Chapter X (2)

Mr. Gladstone has a large family. The eldest son has for some time been in Parliament, but has established no reputation for notable capacity, and it is said that, with the exception of one of his younger brothers, none of the family are remarkable in this respect. Mrs. Gladstone is a person of great kindness of heart and untiring benevolence. She is full of schemes for doing good: hospitals, convalescent institutions, etc. find in her an ever-ready friend, to the neglect, it is whispered, of her domestic duties. There is an amusing story told of how some time ago a few guests arrived at her house in response to an invitation to dinner. They waited in vain for the rest of the party, for whose delay their hostess was at a loss to account. At length she turned aside and opened her blotting-book, which quickly revealed the cause of the guests' non-appearance--the invitations were lying there. They had been written, but never sent.

In London the prime minister--who has an indifferent official residence, which he and his family have occasionally occupied, in Downing street--lives in Carlton-House Terrace. It is a beautiful house, but not by any means well adapted for party-giving, for it is so constructed that circulation is almost impossible. If you once get into a room, you must stay there; whereas half the charm of Lady Palmerston's famous parties at Cambridge House was the free circulation the rooms afforded, enabling you to pass right round a quadrangle, and thus easily find an acquaintance or get away from a bore. Mr. Gladstone's house has a fine double staircase, and it will derive interest in after days from the circumstance that, standing at the head, Lord Russell took leave of the party he had led, and pointed to his then host as his successor.

Carlton-House Terrace is in many respects the most delightful situation in London, for, whilst extremely central, it is very quiet. It stands between Pall Mall and St. James's Park. One side faces a strip of beautifully kept garden, which lies between the terrace and the row of palaces formed by the Senior United Service, Athenaeum, Travelers' and Carlton Clubs. The other side has a charming prospect over St. James's Park. In summer this is really lovely, for all ugly objects are obscured by the foliage, amid which glimpses are obtained of the pinnacles and fretted towers of the palace of Parliament on the one hand, and those of its venerable neighbor, the majestic abbey, on the other. It was here that Bunsen passed his London days, and the reader of his memoirs will remember frequent references to the charms of his house. It may well be imagined how great a boon it is to the toil-worn minister to find himself, as it were, in a garden, with only the distant roar, like that of the sea, to remind him as he sits in his study that five minutes walk across that pleasant park will bring him to Downing street, and three more to the Treasury bench in the House of Commons.

In the country most of his time is spent at Hawarden Castle in Flintshire, about six hours from London. This is the ancestral seat of Mrs. Gladstone's brother, Sir Stephen Glynne, lord lieutenant of the county, whose family have held this property for centuries. Sir Stephen is a very shy man of retired habits. By a family arrangement his house is the country abode of his sister and brother-in-law.

In earlier life, Sir Stephen and his two brothers-in-law, Mr. Gladstone and Lord Lyttelton, formed an unfortunately favorable estimate of certain mines, into which much of the fortune of Sir Stephen and his sisters went, and from which it never came out again. There was one other brother, the late rector of Hawarden. He died about a year ago, and Mr. Gladstone's second son, Stephen, was appointed his successor. The living, in the gift of Sir Stephen, is very valuable. Mr. Glynne, the clergyman, died without a son, and the title will therefore on Sir Stephen's death be extinct. As matters now stand, it may be presumed that Mr. W.H. Gladstone, the prime minister's eldest son, will succeed to the Hawarden estates.

Mr. Gladstone has himself recently increased the family interest around Hawarden by purchase. About five years ago the state of his finances were the talk of the town, and a number of people, especially of the Conservative party, avowed themselves in a position to assert from personal knowledge that he was ruined. There was no just ground for such a statement, and like so many other absurd rumors it died out. None of Mr. Gladstone's daughters are married, nor is his eldest son.

WHITSUNTIDE AMONG THE MENNISTS.

Certain great festivals of the Christian Church which were ignored by the Puritans and Quakers have always continued in high repute among the Pennsylvania Germans. Christmas, Easter, Whitsuntide and Ascension Day are celebrated not only in the Lutheran, the Reformed or Calvinistic and the Moravian churches, but among the descendants of those Swiss Anabaptists who, being driven from their homes by religious persecution, finally took shelter in that part of the land of Penn now called Lancaster county, these quiet sectarians being known among us by the names of Mennists and Amish (pronounced Menneests and Ommish).

