CHAPTER XX.

LOVE AND ELECTIONEERING.

The soul of Keeton, as a local orator expressed it, was stirred to its depths by the events which succeeded. The three estates of the town, whereof we have already spoken, were alike concerned in the election. Had it never occurred, there would have been enough in the death of Mrs. Saulsbury and the rearrangement of Mr. Grey's property to keep conversation up among the middle grade of Keeton folks. But business like that would not interest the park, and of course it had no interest for the working class of the town. The election, on the contrary, was of equal concern to park, semi-detached villa, and cottage, or even garret. A contest in Keeton was an absolute novelty, so far as the memory of living man could go back.

It may perhaps be said that the opinion of the class who alone concerned themselves about her affairs had been, on the whole, decidedly unfavorable to Minola. She had gone as a sort of rebel against legitimate authority out of Keeton, and had flung herself into the giddy vortex of London life. No one well knew what had become of her; and that with Keeton folks was another way of saying that she must have rushed upon destruction. Some persons held that she must have gone upon the stage. This idea became almost a certainty when a Keeton man, being in London on business, brought back with him from town a play-bill announcing a new opera bouffe in which one of the minor performers was named "Miss Mattie Grey." If the good Keeton man had only looked in a few other play-bills, he would have no doubt found Greys in abundance--Matties, Minnies, Nellies, and such like, Grey being rather a favorite name with young ladies in the profession. But he made no such investigation, and it was at once assumed that Mattie Grey was Minola Grey in disguise--a disguise as subtle as that of the famous knight, Sir Tristam, who, when he wanted to conceal his identity from all observers and place himself beyond all possibility of detection, called himself Sir Tramtrist.

When, however, it was found that Minola was to have her father's property after all, a certain change took place in the opinion of most persons who concerned themselves about the matter. It was assumed generally that Mr. Grey was far too good and Christian a man to have left his property to a girl who could be capable of acting in an opera bouffe. Then, when Miss Grey in person came to the town in the company of so distinguished a man as Mr. Money, even gossip started repentant at the sound itself had made, and began to deny that it had ever made any sound at all. Mr. Money was a sort of hero among the middle class everywhere. He was known to have fought his way up in life, and to be now very rich; and when Miss Grey came into the town in the company of Mr. Money and his daughter, the report went about forthwith that Minola Grey had got into the very best society in London, and that she was going to marry the eldest son of Mr. Money, and to be presented at court.

Mr. Money had taken a couple of floors of the best hotel to begin with. He had brought his carriage with him--a carriage in which he was hardly ever known to take a seat when in town. He had brought a sort of retinue of servants. He went deliberately about making what Mr. St. Paul would have called "a splurge." Mr. Money knew his Pappenheimers. He knew that he was well known to have sprung from nothing, but he also knew that the middle and lower classes of Keeton would have given him little thanks if he had tried to please them by exhibiting there a modesty becoming of his modest origin. He knew well enough that the more he put on display the more they would think of him and of his clients. Therefore he put on display like a garment--a garment to which he was little used, and in which he took no manner of delight. There was generally a little group of persons round the hotel doors at all hours of the day waiting to see Mr. Money and his friends go out or come in. At first Minola positively declined to go out at all, except at night; and the recent death of her father's widow gave her a fair excuse for remaining quietly indoors. Lucy delighted in the whole affair, and often declared that she felt as if she had been turned into a princess. When Mr. Heron came down he too seemed rather to enjoy it. At least he took it all as a matter of course. The experiences of colonial days, when the ruler of a colony, however small it may be, is a person of majestic proportions in his own sphere, enabled him to take Mr. Money's pomp quite seriously.

Meanwhile Mr. Augustus Sheppard had got his committee-rooms and his displays of various kinds, and was understood to be working hard. The election contest, so long looked for, had taken every one a little by surprise when it showed itself so near. It was natural that Mr. Sheppard and his friends should feel confident of the result. The retiring representative was now an old man. He had faithfully served out his time; he had always voted as his patrons wished him to do; he had never made a speech in the House of Commons; he had never, indeed, risen to his feet there at all, except once or twice to present a petition. The delights of a Parliamentary career were, therefore, this long time beginning to pall upon him. He had been notoriously anxious to get out of Parliament. He had been sent into the House of Commons by the late duke to keep the seat warm until the present duke should come of age. But the present duke succeeded to the peerage before he came of age, and therefore never had a chance of sitting in the House of Commons. The man in possession was allowed to remain there through years and years, until the present duke could be induced to return from abroad and take some interest in the political and other affairs of Keeton. His own son was yet too young for Parliament, and as the sitting member found himself getting too old and begged for release, there was nothing better to do than to get some safe and docile person to take on him the representation of the borough for some time to come. Those who knew Keeton could recommend no one more fitting in every desirable way than Mr. Augustus Sheppard.

The time was when Mr. Sheppard would only have had to present the orders of the reigning duke to the constituency of Keeton and to take his seat in the House of Commons accordingly as if by virtue of a sovereign patent in ancient days. But times had changed even in sleepy Keeton. The younger generation had almost forgotten their dukes, it was so long since a chief of the house had been among them. Even the women had grown comparatively indifferent to the influence of the name seeing that it had so long been only a name for them. There had been for many years no duchesses and their lady daughters to meet at flower-shows and charitable bazaars, by the delight of whose face, and the sound of whose feet, and the wind of whose tresses, as the poet has it, they could be made to feel happy and exalted. There once were brighter days when the coming and going of the ladies at the castle gave the women of Keeton a perpetual subject of talk, of thought, of hope, and of quarrel. Some of the readers of this story may perhaps have spent a little time in small towns on the banks of foreign--say of American--rivers which have a habit of freezing up as winter comes, and becoming useless for navigation; in fact being converted from rivers into great frozen roads, until spring unlocks the flowers and the streams again. Such travellers must have noticed what an unfailing topic of conversation such a river supplies to those who dwell on its banks. How soon will it freeze this season? On what precise day was it closed to navigation last year--the year before--the year before that? In what year did it freeze soonest? Do you remember that particular year when it froze so very soon, or did not freeze for such an unprecedented length of time? That was the same year that--no, not that year; it was the other year, don't you remember? Then follow contradictions and disputes, and the elders always remember the river having been regularly in the habit of performing some feat which now it never cares to repeat. The time of the frost melting and the river becoming really a river again is a matter just as fruitful of discussion. The stranger is often tempted to wonder what the people of that place would have to talk about at all if suddenly the river were to give up its trick of freezing, and were to remain always as fluent as our own monotonous Thames. There seems to him some reason to fear that the tongues of the people would become frozen as the river ceased to freeze.

Like the freezing and the melting of their river to those who lived on its bank was the annual visit of the ladies of the ducal family to the womankind of Keeton in Keeton's brighter days. Girls were growing up there now who had never seen a duchess. The arrival, the length of stay, the probable time of departure, the appearances in public whether more or less frequent than this time last year, the dresses worn by the gracious ladies, the persons spoken to by them, the persons only bowed to, the unhappy creatures who got neither speech nor salutation--it is a fact that there was a generation of women growing up in Keeton with whom these and such questions had never formed any part of the interest of their lives. They could not be expected to take much interest all at once, and as it were by instinct, in the political cause of the ducal family.

There was therefore a good deal of uncertainty about the conditions of the problem. The followers of the ducal family were some of them full of hope. The reappearance of a duke and duchess and their train might do wonders in restoring the old order of things. In Keeton petticoat influence counted for a great deal, and in other days those who had the promises of the wives hardly thought it worth while to go through the form of asking the husbands. But now there was a new condition of the political problem even in that respect. The ballot, which had made the voter independent of the influence of his landlord or his wealthy customer, had converted the power of the petticoat into a sort of unknown quantity. There could be little doubt that the moral influence and the traditional control would still prevail with some; but he must be a rash electioneering agent who would venture to say how many votes could thus be counted on. It is a remarkable tribute to the moral greatness of an aristocracy that the influence thus obtained in old days over the wives and daughters of Keeton was absolutely unearned by any overt acts of favor or conciliation. The later dukes and their families had always been remarkable for never making any advances toward the townspeople. None of the traders of the town, however wealthy and respectable, found themselves or their wives invited to any manner of festivity up at the ducal hall. All that the noble family ever did for the townspeople was to come at certain seasons to Keeton and allow themselves to be looked at. This was enough for the time. The illustrious ladies could be seen, and, as has been said, they did sometimes speak a word to favored and envied persons. They were loved for being great personages, not for anything they did to win such devotion. "Love is enough," says the poet.

All these considerations, however, rendered it hard to calculate the exact chances of opposition in the borough of Keeton. Of course revolutionary opinions were growing up, old people found, there as well as elsewhere. There was a new class of Conservatives springing up whom steady, old-fashioned politicians found it not easy to distinguish from the Radicals of their younger days. On the other hand, keen-sighted persons could not fail to perceive that, whereas in their youth almost all young men had a tendency to be or to fancy themselves Radicals, it was now growing rather the fashion for immature politicians to boast themselves Tories, and to talk of a spirited foreign policy and the dangers of Cosmopolitanism. It would be hard to say how things might turn out, knowing people thought, as they shook their heads, and hoped the expected contest might not come on for some time.

Now the contest was at hand. At least the sitting member had positively declared that he would sit no longer, and it was announced that the Duke was coming to Keeton, and that Mr. Augustus Sheppard was to be the Duke's candidate. No more striking proof could be given of the recent change in the political condition of Keeton than is found in the fact that the adoption of Mr. Sheppard as a candidate by the ducal family did not even to the most devoted and sanguine followers of the great house make Mr. Sheppard's election seem by any means a matter of absolute certainty. There was a tolerably strong conviction everywhere, long before any opposition was announced, that the Duke's candidate would not be allowed to walk over the course and right into the House of Commons this time. Nobody in the town would oppose the Duke very likely, but the man to oppose would come.

Now the man actually had come. Victor Heron had issued his address and was in Keeton. His address was original; he had positively refused from the first to make any grand professions of superior statesmanship or patriotism. He would tell Englishmen, he said, that he was seeking a seat in Parliament as a way of getting redress for a great wrong done to him, and through him to some of the principles most dear to the country. When he had fought his battle in Parliament and won or lost, he promised that he would then place himself in the hands of his constituents and resign the seat if they desired. The whole address was frank, odd, original, and perhaps seemed a little self-conceited. The author's absorption in his subject was mistaken by many people, as will happen sometimes, for self-conceit.

Mr. Sheppard's address, on the contrary, talked only of the good old Conservative principles which had made England the envy and admiration of all surrounding States; of the local interests of Keeton and the candidate's acquaintance therewith; and of the many splendid things done for the town by the noble family who had done it the honor to have a park there.

"I don't think Heron's address reads half badly," Mr. Money said, one evening in the absence of Heron, to his two companions; "on the whole, I shouldn't wonder if it took some people, the women particularly. Anything personal, anything in the nature of a grievance, is likely to have a good effect on many people, especially where the injured personage is young, and good-looking, and plucky. I wish the women had the votes here just for this once, for I think we should stand to win if they had."

"Then, papa, do you think we shan't win now?" Lucy asked.

Minola looked up eagerly for his answer.

"Well, Lucelet, I don't like to say; I am not quite charmed with the look of things. I find there are a good many very strong Radicals grown up in this place since there was a contest here before; and Heron's not wild enough for them by half. They are a little of the red-hot social-revolution sort of thing--the _proletaire_ business, with a dash of the brabbling atheist--the fellows who think one is not fit to live if he even admits the possibility of another world. I am afraid these fellows will hold aloof from us altogether, or even take some whim of voting against us, and they may be strong enough to turn the scale."

Minola hoped that if her friend Mr. St. Paul had really any charm by which to extort victory for Heron as he had promised, he would not forget to use it in good time. But she began to have less faith, and less, in the possibility of any such feat. She was a little in the perplexed condition of some one of mediæval times, who has entered into a bargain for supernatural interference, and is not quite certain whether to wish that the compact may be really carried out or that it may prove to have been only the figment of a dream.

"I'm told we ought to have some poems done," Money went on to say. "Not merely squibs, you know, but appeals about right and justice, and the cause of oppressed humanity, and all that."

"I'm sure Minola could do some beautifully!" Lucy exclaimed, looking beseechingly toward her friend.

"Oh, no; I couldn't indeed! My appeals would be dreadfully weak; they could not rouse the spirits of any mortal creature. Now, if we only had Mary Blanchet!"

This, it must be owned, was Minola's fun, but it gave an idea to Mr. Money.

"Tell you what," he said; "we ought to have her brother--the bard you used to call him, Lucelet."

"Oh, no, papa; indeed I never called him anything of the kind. I never did, indeed, Nola."

"Well, whatever you called him, Lucelet, we can't do better than to have him. We'll put Pegasus into harness, by Jove--a capital good use to make of him too. I'll write to what's-his-name?--Blanchet--at once."

"But I don't think he would like it, papa; I think he would take offence at the idea of your asking him to do poems for an election. I don't think he would come."

"Oh, yes, he would come; we would make it worth his while. These young fellows give themselves airs to make you girls admire them, that they never think of trying on with men. It would be a rather telling thing here too if it got about that we had brought a real poet specially down from London. I'll write at once."

This seemed rather alarming to Minola.

"I doubt whether Mr. Heron would much like it," she pleaded. "I don't know whether they are such very good friends just now. I am rather afraid."

"Oh, yes; of course they must be good friends! Heron is not to have it all his own way in everything anyhow. He must like the idea; he shall. I'll write without telling him anything about it, and Heron couldn't help being friendly to any fellow who came under his roof, as one might say."

No one made any further objection.

"I wish Heron had not been so confoundedly particular about St. Paul," Mr. Money went on to say in a discontented tone. "That was absurd. St. Paul's no worse than lots of other fellows, and in such a thing as this we can't afford to throw away any offer of support. We have to fight against the Duke and his lot anyhow, and the help of St. Paul couldn't have done us any harm in that quarter, and it might have done us some good in others. I shouldn't wonder if St. Paul had some friends and admirers here still; and it is as likely as not that his being with us might conciliate a few of the mad Radicals. They might like him just because he is against his brother, the Duke."

"But Mr. Heron would not have such help as that," Lucy said, in tones of pride.

"Oh, by Jove! if you want to carry an election--and now, I suppose, if St. Paul has any influence at all, it will be given against us."

Minola thought of her unholy compact, and did not venture to say a word on the subject.

THE "UNIFORMED MILITIA" SERVICE.

I spent seven years of my boyhood at school among the hills of old Connecticut, about fifteen miles back of Bridgeport, in a region even now in almost its primitive simplicity and pastoral beauty. It has been left quiet and untouched between the iron ways of Housatonic and Danbury, equidistant from both, and sufficiently far away from either to be free from the impulse and incentive of that practical missionary of modern progress, the railroad.

City born, but partly country bred, I understand well the sentiment of the New Englander for his old home, and often live over again the days in those familiar hills and valleys of Fairfield. I would revel in enjoyment if it were possible for me to revisit them. It was there my eyes were open to the delights of a "town muster," and my steps taught rhythm by fife and drum.

In occasional musings I hear the old music as it used to reach me in waves of sound, now faint, then loud, as the variable wind would waft it, or as it escaped from obstructing hills. And I see the tall white and red plume of the commandant, undulating with his stride, and dipping salutes to the wind. Reader, if you have never realized the excitement of a "general training day" in the country, you have missed the freshest and most genuine pleasure of youth.

In the fall of 1842 occurred the Croton water celebration, a real city holiday. The procession was long, interesting, and gorgeous, for all of it except the military portion was profusely decorated with autumn flowers, odorless but beautiful, rich in color and variety. It might properly have been called the feast of dahlias.

The old fire department was out in all its glory, and richly arrayed. It always took part in metropolitan rejoicings, heartily and generously. But my interest was centred in the soldiers; fired then by a longing to shoulder a musket. I waited impatiently for the freedom of manhood and a fitting opportunity. When both came I enlisted in a city regiment, and continued the connection till after the close of the late civil war.

Twenty years of service with musket and sabre failed to dull my enthusiasm. I left it, warned by the heaviness of approaching age and the demands of business, convinced of the propriety, the usefulness, and the value of a well regulated militia force.

Aware of how much has been said and written against such service, and of the misapprehension of those who had never studied its organization, its possibilities, and necessity, I propose to draw upon the practical experience of the past twenty-five years for the purpose of correcting wrong views without and suggesting new measures within. The service has been charged with costliness, uselessness, and pretentious display; with vain ambition, absence of organic purpose, and with being inimical to the morality of the individual member. All the charges have some foundation for their utterance, though the evils referred to are not the legitimate results of the organization, but rather the baleful fruit of irresponsible and ignorant commissions. The service is really worthy of conscientious labor and the support of the people.

In the present relations of government and society, a disciplined militia force is an essential part of the body politic, and an organism with vitality if properly administered. The central idea of the organization is a military body, directly from the people, for the conservation of governmental integrity and a protection to the State. Its collateral uses are an initial school for soldierly training, and in cities especially a supplementary and occasional aid to the police forces. In a general way the central idea is accepted, but in particulars is not carried out in equity between governments and the people. The theory is that the people are the State, and therefore must provide their own protection, but under proper authority. The authority exacts the service, at a great cost to the State, but denies reasonable compensation and encouragement to the individual member; therefore the people are not in sympathy with the organization. The service is brought in conflict with the people, in fact with itself, and the anomaly is presented of an organism in internal opposition. It is the duty of legislation and constituted authority to harmonize such an unnatural condition and change indifference into interest, ignorant neglect into intelligent support. Only in times of strife, like our late civil conflict, or the wars of 1812 and 1776, does the service rise to the dignity of an establishment and a recognized power. In times of peace it is permitted to exist, mainly in skeleton condition, without organic discipline, because the people have a false idea of its use and value. State military departments are not administered with intelligence, and military codes are subject to yearly legislative amendments without understanding; conditions of enlistment are altered, generally to the injury of the enlisted soldier, while recruiting for the uniformed corps languishes from lack of encouragement.

It is interesting to follow some of the changes of the New York State code and their inconsistent applications. For instance, when the law allowing relief from jury duty and the partial remission of assessment, to continue during life, was amended to cover terms of enlistment only, the Adjutant General of the State decided the amendments applied to prior enlistments, thereby breaking a contract between the State and enlisted men under the old law. But when the term of service was reduced from seven to five years, enlistments under the former law were held for the longer term. It is in such a spirit that all amendments are interpreted in favor of the State and against the individual. Fortunately the former provision has been reconsidered, and in a spirit of compromise relief from jury duty is reinstated in the code for life, but the abatement of assessments covers only terms of service. The State considers exemption from jury duty for life a relief, the nominal abatement of assessments during the service a benefit, and both together ample compensation to the militiamen. They would be in part, if immediately available, but the compensation is questionable, as the duty is generally performed too early in life for those legislative provisions to be of practical application. The abatement of an assessment is of little benefit to those who, probably, are without property till after their terms of service are completed, and the measure fails by limitation. Fortunately the relief from jury duty is a life provision, for it generally comes later in life, and after the militia service is performed. One does not, however, repay the cost of uniforms and other necessary expenses, nor the other compensate for the time which the service requires.

The New York State code says: "All able-bodied male citizens, between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, are subject to military duty," but also says that minors must obtain the written consent of parents or guardians to legalize an enlistment in a uniformed corps. Why such an incongruous distinction between uniformed corps and ununiformed militia? What right has the code to exact military service from a person who is condemned by the law as incompetent for citizenship, and is legally recognized by the law only as a child? And why exact military service from those who are in the decline of life? There are many who are physically able to do the duty under the age of twenty-one and over the age of forty, but they should be regarded as exceptional. Such service should be voluntary by the individual and optional with the State.

Spiritual, natural, and physical laws have stamped twenty-one the minimum age of manhood, and forty the culmination. Why should military law assume the power to control more?

The young absorb the elements of the future, the old dispose of them; within these life lines is practical manhood.

Patriotism enthusiastic becomes patriotism triumphant; during its passage the sentiment hardens into use.

Fault has been found by tax-payers with State and city governments for maintaining militia forces at such an expense. The censure is justified by the yearly exhibit of military expenditures, which is due in part to the unnecessary maintenance of skeleton regiments and battalions.

The prejudices of the people against soldiers in time of peace will never be overcome till they are educated to the necessity of a military establishment by intelligent administration of its affairs, proper information, greater proficiency, and a more decided application of its use. Satisfy the people of the necessity of the service, enlist their pride in its support by its efficiency, and its maintenance may be secured without opposition. People never grumble when they can see their money's worth.

If States have treated their militia forces as an inferior part of themselves, if military authorities have acted arbitrarily and ungenerously, militiamen themselves are not blameless. They have frittered away their opportunities, and belittled their profession, by vain-glory and personal ambition, and invited censure by inefficient service. Fortunately there are men and officers, companies and regiments, who, recognizing their mission, have conscientiously performed their duty and redeemed the service from greater obloquy. Their work has acted like leaven to the whole body. All honor to them for their intelligence, honest pride, and patriotic labor.

The "uniformed militia" system has a foundation of inherent strength capable of being built upon and extended to a perfectness not at present thought capable of. With its present incompleteness, its degree of usefulness is positive, and even under all the adverse circumstances referred to the condition of ably administered battalions bears upon the side of success and prosperity. Singular as it may seem, part of its weakness is from its own elements of apparent strength.

Recruits enlist with a very inadequate idea of its requirements. Many go through their term of service, sometimes pleased, oftener bored, but always with a sense of personal importance, and take their discharge with feelings of relief.

Some members are guilty of license when in uniform that they would not indulge in as citizens. Officers without capacity accept commissions and occasionally intrigue for command, from ambition and vanity, without a sense of their responsibility or a proper knowledge of their duties. There are also elements of disorder within the lines of duty which are hard to bear and difficult to control, because they arise from personal animosities. The judgment of an officer is warped to his hurt by his selfishness, wounded pride, and ambition, who will hold a commission to the injury of his company or battalion, even with the support of part of his command.

Is it to be wondered at that an organization with such elements of disorder in it should be regarded with disfavor by those ignorant of its trials, its duties, and its aims? And is it not an argument in its favor that its discipline is able to control and surmount such demoralizing tendencies?

It is not pleasant to deprecate a continuation of long services, but under certain circumstances it may result in injury to a corps. Officers of merit and distinction, with the personal veneration of their men, have been known to outlive their usefulness by retention of command after the freshness, activity, and judgment of their earlier manhood have departed. The idiosyncrasies of age and confirmed habits of authority do not readily accept advanced ideas, improvements in methods, and the inevitable changes of time.

Recruiting for uniformed corps has been and is a process without a system--a method without a principle; it is simply a necessity. As conducted at present it is derogatory to the dignity of the service, and in its practice humiliating and unpleasant to its members. The code really offers no inducement to militiamen.

Its failure to provide proper encouragement for recruiting is a defect which should have the serious consideration of military authorities and legislators at the earliest opportunity. It is a matter of vital importance to the service, and forces itself upon the attention of all commandants to their great concern.

It seems as though battalions are expected to perpetuate themselves, and they have to be, by force of circumstances, recruiting organizations for the State.

Personal application and argument have to take the place of official encouragement, and a service whose necessity, propriety, and benefits should be patent to all is left in a measure to factitious circumstances for a support. It is not, however, the sole purpose of this paper to cavil at authority, to criticise military codes, or condemn existing methods, but rather to show how the uniformed militia forces can be better rewarded by proper recognition and acknowledgment, and made more honorable by a higher standard of service. The indifference of the world and the early hostility of the church to amusements were fatal blunders which both have ascertained, and are now atoning for generously, but too thoughtlessly. Opposition has become permission without proper direction, and indiscriminate pleasure anticipates regulated and orderly recreation. This is a question of as great importance to the State as to society, of as vital interest to the church, as of welfare to the individual. Every care should be taken to recognize as orderly only those pleasures which have their foundation in use.

In every community, between the extremes of the artisan, who is almost precluded from the continuous and regular duties of a militiaman, by his occupation and necessities, and the student, who is generally unfitted for them by his intellectual preoccupation, is a numerous class, for whom the service is eminently adapted. Their inclination for occasional relief from business and clerical labors is a proper desire, and should not be permitted to degenerate into undisciplined sport for want of a legitimate pastime.

The militia service, on a peace footing, is really a recreation, with an object and an organization of the most singular merit. Its system of physical training is superior to the abnormal development of the gymnasium, the fitful excitement of the ball-field, the constrained pull and single purpose of the oar, and the violent termination of a "shell" race. Its normal object, military training, is exacting, methodical, and thorough, and moral force of character, self-reliance, discipline of the mind, and knowledge of human nature are collateral results of company and battalion associations. There is an element of possible strength to the militia forces of the several States, which may have been thought of, but never utilized. I refer to the youth in every community who are old enough to be free from the constant necessity of elementary study and relieved from the absorbing application of higher educational branches, who are yet at school, but with sufficient leisure to do well or ill--that age between the watchful eye of maternal care and later parental authority: inchoate manhood, rough, awkward, and susceptible; wild with their first taste of liberty; full of anticipation and courageous in the future. The struggle between them and society for a place is long and doubtful. The State should adopt and help them by recognizing a cadet system to be attached to the uniformed corps, whose officers could inaugurate no wiser, more charitable, or more popular measure than to accept their services. The measure of good to the boy and the measure of benefit to the service would be reciprocal and incalculable. The cadet would take to the "school of the soldier" with enthusiasm. It would give him something proper to do, something right to think of; it would perfect his growing physique with grace, and engraft on his system the elements of manhood.

To all graduating classes in school, a membership in a cadet corps would be an incentive, and school commissioners could make such membership a reward of merit.

It would relieve the service from the present unpleasant feature of recruiting by keeping behind it a subordinate corps of well-drilled young soldiers from which its ranks could be kept full. It would relieve officers from the drudgery of squad-drills, and give the service the full time of their men instead of wasting six, perhaps more, months in the present recruit classes. It would also perfect the enlisted men and subordinate officers for their prospective duties by detailing them for detached service in cadet corps, in grades next higher than their own. Such detached service would be an honor and a prime incentive for all subordinate officers.

The uniformed militia system has been the growth of years upon the single theory of a military power direct from the people. Whatever merit has been developed in its practice is intrinsic, and has been brought to the surface by force of circumstances rather than by encouragement or appreciation. Upon the minimum basis of inherent value can be constructed a maximum power of State economy, by honoring the service with an establishment of intelligence and efficiency. Make the uniformed corps to the State and to the militia forces, in a comparative, what the West Point Academy is to the United States and to the regular army in a superlative degree.

I have treated militia service thus far as a recreation, because the members of uniformed corps have made it so. I will now refer to it as a duty, and endeavor to show how the service can be adjusted to the greater benefit of the State and be made of greater use to the people.

Declare all male citizens between the ages of twenty-one and forty subject to military duty as ununiformed militia, to be enrolled and brigaded, but kept immobile except for emergencies, to be officered when necessary from the subordinate officers of the uniformed corps.

The object of enrollment is twofold: to ascertain the available force of the State, and for the purpose of special taxation, to reimburse the State for military expenditures.

Eliminate all extrinsic material from the present force; disband skeleton battalions; make supernumerary their officers; reduce the force to the efficient corps now existing, or which may have to be organized, in place of ineffective ones, for the purpose of creating normal schools for military instruction. Never call out an ununiformed battalion in time of peace, or put a uniformed corps in the field in time of war; consider them component and interchangeable parts of one system. In active service let the former be the lungs and the latter the heart of a vital organism.

In no instance should a normal battalion be disbanded for the purpose of officering ununiformed corps, but should be kept intact with its field officers and company commandants--a kind of Gatling educational battery for the propulsion of brains. It would be just as sensible to put the West Point cadets in the field as a fighting corps as to put some of our best regiments. Their heads are worth more to the country than their bodies.

I have suggested special taxation of the enrolled militia to reimburse the State for its military expenditures. It can probably be collected more expeditiously and with less expense through a special department of the Commissioner of Jurors than through any other channel. It is now necessary for the Commissioner to keep lists of jurors and register all exempts, and the plan would certainly aid him in those duties of his department by giving him a fuller and more correct canvass of citizens.

The encouragement needed to induce men and officers to spend their leisure hours for ten years in these normal battalions is to void the present remission of assessment, as an inequitable provision--reimburse them for clothing, relieve them from jury duty for life, and exempt them from any possible future draft. With their discharges give the men sergeants' warrants, non-commissioned officers lieutenants' commissions, and advance officers' commissions one grade, waiting papers for possible future services. Furnish comfortable and substantial drill-rooms and armories, and reimburse battalions for proper musical expenditures.

The State should hold itself responsible to the general Government for its officers who may be touched by a draft and furnish the necessary substitutes as compensation in part for their former and prospective services.

Experience furnishes proof that well made, good-fitting clothing, stylish, but not extravagant, is much better and cheaper than the low-priced, ugly State uniforms, ground out by contract, allotted by sizes, and fitting by chance. There is no economy in the joint ownership of a uniform; the nominal owner is niggardly in purchase and the wearer careless in use. Let the uniform be chosen by corps, made in accordance with regimental bills of dress, by individual measure, and let the State reimburse the corps by a liberal commutation. To reimburse battalions for their music may seem a costly item--it certainly is a great expense to the present uniformed corps--but as the project is based upon the idea of a self-supporting establishment, there is no injury to the State; a nominal tax paid by the enrolled ununiformed militia should be sufficient to pay the entire expenditures of the State military department.

To honor discharged men and officers with a kind of brevet commission would be an incentive for ability and efficiency, and would be of sufficient value to invite the best class of young men to the ranks. Whatever may be questionable in the action of Congress for reducing the force of the regular army, there can be none in the policy of the State for reducing its force to the lowest possible point. Every man should be released from the ranks that can be, both in justice to himself and for general industrial effect. The cost of company drills, regimental brigade and division parades in time and money is immense, and out of all proportion to the doubtful value of such services, constituted as the force is. But a compact, thoroughly disciplined, and perfectly drilled force, of the highest obtainable military character, is necessary and should be well maintained for contingent purposes.

I have thrown out these views as applicable to the city and State of New York; but the ideas can be applied to the military department of every State, with such modifications as may be found necessary.

It would be expensive, impolitic, and unnecessary for the general Government to keep a regular army, through years of peace, of sufficient numerical force to meet successfully internal outbreaks or external pressure. The militia force should be trained to be the supporting power of the army for such contingencies. The doubts and fears and awful suspense of the people during the early days of the late rebellion would have been greatly lessened, perhaps quite avoided, had the regular and militia forces been in effective readiness for the struggle, and met the necessity of the hour. The uniformed corps could have been ordered to the front for temporary defence, as some were, and time given for mobilizing the ununiformed troops.

As it was all was confusion, distrust, and almost despair; only for the instinctive loyalty and inherent courage of the people, all would have been lost. The men of the first levy, the rank and file, were magnificent in material, confident in ability, honest in purpose, crude in development, difficult to discipline--it was hard for them to come under military law. Many of their officers were adventurers without experience or qualifications for command. They obtained commissions through personal influence rather than by merit. Militia officers, with all their imperfections, would have been of much greater service.

