Chapter XI: The First Plunge (2)

Several times I was strongly impelled to shunt my bass snorer off the bed or twig his Roman nose, but one experiment of a kick roused such a vigorous snort, like that produced by dropping a brick on a sleeping pig, that I abandoned such physical means of retaliation. I thought of tickling his nose with a feather or a straw, but the bed contained neither, and I had not even a pin. And supposing I should stop my shelf-mate, what could I do to suppress the rest? Should I make some horrible noise between a hoarse cough and a crow, and say, if any one complained, that it was my way of snoring? But I thought that the object to be attained, and the possibility of being voted insane and consigned, in spite of protestation, to the baggage-car, would not compensate me for the exertion required; so I determined to submit to it like a Stoic. (_Query:_ Would a Stoic have submitted?)

The more one meditates upon the reason of wakefulness, the more his chances of sleep diminish; and from this cause, conjoined with the peculiarity of the situation and the mood in which I found myself, I had surely "affrighted sleep" for that night. As I lay awake I indulged in the following mental calculation of my misery to coax a slumber: The average number of inspirations in a minute is fifteen--remember, snoring is an act of the inspiration--the number of hours I lay awake was six. Fifteen snores a minute make nine hundred an hour. Multiply 900 by 6--the number of hours I lay awake--and you have 5400, the number of notes struck by each snorer. There were at least twelve distinct and regular snorers in the car. Multiply 5400 by 12, and you have 64,800 snores, not including the snuffling neighs, perpetrated in that car from about eleven P. M. until five the next morning!

The question follows: "Can snoring be prevented?" It is plainly a nuisance, and ought to be indictable. I have heard of the use of local stimulants, such as camphire and ammonia--how I longed for the sweet revenge of holding a bottle of aqua ammonia under that Roman nose!--and also of clipping the uvula, which may cause snoring by resting on the base of the tongue. The question demands the grave consideration of our railroad managers; for while the traveling public do not object to a man snoring the roof off if he chooses to do it under his own vine and fig tree, tired men and women have a right to expect a sleep when they contract for it. Is there no lover of sleep and litigation who will prosecute for damages?

There is a prospect, however, of a balm in Gilead. An ingenious Yankee--a commercial traveler--has invented and patented an instrument made of gutta percha, to be fitted to the nose, and pass from that protuberance to the tympanum of the ear. As soon as the snorer begins the sound is carried so perfectly to his own ear, and all other sounds so well excluded, that he awakens in terror. The sanguine inventor believes that after a few nights' trial the wearer will become so disgusted with his own midnight serenading that his sleep will become as sound and peaceable as that of a suckling baby.

And yet there is nothing vulgar in snoring. Chesterfield did it, and so did Beau Brummell, and they were the two last men in the world to do anything beyond the bounds of propriety, awake or asleep, if they could help it. Plutarch tells us that the emperor Otho snored; so did Cato; so did George II., and also George IV., who boasted that he was "the first gentleman in Europe." Position has nothing to do with cause and effect in snoring, as there are instances on record of soldiers snoring while _standing_ asleep in sentry-boxes; and I have heard policemen snore _sitting_ on doorsteps, waiting to be wakened by the attentive "relief." We may be sure Alain Chartier did not snore when Margaret of Scotland stooped down and kissed him while he was asleep, or young John Milton when the highborn Italian won from him a pair of gloves; though it did not lessen the ardor of philosophical Paddy, when he coaxingly sang outside of his true love's window--

Shure, I know by the length of your snore you're awake.

But really, I don't know whether women _do_ snore. I'm not sure that the mellifluous _soprano_ snore in the car was Nilsson's, and Paddy may have been joking. I know that only male frogs croak.

W.G.B.

FABLES FOR THE YOUTH.

THE LION AND THE FOX. The Lion and the Fox once traveled in company. Upon their coming to a public-house, it was agreed that the former should go in and get a dinner, while Master Reynard kept watch at the door. In stalked the Lion boldly, and ordered a haunch of venison and a blood-pudding. The servant-maid, instead of fainting away, bade him throw his mane over a chair and take his ease. Locking the door as she withdrew, she sent for a policeman, and before night King Lion was snugly back in the menagerie whence he and his companion had that morning escaped.

Master Reynard, scenting what was in the wind, took to the woods and was seen no more.