The movable feast of Whitsunday or Pentecost, which occurs on the seventh Sunday after Easter, is a solemn occasion in the Mennonite meetings, for at this time is held one of the great semi-annual observances of bread-breaking and feet-washing. The ensuing day, Whitmonday, is a great secular festival. All the spring bonnets are then in readiness for the "Dutch" girls. The young farmer of eighteen or more, whose father has granted his heart's desire in the form of a buggy, or who has otherwise attained to that summit of rural felicity, harnesses and attaches to it one of the horses with which the farm is so well supplied, and takes his girl into the county-town. Here they walk the streets, partake of simple refreshments, meet their acquaintances or talk with them in the tavern parlor. Sometimes they visit a circus or menagerie whose managers have made a timely visit to our inland city.

On the ensuing day, Tuesday, while the Dutch boys are working the corn, you may perchance hear their father's voice raised to a higher pitch than usual, which circumstance he explains when he comes in sight, thus: "The boys is sleepy to-day. Yesterday was Whissuntide, you know. They got home late." For custom forbids their leaving the girl of their choice before the small hours, and allows them, nevertheless, no remission from labor on the succeeding day.

The people, however, whose religious services I am about to describe impose upon their members a stricter rule of earlier hours, etc. They are called New (or Reformed) Mennists.

It was on Whitsunday, May 31, 1868, that I paid a visit to one of our New Mennist meeting-houses, and found before nine o'clock in the morning that the services had already begun. The first apartment we entered was a sort of tiring-room, where along the walls hung the shawls and black sun-bonnets of the sisters. Here were also traveling-bags, and a cradle stood ready to receive one or more of the babies that were in attendance. In the adjoining room were heard the familiar notes of "Old Hundred," and "Du bist der Weg" was sung pleasantly without any instrumental accompaniment.

When we entered the whitewashed apartment in which the meeting had assembled I saw upon a small platform at the farther end five men, who were apparently preachers or elders. At the same end of the room were seated the soberly clad members of the sect--the men on one side of the apartment, with their broad-brimmed hats removed; on the other side the sisters, with their extremely plain book-muslin caps and otherwise sober attire.

A portion of the services was in English. Dr. ----, a practitioner of medicine and a bishop in this Church, spoke extemporaneously in our language. He gave a long account of the ordinances of the Jewish Church, and then of those which the "Lord Jesus instituted in the place of these--the baptism that was celebrated a week ago, and this Lord's Supper, this feet-washing, this kiss of peace, this manner of visiting offenders;" the last phrase being an allusion to the severe rule which forbids the New or Reformed Mennists to eat, etc. with those excommunicated by the society.

The Mennists, as I understand, hold in general those doctrines that are considered evangelical. The services were much prolonged, and the congregation became restless. But at length, while a younger brother was speaking in "Dutch" or German, there came in another bearing a parcel wrapped in a white cloth. He was followed by one carrying something tied in a blue-and-white cloth, which being opened disclosed a demijohn. The white parcel was received by the preacher upon the desk, and when opened showed a great loaf of our beautiful Lancaster county bread divided into slices. After prayer several preachers took slices, and passing around among the congregation broke off bits which they gave to the communicants. The wine in the demijohn was then poured into small, bright tin cups, like milkmen's measures, and was distributed among the members. A hymn in the German language was sung, two lines at a time, while the wine was handed round.

After these services were concluded feet-washing began by reading the passage from the 13th chapter of John on the subject, and this was followed by many remarks. I observed that one elderly brother, speaking in a mournful tone and in our Dutch manner, quoted, "Nimmermehr soll du mein Fees wasche" ("Thou shalt never wash my feet"). These discourses were followed by the announcement, "Next Sunday there will be bread-breaking at Landisville."

Now arose a confusion from carrying out benches, from arranging others in two long rows facing each other, etc. The two principal preachers were seen disencumbered of their coats, much animated conversation began, and feet-washing did not seem to be observed with so much seriousness as the Supper. I took a seat near the end of two long benches which were arranged to face each other, and on which sat some of the brethren whose feet were to be washed by one of the preachers. Common unpainted tubs containing water were brought in by two men. Dr. ----, the bishop already mentioned, had a great piece of white linen tied around his waist. He passed along between the two rows of men as they sat facing each other, bearing his tub alternately from a brother in one row to one in the other, so that both rows were finished at about the same time. Quietly the men took off their shoes and stockings. They did not put their feet forward much. As Dr. ---- came to each participant he set his tub down before him, washed his feet a little, wiped them on the long white apron or towel, then shook hands with him and kissed him. He thus ministered to thirty persons, a somewhat laborious undertaking, but his powerful frame was suited to the exertion. The same water and the same towel served for all.

Meantime, the sisters, in another part of the room, were arranged in smaller companies on benches placed in a similar manner. I said to a sister, "Do the preachers wash the sisters' feet?"

"Oh no," she answered: "the sisters does it."

Some of the sisters were very friendly, and not unwilling to converse. One said, "One sister washes as many as she is pretty well able: it's hard on the back."