Is the affair of Bull Run to be wondered at, with such material, and in the light of later education? It was the incisive action of the war; it punctured the conceit of both armies.

C. H. MEDAY.

THE YOSEMITE HERMIT.

The shadows were lying tolerably long on the green hillsides when the lumbering yellow stage, somewhat the worse for wear, drawn by four lean, dusty horses, also somewhat the worse for wear, drew up with a grand flourish in front of the Grand Hotel, Mariposa.

It was a long, low building, with a broad piazza in front and along one side; the façade was painted a dingy yellow to match the stage apparently, but the rest of the edifice had been neglected, and the superabundant rain and superabundant sunshine of Mariposa had left marks of their handiwork on the bare boards.

The loungers rushed out of the bar-room as soon as the wheels were heard, and stood grouped about the broad piazza exchanging jokes with the driver, who was known as Scotty, and asking the news from Hornitos and other way places.

Meanwhile the "Doctor," a stout, ruddy-complexioned man, whose appearance spoke well for his profession, descended from his seat on the box, and, opening the stage door with an air of pride and satisfaction, he assisted the one lady passenger to alight with a grace which would have done credit to Chesterfield. The loungers on the piazza started and drew back. All ceased their gibes with Scotty, and two or three removed their hats. She was not only a woman, but a very pretty woman--she was even beautiful.

She thanked the Doctor with a pretty grace, and turned her clear, hazel eyes upon the admiring group, scanning each face eagerly and wistfully. The Doctor said, "Allow me," and was about to escort her into the small den at one side known as the "Ladies' parlor," but she swept past him and walked straight into the bar-room, the Doctor, the loafers, and Scotty crowding in after her and regarding her movements with an undisguised admiration, and as much reverential curiosity as though she had been a visitant from another sphere.

The proprietor of the "Grand" was a podgy man, with an aggressively bald head and scaley eyes like an alligator's--though for that matter I may be libelling the alligator. His name was Sharpe, commonly corrupted into "Cutey" by some mysterious process.

He was pouring whiskey from a bottle into a glass, preparatory to serving himself, when the new comer walked--she walked like an angel--straight up to him and said, "Is this the landlord?"

Cutey was so astonished by the apparition that he dropped the glass--he called it a glass; it was in reality a stone-china cup about half an inch thick--and wasted the whiskey; it was only by the greatest presence of mind that he succeeded in saving the bottle.

"Ma-a-a'm?" he stammered, clutching at his bald head to see if there was a hat there.

The woman repeated her question; the crowd by the doorway, headed by the Doctor, strained their ears to listen. She had a low voice, tolerably sweet. Such music had never before been heard within those low walls, perhaps. They wished she would say more. Old "Punks" muttered that she 'minded him of his Lyddy--"jest sech a voice!" which remark brought down upon him much contumely afterward, and a threat from the Doctor to "put daylight through him." After a helpless look around him, Cutey admitted that he _was_ the landlord, with the air of a cornered scoundrel confessing a crime.

"Then perhaps you can tell me what I wish to know," said the woman, fixing her clear, sweet eyes upon him. "I want to find a man named Wilmer--James Courtney Wilmer."

Cutey shook his head sorrowfully.

"Thar be so many names," said he: "skurce any man goes by his own name. Be he livin' in Mariposa, ma'am?"

"I do not know," was the reply, with a suggestion of tears in the voice, at which every heart in the crowd by the door was touched and unhappy.

Punks nudged Scotty with his elbow.

"What's that fellow's name that wus partners with Circus Jack in the Banderita?" he whispered.

Scotty rapped his forehead with his horny hand, and ran his fingers into his bushy, tow-colored hair, with a clutch of desperation.

"Punks," he whispered, "I allers counted you a fool, but you ain't; you air a shinin' light! His name _wus_ Jim Wilmer."

Then, coloring up to the roots of his hair, he advanced and said:

"If you please, ma'am."

The woman turned at this, meeting a whole battery of eyes without any seeming consciousness of it.

"There wus a feller named Jim Wilmer here--wus partners in the Banderita, with a feller named Circ--leastways, I don't know his name, but we called him Circus Jack, ma'am."

The woman's face--her beautiful face--turned as white as the collar at her throat; she leaned against the bar and tried to speak, but the words died on her lips.

Finally, with an effort, she half whispered:

"Do you know where he is now?"

Then, as the men looked at each other, she cried in a clearer tone, "Is he _dead_?"

"No, no, ma'am. He wus here, 'taint a month," said Scotty. "I think he's off huntin' in the hills. I'll find Circus Jack, and bring him up here. He'll be likely to know--him and Jim wus real good friends."

"Thank you," said the stranger softly, in a voice which smote Scotty's heart exceedingly.

The Doctor, meanwhile, had gone for Mrs. Sharpe, who presently entered, and invited the stranger to "hev a little tea."

She was a small fair woman, with a washed-out look, and a mouth not innocent of _dipping_, but she looked and spoke kindly, and the stranger was glad enough to answer, "Yes," and follow her into the dining-room. The crowd fell back as she approached, but only enough to give her room to pass. Some stealthily touched her dress as she swept by them, and when she had disappeared, and the door had closed, forty tongues were loosed at once, and a scene of excitement ensued only equalled by the one which followed on the shooting of "the Judge" by "Little Jack," over a game of poker, in that very bar-room of the Grand Hotel.

"Mought I ax your name, ma'am?" inquired Mrs. Sharpe.

"Marian Kingsley," was the faint reply.

"Miss or Mrs., ma'am?" pursued Mrs. Sharpe, glancing at the shapely, white, ringless hands.

The stranger gave a slight impatient twitch. "It doesn't matter," she said. "Call me Marian. That will do as well as anything."

Mrs. Sharpe was a washed-out woman. Many of the natural and laudable instincts remained, perhaps being fast colors; but a horror of the class to which she now supposed Marian to belong was one which had faded out of her nature. She gave a slightly supercilious look, which fell upon the woman like moonlight on ice, and pursued her inquiries.

"Came from 'Frisco?"

"I came through there. I didn't see anything of the place."

"Whar _did_ yer come from?"

"Philadelphia." The tone was changed. She evidently felt the impalpable rudeness of the faded woman, and knew how to resent it in the same way. More conversation ensued, in the course of which Mrs. Sharpe discovered that Marian had a little money--enough to pay her board for a few months--and that she had come there to find "James Courtney Wilmer."

Mrs. Sharpe had information to give as well as to take, for she knew something of Jim.

"_We_ called him _Jim_," she said, a little scornfully. "He didn't git no 'Courting' from _we_."

Poor Marian gave a faint smile. "There might be other James Wilmers," she said. "I wanted to be sure."

Mrs. Sharpe didn't think this could be the one.

"He's a rough, ragged creeter," she said, "and 's had the snakes fur weeks at a time."

Marian shrank and cowered at this, with a pitiful look of pain on her beautiful face.

"Hed money left him?" asked Mrs. Sharpe.

Marian nodded.

"'Twon't do him no good. Soon as he hearns of it, he'll drink himself into snakes. Allers did when they struck a good lead on the Banderita. Circus Jack, he loses all hisn's at poker; so thar they go."

In the course of an hour Circus Jack, scrubbed and "fixed up" to a degree which made him almost unrecognizable by his comrades, appeared, escorted by Scotty, also prepared by a choice toilet to enter the presence of "the ladies."

"'Scuse my not comin' afore," said Scotty. "Hosses must be 'tended to, and them of mine wus about dead beat."

Marian smiled graciously, if absently, and turned her clear, hazel eyes to Circus Jack, who, with many excuses, circumlocutions, and profane epithets, most of which he apologized for instantly, and some of which he was evidently unconscious of, gave her all the information in his power in regard to the man she had come to find.

No one in Mariposa knew him better. As "Jim" he was almost an integral part of the city of "Butterflies." The butterflies, by the by, for which the town is named, are not those which soar in the air, but "Mariposas," fastened by long, tough filaments to the ground.

Many a night had Jim Wilmer crushed his swollen face into them, and slept a drunken sleep with their soft wings folded sorrowfully above him.

There was something of a mystery hung about him, which the "boys" had never been able to fathom. Some said that he belonged to a wealthy and aristocratic family, and had left home and become a wanderer and an outcast, because some beautiful woman had jilted him; others said that he had had a wife and children, that he had broken his wedded faith and his wife's heart at the same time, and that a grim phantom followed him wherever he went, and gave him no peace. Others told yet another story: that he had been engaged to a beautiful girl, and had loved her and trusted her above all telling; that his wedding day was near, when he had stumbled upon some miserable secret, which was dead and buried, but could not rest in its grave; that there was no room left for doubt, which is sometimes blessed, and he had fled without a word; disappeared, and left to her own wretched heart the task of telling her the reason why.

Circus Jack did not tell Marian these stories, though he had heard them all; indeed, they had all been retold and discussed in the bar-room, not half an hour since. An average woman would have repeated them to her, and thus tempted her to reveal the truth; but a chivalrous heart beat under Jack's flannel shirt, and he could no more bear to hurt her than he could have crushed a little bird to death with his hand.

If any of the stories were true, and she yet loved poor Jim, he told her enough to wring her heart and haunt her dreams for ever.

The winter that he spent in the hollow of a great pine tree, on the rim of Yosemite valley, was perhaps his happiest and most peaceful. Every Yosemite tourist stops to peep inside this tree, and to wonder if a man really lived there. "It was comfortable enough," says the hale old pioneer of the valley below. "He had plenty of room. We both slept in it one night."

At which the tourist peeps in again, and wonders if the long-limbed Texan was not a bit cramped by the footboard.

When Circus Jack told Marian the story it was fresher and less wonderful than now.

"Was the snow very deep?" she said. "Was there no danger of his freezing to death?"

"I never hearn much about it anyhow," said Circus Jack, "'cept thet he lived thar alone cuttin' shingles. I 'spect the snow was 'bout four or five foot deep up thar whar he lived. He's a close-mouthed one, I tell yer. Never git nothin' outer him, an' when he's drunk he don't tell nothin' whatsomd-ever!"

This, with a glance half pitying, half reassuring, as though he would promise her that the secret, whatever it might be, was safe.

One comforting doubt beat at the woman's heart all the while that Jack was talking. "Perhaps this man was not the one!"

She mentioned this at length, and asked Jack what his quandom "partner" was like.

"He was a slight-built feller, rayther light-complected," was the reply. "An' han'some! I called him han'some, didn't you, Scotty?"

Scotty, thus appealed to, gave a profane assent. He had scarcely moved a muscle since he sat down, with his eyes fixed on Marian's fair, ever-changing face. Mrs. Sharpe, after a vain attempt to engage him in conversation, had quietly withdrawn, having no relish for being one of a quartette where two did all the talking.

"Was he--an--educated man?" inquired Marian hesitatingly, feeling in a vague way that the question might offend Jack.

"Yes, he war," replied that worthy in a contemplative tone. "When he war drunk I hev hearn him talkin' a lot of stuff like po'try. Thar's a pile of books in my cabin now that he used ter read consid'able. _I_ can't make head nor tail to 'em. P'r'aps you might."

"I would like to see them," said Marian eagerly.

Jack nodded, and a pause ensued. At length Scotty remarked that the "old man," meaning Cutey, was "reyther late in lightin' up," at which Jack arose and bade the stranger "good night."

Marian put out her hand, saying, "We will be good friends, I hope."

Circus Jack took it by the finger tips cautiously, careful not to hurt it with his horny fingers.

"I'll do ary thing in the world fur yer, madam," he replied earnestly and ingenuously.

"There was one thing I wished to ask," she said, "though it may be a foolish question. Did you ever notice any--ring--that he wore or--carried?"

"They _wus_ a ring, but I'm beat ef I kin tell what kind. Once when Jim was turrible sick, an' his hand swelled up, I wanted to file it off, but he fought so I couldn't. He said when he got well thet it never had ben off, nor never shouldn't be while he had life to fight."

"Can't you tell me what it was like?" she asked.

"I ain't no hand," said Circus Jack, rubbing his head. "I'd know it ef I seed it, but----"

"Was it like this?" She drew a dainty purse from her pocket, and took from its safest corner a plain, flat band of gold, with a small disk on it, shaped like the half of a heart placed horizontally.

"Prezactly!" exclaimed Circus Jack with emphasis.

She opened her purse to put it back, but it fell from her hand, scattering her little stock of money over the floor, and a moment after, when Mrs. Sharpe came in, in response to frantic halloos from Scotty, she found Marian in a dead faint upon the floor, with Scotty and Circus Jack, with hands clasped behind them, kneeling on either side of her like uncouth angels, while scattered coins and escaping masses of golden-brown hair formed a halo about her head.

She was ashamed of and provoked at her weakness afterward; said she was fatigued with her long and wearisome ride, and that she never fainted before; but if she had been an accomplished diplomatist, she could have planned nothing better for her popularity.

As for the faded-out woman, her opinion, which had been tottering under a severe reproof from Cutey, now underwent a complete revolution.

"_Them_ kind never faints!" she said to herself dogmatically, as she assisted Marian to her room and begged her to "take things easy like." She patiently answered one hundred and seven inquiries that evening, varying from, "How's the sick lady?" to, "Jim Wilmer's gal perking up a little arter her faint?" and for the rest of Marian's stay in Mariposa she proved that kindliness of heart had been one of the "fast colors."

It was but natural that Cutey should feel a friendly interest, since he dealt out at least two hundred extra drinks, at highly remunerative prices, on her account that evening; and moreover, the Doctor "tipped" him handsomely for extra care and attention. In a week after her arrival, Marian had learned all that anybody in Mariposa knew regarding "Jim." She wore that curious ring upon her finger now. There were two letters upon the disk, but no one ever had the hardihood to ask what they were.

Punks, whose eyes were keen, and whose curiosity was keener, declared that they were "i l," with a "little quirl-like" between.

Punks also knew--a fact which did credit to his powers and habits of observation--that on the disk of the ring which Jim wore on his little finger were the letters "Fa."

Punks desired to know what "Fail" spelled but "fail." He further inquired "what they wanted to hev sech a doggoned mis'able word as thet on a ring fur?"

"'T'orter be 'love' or sunthin'," he added critically.

It was only after much questioning in divers places, and the exercise of a deal of patience and some finesse, that Marian learned the present whereabouts of the half-crazed hermit "all unblessed." When last seen, something less than a week before her arrival, he had been wandering through the neighboring mountains, half-clothed in wretched rags, living on berries and roots, alternately muttering and shrieking the vagaries of his unhinged mind.

They were loth to tell her, even those who knew it. Their rude externals seemed to have made their hearts softer. It hurt them to see the pink color fade from her cheeks, and the shadow of sharp pain creep over her beautiful face; so she had to learn the lesson of smiling when her heart ached worst. The two Mexicans, cattle herders, who had seen him, were eagerly questioned; but they could tell nothing that she did not know, save that they were quite sure that it was Jim, and not some other unfortunate, whom they had seen.

They gave a stupid assent when asked by Marian to secure him and bring him into town the next time that they saw him; and a "Si, Señor," considerably less stupid in a subsequent private interview with Jack, who promised them "heap money" for their labor.

Marian had the books which Jim had left in the cabin: commonplace Greek and Latin books, which might have belonged to anybody, save that on one fly leaf was written in a scrawling hand, "J. C. Wilmer," and this yellow page, and this faded ink, she covered with her kisses and baptized with her tears. And another weary week crept by.

The Doctor noticed with disapprobation strongly expressed how pale and worn-looking the pretty woman grew. Not professionally; indeed, his title was merely honorary, bestowed in recognition of his services in prescribing the "Golden Anti-bilious Pills" for Bob Jinks, which, or nature in spite of them, had effected a cure, and restored to bereft Mariposa society an efficient and valuable member.

The Doctor's interest afforded considerable amusement to the habitués of the "Grand" bar-room, and they fairly roared with sympathy when he profanely expressed his sorrow to see her wasting her beauty in tears over "another feller."

One Saturday night, two weeks and a day since Marian's arrival, the whole population of the town were at the Grand, either drinking, gambling, or purchasing provisions of Cutey's deputy, who presided over the tin can department with activity and grace; and all, whatever their occupation, were swearing vigorously and unceasingly.

Marian sat up stairs in her tiny room burning with feverish anxiety. Her long years of home-waiting, the comfortless journey, even the first week of uncertainty, had been easier to bear than this anxious waiting. The Mexicans had not hesitated to say that he must be dead by this time; but _that_ she did not believe; he might be starving, crazed, nearly dead, but surely she might see him once more and hear him say that he forgave her; perhaps even nurse him back to reason and health and hope again.

The brawling and laughter down stairs made her shudder. "If I was only a man!" she whispered fiercely, clenching her little hands. "Can I do _nothing_ but sit here and wait? Oh, God, be merciful!" she cried.

Then suddenly a thought flashed into her mind. She did not stop to think of it; she acted upon it.

The Doctor's partner, profoundly studying his cards, was somewhat disconcerted to see the table kicked over, and the Doctor's "hand" on the floor. Without a question, he put his hand back for his pistol, when the sudden stillness in the room caught his attention, and all that followed caused him to forget the affront.

In the centre of the room, her disordered hair flying about her face, her clear eyes flashing with excitement, her cheeks flaming with color, more beautiful than they had ever seen her look before, Marian stood waiting for silence. Men crowded up to the doorways and filled the windows, certain from the sudden quiet that "something was up."

"Won't you _help_ me?" she cried out. "What can _I_ do to find him? He may be starving to death! He would not have left you to starve! You"--she gasped and drew her breath hard--"you--whom he was good to--you remember--a hundred things, but you forget him! and let him--rave his life away--and starve to death--alone." She choked. She could not speak another word! but she stood with her lips parted, her eyes flashing, looking eagerly, almost angrily, from one face to another.

Circus Jack bounded on to a table; it was rickety, and reeled with his weight; but Punks and Bob Jinks steadied it; they were friends of Jack's; besides, they had just won from him at poker, and felt very friendly. "Fellers!" said Jack, "to-morrow's Sunday. I'm going out ter hunt fer poor Jim, and ain't comin' back till I find him. Them as wants ter 'comp'ny me kin call at my cabin to-night."

"I will go with you, Jack," said the Doctor impressively.

"Me, too, you bet!" cried Scotty.

"Count me in," growled a bass voice from the window.

"Me too," squeaked Punks. "All as'll go say, 'Ay!'"

And an "Ay!" came from those rough voices with such a ringing burst of good will as must have startled the very birds asleep in the distant trees.

Nay! some faint echo of it may have been heard at the very gates of heaven itself. The tears rolled down Marian's cheeks. She tried to say, "God bless you!" but the tears had the right of way, and the words broke into something unintelligible.

A sudden shame came over them that they had not thought of this before. Memories of homes, of mothers, of wives, came knocking at their hearts, and would not be denied. The sleeves of rough and not over clean flannel shirts were drawn across eyes that had scorned tears, through sickness, discomfort, and disappointment.

Cutey came to the rescue.

"Gentlemen!" he said, waving his hand over the bar, "help yourselves. My j'ints are stiff, and I can't go; but I'll treat the crowd. Free drinks, gentlemen!"

And leaving his bar to the tender mercies of his thirsty friends, Cutey offered his arm to Marian, and escorted her to her own door, where he took leave of her with a low bow.

Then he went down stairs four steps at a time, lest his choice liquors should be annihilated in his absence.

It was Monday noon when they returned. Marian sat at the window in the easiest chair the house afforded, sickening with fever. She watched them coming into town with a restless, helpless anxiety. She watched them scatter to their cabins, and saw Circus Jack coming on toward the hotel alone.

She buried her face in her hands. He had said that he would never come back until he found him. Had they become discouraged, or----

She could not believe that they had found him. Her heart seemed to cry out, "No! no!" Jack came up, with little Mrs. Sharpe at his heels.

"Be keerful!" said the faded woman. "She mighty poorly."

Jack came in as lightly as his heavy boots would allow.

"The boys said fur me ter tell yer they wus all dretful sorry fur yer. We buried him jist whar we found him. He'd a ben dead nigh on to a couple of weeks, I reckon. Don't yer look so, lady. Poor Jim! he warn't never happy, even when he was drunk. He's better off up thar. We flung a few stones together to mark the place, and I'll guide you and Mrs. Sharpe thar any time."

Then, lowering his voice to a whisper, he added tenderly, "And I tuk the ring offen his finger. He couldn't fight fur it now; an I thought as mebby you'd like it."

He took it from the corner of his handkerchief; she held up her finger for it, and he slipped it on. Then he saw that the letters spelled "Faith." "Thet Punks!" he thought to himself contemptuously.

She looked up into his face with a stony smile--no tears now.

"Thank you," she said.

Four weeks afterward the Doctor lifted Marian into the stage. She was strong enough for her journey now, she said. Two days before she had visited the lonely cairn. It was a tiresome horseback ride too. She seemed to be getting well very fast. The Doctor told her so.

"People never die when they wish to," she answered sadly.

Circus Jack came to the stage-door to bid her "Good-by."

"What can I do for you to thank you?" she asked earnestly.

Jack hesitated.

"Ef you wouldn't mind, ma'am," he said, "I'd like--to--kiss your hand. I've got a dear old mother home--ef you wouldn't mind!"

Without a blush or a change of countenance she put her arm around his neck and kissed his lips.

"Good-by, dear old fellow," she said.

Then Scotty cracked his whip, the crowd on the piazza raised their hats--even the poor, chagrined Doctor--a subdued cheer was given, and the lumbering stage disappeared in a cloud of dust, the nodding mariposas on the hillside looking curiously at it as it went by.

CLARA G. DOLLIVER.

THE PUNISHED.

Not they who know the awful gibbet's anguish, Not they who, while sad years go by them, in The sunless cells of lonely prisons languish, Do suffer fullest penalty for sin.

'Tis they who walk the highways unsuspected, Yet with grim fear for ever at their side, Who clasp the corpse of some sin undetected, A corpse no grave or coffin lid can hide.

'Tis they who are in their own chambers haunted By thoughts that like unwelcome guests intrude, And sit down uninvited and unwanted, And make a nightmare of the solitude.

ELLA WHEELER.

ALFRED DE MUSSET.

It had been known for some time that M. Paul de Musset was preparing a biography of his illustrious brother, and the knowledge had been grateful to Alfred de Musset's many lovers; for the author of "Rolla" and the "Lettre à Lamartine" has lovers. The book has at last appeared--more than twenty years after the death of its hero.[1] It is probably not unfair to suppose that a motive for delay has been removed by the recent death of Mme. Sand. M. Paul de Musset's volume proves, we confess, rather disappointing. It is a careful and graceful, but at the same time a very slight performance, such as was to be expected from the author of "Lui et Elle" and of the indignant refutation (in the biographical notice which accompanies the octavo edition of Alfred de Musset's works) of M. Taine's statement that the poet was addicted to walking about the streets late at night. As regards this latter point, M. Paul de Musset hastened to declare that his brother had no such habits--that his customs were those of a _gentilhomme_; by which the biographer would seem to mean that when the poet went abroad after dark it was in his own carriage, or at least in a hired cab, summoned from the nearest stand. M. Paul de Musset is a devoted brother and an agreeable writer; but he is not, from the critic's point of view, the ideal biographer. This, however, is not seriously to be regretted, for it is little to be desired that the ideal biography of Alfred de Musset should be written, or that he should be delivered over, bound hand and foot, to the critics. Those who really care for him would prefer to judge him with all kinds of allowances and indulgences--sentimentally and imaginatively. Between him and his readers it is a matter of affection, or it is nothing at all; and there is something very happy, therefore, in M. Paul de Musset's fond, fraternal reticency and extenuation. He has related his brother's life as if it were a pretty "story"; and indeed there is enough that was pretty in it to justify him. We should decline to profit by any information that might be offered us in regard to its prosaic, its possibly shabby side. To make the story complete, however, there appears simultaneously with M. Paul de Musset's volume a publication of a quite different sort--a memoir of the poet by a clever German writer, Herr Paul Lindau.[2] Herr Lindau is highly appreciative, but he is also critical, and he says a great many things which M. Paul de Musset leaves unsaid. As becomes a German biographer, he is very minute and exhaustive, and a stranger who should desire a "general idea" of the poet would probably get more instruction from his pages than from the French memoir. Their fault is indeed that they are apparently addressed to persons whose mind is supposed to be a blank with regard to the author of "Rolla." The exactions of bookmaking alone can explain the long analyses and prose paraphrases of Alfred de Musset's comedies and tales to which Herr Lindau treats his readers--the dreariest kind of reading when an author is not in himself essentially inaccessible. Either one has not read Alfred de Musset's comedies or not felt the charm of them--in which case one will not be likely to resort to Herr Lindau's memoirs--or one _has_ read them, in the charming original, and can therefore dispense with an elaborate German _résumé_.

[1] "_Biographie de Alfred de Musset: sa Vie et ses Oeuvres._" Par PAUL DE MUSSET. Paris: Charpentier.

[2] "_Alfred de Musset._" Von PAUL LINDAU. Berlin: Hofmann.

In saying just now that M. Paul de Musset's biography of his brother is disappointing, we meant more particularly to express our regret that he has given us no letters--or given us at least but two or three. It is probable, however, that he had no more in his hands. Alfred de Musset lived in a very compact circle; he spent his whole life in Paris, and his friends lived in Paris near him. He was little separated from his brother, who appears to have been his best friend (M. Paul de Musset was six years Alfred's senior), and much of his life was passed under the same roof with the other members of his family. Seeing his friends constantly, he had no occasion to write to them; and as he saw little of the world (in the larger sense of the phrase), he would have had probably but little to write about. He made but one attempt at travelling--his journey to Italy, at the age of twenty-three, with George Sand. "He made no important journeys," says Herr Lindau, "and if one excepts his love affairs, he really had no experiences." But his love affairs, as a general thing, could not properly be talked about. M. de Musset shows good taste in not pretending to narrate them. He mentions two or three of the more important episodes of this class, and with regard to the others he says that when he does not mention them they may always be taken for granted. It is perhaps indeed in a limited sense that Alfred de Musset's love affairs may be said to have been in some cases more important than in others. It was his own philosophy that in this matter one thing is about as good as another--

Aimer est le grand point; qu'importe la maitresse? Qu'importe le flacon pourvu qu'on ait l'ivresse?

Putting aside the "ivresse," which was constant, Musset's life certainly offers little material for narration. He wrote a few poems, tales, and comedies, and that is all. He _did_ nothing, in the sterner sense of the word. He was inactive, indolent, idle; his record has very few dates. Two or three times the occasion to do something was offered him, but he shook his head and let it pass. It was proposed to him to accept a place as attaché to the French embassy at Madrid, a comfortable salary being affixed to the post. But Musset found no inspiration in the prospect. He had written about Spain in his earlier years--he had sung in the most charming fashion about Juanas and Pepitas, about señoras in mantillas stealing down palace staircases that look "blue" in the starlight. But the desire to _see_ the picturesqueness that he had fancied proved itself to have none of the force of a motive. This is the fact in Musset's life which the writer of these lines finds most regrettable--the fact of his contented smallness of horizon--the fact that on his own line he should not have cared to go further. There is something really exasperating in the sight of a picturesque poet wantonly slighting an opportunity to go to Spain--the Spain of forty years ago. It does violence even to that minimum of intellectual eagerness which is the portion of a contemplative mind. It is annoying to think that Alfred de Musset should have been meagrely contemplative. This is the weakness that tells against him, more than the weakness of what would be called his excesses. From the point of view of his own peculiar genius, it was a good fortune for him to be susceptible and tender, sensitive and passionate. The trouble was not that he was all this, but that he was lax and soft; that he had too little energy and curiosity. Shelley was at least equally tremulous and sensitive--equally a victim of his impressions, and an echo, as it were, of his temperament. But even Musset's fondest readers must feel that Shelley had within him a firm, divinely-tempered spring against which his spirit might rebound indefinitely. As regards intense sensibility--that fineness of feeling which is the pleasure and pain of the poetic nature--M. Paul de Musset tells two or three stories of his brother which remind one of the anecdotes recorded of the author of the "Ode to the West Wind." "One of the things which he loved best in the world was a certain exclamation of Racine's 'Phædra,' which expresses by its _bizarrerie_ the trouble of her sickened heart:

Ariane, ma soeur, de quel amour blessée, Vous mourûtes aux bords où vous fûtes laissée!

When Rachel used to murmur forth this strange, unexpected plaint, Alfred always took his head in his two hands and turned pale with emotion."

The author describes the poet's early years, and gives several very pretty anecdotes of his childhood. Alfred de Musset was born in 1810, in the middle of old Paris, on a spot familiar to those many American visitors who wander across the Seine, better and better pleased as they go, to the museum of the Hôtel de Cluny. The house in which Musset's parents lived was close to this beautiful monument--a happy birthplace for a poet; but both the house and the street have now disappeared. M. Paul de Musset does not relate that his brother began to versify in his infancy; but Alfred was indeed hardly more than an infant when he achieved his first success. The poems published under the title of "Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie" were composed in his eighteenth and nineteenth years; he had but just completed his nineteenth when the volume into which they had been gathered was put forth. There are certainly--if one considers the quality of the poems--few more striking examples of literary precocity. The cases of Chatterton and Keats may be equally remarkable, but they are not more so. These first boyish verses of Musset have a vivacity, a brilliancy, a freedom of feeling and of fancy which may well have charmed the little _cénacle_ to which he read them aloud--the group of littérateurs and artists which clustered about Victor Hugo, who, although at this time very young, was already famous. M. Paul de Musset intimates that if his brother was at this moment (and as we may suppose, indeed, always) one of the warmest admirers of the great author of "Hernani" and those other splendid productions which project their violet glow across the threshold of the literary era of 1830, and if Victor Hugo gave kindly audience to "Don Paez" and "Mardoche," this kindness declined in proportion as the fame of the younger poet expanded. Alfred de Musset was certainly not fortunate in his relations with his more distinguished contemporaries. Victor Hugo "dropped" him; it would have been better for him if George Sand had never taken him up; and Lamartine, to whom, in the shape of a passionate epistle, he addressed the most beautiful of his own, and one of the most beautiful of all poems, acknowledged the compliment only many years after it was paid. The _cénacle_ was all for Spain, for local color, for serenades, and daggers, and Gothic arches. It was nothing if not audacious (it was in the van of the Romantic movement), and it was partial to what is called in France the "humoristic" as well as to the ferociously sentimental. Musset produced a certain "Ballade à la Lune" which began--

C'était dans la nuit brune Sur le clocher jauni, La lune Comme un point sur un i!