_Moral_: This fable teaches us to beware of that pretended friendship which is specious and hollow.

THE JUDGEMENT OF PARIS. The Gorilla, the Hippopotamus and the Snapping-Turtle were once upon a time partaking of a royal dinner at the table of an opulent old Oyster, when the conversation turned upon personal beauty. Each one of the guests present claimed for himself that he alone was the favorite among the ladies for his handsome form and features. As the wine had gone around freely, the discussion grew heated, and upon the suggestion of the Gorilla it was left to their host to decide between them.

In vain did Mr. Saddlerock (for that was the host's name) insist that the point was too delicate for so humble an individual as himself to presume to pass upon.

"Nay," said all three in concert, "tell us honestly what you think."

"But I may offend you," urged the bivalve.

"Oh, that were impossible," smiled the Turtle.

"Quite so," grunted the Hippopotamus.

"My dear friend," added the Gorilla with a leer, "as for myself, I am so confident of being considered an Apollo that I wish for nothing so much as your candid opinion."

"Well, gentlemen," replied Mr. Saddlerock, "since you all urge me to disclose my real sentiments, I will do so. So far from being good-looking, egad! it's hard telling which of you has the ugliest countenance! In fact, you'd better draw lots for it."

No sooner had this remark fallen from his lips than he saw his mistake. He ran to the window, jumped out and vainly attempted to climb a tall sycamore in the garden. The Gorilla, seizing him with a clutch like that of a vice, dragged him ignominiously back to the dining-hall. Here the unhappy Mr. Saddlerock was opened, and the wicked Gorilla swallowed his body in a twinkle, flinging thereafter a shell to each of the other competitors.

_Moral_: When the powerful quarrel, don't let yourself become mixed up with them or you may get hurt.

THE SANGUINARY DUEL. Two men fought a duel. Let us distinguish them by the names of A and B respectively. It was a real, _bona-fide_, powder-and-ball affair. A meant business: so did B.

It was a terrible encounter.

A had all the vocal part of his jaw shot off, and several useful portions of his epiglottis carried away. Totally unfitted for his business as auctioneer, he died some years after of dyspepsia of the brain.

B parted company with his left arm, so he was compelled to pass himself off as a disabled hero of the rebellion and accept a snug little office in the United States custom-house, where there was nothing whatever to do.

That is all.

The dispute grew out of something A had said about B. B said A said that B said something, and B said he hadn't said it.

_Moral_: Don't duel.

THE DOG AND THE SPARE-RIB. A mastiff crossing a bridge, and bearing in his mouth a piece of meat, suddenly swallowed the meat. He immediately observed that the shadow of the aforesaid meat in the water had disappeared.

Such is optics.

_Moral_: We learn from this fable that life is but a shadow.

THE ASS AND THE LOCOMOTIVE. A donkey one day was quietly munching thistles when he heard the screaming whistle of a locomotive. Pricking up his ears, he started into a gallop and raced across lots with his tail high in the air.

_Moral_: This fable teaches what an ass he was.

THE MOUSE AND THE CAT. A mouse once peeped from his hole and saw a cat. The cat was looking the other way, and happened not to see the mouse.

Nobody killed.

_Moral_: This little fable doesn't teach anything.

SARSFIELD YOUNG.

A PICTURE WITH A HISTORY

In a number of _Punch_ for February, 1873, in the account of "Our Representative Man's" visit to the Exhibition of Old Masters, occurs the following sentence: "No 35. Oh, Miss Linley (afterward Mrs. Sheridan), oh how lovely you are! Oh, Thomas Gainsborough, oh, Thomas Gainsborough, oh! And if Baron Lionel de Rothschild, M.P., ever wishes to offer a testimonial to one who knows nothing whatever about him, and for no particular object, let him send this picture, carriage paid, to the residence of your representative, who as his petitioner will never cease to pray at convenient seasons, etc."

The picture thus apostrophized represents that "Saint Cecilia, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race, [3] whose delicate features, lighted up by love and music, art (Reynolds's and Gainsborough's) has rescued from the common decay."

It is not unlikely that Sheridan or his wife may have presented this picture to the Hon. Edward Bouverie.[4] A letter of Mrs. Sheridan in 1785 (she died in 1792) is dated from his seat, Delapre Abbey, and she and Sheridan were _habitués_ of his house.

