to Fonblanque and Fox?" After this it is amusing to read that the book "was not one of his greatest successes, and it raised him up some objectors;" but the reading was the germ of those which afterward brought him into such close relations with his public.

Of another Christmas story he writes, "I dreamed _all last week_ that the _Battle of Life_ was a series of chambers, impossible to be got to rights or got out of, through which I wandered drearily all night. On Saturday night I don't think I slept an hour. I was perpetually roaming through the story, and endeavoring to dovetail the revolution here into the plot. The mental distress quite horrible." Here we have, perhaps, a clear case of the effects of overwork. But in general the details of his plots, the names of the characters, above all, the titles of the stories, were evolved with an amount of thought and discussion that might have sufficed for the plan and the preparations for a battle. "Martin Chuzzlewit" is not a name suggestive of long and serious deliberation: one might rather suppose that it had turned up accidentally and been accepted simply as being as good as another. Yet it was not adopted till after many others had been discussed and rejected. "Martin was the prefix to all, but the surname varied from its first form of Sweezleden, Sweezleback and Sweeztewag, to those of Chuzzletoe, Chuzzleboy, Chubblewig and Chuzzlewig." _David Copperfield_ was preceded by a still longer list of abortions, and _Household Words,_ as a mere title, was the result of a parturition far exceeding in length and severity any throes of travail known to natural history.

All this was unaccompanied by any of the doubts and misgivings, the fits of depression and intervals of lassitude, which are the ordinary tortures of authorship. Nor had it any connection with the weaknesses of the craft, its small vanities and jealousies. "It was," as Mr. Forster well remarks, "part of the intense individuality by which he effected so much to set the high value which in general he did upon what he was striving to accomplish." Hence, too, no half-formed and then abandoned projects were among the stepping-stones of his career. A plan or an idea, once conceived, was certain to be shaped, developed and matured; and whatever the result, it left up disheartening effect, no feeling of distrust, to cripple a subsequent undertaking.

Nor was Dickens so absorbed in his work as to leave it reluctantly, or to find no fullness of satisfaction in occupations or enjoyments of a different kind. On the contrary, no man ever threw himself so heartily and entirely into the business of the hour, or more eagerly sought diversion and change. Dinners, private and public, excursions in chosen companionship, amateur theatricals, schemes of charity or benevolence, occupied a large portion of his time, and were entered into with an ardor which never flagged or needed to be stimulated. His correspondence--an unfailing barometer to indicate the state of the mental atmosphere--is always full of life, overflowing, for the most part, with animal spirits, often vivid in description both of places and people, turning discomforts and embarrassments into subjects of lively narrative or indignant protest. The letters from Genoa and Lausanne are especially copious and entertaining, and form, we think, the most interesting portion of the book. The later chapters, giving the final year of his residence in Devonshire Terrace, are less satisfactory. We would fain have had a picture of that circle of which Dickens was one of the most prominent figures; but though his own personality is revealed in the fullest light, the group in the background is left indistinct, most of its members being barely visible, and none of them adequately portrayed.

* * * * *

Émaux et Camées. Par Théophile Gautier. Nombre définitif. Paris: Charpentier; New York: F.W. Christern.

Gautier was polishing and adding to his literary jewelry almost to the day of his death, and the final edition which he published among the last of his works about doubles the number of poems first issued. These verses are like nothing we have in English. Their imagery is strongly sophisticated, tortured, brought from vast distances, and then chilled into form. Yet they are the most sincere utterances of a soul fed perpetually among cabinets and picture-galleries, to whom their compact method of utterance is, so to speak, secondarily natural. That they are precious and beauteous no one can deny. How sparkling are the successive descriptions of women--blonde, brune, Spanish, contralto-voiced, coquettish, etc.--whom the poet, like some capricious artist, invites into his atelier, drapes hastily with old Moorish or Venetian or diaphanous costumes, and then reflects in a diminishing mirror, changing the model into a fine statuette of ivory and enamel! More virile and thoughtful images are intermixed: such are the figures of the old Invalides seen at the Column Vendôme in a December fog, and for whom he pleads: "Mock not those men whom the street urchin follows, laughing: they were the Day of which we are the twilight--maybe the night!" Not less fresh are the two "Homesick Obelisks"--that in the Place de la Concorde, wearying its stony heart out for Egypt, and that at Luxor, equally tired, and longing to be planted at Paris, among a living crowd. But Gautier is a colorist, an artist with words, and he is at his best when he works without much outline, celebrating draperies, bouquets and laces, to all of which he can give a meaning quite other than the milliner's, as where he asserts that the plaits of a rose-colored dress are "the lips of my unappeased desires," or describes March as a barber, powdering the wigs of the blossoming almond trees, and a valet, lacing up the rosebuds in their corsets of green velvet. Whatever he touches he leaves artificial, "enameled," yet charming. The verses added in the present edition are more pensive, even sombre. A life given to art wholly, without patriotism or religion or philosophy, does not prepare the greenest old age. There is a long and beautiful poem, "Le Château du Souvenir," which he fills, not exactly with Charles Lamb's "old familiar faces," but with portraits of his mistresses and of his old self. There is the "Last Vow"--to a woman he has pursued "for eighteen years," and whom he still accosts, though "the white graveyard lilacs have blossomed about my temples, and I shall soon have them tufting and shading all my forehead." There is also the accent of his irresponsible courtiership, the facile and unashamed flattery he paid to such a woman as Princess Mathilde. This personage was, or is, an artist; and we may not be mistaken in believing that we have seen, cast aside in the vast storerooms of Haseltine's galleries in this city--an example and gnomon of disenchanted glory--her water-color sketch called the "Fellah Woman," and the very one of which Gautier sang: "Caprice of a fantastic brush and of an imperial leisure!... Those eyes, a whole poem of languor and pleasure, resolve the riddle and say, 'Be thou Love--I am Beauty.'"