This assimilation of the moon suspended above a church spire to a dot upon an _i_ became among the young Romanticists a sort of symbol of what they should do and dare; just as in the opposite camp it became a by-word of horror. But this was only playing at poetry, and in his next things, produced in the following year or two, Musset struck a graver and more resonant chord. The pieces published under the title of "Un Spectacle dans un Fauteuil" have all the youthful grace and gayety of those that preceded them; but they have beyond this a suggestion of the quality which gives so high a value to the author's later and best verses--the accent of genuine passion. It is hard to see what, just yet, Alfred de Musset had to be passionate about; but passion, with a poet, even when it is most genuine, is very much of an affair of the imagination and the personal temperament (independent, we mean, of strong provoking causes), and the sensibilities of this young man were already exquisitely active. His poems found a great many admirers, and these admirers were often women. Hence for the young poet, says M. Paul de Musset, a great many romantic and "_Boccaciennes_" adventures. "On several occasions I was awaked in the middle of the night to give my opinion on some question of high prudence. All these little stories having been confided to me under the seal of secrecy, I have been obliged to forget them; but I may affirm that more than one of them would have aroused the envy of Bassompierre and Lauzun. Women at that time were not wholly absorbed in their care for luxury and dress. To hope to please, young men had no need to be rich; and it served a purpose to have at nineteen years of age the prestige of talent and glory." This is very pretty, as well as very Gallic; but it is rather vague, and we may without offence suspect it to be, to a certain extent, but that conventional _coup de chapeau_ which every self-respecting Frenchman renders to actual or potential, past, present, or future gallantry. Doubtless, however, Musset was, in the native phrase, _lancé_. He lived with his father and mother, his brother and sister; his purse was empty; Seville and Granada were very far away; and these "Andalusian passions," as M. Paul de Musset says, were mere reveries and boyish visions. But they were the visions of a boy who was all ready to compare reality with romance, and who, in fact, very soon acceded to a proposal which appeared to offer a peculiar combination of the two. It is noticeable, by the way, that from our modest Anglo-Saxon point of view these same "Andalusian passions," dealing chiefly with ladies tumbling about on disordered couches, and pairs of lovers who take refuge from an exhausted vocabulary in _biting_ each other, are an odd sort of thing for an ingenuous lad, domiciled in the manner M. Paul de Musset describes, and hardly old enough to have a latch-key, to lay on the family breakfast table. But this was very characteristic all round. Musset was not a didactic poet, and it was not for him to lose time by taking his first steps as one. His business was to talk about love in unmistakable terms, to proclaim its pleasures and pains with all possible eloquence; and he would have been quite at a loss to understand why he should have blushed or stammered in preluding to so beautiful a theme. Herr Lindau thinks that even in the germ Musset's inspiration is already vicious--that "his wonderful talent was almost simultaneously ripe and corrupted." But Herr Lindau speaks from the modest Saxon point of view; a point of view, however, from which, in such a matter, there is a great deal to be said.

The great event in Alfred de Musset's life, most people would say, was his journey to Italy with George Sand. This event has been abundantly--superabundantly--described, and Herr Lindau, in the volume before us, devotes a long chapter to it and lingers over it with peculiar complacency. Our own sentiment would be that there is something extremely displeasing in the publicity which has attached itself to the episode; that there is indeed a sort of colossal indecency in the way it has passed into the common fund of literary gossip. It illustrates the base, the weak, the trivial side of all the great things that were concerned in it--fame, genius, and love. Either the Italian journey was in its results a very serious affair for the remarkable couple who undertook it--in which case it should be left in that quiet place in the history of the development of the individual into which public intrusion can bring no light, but only darkness--or else it was a piece of levity and conscious self-display; in which case the attention of the public has been invited to it on false grounds. If there ever was an affair it should be becoming to be silent about, it was certainly this one; but neither the actors nor the spectators have been of this way of thinking; one may almost say that there exists a whole literature on the subject. To this literature Herr Lindau's contribution is perhaps the most ingenious. He has extracted those pages from Paul de Musset's novel of "Lui et Elle" which treat of the climax of the relations of the hero and heroine, and he has printed the names of George Sand and Alfred de Musset instead of the fictitious names. The result is perhaps of a nature to refresh the jaded vision of most lovers of scandal.

We must add that some of his judgments on the matter happen to have a certain felicity. M. Paul de Musset has narrated the story more briefly--having, indeed, by the publication of "Lui et Elle," earned the right to be brief. He mentions two or three facts, however, the promulgation of which he may have thought it proper, as we said before, to postpone to Mme. Sand's death. One of them is sufficiently dramatic. Musset had met George Sand in the summer of 1833, about the time of the publication of "Rolla"--seeing her for the first time at a dinner given to the contributors of the "Revue des Deux Mondes," at the Trois Frères Provençaux. George Sand was the only woman present. Sainte-Beuve had already endeavored to bring his two friends together, but the attempt had failed, owing to George Sand's reluctance, founded on an impression that she should not like the young poet. Alfred de Musset was twenty-three years of age; George Sand, who had published "Indiana," "Valentine," and "Lélia," was close upon thirty. Alfred de Musset, as the author of "Rolla," was a very extraordinary young man--quite the young man of whom Heinrich Heine could say "he has a magnificent _past_ before him." Upon his introduction to George Sand, an intimacy speedily followed--an intimacy commemorated by the lady in expansive notes to Sainte-Beuve, whom she kept informed of its progress. When the winter came the two intimates talked of leaving Paris together, and, as an experiment, paid a visit to Fontainebleau. The experiment succeeded, but this was not enough, and they formed the project of going to Italy. To this project, as regarded her son, Mme. de Musset refused her consent. (Alfred's father, we should say, had died before the publication of "Rolla," leaving his children without appreciable property, though during his lifetime, occupying a post in a government office, he had been able to maintain them comfortably.) His mother's opposition was so vehement that Alfred gave up the project, and countermanded the preparations that had already been made for departure.

"That evening toward nine o'clock," says M. Paul de Musset, "our mother was alone with her daughter by the fireside, when she was informed that a lady was waiting for her at the door in a hired carriage, and begged urgently to speak with her. She went down accompanied by a servant. The unknown lady named herself; she besought this deeply grieved mother to confide her son to her, saying that she would have for him a maternal affection and care. As promises did not avail, she went so far as sworn vows. She used all her eloquence, and she must have had a great deal, since her enterprise succeeded. In a moment of emotion the consent was given." The author of "Lélia" and the author of "Rolla" started for Italy together. M. Paul de Musset mentions that he accompanied them to the mail coach "on a sad, misty evening, in the midst of circumstances that boded ill." They spent the winter at Venice, and M. Paul de Musset and his mother continued to hear regularly from Alfred. But toward the middle of February his letters suddenly stopped, and for six weeks they were without news. They were on the point of starting for Italy, to put an end to their suspense, when they received a melancholy epistle informing them that their son and brother was on his way home. He was slowly recovering from an attack of brain fever, but as soon as he should be able to drag himself along he would seek the refuge of the paternal roof.

On the 10th of April he reappeared alone. A quarter of a century later, and a short time after his death, Mme. Sand gave to the world, in the guise of a novel, an account of the events which had occupied this interval. The account was highly to her own advantage and much to the discredit of her companion. Paul de Musset immediately retorted with a little book which is decidedly poor as fiction, but tolerably good, probably, as history. As a devoted brother, given all the circumstances, it was perhaps the best thing he could do. It is believed that his reply was more than, in the vulgar phrase, Mme. Sand had bargained for; inasmuch as he made use of documents of whose existence she had been ignorant. Alfred de Musset, suspecting that her version of their relations would be given to the world, had, in the last weeks of his life, dictated to his brother a detailed statement of those incidents to which misrepresentation would chiefly address itself, and this narrative Paul de Musset simply incorporated in his novel. The gist of it is that the poet's companion took advantage of his being seriously ill, in Venice, to be flagrantly unfaithful, and that, discovering her infidelity, he relapsed into a brain fever which threatened his life, and from which he rose only to make his way home with broken wings and a bleeding heart.

Mme. Sand's version of the story is that his companion's infidelity was a delusion of the fever itself, and that the charge was but the climax of a series of intolerable affronts and general fantasticalities.

Fancy the great gossiping, vulgar-minded public deliberately invited to ponder this delicate question! The public should never have been appealed to; but once the appeal made, it administers perforce a rough justice of its own. According to this rough justice, the case looks badly for Musset's fellow traveller. She was six years older than he (at that time of life a grave fact); she had drawn him away from his mother, taken him in charge, assumed a responsibility. Their literary physiognomies were before the world, and she was, on the face of the matter, the riper, stronger, more reasonable nature. She had made great pretensions to reason, and it is fair to say of Alfred de Musset that he had made none whatever. What the public sees is that the latter, unreasonable though he may have been, comes staggering home, alone and forlorn, while his companion remains quietly at Venice and writes three or four highly successful romances. Herr Lindau, who analyzes the affair, comes to the same conclusion as the gross synthetic public; and he qualifies certain sides of it in terms of which observant readers of George Sand's writings will recognize the justice. It is very happy to say "she was something of a Philistine;" that at the bottom of all experience with her was the desire to turn it to some economical account; and that she probably irritated her companion in a high degree by talking too much about loving him as a mother and a sister. (This, it will be remembered, is the basis of action with Thérèse, in "Elle et Lui." She becomes the hero's mistress in order to retain him in the filial relation, after the fashion of Rousseau's friend, Mme. de Warens.) On the other hand, it seems hardly fair to make it one of Musset's grievances that his comrade was industrious, thrifty, and methodical; that she had, as the French say, _de l'ordre_; and that, being charged with the maintenance of a family, she allowed nothing to divert her from producing her daily stint of "copy."

It is easy to believe that Musset may have tried the patience of a tranquil associate. George Sand's Jacques Laurent, in "Elle et Lui," is a sufficiently vivid portrait of a highly endowed, but hopelessly petulant, unreasonable, and dissipated egotist. We are far from suspecting that the portrait is perfectly exact; no portrait by George Sand is perfectly exact. Whatever point of view she takes, she always abounds too much in her own sense. But it evidently has a tolerably solid foundation in fact. Herr Lindau holds that Alfred de Musset's life was literally blighted by the grief that he suffered in Italy, and that the rest of his career was a long, erratic, unprofitable effort to drown the recollection of it. Our own inclination would be to judge him at once with more and with less indulgence. Whether deservedly or no, there is no doubt that his suffering was great; his brother quotes a passage from a document written five years after the event, in which Alfred affirms that, on his return to Paris, he spent four months shut up in his room in incessant tears--tears interrupted only by a "mechanical" game of chess in the evening. But Musset, like all poets, was essentially a creature of impression; as with all poets, his sentimental faculty needed constantly to renew itself. He found his account in sorrow, or at least in emotion, and we may say, in differing from Herr Lindau, that he was not a man to let a grievance grow stale. To feel permanently the need of smothering sorrow is in a certain sense to be sobered by it. Musset was never sobered (a cynical commentator would say he was never sober). Emotions bloomed again lightly and brilliantly on the very stem on which others had withered. After the catastrophe at times his imagination saved him, distinctly, from permanent depression; and on a different line, this same imagination helped him into dissipation.

M. Paul de Musset mentions that in 1837 his brother conceived a "passion sérieuse" for an attractive young lady, and that the _liaison_ lasted two years--"two years during which there was never a quarrel, a storm, a cooling-off; never a pretext for umbrage or jealousy. This is why," he adds, "there is nothing to be told of them. Two years of love without a cloud cannot be narrated." It is noticeable that this is the third "passion sérieuse" that M. Paul de Musset alludes to since the dolorous weeks which followed the return from Venice. Shortly after this period another passion had come to the front; a passion which, like that which led him to Italy, was destined to have a tragical termination. This particular love affair is commemorated, in accents of bitter melancholy, in the "Nuit de Décembre," just as the other, which had found its catastrophe at Venice, figures, by clear allusion, in "Nuit de Mai," published a few months before. It may provoke a philosophic smile to learn, as we do from M. Paul de Musset--candid biographer!--that the "motives" of these two poems are not identical, as they have hitherto been assumed to be. It had never occurred to the reader that one disillusionment could follow so fast upon the heels of another. When we add that a short time afterward--as the duration of great intimacies of the heart is measured--Alfred de Musset was ready to embark upon "two years of love without a cloud" with still another object--to say nothing of the brief interval containing a sentimental episode of which our biographer gives the prettiest account--we seem to be justified in thinking that, for a "blighted" life, that of Alfred de Musset exhibited a certain germinal vivacity.

During his stay in Italy he had written nothing; but the five years which followed his return are those of his most active and brilliant productivity. The finest of his verses, the most charming of his tales, the most original of his comedies, belong to this relatively busy period. Everything that he wrote at this time has a depth and intensity which distinguishes it from the jocosely sentimental productions of his début, and from the somewhat mannered and vapidly elegant compositions which he put forth, at wide intervals, during the last fifteen years of his life. This was the period of Musset's intellectual virility. He was very precocious, but he was at the same time, at first, very youthful. On the other hand, his decline began early; in most of his later things, especially in his verses (they become very few in number), the inspiration visibly runs thin. "Mon verre n'est pas grand, mais je bois dans mon verre," he had said, and both clauses of the sentence are true. His glass held but a small quantity; the best of his verses--those that one knows by heart and never wearies of repeating--are very soon counted. We have named them when we have mentioned "Rolla," the "Nuit de Mai," the "Nuit d'Aout" and the "Nuit d'Octobre"; the "Lettre à Lamartine," and the "Stances à la Malibran." These, however, are perfection; and if Musset had written nothing else, he would have had a right to say that it was from his own glass that he drank. The most beautiful of his comedies, "Il ne faut pas badiner avec l'Amour," dates from 1834, and to the same year belongs the "Lorenzaccio," the strongest, if not the most exquisite, of his dramatic attempts. His two most agreeable _nouvelles_, "Emmeline" and "Fréderic et Bernerette," appeared about the same time. But we have not space to enumerate his productions in detail. During the fifteen last years of his life, as we have said, they grew more and more rare; the poet had, in a certain sense, out-lived himself. Of these last years Herr Lindau gives a rather realistic and unflattered sketch; picturing him especially as a figure publicly familiar to Parisian loungers, who were used to observe him as "an unfortunate with an interesting face, dressed with extreme care," with the look of youth and the lassitude of age, seated in a corner of a café and gazing blankly over a marble table on which "a half empty bottle of absinthe and a quite empty glass" stood before him. M. Paul de Musset, in describing his brother's later years, is mindful of the rule to glide, not to press; with a very proper fraternal piety, he leaves a great many foibles and transgressions in the shade. He mentions, however, Alfred's partiality for spirits and stimulants--a taste which had defined itself in his early years. Musset made an excessive use of liquor; in plain English, he got drunk. Sainte-Beuve, somewhere in one of his merciless but valuable foot-notes, alludes to the author of "Rolla" coming tipsy to the sittings of the French Academy. Herr Lindau repeats a pun which was current on such occasions. "Musset s'absente trop," said some one. "Il s'absinthe trop," replied some one else. He had been elected to the Academy in 1852. His speech on the occasion of his reception was a disappointment to his auditors. Herr Lindau attributes the sterility of his later years to indolence and perversity; and it is probable that there is not a little justice in the charge. He was unable to force himself; he belonged to the race of gifted people who must do as it pleases them. When a literary task was proposed to him and he was not in the humor for it, he was wont to declare that he was not a maid-of-all-work, but an artist. He must write when the fancy took him; the fancy took him, unfortunately, less and less frequently. With a very uncertain income, and harassed constantly by his debts, he scorned to cultivate a pecuniary inspiration. He died in the arms of his brother in the spring of 1857.

He was beyond question one of the first poets of our day. If the poetic force is measured by the _quality_ of the inspiration--by its purity, intensity, and closely personal savor--Alfred de Musset's place is surely very high. He was, so to speak, a thoroughly _personal_ poet. He was not the poet of nature, of the universe, of reflection, of morality, of history; he was the poet simply of a certain order of personal emotions, and his charm is in the frankness and freedom, the grace and harmony, with which he expressed these emotions. The affairs of the heart--these were his province; in no other verses has the heart spoken more characteristically. Herr Lindau says very justly that if he was not the greatest poet among his contemporaries, he was at any rate the most poetically constituted nature. A part of the rest of Herr Lindau's judgment is worth quoting:

He has remained the poet of youth. No one has sung so truthfully and touchingly its aspirations and its sensibilities, its doubts and its hopes. No one has comprehended and justified its follies and its amiable idiosyncrasies with a more poetic irony, with a deeper conviction. His joy was young, his sorrow was young, and young was his song. To youth he owes all happiness, and in youth he sang his brightest chants. But the weakness of youth was his fatal enemy, and with youth faded away his joy in existence and in creation.

This is exactly true. Half the beauty of Musset's writing is its simple suggestion of youthfulness--of something fresh and fair, slim and tremulous, with a tender epidermis. This quality, with some readers, may seem to deprive him of a certain proper dignity; and it is very true that he was not a Stoic. You may even call him unmanly. He cries out when he is hurt; he resorts frequently to tears, and he talks much about his tears. (We have seen that after his return from Venice they formed, for four months, his principal occupation.) But his defence is that if he does not bear things like a man, he at least, according to Shakespeare's distinction, feels them like a man. What makes him valuable is just this gift for the expression of that sort of emotion which the conventions and proprieties of life, the dryness of ordinary utterance, the stiffness of most imaginations, leave quite in the vague, and yet which forms a part of human nature important enough to have its exponent. If the presumption is against the dignity of deeply poetic utterance, poor Musset is, in the vulgar phrase, nowhere--he is a mere grotesque sound of lamentation. But if in judging him you don't stint your sympathy, you will presently perceive him to have an extraordinarily precious quality--a quality equally rare in literature and in life. He has passion. There is in most poetry a great deal of reflection, of wisdom, of grace, of art, of genius; but (especially in English poetry) there is little of this peculiar property of Musset's. When it occurs we feel it to be extremely valuable; it touches us beyond anything else. It was the great gift of Byron, the quality by which he will live in spite of those weaknesses and imperfections which may be pointed out by the dozen. Alfred de Musset in this respect resembled the poet whom he appears most to have admired--living at a time when it had not begun to be the fashion to be ashamed to take Byron seriously. Mr. Swinburne in one of his prose essays speaks of him with violent scorn as Byron's "attendant dwarf," or something of that sort. But this is to miss the case altogether. There is nothing diminutive in generous admiration, and nothing dwarfish in being a younger brother; Mr. Swinburne's charge is too coarse a way of stating the position. Musset resembles Byron in the fact that the beauty of his verse is somehow identical with the feeling of the writer--with his immediate, sensible warmth--and not dependent upon that reflective stage into which, to produce its great effects, most English poetic expression instantly passes, and which seems to chill even while it nobly beautifies. Musset is talked of nowadays in France very much as Byron is talked of among ourselves; it is noticed that he often made bad verse, and he is accused of having but half known his trade. This sort of criticism is eminently just, and there is a weak side of the author of "Rolla" which it is easy to attack.

Alfred de Musset, like Mr. Murray's fastidious correspondent, wrote poetry as an amateur--wrote it, as they say in France, _en gentilhomme_. It is the fashion, I believe, in some circles, to be on one's guard against speaking foreign tongues too well (the precaution is perhaps superfluous) lest a marked proficiency should expose one to be taken for a teacher of languages. It was a feeling of this kind, perhaps, that led Alfred de Musset to a certain affectation of negligence and laxity; though he wrote for the magazines, he could boast a long pedigree, and he had nothing in common with the natives of Grub street. Since his death a new school of poets has sprung up--of which, indeed, his contemporary, Théophile Gautier, may be regarded as the founder. These gentlemen have taught French poetry a multitude of paces of which so sober-footed a damsel was scarcely to have been supposed capable; they have discovered a great many secrets which Musset appears never to have suspected, or (if he did suspect them) to have thought not worth finding out. They have sounded the depths of versification, and beside their refined, consummate _facture_ Musset's simple devices and good-natured prosody seem to belong to a primitive stage of art. It is the difference between a clever performer on the tight rope and a gentleman strolling along on soft turf with his hands in his pockets. If people care supremely for form, Musset will always but half satisfy them. It is very pretty, they will say; but it is confoundedly unbusinesslike. His verse is not chiselled and pondered, and in spite of an ineffable natural grace, it lacks the positive qualities of cunning workmanship--those qualities which are found in such high perfection in Théophile Gautier. To our own sense Musset's exquisite feeling more than makes up for one-half the absence of "chiselling," and the ineffable grace we spoke of just now makes up for the other half. His sweetness of passion, of which the poets who have succeeded him have so little, is a more precious property than their superior science. His grace is often something divine; it is in his grace that we must look for his style. Herr Lindau says that Heine speaks of "truth, harmony, and grace" being his salient qualities. (By the first, we take it, he meant what we have called Musset's passion.) His harmony, from the first, was often admirable; the rhythm of even some of his earliest verses makes them haunt the ear after one has murmured them aloud.

Ulric, des mers nul oeil n'a mesuré l'abîme, Ni les hérons plongeurs, ni les vieux matelots; Le soleil vient briser ses rayons sur leur cime, Comme un soldat vaincu brise ses javelots.

Musset's grace, in its suavity, freedom, and unaffectedness, is altogether peculiar; though it must be said that it is only in the poems of his middle period that it is at its best. His latest things are, according to Sainte-Beuve, _califichets_--baubles; they are too much in the rococo, the Dresden china style. But as we have said before, with his youth Musset's inspiration failed him. It failed him in his prose as well as in his verse. "Il faut qu'une Porte soit ouverte ou fermée," one of the last of his dramatic proverbs, is very charming, very perfect in its way; but compared with the tones of the "Caprices de Marianne," the "Chandelier," "Fantasio," the sentiment is thin and the style has rather a simper. It is what the French call _marivaudage_. There can, however, be no better example of the absoluteness of the poetic sentiment, of its justifying itself as it goes, of lyrical expression being as it were not only a means, but an end, than the irresistible beauty of such effusions as the "Lettre à Lamartine" and the "Nuit d'Aout."

Poëte, je t'écris pour te dire que j'aime!

--that is all, literally, that Musset has to say to the "amant d'Elvire"; and it would be easy to make merry at the expense of so simply candid a piece of "gush." But the confidence is made with a transparent ardor, a sublime good faith, an audible, touching tremor of voice, which, added to the enchanting harmony of the verse, make the thing one of the most splendid poems of our day.

Ce ne sont pas des chants, ce ne sont que des larmes, Et je ne te dirai que ce que Dieu m'a dit!

Musset has never risen higher. He has, in strictness, only one idea--the idea that the passion of love and the act of loving are the divinest things in a miserable world; that love has a thousand disappointments, deceptions, and pangs, but that for its sake they are all worth enduring, and that, as Tennyson has said, more curtly and reservedly,

'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.

Sometimes he expresses this idea in the simple epicurean fashion, with gayety and with a more or less cynical indifference to the moral side of the divine passion. Then he is often pretty, picturesque, fanciful, but he remains essentially light. At other times he feels its relation to the other things that make up man's destiny, and the sense of aspiration meets with the sense of enjoyment or of regret. Then he is at his best; then he seems an image of universally sentient youth.

Je ne puis; malgré moi, l'infini me tourmente. Je n'y saurais songer sans crainte et sans espoir; Et quoiqu'on en ait dit, ma raison s'épouvante De ne pas le comprendre, et pourtant de le voir.

While we may suspect that there is something a little over-colored in M. Paul de Musset's account of the degree to which his brother was haunted by the religious sentiment--by the impulse to grope for some philosophy of life--we may also feel that with the poet's sense of the "divineness" of love there went a conviction that ideal love implies a divine object. This is the feeling expressed in the finest lines of the "Lettre à Lamartine"--in lines at least which, if they are not the finest, are fine enough to quote:

Eh bien, bon ou mauvais, inflexible ou fragile, Humble ou gai, triste ou fier, mais toujours gémissant, Cet homme, tel qu'il est, cet être fait d'argile, Tu l'a vu, Lamartine, et son sang est ton sang. Son bouheur est le tien; sa douleur est la tienne; Et des maux qu'ici bas il lui faut endurer, Pas un qui ne te touche et qui ne t'appartienne; Puisque tu sais chanter, ami, tu sais pleurer. Dis-moi, qu'en penses-tu dans tes jours de tristesse? Que t'a dit le malheur quand tu l'as consulté? Trompé par tes amis, trahi par ta maitresse, Du ciel et de toi-même as-tu jamais douté? Non, Alphonse, jamais. La triste expérience Nous apporte la cendre et n'éteint pas le feu. Tu respectes le mal fait par la Providence; Tu le laisses passer et tu crois à ton Dieu. Quelqu'il soit c'est le mien; il n'est pas deux croyances. Jene sais pas son nom: j'ai regardé les cieux; Je sais qu'ils sont à lui, je sais qu'ils sont immenses, Et que l'immensité ne peut pas être à deux. J'ai connu, jeune encor, de sévères souffrances; J'ai vu verdir les bois et j'ai tenté d'aimer. Je sais ce que la terre engloutit d'esperances, Et pour y recueillir ce qu'il y faut semer. Mais ce que j'ai senti, ce que je veux t'écrire, C'est ce que m'ont appris les anges de douleur; Je le sais mieux encor et puis mieux te le dire, Car leur glaive, en entrant, l'a gravé dans mon coeur.

And the rest of the poem is a lyrical declaration of belief in immortality.

We have called the "Lettre à Lamartine" Musset's highest flight, but the "Nuit de Mai" is almost as fine a poem--full of imaginative splendor and melancholy ecstasy. The series of the "Nuits" is altogether superb; with an exception made, perhaps, for the "Nuit de Décembre," which has a great deal of sombre beauty, but which is not, like the others, in the form of a dialogue between the Muse and the poet--the Muse striving to console the world-wounded bard for his troubles, and urging him to take refuge in hope and production:

Poëte, prends ton luth et me donne un baiser; La fleur de l'églantier sent ses bourgeons éclore. Le printemps naît ce soir; les vents vout s'embraser; Et la bergeronette, en attendant l'aurore, Au premier buissons vertes commence à se poser. Poëte, prends ton luth et me donne un baiser.

That is impregnated with the breath of a vernal night. The same poem (the "Nuit de Mai") contains the famous passage about the pelican--the passage beginning

Les plus' désespérés sont les chants les plus beaux, Et j'en sais d'immortels qui sont de purs sanglots----

in which the legend of the pelican opening his breast to feed his starving young is made an image of what the poet does to entertain his readers:

Poëte, c'est ainsi que font les grands poëtes. Ils laissent s'égayer ceux qui vivent un temps; Mais les festins humains qu'ils servent à leurs fêtes Ressemblent la plupart à ceux des pélicans.

This passage is perhaps--unless we except the opening verses of "Rolla"--Musset's noblest piece of poetic writing. We must place next to it--next to the three "Nuits"--the admirably passionate and genuine "Stanzas to Malibran"--a beautiful characterization of the artistic disinterestedness of the singer who suffered her genius to consume her--who sang herself to death. The closing verses of the poem have a wonderful purity; to rise so high, and yet in form, in accent, to remain so still and temperate, belongs only to great poetry; as it would be well to remind the critic who thinks the author of the "Stanzas to Malibran" dwarfish. There is another sort of verse in which violence of movement is more sensible than upwardness of direction.

So far in relation to Musset's lyric genius--though we have given but a brief and inadequate account of it. He had besides a dramatic genius of the highest beauty, to which we have left ourself space to devote only a few words. It is true that the drama with Musset has a decidedly lyrical element, and that though his persons always talk prose, they are constantly saying things which would need very little help to fall into the mould of a stanza or a sonnet. In his dramas as in his verses, his weakness is that he is amateurish; they lack construction; their merit is not in their plots, but in what, for want of a better term, one may call their sentimental perfume. The earliest of them failed upon the stage, and for many years it was supposed they could not be played. Musset supposed so himself, and took no trouble to encourage the experiment. He made no concessions to contemporary "realism." But at last they were taken up--almost by accident--and it was found that, in the hands of actors whose education enabled them to appreciate their delicacy, this delicacy might become wonderfully effective. If feeling is the great quality in his verses, the case is the same in his strange, fantastic, exquisite little _comédies_; comedies in the literal English sense of the word we can hardly call them, for they have almost always a melancholy or a tragical termination. They are thoroughly sentimental; he puts before us people who convince us that they really _feel_; the drama is simply the history of their feeling. In the emotions of Valentin and Perdican, of Fantasio and Fortunio, of Célio and Octave, of Carmosine and Bettine, there is something contagious, irresistibly touching. But the great charm is Musset's dramatic world itself, the atmosphere in which his figures move, the element they breathe.

It seems at first like a reckless thing to say, but we will risk it: in the _quality_ of his fancy Musset always reminds us of Shakespeare. His little dramas go on in the country of "As you Like It" and the "Winter's Tale"; the author is at home there, like Shakespeare himself, and he moves with something of the Shakespearian lightness and freedom. His fancy loves to play with human life, and in the tiny mirror which it holds up we find something of the depth and mystery of the object. Musset's dialogue, in its mingled gayety and melancholy, its sweetness and irony, its allusions to real things and its kinship with a romantic world, has an altogether indefinable magic. To speak it on the stage is almost to make it coarse. Once Musset attempted a larger theme than usual; in "Lorenzaccio" he wrote an historical drama on the scale of Shakespeare's histories; that is, with multitudes of figures, scenes, incidents, and illustrations. He laid his hand on an admirable subject--the story of a certain Lorenzino de' Medici, who played at being a debauchee and a poltroon in order better to put the tyrant of Florence (his own cousin) off his guard, and serve his country by ridding her of him. The play shows an extraordinary abundance and vivacity of imagination, and really, out of those same "histories" of Shakespeare, it is hard to see where one should find an equal spontaneity in dealing with the whole human furniture of a period. Alfred de Musset, in "Lorenzaccio," has the air of being as ready to handle a hundred figures as a dozen--of having imagination enough for them all. The thing has the real creative _souffle_, and if it is not the most perfect of his productions, it is probably the most vigorous.

We have not spoken of his tales; their merit is the same as of the _comédies_--that of spontaneous feeling, and of putting people before us in whose feelings we believe. Besides this, they have Musset's grace and delicacy in a perhaps excessive degree; they are the most mannered of his productions. Two or three of them, however--"Emmeline," "Les Deux Maîtresses," "Frédéric et Bernerette"--are masterpieces; this last epithet is especially to be bestowed upon the letter written by the heroine of the last-mentioned tale (an incorrigibly _volage_ grisette) to her former lover on the occasion of his marrying and settling. The incoherency, the garrulity, the mingled resignation and regret of an amiable flirt of the lower orders, divided between the vivacity of her emotion and the levity of her nature, are caught in the act; and yet it is not fair to say of anything represented by Musset that it is caught in the act. Just the beauty and charm of it is that it is not the exact reality, but a something seen by the imagination--a tinge of the ideal, a touch of poetry. We must try to see Musset himself in the same way; his own figure needs to a certain extent the help of our imagination. And yet, even with such help taken, we cannot but feel that he is an example of the wasteful way in which nature and history sometimes work--of their cruel indifference to our personal standards of economy--of the vast amount of material they take to produce a little result.

Alfred de Musset's exquisite organization, his exaltations and weaknesses, his pangs and tears, his passions and debaucheries, his intemperance and idleness, his years of unproductiveness, his innumerable mistresses (with whatever pangs and miseries it may seem proper to attribute to _them_), his quarrel with a woman of genius, and the scandals, exposures, and recriminations that are so ungracefully bound up with it--all this was necessary in order that we should have the two or three little volumes into which his _best_ could be compressed. It takes certainly a great deal of life to make a little art! In this case, however, we must remember, that little is exquisite.

HENRY JAMES, JR.

REFLECTED LIGHT.

Your eyes say, "Sweet, I love--I love you, sweet." Where is the blame If, when their mute significance I meet, Mine say the same?