It was at the death of General Bouverie, grandson of Mrs. Sheridan's friend, that her picture was sold, a few months ago, to Baron Rothschild; and a romance might well be woven out of the circumstances which caused this painting to be removed from the place which it had so long occupied in the library of Delapre Abbey.

Delapre Abbey is a stately mansion occupying ground once covered by a monastery, of which the only remains serve as offices of the more modern edifice. Approaching the ancient borough of Northampton by the old London road, you observe on your left, about a mile from the town, a beautiful specimen--one of the only three remaining--of the crosses which a king of England raised to commemorate the places where his beloved wife's body rested on her last journey to Westminster. It lay one night at the abbey, and, whilst that is almost obliterated, the cross remains almost perfect after centuries have elapsed, and served mainly as the model for that which has recently been erected close to Charing Cross, where formerly another of these memorials marked the last halt of the royal funereal cortege.

Mr. Edward Bouverie had several sons, and on the marriage of the eldest Delapre Abbey and the estates attached to it were, in conformity to common usage in England, settled upon the children of this marriage, and, failing issue, on the general's younger brothers and their sons in succession. The general's marriage proved childless, his next brother also left no issue, and at length no son remained but a certain somewhat ne'er-do-weel, Frank.

Frank was an officer in the army. Whilst quartered in the north of Ireland he had fallen in love with a girl beneath him in station, and, greatly to the disgust of his family, married her. His father, who was deeply imbued with aristocratic prejudices, ceased to hold intercourse with him, and except that occasional communications passed between him and his mother, his relations with his family ceased. At length he died, and as it became evident that his brothers would never have children, Frank's son was obviously the heir. Under these circumstances the family offered terms to the mother if she would give up her son altogether and consent to his being bred a Protestant. These overtures she declined. The advice of leading lawyers was then sought, but they declared that the settlement of the property could not by any possibility be set aside. Meanwhile the case suddenly assumed a new aspect.

About twelve years ago a lady of prodigious energy and perseverance made her appearance in the law courts of London, who was bent on proving the legitimacy of her grandfather. By "much wearying" she prevailed upon Lord Brougham to introduce a bill which became known as the "Legitimacy Declaration Act." By the provisions of this measure a person who believes himself heir to a property may cite all persons interested to come in at once and show cause why he should not be adjudged rightful heir and representative of a given person and estate.

Frank Bouverie's son resolved, therefore, to take the bull by the horns, and save all future trouble by obtaining a decree of court. The family very unwisely resolved to oppose his claim. It seemed that stories prejudicial to the character of the claimant's mother had been in circulation, and the Bouveries grounded their opposition on the allegation that the claimant [5] was not in truth a Bouverie at all.

On the other hand, ample testimony was adduced to show that Frank Bouverie, notwithstanding his wife's irregularity of conduct, had always regarded the boy as his son and heir; and one witness told how the father had held the little fellow up to look at the picture of his ancestral home, and said, "All that will one day be yours." So the Bouveries' case broke down entirely, and the ex-private soldier, ex-policeman, stepped into the fine old mansion of Delapre with sixty thousand dollars a year. It is satisfactory to be able to add that he has always borne an excellent character, and seems likely to duly take his place as a country gentleman. Of course nothing but the bare fabric and land came to him: the personalty was all left to his aunt, the general's widow, an old lady near ninety, who yet survives; and it was by her direction that the famous Linley picture once more changed hands.

[Footnote 3: This lady's granddaughters, her son's daughters--the duchess of Somerset, Queen of Beauty in the celebrated Eglinton Tournament; the countess Gifford, mother, by her first husband, of Lord Dufferin, viceroy of Canada; and the Honorable Mrs. Norton, the well-known authoress--were famous in their day for beauty. Gainsborough passed many years at Bath, where his intimacy with the Linley family, then resident there, commenced. The following is from Fulcher's _Life of Gainsborough_: "After returning from a concert at Bath, where we had been charmed with Miss Linley's voice, I went home to supper with my friend (Gainsborough), who sent his servant for a bit of clay, with which he modeled, and then colored, her head--and that too in a quarter of an hour--in such a manner that I protest it appeared to me even superior to his paintings. The next day I took a friend or two to his house to see it, but it was not to be seen: the servant had thrown it down from the mantelpiece and broken it." Gainsborough would now and then mould the faces of his friends in miniature, finding the material in the wax candles burning before him: the models were as perfect in their resemblance as his portraits.]