The late poems, however, as well as the old, are filled with felicities. They contain many a lesson of the word-master, who, though he did not attain the Academy, left the French language gold, which he found marble. The ornaments, exquisite licenses, foreign graces and wide researches which Gautier conferred upon his mother-tongue have enriched it for future time, and they are best seen in this volume.

* * * * *

Concord Days. By A. Bronson Alcott. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

In these loose leaves we have the St. Martin's summer of a life. Mr. Alcott, from his quiet home in Concord, and from the edifice of his seventy-three years, picks out those mental growths and moral treasures which have kept their color through all the changes of the seasons. They bear the mark of selection, of choice, from out a vast abundance of material: to us readers the scissors have probably been a kinder implement than the pen. Be that as it may, the selections given are all worth saving, and the fragmentary resurrection is just about as much as our age has time to attend to of the growths that were formed when New England thought was young. That was the day when Mrs. Hominy fastened the cameo to her frontal bone and went to the sermon of Dr. Channing, when young Hawthorne chopped straw for the odious oxen at Brook Farm, and when a budding Booddha, called by his neighbors Thoreau, left mankind and proceeded to introvert himself by the borders of Walden Pond. Mr. Alcott's little diary gives us some of the best skimmings of that time of yeast. There is Emerson-worship, Channing-worship, Margaret Fuller-worship and the pale cast of _The Dial_. There is, besides, in another stratum that runs through the collection, a vein of very welcome investigation amongst old authors--Plutarch's charming letter of consolation to his wife on the death of their child; Crashaw's "Verses on a Prayer-Book;" Evelyn's letter on the origin of his _Sylva_; and many a jewel five-words-long filched from the authors whom modern taste votes slow and insupportable. We mention these to give some idea of the spirit in which this work of marquetry is executed--a work too fragmentary and incoherent to be easily describable except by its specimens. And while culling fragments, we cannot forbear mentioning the curious records of Mr. Alcott's "Conversations," held now with Frederika Bremer, now with a band of large-browed Concord children, held forty years ago, and turning perpetually upon the deeper questions of metaphysics and religion; we will even indulge ourselves with a short extract from one of the "Conversations with Children," reported verbatim by an apparently concealed auditress, and eliciting many a cunning bit of infantine wisdom, besides the following finer rhapsody, which Mr. Alcott succeeded in charming out of the lips of a boy six years of age:

"Mr. Alcott! you know Mrs. Barbauld says in her hymns, everything is prayer; every action is prayer; all nature prays; the bird prays in singing; the tree prays in growing; men pray--men can pray _more_; we feel; we have more, more than Nature; we can know, and do right: _Conscience prays_; all our powers pray; action prays. Once we said, here, that there was a Christ in the bottom of our spirits, when we try to be good. Then we pray in Christ; and that is the whole!"

To think that the lips of this ingenuous and golden-mouthed lad may be now pouring out patriotism in Congress is rather sad; but the author's own career tells us that there are some of the Chrysostoms of 1830 who have had the courage to keep quiet, and sweeten their own lives for family use. Mr. Alcott betrays in every line the kindest, sanest and humanest spirit; and we wish he could feel how grateful some of us are for his example of a thinker who can keep quiet, and a writer who can show the power of reticence.

* * * * *

Thirty Years in the Harem; or, The Autobiography of Melek-Hanum, wife of H.H. Kibrizli-Mehemet-Pasha. New York: Harper & Brothers.