Nay, thank me not, nor deem your triumph near. The message bright My glance conveys--'tis but--believe, me, dear-- Reflected light!

MARY AINGE DE VERE.

LIFE INSURANCE.--II.

The companies organized under the general law of the State of New York are the mere creatures of that statute. Their organization, management, powers for good or evil, opportunities for mismanagement and corruption, are all to be traced directly to the law to which they owe their being. It will be necessary, therefore, for an intelligent understanding of the condition to which the business has come, to examine the act particularly. It is chapter 463 of the laws of 1853. It provides that any number of persons not less than thirteen may form a corporation for the purpose of making insurance on the lives of individuals, or against accidents, or on the health of persons, or on live stock. Such corporators are allowed to draw their own charter, and upon its approval by the Attorney General, that document has all the force of positive law. It is of course subject to the provisions of the act itself, but those provisions are so few and meagre that it is practically left to the promoters of the scheme to draw their own charter of incorporation. The capital stock is to be not less than $100,000, and no provision is made for the incorporating of any company without a capital. The rate of dividends to the stockholders, the proportion of profits to be paid the policy-holders, and the time of payment, are not provided for in the law, and are left to be settled by the associates. The consequence is that no two companies are alike in this respect. In some of them the stockholder receives an interest of seven per cent. upon his stock, and is entitled to no more under any circumstances, the whole surplus or profits being divided among the policy-holders. In others, in addition to interest, the stock is entitled to participate with the policies in the surplus. The extent of this participation varies; in some it is fixed at ten per cent. of the whole profits, to the stock-holders, in others twenty, and in others thirty per cent. In all of them, however, with one exception, participation by the policy-holders in the profits of the business is a rule. To a greater or lesser extent, in some to the whole profits, it is the recognized rule that the holders of policies are to receive dividends or bonuses from the companies out of the profits. In effect, therefore, so far as participation in the profits of the business goes, all our companies, with the one exception before mentioned, are mutual companies.

The act makes no provision for the government of the corporations it allows to be created. It leaves it to the promoters to state the mode and manner in which the corporate powers shall be exercised, and the manner of electing trustees, or directors, and officers. The natural consequence of this provision is, that the manner of electing trustees and directors varies in different companies. In some of them the stock-holders alone have any voice or vote, in others the policy-holders are allowed, under certain restrictions, to vote, but it is safe to say that in all of them the power is kept in the hands of the stock-holders as far as it possibly can be; and the policy-holders are allowed as little voice in the management of the company as the stock-holders can permit.

The result of this vice in the formation of the company is shown in corporations which have amassed a large reserve. There it will be seen that the owners of one hundred thousand dollars of stock absolutely control the entire management and disposition of twenty, thirty, or forty millions of accumulations, as the case may be; and the real owners of this fund--the policy-holders--have no voice in its management and no vote for the body or board which exercises the powers of the corporation.

It is contended by very prominent gentlemen in the life insurance business, that this plan is the only safe one; that interference in the management of the company by uninstructed policy-holders, not versed in the business, would be productive of nothing but evil. They contend that the necessary unity of management required for a business, covering as this does long periods of time, and requiring carefully laid plans extending into the distant future, would be greatly endangered by the existence of a right to participate in the management by representation on the part of so numerous and so widely scattered a constituency. In other words, the managers of companies which have retained in the hands of the stock-holders all the powers of the corporation think that those powers are more safely exercised by that small body than they would be if participated in by all the holders of policies. It may be doubted, however, whether a constituency small in number and capable of manipulation, and their votes of concentration into the hands of a few men, is the safest body to manage a corporation whose chief business is the care of the accumulations arising from the trust imposed upon the corporation by the contract of life insurance. The power of wielding a mass of capital amounting to many millions of dollars is an enormous power, and it should be reposed only in a body which should be responsible for the careful, honest administration of the trust, at stated intervals, to the persons most interested--that is, to the policy-holders--the owners of the trust fund. One of the chief characteristics of English companies is, that at the annual meeting of the interested persons a full statement of the affairs of the company is laid before the meeting, and an opportunity offered of critical examination and comment. Discontent is thus allowed a safety valve to express itself through, and the managers an opportunity of explaining their action and accounting for their conduct. Public opinion--the public opinion of the persons interested--is allowed a chance of expression, and all misunderstandings and misconceptions an opportunity for examination and refutation. The right to interrogate the managers, and ask and obtain information as to the business at such regularly recurring intervals, is an inestimable one. It can hardly be conceived possible that great abuses could grow up if such a right existed; but at any rate it is apparent that the probability of such abuses is lessened to a great extent.

But this English practice is not known among us. In life insurance affairs we have nothing remotely approaching it. It seems to have been the policy of our companies to restrict participation in their management to the smallest possible number, to avoid opportunities for questioning or explanation, and to shroud the business in the deepest mystery.

The officers of companies responsible for this policy justify themselves upon the broad ground that they know better what is good for the policy-holders than they do themselves. In the light of the evidence given before the Committee of the Assembly by life insurance officers, and in the light of the affairs of the Continental, Security, and Popular, it may be doubted whether this assertion proves itself. It has the merit, however, that every honest avowal has, and it is entitled to examination.

Why should a self-electing, self-perpetuating proprietary board, resting upon a constituency composed solely of owners of the capital stock, be a safer or better management than one elected by the votes of the policy-holders at large? The only answer you can get to that query is this: The board elected by the stock-holders are sure of their position, and it is not in the power of a few malcontents to get up a secret movement to oust them at the election. The more stable management is to be preferred to one which is dependent on the popularity of the officers with the policy-holders. It is in the nature of things that the officers should become more or less unpopular. The business depends for success upon the enforcement of strict rules in dealing with the policy-holders, and the enforcement of these strict rules, although absolutely necessary for the success of the business, naturally tends to give fancied grievances to the persons against whom they are enforced. If, therefore, the tenure of office of the management depends upon the policy-holders, there is the constant danger of frequent attempts at revolution arising from this cause, and the consequent weakness of the officers in enforcing rules the enforcement of which may tend to shorten their tenure of office.

I think I have fairly stated the argument. Is there anything in it? Is the reason given any reason at all? Is it not rather a positive argument against the system. Perhaps the best government for men and companies is an absolute monarchy, without accountability or restraint; there are large masses of the human race who are so governed; and it is an open question yet whether government by the people be or be not the best government. But certainly one thing is assured. In this day and in this country the monarchical and the oligarchical systems are out of date and out of place; and all attempts to introduce them or the principles which underlie them into our system of free government by the representatives of the governed will be failures. The doctrine of paternal government is "played out" in affairs of nations, and it is not to be supposed that the principle has in it any greater efficacy when applied to the affairs of corporations. The fact is, we have too much of this thing in all our relations political and social. The idea that there is a class who are in their own estimation better able to govern than the rest of mankind has been exploded by the experience of the people of this country, and it is intolerable that we should be forced to do homage in our private affairs to a principle which we have, as regards public business, exploded long ago as a traditional fallacy.

Most of the evil practices which have made the whole system of life insurance a by-word and the scorn of the people, have arisen under this irresponsible management. Investments in extravagant buildings, the enormous expenditures for payments of salaries to officers and to agents, are all the result of the secret plan of management. Does any one suppose that if the affairs of the companies were fully and completely exposed to the public, such payments would be permitted or tolerated? Men are entitled to be paid for services rendered the full equivalent of those services, but they ought not to be allowed to be the sole judges of the value of those services, and they ought to be at all times ready and willing to come before the persons interested, and submit a full, fair, and clear account of their stewardship. Human nature is of the same quality in the managers of life insurance companies as in other men. Responsibility to some power, accountability to some persons or body, is absolutely essential to honest management. Men who know that they cannot or will not be called to account will fall into loose and unbusinesslike methods and practices. Nothing can be more dangerous to the honesty of a man than to place him in charge of immense interests without a system of periodical accountability. A man may be ever so honest, yet he will, if this accountability be absent, be led to do things which he never would do if he were sure that at a fixed period his doings would become known and he would be required to justify them.

From these considerations and on these grounds, I come to the conclusion that the management of a life insurance company by a board of directors elected solely by the stock-holders is a management which contains within itself the germs of a fatal disease, which will sooner or later develop itself. In this respect legislation is needed. Such a management ought to be forbidden, and a provision made for the election of trustees by the policy-holders as well as the stock-holders, upon a basis as to the vote and the amount of interest it should represent which would be equitable and just.

Complaints have been made against the use of proxies in elections. Notably these complaints have been made respecting elections in the Mutual Life Insurance Company, a corporation which has no stock-holders, but which consists in a membership of its policy-holders. These policy-holders have the supreme control of the corporation in their own hands. Its government is by them delegated to a board of trustees thirty-six in number, divided into four classes of nine in each class. The term of office is four years, so that nine trustees go out of office in each year. This classification prevents the possibility of any sudden change of management, while it leaves all needed control in the hands of the policy-holders. If, for instance, dissatisfaction with the management exists, and nine new trustees are elected, it is not to be doubted but that the warning would be listened to and the necessary change of policy effected to satisfy the constituency. On the other hand, should the change of trustees be the result of a combination to seize the management of the company for any improper purpose, the first election would unmask the design and insure its defeat by an appeal to the voters.

The objections to the use of proxies come entirely from those policy-holders who have been defeated by their use, or fear they will be defeated by their use, in an attempt to change the management. Does not this prove that the great body of policy-holders believe in the management and are determined to sustain it. In a free company based upon the liberal principles upon which the Mutual Life is established, any attempt to limit the franchise would be an unparalleled wrong. The policy-holder in Chicago or in San Francisco has the same right to exercise his right to a voice in the election of trustees as the policy-holder who resides in New York, and there can be no reason why he should not cast his vote by proxy, since it would result in his disfranchisement to require him to do it in person. Be sure that if real trouble arose, and there was an abuse to rectify, if there were officers unmindful of their duties to rebuke, or trustees regardless of their trust to set aside, the votes cast by proxy would be as intelligently given as those of the residents immediately near the office who could attend in person. Every effort to limit the right to vote by proxy is an attempt to perpetuate power in the hands of the policy-holders resident here, which would be quite as obnoxious to sound principles as the government of companies solely by the stockholders.

It would appear, on every principle of fairness and justice, that the more full and perfect the right of the policy-holder to participate in the election of trustees, the more stable and conservative will be the management. On the other hand, it is quite as apparent that the limitation of such right is attended with consequences the reverse of those just stated, and those consequences attained in proportion to the limitation of the right.

With the broad superstructure of a body of voting policy-holders, the selling out of the control of a company is impossible, because no one will be willing to pay for the possession which the next election may deprive him of. Of all the mean and contemptible methods of robbery as yet discovered, the selling out of a life insurance company is the meanest and most contemptible. Too cowardly to wreck it themselves and personally rob the widows and orphans, the trustees, who quietly receive a bonus for their stock and retire from the management, sell the opportunity of robbery to others. This they do too in the full knowledge of the purpose for which they are asked to retire. When the crash comes they may say they did not know the purpose of the purchasers, but they did know they were to receive for their stock two or three times its value, and that no man could afford to pay such a price to obtain control of the company except for the purpose of making money by irregular and questionable means. It will not do for men entrusted with positions of a fiduciary character to make the holding of such positions the lever for obtaining a large price for their stock, and then claim exemption from responsibility for the misdeeds of their successors. They were there in charge of a sacred trust, and they have sold and betrayed that trust--for what? Why, for the enhanced price which they got for their stock. This is the great evil of the close corporation system. It enables one or more men to own complete control of a company and to sell it to the highest bidder. Of course the highly respectable gentlemen who sell, and those also who buy, will be shocked at having imputed to them any crime or breach of trust. But how can such sums of money be lawfully made out of life insurance stock as to justify the price the records of the Committee on Insurance show have been paid for it? Life insurance is or ought to be a benevolent institution. Its management is or ought to be a trust, and every trustee who makes use of his position to make money for himself is false to his trust, and should never be appointed to another. Life insurance is not to be made the sport of speculators, and the only reliance of the unfortunate made the football of gambling operations. Most if not all of the troubles which have arisen in the business are to be traced to this attempt to make money out of it, honestly if possible, but to make money at all hazards. The way to end this for ever is to allow the policy-holders to vote, not for a minority of the trustees, but for all of them. Representation should be equal, or it is worthless. The representation which would leave the power to elect a majority still in the hands of the stock-holders is not equal or just. Money paid for premiums is as good as money paid for stock, and should have equal voice in the management. But when you have given the policy-holders votes, you should also see that the opportunity was afforded to them of voting. Most of the elections are held without any other notice than an advertisement in the corner of a crowded column of one or two newspapers. Every policy should have printed on it the date of the annual election, and all the information necessary to enable the holder to be present and vote, or to be represented by proxy. Under the present practice, few holders of policies know whether they have votes or not, and hardly any of them ever heard of the time of holding the election. If the present discussion of life insurance affairs does no other good than to awaken the policy-holders to a sense of their own responsibility for abuses of management, it will not have been in vain. It is safe to say that watchfulness on their part would have prevented the lavish expenditures, the unwise real estate investments, the enormous salaries, which the investigation of the Assembly committee has discovered. The same conservative power held over managers would be a constant check upon any tendency to depart from the safe and regular open pathway of honorable dealings. Under its influence there would be few if any cases of commissions in addition to salary of officers, less tendency to make loans to the trustees and their friends, and a general adhesion to business rules and traditions. But above and beyond all other reforms, the control of the company by the policy-holders would make it impossible for greedy and scoundrel officers to gather into their hands the entire control of the company, and then sell it out to a rival company for four or five times what the stock cost, and an annuity for life to the traitor who had betrayed his trust. This has been, is now, and will be, if not prevented, the fruitful mother of all the ills of life insurance. Just as soon as any clique get possession of the majority of the stock, there is danger. Nay, there is always danger; any clique may, at any time, get possession of the stock by paying enough for it. If one price will not bring it, another will, and the value to the wrecker depends upon the amount of assets. It is the assets which are to pay the profit of the transaction. The money of the policy-holders is what is sold, not the mere pittance which belongs to the stock-holders, and it is the money of the policy-holders which is stolen to pay the purchase money. Honorable gentlemen, prominent in social life, elders, deacons, and vestrymen who in the past few years have quietly pocketed two hundred for your stock and retired from the management of life insurance companies, how are you pleased with your own conduct? In the light of recent disclosures, does not the ill-gotten money burn in your pockets? Truly you would not wreck a company yourselves by transferring it to any man or number of men; but you accomplish the same purpose by retiring. A captain who will not himself surrender to the enemy, but who retires from the command of his fortification knowing that the subaltern who will succeed him intends to strike his flag, may deceive himself, but he does not long succeed in deceiving any one else.

The evidence taken before the referee in the Continental case fully describes and explains the methods of wrecking. A company is sold out or reinsured in another; that is, the stock has been bought up at two or three hundred per centum, the officers have been promised good places, or paid in cash for their silence. Immediately the operations of the wreckers begin. The agents of both companies go into the work with a single aim, and that aim is to obtain the surrender of the policies in the old company in exchange for new policies in the purchasing corporation. The old policies represent an actual liability; the company which has issued them is obliged to hold a certain sum against each of them. The aggregate of these sums makes up the "reserve" or reinsurance fund. As fast as the old policies are cancelled this reserve is released, and when all the policies are cancelled there is no liability at all. The new policies of course have no liability. This is in short the whole operation of wrecking. By such means a million or two of assets will be distributed, and in the process the policy-holders will receive a little--a very little--and the agents a good deal, and the officers composing the ring all that is left. The arts, the deceptions, the false representations made in the course of the proceeding to induce the policy-holder to give up his policy have been fully disclosed by the evidence in question. Of course it is suggested that the company is in a bad way, and that there is probably no other way of securing anything unless an opportunity now offered of changing is embraced.

Reinsurance was abandoned as a means of wrecking because it was found the policy-holders preferred to keep the old policy and the new guarantee together. So in the later transactions they are told that if they do not change, they will get nothing.

The lesson of all this to the policy-holder may be written in large letters and kept as a maxim:

DO NOT SURRENDER YOUR POLICY.

You will never make a mistake by keeping to this motto. And particularly the more should it be kept to when you are urged by agents to a contrary action. You never get one-third its value even in companies honestly managed; what you get in companies dishonestly managed no one can tell.

FALLEN AMONG THIEVES.

BRUSSELS!

Is it not written that good Americans, when they die, go to Paris? So Elysium to all righteous sons of Cockayne is Brussels. And yet I was weary of it. No charms for me had the perpetual sabots and blouses, the _braves Belges_ in jaunty uniform, the bejewelled saunterers in the Galerie St. Hubert, the _gauche_ tourists desecrating the sombre stillness of the St. Gudule, _la belle Anglaise_ seeing for the first time the outrageous little manikin, the homely phaëton of good old King Leopold with its pair of very unroyal plugs, the tirailleurs in Lincoln green, the Parc with its music, fountains and maitrank, the Jardin des Plantes, the boulevard, and the Ecole d'Equitation.

All lost on me. I stood at a window of the Hôtel de Flandres gazing on the ever-moving panorama of the Grande Place with as little interest as though my eye rested on a vacant lot in Pumpkinville.

Was it bile? No. Was it love? Yes.

Another scene was ever before my eyes: An old red-brick house on the cliffs of Devonshire, half hid by giant oaks and elms, fragrant with honeysuckle and jessamine, stately with avenue, lawn, and rookery; and I saw leaning on the rustic gate beneath the chestnut trees Gwendoline Grey: her straw hat dangling by her side, her fresh young face set in a glory of light brown hair, her---- But it had all passed away now. The light was gone out of my life, for but three days ago I had received a letter from her mother deploring my altered prospects, returning my billets and love tokens, and assuring me that Gwendoline acquiesced in this painful decision.

My altered prospects--_hinc illæ lacrymæ_. Nine months ago I was heir to a wealthy man, and now I was but bear-leader to the son of the Earl of Tottenbridge. Upon the loss of my father's property, which had come like an avalanche on us, I had left college and assumed the tutorship of the Hon. Nigel Fairleigh, as good a lad as ever handled a cricket bat.

After a brief run through southern Europe, I had just delivered him up to his aunt, my lady Milton, who was to take him to Scotland, while I was free, according to compact, to enjoy a couple of months' vacation.

How I had longed for this vacation--and now, where to go, what to do, I knew not. For three days I had stayed with a dull uncertainty on the spot where the blow had fallen on me.

My meditations were broken by the entrance of a garçon announcing,

"A gentleman for monsieur."

"Ah, M. Danneris, I am glad to see you. Be seated."

To say how I became acquainted with the chatty little Frenchman who sat before me would be a difficult matter. The offer of a cigar, an exchange of newspapers at the reading room, a passing _bon jour_ on the stairs, had ripened under his friendly gayety into a familiarity which had extended so far as to my passing more than one evening at his snug office in the Rue des Allumettes, where François Danneris, advocate, spun toils for litigious Flemish _bourgeoises_.

"My friend," he said, "you look _ennuyé_, _triste_, dull; you need change. What do you say to a scamper over the continent?"

"I have done scampering enough lately," I replied, "and moreover my funds----"

"_Tiens, mon ami._ Do not talk of money. It is my great happiness to offer you an opportunity to combine business with pleasure, and take a most delightful trip without the expenditure of a sou."

"You surprise me--and where?"

"To a beautiful manorial residence at the village of Kioske, twenty miles beyond Buda, on the banks of the Danube--one of the most romantic spots of eastern Europe."

"And the object?"

"To take temporary charge of the only son of the wealthy Baron von Dressdorf. Jules von Dressdorf," added the advocate in his bland, pleasant way, "is a boy of fifteen, who, after spending a year in an academy in England, has been placed in a _pension_ in Brussels; but, _hélas!_ an hereditary disease, which has developed itself more strongly of late, has determined his father to recall him immediately. Pericardiac, my dear sir--pericardiac; and it is most important that he should without delay seek the quiet of his native valley."

"The terms?"

"Two hundred and fifty francs a week, and all expenses paid. When could you start?"

"To-morrow--to-day--when you will."

"_Bien!_ There is a little difficulty I would mention; the journey is not without small perils. Hungary, as you are aware, is now under the ban of an Austrian tyranny."

I assured him of my sympathy.

"Hold," he cried. "It is exactly that you have no sympathy that I select you. The Baron is already _suspect_, and the son, inheriting his father's sentiments, has small discretion of speech. Keep Austria in the background, I implore you."

"And are you sure that the Baron will approve of your choice of an escort?"

"The mere fact, Monsieur Mortimer, that you were in the service--I beg your pardon--in the family of the Earl of Tottenbridge would be sufficient, but I am proud to say that the recommendation of François Danneris would be a _carte blanche_ to any one to the confidence of Baron Dressdorf. He is a noble man," he added with emotion, "and to him I owe all I have in the world."

And then for half an hour the advocate poured into my ear the glories of the house of Dressdorf and stories of Austrian oppression that made me eager to serve his _protégé_. Nay, I was so interested in his case that I believe I would have seen the youth home, if I had had to bear all the expenses of the journey myself.

"Have you a passport?"

"It is here," I said, handing it to him--"a Foreign Office passport that protects me all over the continent."

"Ah, I see. And this permit?"

"Ah, that belongs to my pupil, Nigel Fairleigh. We can cut that off. Lady Milton should have had it with her, but they are not very strict at Ostend, and I suppose her rank proved an open sesame."

"Black eyes," he read, "black hair, sharp features, high forehead, height, five feet three. My dear Monsieur Mortimer," and he turned eagerly toward me, "you would do me a real service, you would lay the noble Dressdorf under the greatest obligation, if you would permit our young charge to use this passport. It describes him to a T. The critical nature of events, the necessity for caution, the delicate health of the boy--nay, do not look shocked; such things are done every day--will excuse the trifling impropriety----"

"Impossible!"

Taking no notice of the interruption, he continued. "And to tell the truth, it was just this that bothered me. A Belgian passport is looked upon with much suspicion, and is likely to lead to inquiry; but armed with this, you may go from here to the Oural mountains without a question."

At first I refused point-blank, but at last resigned myself to his sophistry, and the bargain was closed.

"When can I see the youth?" I asked.

"Now, monsieur. I will at once escort you to the _pension_ of the Porte de Schaerbeck, and introduce him to you."

Fifty boys of Belgian, French, American, and English extraction, seated at a long table enjoying their afternoon's "goûté"--a post-meridian lunch of weak brandy-and-water and grapes; a bald _maître d'école_ periodically crying, "Si-i-i-lence, messieurs. Restez-vous tranquilles!" like a sheriff in a court of law. Such a scene met my view. I recognized my youth in a moment; there was no mistaking the clear, well-defined features, raven hair, and black eyes of the gentle lad who rose to greet my companion with a grace and assurance that checked remonstrance on the part of the half-offended usher, who simply solaced himself with a shrug of the shoulders and a more than usually prolonged "Si-i-i-i-i-lence, messieurs. Restez-vous tranquilles!"

"This is the gentleman, Jules, who has kindly consented to take you home, and it is arranged that you start to-morrow," said the advocate.

The boy's big eyes looked into mine with an inquiring gaze, and then, taking my hand, he quaintly said:

"I like you."

There was nothing impertinent in the tone or manner; it was the hearty expression of his unsophisticated thought.

"He is an Englishman," continued M. Danneris, "and will be very kind to you. Remember that you owe him respect and implicit obedience."

"Then he hates the Austrians--he whose country is free knows how to give sympathy to a poor Hungarian. This good Englishman shall see for himself how our noble people suffer at the hands of tyrants."

"Hush, hush, Jules! You must not talk like this. Is it not extraordinary," said M. Danneris, turning to me, "that even the very children of this oppressed race fill their minds with a sense of wrong?"

"No wonder," I replied, "if but half you have told me is true."

"When I am a man," flashed Jules, "I will kill the Austrians--they are not worthy to live."

"Jules," I said soothingly, "I am just going for a stroll over the fields toward Louvain. Ask permission from monsieur, your professor, to join me."

Danneris smiled. "That was well done," he said. "You cannot too soon become acquainted. Call here for the boy to-morrow midday. I will see that he is prepared."

When I said adieu to Jules that evening, after a long ramble over the endless corn fields that bordered the "road to Waterloo," I saw with pleasure that I had awakened in him a generous confidence. He too had, by his artless manner, inspired in me no common interest.

We started. Six days' journey to reach Vienna, a hundred-mile trip up the Danube to Buda, seven leagues in a _calèche_, and we should be at Dressdorf Castle.

Uneventful the days were. Poor Jules, weary with travel, talked but little, for which I was appropriately thankful. It was painful to see how he shrank from the gaze of any official who might question us a little closely as to our destination, and to watch his quivering lips as he muttered in response to my assurances of safety, "I trust all to the good Englishman."

As we neared the Austrian frontier he harped more on the subject of his Austrian wrongs, and I was frequently obliged to check him. A fire seemed consuming the boy, a burning vengeance toward the oppressor.

We reached Vienna at dusk on the sixth day, and put up at the Hôtel d'Hollande, according to the suggestions of Danneris. Jules complained of sick headache, and I was somewhat relieved to hear him suggest bed.

It was not till I had seen him safely settled, and had extracted a promise from him not to leave his room, that I felt at liberty to call a few hours my own.

Having dined, I stood on the doorstep of the hotel smoking a cigar and revolving in my mind where I should spend my evening, when I was accosted by a police agent making some inquiry about my passport.

"By the way," said I, "I never was in Austria before, but in France I have been accustomed to give a gensdarme a couple of francs to take my passport to the bureau of the police to be _visé_."

"Herr Engländer can pursue the same plan here," was the polite rejoinder. "I shall be happy to oblige him."

Glad to be relieved of the bother, I handed him the document. He briefly compared my person with the description, and then queried:

"And the boy?"

"He is sick and has retired; but if you desire it, you shall see him."

"No need--a boy is no great matter"; and the courteous official, with a bow that would have graced a D'Orsay, was gone.

To the Grand Opera House, the largest in the world, I bent my steps, and in an hour was revelling in Mme. Garcia's thrilling notes, when a hand was laid on my shoulder and a grim, moustached, soldier-like fellow whispered in my ear:

"Your passport, Herr Engländer."

"It is gone to the police bureau to be _visé_. I sent it from the Hôtel d'Hollande by an officer."

For the moment he withdrew, and burning with shame, for every eye was upon me, I turned defiantly to the stage.

"Will the Herr ride or walk?" came again the voice in my ear.

"What do you mean?"

"The Herr must go immediately to the Hôtel d'Hollande. That is all."

I expostulated, but a storm of hisses from those near enough to be interrupted in their enjoyment of the music decided me, and I angrily rose.

"I am at your service, sir."

We walked on without a word.

Never shall I forget the face of the fat little Dutch landlord as we entered--surprise, sympathy, fear alternately lighting his countenance as he poured forth a polyglot expression of his excited feelings. In French, English, Dutch, and German he assured us he was desolated, miserable, abandoned. Ah, but it was a good young Engländer. It was true he had never seen the passport; he knew he should have asked for it himself when his noble friend first came to the house; but, _bête brouillant_ that he was, he had forgotten it.

Then followed a conference between the landlord and the officer, resulting in my being called aside by the former and receiving the following valuable advice:

"My dear sir, you have made a most never-to-be-sufficiently deplored mistake. But see. Satisfy this zealous officer with a bottle of good Stein wine, and all will be well in the morning; only do not leave the house again to-night."

It was a bitter pill, but I swallowed it gracefully, and Herr Polizeidiener and I clicked glasses fraternally with protestations of mutual regard.

In the morning I was awakened by Jules, whose night's rest had done him a world of good. Bright, vivacious, and noisy, he bounded into my room.

"Oh, Herr Mortimer, such an idea! There is a grand review of the soldiery. Come, get up. We must go and see it. I would not miss it for the world."

"Do not be so excited, Jules; it is the last place to which I would dream of taking you. Your father----"

"Wrote me not to fail to see the Austrian troops if I had an opportunity."

Perhaps there was some object in that, and to Jules's delight I consented to take seats on the lumbering stage-coach that was to leave the hotel with other guests bent on the same holiday excursion. I was the more complacent as I reflected that the steamer did not leave Vienna till five o'clock, and I thus saw a means of keeping Jules out of further mischief.

We reached the review ground. It was indeed a gorgeous scene. Crimson and gold, blue and silver flashed back the sun's rays, bugles sounded, and cannon roared.

I was not quite at my ease, however, as I noticed the interest I was exciting in a resplendent official, whose eyes were continually on me. At last, to my dismay, he beckoned to me.

"Sir, your passport?"

"It is gone to the bureau to be _visé_," and then followed a pathetic recital of the annoyances I had been subjected to.

"Will the Herr ride or walk?" was the stereotyped response.

"Where?"

"To Vienna. Until this passport is found the Herr must consider himself under arrest."

In vain I pleaded the unprotected position of my young companion. All the concession I could get was permission to speak a few words with him, which I did with much caution, simply assuring him of my speedy return, and extracting his promise that, if I were detained by my "friend," he would return with the fiacre to the hotel, and quietly await my arrival.

"I will do all the good Englishman asks of me"; and a warm pressure of the hand made me feel that Jules understood the extremity of the case.

At once to the bureau.

I was so confident of finding the passport and utterly confounding the officer who had given me all this trouble, that I am afraid my manner was rather supercilious, to say the least of it.

The commissaire heard my story somewhat impatiently.

"The officer's number to whom you say you gave your passport?"

"I did not notice it."

"His name?"

"I never demanded it."

A grin on the face of the commissaire, a very sarcastic curl of the lip, a shrug of the shoulders, an ominous silence.

"Sir," said I, somewhat sobered by the course events had taken, "I am a British subject!"

"Zo?"

"A graduate of the University of Oxford."

"Zo?"

"Tutor in the family of the Earl of Tottenbridge."

"Zo?"

"Son of a county magistrate."

"Zo? And nevertheless you are arrested for wandering about like a rogue and vagabond without a passport. We know not who you are, what you are, where you come from. The question with us is, Where is your passport? It is enough." And before I could reply his back was turned.

A whitewashed room, sixteen feet square, one barred window, one iron bedstead, one wooden bench--such was my apartment and the inventory of its furniture; and I felt my heart sink as the key in the door turned with an ominous click, and I was left to enjoy my solitary meditations.

What could I do? For an hour I racked my brain. Dared I apply to the English embassy? I would, come what might of it. A few blows on the panel of my door brought the officer.

"I wish to make immediate application to Lord Cowley."

"I will see."

He returned in a few minutes.

"Lord Cowley is not in Vienna now. He is at the Grand Baths."

"Still, there is somebody at the embassy office. I must go there."

After a brief interview with his superior, the permission was accorded.

The officer and I reached the embassy building, and as I passed the jovial English porter at the door, my heart rose, for already I felt the shadow of the British lion over me.

A pale, emaciated, gentlemanly youth, with a gold eyeglass, was standing with his back to the fire, reading a copy of the "Times," while at his feet lay a magnificent bull-and-mastiff, by far the more dignified animal of the two. The exquisite gave no sign of his knowledge of our presence.

"Ahem!"

No attention.