[Footnote 4: The history of the Bouverie family settling in England is curious. The family had, prior to 1542, long been settled in Flanders. In that year was born, near Lisle in that country, Laurence des Bouveries, as the name was then written, founder of the English branch. Laurence, from mixing with his father's Protestant tenants, had imbibed some of their ideas, and his father, a stern Catholic, told him that if he failed to appear at mass the following Sunday he would have him examined by the Inquisition. In terror he ran away to Frankfort-on-the-Main, and there had the luck to fall in with a sympathetic silk manufacturer, who made him superintendent of his men. Subsequently he married his patron's niece and heiress, and eventually removed to England when Queen Elizabeth offered an asylum there to those of the Reformed faith. His family made wealthy alliances and prospered, and in 1747 his representative was created a peer. He married, first, the heiress of Delapre, and her property went to her second son, Edward. His eldest son by his second marriage took the name of Pusey, and was, father of the celebrated Dr. Pusey.]

[Footnote 5: Lord Cairns, then Sir Hugh, opened the case for the claimant, and received, it was said, two hundred and fifty guineas for the work, which occupied about two hours. Sir Fitzroy Kelly appeared as counsel for the family. He spoke for about fifteen minutes, and his fee was the same.]

HINTS FOR NOVEL-WRITERS.

"Constance," said Philip to his sister, "I have got on very well with my novel. I have written fifty pages, described my hero and heroine, made them thoroughly in love with each other; and now I intend to part them for a season, without letting them be certain of the state of each other's heart. I think narrative my forte, but it will not do to have no conversations, and my dialogues seem so short and trite. Do look over this:

"'_Helena_. Your letter has arrived, I see.'

"'_Bertram_. Yes, I have just read it.'

"'_H_. Well?'

"'_B_. It says I must delay no longer.'

"'_H_. When shall you start?'

"'_B_. Tomorrow, at the latest.'

"'_H_. Have you told my aunt?'

"'_B_. Not yet: I must do it now.'

"'_H_. Shall you go direct to London?'

"'_B_. No: I stop one night at the Grange.'

"'_H_. Oh, then I will ask you to be the bearer of my letter.'

"'_B_. Is that _all_ you will permit me to do for you?'

"'_H_. I am careful not to burden my friends.'

"'_B_. Then you have no belief in true friendship.'"

"Well, Philip, let me try whilst you are at the office, and see what I can suggest:

"'_Your letter has arrived, I see_,' said Helena, turning as Bertram entered, letter in hand.

"'_Yes, I have just read it_,' he replied, advancing and leaning his arm on the mantelpiece.

"'_Well_?' said Helena, stooping as if to warm her hands, but really endeavoring to shade her face.

"'_It says I must delay no longer_,' he answered, trying to assume an air of indifference.

"'_When shall you start_?' she said, resuming her work and fixing her eyes on her pattern.

"'_To-morrow, at the latest_,' he replied, transferring the letter to his pocket.

"'_Have you told my aunt_?' she said, searching her work-basket for her scissors.

"'_Not yet: I must do it now_,' he said, putting back the little ornament his elbow had displaced.

"'_Shall you go direct to London_?' she said, trying to disentangle a skein of colored yarn.

"'_No: I stop one night at the Grange_,' he said quietly, but with an air of decision.

"'_Then I will ask you to be the bearer of my letter_,' she added, laying down her work as she spoke.

"'_Is that all you will permit me to do for you_?' he asked anxiously.

"'_Oh, I never burden my friends_,' she said, raising her head and tossing back her curls.

"'_Then you have no belief in true friendship_,' he answered in a tone of bitterness."

"That is pretty good," said Constance to herself, "but I will take these two young people out of doors: perhaps Philip may be better pleased:

"'_Your letter has arrived, I see_,' said Helena, advancing as Bertram opened the garden gate.

"'_Yes, I have just read it_,' he replied as he secured the fastening.

"'_Well_?' said Helena, taking the path to the house.

"'_It says I must delay no longer_,' he replied, proffering her a bunch of wild-flowers he had gathered in his walk.

"'_When shall you start_?' said Helena, turning away to pluck some rosebuds, which she added to her bouquet.

"'_Tomorrow, at the latest_,' he answered, flinging aside roughly a branch that crossed his path.

