Chapter XXXV: Under the White Stars (7)

But it was not in nature that a man of Shelburne's energetic and practical temperament should long be content to remain in his tent when a Grenville was afield with such (to say the least) debatable measures as the taxation of the colonies and the Regency Bill inscribed upon his banner. His marriage happening to occur just at the time when the famous Stamp Act was in the House of Lords kept Shelburne away from the debates on that measure, to which we may be sure he would, if present, have offered a persistent and uncompromising opposition; but at the end of April, 1765, he appeared in his place in Parliament to deliver a vigorous speech against the Regency Bill, and showed the courage of his opinions by leading a minority of eight into the lobby. To Rockingham, now at the head of the ministry, it was obvious that Shelburne, despite his years--he was barely eight-and-twenty--was a personage whose support was worth conciliating, and in July he offered to replace him in the Board of Trade. The offer was declined, and not unnaturally. Shelburne had always, with Pitt, protested against the policy of the Stamp Act, and could hardly have sat in a cabinet which, domineered over by the king, was preparing to carry it into execution. We may surmise, too, that he was not unalive to the advantages of a waiting game, and that, closely allied with Pitt as he had now become, and heartily believing in him, he was unwilling to take office on any other than what we may call the Pitt platform. Indeed, he himself says as much in writing to Pitt, a few months afterward, apropos of the Rockingham overtures: "My answer was very short and very frank--that, independent of my connection, I was convinced, from my opinion of the state of the court, as well as the state of affairs everywhere; no system could be formed, durable and respectable, if Mr. Pitt could not be prevailed on to direct and head it." In the same letter--the date is about December, 1765--he tells Pitt, "'Tis you, sir, alone, in everybody's opinion, can put an end to this anarchy, if anything can. I am satisfied your own judgment will best point out the time when you can do it with most effect. You will excuse me, I am sure, when I hazard my thoughts to you, as it depends greatly upon you whether they become opinions, but, by all I find from some authentic letters from America, nothing can be more serious than its present state; and though it is my private opinion it would be well for this country to be back where it was a year ago, I even despair of a repeal [of the Stamp Act] effecting that if it is not accompanied with some circumstances of a firm conduct, and some system immediately following such a concession."