"And does she have a towel?" said I.

"She girds a towel, and then she washes and wipes them, and gives them a kiss."

"Do you all have your feet washed?" I inquired further.

"No, not those that have any weakness that prevents."

"And will all these brothers have their feet washed?"

"All that communes."

"And do not all commune?"

"Yes, without they feel that they have something against another. Now if I feel that I have something against her--placing her hand upon a sister.

"I understand," interrupted I. "'If thou bring thy gift to the altar--' And how many," I continued, "will there be in such a meeting as this that will not commune? Will there be half a dozen?"

"Oh yes; but by another year all will likely be right, and then they will commune. Now, I did not commune nor have my feet washed."

"Why not?" said I.

"Why, I felt at this time such confusion of mind, as if the Enemy was against me--"

"Well, it was not anything against a brother or sister?"

"No, I count them all ahead of me: I count myself the poorest member."

At the conclusion of the feet-washing a hymn was sung. Among those who had their feet washed was a young man apparently about twenty-two, and who looked full of fun. It seems that even such may be in membership with so strict a sect. It was about one o'clock when the meeting ended, having been in session four hours and a half.

The great simplicity of the surroundings on this occasion may lead the reader to suppose that the congregation was poor. It was, however, composed in a great measure of some of the thriftiest farmers in one of the richest upland sections of the United States.

Some time after attending this meeting I called upon an aged Amish man to converse with him upon their religious society, etc. The Amish are another branch of the Mennonites, and those among us are likewise descendants of Swiss refugees. They are the most primitive of the three divisions of the sect, preserving the use of the Dutch or German language not only in their religious meetings, but almost entirely in their own families.

I mentioned to this aged man the feet-washing that I had attended, and told how Dr. ----, the bishop, had washed the feet of the other brethren.

"Did he wash them all?" said my Amish acquaintance.

"Yes, all that were assigned to him. How is it among you?"

"They wash each other's, every two and two. If he washes them all, he puts himself in Christ's place. _He_ says, 'Wash each other's feet.'"

This, I am also informed, is the rule among the third division, the Old Mennists, the most numerous branch of these remarkable people.

P.E.G.

THE RAW AMERICAN.

London at present abounds in Americans on their way to the Vienna Exposition. Many of them are commissioners from various States. Some have lands to sell or other financial axes to grind. Of such the Langham Hotel is full. The Langham is the nearest approach to an American hotel in London. There, though not a guest, you may pass in and out without explaining to the hall-porter who you are, what you are, where you come from or what you want: you may there enter and retire without giving your pedigree, naturalization papers or a certificate of good character. At other English hotels something analogous to this is commonly required.

We, who have been in England a full year, look down with an air of superiority on the raw, the newly-arrived American. We are quite English. We have worn out our American clothes. We have on English hats with tightly-curled rims and English stub-toed boots. We know the intricacies of London street navigation, and Islington, Blackfriars, Camden Town, Hackney, the "Surrey Side," Piccadilly, Regent and Oxford streets, the Strand and Fleet street, are all mapped out distinctly in our mind's eye. We are skilled in English money, and no longer pass off half crowns for two-shilling pieces. We are real Anglo-Americans.

But the raw American, only arrived a week, is in a maze, a confusion, a hurry. He is excited and mystified. He tries to appear cool and unconcerned, and is simply ridiculous. His cards, bearing his name, title and official status, he distributes as freely as doth the winter wind the snow-flakes. Inquire at the Langham office for Mr. Smith, and you find he has blossomed into General Smith.

He is always partaking or about to partake of official dinners. He feels that the eyes of all England are upon him. He is dressed _à la_ bandbox--hat immaculate in its pristine gloss, white cravat, umbrella of the slimmest encased in silken wrapper. A speck of mud on his boots would tarnish the national honor. Commonly, he is taken for a head-butler. He drinks much stout. He eats a whitebait dinner before being forty-eight hours in London, and tells of it. All this makes him feel English.

You meet him. He is overjoyed. He would talk of everything--your mutual experience in America, his sensations and impressions since arriving in England. He talks intelligibly of nothing. His brain is a mere rag-bag, shreddy, confused, parti-colored. Thus he empties it: "Passage over rough;" "London wonderful;" "Dined with the earl of ---- yesterday;" "Dine with Sir ---- to-day;" "To the Tower;" "Westminster;" "New York growing;" "Saint Paul's"--going, going, gone! and he shakes hands with you, and is off at a Broadway gait straight toward the East End of London for his hotel, which lies at the West End.