"'_Have you told my aunt_?' said Helena, tying the strings of her hat.

"'_No: I must do it now_,' he said, holding out his hand to relieve her of her parasol as they entered the shady avenue.

"'_Shall you go direct to London_?' she asked hurriedly.

"'_No: I stop one night at the Grange_,' he said, inviting her by a gesture to take a seat upon a rustic bench.

"'_Oh, then I will ask you to be the bearer of my letter_,' she said, quickening her steps lest he should perceive her emotion.

"'_Is that all you will permit me to do for you_?' he said, with more feeling than he had yet permitted himself to show.

"'_Yes: I am careful not to burden my friends_,' she added, drawing her mantle round her and speaking in a tone of irony.

"'_Then you do not believe in true friendship_,' he replied as they reached the house, and with a heightened color he threw back the hall door and made way for her to enter."

NOTES.

Since the publication of the article on "Salmon Fishing in Canada," in the May Number of this Magazine, the writer has had access to the _Report of the Department of Fisheries of the Dominion of Canada_, for 1872. By this document it appears that an establishment for the artificial hatching of salmon, whitefish and trout is in operation at Newcastle on Lake Ontario, and that two millions of fish eggs were put in the hatching-troughs the last season. Adult salmon, the produce of this establishment, are now found in nearly all the streams between the Bay of Quinté and Niagara River. A salmon-breeding establishment is about going into operation on the Restigouché, and another is contemplated for the Matapedia, both rivers of the Bay of Chaleur.

The reports from the river overseers indicate that under the system of protection all the rivers are improving in the number and size of their salmon. There were taken with the rod in 1872--from Grand River, 70 fish, average weight 14 pounds; Cascapedia, 139 fish, average weight 22 pounds; Restigouche, 500 fish; Upsalquitch, 70 fish; St. Marguerite, 165 fish; Moisie, 219 fish, average weight 18 pounds; St. John, 147 fish, average weight 13 pounds; Mingan, 130 fish; and in most of the rivers the young salmon are very numerous.

* * * * *

It is a familiar observation that great inventions are commonly foreshadowed in theory or speculation, and very often are approached gradually in a long series of tentative experiments before the perfected result is reached. Exceptions occur to this rule, but they are exceedingly few, since usually it is a general sense of the need of any new device which directs mechanical skill toward supplying it. Nevertheless, it is with no little surprise that one reads how thoroughly a century ago the entire theory of the modern electric telegraph was comprehended; for a most remarkable premonition, so to speak, of this great device is contained in a letter recently brought to public notice, written by the abbé Barthélemy (the once famous author of the _Voyage of Anacharsis_) to the marchioness du Deffand. "I often think," says the abbé, writing under date of Chanteloup, 8th August, 1772, "of an experiment which would be a very happy one for us. They say that if two clocks have their hands equally magnetized, you need only to move the hands of one to make those of the other revolve in the same direction; so that, for example, when one strikes twelve, the other will denote the same hour. Now, suppose that artificial magnets can some day be so improved as to communicate their power from here to Paris: you shall procure one of these clocks, and we will have another. Instead of the hours, we will mark on the two dials the letters of the alphabet. Every day at a certain hour we will turn the hands. M. Wiart will put the letters together, and will read them thus: 'Good-morning, dear little girl! I love you more tenderly than ever.' That will be grandmother's turn at the clock. When my turn comes, I shall say about the same thing. Besides, we could arrange to have the first motion of the hand strike a bell, to give warning that the oracle is about to speak. The fancy pleases me wonderfully. It would soon become corrupted, to be sure, by being applied to spying in war and in politics; but it would still be very pleasant in the intercourse of friendship." In 1774--that is, two years after Barthélemy's letter--Lesage, a Genevese professor of physics, guardedly intimated that an apparatus could be constructed to fulfill these vague suggestions. There were a few experiments in electro-magnetism during the succeeding half century. It was reserved for our own Morse to put into practical application the grand system which the abbé Barthélemy had so curiously foreshadowed in a freak of fancy.