We have had many revelations from the interior, but nothing quite like this. Most histories are valuable in proportion to the truthfulness of the narrator, but Mrs. Melek's story owes a large show of its interest to her obvious tension of the long-bow. It is, in fact, a self-revelation--the vain and audacious betrayal by an Oriental woman of the narrowness, the shallowness, the dishonesty which ages of false education have fastened upon her race. The lady in question is--and evidently knows herself to be--an exception among her countrywomen for ability and acumen: an extreme self-satisfaction and vanity are revealed in the recital of her most disreputable tricks. She passes for a white blackbird, a woman of intellect caught in the harem; and it needs but little ingenuity to guess the torment she must have been to her protectors--first to the excellent Dr. Millingen, with whom she formed a love-match, and whom she abuses--and then to her second husband, Kibrizli, ambassador in 1848 to the court of England, upon whom she attempted to palm off an heir by the ruse practiced by our own revered Mrs. Cunningham. Whatever the clever Melek does, or whatever treatment she receives, it is always she who is in the right, and her eternal "enemies" who are unjust, barbarous and stingy. The ferocious blackmailing of natives in the Holy Land which she practiced when her husband represented the sultan there, is represented as cleverness; but her divorce after the infamous false accouchement is a piece of persecution. The marriage and adventures of her daughter form a tangled romance through which we hear of a great deal more oppression and cruelty; and the escape into Europe, where the old enchantress appears to be now prowling in poverty and degradation, concludes the curious story. The narrative bears marks of having passed through a French translation and then a British version. To disentangle the thread of actuality that probably runs through it would be too troublesome and futile; but the truths that the wily Melek cannot help telling--the facts of the harem and of Eastern life that involuntarily sprinkle it all like a flavoring of strange spices--these are what give it the odd dash of interest which keeps it in our hands long after we had meant to toss it aside. Here is a "screaming sister" of the East--an odalisque who was not going to be oppressed and degraded like the other women, but who meant to be capable and cultivated and smart, just like the Christian ladies; and this bundle of lies and crimes and hates is what she arrives at.

* * * * *

Hints on Dress; or, What to Wear, When to Wear it, and How to Buy it. By Ethel C. Gale, (Putnam's Handy-Book Series.) New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.

This little book will certainly elicit commendation from all who consider the subject of dress within the pale of aesthetic treatment; and, what is still more fortunate, it will probably serve to elevate, in some degree, the standard of taste among that large class of persons for whom handy volumes are chiefly compiled. Its statements and deductions are accurate, sensible, comprehensive and practical, and the style in which they are presented is simple and attractive. The color, form and suitability of dress, as well as the best methods of economy in its purchase and manufacture, are intelligently treated. We have only to regret the want of a chapter devoted to the hygiene of dress, which is a subject deserving the earnest attention of every friend of physical development. Ten or a dozen pages given to this topic might have done a service to hundreds who are willing enough to gather knowledge in passing, but who are repelled from the separate consideration of any subject which seems to call for the exercise of serious thought.

* * * * *

A Sketch Map of the Nile Sources and Lake Region of Central Africa, showing Dr. Livingstone's Discoveries and Mr. Stanley's Route. Folio, folded. Philadelphia: T. Elwood Zell.

A clear, well-executed polychrome map, evidently copied from the one recently published in England, if not actually printed there. It exhibits not only the route of Dr. Livingstone during the period included between the years 1866 and 1872, and that taken by Mr. Stanley in his recent search, but also the course which the former proposes to follow in the prosecution of his discoveries. The boundaries of lakes and the courses of rivers, where definitely known, are indicated by unbroken lines--where still supposititious, by dotted ones. The map, which is printed on heavy paper, is thirteen inches wide by eighteen inches long, and being folded within a stiff duodecimo cover, can be easily preserved and readily consulted.

_Books Received_.

Papers relating to the Transit of Venus in 1874. Prepared under the Direction of the Commissioners authorized by Congress. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing-office.

Reports on Observations of Encke's Comet during its Return in 1871. By Asaph Hall and Wm. Harkness. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing-Office.

Harry Delaware; or, An American in Germany. By Mathilde Estvan. New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.

California for Health, Pleasure and Residence. By Charles Nordhoff. New York: Harper & Brothers.

The Lives of General U.S. Grant and Henry Wilson. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.

The Romance of American History. By M. Schele de Vere. New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.

Book of Ballads, Tales and Stories. By Benjamin G. Herre. Lancaster, Pa.: Wylie & Griest.

The Poet at the Breakfast Table. By Oliver Wendell Holmes. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.

The Lawrence Speaker. By Philip Lawrence. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.

Memoir of a Huguenot Family. By Ann Maury. New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.

Within the Maze. By Mrs. Henry Wood. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.

Sermons. By Rev. C.D.N. Campbell, D.D. New York: Hurd & Houghton.

Outlines of History. By Ed. A. Freeman, D.C.L. New York: Holt & Williams.

The End of the World. By Edward Eggleston. New York: Orange Judd & Co.

Sermons. By Rev. H.R. Haweis, M.A. New York: Holt & Williams.

Kaloolah. By W.S. Mayo, M.D. New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.

Nast's Illustrated Almanac for 1873. New York: Harper & Brothers.

A Summer Romance. By Mary Healy. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Song Life. By Philip Phillips. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Gavroche. By M.C. Pyle. Philadelphia: Porter & Coates.