Whatever the faults and weaknesses of the Rockingham administration of 1765-66--and they were many--their moral courage in proposing and carrying through the repeal of the Stamp Act ought to stand weightily to their credit. The king was well known to be vehemently averse to the slightest tampering with the act; and it is difficult for any body of statesmen, even where--which here was anything but the case--public opinion unanimously admits that a false step has been taken, to face the obloquy and sneers sure to attend upon any proposal to retrace it. However, the repealing measure was proposed and carried, Shelburne supporting the ministers with all his might, though, doubting as he did even the abstract right of England to tax her colonies, he with only four other peers divided the House against them on the question of the well-known declaratory resolution. _Sic vos non vobis._ Though the Rockingham administration repealed the Stamp Act, it was the popular belief that Pitt had been the real moving cause in the matter. Pitt, and none other, was demanded by the national voice. The king reluctantly yielded. Pitt marched into the royal closet with words of profoundest deference upon his tongue and the stern triumph of a conqueror in his heart, and proceeded to form an administration in which there was not even the offer of a place for Rockingham. For Shelburne, on the other hand, he immediately sent, and offered him the seals of secretary of state. Such an appointment must have been a bitter pill indeed to George III., but Pitt stood firm, and the king had to swallow his dislike as best he might. What Choiseul, the French minister, thought of the new arrangement appears from an interesting letter from him to Guerchy in London, which Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice quotes from a copy at Lansdowne House. His conclusion is: "Alors le ministère d'Angleterre aura une certaine consistance; sans cela, avec l'opposition de my Lord Temple, l'ineptie de M. Conway, la jeunesse et peut-être l'étourderie de my Lord Shelburne quoique gouverné par M. Pitt, il ne sera pas plus fort qu'il ne l'étoit ci-devant. My Lord Chatham à pris une charge trop forte d'être le gouverneur de tout le monde et le protecteur de tous." At this critical point, the mosaic administration (as Burke felicitously nicknamed it) just formed, Pitt entering the House of Lords as earl of Chatham, to the annoyed surprise of the multitude to whom he had so long been distinctively the Great Commoner, Shelburne at nine-and-twenty essaying the grave responsibilities of a secretaryship of state, the first volume of the biography before us comes, most tantalizingly, to a close. We stand on the threshold of the ever-memorable events of the war of independence, and our appetite is keenly whetted for the feast of freshly interesting details which, though Mr. Bancroft has enjoyed most liberal access to the papers at Lansdowne House, may confidently be expected to be brought to light by one possessed of the opportunities, and, as the volume before, us abundantly shows, the diligence and judgment of Lord Shelburne's present biographer. The main outlines of Shelburne's career throughout the war are familiar, doubtless, to most American readers. How he dissented from his colleagues' treatment of the American difficulty, and was driven, in consequence, to resign his office; how, in opposition, he struggled with all the energy of his character against the policy of North; how, when that policy received its deathblow in the surrender of Cornwallis, he had the quiet triumph of seeing the king come over to the views which he had so long vainly advocated; how, placed at the head of affairs, he arranged and got the king's consent to preliminaries of peace; and how, before he had time to finish his work, he was overthrown by the most disgraceful coalition that British parliamentary government has seen;--are not all these things written in a hundred history books? But pending the detailed and authentic narrative of these things that we shall look for in a future volume of this new life of Shelburne, we have here, by anticipation, a most powerful sketch, by Shelburne's own hand, of one of the principal--we cannot add famous--actors in the conduct of the war; we mean the notorious Lord George Sackville, who, after being cashiered for cowardice at Minden, was whitewashed by the first Rockingham ministry, and thenceforward so boldly held up his head again, and traded on his plausible gravity of manner and family connections, that in the heat of the war the court actually got him appointed to the peculiarly responsible post of American secretary. Shelburne is terribly severe upon his conduct. "He sent out (writes Shelburne) the greatest force which this country ever assembled, both of land and sea forces, which together perhaps exceeded the greatest effort ever made by any nation, considering the distance and all other circumstances, but was totally unable to combine the operations of the war, much less to form any general plan for bringing about a reconciliation. The best plan which was formed in the office was one which was given in by General Arnold. The inconsistent orders given to Generals Howe and Burgoyne could not be accounted for except in a way which it must be difficult for any person who is not conversant with the negligence of office to comprehend. Among many singularities he had a particular aversion to being put out of his way on any occasion. He had fixed to go into Kent or Northamptonshire at a particular hour, and to call on his way at his office to sign the despatches, all of which had been settled, to both these generals. By some mistake, those to General Howe were not fair copied, and, upon his growing impatient at it, the office, which was a very idle one, promised to send it to the country after him, while they despatched the others to General Burgoyne, expecting that the others could be expedited before the packet sailed with the first, which, however, by some mistake, sailed without them, and the wind detained the vessel which was ordered to carry the rest. Hence came General Burgoyne's defeat, the French declaration, and the loss of thirteen colonies." What, indeed, could have been, even _a priori_, greater fatuity than to entrust the direction of a war to a man who years before, on the continent of Europe, had over and over again proved himself to be utterly destitute of every military quality--of whose general repute the following lines, quoted by Shelburne (from a newspaper of the time of the Seven Years' War), with the caustic commentary, "It is feared there was too much foundation for what is insinuated, and more need not be said," are a sufficiently suggestive indication?--

All pale and trembling on the Gallic shore,
His lordship gave the word, but could no more:
Too small the corps, too few the numbers were,
Of such a general to demand the care.
To some mean chief, some major or a brig.,[D]
He left his charge that night, nor cared a fig.
'Twixt life and scandal, honor and the grave,
Quickly deciding which was best to save,
Back to the ships he ploughed the swelling wave.