* * * * *

Endless are the blandishments and the seductive devices of trade. A famous dry-goods store lately startled the shopping community of Paris by opening a free restaurant, a billiard-hall and a reading-room for the use and behoof of its customers. When ladies go to purchase at this place, while preparing their lists a polite clerk escorts them to the _buffet_, which is set out with ices, cakes, madeira wine, and so forth; and, having ended their repast, they are again escorted to the counter at which they desire to buy. But sometimes ladies bring their escorts--husbands, brothers or other useful bankers and purveyors of lucre--and the question arises, therefore, how to provide for them. The device of the reading-room and the billiard-table is interposed for this purpose, and a servant in livery informs them when the buying is completed, and when their own duties--namely, of footing the bills--are to begin. The care and ingenuity with which the French guard against having any annoying moments in life are well exemplified in this device. The free reading-room as an adjunct of the dry-goods store is not wholly unknown in New York, but the free _buffet_ has not yet, we believe, been transplanted there. A very much cheaper and a far less praiseworthy mercantile trap for catching custom in the same branch of trade also originates at Paris. One popular store has a superb clerk, whose _spécialité_ is to place himself near the door, and to murmur whenever a new customer enters, "Hum! la jolie femme!" The storekeeper is said to have observed that the effect was immediate and lasting, the new-comer remaining a faithful and habitual customer; but this device is not to be ranked for breadth of enterprise with the one already mentioned.

* * * * *

The project to turn the famous palace of Madrid into a museum like that of Versailles inspires Angel de Miranda to recall the strange vicissitudes of government which the vast, majestic edifice has witnessed--it and its predecessor on the same site--during seven centuries. Situated in the western quarter of the city, its principal face dominates a grand esplanade called the "Field of the Moor," after the Moorish camp there established in the twelfth century. A fortress first, the original structure was turned by Peter the Cruel, a lover of fine architecture, into a royal castle, or _alcazar_, as it was then called, the word being borrowed from the Arabic. It became thenceforth an historic spot of Spain. It was the prison of Francis I. after Pavia. It was the dwelling of Philip II., who first made it the official royal residence; and there died his son, Don Carlos, whose tragic career has inspired so much dramatic literature, from Schiller's fierce handling of Philip II. to the widely different treatment of the subject by Don Gaspar Nuñez de l'Arce in his drama played for the first time the past year. In the same palace, continues Miranda, died Elizabeth of Valois. There Philip IV. had farces played by ordinary comedians while the tragedy of his own downfall was enacting without. A fire reduced to ashes the haughty Alcazar at the moment when the Austrian dynasty disappeared from the realm, and on its ruins Philip V., first of the Spanish Bourbons, built the sumptuous palace that exists today. Stranger tenants even than its predecessor's it was fated to see--Riperda, Farinelli, Godoy, who began his political rise by his skill with the guitar; and Joseph Bonaparte, to whom his fraternal patron said, "Brother, you will have better lodgings now than mine." There Ferdinand VII. passed his life in breaking his word, and there reigned Isabella II., first adored, then execrated. Marshal Serrano established there his modest headquarters as regent of a provisory kingdom, and there lived Amadeo, who had the spirit to quit a throne which he could not occupy with dignity. What a story of changed times and manners does it tell, when, in a detached wing of this royal edifice, we find installed Don Emilio Castelar, foreign minister of the Spanish republic!

* * * * *

"I must be cruel, only to be kind," says Hamlet. In a different sense the kindness of some people is pretty sure to be cruel, their very charity ferocious. There is a story of an old maiden lady whose affection was centred on an ugly little cur, which one morning bounded into her room with a biscuit in his chops. "Here, Jane," cries the good lady, twisting the tidbit out of his mouth and giving it to her maid, "throw away the bread--it may be poisoned; or stop, put it in your pocket, and give it to the first poor little beggar you find in the street!" The story is hardly overdrawn, for if "all mankind's concern is charity," as Pope says, yet at least some of mankind's methods of exhibiting generosity are questionable. An English paper recounts that a Croydon pork-butcher was lately arrested for selling diseased pork, and the man from whom he bought the pig, being summoned as a witness, admitted that the animal had been killed "because it was not very well"--that he was just about to bury the carcass when the butcher opportunely came and bought it; but the strange point is that, in a burst of munificence, "the head had already been given to a poor woman who lived near." Evidently, the worthy pair thought this to be the sort of charity that covers a multitude of sins; and to a question whether their intents, as a whole, were wicked or charitable, they might properly have answered "Both." The "charities that soothe and heal and bless" are not the only ones that pass current under the general form of almsgiving.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Literature and Dogma: An Essay toward a Better Apprehension of the Bible. By Matthew Arnold. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.