In reality, the man is not in his right mind. He is undergoing the mental acclimatization fever. Should he stay in London for three months, he might recover and begin to find out where he is. But six months hence he will have returned to America, fancying he has seen London, Paris, Rome, Geneva, Vienna, and whatever other places his body has been hurried through, not his mind; for that, in the excitement and rapidity of his flight, has streamed behind him like the tail of a comet, light, attenuated, vapory, catching nothing, absorbing nothing.

Occasionally this fever takes an abusive phase. He finds in England nothing to like, nothing to admire. Sometimes he wishes immediately to revolutionize the government. He is incensed at the cost of royalty. He sees on every side indications of political upheaval. Or he becomes culinarily disgusted. Because there are no buckwheat cakes, no codfish cakes, no hot bread, no pork and beans, no mammoth oysters, stewed, fried and roasted, he can find nothing fit to eat. The English cannot cook. Because he can find no noisy, clattering, dish-smashing restaurant, full of acrobatic waiters racing and balancing under immense piles of plates, and shouting jargon untranslatable, unintelligible and unpronounceable down into the lower kitchen, he cannot, cannot eat.

PRENTICE MULFORD.

FAREWELL.

The occasion commemorated in the following verses--one of those festive meetings with which tender-hearted Philadelphians are wont to brace themselves up for sorrowful partings--called forth expressions of deep regret and cordial good wishes, in which many of our readers, we doubt not, will readily join:

If from my quivering lips in vain
The faltering accents strove to flow,
It was because my heart's deep pain
Bade tears be swift and utterance slow;
For in that moment rose the ghosts
Of pleasant hours in bygone years;
And your kind faces, O my hosts!
Showed blurred and dimly through my tears.

I could not tell you of the pride
That thrilled me in that parting hour:
Grief held command all undenied,
And only o'er my speech had power.
I found no words to tell the thoughts
That strove for utterance in my brain:
With gratitude my soul was fraught,
And yet I only spoke of pain.

O friends! 'tis you, and such as you,
That make this parting hard to bear!
Pass all things else my past life knew:
I scarcely heed--I do not care.
I lose in you the dearest part
Of pleasant time that here now ends:
Hand parts from hand, _not_ heart from heart,
And I must leave you, O my friends!

What can the future's fairest hours
Bring me to recompense for these?
Acquaintances spring like the flowers--
Friends are slow growth, like forest trees.
Come hope or gladness, what there will--
Days bright as sunshine after rain--
The past gave life's best blessings still:
We'll find no friends like these again.

I leave you in the dear old home
That once was mine--now mine no more:
Henceforth a stranger I must come
To haunts so well beloved of yore;
Yet if your faces turn to mine
The kindly smile I'm wont to see,
Not all, not all I must resign--
My lost home's light still shines for me!

Whatever chance or change be mine
In other climes, 'neath foreign skies,
Your love, your kindness, I shall hold
Dearest amid dear memories.
O eyes grown dim with falling tears!
O lips where Sorrow lays her spell!
The saddest task of all life's years
Is yours--to look and say farewell!

LUCY H. HOOPER.
AUGUSTIN'S, April 7, 1873.

NOTES.

Between the careers of Cavour and Thiers no sound parallel can easily be traced, but in their characters--or rather in their diplomatic methods and arts--there would seem to be some curious and almost ludicrous points of resemblance, if we may accept as true a sketch of the great Italian statesman made by M. Plattel, the author of "Causeries Franco-Italiennes," fifteen years ago. M. Plattel, who wrote from close personal observation, at that time described Count Cavour as being physically "M. Thiers magnified;" or, if you prefer, M. Thiers is the count viewed through the big end of an opera-glass. The count, says M. Plattel, "has the spectacles, and even a similar expression of finesse. When things take a serious turn, the count puts both hands in his pockets; and if you see him do that, expect to hear this threat: 'If you do not pass this bill, _signori deputati_, I consider you incapable of longer managing the affairs of the country: I have the honor of bidding you good-evening.' For (and this is a strange peculiarity) this first minister is never steadier than when in danger of falling; and his grand oratorical, or rather ministerial, figure of speech is to seize his hat and his cane, whereupon the chamber rises and begs M. de Cavour to sit down. M. de Cavour lets them plead a while, and then--he sits down again! Reading his speeches now in Paris, I can fancy the count with his hat by his side and his hand on the door-knob. Heaven knows how many times that comedy-proverb of Musset called 'A door must either be open or shut,' has been gravely played by the Sardinian Parliament and the prime minister!" It is with a very droll effect that a French paper has revived this curious description, _à propos_ of the perpetual repetition of the drama played by the French Assembly and the French president, in which the constant threats of resignation on the one hand are invariably followed by passionate and despairing entreaties to "stay" on the other. It is the old story of Cavour and the door-knob over again; and even the great Bismarck, by the way, does not disdain a resort occasionally to the same terrible pantomime. "The only _coup d'état_ to be feared from M. Thiers," said M. Dufaure in the Assembly, "is his withdrawal." It is, the quarreling and reconciliation of Horace and Lydia: "What if the door of the repudiated Lydia again open to me?" "Though you are stormier than blustering Adriatic, I should love to live with you," etc. Such is the billing and cooing, after quarrel, between the president and the Assembly. Still, it is clear that the puissant hat-and-cane argument must date back to Cavour.