Our view of Shelburne would be but a one-sided one if it regarded him solely and wholly as a public character, and took no count of the domestic and private side of him. We are proportionately grateful for some extracts from a diary kept at the time by his wife, Lady Shelburne, which her great-grandson has been able to lay before us. They picture to us a quietly-ordered, rather serious home, pretty constantly frequented, however, by company, as one would expect from the many interests and associations of its busy-minded master. He seems to have been in the habit of treating his wife, in private, to solid readings in history, politics and theology. One morning breakfast is followed by some chapters of Thucydides, the next by part of one of Abernethy's sermons, another day "Lord Shelburne read to us a paper concerning the Stamp Act in America;" while on a fourth occasion Lady Shelburne, after dining at the French ambassador's and going to a couple of gossipy assemblies afterward, comes home to her lord, who very appropriately reads to her "a sermon out of Barrow against judging others--a very necessary lesson delivered in very persuasive and pleasing terms." More of Lord Shelburne's private life we shall no doubt learn in the second volume of his biography, in which we are promised "a picture of the society of which Bowood [Lord Shelburne's country-seat in Wiltshire] was the centre during the latter part of the century." Here, for the present, we conclude by registering once more our cordial appreciation of the service that is rendered to history by the publication of such biographies of leading men as that treated of in this paper. Documentary evidence carefully collected, besides correcting the hasty and generally biased assertions of irresponsible contemporary chroniclers, forms the only trustworthy foundation for the judgment of the impartial historian.

W. D. R.

FOOTNOTES:

[C] _Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, afterward First Marquess of Lansdowne, with Extracts from his Papers and Correspondence._ By Lord EDMOND FITZMAURICE. Vol. 1., 1737-66. Macmillan & Co., London and New York, 1875.

[D] Brigadier-general Mostyn.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

SOCIETY IN PARIS.

If there is one point in social matters wherein Philadelphia shines pre-eminent, it is in the matter of entertainments, whether private or public. A lavish and generous hospitality rules our actions whenever we bid a guest to our board. Emphatically, it is to our board. If that hospitality has a flaw, it is to be found in the fact that we make the eating and drinking part of our festivities of far too much importance. Terrapin and Roederer take the place of dress and of diamonds. Our cooks, and not our mantuamakers, are set in a flutter at the rumor of a projected ball. We are less learned in point lace than we are in croquettes. There may be a flaw in our diamonds, but our butter is peerless. Our balls have their culminating point in the supper, and not in the German. We invite our best friends more willingly to partake of a new dish than to meet some distinguished stranger. And at most of our grand entertainments two great rushes take place--the one toward the dining-room when supper is announced, and the other out of the front door when the banquet is ended, when repleted Nature finds no more joy at the thought of terrapin, and when champagne has become a delusion and a snare.

In far different style do people entertain on the other side of the water. In Paris, that very paradise of cookery, the substantial element of balls and parties is either wholly wanting or is but a very secondary consideration. A Parisienne will bid you to her house, and leave you to refresh exhausted Nature with a cup of tea and a sponge-cake. In summer she may vary the entertainment by offering you a glass of currant syrup and water. She would consider herself as utterly ruined in a financial point of view did she conceive that an assemblage of some twenty or thirty people would require anything more substantial. At entertainments on a larger scale, such as _soirées musicales_, evening receptions, etc., ices, coffee, sandwiches and a variety of small cakes are usually handed round during the course of the evening; and that is all. At the grandest of grand balls the supper is almost invariably composed entirely of cold dishes--chicken, filet of beef, fish with mayonnaise sauce, etc., with ices, cakes and delicious bon-bons. If extra magnificence in the matter of viands is aimed at, it is sought in the matter of unseasonable and consequently costly delicacies. Thus, at a ball which was given during the month of February last the feature of the supper was strawberries served in unlimited profusion. The substantiality, the abundance, the variety of one of our Philadelphia suppers, with its terrapin, its croquettes, its oysters dressed in half a dozen styles, its game and sweetbreads and chicken salad, its ices and Charlotte Russe and meringues, its fruits and flowers, its oceans of champagne, rivers of hock and lakes of claret punch, would make a Parisian open his eyes--ay, and his mouth as well. For, be it known, the foreigners who scorn suppers in their native land lay aside all such prejudices with marvelous celerity when bidden to a Philadelphia banquet.