The dog yawned, the great clock on the wall ticked with an aggravating loudness, and at last I broke out--

"Sir, I am in a terrible dilemma. I have lost my passport. I trusted it to a rascally policeman to take to the bureau to get _visé_, and now I am apprehended, put in a miserable prison, called a rogue and vagabond by a confounded commissaire." The effect of my eloquence on the attaché was amusing. Down went the paper.

"Oh, I say--you know--you mustn't--indeed, you mustn't. The office can't be approached in this manner--very irregular, by Jove, very irregular."

"What must I do? The consequences may be fearful----"

"Write to Lord John Russell at the F. O. If he knows anything about you, you can petition Lord Cowley, and in the course of a few weeks----"

"A few weeks! a cycle of years! I must be liberated at once. The safety, nay, the very life of a helpless boy depends upon it."

"Oh, I say, you know, you mustn't get so excited, by Jove, you know; you mustn't indeed. Very irregular--'pon honor, I never saw such irregularity."

The Adam was aroused in me--I couldn't help it.

"Sir!" I roared, "you are here for the protection of the British subject----"

"No, you know," he interrupted. "Consul, that sort of thing. By Jove, never saw such a fellow."

"You are placed here for use or ornament. You are, sir, a failure in either capacity."

"John!"--oh, the superciliously grand air of that little mite!--"John, show this person the door!"

* * * * *

Once more in prison.

Another hour's mental rack, another resource--send for the landlord of the Hôtel d'Hollande.

He came.

I fancy I see before me now the paunchy Dutchman, rubbing his fat hands and condoling with me in hybrid accents.

"But now, Herr Engländer, an inspiration!" He approached me, placed his pursy lips to my ears, and whispered: "Offer--delicately as you can--but offer the commissaire a few of your English gold pieces, and see the passport, he return, he come back--_vite_, quick. _Voilà tout._"

"Bribe the commissaire?"

"Hush! yes, it is your only chance."

Heavens! what a country! Well might poor Jules rave at the Austrians!

The Dutchman left, and after a few minutes' hesitation, I summoned up courage to knock at the door, which was promptly opened by the officer, who respectfully demanded my requirements.

"I wish to see the commissaire."

"Surely. Will the Herr follow me?"

Where were the frowns gone? The commissaire received me in a most gracious manner. Would I be seated?

"Sir," I stammered, for it went sorely against the grain, "my carelessness has brought me into considerable trouble, and I feel that with your aid alone I can rectify matters. At the same time I am aware that I should pay some penalty for my lack of discretion. If therefore you would give these five sovereigns to some charitable institution in Vienna, and use some effort to find my passport, you will lay me under a great obligation."

The great official said he would do so, and the English sovereigns chinked in his capacious vest-pocket.

"And now, if the Herr will go to his hotel, all Vienna shall be searched. The passport cannot be lost, and in a few hours it shall be in his hands."

Free! It was the only time I was ever under lock and key, but I shall never forget the exhilarating delight of that moment.

I had hardly gone twenty rods when I remembered that the boat left at five o'clock, and I thought that I would return and tell the commissaire to hurry up.

As I opened the door of the bureau I saw him deliberately take from a pigeon-hole my passport, and handing it to the agent, say, "Here, take this stupid Englishman his passport!"

"Sir," I said, stepping forward, "I will relieve you of the trouble."

Not a blush, not an apology. With a profusion of compliments and hopes for my _bon voyage_, the commisaaire graciously bowed me out, and with all haste I sought the Hôtel d'Hollande.

The fiacre was just driving up to the door as I arrived. I saw it all in one moment. _The boy was not there._

I questioned the driver and passengers. It appeared that Jules had left the carriage shortly after my departure, and as three hours had elapsed before their return to Vienna, they concluded that he had joined me.

My excitement threw the landlord into a further convulsion of hand-rubbing and general perplexity.

"Get me a strong saddle horse," I impetuously demanded.

"It shall be at the door in five minutes. Will not the Herr dine before he leaves?"

"Dine! No; but let me have a flask of brandy."

Out through the paved streets to the plain. I scoured the whole country round, peered into every carriage, searched every bush and brier, rode up and down the neighboring lanes and highways, inquired of all I met, and only trotted back to Vienna when darkness came on and my jaded horse could hardly bear me home.

Then I ate and drank, and, taking a calèche, visited every police station and hospital in Vienna. All in vain; and at three o'clock in the morning I threw myself on my bed to snatch a few hours' sleep ere my search should be again renewed.

I will not dwell upon the horrors of that time. Day succeeded day, and nearly a week passed in my frantic efforts to discover the whereabouts of the poor young Hungarian. How my heart bled for the gentle boy, perhaps languishing in an Austrian dungeon and calling on the good Englishman to rescue him. I lived a year in that week. At last I resolved to telegraph to M. Danneris. "Jules is lost. For God's sake, come at once," flashed along the wires. The answer was equally terse. The operator at Brussels replied, "Danneris gone. Left no address."

Was ever anything so unfortunate? Ah, yes, he did talk of visiting England, and that was the reason he could not himself escort Jules home.

Then I knew that I must brace my nerves to the terrible effort of telling that poor father that his child was lost; that I, by my cursed carelessness, had been the destroyer of his peace.

"Your son has mysteriously disappeared from my charge. Hasten here."

The answer was more perplexing than the one from Brussels: "Baron von Dressdorf not known--no such place as Kioske."

Heavens! Was I in a dream?

For three weeks I continued my search, wandering about in a haggard, broken manner, dreading every day to be stricken with brain fever. I could not sleep for thinking of the poor lad, whose big, pleading eyes seemed to look up into mine from every side. He haunted me.

One day I was watching the crowd pass the corner of the Thun Strasse, when my hand was clasped, and a cheery voice rang in my ear:

"Mortimer, old fellow, by all that's glorious! Who would ever have thought of meeting you here?"

It was Harvey Lawson, my old college chum.

"But you are sick, man. You look clean out of condition. Come up into my den--mind those stairs--here you are--take that arm-chair. You see I'm 'own correspondent' to the 'Daily Growler.' There's a pipe. Will you have beer or wine? And, now, what have you been doing with yourself?"

I told him all, and my story certainly awakened much interest in him.

"What was the date of your leaving Brussels?"

"Wednesday, September 17."

"Just a month ago. Hand me that file of papers at your elbow."

He selected one, glanced at it a moment. "Ah, yes, here it is."

"What?" I cried eagerly, the blood flying to my face.

"What was the name of the advocate?" he persisted with all the gravity of a judge.

"Auguste Danneris."

"And his office, 170 Rue des Allumettes?"

"Yes, yes!"

"The _pension_ in the Porte de Schaerbeck?"

"Yes."

"The youth--black eyes, black hair, high forehead, projecting chin, height five feet three?"

"Yes."

"Spoke English well?"

"Remarkably well for a foreigner--and so young."

"Had a slight impediment in pronouncing the letter _p_."

"Yes, I tried to correct the dear boy of the habit."

"Did, eh?"

"I did, and with some success too."

"And went by the name of Jules von Dressdorf?"

"Yes."

"Then, by the lord Harry! Master Mortimer, you've immortalized yourself. You've abducted the most accomplished little _dame d'industrie_ Paris ever produced--you've snatched from under the very noses of a cordon of French and Flemish police the princess of adventuresses, Adèle de la Voix, spy, thief, forger--ay, and if suspicion points truly, murderess--for she is believed to have poisoned an accomplice at Ghent after consummating the robbery of the Comtesse de Nemour's jewels. A pretty piece of business truly."

I was dazed. He handed me the journal, and I read for myself the whole of the infamous plot.

"By George, that boarding-school dodge was an excellent one, worthy of her greatness--threw the police off the scent for ten days," said Harvey with a grin.

"Then, when the police got on the right track again," he continued, "it was too late; she had eloped with you. O Lord, it's too good," and he lay back in his chair and roared.

"By heavens, if you are not quiet, I'll pitch you out of the window."

"No, you won't. If you move a finger, I'll write and tell Gwennie Grey all about your elopement. Why, man, if you were a child of grace, you'd go down on your knees and implore me not to give you two columns in the 'Growler.' There, I was only joking. Don't look so blue. But I confess it's a strong temptation. Such sensations don't crop up every day; besides, messieurs the police are dying to know how _la belle_ Adèle crossed the frontier."

"Do you think," I said wearily, "that the proprietor of the _pension_ was an accomplice?"

"Most assuredly not. He is an old resident, and gave his testimony with tears in his eyes, assuring the court that Jules von Dressdorf was one of the most docile, intelligent pupils he ever had under his roof."

"And M. Danneris?"

"Her father, I believe. His rôle was the man of reference, the respectable 'fence' who directs the game while others do the work."

"Had my trouble with the police here anything to do with the matter?"

"Not a bit of it. They are infernal rascals, reaping where they do not sow, and looking on careless travellers as legitimate game. Under the present _régime_ they make half their living out of passport irregularities."

"I suppose," I added, "I had better notify the police at Brussels."

"And be the laughing stock of Europe for your pains. No, Mortimer, lie quiet here for a week or two, then take steamer through the Mediterranean home. By the by, did Danneris advance you money for the journey?"

"He gave me five hundred francs."

"Then you are not so badly off after all. Make your mind easy about Mlle. Adèle. She is hundreds of miles away by this."

"I wonder why she did not run away from the hotel the night I went to the theatre."

"_Quien sabe?_ Let the dead past bury its dead."

* * * * *

Seventeen years have passed since the occurrence of the events I have recorded, and never till yesterday have I seen or heard one word of Adèle de la Voix.

"Gwennie," said I to my dear little wife, on reaching my home in southern Michigan after a visit on business to Detroit, "you remember the heroine of my trip to Dressdorf castle, just before we were married?"

"Surely," said the wife.

"Well, I saw Adèle de la Voix yesterday."

"You didn't! When? Where?"

"At a store in Gratiot avenue. I was making a purchase, when a woman entered--old-looking, homely, shabby; but there was no mistaking those black eyes, nor the sniff of the left nostril. When she was gone, I made some inquiries about her, and here is her business card:

"MME. JULIENNE, from Paris, reveals the past, the present, and the future. Can be consulted on all affairs of love, business, or law, and overcomes trouble of any kind. She brings together the separated, causes speedy marriages, and sells infallible love powders. Go and see for yourself. No humbug here.

"Rooms, etc."

"And what are you going to do?"

"Do? I don't know."

"I do."

"You wise woman, what is it?"

"Write the whole story for your favorite magazine. It is as interesting as half the fiction one reads, and contains a good moral."

THE BATTALION.

A thousand strong we marched to battle; The city roared around the host; The tambours crashed their vaunting rattle; The bugles screamed their joyous boast.

No thought had we to die asunder, Companions sworn, a brother throng; We looked to sweep through battle's thunder In noble lines, a thousand strong.

But ah, the fever's poisoned arrow! The jungle's breath, the summer's glow! Our broad array grew swiftly narrow, And scanty hundreds met the foe.

O splendid longings, thoughts and fancies Which tread the city of the soul, How few of all your spirit-lances Arrive where duty's trumpets roll!

J. W. DE FOREST.

THE FASCINATIONS OF ANGLING.

I.

It is the cheerful verdict of all anglers that they find no other pastime so fascinating. This conclusion is not based upon the mere mechanism of the art, but upon the fact that it is eminently healthful, rational, and elevating, blending the picturesque and exhilarating in such equal proportions as to exactly meet the demands of the quiet student, the contemplative philosopher, and the care-worn man of business, whose wearied or exhausted nature covets just the solitude and repose which no other recreation so abundantly furnishes.

This of course could not be said of angling if it had no other attraction than the excitement it affords. But I am sure no one ever became an enthusiastic angler who had no other or higher conceptions of its possibilities. The mere act of taking fish is but a minor note in the full volume of harmony which comes to its appreciative disciples amid the vast solitudes where they find their best sport and highest pleasure. Ask any true angler what pictures come up most vividly before him as "the time of the singing of birds" draweth nigh, when it is right to "go a-fishing." His answer will not be, "The rise and strike of trout or salmon," although both will pass upon the canvas like rays of sunshine upon the quiet repose of a forest landscape. He will rather discourse to you of flowing river, of murmuring brook, of cloud-capped mountain, of waving forest, of sunshine and shadow, of rapid and cascade, of tent and camp fire, of silence and solitude, of cozy nook, of undisturbed repose, of refreshing slumber, of invigorated health, and the _abandon_ of delight which neither word nor pencil can adequately portray. I have heard such "simple wise men" talk of their favorite pastime until they glowed with ecstasy, without once naming fish or fishing. That is but the body of the art. Its spirit consists in what is seen and felt. An angler, "born so," as Walton hath it, retains a more vivid recollection of the foam-encircled pool where salmon love to congregate than of the "rise" and "strike" which gave him his early morning's exhilaration. While he soon forgets the "play" and weight of the fish captured, he never forgets the picturesque surroundings of the struggle. He may forget the last homily he read, or the last sermon to which he listened, but never the thrill of devout ecstasy which came to him while wandering along some forest pathway, or while gently floating with the current of his favorite river, bathed in sunshine and fanned by summer zephyrs. After many days, these blissful moments come back to him like divine benedictions. Be sure, O carping critic, the gentle art has its spiritual and æsthetic as well as its physical and intellectual attributes.

As a mere physical pastime, angling stands foremost among all the known sources of pleasurable recreation. It blends active exercise with fascinating excitement in such healthful proportions as to ensure the fortunate participant equally against wearisome monotony and excessive fatigue. The pure mountain air in which he is constantly enveloped is a perpetual tonic, while the exercise it compels gives steadiness to the nerves and solidity to the muscles.

As a mental renovator it is equally effective. There can be no protracted lassitude while the brain is constantly quickened into refreshing vitality by the novel and exhilarating surroundings of mountain and forest and river, and the rise and strike and struggle of trout or salmon.

And to those who have neither physical nor mental ailment, but who are conscious of a spiritual need--of some more vivid appreciation of the goodness and beneficence of the Heavenly Father than most men attain unto while writhing under the harrow of business or bewildered by the shallow superficialities or noisy clatter of artificial life--the quiet places where the pursuit of the gentle art takes them, the silence and shadow of the sombre forest, the twitter and song of the solitary woodbird, the clear shining stars, which hang like silver lamps above his tent or cabin, and the reposeful hush which comes to his soul like whispered benedictions--these all tend to intensify his gratitude, to quicken his spiritual pulse, and to give to him a higher and a keener appreciation of his spiritual obligations.

There may be those who engage in angling only as they engage in the coarser amusements which, for a time, divert the mind and banish _ennui_. But all such soon weary of it, and never reach the higher plane of the pleasant pastime. To do so requires a placid temper, a thoughtful if not a poetic appreciation of the picturesque, a moderate love of solitude, a patient habit, and a quiet disposition. To find delectation in his walks, the angler need not be an ascetic or a stickler for creeds; but I do not think the heart of Gallio, who "cared for none of these things," would have been made glad when "the voice of the turtle was heard in the land," and it was right to "go a-fishing," because I cannot imagine him a man of a teachable disposition or of a lovable nature, who took pleasure in the society or teachings of the gentle Master of the Galilean fishermen. Izaak Walton might have had equal skill with rod and reel without his saintly faith; but his "Complete Angler" never would have attained the high place it has held and will ever hold in the affections of the contemplative men of all time had he not been imbued with the spirit of reverent humility and such a loving sense of the Infinite Beneficence as to find in all the beauty and sublimity of Nature evidence of His great goodness and loving kindness to the children of men. He may not, like Enoch, have "walked with God," but in all his walks he saw God's handiwork; and this consciousness multiplied many fold the pleasure he sought and always found in the pursuit of his favorite recreation.

II.

There are times and seasons for salmon fishing as for all things. But all times and all seasons are not alike. Nor are all places. The best time to fish for salmon, where salmon are to be fished for, is the first hour the water is in condition; that is, as soon as the spring freshets have subsided, and the water, by falling back into its natural channel, has become freed from the surface rubbish washed into it, and sufficiently settled to render your line visible to the eye of the fish. This time varies on different rivers, according to their length, their volume, and the character of the soil through which they flow. On some rivers the drainage is so limited that a fly may be cast successfully so soon as the ice disappears. There are, however, but few rivers on either side the Gulf, or in either of the Provinces, where the best fishing is attainable before the first of June. The "season" continues from that time on to the middle of August, although there is often good sport into September, when the last "run" begin their journey. But no "posted" angler would care to be compelled to take the chances of sport after the close of August, as only very few fish come up from the sea later, and those remaining in the river are wearied from their long journeyings, or are torpid from their protracted absence from the sea.

Within the period named--June to the middle of August--salmon are gamy and muscular, wherever found, whether one or fifty miles from the ocean. But the pools most coveted are those in closest proximity to salt water. Salmon are at their best when they begin their upward journey. The fresh element in which they find themselves seems to give them new life and friskiness, and when hooked they fight with a strength and fierceness not exhibited in the same measure afterward. A twenty-pound salmon fresh from the sea gives you the play of a thirty-pound fish taken weeks after he has made his way far up toward the headwaters of a fifty or a hundred-mile river.

This fact, however, is not only not perceptible to the novice, but the sport furnished by the capture of a salmon at any point in a river, or at any stage of his sojourn in fresh water, is so grandly exhilarating and so full of the intensest excitement, that it is a matter of but trifling moment where a fish is struck so long as the angler strikes him.

But the season _is_ important. The earlier weeks on any river are to be preferred, not alone because the fish have more vitality, but because, as a rule, they are more abundant. With an unerring instinct which is as mysterious as it is wonderful, they seek the rivers where they were born upon the return of every spring. If the rivers are in condition for their ascent, they begin their journey at once. But the rivers are not always in this condition when salmon first come to them; and if they are not, they wait their opportunity, and then move forward with the regularity and steadiness of an army under marching orders. Hence they are ordinarily found in greatest numbers at the first rush; and they are most fortunate who are duly placed, at favorite pools, to bid them welcome.

What I know of this phase of salmon angling I have learned from experience and observation, under circumstances which enable me to speak with more confidence than would be otherwise becoming. I have fished for three years on what I believe to be one of the very best rivers on the continent; best not merely because of the abundance and weight of its fish, but because also of its size and length, the magnificence of its scenery, and the great number of its splendid pools. My first two seasons extended from July 10 to August 10; and they are seasons which will be for ever remembered with delight. I did not deem it possible that I should ever experience any higher pleasure this side that "pure river of water, clear as crystal," which fills so large a place in the entrancing picture of the bright hereafter. My catch exceeded my highest expectations, the sport from first to last was magnificent and kingly, and the river, and the scenery, and the surroundings embodied so much of beauty and grandeur, that my cup of joy was filled to overflowing. If I had left the river with no other knowledge than I then possessed of what had been and of what might be, I would have lived on content with the happy impression that I had experienced the highest possibilities of the gentle art. Every hour was an hour of sunshine--whether casting, or striking, or killing--whether slowly ascending or swiftly schuting the rapids--whether shouting in very ecstasy of delight or quietly discoursing of the pleasures of angling, around the camp fire, grateful to a kind Providence which had "cast my lines in such pleasant places," and filled with devout thanksgiving that time and opportunity had been given me to understand why the good men, and the thoughtful men, and the simple wise men of all ages had written so enthusiastically and sung so glowingly of the gentle art.

But, while thus pluming myself upon what I had achieved and experienced, fancying that I had reached the highest pleasure attainable from the art of angling, I learned that while I had done well I could do much better earlier in the season. And so I found; for by a combination of circumstances as fortunate as they were gratifying, my third season gave me the first "run" and such experience and sport as will for ever remain a golden memory.

III.

With a companion as venerable in years and as full of enthusiasm as myself, we set our faces toward the bay of Chaleur on as bright and beautiful a June morning as ever gladdened the world. Hitherto the journey had been tedious and circuitous--by rail and steamer. But, like the world in general, the Provinces are progressive, and on this occasion an "all-rail" route enabled us to do in two days what it formerly took six to accomplish, and the 10th of June found us encamped in a beautiful valley encircled by magnificent mountains, with a majestic river at our feet grandly marching to the sea, but in unwelcome volume and raging with frightful turbulence. The melted snow was pouring down from the hills in such torrents as to overflow banks and lowlands, and to preclude all hope of angling until an abatement of the flood. It only remained for us to imitate the patriotic Germans on the Rhine, and "watch and wait." And for ten days we watched and waited with such patience as we could muster, and with such diversion as could be found in casting for trout in a neighboring brook which found its way to the river in our immediate neighborhood.

IV.

It was the tenth day of our waiting, and while the river was rushing with such fury as to render holding a canoe in the current with any appliances at our command impracticable, that I succeeded in reaching an eddy caused by a huge bowlder still buried beneath the waters. I could not anchor, and my frail bark was kept in constant motion by the swirling eddy, when, after repeated casts, I had a rise. The fish leaped to such an unusual height, and with such seeming determination that the lure should not escape him, that I was startled and barely escaped a backward plunge in my anxiety to make a sure "strike." From the "feel," which ran like electricity from my submerged fly to the tips of my fingers, I knew that the hook had effectively performed its work, and was "fastened in a sure place." With this conviction I felt bold to begin the work resolutely, although I knew that if I succeeded in making a capture, I must do so under circumstances more difficult than any I had ever before encountered in any waters or with any fish. I was literally hemmed in. I dared not allow the monster to get outside the restricted circle of the eddy, for if he should reach the current, which was sweeping downward at the rate of ten miles an hour, I would be utterly powerless to check him, because it would be impossible to prevent him from rushing over the boiling rapids, which were thundering within fifty feet of the lower edge of the eddy. My only hope of fish or canoe was to hold both under the shelter of the rock which caused the eddy. To do this required a shorter line than it is ever wise to retain at the opening of a fight with a thirty-pound salmon. But everything--fish, rod, and line--had to be risked. It was hold all or lose everything; and with a shout which made the whole camp lookers-on, I began the fight; now hopeful, now in despair; now with the fish leaping within fifty feet of the canoe, and now lashing the water with the fierceness of a tiger; now dashing toward the current as if determined to break off or drag the canoe with him, and anon sullenly permitting himself to be reeled up to within ten feet of the gaff; now sinking and sulking, and now rushing and leaping as if he would twist off his own neck in his attempts to shake the cruel barb from his lacerated jaw; now at handsome holding distance, peaceful as a lamb, and seemingly ready for the _coup de grace_, and anon dashing hither and thither, as if looking for some open door to freedom; but all in vain. If his mettle was up, so was mine, and at that moment I would sooner have lost a fortune than that fish. I had kept him within bounds and well in hand; had got him within a foot of the gaff, sure of victory, and was shouting to my gaffer, "Now then, let him have it!" when, like a flash, he shot under the canoe, and would have smashed everything in a moment had not my watchful guide, seeing the situation and the danger in the twinkling of an eye, swung round our boat so that I could place the tip of my rod beyond the stern of the canoe, and thus escaped the greatest misfortune that can befall a salmon angler. It was quickly and skilfully done, and in five minutes more the first salmon of the season was gaffed, and the first victory achieved. The shout from my own canoe was caught up by the excited lookers-on, and we paddled to camp thrilled with the excitement of the contest, and happy as it is possible for an angler to be--and there are possibilities of happiness to anglers inconceivable to any who have never killed a salmon.

We accepted this first fish as the forerunner of the good time hoped for. And the good time came of which, for the delectation of those who have been or would like to be "there" themselves, I subjoin a few samples.

V.

I had as my immediate companion an enthusiastic angler in all waters, but who had not as yet had the good fortune to take a salmon. The flood had somewhat receded; but it was still necessary to place our canoes in the eddies, and cast crosswise into the edges of the current. I had landed a fish of moderate size, and was watching my friend trying his 'prentice hand, at salmon casting, occasionally directing him by my fancied superior knowledge of the art, when a very large fish rose to his fly, and he struck him with a suddenness and force which was certainly complimentary to his muscle if not so illustrative of his skill. For it is always dangerous to strike too hard. It does not require a great pressure to force the barb home, while a heavy strike or a too sudden twitch is apt either to break something or tear the hook from the fish's jaw. In this case the hook held. For a moment fish and fisher seemed alike astonished, and neither stirred; but it was only for a moment. Directly away flew the fish--the line spinning from the reel as if harnessed to a locomotive. Fortunately the eddy, which made out from the point of an island, extended some quarter of a mile, and before it was passed over, the Judge began to appreciate the situation, the magnitude of the work in hand, and the difficulties he was likely to encounter before he could call the fish his own. He held him with a steady hand. He answered every call for line with a promptness and caution which indicated great tact, and he lost no opportunity to reel in when practicable. For a time it seemed probable that he would kill his fish without being carried into the central current. But no such luck awaited him; for after two hours of patient waiting and working--of rushing, and leaping, and sulking--the frenzied fish made for the centre of the river with such impetuosity that it would have been as easy to stop the flow of the river itself as to check him in his mad career. Where he led the canoe was obliged to follow; and follow it did for more than two miles, with occasional respites at available eddies, and occasional dashes up stream, putting the canoe men to their best trumps to prevent the reel from becoming exhausted by these upward flights.

Thus the battle progressed for more than three hours, when the fish approached the canoe of one of the party, which was anchored near a bank covered with overhanging brush. He rushed with such speed that the Indians in the anchored canoe had barely time to get out of the way, when the fish dashed between them and the bank, but so closely that when he halted for an instant near the surface, one of the Indians, whose movements were as quick as those of the fish himself, gaffed him and so saved him "as by fire," for in an instant more he would have been caught in the overhanging brush toward which he was moving, and where, had he reached it, he would have been inevitably lost. He weighed thirty-six pounds--the largest fish taken during our month's sojourn on the river. But the most marvelous part of the story is that the brute was hooked foul in the side, rendering the fight and the capture of so large a fish a double victory.

Many events in the Judge's life will be forgotten, but this first fight with his first salmon will remain a pleasant memory for ever.

VI.

Here is another experience which all anglers will appreciate. I was anchored in an eddy at the head of a favorite pool while the current in the channel of the river was so strong that it was deemed impossible to make headway against it. The pool in which I was casting was full of hidden rocks; but for that very reason it was one of the very best on the river. After an unusually long cast, a fish rose to my fly and was hooked. On the instant he dashed for the head of the pool, but by the time the anchor was shipped he reversed his movement with a rush, carrying with him more than two hundred feet of line. The canoe, having been forced into the channel, was sweeping downward with great rapidity, when I became conscious that my line was hitched. The only hope of rescue was to force the canoe back against the heavy current--and the order to do so was answered by such a display of skill and muscle as I had never before and have never since witnessed. The paddles bent like withs, and for a moment not an inch of headway was obtained. "We can't move her," was the mournful wail of my faithful Indians. "You can and must. Away with her!" was all I could say to them; and "away" it was. After a desperate struggle the canoe reached a point on a line with the rock on which I was caught, when off the line flew with a spring which indicated the great tension to which it had been subjected. "Now let her go!" and down we went, swept by the current, past rocks, into eddies and over rapids for a mile before I succeeded in getting the fish in a position where I could check him or place him where I desired. This I did, however, in time, by getting below him and holding the canoe broadside to the current. This enabled me to handle him at will, and the gaffer soon brought him to book. He weighed twenty-nine pounds.

VII.

One other incident. To have it appreciated, however, I must premise that the manner in which an angler plays a fish depends largely upon the condition of the river. Where, after a strike, you can pass into still water or into a moderate current, the position of your canoe is of no great moment. But if you are forced into very swift water, to allow a fish to have his way, and to make no attempt to gaff him until he is exhausted or until you can force him up to within gaffing distance against the current, is to find yourself at the end of the battle so far from your pool as to render a return unpleasantly tedious. Under such circumstances the order of battle with experts is as follows: The moment the fish starts down stream push below him with all possible despatch, reeling up the attained slack as the distance decreases. When the desired position is reached the canoe is thrown across the current and allowed to float with it. As the fish is above you, it is comparatively easy, with the aid of the current, to guide him downward with a very moderate pressure. In this position, with the exercise of proper caution and skill, the fish can generally be brought near enough to be gaffed long before he is the least exhausted.

This mode of killing is not only exciting, but very hazardous. The fish, when brought close up to the canoe, sometimes dashes beneath it, to the great peril of rod, reel, and leader, if not to the perpendicularity of the canoe itself. To illustrate: I had struck a large fish, and was playing him in the manner detailed, to my entire satisfaction. I had never been better pleased with the behavior of any fish, and I had him under such perfect control that I foolishly began to deem myself perfect master of the situation. In his strugglings the fish had crossed and recrossed the channel a hundred times--had rushed up stream and dashed down stream with the speed and eccentricity of a boomerang, but had failed to get beyond the restraint of a steady tension. I had reached a point in the struggle where I would not have given a farthing to be insured against accidents, when, while holding him within twenty feet of my tip, he turned his head down stream and dashed directly under the centre of the canoe, bearing my rod with him, and bending it double before I knew whether I stood on my head or my heels. And then came a crack, and a tear, and a snap, splintering the second joint of my rod, and breaking my tip like a pipe stem. I supposed, of course, that the wrench had released the fish, and I began to reel in as disconsolate as a defeated candidate for office. But, hollo! the fish is not off! When the crash came the line had rendered so freely that there was no unusual strain upon the hook, and he was still fast. But what of that? How could I save him with such a wreck? The idea that it was possible, with skilful handling, added a hundredfold to the excitement, and put me on my mettle. So, finding that the line was free, and that by keeping the dangling pieces in proper position I could still manipulate the reel, I renewed the contest, and after floating a mile or two with the current, brought him to gaff. I mourned, of course, the destruction of my favorite rod--the best I ever handled, which had served me, without a crack, for two years, and which I would not have exchanged for any rod I ever saw. There was nothing gorgeous about it; but it had life in every fibre, and responded with every cast, from tip to butt, with such spring and elasticity as rendered casting with it a real pleasure.

VIII.

And apropos of the old adage that wise men learn from experience. After this fish had thus made shipwreck of my favorite rod, the Judge, with a generosity which is characteristic of the true angler--and no man has the spirit of the true angler who is not generous--proffered me the use of his untried bamboo. It was, and still is, the handsomest piece of salmon rod workmanship I ever saw, and felt in the handling as if it were as good to go as it was handsome to look at. He had hesitated, with the excusable timidity of the novice, to use it himself, and wished it tried, that he might report the result to its maker. I, of course, felt complimented by this proof of confidence in my skill, and consented, with the promise that I would do my best to preserve it intact, but that I must save my fish if I had to risk every inch of my harness.

The pool in which the test was to be made was directly in front of our camp, and the water was still in excessive volume, and the flow unpleasantly impetuous. I soon caught the hang of the rod, and was making experimental casts of a hundred feet or more, quite delighted with its spring and play, when I had a rise from the most dangerous spot in the pool. Afraid to strike with my usual force, I simply raised my tip an inch or two, and felt that he was as securely hooked as if I had a "double hitch" around him. And it is curious this instinctive consciousness of a secure or of a frail hold of your fish the instant you strike him. Every observant angler has this consciousness; and nothing is more common at such a moment than the remark, "I am afraid he is not well hooked"; or, "Ah! that struck home"; and all the after play--whether timidly or fearlessly--depends largely upon the "feel" of the strike.