* * * * *

The recent proposition of some English writers to elevate a certain class of suicides to the rank of a legalized "institution," under the pleasant name of "euthanasia," suggests the inquiry whether, without any scientific vindication of the practice, there will not always be suicides enough in ordinary society. At any rate, however it may be in England, just across the Channel, in France, thousands of people every year break the "canon 'gainst self-slaughter," leaving the ills they have to "fly to others that they know not of." The official figures show that in a period of twenty-two years no less than 71,207 persons committed suicide in France. The causes were various--business embarrassments, domestic chagrins, the brutishness produced by liquor, poverty, insanity, the desire to put an end to physical suffering by "euthanasia," and so on; but they are pretty nearly all included in the "fardels" which Hamlet mentions, from the physical troubles of the "heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to," up to the mental distress wrought by the "whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of despised love," and so on in the well-remembered catalogue. Perhaps the most interesting point in these statistics concerns the means employed for suicide. These are thus tabulated: Hanging, 24,536; drowning, 23,221; shooting, 10,197; asphyxia by charcoal fumes (a true Paris appliance), 5587; various cutting instruments, 2871; plunging or jumping from an elevated place (an astonishing number), 2841; poison, 1500; sundry other methods, 454. Hanging and drowning are thus accountable for more than half the French suicides. The little stove of charcoal suggests itself as a remedy at hand to many a wretch without the means to buy a pistol or the nerve to use a knife. The cases of voluntary resort to poison are astonishingly few, but it must be remembered that the foregoing figures only embrace successful suicides, and antidotes to poison often come in season where the rope or the river would have made quick and fatal work. _La France_ notes, regarding these statistics, that their details show that men oftenest use pistols, and women oftenest try poison, in their attempts at suicide. What is more curious, each man is likely to employ an instrument familiar to him: thus, hunters and soldiers resort to the pistol, barbers trust the razor, shoemakers use the knife, engravers the graving-tool, washerwomen poison themselves with potash or Prussian blue; though, of course, these are only general rules, with a great many exceptions. And in Paris it is said that among all ranks and professions, and in both sexes, at least half of the suicides are by asphyxiation with charcoal. Surely in France one hardly needs to preach any doctrine of not patiently suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. A healthier and more inspiring morality would be that of the story of the baron of Grogzwig and his adventure with the "Genius of Despair and Suicide," as narrated in an episode of _Nicholas Nickleby_; for the stout baron, after thinking over his purpose of making a voluntary departure from this world, and finding he had no security of being any the better for going out of it, abandoned the plan, and adopted as a rule in all cases of melancholy to look at both sides of the question, and to apply a magnifying-glass to the better one.

* * * * *

In Philadelphia, at least, where there is still a respect for age, the tidings will be received with respectful regret of the death of Nono, a noted pensionary of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, at the ripe age of more than a hundred years. To have achieved the celebrity of being the oldest inmate of that institution was no despicable distinction, but the venerable centenarian had other claims to honor. A native of the Marquesas Islands, he was brought by Bougainville in 1776 to the Royal Museum, afterward known as the Jardin des Plantes. It has frequently been alleged that parrots may live a hundred years: Nono has established the fact by living still longer. As he thus contributes an illustration to science, so surely he might point a general moral and adorn a historic tale. If Thackeray could discourse so wisely on "Some Carp at Sans Souci," the vicissitudes which this veteran Parisian witnessed in the French capital from 1776 to 1873, under two empires, two royal dynasties and three republics, might be worth a rhapsody. Nono seems to have been a well-preserved old parrot. Magnificent in youth, he attained literally a green old age, for his plumage was still fresh and thick. Very naturally, he had lost his houppe, and was almost totally bald. However, his eye was clear and bright enough to have read the finest print or followed the finest needlework; and it had the _narquois_, lightly skeptical look of those who have seen a great deal of life. In short, Nono was a stylish and eminently respectable old bird. That worthy person, Monsieur Chavreul, who treats the animals of the Jardin like a father, has stuffed and mounted the illustrious Nono as a testimonial of affection and respect.