It must, however, be confessed that this simplicity in the matter of food which is characteristic of French entertainments is a great encouragement to the givers of soirées in general. With us, to entertain as other people do requires not only a lengthy purse, but a degree of care and forethought in the preparation for any festivity which is very wearing on body and mind alike. If Mrs. Quakercity wishes to invite fifty people to her house, her soul is vexed within her and her body is worn to a shadow with the magnitude of her preparations before the event can take place. Not so with Madame la Marquise. The purse of Madame la Marquise is but slender and her rooms are small. Nevertheless, she shrinks not from bidding her friends come to see her. Either she has, in pleasant sociable fashion, a regular reception-evening, once a week, when she is "at home" to all her friends and acquaintances, or else she organizes a little soirée twice or thrice during the season. Fifty or sixty people, as many as her rooms will conveniently hold, are invited. The mistress of the house provides something in the way of some good amateur music, a charade or two acted in almost professional style, a bit of declamation, or possibly the presence of some literary or artistic lion. Everybody comes, and everybody tries to make himself or herself as agreeable as possible. Nobody turns up his or her nose at the cup of tea, the delicately cut sandwiches, the tiny cakes that are handed round during the course of the evening. Nobody goes away groaning, "Heavens! how hungry I am!" Madame la Marquise cannot afford to give her friends _pâté de foie gras_ and hothouse strawberries, and they neither expect to have them nor blame her for not offering them. If she were obliged to offer costly and delicate viands to her friends whenever she invited them to her house, she would not be able to invite them at all. They recognize the fact, and enjoy the hospitality which she offers them without expecting anything more. But I should very much like to see a reception at home where tea and sandwiches formed the sole refreshments of the evening. The comments of the departing guests would be more audible than flattering to the hostess, I am afraid.

The dinner-parties which form in Paris, as with us, a very prominent feature of social life, are far less heavy in character than are the same class of entertainments with us. They consist of fewer courses, which are served more rapidly. The guests are usually invited at seven o'clock, and are seldom detained at table after ten. Music, either private or professional, usually fills up the evening. It is customary to invite a certain number of guests to come in after a grand dinner to pass the remainder of the evening--a practice which proves that in Parisian society people are far less "cantankerous" than they are in our own. I can scarcely picture to myself a state of affairs wherein an American belle or society-man would consider an invitation to "come in" after dinner as anything but an insult. Which proves that we are not, after all, as we pride ourselves upon being, the most sensible people on the face of the earth in _all_ respects. That pleasant willingness to accept invitations as they are really meant, and to appreciate hospitality for its own sake, is a social lesson that the members of American society would do well to study after the example set by their Parisian brethren.

A Parisian dinner-party is far less conducive to indigestion than is one of our own. Not only are the courses fewer, as I before remarked, but the viands are less rich in quality and are served in smaller portions. Delicacy of flavor, and not solidity, is the result aimed at by a true French _cordon bleu_. There is also considerable taste and ingenuity displayed in serving the ices, which are brought to the table in all manner of pretty and fanciful forms. Thus, at one dinner-party a basket formed of brown _nougat_ was handed round. It was filled with apricots moulded in peach-tinted ice and of delicious apricot flavor. At another the basket was of white _nougat_, and the ice-cream was colored and moulded to represent pink and crimson roses. On another occasion a large silver dish was borne in, on which was placed a bundle of asparagus, the stalks held together by a broad blue satin ribbon. The ribbon was untied, the stalks fell apart, and one was served to each guest, together with a rich sauce from a silver sauce-boat. The asparagus-stalk was composed of vanilla ice-cream, and the green part of pistacchio ice, while the sauce was a delicately flavored cream. The imitation of the vegetable was perfect in every particular, and was thoroughly deceptive. The floral decorations at dinner-parties are usually on a far less extensive scale than with us. A single basket tastefully arranged for the centre of the table is considered quite sufficient, except on occasions of extra magnificence and importance.