At the outset I knew that if my fish escaped, it would not be because he was not well hooked; and, with this assurance, the play began. He took to the swiftest water at the first dash; he fairly leaped over the rapids at the foot of the pool, the canoe following with the speed of a race-horse, for half a mile, when he cried a halt, much to my satisfaction, for was I not entrusted with the finest rod that had ever wet its tip in the Cascapedia? Unlike my old companion, with which I had fought an hundred such battles, I was ignorant of the strain this elegant bamboo would bear, and so fought this battle as timidly as if I had never before broken a lance or captured a salmon. But a necessity was upon me. Its power of resistance must be tested, and the monster I was fighting must be kept in hand, if every joint in the rod should be reduced to splinters. So, ounce by ounce, the pressure was increased. Every new rush of the fish was met by augmented resistance on my part, until I found the rod capable of as hard work and as heavy a pressure as I had ever placed upon any rod I had ever handled. With what mathematical precision it curved from tip to reel! How grandly it took the butt, and with what grace it resumed its original form when relieved of an unusual pressure! To handle it soon became a delight, and I found myself procrastinating the contest from the mere pleasure I experienced in watching its perfect movement.

When at length I concluded to make a finish of the struggle, had placed my canoe below the fish, and was gathering him in, by slow approaches, not dreaming of disaster or defeat, the ferocious brute dashed for the canoe, passing under it near the stern like a flash, and threatening to make as complete shipwreck of the Judge's bamboo as the fish of the day previously had made of my own lance-wood. But, like others before me, I had learned from the enemy how to fight. The moment I saw what was coming I threw my rod down parallel with the side of the canoe, allowing the tip to extend beyond it, with the reel outward, so as to give the line free play. The experiment was a success. The line followed the fish without a hitch, and the beautiful rod remained intact! The furious brute was outflanked, and, as if in despair, he gave up the battle, and in ten minutes was gaffed.

The rod was a success. It had passed every ordeal grandly, and it was handed back to its owner with the comforting assurance, "It will do."

* * * * *

These are but specimen illustrations of the pleasure and exhilaration which come to those who "go-a-fishing" for salmon. But the pastime holds its votaries for other reasons than the mere excitement it affords them. A diversion which reaches only to the material of our natures can never acquire a permanent place in the affections of men of thoughtful habit. It is proof, therefore, of the satisfying and elevating character of the gentle art, that its disciples never weary of the pleasure it affords them. Indeed, the most enthusiastic anglers, and those who best illustrate its refining and invigorating influence, are those who have passed into "the sere and yellow leaf" with rod and reel as their inseparable companions. Like the virtues, it grows by what it feeds upon; and as the sun becomes more and more attractive in its mellow beauty, as it silently and gently sinks from view, so do the pleasures of angling become increasingly fascinating to its happy votaries as they near the gateway of their final rest. Ah! unhappy they who, in making haste to be rich, fail to avail themselves of the opportunity which angling affords to garner up such pleasant memories as would cast perennial rays of refreshing sunshine upon the too often sombre pathway of old age!

GEORGE DAWSON.

EXECUTIVE PATRONAGE AND CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.

Late writers on the English Constitution draw a contrast rather unfavorable to us between their Parliamentary and our Presidential Government. Our Executive is a fixture for four years and reëligible. He is responsible, and not shielded by any such legal fiction as "The king can do no wrong." In Great Britain, the cabinet, selected from the legislature, is the real executive body. "In its origin it belongs to the legislative part of the State; in its functions it belongs to the executive part." By a conventional code, the ministry or "the Government" can be changed by a vote of want of confidence, or by a defeat of the ministry in the House of Commons on a governmental measure. Our Cabinet holds a subordinate position. The Constitution contemplates, but does not define, "executive departments." Seven have been established by law, some of which have been divided into inferior departments called bureaus. The Cabinet is the political family of the President. The "heads of departments" are his constitutional advisers, and aid in the execution of his high functions. They are not held responsible for good government, are not liable to votes of censure for their policy, although for convenience sake, a kind of semi-official connection subsists betwixt them and the Federal Legislature.

The "principal officer in each of the executive departments" has a staff of subordinates. The various officers of the United States constitute the machinery of government, and the appointment of a large proportion of them is vested in the President. These various civil officers, so appointed, are for the execution of public business. The conduct of public business and the care of the public interests are, under the President's supervision and control, largely committed to these functionaries. With the growth of the country in territorial area, population, and wealth, the enormous increase of taxation and expenditures and the assumption by the Federal Government of State duties and prerogatives, the number of officials has increased to 100,000. The civil list in 1859 numbered 44,527; in 1875, 94,119. The rolls show a larger list of paid dependents since the war than there was during the war. All these officers hold their places by the tenure of the President's will. They are to be found in every neighborhood in the Union, and constitute a large army, dangerous to the welfare and perpetuity of the republic.

The theory is that all public offices are for administrative efficiency and the public weal. Up to the beginning of General Jackson's term of office, there had been, during the forty years of his six predecessors, 112 removals of such officers as required for their appointment "the advice and consent of the Senate." These few removals were not made from caprice, or to punish enemies, or to reward partisans, but for cause and by strict rule. The power of removal was exerted so exceptionally, only for just and salutary purposes, and was never used as an instrument of party success. Public policy dictated its exercise. Offices were not regarded as the private property of the President, or as the perquisites of a party, but as trusts for the general good.

General Jackson's accession to the Presidency began a revolution. Differences of opinion were punished by removal from office, and partisanship was rewarded with places of profit. His successors have adhered too closely to a precedent which has almost solidified into a party law, or a principle of American politics. No party can claim exemption from the sin of using the civil list for party ends. The Whig, Democratic, and Republican parties, in the distribution of "patronage," in Federal, State, and municipal governments, are alike obnoxious to censure. The poison has infiltrated every vein and artery of the body politic. Every branch of federal and of State service has suffered from the vicious maxim that offices are spoils to be divided among the victors in a party contest. Too often the condition precedent to appointment is unquestioning submission to party decrees, indiscriminate support of party candidates and party measures. The right to remove incumbents is now a conceded Presidential prerogative, acquiesced in by all parties.

The power of removal, under the influence of a false political philosophy, has been perverted into the duty of removal so as to give the offices to the winning party. A new President of different politics from his predecessor is expected to make sweeping changes, amounting even to a "total administrative cataclysm." The appointment of a political antagonist excites surprise, and requires an explanation or apology. Experience of the working of an office, ability, honesty, fitness, are not conclusive. "Off with his head," is the remorseless decree when a place is needed for a partisan. Each incoming administration is bedeviled by hordes of applicants, as greedy as the daughters of the horseleech. The plagues of Egypt scarcely symbolize the number and clamorousness of the mendicants. General Harrison, honest old man, in one month fell a victim to the tormentors, and General Taylor's death was probably hastened by a similar infliction.

Executive patronage is dependent on the revenue and expenditures of the Government and on the number of persons employed by the Government, or who receive money from the public treasury. To appoint and remove at will is a dangerous prerogative, royal in its proportions. Some of the ablest statesmen and constitutional lawyers have denied the right of the President to remove without cause, especially in such appointments as required the concurrence of the Senate.[3] The practice of the Government seems to have settled the question differently. Conceding _pro hoe vice_ the constitutionality, the evils, as illustrated in our history, are none the less great.

[3] Reports to the Senate in 1825, 1835, and 1844, contain able discussions of "Executive Patronage."

I. There has been a reversal of the theory of our institutions in respect to officers. In 1835 Mr. Webster said in the United States Senate:

Government is an agency created for the good of the people, and every person in office is an agent and servant of the people. Offices are created not for the benefit of those who are to fill them, but for the public convenience; and they ought to be no more in number, nor should higher salaries be attached to them, than the public service requires. The difficulty in practice is to prevent a direct reversal of all this; to prevent public offices from being considered as intended for the use and emolument of those who can obtain them. There is a headlong tendency to this.... There is another, and perhaps a greatly more mischievous result, from extensive patronage in the hands of a single magistrate, and that is, that men in office have begun to think themselves mere agents and servants of the appointing power, and not agents of the Government or the country.

Offices are looked upon as the prey of political parties, as spoils to be distributed. The well-being of the country, with appointer and appointees, becomes a secondary consideration. Office-holders, holding by the "tenure of partisan zeal and service" are regarded as receiving pap from the party, and therefore under special obligations to make sacrifices for its success. Hence federal officers, holding their places for the benefit of the party, are assessed for contributions for electioneering purposes and the recalcitrants are dismissed or tabooed. This system is unfavorable to manly independence. Fearing removal, incumbents become parasites, with chameleon facility adapting the complexion of their politics to the color of the appointing power. Government becomes also an almoner to bestow charities. Pensioning, never justifiable except in special exigencies, becomes the rule. Some apprehension of the evils of governmental allowances without an equivalent possibly induced Dr. Johnson, in the first edition of his dictionary, to define "Pensioner, a slave of the State, hired by a stipend to obey his master."

II. Government becomes a kind of close corporation for the benefit of the party in power. Party adherents, pets, favorites, get the dividends; civil service thus affording, as Mr. Bright phrased it for England, "a system of out-door relief to the poorer saplings of aristocracy." As a necessary consequence, patriotism and attachment to principles among those corporators become feebler, and servility to party stronger.

III. The Government suffers in its administration. In appointments other tests than the Jeffersonian, "Is he honest, is he faithful, is he capable?" are applied. The right to employment should grow solely out of superior capacity and attainments. Official patronage is a trust for promoting the general welfare. The present system, forgetful of general interests, instead of securing the best men, often gets instead the incapable. A good official system is hardly possible with constant changes in the _personnel_. If continuance in office be dependent on other considerations than discharge of duties, a stimulus to diligence and fidelity is taken away. The best motive for learning a task thoroughly should be furnished. Not unfrequently one defeated in his aspirations for Congress receives a Federal appointment. A popular condemnation becomes a stepping stone to a higher position. What should be regarded as a rebuke is made a plea for promotion.

IV. The tendency of the abuse of Executive patronage is to make those in the civil service mere placemen and mere tools or willing servitors of the President. To quote again from Mr. Webster:

A competition ensues, not of patriotic labors, not of rough and severe toils for the public good, not of manliness, independence, and public spirit, but of complaisance, of indiscriminate support of executive measures, of pliant subserviency and gross adulation.

By personal effort, by money contributions, through the press, in nominating assemblies, at the polls, office-holders work for him in whom they have their official being. An incumbent of the Presidency, a candidate for reëlection, has a large number of men and their families interested in his success, and swayed by the temptation of interest to secure his renomination and reëlection; add to these the hungry expectants, whose eyes and hopes are fixed on Washington, and it can be seen that the power and the practice of giving offices to partisans operate on the fears of all who are in and the hopes of those who wish to get in. The Executive himself is armed with undue influence and power and subjected to a temptation to dishonesty if he covets a reëlection. The "spoils" in the hands of a President, granted or withdrawn at pleasure, give fearful odds in a popular or party contest. Our Presidential elections are pervaded by an element not favorable to fairness or purity. A dangerous mass of private and personal interest is thrown into the scale, and selfishness usurps the place of patriotism and a sense of public duty.

V. Distribution of so many and such valuable offices as party rewards degrades parties from organizations upon principle, for patriotic political ends, to mere combinations for expediency and for personal ends. Because of the power and patronage of the President; and the centralizing effects of federal legislation, all State and local elections are subordinate to the quadrennial agitation for the highest federal officer. So ramifying is this federal influence, the election of a constable in Montana is decided by his relation to a "national" party. State and county officers are nominated upon "national" platforms, and support of Hayes or Tilden determines governors, Congressmen, judges, superintendents of education, mayors, sheriffs, policemen. Local interests are subordinated to the Presidential struggle. The attention and ability of the people of a State are diverted from State development to national concerns, or rather to the question, who is to be empowered to bestow Executive patronage? In the mind of the masses the President is the government. A Presidential election has ceased to be a contest of ideas, or to decide a political policy. It is a gigantic party struggle. Overwhelming importance attaches to it, because the victor has a cornucopia of "patronage bribery" to give to whom he likes. In other days, the canvass which preceded elections was educatory. Able men, on opposite sides, face to face, discussed grave questions of constitutional law or federal policy. In the nullification controversy of South Carolina there was a war of giants. The speeches of O'Neal, Harper, Johnston, Hamilton, Hayne, Preston, McCuffie, and Calhoun were such masterly expositions of the relations of the States to the general Government as would have done credit to Edmund Burke. In other contests, North and South, were discussions by our ablest statesmen of fundamental principles of higher abstractions. In the last contest much of the "stump" speaking was the veriest twaddle, an appeal to prejudice, and hate, and sectionalism, full of scurrility, personality, and vulgar anecdote. The press, so essential to free institutions, partakes of the degeneracy, and thus politics is degraded from a noble science to a disgusting scramble for spoils.

VI. Treating the civil service as legitimate rewards for partisan zeal diminishes official responsibility, lowers the standard of official integrity, and stimulates corruption by augmenting the means of corruption. The rapid growth of patronage, far beyond what is required for efficiency of administration, is readily suggestive of evil. A spirit of subserviency is not favorable to the growth of the highest qualities. Ceasing to regard office as a trust for the public good, the holder loses a strong motive for integrity. Favoring servility, or sycophancy, to conciliate superiors, very easily loosens the restraints of conscience. Vigorous attachment to principles yields to devotion to party. Public morals are corrupted by false maxims, by increase of temptation, by loss of patriotism. Places are multiplied for partisans. Contracts are let to partisans. Frauds, the logical consequence of lowering office to be mere pay for party services, are covered up, or palliated, to prevent damage to "the party."

If these evils be not greatly exaggerated, reform seems an imperative necessity. It is hard to correct governmental abuses. Society is prone to run in ruts. To suggest the supernumerariness of an office, or a reduction of salaries, raises a howl among the _ins_ as if the liberties of the country were imperilled. Those useful legislators, like George W. Jones of Tennessee, and Holman of Indiana, who watch for abuses and scent afar a "ring," are always unpopular. It is needful to get back to first principles and to indoctrinate the public anew with correct notions as to the object of an office and the duties of a public officer. The Koran says: "A ruler who appoints any man to an office when there is in his dominions another man better qualified for it sins against God and against the State." To dismiss a faithful and capable incumbent to gratify party resentment, or to gratify a friend, is utterly in disharmony with the purpose of administrative machinery. Our Government is an agency for the public weal. It is not in an antagonistic position to "the people of the United States," but their servant to accomplish their legal will and to promote their prosperity. People were not created for offices, but offices for the people. As soon as the public service ceases to be subserved the offices should at once cease. While the office is necessary, and the incumbent discharges its duties satisfactorily, there should be no needless change. A citizen accepting a public trust, and doing his duty faithfully, should be allowed to enjoy his manhood and be protected from the exactions of a superior power. If, as has been asserted, "no vacancies" greet the eyes of applicants for places in Washington, it is a hopeful sign and most praiseworthy.

When vacancies do occur, or new offices are created, some competition among the candidates for employment would ensure more efficient service. Superiority of parts or attainments is a better qualification for bureau or clerical duties than activity in a ward meeting. Men of the best energy and capacity are not likely to be obtained by an arbitrary partition of places among the districts whose representatives sustain the Administration. England has reached the competitive test by slow steps. Employees in the several departments were, for a long time, clerks to the minister, and were paid out of the fees received from those who had business with the department. The sale of offices and exaction of fees occasioned serious abuses. By several acts of Parliament in this century, a civil service has been established, a public status assigned to clerks, and their salaries are now paid out of the public exchequer. By the test of competitive examinations, and by placing on a better basis the relation betwixt public servants and the nation, the service has been much improved.

The application of some competitive test for certain grades of office might be supplemented by requiring the President, in all cases of nominations to the Senate to fill vacancies, to state the reasons for removal, if any had been made. Laws might be passed modifying the absoluteness of the right of removal. In 1789, in a discussion in the House of Representatives, Mr. Madison said:

To displace a man from office whose merits require that he should be continued in it would be an act of maladministration, and the wanton removal of meritorious officers would subject the President to impeachment and removal from his own high trust.

The Constitution of the Confederate States had this provision:

The principal officer in each of the executive departments, and all persons connected with the diplomatic service, may be removed from office at the pleasure of the President. All other civil officers of the executive departments may be removed at any time by the President, or other appointing power, when their services are unnecessary, or for dishonesty, incapacity, inefficiency, misconduct, or neglect of duty; and when so removed, the removal shall be reported to the Senate, together with the reasons therefor.

A further provision forbade the President to reappoint to the same office, during the recess, any person who had been rejected by the Senate.

To make the President ineligible, as was done in the Confederate States Constitution, and as President Hayes recommends, would take from the Executive the temptation to use the appointing power to receive a renomination or reëlection. As the term of a Chief Magistrate draws near its end, and he becomes more deeply interested in being his own successor, he may make his appointments and direct his administration to increase popularity and accomplish his own ambitious ends. He might look to party management, and ward meetings, and manipulated caucuses, rather than to the general welfare. The evil of re-eligibility is increased by the failure of our electoral colleges to effect what was designed. These colleges have no independence, and most mechanically register the decrees of caucuses. What was intended to be a check on party has become its pliant instrument.

As essential to reduction of Executive patronage, and disarming the President of the dangerous influence and power growing out of it, there should be a persevering and a large reduction of federal expenditures. General Jackson, in 1836, truly said, "No political maxim is better established than that which tells us that an improvident expenditure of the public money is the parent of profligacy, and that no people can hope to perpetuate their liberties who long acquiesce in a policy which taxes them for objects not necessary to the legitimate and real wants of their government." Large revenue and expenditure give an excuse if they do not make the necessity for increasing the number of persons employed by the government. With expenditure comes an army of agents, contractors, officers interested in keeping up extravagance and multiplying officials. Patronage flows from the fountain of public income. To reduce patronage and ensure honest government, it is indispensable that the Government should extort no more money from the people than is needful for a just and economical administration. Our governments, federal, State, and municipal, need to be taught, by constitutional limitation and a sound public opinion, that a citizen's property is his as against every demand, except for a just, honest, and economical administration of the government.

As helping reform and growing out of it, a reorganization of parties is needed. The present parties have "played out." Parties are essential in republics, but they should represent intelligent patriotism, be organized on practical, living issues, and be vitalized by principles. Who is wise enough to tell what differentiates the Republican and the Democratic parties? What distinctive principles divide them? Who can "locate" the parties on such questions as tariff, currency, expenditure, civil service reform, character of the government, boundary between reserved and delegated powers? Issues like secession and slavery, no longer disputed or doubted, should have no influence in forming or keeping alive parties. Obsolete shibboleths should not alienate those who are otherwise agreed. A party not crystallizing around vital issues, not having "the dignity of contention" for principles, becomes a machine to put up A or put down B. The _ins_ and the _outs_ make now the two centres of the dividing parties, which have become cliques and cabals controlled by caucuses.

This is a most opportune season for reorganization of political parties, and a readjustment on broad and living issues. It is wrong to be carrying about the dead corpse of the past. A new generation has grown up since 1860. The spirit of the age is not what it was two decades since. The young men know next to nothing of Whiggery and Democracy. To make secession, or slavery, or the "bloody shirt" a rallying cry, is as absurd as to exhume the embargo or the alien and sedition laws. The inertia of society is great, and men cohere from traditions of the past. The reform bill of 1832 was long delayed in England, in its practical results, because the statesmen of 1832 continued in public life. So now effete parties are kept alive for partisan or patriotic ends by those who seem not to have realized that we are living in a new America.

It seems a plain duty to gather up what survives of our constitutional federal republic, of the labors of the past, and with a catholic spirit to combine for reformation of abuses, for national conciliation, for purifying parties, for saving the republic. A party equally of order and of progress, in favor of retrenchment, economy, low taxes, sound currency, civil service reform, preservation of State and of federal honor, strict adherence to the Constitution, keeping federal and State governments within their separate and defined spheres of action, while encountering the hostility of extremists, would rally to its support enough of intelligence and patriotism to repress sectionalism and hate, and bring our lately discordant States into a fraternal union, based on fixed law, mutual toleration and respect, and exact justice.

J. L. M. CURRY.

THREE PERIODS OF MODERN MUSIC.

In "Punch's Almanack" for this year is an illustration, in three compartments, of the subject "Music at Home." The first is called "Drawing-room Music of the Past." A young lady sits at one of those little spindle-legged piano-fortes, hardly larger than a large washstand, and somewhat shaped like one, with which our grandmothers and great grandmothers, and the men who composed music for them, were not only satisfied, but delighted. Her hands are moving, light and level, over the little key-board, and the dainty turn of her head shows that she is captivated by the sounds that she is eliciting. Around her is gathered a family group of some dozen people, old and young, from the grandfather to the little grandchild who sits upon a hassock at her lovely mother's knee. They are all entranced by the music. Plainly there is not a sound in the room but that which is produced by the fair performer. The souls of all that company are enchained; their hearts if not their eyes are brimming with emotion. A spell of tenderness and grace has been cast upon them; and they have given themselves up to him who has woven it. The faces of all are lightly tinged with sadness, but it is an elevated and elevating sadness; a sadness that is mingled with a joy silent, deep, and strong, a joy far above hilarity. The most impressive figure of the group is the grandfather, who sits with his arm lying listlessly across the instrument and his head slightly bowed, as, we may be sure, he is carried back by the sweet strains to a time when one who does not appear in the group was by his side in all the charms of early womanhood. The composition is so touching, so filled with purest, sweetest sentiment, that it is impossible to look at it long without being moved almost to tears by the tender and serene pathos with which it is pervaded. The legend tells us that the music which has wrought this spell is "A Melody by Mozart."

In the second compartment of the triptique, which is labelled "Drawing-room Music of the Present," a young lady also sits at a piano-forte. It is a grand, a very grand piano-forte; a tremendous institution, the invisible end of which stretches far into infinitude. Plainly it is one of those awful instruments which have received a gold medal at all the expositions. The lid is propped up so that it looks like a gigantic trap set to catch some gigantic bird or vermin. The performer's shoulders and arms, which emerge in a somewhat alarming manner from their scanty covering, are in violent agitation. Her hands are flung into the air as they poise for an instant over the upper part of the long key-board, ready to pounce down upon the shuddering notes below, and from the great gaping instrument a flock of startled and affrighted quavers, semiquavers, and demisemiquavers is pouring out pell-mell over the assembled hearers. Hearers! No. The great drawing-room is filled with a crowd of people who have evidently been bidden to listen to the music. But they are undergoing it with stolid indifference as they talk or try to talk, either almost shouting or whispering into each other's deafened ears and bewildered brains. The only person who takes any interest in the performance is the performer herself. The motive power here is "A brilliant fantasia for the piano by Signor Rumblestominski."

The third compartment is entitled "Drawing-room music of the Future." Here five performers are laboring at and around the piano-forte, the top of which has been taken off. They are all men; tough-brained-looking fellows: one a violinist, one a violoncellist; two are at the key-board, and one stands music in hand and mouth wide open. They are toiling as if at day's work by the piece; and all are singing. They are engaged upon "Twenty-four consecutive interdependent Logarithmic studies for Violin and Violoncello, with Double Differential and Integral accompaniment for the Piano-forte, supplemented by Unisonal Descriptive and Corroborative vocal exposition in five modern languages." They have evidently got well into harness, and have dragged their hearers some distance over their rugged road, which is a "hard road to travel." The mass of the assembled company are rushing madly for the door. On an ottoman in the foreground sit five victims, four young ladies and a bald-headed old gentleman, who are all fast asleep. At one side a determined fellow sits with his elbows on his knees grasping his head with both hands, resolved to endure unto the end. Not even in the faces of the performers is there the slightest manifestation of the soothing, the elevating, or even the pleasurably exciting influence which belongs peculiarly to music. With dogged determination they are working out a knotty intellectual problem. They do not exhibit even the tickled vanity of musical virtuosity; they are there--to use a cant phrase of musical criticism--to "interpret" what the composer has with infinite toil and trouble put upon paper; and very tough work they find it; somewhat like reading mathematics written in the Basque language. And their souls are unmoved. The musical sounds go through their ears straight to their brains, leaving their hearts untouched. They are engaged in an intellectual process.

Of these designs, the last two, although they are laughable caricatures, express with very little exaggeration (allowing for the notes made visible in the second) the character, the quality, and the effect of certain schools of musical composition. The first is not a caricature, as any one will see; but although it is quite the contrary, it is not on the other hand idealized. It merely represents with skilful touch and felicitous arrangement what might have actually occurred and what doubtless did many times occur in drawing-rooms at the end of the last century and the first years of this; indeed, what might happen and even does happen now. There has been a change in costume and in manners; but there is none in the effect upon musical souls of a melody by Mozart.

And these designs illustrate three periods in modern music: two through which it has passed and one upon which it seems now to be entering. By modern music I mean music since the days of Palestrina. What was written before that time, nearly or remotely, although it may have historical importance and interest, is of little or no value as music. Indeed, it hardly is music as we know and feel it. Not that I would imply that Palestrina invented modern music, or even that he alone of contemporary composers was a gifted and accomplished master of his art. Roland de Lattre, called Orlandus Lassus, chief of the Gallo-Belgic school, might dispute the palm with him.[4] But this conceded, it remains that in Orlandus Lassus we have the best product of the ancient school, adhering to the ancient style and bringing it to its highest perfection; while in Palestrina we have the beginning of the modern school and style, the distinctive trait of which may broadly be said to be the use of melody and harmony of independent value under constant governance of the principle of tonality. Before the time of Palestrina--say A.D. 1550, he having been born about 1524 and having died about 1594, which year closed the life of Orlandus Lassus, who was born in 1520--before that time music was polyphonic. But it was not merely, as that term implies, many-voiced, or in several parts; for that it is now; but the parts moved without any æsthetic relation to each other, and with the same independence of the æsthetic effect of the whole. Their progression was according to certain rules; but these conformed to, the object of the composer seemed to be to make his work as intricate as possible. Certain figures--for they could hardly be called melodies--one or two or three or more--were repeated again and again and again by the various voices, each one going or seeming to go its own way, entirely regardless of the others--regardless of anything except the rules of the counterpoint of the day. The combining result was a tangled skein of sound which could be unravelled only as it had been put together, by rule. Instead of an emotional expression it was an intellectual puzzle in sound. Moreover the whole composition was without any bond of unity; it was, so to speak, and in its effect it was really, in no particular key.

[4] For an able setting forth of the claims of Orlandus Lassus, see Frederic Louis Ritter's excellent "History of Music," First Series, published by Oliver Ditson & Co.

Upon music in this condition there came about three hundred years ago a great change. Polyphonetic writing gave way, gradually but with some rapidity, to the movement of parts in a harmony of independent absolute beauty--that is, beauty, in the simple succession of its chords--and to the union with this harmony of a leading melody, also valuable for its independent, absolute beauty. Thus came into being what I have heretofore called "absolute music," which has been known to the world only about three hundred years, and in its full and complete development only about one hundred and fifty. At the same time, with this use of harmony and melody of absolute beauty and value, came in a great controlling principle or law, upon the operation and influence of which, in fact, the æsthetic effect of the new music chiefly if not entirely depended. This law or principle was tonality. I have been told that in a publication which I have never seen--although most probably it has been sent to me, to go, with the greater part of the printed matter and not a few of the letters that I receive, unread into my waste-basket--I have been held up as a dreadful example of musical incompetence on the ground that I cannot "appreciate Wagner's magnificent [or splendid, or something of that sort] tonality." Of course it cuts me to the heart to show that my criticaster was thoroughly ignorant of the very meaning of the word that he used--a word which is the name of a principle of paramount importance and significance in the art of music, which, I believe, he in some sort professes. But the demands of truth are inexorable.

Tonality is something which cannot be magnificent or splendid; nor can it be attributed to a composer as being in the slightest degree a claim to admiration. Indeed, one composer can hardly possess it in a greater degree than another; and the writer of an ephemeral ballad, or of "Thou, thou reignest in this bosom," has it, although not more largely, with stronger manifestation than Mozart or Beethoven. And yet it so happens that Wagner is in his later works _less_ governed by the law of tonality than any other known composer of the day.

Tonality is simply the relation of a musical phrase, or air, or longer composition, to a keynote or tonic chord. To this tonic chord the harmonies of the composition must bear a close and constantly felt relationship. The harmony almost always opens with this chord, and continually recurs to it; and either in its simple form or in some of its inversions, it, its dominant and subdominant, are the perceptibly ruling harmonies of the composition; and upon this tonic chord the composition always ends. That is tonality; nothing more nor less; and to the influence of this principle of tonality is due the distinctive character of modern music. Strange as it will probably seem to most amateurs, news as we have already seen it is to one professor, it was not until after Palestrina's time that the law of tonality asserted itself in music, and that compositions were clearly written with any tonic, that is, manifestly and strikingly in any particular key.[5] But it so happens that Wagner's method of composition has actually led him somewhat away from this principle of tonality. Any musical person will see that in recitative there is much less relation of harmony to the tonic than in airs or in choruses; and Wagner's prolonged, almost endless recitatives are wearisome partly from the very fact that we are so long at sea drifting hither and thither without the rudder of tonality. But what did this matter to the criticaster? He had heard the word tonality, and it was a round, mouth-filling word, somewhat new withal, and therefore good for use against an ignoramus. Perhaps he thought it meant sonority or something of the kind; or he connected it with that lovely phrase "tone-poem." Well, in any case, it has served his purpose astonishingly.

[5] It is not necessary that I should give authority for this to any competent person who is acquainted with the music of the ancient composers; but whoever chooses to do so may find the subject fully discussed in Helmholtz's great work, _passim_.

After the introduction of the principle of tonality music developed with remarkable rapidity. In one hundred and fifty years it made more progress toward an ideal beauty and as a means of emotional expression than it had made in the thousands of years that had passed since the first note was sung. For by this principle of tonality, melody and harmony as we know them became possible. All that went before was either the vague, formless, unsymmetrical production of popular mood and fancy, or the dry formula-work of musical pedants. And yet within a century we have such a result as Stradella's divine _Aria di chiesa Se i miei sospiri_, which, whether for its melody, its harmony, or its emotional expression, intense yet kept within the bounds of a lofty and almost serene dignity, is unsurpassed by any vocal work which has been since produced. It has been said by some that this air was not written by Stradella. M. Fetis, however, does not doubt it; and the result of the discussion is that it is assigned to the great Italian singer. The story of his having saved his life by singing it--two assassins who followed him into a cathedral to put him to death for having robbed a nobleman of his beautiful mistress having been disarmed and sent off repentant by the charm of his voice and of the music--is probably known to many of my readers. Did any of them ever hear in a composition by Wagner or Liszt, or any of that crew, a melody of which it could be believed or for a moment supposed that it would produce such an effect, even if it were sung by a seraph?