* * * * *

The connection between war and botany is, at first, not specially obvious, and yet a very clear bit of testimony to their relation was disclosed by the siege of Paris. Two naturalists have published a _Florula Obsidionalis_, which, as its name partly indicates, is a catalogue of the accidental flora of the late investment of Paris. They reckon in their list not less than one hundred and ninety species before unknown to the neighborhood of the French capital, whereof fifty-eight are leguminous (such as peas, beans, etc.), thirty-four are composite, thirty-two are _plantes grasses_, and sixty-six belong to other families. Almost all are to be found chiefly on the left bank of the Seine, though also discoverable at Neuilly and in the Bois de Boulogne. Of course, these new-comers are all accounted for as the produce of seeds brought by the German army. They will gradually die out; and yet some few may remain as permanent conquerors of the soil, since among the flora of Paris is still reckoned one plant whose seed was brought into France by some Russian forage-train in 1815.

* * * * *

As the impudence, dishonesty, laziness and rapacity of servants at watering-places have long been familiar subjects of satire, it is just to say a word on the other side in favor of some extreme Northern resorts. At the White Mountains, for example, the waiters and waitresses are of a better class than is generally met. Some of the young girls are farmers' daughters, who go to the hotels to see the fashions and earn a little pocket-money. The colored cook at one of the great houses teaches dancing during the winters. Not a few are school-teachers, others students at country academies, who pass their vacation in this way in order to earn enough to buy text-books or pay the winter's tuition. Many of them are more intelligent and well educated than some of the shoddies they wait upon. They are usually quicker in movement and of more retentive memory than the average American waiter; and though each has a great deal to do at times, yet even during the tremendous moment of dinner they contrive to find a few little intervals for harmless flirtations in the dining-room. They are for the most part well-mannered too, and if they talk to you of each other as "this lady" or "that gentleman," what is it more than some waiters do with far less reason? The New Hampshire villages become versed every summer in the latest imported fashions, thanks to the quick eyes of the hotel waitresses.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Lars: A Pastoral of Norway. By Bayard Taylor. Boston: Osgood & Co.

Mr. Taylor's muse has of late become very still-faced, decorous and mindful of the art-proprieties. Cautious is she, and there is perhaps nothing in this pastoral that will cause the grammarian to wince, or make the censorious rhetorician writhe in his judgment-seat with the sense that she is committing herself. Not such were the early attributes of the great itinerant's poetry. When he used to unsling his minstrel harp in the wilds of California or on the sunrise mountains of the Orient, there were plenty of false notes, plenty of youthful vivacities that overbore the strings and were heard as a sudden crack, and, withal, a good deal of young frank fire. Now there is much finish and the least possible suspicion of ennui. But the life-history of _Lars_ is worth reading. It is a calm procession of pictures, without pretence, except the slight pretence of classical correctness. The first part, which reflects Norwegian manners in a way reminding us more or less of the exquisite stories of Bjornsen, tells how two swains of Ulvik, Lars the hunter and Per the fisher, quarrel for love of Brita, and at a public wrestling decide the question by a combat, fighting with knives, in Norse fashion, while hooked to each other at the belt. They strip, _à la_ Heenan and Sayers. Mr. Taylor, who does not often come behind the occasion when he can get a human figure to describe statue-wise or under a studio light, is perhaps a trifle too Phidian in bringing out the good looks of his fish-eating gladiators:

The low daylight clad
Their forms with awful fairness, beauty now
Of life, so warm and ripe and glorious, yet
So near the beauty terrible of Death.

Lars, the victor, has all the ill-luck. His foe falls lifeless, his sweetheart calls him a murderer, and he flies from the law. Another scene quickly shows him crossing the broad ocean, as so many Norwegians and Swedes had crossed before him, and seeking the protection of Swedish forts on Delaware banks. Long, sad days pass on the ocean,

Till shining fisher-sails
Came, stars of land that rose before the land;

and soon he leaps to shore in New Sweden, only to find that the civilization he seeks has set like a sinking planet into the abiding enlightenment of another race and creed. Governor Printz's fortress on Tinicum isle is a ruin of yellow bricks: the wanderer strays up the broad stream

To where, upon her hill, fair Wilmington
Looks to the river over marshy weeds.
He saw the low brick church with stunted tower,
The portal-arches, ivied now and old,
And passed the gate: lo! there the ancient stones
Bore Norland names and dear familiar words!
It seemed the dead a comfort spake.

The governor is a myth, the Swedes are dead, the Scandinavian tongues have been changed to English, and an English exactly conformed to King James's translation of the Scriptures. The first girl he speaks to checks him for addressing her with a civility:

"Nay," she said, "not _lady_! call me Ruth."