This is a tract issued in the author's apprehension that our popular view of Christianity is false, our conception of the Hebrew and Greek Bible altogether hidebound and deadening, our notion of the Deity a picture that is doomed to destruction in the face of science. As it is a sincere scheme of individual opinion (though not of original opinion, being largely made up of graftings from a certain recognizable class of modern scholars), it could only be finally disposed of by following it up root and branch in nearly all its details, at the cost of writing a much larger book. No opponent will be likely to give it so much importance. For our part, we are quite content to exhibit a little tableau of the main theory advanced, and let this tableau speak for itself.

We should perhaps begin with Mr. Arnold's matter, but it is hard to represent him at all without doing some preliminary justice to his manner--his attitude toward the Christian public, his dogma of urbanity, and the value of his way of putting things as a likelihood of making converts. This is the more appropriate as he thinks the Founder of Christianity, and its chief promulgators, such as Peter and Paul, gained most of their successes through manner. "Mildness and sweet reasonableness" he believes to be the characteristic of Christ's teaching--a presentment of truths long afloat in the Jewish mind so winningly and persuasively that they became new and profound convictions in all minds; and he believes that when these characteristics were withdrawn or veiled the teaching was so far ineffectual; that when Christ, addressing the Pharisees, abandoned "the mild, uncontentious, winning, inward mode of working," there was no chance at all of His gaining the persons at whom His sayings were launched; and that Saint Paul certainly had no chance of convincing those whom he calls "dogs." Now, it is inevitable for us to ask ourselves what chance Mr. Arnold, undertaking the most delicate and critical crusade that can possibly be imagined against the dearest opinions of almost everybody, will have with _his_ method. The hard hits which the Pharisees got, and which the early churches sometimes received from Paul, were direct, terrible blows, adapted to a primitive age: Mr. Arnold's hits, full of grace and sting, are adapted to our own age, and are rather worse. When he calls Pius IX. the amiable old pessimist in Saint Peter's chair, or when he calls Dr. Marsh, an Anglican divine who had hung in the railway stations some sets of biblical questions and answers which he does not approve, a "venerable and amiable Coryphaeus of our evangelical party," he uses expressions that will lash the ordinary Catholic and Churchman of his audience harder than the fisherwoman was lashed in being called an isosceles and a parallelopipedon. Not much more "sweetly reasonable" will he seem to the ordinary Cantab. when he says that the Cambridge addiction to muscularity would have sent the college, but for the Hebrew religion, "in procession, vice-chancellor, bedels, masters, scholars, and all, in spite of the professor of modern philosophy, to the temple of Aphrodite;" nor anymore "sweetly reasonable" will he seem to the ordinary innocent, conventional Churchman in asserting that the God of righteousness is displeased and disserved by men uttering such doggerel hymns as "Out of my stony griefs Bethel I'll raise," and "My Jesus to know, and feel His blood flow;" or in asserting that the modern preacher, who calls people infidels for false views of the Bible, should have the epithet returned upon him for his own false views; and that it would be just for us to say, "The bishop of So-and-so, the dean of So-and-so, and other infidel laborers of the present day;" or "That rampant infidel, the archdeacon of So-and-so, in his recent letter on the Athanasian creed;" or "_The Rock_, the _Church Times_, and the rest of the infidel press;" or "The torrent of infidelity which pours every Sunday from our pulpits! Just it would be," pursues the author, "and by no means inurbane; but hardly, perhaps, Christian." The question is not so much whether such allocutions are Christian--which they possibly may be in Mr. Arnold's clearer aether--as whether they are adapted to his purpose of winning. He manages here and there, indeed, in trying on his new conceptions of old truths, to be exquisitely offensive. It will seem like trifling, and it will keenly wound, for instance, the person of ordinary piety, to have his "Holy Ghost," his promised "Comforter," called "the Paraclete that Jesus promised, the Muse of righteousness, the Muse of humanity," and to have this solemn Mystery lightly offset against the literary Muse, "the same who no doubt visits the bishop of Gloucester when he sits in his palace meditating on Personality." But he becomes most elaborately and carefully outrageous when, combating this same idea of Personality in the Holy Trinity, he calls it "the fairy-tale of the three Lord Shaftesburys," in allusion to a parable which he is at the pains of constructing about a first Lord Shaftesbury, who is a judge with a crowd of vile offenders, and a second Lord Shaftesbury, who takes their punishment, and a third Lord Shaftesbury, "who keeps very much in the background and works in a very occult manner." This seems like the talk not of a man who wishes to convince, but who wishes to wound: it appears to be completely parallel with the method of those dissenters, whom Mr. Arnold is never tired of inveighing against, who use invective because Christ used it, and who hurl epithets at a state church or titles. As for the new light which Mr. Arnold has to shed on the Bible and religion, it is a recasting in his own way of the old interpretation. He deals with miracles as Renan deals with them, believing that credence in "thaumaturgy" will drop off from the human mind as credence in witchcraft has done--that Lazarus underwent resurrection, since, having found the Life, he had passed through the state of death. The Hebrew God he believes to have been a conception, not positive and pictorial as ours is apt to be (influenced, perhaps, though Mr. Arnold does not say so, by the efforts of Christian art), but a tendency to righteousness, a current of superior virtue, plain enough to the Oriental mind without mere personality; yet it may be objected to this that the Oriental mind made for a personal God, when Jesus came, as delightedly as our Aryan race could do. It is not, however, our purpose to expose much of Mr. Arnold's theory. It will be accepted by some as the last effectual mingling of literary grace and spiritual insight; but others, especially when they find him saying that conduct cannot be perfected except by culture, will think this work the sheep's head and shoulders covering the bust of a Voltaire.