It was not, however, until the first quarter of the last century that what is in a large sense the modern school of music came to full growth. Then appeared Bach and Handel. They came suddenly; as suddenly as Marlow and Shakespeare into the field of dramatic poetry, as suddenly as Raphael and Titian into that of painting. Not indeed without roots in the past and a growth from them, but with a marvellously quick and strong development, and an unfolding of flower and fruit that seemed as if it were--as indeed it was--the blooming of a century plant. And as is ever the case in art, the utmost limit of attainment seems to have been reached at the first bound. What was dramatic poetry before the half century which began with Marlow and Shakespeare? What was painting before the like period of its glory? And what have either been since? This position may be claimed for Handel, with the fullest recognition of the genius of Mozart (Haydn, great, enchanting, truly inspired as he was, is yet out of the question), and even of the almost awful genius of Beethoven. But when we remember that the Hallelujah Chorus, _Lascia chio pianza_, the renowned _Largo_ in G so grandly performed by Mr. Thomas's orchestra at his last subscription concert, are from the same hand, and that these are only examples (which I cite because they are so well known) of a creative power which seems to have been equally great and various in its manifestations--when we take into consideration the healthiness, the virility of Handel's tone of thought, there being, I believe, in all his known works, not a single passage marked by morbid feeling or even exaggerated sentiment, although of intensest feeling there is overpowering expression, as for example in the _Largo_ just referred to, and when we give due weight to the copiousness of his production, he being the most voluminous of all the great composers, if we measure his works by their quantity and not by their numbers, in which an oratorio or an opera would count only one, we can hardly hesitate, except in favor of Beethoven, in reckoning him as the greatest creative mind in music. And as to Beethoven, deeply as he sunk his shaft into the profound of human emotion, mightily as he moves us, deftly as he expresses even the lighter moods of feeling (rarely, however, without some passing touch which, if pushed a little further, might become almost fierceness), is there not sometimes, and perhaps more than sometimes, a morbidness, noble, magnificent, but still morbidness, in his moods? We are overwhelmed by the grandeur, and are swallowed up in the gloom of his graver compositions; but when we emerge are we in as healthy a state of mind as that in which we find ourselves after listening to Handel or reading Shakespeare--even if we read such tragedies as "Hamlet," "Othello," and "King Lear"? Then, too, it must be remembered how carefully Beethoven nursed his genius; how regardless he was of every consideration except the expression of his own thought; and how comparatively limited was his productiveness, or certainly his production.

As to his moodiness, it must, on the other hand, be considered that it is the peculiar function of music to express moods. Man's soul is stirred by emotions which cannot be given utterance in words, and which would remain unexpressed but for music, which to the musically organized is a means of communication and of sympathy. There is a question at least whether an art whose function it is to give expression to inward feeling too subtle for words, an expression which is above all words, which gives form to the formless and utterance to the unspeakable, is not rightfully and of necessity at times morbid and moody; whether if it were not so it would not fail in doing that which is the very reason of its being. The supremacy lies between Handel and Beethoven; and we shall find ourselves inclined to assign it now to one and now to the other, according to the mood in which we are, which will depend greatly on which of the two we have just heard.

And yet, as to pure music, irrespective of psychological significance--that is, the expression of an ideal of beauty in musical form--Mozart stands first among all composers. Another mind so fertile in thoughts of the finest and highest kind of beauty is unknown in the history of any art, Shakespeare being of course always excepted. Writing, like Shakespeare, always for money, and not hesitating to put his hand to any task that would bring him a return, driven by sharp necessity almost to the prostitution of his genius, driven in his boyhood, by an exacting father, to write as an infant prodigy for the support of the family, dying at the early, and, as far as the mind is concerned, the immature, age of thirty-seven, he left behind him, in the mass of his compositions, much that was hastily produced merely to meet the needs of the moment. And yet in it all what transcendent beauty of form! He had rarely even a fitting occasion for the exercise of his faculties. Rarely is he not superior to the subject which he undertakes to illustrate. Like Shakespeare, he throws away beautiful thoughts upon mean and trivial subjects. Contrary to the supposition of the Roman Pope, with Mozart it was the jug that was begun to be made and the vase that issued from his hand.[6] "Don Giovanni" his greatest or at least his richest work, is full of examples of this incongruity between the occasion and the production. In a previous paper I pointed out an example in the _andante_ of Leporello's catalogue song. Another is the trio in masks. Only elsewhere in his own works can be found examples of an equally enchanting beauty of musical form. In its thought, and in the elevation and finish of that thought, it reaches the highest attainable pitch of perfection. This single trio is of more worth than all that many composers of repute have written in all their lives. For example: If it were a question between the destruction of this brief passage and all of Mendelsohn's compositions, the trio should be preserved without a moment's hesitation. Just as the Madonna Sixtina is worth ten times over all the canvases of Giulio Romano; and as a single mutilated figure of the frieze of the Parthenon, or the Venus of Milo, outweighs all the perfect marbles of Canova and of Thorwaldsen. Such is the transcendent value of the supreme in art.

[6] Amphora cepit Institui, currente rota cur urceus exit?--_Hor. Ad Pisones._

In all the works of the great composers of the modern school--the only real school--of music, from Bach to Beethoven, including Haydn, there is a supreme dominant feeling for beauty of form, shown chiefly in melody, but hardly less apparent in harmony. Indeed, without this feeling they would not have been great. The rule is absolute: no form, no art; for art is proportion, symmetry. Melody is a series of musical proportions; like a series of arches the lines of which are harmonious. These melodic ideas they elaborated with the utmost care. It is generally supposed that ideas in art come spontaneously; and of all this might seem truest of musical ideas, which are not, like those expressed in language, in painting, in sculpture, or in architecture, required to conform themselves to a type or a purpose. They do come indeed to the musical artist, but not spontaneously in the form in which he presents them. They would not come up if they were not in the soil; but the soil must be cultivated and the growth must be pruned and trained into seeming naturalness and spontaneousness of beauty. Milton's lines--

Where the bright seraphim in burning row Their loud, uplifted angel trumpets blow--

seem like a splendid spontaneous outburst of poetical expression. But we know that their splendor and their spontaneous seeming is the result of elaboration, of erasure, of interlineation, of recasting. The thought we may believe came in a moment, but it was worked with consummate care and art into the form in which the poet gave it to the world. So it is even with melody, the most spontaneous-seeming part of music. We may be sure that even Mozart, most fertile of all composers in melody, the greatest master of instrumentation, elaborated his themes and his treatment of them, if not on paper, at least in his mind before he put his conceptions into score. And the reason, the occasion for this elaboration was the desired attainment of the highest possible perfection of form. I need hardly say to any musician that I am not speaking of technical form, either of harmonic progression or of the cast of a composition, as for example the sonata form, the symphonic form, the dramatic form, but of the form of intrinsic absolute value which appeals to the general craving for and appreciation of beauty. This beauty of form cannot be disregarded in any art without failure to attain the highest place in the world's estimation, no matter how marvellous and admirable the powers displayed in another direction. For lack of this excellence Rembrandt can never take the highest place, but must be content with the admiration of those who can appreciate his mastery of manipulation, a technical excellence. Of all great painters, Turner is most imperfect in this respect. But Turner can hardly be said to have dealt with form at all. Hence a certain weakness amid all his glory. He painted distance, light. Among painters he is the king of space, the prince of the powers of the air.

Absolutely essential as beauty of form is in music, the reason of it, unlike that of the same quality in other arts, is beyond our apprehension. I at least find it so. I have heard it, and seen it upon paper, and considered it all my life. I have taken it in at eye and ear together. I have read and have pondered; but I never have been able to detect musical genius in its working, as I have, or have fancied that I have, done in other arts. I can find no reason for the existence of this beauty except that it is beautiful. I can see clearly, and I have sometimes thought that I could with some satisfactory approach to clearness tell in words, what the composer has done; but the how, and above all the why, is as much hidden from me as it was from him. For that it was unknown to him I am sure, not because I could not discover it, but from the very nature of the case.

Beauty of form in music is absolute, independent, self-existent. This is true of all natural beauty. There is no obligation upon beauty as there is, for instance, upon mathematical truth or moral goodness. But in all imitative art there is an obligation of conformity at least to an ideal type of what is represented. But music the moment it becomes imitative becomes ridiculous; it steps out of the proper limits of the art. For example, Haydn's "cheerful roaring lion" and "flexible tiger" in the "Creation." But it should be remembered that what is imitative and false in that aspect may have an essential beauty given by the genius of the composer. For example, the second and the fourth movements of the "Pastoral Symphony," and Haydn's own illustration of the passage, "softly purling glides through silent glades the limpid brook," in Raphael's song, "Rolling in foaming billows."

Music in its higher forms--I will not say its highest, but those which bring it within the pale of consideration in æsthetics--is without relations of any kind, except those which it bears to the soul of the composer and to that of the hearer. Even words are only the occasion of it, the suggestion. An embroidery of music with words is like the semi-pictorial explanatory addition to the Egyptian temples. The hieroglyphics tell us the story indeed, but if we are near enough to distinguish them, they only mar the effect of the architecture. So if in song the words are for any reason sufficiently salient to attract attention to themselves, they mar the music. In sacred music innumerable foolish and canting verses have become associated with fervor of feeling and sublimity of aspiration because of the music of which they have been made the vehicle. We do not really think of the words. And so in "Don Giovanni," in "Fidelio," we overlook the childishness of the poetry, if it must be called poetry, and regard it only as affording suggestions and occasions for the music.

Modern music was presented under these conditions until about half a century ago, when beauty of form and emotional expression began to be disregarded in favor of finish and brilliancy of execution. This was brought about in a great measure by the mechanical improvement of the pianoforte and the extension of its scale. This improvement and extension were made, it is true, in part to meet the demands of performers; but on the other hand, they made performance possible. I believe that there has been no more pernicious influence upon music than the transformation which the piano-forte has undergone since Beethoven's time, and its diffusion over all the world. I do not refer to the cruelties which it is daily the means of inflicting upon inoffensive families and true lovers of music, but to the effect that it has had upon composition and upon performance. The former it has helped to be at once flashy, dull, intricate, and shallow; the latter it has led to be astonishing. Brilliancy, a crowd of notes, sonority, all without beauty of form or emotional suggestiveness--this is the music which the modern grand piano-forte has brought upon us. Not only piano-forte music, but in a measure all music, has become a brilliant fantasia by Signor Rumblestominski. We do not sit in passive silence to listen to it; we talk, or are tempted to talk, against it; and the praise we give it is not a look of serene joy, with that tinge of sadness which Shakespeare had in mind when he made Jessica say, "I'm never merry when I hear sweet music," but a clapping of the hands and congratulation upon a brilliant triumph. And then we turn aside and go on again with our society gabble. Orchestral leaders and performers are not content unless they have a very full score to "interpret." They must have a big brilliant noise. The pitch has been raised until singers shriek, in order that the tone of the instruments may be brilliant. Our ears must be shot through and through with piercing shafts of sound. The time is quickened until _allegro_ has become _presto_, and _presto_ a maddened, indistinguishable rush. Even Theodore Thomas loses some of the majesty of the final movement of the "Fifth Symphony" by too quick a movement; and in the Trio of the Scherzo he drives the basses into a headlong scramble up and down the scale. When the clear succession of notes becomes indistinguishable, musical form, and with it musical beauty, is lost; and the performance becomes a mere victory over musical difficulties. And this quickening of the time is exactly what should not have taken place. Our orchestras have increased in size and in volume of sound since the days of Mozart and Beethoven. As larger bodies, therefore, their movement should be a little slower to produce the effect which the great composers had in mind. But in our rage for brilliancy we have hastened the movement; as if we should make an elephant gallop like a horse. Moreover we have fallen into the fatal error of making the finish, if not the difficulty of execution, superior to the presentation of beauty in form and in expression.

This condition of musical taste has been accompanied or followed--we cannot surely say as effect from cause--by a withering of the creative musical faculty in all its fairest, highest branches. After Weber's death, which deprived the world of the only musician who promised to be worthy to follow Beethoven, came Schubert and Mendelssohn, neither of them very strong men; the latter decidedly weak, and deficient in creative faculty; the former far more fertile and original. Since their time there has been a blank in the annals of music of the higher kind. The creative faculty seems to be dead. It is not so; for nature is exhaustless, and in his due time the new composer will come. But new conceptions of beautiful musical forms are unknown to the present generation--indeed, were so to the foregoing. There is Schumann; but Schumann is only the strongest and best of the non-creative composers. He writes very elegantly, with harmonies unexceptionable and pleasing; his taste is generally exquisite; his handling of his themes masterly. But to what great end? None. He could not create a melody; and his harmony is plainly contrived, not conceived. All of Schumann's music that I ever heard, from symphony down to piano-forte music, is not worth Beethoven's Sonata in C sharp minor, or Mozart's quartet in C.[7] They have a certain sort of beauty and charm while you are hearing them, but you don't hanker after them; passages from them don't come to you when you are alone with troubled thoughts, and comfort you, hearten you, and build you up, as the remembered strains of Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven do. Simply, they are without real melody: they have only a well manufactured imitation of melody. Such enjoyment as they give is in a great measure intellectual. We admire the composer's skilful musical processes. Hence he is admired by professional musicians. And I remark, in passing, that professional criticism in any art, although it has a certain value, has not valid, determining power, and is not very trustworthy as a guide. It too generally runs on methods, processes, technicalities. If you would learn to paint, listen to the criticisms of a well instructed, capable painter; but if you would know and feel the highest things in art, remain an amateur and study nature and Raphael and Titian and Tintoretto.

[7] No. 6, Breitkopf and Härtel.

As to the other composers who were Schumann's contemporaries, they wrote in a condition of hopeless incapacity, except as to their acquired mastery of their craft. They are ever uncertain themselves what they would be at. Compare them with the real composers. Those men knew they had something to do, and they did it. They felt that they had something to say, and they said it. These are always about doing something; they are ever entangled in some complicated toil of sound, out of which they cannot find their way; they are hanging by the very eyelids upon some discord that they are afraid to resolve; they are always sounding a note of preparation, announcing that they are about to do something, which they never do. Their music is written in the paulo-post-future tense.

Under such circumstances it is not surprising that music, ceasing to be merely beautiful and emotional, has, in its decay, sprouted a fungus and monstrous intellectuality. Wagner's musical figures have become as intricate, and often as ugly, as those of a Chinese puzzle; and the entertainment is to see how they fit each other and the words to which they are adapted. In his orchestral work we have the most masterly instrumental coloring; a knowledge and an elaboration which is unsurpassed, and also uninspired. It is great technical work, and no wonder that professional musicians admire it. But what is its real value? Take, for example, the finale to the overture to the "Meistersinger." It is very impressive materially, and as a work of instrumental art. It becomes tremendous from mere muscular activity and accumulation of physical force. The violins rush frantically up and down the finger-board; the violoncellos are ready to jump over their bridges; the trumpets blow blood out of their eyes; and there is general frenzy. But what is all this hurly-burly about? What are the ideas? Look at them. There are, after all, but three, or it may be four, notes in a chord, and a melody is--well, a melody; an unmistakable sort of thing, one would think, although so hard to define. What is there here of harmony or of melody that would be valuable for its own sake? Strip this music of all its instrumental elaboration, tone down its noisy self-assertion, and look at the bare ideas as they can be played with two hands upon a piano-forte, or with four strings in a quartet, and what are they worth? Would a circle of cultivated musical people sit entranced by them if they were played upon an old harpsichord! No, I take it. And if not, their worth is little.

Instrumentation, and all manner of elaboration--orchestral and choral--is of value only when it enhances and sets forth ideas, melodies, harmonies--in a word, musical forms which in themselves have the value which belongs to beauty and expression. Else, like the gift of tongues without the spirit of love, it is literally sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. There is in some of this work--notably in Wagner's--an evidence of sustaining power which deserves and commands a certain respect. But such sustaining power, so applied, is like figures of caryatides supporting some poor decadent frieze. They bend and strain and keep it up. But why, we are tempted to say to them, do you strain to keep up that poor, commonplace stuff, which would not be looked at if it stood not upon your heads? Let it fall! You are all that keep it from tumbling into a dust-heap and seeming the rubbish that it is. It seems to be a consciousness of their deficiency in melody and in emotional expression which drives such composers of the present day as aim to write in the higher style to make their music "interdependent, logarithmic, differential, integral, and corroborative," and to strive to make up in intellectual elaboration what they lack in inspiration.

This condition of things in music is not to be bettered by endeavor. Genius alone can do that, when brought into contact with the power of appreciating genius. And genius, although conscious of its power, is ever ignorant of its tendency, and never works but for its own ends; while those who hear and understand its utterances do so with no higher purpose than the delight they bring them. When I hear a man talk of doing something to elevate his art, however much I may respect his taste, his acquirements, or his aims, I then begin to doubt, if I have not before doubted, his ability to write a sentence worth reading, to make a picture worth looking at, or a song worth hearing.

RICHARD GRANT WHITE.

SPRING.

Spring gives the order, "Forward, march!" 'Tis borne along the eager line; Breathes through the boughs of rustling larch, And murmurs in the pine.

"March!" At the sound, impatient, springs The mountain rill, with rippling glee, And rolling through the valley, brings Its tribute to the sea.

"March!" and upon each sunny hill Old winter's allies, ice and snow, Start at the music of the rill, And join its onward flow.

"March!" Down among the fibrous roots Of oaks we hear the summons ring. The long-chilled life-blood upward shoots To hail the coming spring.

"March!" and along each narrow neck, Across the plain, and up the steep, The spring tide clears the winter's wreck With its resistless sweep.

Advancing in unbroken lines, New allies rush to join its bands, Till winter, in despair, resigns The sceptre to its hands.

On southern slopes, in quiet glades, And where the brooklets murmuring run, The grass unsheathes its tiny blades To temper in the sun.

Flora unfurls her banner bright Above the field of flashing green, And crocus blooms in lines of light Throw back the sunlight's sheen.

The birds on every budding tree Take up anew the old refrain: The spring has come: rejoice all ye Who breathe its air again.

H. R. H.

DRIFT-WOOD.

THE TRAVELLERS.

May brings the travelling season. Thanks to steam and Cook, we can all find time for a trip to Florida or Labrador, if not to Lapland and Thibet. Travel is a pastime of both sexes, all ages, all sorts and conditions of men. Lord Bateman was a noble lord, a noble lord he was of high degree; and, adds the ballad, "he determined to go abroad, strange countries for to see." Cheek by jowl with Lord Bateman, in the railroad car, is Samuel Shears, Esq., his lordship's tailor, on the same errand.

"Pa, I think we ought to go to Paris," says matronly Mrs. Brood.

"Why do you think that, my dear?" asks paterfamilias.

"Because I do," rejoins the lady, wheeling in a circle of small radius. Impressed by that logic, Brood has his trunks mended, and embarks his family on the first available steamer.

Mrs. B's spring of action is that the Breeds have started, or that the McBrides went last year. Fashion pries us out of our comfortable domesticity, our cozy home-keeping ruts, which we exchange for the miseries of inns and the perils of voyaging; precisely as custom, gathering at length the force of law, "moves" a hundred thousand hapless New Yorkers, more or less, every May, with smash of household goods, cost, loss, hurry, flurry, and worry--they exchange houses as in the children's game everybody changes "chairs" or "corners" to see who will get the worst of it. This is a species of May travelling with all its curses and none of its compensations.

Presently our European voyagers will be sending home the tale of their misadventures. They fell among the London servants--soft and sweet to the face, perfect devils behind your back; stealing all your provisions under pretence of perquisites, and drinking enough beer in a week to last an American a year; whereas, if you yourself so much as send for a glass of ice-water at the hotel, the butler grumbles at the messenger, "Those Americans lap water like dogs!" At Paris our pilgrims fall a prey to landlords who charge the price of new furniture for every microscopic scratch on a chair, besides cheating them out of a thousand francs extra rent, as a parting token, on the ground that the laws require a certain notice of quitting.

A more agreeable theme will be the people our travellers meet. Whoever goes from another American city to New York is struck by the strange faces he sees--phizzes and figures that make Hans Breitmann commonplace and Nast a portrait painter instead of a caricaturist. Could one have suspected such oddities in human shape, such outlandish rigs? The New Yorker going to London is still more surprised at the queer-looking specimens he sees there, surpassing the fancy of Dickens and Cruikshank: plenty of Bagstocks, Peggotys and Skewtons; perfumed old beaux, with enormous gloves, too long in the fingers, and with an eyeglass held muscularly in one eye socket by screwing up the face; and all sorts of people belonging to the last century, and magically coming out of bandboxes a hundred years old.

So, at least, writes Augustus from London; and presently, as if whisked off by an enchanter, we hear of the youth in Naples, "the noisiest city in Europe," he says, where all the people chatter incessantly--"the dirtiest city, too, and one of the most delightful." There is something enviable to us desk-tethered mortals in these wide-striding rovers who one week are in Copenhagen and the next in Constantinople. "Hang it," says Brown, coming down to breakfast in Brussels and finding that Smith has gone, "I meant to bid Smith good-by, and forgot it. But I shall run across him in Smyrna next month, and can do it then."

Before we have digested the Neapolitan missive of Augustus, and its funny account of his fellow voyagers--how the men kissed all their male friends at parting, as women do with us, and, after kissing, ran again to the car windows to blow and throw last kisses--we see the traveller in Toledo, and reeling off his diary to us in some such fashion as this: "Here we find Burgos, formerly the capital of Castile and Leon, showing signs of former greatness, but now fallen to decay. It has a magnificent cathedral, a convent, and a nunnery, in which the people seem to have spent all their money, the rest of the city being mostly in ruins. Next we come to the Escurial, that vast pile, embracing palace, monastery, and cathedral, with burying place for the reigning kings. Leaving Madrid for a few moments, we will look at Toledo. Toledo is one of the old cities of Spain, and was a place of some importance when taken by the Romans, about 200 B.C. It had at one time 200,000 inhabitants; now but 17,000. What struck me so strangely was, why they should build up such a city among these rocky hills, not a tree or shrub to be seen outside the city, and very few inside," etc.

I quite like to read these travellers' letters, with their odd jumpings from city to city and century to century. True, a man might girdle the earth as many times as the Wandering Jew, without reaping a tithe of the instruction that Xavier de Maistre got from his "Voyage Autour de Ma Chambre"; and again, one untravelled, humorous pen made a small Connecticut town more talked of than any other of its size in the United States--I mean, of course, Danbury. Still, the exhilaration of travel, and its habit of observation, do lend freshness to writing. Then the returned traveller has a fund of new ideas for us stay-at-homes, and his story is agreeable provided he does not pronounce his French and German too abominably. He corrects our fancies by his experience. Who does not know Mrs. Norton's "A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers," and has not conjured up an image of "fair Bingen on the Rhine"? "_Fair_ Bingen!" cries Miss Kate contemptuously, when we ask her memory of the place. "Why, Bingen is nothing--not handsome, not picturesque, not poetic, not even clean. In fact, it is the smelliest place on earth, except Cologne." So the traveller modifies our stay-at-home impressions.

Again, we always notice signs of mental growth and widening in our returned travellers. Besides, for a time they are less anxious over details, less overcome by trivial mishaps; they have an agreeable _aplomb_; they bring a certain refreshing atmosphere of leisure to our round of careful routine. One palpable danger of the traveller is becoming a slave to his guide-book, as some opera-goers are to the libretto; he is verifying the assertions of his Murray, when he should be seeing the landscape or the cathedral; he spends the time he has for picture galleries in checking off the catalogue, as if hired to certify that the alleged contents are there. Travellers who see only what the books tell them to see bring us home no facts and opinions of value.

The earth has now been so tracked from pole to equator that the traveller, to gain the world's attention, must see old things with new eyes, or must ferret out new paths and places. Still, for a Stanley and a Cameron mankind has immeasurable wonder; so has it for some tremendous exploring sportsman like Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Cumming, who takes only an ordinary paragraph to describe such an episode as the crunching to death of his gun-bearer on a certain Indian "nullah," adding: "This was a sad termination to what had been a brief but successful _chasse_--my bag during the trip consisting of seven tigers, a panther, and a bear."

As to types of travellers, they have nearly all been drawn--the irascible, the erratic, the English, the _nil admirari_, the enthusiastic, and so on. Travelling is bad for some people, like Jack Peters, who had his cards in Europe printed "Mr. Jacques Petersilli," pretending it to be easier for his European friends to get the hang of that title, of which the "silly" part was all acquired across the sea.

The ex-Reverend Christopher Cheeseman, tutor and philosopher, is a voyager of a sort perhaps destined to be more generally known among us. He visits Europe as often as he can procure his passage and pocket money in return for his valuable services as escort and adviser. He arranges the preliminaries of purchasing the tickets and outfits, but, once afloat, allows little to burden him with anxiety. Aboard ship he is recognized as a good teller of stories, some serious but not truthful, some comic but not truthful, these last being nicely graduated in delicacy from the boudoir to the mess table. Reaching England, he has prayers put up in the established church for the safe arrival of "Christopher Crozier Cheeseman and party"--the humor being that he is only the courier or nominally useful man of the persons who pay for him, and whom he lumps as "party." He studies the peerage attentively, carefully deciphering the mysteries of the coats of arms on the equipages. In England, when visiting the cathedrals, he expresses a great desire to be a monk (probably of the _bon vivant_ sort), and actually pushes his asceticism to the point of attending religious services with great regularity; but at Rome the rogue will do as Romans do, and may be found any Sunday afternoon listening to the band on the Pincio. He likes best to travel as tutor to some ingenuous youth, because it comes handy to leave the lad to fight a duel in France, or gamble in Germany, or fall in love in Switzerland, while the judicious mentor is supplied with funds to take a little diversion on his own account, after his arduous duties. But let us stop at the threshold of this sketch, because it is plainly one for the skilled novelist, rather than the rambling, loitering prattler, to undertake.

* * * * *

SWINDLERS AND DUPES.

The number of people ready to buy $200 watches for $20, and then to find them not worth $10, was made known by a recent exposure of pretended Kansas "lotteries." A like eagerness maintains "gift concerts" and similar swindles. Conducted honestly, they would earn fortunes for their projectors, whose instinct, however, is for a total swindle.

The gift swindle is known by its circular, with its voluble assurances that "ticket-holders can confide in our honor"; that the drawing is to be done from two boxes, a securely blindfolded deacon at one and a real blind girl at the other; that all funds received will "remain inviolably pledged for prizes and donations"; that the result of the drawing of the 9,999 prizes by the 99,990 ticket-holders will be telegraphed the same night to all parts of the United States and to Mexico and Canada, and the prizes distributed the day following; that agents may trust the honesty of the enterprise, "as its founders are men of high standing," and so on.

One trick is the "cash assessment on prizes." The investor is notified that he has drawn a $150 prize, deliverable on the payment of "the usual five per cent. for handling," which sum he will "please forward" to the Grand Atlantic and Great Western Monster Gift Carnival and Bottle Washer's Library Fund Association. The gudgeon protests that there was no such condition on his ticket, but not liking to lose $150 by grudging $7.50, "forwards" this sum, and receives $150 worth of stock in the Seashore Gold-Mining Company, or 3 undivided acres in the Atahualpa Swamp--"the directors of the association having recently decided to invest the receipts for their wards, the ticket-holders, in this splendid property." There really need be no ticket drawing or tickets for this swindle, as people who never heard of the enterprise can be informed of their luck, and will all the more quickly forward their "five per cent."

Some readers may remember B. Sharp & Co.'s fine "gift enterprise," whose drawing was postponed so many times on the plea that "the last drawn numbers are as fortunate as the first," as indeed they were. It begged ticket-holders to "exhibit to your friends and neighbors the many rich presents we have so generously bestowed upon you." The "committee" were engaged in the herculean labors of "drawing and registering tickets at the rate of 6,000 per week, and in packing and expressing prizes"; but alas! "owing to unforeseen expenses we have been put to in purchasing presents for our ticket-holders," this is what happened:

_We are compelled to make an assessment of_ 5 PER CENT. _on all prizes over fifty dollars_ ($50) awarded to them; and in order to expedite the business of the distribution in packing and forwarding the gifts, ticket-holders must within _ten days_ after notification of the value of the gift awarded to them, forward to us the amount of per centage, with directions for the packing and expressing of their gift, or else at the expiration of that time it will be forfeited.

Then there was B. Flat's "National Engineers Gift Enterprise," which with a spice of humor announced that it was controlled by the class of men for whose benefit it was devised--"all engineers." It had as "references" a "State senator" of New York and another of Illinois, a lithographer, an editor, a hardware merchant, and other like distinguished personages, whose callings were proudly set forth, presumably to show that they were not mere adventurers. An enlightened press, if we may believe the circulars, backed up this "association." "Its managers are men of the strictest integrity," said one Milwaukee paper; "We believe they will discharge all their obligations to purchasers of tickets with punctuality and integrity," said a second; "An institution above suspicion, and worthy in every respect of public patronage. The managers we believe to be honest, reliable, and trustworthy," said a third. "The safest investment of the kind in America," said one Chicago paper, unless the circular falsifies; "Considered as a sure success," said a second. One New York paper is quoted as commending the enterprise, and another as thinking that "$30,000 for $2.00 is worth chancing." But when the thing went to pieces, and B. Flat escaped on bail, it was announced that "the swindle had been exposed by the press," as indeed it was.

* * * * *

PEGASUS IN HARNESS.

The muse that in our day quits Parnassus to pay gossiping visits among the pill-kneaders, and to lounge in the haunts of trade, has of late been pressed into service by the guild of beggars. Perceiving, doubtless, that fortunes are got in teas, trousers, and tooth washes by sheer dint of literary advertising, the mendicants too have quaffed the Pierian spring, and now leave their sheets of verses at our doors for the accommodating price of "whatever you choose to give." The rogues have learned wisdom by experience. When a long-winded legislator troubles his fellow Solons with an unwelcome speech, he is sometimes gently rebuked by cries of "Oh, print the rest!" That is what the professional beggars have learned to do. Habitually cut off in their tale of woe at the door sill by an unfeeling "There's nothing for you!" they have learned to print the rest, and now before Dora the doormaid can utter her formula of rejection, a neat circular is in her hand, on which is printed: "Please give this to the lady or gentleman. Will call in an hour."

Such, in fact, was the inscription on a printed page left at the Maison Quilibet this very morning, purporting to be a "copy of verses by a party of mechanics," as indeed one may easily believe that it is, from the internal evidence of such stanzas as these:

For many weeks we work have sought, But work we cannot procure. Sad distress has been our lot, To go from door to door.

May want upon you never frown, Nor in your dwelling come; May Heaven pour its blessings down On every friendly soul.

Lord Jesus, thou hast shed thy blood For thousands such as we; Many despise the poor tradesman's lot, But to Thy Cross I flee.

Suddenly shifting then from poesy to prose, the circular continues:

A BLESSING.--May the blessings of God await you; may the bright sun of glory shine above thy bed; may the gates of plenty, honor, and happiness be ever open to thee; may no sorrow distress thy days, and when the dim curtain of death is closing around thy last sleep, and the lamp of life extinguishing, may it not receive one rude blast to hasten its extinction.

Thus having propitiated the æsthetic feeling as well as the benevolent heart of the householder, the circular proceeds to business by declaring that "the bearers are a party of unemployed tradesmen, who," etc. There is, of course, no resisting the appeal to buy the poem and the benediction; only, when Dora the doormaid is afterward questioned how many unemployed tradesmen formed the party, and she answers, "Only one, ma'am, and he's no tradesman," we look at each other as we do when "The Blind Man's Prayer" is given to us in the street car by some bright-eyed little girl, or some boy who meanwhile munches an apple. "It's my uncle," says the lad, if asked whether he is perhaps, the person alluded to in the lines, "You see before you a poor, blind man," etc.; and I fancy that the literature of mendicancy has now become important enough to furnish a large variety of printed forms, so that the regular customer can choose for himself whether in any particular season he will be a poor blind man, or a lady that has seen better days, or a party of poetical mechanics.