With the father of this primitive Nausicaa, on Hockessin Farm, the wanderer abides as herdsman. Soon, under the propaganda of Ruth's soft eyes and the drowsy spell of the Delawarean society, he joins the peaceful sect amongst which he labors. It is easier, though, to change his plural pronouns to the scriptural _thou_ and _thee_ of King James's translators than to tame his heroic Viking blood, swift to boil into wrath at the show of oppression. Such an outburst leads to a quaint scene of acknowledgment and repentance, where lies

Up beyond the woods, at crossing-roads,
The heart of all, the ancient meeting-house.

Lars, prayed over by the brethren, bursts forth in tears and supplications among the worshipers, and is received into full harmony with them:

So into joy revolved the doubtful year,
And, ere it closed, the gentle fold of Friends
Sheltered another member, even Lars....
And all the country-side assembled there
One winter Sabbath, when in snow and sky
The colors of transfiguration shone,
Within the meeting-house. There Ruth and Lars
Together sat upon the women's side;
And when the peace was perfect, they arose:
He took her by the hand, and spake these words,
As ordered: "In the presence of the Lord
And this assembly, by the hand I take
Ruth Mendenhall, and promise unto her,
Divine assistance blessing me, to be
A loving and a faithful husband, even
Till death shall separate us." Then spake Ruth
The like sweet words; and so the twain were one.

It is not often that a liturgy has been translated into metre with less change of its form and substance.

The imbedding of a raw Northern native in this lap of repose and in this transfiguring matrimonial alliance is the grand problem of the poem. What will Lars do, now that he is a man of peace and a Child of Light, with the burden of conscience? In America he is a saint and an apostle. In Europe he is known but as a proscribed murderer. The later scenes, where Lars, accompanied by his true and tender wife, meets his old love, his neighbors, and his rival restored to life, are of a more ambitious character than any that have preceded. The holy principles imbibed on the shores of Delaware are made to triumph, and Lars, dropping the sharp blade from his hand in the thronged arena whither he is forced once more, stands first as a laughing-stock, and then as an apostle, among his old neighbors. It is a position full of moral force, and we find ourselves--suddenly recovering in a degree from the calm view we had taken of the poem as a work of art--asking _how_ we should be so sensible of the grandeur of the situation if the poet by his skill had not brought out its peculiarity.

* * * * *

A Lady of the Last Century. By Dr. Doran. London: Bentley.

This is the life of a lady remarkable in herself and in her surroundings. Of every day in her life she could say, in the words of Horace, "I have lived." "She never had a fool for an acquaintance," says her biographer, "nor an idle hour in the sense of idleness." Her father, Mr. Robinson, who belonged to an eminent family which had been settled about a century at Rokeby, subsequently the seat of Scott's friend Morritt, in Yorkshire, married when a boy of eighteen a rich young lady of very superior quality in every respect, and by her had a large family. His wife's mother married secondly Middleton, the biographer of Cicero, who took a great fancy to her grand-daughter, Elizabeth Robinson, and paid much attention to her intellectual development. In fact, from the cradle to the grave she was thrown amongst the erudite and cultivated in a very uncultivated age. During her girlhood Elizabeth Robinson had every advantage and pleasure which wealthy and devoted parents could give her, and when twenty-two she married Mr. Edward Montagu, a grandson of the first earl of Sandwich, and first cousin of the celebrated Lady Mary's husband.

Mrs. Montagu was far more fortunate in her choice than the brilliant daughter of the duke of Kingston. Her husband was in every way estimable and amiable, and her letters afford ample evidence how thoroughly she appreciated his character. They had only one child, who died in infancy, and when Mr. Montagu died he bequeathed to his widow the whole of his property, which she in turn left to her nephew, who took the name of Montagu and became Lord Rokeby.

A few years after their marriage Mr. Montagu, already affluent, received a great accession of fortune in the shape of colliery property in the north of England. This enabled his wife to entertain very liberally, and, in conjunction with her talents and high connections, gave her a commanding place in society. They took a large house in Hill street, then the extremity of the West End, which became the resort of that class who, being anxious to put an end to eternal card-playing and introduce rather more of the intellectual into social intercourse, received from a chance circumstance the name of "blue-stockings." There were to be seen Burke, Fox, Hannah More, Johnson, Lord Lyttelton, etc. Subsequently, Mrs. Montagu fitted up a room whose walls were hung with feathers, and thence came Cowper's well-known lines and Macaulay's passage: "There were the members of that brilliant society which quoted, criticised and exchanged repartees under the rich peacock hangings of Mrs. Montagu." After her husband's death a great deal of business devolved on her in the management of his estates, and here she showed those qualities which are singularly conspicuous in Englishwomen of rank. She went down to Northumberland, inspected her farms, visited her colliers, and made acquaintance with her tenants. She seems particularly to have appreciated the people in Yorkshire, and her descriptions of them recall in no slight degree some of those of the sisters Bronté. Her principal seat was at Sandleford in Berkshire, where she spent large sums in improvements under the celebrated landscape-gardener "Capability Brown."