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Rhymes Atween Times. By Thomas MacKellar. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott &Co.

When we find actually embalmed in a book the simple and touching song, "Let me kiss him for his mother," our first inclination is to take all its merit for granted and hurry by, capping the matter as we pass with the inevitable quotation which also begins with a _let me_, and refers to making the songs of a people, with infinitive contempt for the adjustment of their laws. The people for whom Mr. MacKellar's ballad was made, being young women in ringlets who press the suburban piano, have, we may reasonably hope, small need of the law any how, and we may be pretty sure that the verses which have touched the great popular heart are made in a spirit which is better than any law, even the law of metre. On reading attentively the poem in question we find a touching theme handled with simplicity, and in a certain sense earning its popular place, though no poem could possibly be so good as the simple fact--an ancient woman in a hospital at New Orleans arresting the coffin-lid they were placing over a young fever-patient from the North with the natural impulse, "Stop! let me kiss him for his mother!" That little sunbeam of pure feeling, sent straight from the affections of the people, is the real poet in the affair, though Mr. MacKellar has succeeded in investing himself with its simplicity, supporting his subject with tenderness and directness. When a writer happens, with luck in his theme and luck in his mood, to strike such a keynote, he is astonished in a moment by a mighty and impressive diapason, a whole nation breaking into song at the bid of his whisper. Mr. MacKellar doubtless would think it strange, and a little hard to be told, that this trifle outweighs the whole bulk, body and sum of his collection. He is a writer of old acceptance and experience, who began to rhyme long ago in _Neal's Gazette_, with "occasional verses" about "no poetry in a hat"--a question which was bandied, in the fashion of the times, through half a dozen assertions and replies, assisted by voluntaries from the public. A stage-ride from New York to Singsing at that day was something of an adventure, affording a subject for six cantos, which Neal was doubtless very glad to get for his journal. Neal's death, and the parting with Henry Reed and Dr. Kane, with some other local changes, extracted short laments from the author, whose tone is nevertheless usually cheerful and canny; but his ballad is his best.

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_Books Received_.

The Philosophy of Art. By H. Taine, Professor of Aesthetics and of History of Art in the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Translated by John Durand. Second edition. Thoroughly revised by the translator. New York: Holt & Williams.

Fleurange: A Novel. From the French of Madame Augustus Craven, author of "A Sister's Story," "Anne Severin," etc. Translated by M.M.R. New York: Holt & Williams.

Love is Enough; or, The Freeing of Pharamond. By William Morris. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Ralph Harding's Success. By the author of "Robert Joy's Victory." Boston: Henry Hoyt.

The Mysterious Guest. By Miss Eliza A. Dupuy. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.

Madame de Chamblay. By Alexander Dumas. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.

Not Forsaken. By Agnes Giberne. Illustrated. Boston: Henry Hoyt.