The official balls at the Élysée, of which two or three are usually given every winter, are very informal in character. The American traveler who wishes to attend must send in his or her name through the medium of the American minister. The invitation-lists are divided into as many sections as there are balls to be given, so as to avoid over-crowding in the comparatively small salons of the Élysée. Madame MacMahon and the marshal receive their guests in a small reception-room, which is the first of the suite of apartments on the first floor, all of which are thrown open to the public on such occasions. They receive in a perfectly simple and informal manner. Each guest on entering bows to the host and hostess without any form of presentation, and is then at liberty to wander about at will. The apartments thrown open comprise the state suites on the first and second floors, numbering some twenty or thirty rooms in all. A temporary gallery is erected to serve as a supper-room, and there refreshments are served all through the evening, there being no set hour for supper, as with us. The profusion of flowers and lights, the crowd of powdered footmen in the white and scarlet liveries of the marshal, the delightful music and splendid toilettes, combine to make these balls very elegant and attractive, though far less so than were the official fêtes given under the Empire, when the superb apartments of the Hôtel de Ville and of the Tuileries formed the grand ball-rooms for the hospitalities of the government. The Élysée is much too small to accommodate the crowds that usually rush to these festivals. The heat and crush are excessive, and it is recorded that after the great ball last year wisps of costly laces, shreds of Chantilly, rags of old point, scraps of point de Bruxelles strewed the grand staircase from top to bottom. The crowd, owing to the division of the invitation-lists of which I have spoken, is less dense this year, but still great enough to render a ball at the Élysée anything but a comfortable form of enjoyment.

There is one feature about Parisian entertainments, whether public or private, which is apt to strike a stranger very unpleasantly; and that is the card-playing--nay, to put it accurately, the actual gambling--which forms one of the amusements of the evening. It is not pleasant to behold in the salons of the President of the French Republic an accurate reproduction in miniature of the departed glories of Baden-Baden and of Homburg--the shaded lamps, throwing a lurid light on the "board of green cloth," the piles of gold, the shifting cards, the intent faces of the players, and the groups of gazers looking on in silence. Vast sums are, I am told, often lost and won in this manner during a single evening. This, at least, is a reproach from which American entertainments of the highest class are certainly free. John Morrisey may take his seat in Congress, but he does not direct the amusements in the back parlor of the White House.

But if French society is unexacting in the matter of refreshments, it runs to waste in regard to dress. The toilettes worn at all entertainments of any extent and formality far surpass in costliness and beauty any festal garbs which feminine humanity can contrive to don in America. In this birthplace of dress, dress is a pre-eminent and all-important feature. Two great points are _de rigueur_ in a Frenchwoman's toilette: it must always be appropriate, and always be fresh. It may not be costly, it may not be elaborate, but those two qualities must not be lacking. And they shade things off so much more minutely than they do with us. A ball-dress cannot be a dinner-dress, and _vice versâ_; while in America the same toilette is considered appropriate for both occasions. If a dinner-party is to number over twelve guests, a low-necked dress is admissible; otherwise, the dinner-dress must be made with open corsage and half-long sleeves. The same shade of glove is not suitable at a wedding-reception that is proper for a formal call. The handsomest of walking-dresses is inadmissible to receive calls in or to wear out in the evening to the opera or to a small party. The very length of skirt that is appropriate for each festive occasion is regulated by the laws of fashion. A lady at the Grand Opéra or Les Italiens must not wear her opera-cloak after she takes her seat in the theatre: it is considered only a wrap, no matter how magnificent or costly it may be. Fancy jewelry of all kinds is entirely out of fashion, and is seen no more: pearls and precious stones alone are worn on full-dress occasions. This rule has, it is whispered, caused a great increase in the trade of dealers in imitation jewelry, those who cannot afford the real article taking refuge in the highly _vraisemblable_ splendors of wax-lined pearls and paste diamonds. It is rumored that after one of the great official balls of last season a superb diamond necklace was found behind one of the cushions of a sofa at the Élysée. It was placed in the hands of the prefect of the police, where it remained for some time without any claimant presenting herself. Finally, it was decided that the ornament should be sold and the proceeds applied to the relief of the poor of Paris. A jeweler was accordingly summoned, who, by the application of acids and a file, soon proved conclusively to the authorities that the precious _trouvaille_ was a worthless piece of imitation. Sardou's heroine in his _Maison Neuve_, who sells her small real diamonds in order to appear at a ball ablaze with paste, is a true character of the epoch, and was evidently sketched from real life. But the disappearance of the masses of _clinquante_ which used to be worn some years ago is a positive boon to the lovers of correct taste in dress.