PHILIP QUILIBET.

SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.

THE SURVEY IN CALIFORNIA.

In Lieutenant Wheeler's report of operations on the geographical and geological survey of the Territories west of the 100th meridian during 1876, we find the first explanation of the origin of the name California. The mountainous country of Mexico has three climates through which the traveller passes in going from the sea to the high country, the hot, the temperate, and the cold zones. The Mexicans call them _tierra caliente_, _tierra templada_, and _tierra fria_. They entered the present region of California from Sonora or New Mexico, and on their way passed a lake now called Lake Elizabeth, on the border of the California desert. There a violent west wind blows night and day. It is a real _sirocco_, dry, and so hot as to remind one of a blast from a furnace. The Mexicans accordingly made the country beyond it the fourth in their series of ascending temperatures, and named it _tierra california_, the country hot as a furnace.

This report is one of the most valuable produced by the survey. During the year the great area in California which lies below the level of the sea was examined to ascertain whether it could be filled and maintained as a lake by a canal from the Colorado river, and the decision is in the negative. The depressed area covers about 1,600 square miles in California, and the difference between the rainfall and the evaporation is so small that if the whole Colorado river were poured into the basin, it would cover only 556 square miles of surface, or little more than one-third the basin. Filling would cease at that level for the reason that the whole supply of the river would disappear in vapor. The slope of the Colorado river is extraordinary, 2.13 feet per mile at Stone's Ferry, and 1.21 feet at Camp Mohave, which may be compared with eight inches, the average fall of the Mississippi per mile. At Stone's Ferry the velocity is 3.217 feet per second and the discharge 18,410 cubic feet. Great difficulties stand in the way of the proposed canal, and the engineers do not think the lake, if it could be formed, would have an appreciable effect upon the climate of the surrounding region. The primary object of this survey is to carry the grand triangulation of the continent across the country under its jurisdiction, and to map the surface so as to enable the Government to put the ground properly in market. In addition to these objects a great amount of valuable work is done in geology and natural history.

Prof. Jules Marcou, geologist attached to the survey, points out that the valleys of Santa Clara and Santa Barbara in California may become the site of _true_ artesian oil wells. The ordinary flowing oil well is supposed to obtain the force which lifts its oil above the surface level from confined gases in the earth, but in California the lift will be obtained in precisely the same manner as in the case of artesian wells for water. There are strata of sandstone impregnated with the petroleum, and these strata are lifted up on the mountain sides, so that a well bored at a low point in the valley would be supplied from a reservoir some thousands of feet high. The wells will have to be about three thousand feet deep.

The naturalists of the survey noted many singular phenomena of animal life. On the islands off the coast there is a race of liliputian foxes which is supposed to have been derived from the Gray fox, its small size and perfect fearlessness, together with its insect diet, being due to its confinement to the islands. This animal is so small that even the sheep breeders do not fear it. It lies under the cactus plants for its noonday nap, and to this fact must be due the remarkable circumstance noticed in skinning a number of them. In every instance the interior surface of the hide was perforated by cactus spines, and in one individual the hide was fairly coated within by these spines, some of which had become soft with age. There were so many that a knife could not have pierced the hide without touching the spines!

Another fact developed was that the great dread of the grizzly bear is resulting in his rapid extinction. Strychnine is considered indispensable to the outfit of a California shepherd, and the grizzlies have been killed or forced to the mountains, where they still linger in considerable numbers in the chapparal. It is noticeable that the Rocky mountain grizzly is a tame creature compared with his brother of the Sierra Nevada, who does not hesitate to take the initiative in a combat with man.

* * * * *

A GERMAN SAVANT AMONG THE SIOUX.

Prof. Virchow lately informed the Berlin Anthropological Society that an intrepid young German traveller, Herr von Horn von der Horck, is now (January, 1877) living among the Sioux Indians busily engaged in taking plaster casts for craniological studies. Von der Horck made a journey to the Polar sea last summer, returning by way of Lapland, where he made enormous collections of bones, skulls, and casts. Prof. Virchow says these collections are more complete in Scandinavian ethnology than all that European museums outside of Scandinavia contain. One result of this journey was the discovery of a continuous water way between the Gulf of Bothnia and the Polar sea, though not one that is capable of navigation. A lake, called Wawalo Lampi, lies on the divide between these two bodies of water, and sends a river to each. The northward flowing one is the Ivallo and the southward the Kititui. We are glad to welcome so enthusiastic and thorough a student to this country. It is precisely work like his that is needed in America, and the time for accomplishing it is rapidly passing away. We have too much theory and too little real investigation in American ethnology, and while the men of hypotheses are talking about the origin of the Indians, and endeavoring to trace them to Asiatic stocks through the medium of language, the race is fast losing its purity by intermarriage, as it has already lost the most distinctive of its peculiarities by intercourse with the whites.

* * * * *

BALLOONING FOR AIR CURRENTS.

It is well known to meteorologists that the wind vanes as ordinarily placed near the surface do not give a true indication of the wind. Even when the vane is not over a city or town where the air currents near the earth are affected by the direction of the streets, the varying character of the surface in respect to radiation and absorption of heat will modify them. It is therefore for good reasons that vanes are perched up on high flagstaffs fixed on the roofs of buildings. Some of these are more than a hundred feet above the ground, but recent observations in Paris show that this is not enough. Small India-rubber balloons a foot in diameter and with an ascensional force of about one ounce were sent up, and as they rose slowly, at the rate of twelve feet per second, the effect of the air currents upon them could be easily marked. This was found to be very variable at heights of less than one or two hundred metres (300 to 600 feet). The conclusion was that no observations at lower levels were trustworthy.

* * * * *

THE GREATEST OF RIFLES.

In spite of the familiarity with great cannon which the advances in gun construction of late years have produced, the experiments with the 100-ton gun of the Italian government have not failed to awaken general interest and wonder. It fires a 2,000-pound shell, and a charge of 240 pounds of powder is but a portion of what the gun will bear. These light charges have to be used if the penetrative effects of the gun under unfavorable conditions are to be studied, for with its full charge the weapon simply destroys anything that is put before it. Comparative results cannot be obtained when the only effect is complete ruin. It is somewhat remarkable that an over confident iron founder should have chosen this weapon to test once more the value of _cast_ iron for defensive armor. His idea was that armor could be made so hard by chilling the surface that the shot would be broken to pieces upon it, and experiments with a good iron and guns of small calibre had encouraged the hope. But a 2,000-pound shell and 400 pounds of powder in the 100-ton gun proved anew the unfitness of this material for armor plating. The shot had a velocity of 1,494 feet per second, and it smashed through an 8-inch plate of wrought iron, a wood layer, and a 14-inch plate of chilled cast iron. The ruin produced was greater than in any other experiment, the cast iron breaking into fragments. The power of this gun, the greatest rifle ever made, is such that a solid 22-inch plate of the best English wrought iron is completely penetrated by its shot.

* * * * *

VIENNA BREAD.

A "Vienna bakery" has been one of the most prominent objects at each of the last three international exhibitions, and probably there are many housekeepers who would be glad to know how this delicious bread is made. Unfortunately success does not always follow imitation, and several attempts to introduce the manufacture of this bread have failed, even when Vienna bakers were employed in the work; and yet there is absolutely no secret in the process. One of the American commissioners to the Vienna exhibition, Prof. E. N. Horsford, gave an elaborate report on this bread, and since he came to the conclusion that it _can_ be made elsewhere, we will recount some of the causes upon which in his opinion its excellence depends. These are the mode of baking, the mode of making, the use of fresh "compressed yeast" which produces no acetic acid in fermentation, the use of selected flour, the mode of milling, and the kind of wheat.

_The Baking._--The loaf should be so small that fifteen or twenty minutes will be sufficient to cook it through in an oven which is heated to a temperature of about 500 deg., or the melting point of bismuth. The rolls should not touch each other.

_The Mixing._--The proportions are:

8 pounds of flour, 3 quarts of milk and water, in equal proportions, 3-1-2 ounces of pressed yeast, 1 ounce of salt,

which should make about 380 rolls of the ordinary "Kaiser semmel" size. The milk and water in equal parts are first mixed and allowed to come to the usual temperature of a kitchen, and a small amount of flour is then mixed in it so as to make a thin emulsion. The yeast is added and well mixed in, first crumbling it in the hand, and the pan is left covered for three-quarters of an hour. Then the rest of the flour is slowly mixed in, with thorough kneading. The dough is left for two hours and a half, "at the end of which time it presents a smooth, tenacious, puffed, homogeneous mass, of slightly yellowish color." It is weighed into pound masses (all bread must be sold by weight in Europe), each of which is cut into twelve rolls. The proportions for twelve rolls should therefore be about as follows: 1-4 pound of flour, 1-5 pints milk and water, 1-10 ounce pressed yeast, and 1-32 ounce of salt. The small masses of dough have a thickness of three-quarters of an inch, and the workman, laying the back of his left forefinger in the centre of one, pulls out and folds up the corners of the irregular mass, and pinches them together. The little lump of dough is then reversed upon a smooth board, and after remaining there long enough to finish "rising," they are placed in the hot oven by means of a wooden shovel.

_The Yeast._--Pressed yeast, which is now made in America, is obtained by skimming the froth from mash while it is in active fermentation. The yeast is repeatedly washed with cold water until it settles pure and white in the water. It forms a tenacious mass which is pressed in a bag. It will keep about eight days in summer, and indefinitely if put on ice.

_The Flour._--Only a selected part of the flour is used in Vienna for the manufacture of white bread and rolls, amounting to about forty-five per cent. of the wheat. Precisely the same grades are not produced in the American process of milling, but Dr. Horsford thinks that good, fresh middlings flour will compare favorably with the average Hungarian flour.

_The Milling._--A peculiar mode of milling wheat has grown up in Austria and Hungary, which is almost the antipodes of the old and crude methods of grinding. It is called "high milling," and consists in cracking the wheat by successive operations down to the required size. First the wheat is run through a coarse mill, which takes off the beard at one end and the germ at the other. The resulting powder is then sifted, to separate the grits from the dross and flour, and the central part is again cracked, and the products sifted. Some flour is produced in each of these steps, but the best of the wheat kernel is still in the condition of grits, and the bran and outer coat of the kernel having been separated by the sifting, the pure grits are now cracked once more, and number one flour is produced. All the other flour from these three operations is purified from bran, mixed and ground, making number two flour. In short, the essential characteristic of the Austrian system of milling lies in a gradual process of reducing the wheat, with careful separation of the products, or cleaning, at each step. These products are quite numerous, as the following list shows:

_Class._ _Percentage._

A. { Lady groats. B. 4.25 { Table groats, fine. C. { Table groats, coarse. 0. { Extra imperial flour. 1. 5.53 Extra fine flour. 2. 5.76 Ordinary fine flour. 3. 5.51 _Extra roll or semmel flour._ 4. 6.48 _Common roll or semmel flour._ 5. 7.12 First pollen flour. 6. 13.30 Second pollen flour. 7. 11.85 First dust flour. 8. 9.95 Second dust flour. 9. 4.36 Brown pollen flour. 10. 6.32 Fort flour. F. 8.94 Fine bran. G. 6.87 Coarse bran. H. 3.76 Chicken feed, loss, and dirt. ---- 100

This chicken feed consists of the foreign seeds, the tares, which grow up with the wheat, and which are separated before milling. In the above list only 39 to 40 per cent. of the flour is fit for white bread making.

_The Wheat._--Last of all, in following back the processes of Vienna bread making, we come to one of the essential requirements, a proper kind of wheat. "The virtues of this bread," says Dr. Horsford, "had their origin principally in the Hungarian wheat. These are not due to any particular variety of wheat, or to any marked peculiarity of soil or mode of fertilizing, or to a mean annual temperature characterizing the climate of Hungary as a whole, but to _a peculiarity of climate_, uniting especial dryness of the air during the hot season, from the time of the development of the milk of the berry, through the period of its segregation of the various constituents of the grain, down to its being housed for thrashing." The Hungarian wheat is red, shrivelled, and hard, and it is this hardness that fits it so well to the successive crackings which constitute the process of "high milling."

Vienna bread is white, fine grained, perfectly sweet, aromatic, agreeable without butter, thoroughly baked, and has a tender crust, and Dr. Horsford shows dearly that this combination of excellences is not the result of an art, but of the joint operation of many arts. Its introduction may be made an economical act, for its peculiar succulence makes butter or other condiment unnecessary. It is, however, essentially a _baker's_ bread, for it should be eaten on the day it is made, and is at its best immediately after becoming cold. There is little room for expecting it to replace the kind of bread in vogue in American homes, for that is just as much the result of peculiar circumstances as the product of the Hungarian farm, the Austrian mill, and the Vienna oven. Economy in labor is just as much a consideration in most American families as it is in our workshops, and the semi-weekly or weekly baking is the means by which it is obtained. But American housewives can improve their bread by adopting from the Austrian system the whitening of the yeast by washing, the small loaf, and the rapid baking. The use of selected flour can hardly be obtained unless the millers are offered a market for the darker flour that remains. In Europe that is at hand in the nutritious "black" bread which is everywhere _the_ staff of life, white bread being a luxury taken only with coffee. In fact it is American cake that the Vienna roll comes in competition with, and the habit of making cake almost daily, which obtains in so many American homes, shows that there is time and labor which can be turned to the production of the Vienna bread if desired.

* * * * *

MODERN LOSS IN WARFARE.

The German government has just published the official statistics of the losses in the war with France. The total killed and wounded was 3,919 officers and 60,978 men. The killed and dead of wounds were 1,374 officers and 16,877 men, the proportion being 1 killed to 3.44 wounded among the officers, and 1 to 5 among the men. The infantry lost 57,943, artillery 4,266, and cavalry 2,236. Fighting in line, and at such a distance as modern weapons command, have made the loss by artillery a minimum; 5,084 of the casualties being due to artillery and 55,862 to rifle practice. One noteworthy item is the proportion--12,717 out of the whole number--that were struck about the head and shoulders. This is held to show that the French troops fired high, but it may also be due to the attention now paid to field defences. It is quite possible also that all modern rifles are sighted a trifle too high.

* * * * *

A NEW TREASURY RULE.

The Secretary of the Treasury has lately issued a circular which affects rather uncomfortably the interests of educational, scientific, and literary institutions. They are allowed by law to import books, instruments, and illustrative collections free of duty, and the Secretary now says that the sale or distribution of articles imported in this way will not be allowed. They must be retained in the institutions that bring them into the country. It is quite probable that advantage has sometimes been taken of the law's liberality in this respect, but we fear this circular will really defeat the purpose of the law. Collections of all kinds in colleges and schools are kept up by a system of exchange, which is very necessary to them on account of the small sums of money at their disposal. To break up this system in the case of European specimens would be especially hard, for each institution would then be forced to import single specimens at much greater cost and trouble; or what is more likely, it would be found cheaper to pay the duty; that is, purchase through a dealer. So long as the exchange is confined to the circle of institutions which the law was designed to benefit, we cannot see that its provisions are unduly taken advantage of.

* * * * *

A HYGIENIC SCHOOL.

Dr. Agnew, the celebrated oculist of New York, has indicated his idea of a school for little children, in which health should be a first consideration, as follows: "If we could effect some alterations in the style of school architecture in our school houses, especially the primary departments, it would be a great desideratum. One of the greatest evils at present existing is the method of constructing the school room and of conducting the same. I never could understand why children of the primary age are kept sitting on benches for a large number of hours at a time. School houses ought to be built like the hospital building at the corner of Lexington avenue and Forty-second street, used for cripples, where there is in the upper story a large room, called the solarium, which is in fact a large play room, exposed to the sun, where these little ones are kept the greater part of the time. The upper story of the school houses should be so constructed; and children should be encouraged to bring their toys and playthings with them; and then, instead of changing the age of admission from four years, it might be kept as it is; and instead of shortening the hours of attendance, lengthen them. Of course it should be taken for granted that the school house is constructed for the accommodation of the poor children, and in this light it would be better that such children should spend most of the day in school houses having good sanitary conditions, rather than, as they now do, in tenement houses. Thus you would have these primary schools with plenty of air and light, which you can get in the upper story, and children would be glad to come early, and remain until three or four o'clock, or even later in the afternoon."

* * * * *

MICROSCOPIC COMPARISON OF BLOOD CORPUSCLES.

Dr. J. G. Richardson of Philadelphia, whose views upon the subject of proving blood stains by the use of the microscope have been described in this Miscellany, has lately prepared slides for the microscope so as to show blood corpuscles from two different animals on the same field. He did this by flowing two drops of blood down the slide, and nearly in contact. Dr. C. L. Mees has modified this proceeding. He spreads the blood by Johnston's method, which is to touch a drop of blood to the accurately ground edge of a slide, and then draw it gently over the face of the other slide, leaving a beautifully spread film. In this way one kind of blood is spread upon the slide, and another on the cover. When dry, one half of each is carefully scraped off with a smoothly sharpened knife, and the cover inverted upon the slide in such position as to bring the remaining portions of the film into apposition. When thus prepared the magnified image can be photographed.

* * * * *

THE SUMMER SCIENTIFIC SCHOOLS.

The Peabody Academy of Science at Salem, Massachusetts, will open the second session of its summer school of biology July 6, the course to continue for six weeks. Four days in each week will be given to lectures and laboratory work, and one day to a dredging expedition. Entomology, together with spiders, crustacea, and vertebrate anatomy, will be the especial subjects of study this year, and as usual the advantages enjoyed by this institution for studying marine zoology will be fully utilized. Dr. A. S. Packard, assisted by Messrs. Emerton and Kingsley, will have charge of zoölogy, Mr. Robinson of botany, Rev. Mr. Bolles of microscopy, and Mr. Cooke of the dredging parties. Fees, $15, or for lectures only, $5. Board $5 to $7 weekly. Application should be made to Dr. Packard.

A four weeks' school will be opened at the State normal school, West Chester, Pennsylvania, beginning July 11. Zoölogy and botany will be taught by Prof. M. W. Harrington, geology and physiological chemistry by Mr. V. C. Vaughan, and mineralogy by George G. Groff, all these gentlemen being connected with the University of Michigan. Elocution and industrial drawing will also be taught. Fees are for board and tuition $30, and tuition alone $12. Apply to Mr. George L. Maris, principal.

Scientific excursions seem to be the order of the day. Mr. Woodruff of Detroit has planned one to make the tour of the world; and Mr. J. B. Steere of Michigan university, who spent several years in a journey of scientific character, says: "The expedition will probably leave New York in October or November next, going directly to the mouth of the Amazon, where some time will be spent in making collections in natural history. The island of Marajo will be the principal field for this work. Rio Janeiro will probably be called in at, on the way to the Straits of Magellan, which will be reached in January or February (the summer season there), and a stay will be made for the purpose of collecting. The expedition will then make its way northwest, cruising among several of the rarely visited groups of islands in the central Pacific, where there is every opportunity for making large and valuable collections of sea shells and corals as well as of the myriads of other and rarer things brought up by the dredge. Some stay will probably be made in New Guinea; but the next great object of interest will be the island of Borneo. It is supposed that the northeast and central part of this great island, which are the parts still unknown, can be best reached through the assistance of the Dutch traders at Macassar on the island of Celebes, where the expedition will touch on its way. It seems probable that entering from the east side, with the proper guides and interpreters, the interior of the island can be reached and explored, and perhaps a party may be able to reach the west coast. Borneo is less known than Central Africa, and there is a grand opportunity here for Americans to solve the great problem of its interior lakes and plateaus. A journey through an unexplored country like this cannot fail also to give opportunity for collecting many new species of animals and plants. From Borneo the expedition will make its way to the Philippine islands, where there is great room still for discovery, not only in natural history, but also in fixing the geographical knowledge of the islands, which is at present very faulty. Several of the larger islands of the group are entirely unknown in respect to their animal and vegetable life. From the Philippines the expedition will go to the island of Formosa, off the coast of China. This island is rich in objects of interest to the naturalist, and the east and central parts of the island are unknown. There are Chinese traders who visit the west coast for the purpose of trade with the natives, and through their help there is no doubt that much new work can be done in that locality. The expedition will then visit Canton, and some others of the coast towns of China, and begin its return voyage by way of Singapore, which is a depot for all that is rare and curious in the East. Ceylon will then be touched at, and the expedition will pass through the Red sea and Suez canal. It is intended to spend some time in the Mediterranean in visiting various places of interest, and to return home by way of England. The voyage is expected to occupy two years' time, and to cost students $2,500 per year, this sum paying costs of expeditions inland and everything except personal expenses, clothing, etc. All the collections made will belong to those who make them." This plan seems to follow about the same line as Mr. Steere's own journey, and it would certainly be a great advantage to the excursionists to be under the guidance of an explorer who has so lately been over the ground. We believe the company is nearly completed.

A similar trip is proposed in France, where a society supported by the liberality of M. Bischofsheim, the well known banker, has been formed for the purpose of encouraging periodical voyages. The travellers will be scientific men, Dwuyn l'Lhuys being at their head, and as in the American expedition, the vessel will be commanded by a naval officer. The first voyage will be from Marseilles, and will occupy less than a year, the line of travel being to America and India.

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THE WAGES VALUE OF STEAM POWER.

Prof. Leone Levi, in a lecture to workingmen on "Work and Wages," estimated the amount of capital required to carry on some of the industries in Great Britain. There are 20,000,000 acres of land cultivated, which at £8 is £160,000,000. The cotton trade requires £80,000,000, wool trade £30,000,000, iron trade £30,000,000, merchant marine £70,000,000; railways have £600,000,000 invested in them, and the waterworks, gasworks, docks, and other undertakings all call for similar vast sums. Construction may be considered as the fixation of work, and here we have about a thousand million pounds worth of fixed labor. Labor in use deals with figures and values that are quite as large. The annual industrial production of France is £480,000,000, and of this £200,000,000 is labor, the remainder being _called_ material, though if the items of its cost were ascertained, current labor would be found to make up a great portion of that sum also.

But taking French manufactures as they are reported, we can obtain from them an estimate of the value of machines. The first steam engine was introduced into that country by the city of Paris in 1789, the year of revolution. At that time the cost of labor in manufactures was 60 per cent. and of material 40 per cent. of the whole cost. On this basis the £280,000,000 worth of material used now would require £420,000,000 of labor to work it up. The present industrial population of France is 8,400,000, though all are not fully effective, and on the old basis this would have to be increased to 17,640,000 persons. The other divisions of population, tradesmen, etc., would also increase, and the result is finally apparent that France is not large enough to contain and raise food for the people that would be needed to carry on the modern business on the old methods. The _man_ power of the steam machinery introduced into the industries is estimated at 31,500,000, and as it replaces £220,000,000 worth of labor, we may reckon the wages of a steam man power at £7, or $35, per year, exclusive of food (fuel) and lodging.

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THE NEGRO'S COLOR.

The chemical character of the coloring matter in the negro's skin has been investigated by Dr. F. P. Floyd, in the laboratory of the University of Virginia. Strips of skin were well washed with water and alcohol, in order to remove fatty matter, and then cautiously scraped with a blunt scalpel, to loosen up the pigment granules. This must be carefully done, for an examination of the scraped skin shows that the whole substance of the cuticular tissue may easily be broken up and mingled with the pigment, which cannot then be obtained pure. But by selecting the most strongly colored parts and treating them carefully, the following points were established: The coloring matter is insoluble in water, alcohol, and ether. It is also unaffected by dilute acids or dilute solutions of alkali. The strong acids, even concentrated nitric acid, attack it but slowly. Chlorine destroys it especially in presence of alkali. Heated for some time with a strong solution of sodium hydrate, it is gradually dissolved, and from the diluted solution it may be partially precipitated on neutralization with an acid. The ash of the negro skin gave twice as much ash as the white skin, or 2.4 per cent. against 1.15 per cent. Analyses of the ash for iron showed 2.28 per cent. of metallic iron in the black and 1.21 per cent. in the white skin. These facts confirm the general impression that the color of the negro's skin is nearly allied to the "melanin," or black pigment of the choroid coat in the eye. Both seem to be products of alteration of the blood.

This pigment appears to be similar to or identical with the black coloring matter of feathers. When perfectly white hair or feathers are heated gently with dilute sulphuric acid, they dissolve completely, though slowly. Black or brown feathers leave an insoluble residue. This subject was lately presented to the London Chemical Society by Messrs. W. R. Hodgkinson and H. C. Sorby. They took feathers of the English rook, which contain one per cent. of pigment, and having cut the vanes from the central rib, cleaned them from fat by treatment with alcoholic ammonia. Warm dilute sulphuric acid was then applied, until it was no longer colored, and the residue was treated with dilute hydrochloric acid and boiling alcohol and ether. Black pigment is usually found in black, brown, and dark red hair, but in the latter it is associated with a brown pigment that is soluble in dilute sulphuric acid.

Experiments were made by Dr. Floyd to determine the position of the pigment in the negro's skin. Many Southern physicians are under the impression that a blister upon the black skin is white, or nearly so. But this was disproved by experiment, and the microscope showed that the granules were dispersed through the whole of the cuticle, though less dense at the surface than in the deeper tissues. In fact Dr. Floyd thinks that the pigment originates in the outer layer of true skin, "its production being probably connected with the loss of vitality of the cells, and that it accompanies those cells all the way to the surface, where it is mechanically removed by desquamation." The alteration of the red blood corpuscles to black pigment may be due to feeble circulation in the superficial capillaries. The diseases of negroes, and their extreme sensitiveness to low temperatures, sustain this view.

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The jurisdiction of London extends over 756 square miles; its area embraces 78,000 acres. It contains 4,000,000 of inhabitants, increasing at the rate of 75,000 a year, of various nationalities.

The rapidity of sewing machine work, even when not working beyond an ordinary manufacturing speed, is seen in the manufacture of 110 three-bushel sacks per hour, containing 35,640 stitches, or close on 600 per minute.

The pine woods of Michigan are said to contain in standing trees--

In Eastern Michigan 13,500,000,000 feet. In Western Michigan 11,500,000,000 " In Upper Peninsular 19,500,000,000 " -------------- Total 44,500,000,000

A manufacturer lately sued the city of Paris for about $15,000 on the ground that the water supplied by the new works was so good that he could not make gelatine, and his business was therefore ruined! The suit was dismissed with costs.

A paste made of fifty-one parts of finely shaved stearine, melted in seventy-two parts of previously warmed oil of turpentine, will restore the polish to furniture. When cool rub on with a woollen rag, and when dry rub thoroughly with a clean dry cloth.

This winter is said to have been the coldest known in Russia for 153 years! In St. Petersburg the thermometer has been -32 deg. Reaumur, or 40 deg. below zero, Fahrenheit. Drivers have frozen in their seats, and the police kept large fires burning in the streets at night.

The difference between exploding powder under water and above ground is shown in the relative effect of 50,000 pounds of giant powder fired in the great Hell Gate blast, and the small quantity of 370 pounds of black powder which is the service charge of the 80-ton cannon at Shoebury, England. The former made but little shock or sound. The latter has shaken houses to pieces by the force of the concussion wave produced in the air. The first blood shed by the gun was that of a half dozen sea gulls. A canister shot, containing 2,170 balls, burst just in front of a large flock of them.

The United States issued 15,911 patents in 1876, and received 22,408 applications.

Important works in construction and other branches of engineering are now sometimes continued at night by means of the electric light. The buildings for the French international exhibition are pushed in this way, and the method is used at the Taybridge Works and others in England.

Among the interesting facts which have been developed by the careful study of ants is the existence of piracy among them. Mr. McCook has noticed that ants descending from trees with abdomens full of honey dew were waited for by workers from the hill, seeking food, and compelled to disgorge their accumulations. If this was not done willingly, force was used.

The walrus has a singular mode of adapting his attack upon enemies to the circumstances in which he is placed. They can shiver ice from four to six inches thick by rising from below and striking it with their huge heads. An exploring party near Novaya Zemla, while walking over a field of new ice, noticed a herd of walruses following them under the ice. They presently began operations, and broke the field in pieces on all sides of the party, which barely escaped by running for the main pack ice near by.

Oxford university, England, has a revenue of about $2,000,000 yearly, 43 professors, 160 lecturers and tutors, 2,400 undergraduates (1875), of whom 24 per cent. hold scholarships worth from $150 to $500 yearly. Seventy-five per cent. of these read for honors as follows: 33 per cent. for the school of Literæ Humaniores (philosophy, classical history, and philology), 20 per cent. for the school of modern history, 17 per cent. theology, 15 per cent. law, 7 per cent. mathematics, and 6.5 per cent. physical science. There are 360 fellows, of whom 140 are resident and engaged in teaching. The average endowment of a fellowship is $1,250. The average number of pupils to one professor or teacher is in Literæ Humaniores 5 1-2; in mathematics 6, in physical science 7, in modern history 5, in law 15 1-2.

Prof. von Zech lately mingled politics and science in a paper read before the Wurtemburg Anthropological Society. He compared the returns of a recent election with the known ethnological characteristics of the kingdom of Wurtemburg, and found that in districts where light hair and eyes predominated the government won the election. The black-haired and black-eyed portions of the population seemed to favor democracy and social reform, and the Ultramontanes form a medium class so far as complexion is concerned.

The misfortunes of the deaf and dumb are greatly lessened by the substitution of lip-reading for other modes of conversation. The words are read from the movement of the lips so that the deaf can join in an ordinary conversation. In beginning the instruction the lips must be moved slowly, but in time the pupil gains such facility that the words of a public speaker can be taken as well by a deaf person in the audience as by any other. Deaf mutes are frequently very intelligent, and it may be that the "kindergarten" system, which is a necessity in their case, has something to do with their proficiency. In the Clark Institute children are received at the age of five years, and the first year's instruction consists in laying sticks and rings in designs imitated from the teacher. Weaving, card pricking, and drawing are also taught. From this beginning the pupil's development goes on through physical studies, such as zoölogy, botany, physiology, and geography. After these come higher mathematics, geology, chemistry, history, psychology, etc.

CURRENT LITERATURE.

It would seem, or rather it would have seemed, almost impossible to present Shakespeare in any new light, so much has been written by the wise and the foolish, the learned and the ignorant, the bright and the dull, the competent and the incompetent, upon that marvellous man. But Mr. George Wilkes has managed to write a goodly octavo which, while it contains nothing absolutely new upon this subject, presents it as a whole in a fresh aspect.[8] Mr. Wilkes says, in his brief preface, a few words which seem to be candid and truly modest. Rigorous criticism, he tells us, will not be unwelcome, not because he has any vain confidence in his own views, but "because they are put forward in good faith in order to elicit truth concerning a genius who is the richest inheritance of the intellectual world." He adds that he presents his book rather as a series of inquiries than as dogmatic doctrine, and that even if his views are controverted, he must be a gainer, "for it can never be a true source of mortification to relinquish opinions in favor of those which are