She survived her husband twenty-five years, and about twenty years before her death removed to a fine house which she had erected in a then new part of London, Portman Square, and which is still known as Montagu House. But the entertainments there given were, though more splendid, less notable than in the humbler mansion in Hill street, for Mrs. Montagu herself was getting into years, and many of those who had been the brightest ornaments of the Hill street parties were passing away. Mrs. Montagu died in 1800, at the age of seventy. She was of an affectionate disposition, but had somewhat less sensibility perhaps than most men would like to see in a woman; yet, on the whole, she played her part in life extremely well, being wise, generous and true.

The book is particularly interesting for the rich aroma of association around it, and would have been far more so had Dr. Doran taken the trouble to give a few notes, of which there is not a single one in the whole book--a serious drawback, more especially to American readers.

* * * * *

The Treaty of Washington: Its Negotiation, Execution, and the Discussions relating thereto. By Caleb Cushing. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Mr. Cushing has given another proof of the great capacity of some men to do very clever work, but to fail utterly in giving an adequate account of the work itself or of the way in which it was done. Trained by long experience in public business, and intimately acquainted by long residence in Washington with the methods of diplomatic negotiation and interpretation, he was eminently fitted to be the colleague of Mr. Evarts as counsel for the government before the Geneva arbitration. Here he undertakes to give an account of the task there brought to a result so favorable to the United States. Unluckily, he shows that he is always and only an advocate. Much that may have been useful for his duties in that office is prominent in a disagreeable way in his recital of the Geneva award. His language is loose and offensive, often without meaning to be so, but oftener in a way that shows how much he must have been galled by the lord chief-justice of England. Whatever Sir Alexander Cockburn may have done there, and however much he may have fallen from his high estate as one of the arbitrators to the less dignified position of an advocate for English claims, he will have a sweet revenge in seeing the anger that he has excited in one of the American representatives, now become their spokesman. Mr. Cushing falls into the blunder that was once so common in our American state papers as to give good cause for that happy phrase of Nicholas Biddle--"Western Orientalisms." The tone of the book, which ought to be a simple story, is stilted and rhetorical. The result of all the long discussions is the best praise of our American statesmen who were its authors, but it is dwarfed and lessened by the fulsome praise given to the foreign representatives who brought it about. Of "bad language," in keeping with the bad spirit of the book, the following may serve as specimens: "Pretensiveness," "frequentation," "annexion," "capitulations" instead of "treaties," "monogram" for "monograph," "it needs to," "howmuchsoever," "law-books invested with the reflection of fine scenery," "imposed itself," "I demand of myself," and other such phrases without number.

Once done with Sir Alexander Cockburn and the work at Geneva, Mr. Cushing shows himself and his country to much better advantage in discussing the "Mixed Commission" now sitting at Washington, the Northwest Boundary, the Fisheries, and the general provisions of the Washington treaty. He has, however, simply forestalled the ground for some better writer on the important history which belongs to that negotiation, and will give the reading and reflecting public, both abroad and at home, a very unfavorable impression of the great task in which he played so important a part, and of the qualities of mind and temper he must have brought to it, since at this late day he finds no better impetus to the work of writing its history than unexplained anger at one of the members of the board before which Mr. Cushing argued the cause of his country, and helped to win it.

_Books Received._

The Drawing-Room Stage: A Series of Original Dramas, Comedies, Farces, and Entertainments for Amateur Theatricals and School Exhibitions. By George M. Baker. Illustrated. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

Five Years in an English University. By Charles Astor Bristed, late Foundation Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge. Third edition. Revised by the Author. New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.

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

Livingstone and his African Explorations: together with a Full Account of the Young, Stanley and Dawson Search Expeditions. New York: Adams, Victor & Co.

The Mother's Register: Current Notes of the Health of Children. From the French of Professor J.B. Fonssagrines. New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.

Thorvaldsen: His Life and Works. By Eugene Plon. Translated from the French by J. M. Luyster. Illustrated. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Scientific and Industrial Education: its Importance to our Country. By G.B. Stebbins. Detroit: Daily Post Printing Establishment.

Never Again. By W.S. Mayo, M.D., author of "Kaloolah," "The Berber," etc. New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.

The World-Priest. From the German of Leopold Schafer. By Charles T. Brooks. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

The Cuban Question in the Spanish Parliament. London: Press of the Anglo-American Times.

Treason at Home: A Novel. By Mrs. Greenough. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.

Myths and Myth-Makers. By John Fiske, M.A., LL.B. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.

An Account of the Sphynx at Mount Auburn. Illustrated. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.