Another striking feature of European society to an American is the predominance of old women therein--ladies of sixty or seventy years of age, very much coiffées, tremendously dressed and glittering with gems. This element is far from being an attractive one. A venerable dowager with white roses and lilies of the valley in her frizzed gray hair, with many diamonds and pearls displayed upon a neck which should long ago have retired into the deep obscurity of kerchief and high corsage, is not a charming object. It has been made a subject of reproach against American society that it is given up so entirely to the youth of both sexes. Well, after all, it is better so--that is, so far as balls and dancing-parties are concerned. Seventeen in white tarletan is a far more beauteous and appropriate ornament for a ball-room than is seventy in white brocade or rose-pink satin.

L. H. H.

NATIONAL FORMS OF GREETING.

The general structure of a language is admitted on all hands to be a good index of the character of the people using it. To cite but two instances: the firm, compact, stern mould in which a Latin sentence is cast seems only the natural mode of expression for those who so firmly, compactly and sternly carried their eagles in triumph over the world and assembled the deities of conquered nations in their own Pantheon; while the marvelous grace and flexibility spread like a transparent veil of ravishing beauty over the well-posed members of a Greek sentence could emanate, from no source so naturally as the gay, beauty-loving sons of the Hellenes, whose conceptions of beauty are the ideals for all time; whose flexible wit needed, as it created, the vehicle of its communication; and whose philosophical acumen could flash out in no speech less capable of manifesting delicate shades of thought.

What is thus true of language in general has a concentrated truth in the forms of speech used in greetings. Let us compare these in a few languages, ancient and modern, and see if the fact be not so. We will begin with the most familiar, as it is the best and most enduring, type of the Semitic race--the Hebrew. The history of the Jews--at any rate as it is set forth in their own sacred Books--is pre-eminently the history of a race singled out by an overruling Power for the education of _conscience_. To this bear witness the laws of the Two Tables, and most of those other laws, purely ceremonial, whose apparent triviality in some particulars is at any rate a mode of symbolizing what was the main object of the Lawgiver--keeping the heart and conscience pure. To this bear witness the indignant denunciations of their prophets, as well as the impassioned pleadings to return to a better mind and keep the conscience unaccused--to "do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God." To this bear witness the plaints--the like of which no other ancient literature furnishes--of their royal Psalmist, the type of what was best and noblest in his race--plaints which mourned not so much outward adversity or physical suffering as the pain of a hurt conscience, a realization of guilt which threw a pall over all that else was bright--plaints which, as that secluded education in Palestine became handed down to posterity and diffused wherever the Old Testament found its way, have been adopted by humanity as the _de profundis_ of all hearts conscious of guilt. And what was the Hebrew's salutation as he met his brother or his friend? "Peace!" The inner life of the race could not be more clearly shown by volumes.

With the Greek it was different. His heaven and his earth were counterparts of each other. Even his Zeus Terpikeraunos seemed fonder of other occupations than hurling his flashing bolts. The Father of gods and men disdained not (when nectar and ambrosia perhaps began to surfeit him) to lead the dwellers of Olympus on festive journeys to the "blameless Ethiops," and there pass a week or two in revels. No chance of a quiet flirtation would he miss if only he could escape the keen watchfulness of Hera; and not unfrequently, if such escape were hopeless, would he run the risk of a curtain-lecture rather than forego his _tête-à-tête_. And for the other "greater gods," if we except the cold Pallas Athene and the stately spouse of Zeus, their principal aim seemed to be to have a jolly time of it.

Man tanzt, man schwätzt, man kocht, man trinkt, man liebt:
Nun sage mir, wo es was Besseres giebt?

might serve popularly as the Greek's notion of the occupations of the gods when they were not quarreling with each other; and no wonder, for he simply peopled Olympus with exaggerated counterparts of himself and his fellows. Life to him was nothing if it was not a fast and merry one; and to make it so were pressed into the service not only what catered to his sensual nature (and, truly, if Faust had been a Greek there had been no need of Mephistopheles), but all the charms of art, all the powers of exuberant fancy, all the keen delights of literary culture. He had higher aspirations than mere enjoyment, even of an elevated kind: witness Salamis and Mycale, the Pass of Thermopylæ and the fields of Marathon and Platæa. But when the serious business of life gave time, wine, flowers and lovely women were uppermost in his thoughts. To and from him, then, what greeting so natural as [Greek: Chaire!] ("Rejoice!" "Be happy!")?

As we pass from the shadows of the Acropolis and the Acrocorinthus to the crests and valleys of the Seven Hills, the tone is changed. We do not speak of the degenerate days when, after his indignant burst of

Non possum ferre, Quirites,
Græcam Urbem,

Juvenal, in speaking of Rome itself, says,

Non est Romano cuiquam locus hîc, ubi regnat
Protogenes aliquis, vel Diphilus, aut Erimarchus,

although even then the Latin speech retained forms of a nobler antiquity. We speak rather of those times when Rome was Roman--when the spirit which framed the speech still pervaded the commonwealth which used the speech. To the citizen of that time the idea of the chief of the Olympian gods was not of a rollicking despot, angry and jovial by turns, a delighter in thunderbolts, a cloud-compeller, a reckless adulterer: he was the awful personification of the majesty of law, mighty to impose its decrees and mighty to avenge its disregarded sanctions--who, brought near to the city, was worshiped as Jupiter Capitolinus, majestic as the conservator of civil and social order. The charms of art, the graces of song, the effeminacy of festal pleasures were little recked of by the Roman of the Roman period--he who used his ancestral speech in the meanings imposed upon its terms by his fathers. Phoebus Apollo and Pallas Athene were not so much revered by him as was Mars of the visage stern and the bloody hand, to whom he gloried in ascribing the blood of Romulus, protected by whom he believed the "Mavortia moenia" would stand for ever. To him the state was everything, the citizen nothing, save in so far as he was a working member of the state. No private pleasure, no private gain, no private right was admitted which stood in the way of the common weal; and whatever privileges one might have, belonged to him not as a man, but as a Roman, reflecting in his own person the sacred being of the state. No wonder that in spite of all reverses, and until absorption of foreign poisons had vitiated the blood of her sons or fratricidal strife had spilled it, Rome saw the world at her feet. No wonder, too, that the customary greeting of those who used her speech was "Salus!" ("Health!") at meeting, and "Vale!" ("Be strong!") at parting.

To pass from ancient nations to modern. No race has had, in its way, a greater influence upon European civilization than the French, many-sided in character, and whose language is that of modern diplomacy. By no people are _appearances_ more studied or cared for. Courage, undoubtedly, is possessed by the men, but a Frenchman (the typical Frenchman, that is) is better pleased if his courage, whether on the field of battle, in the private encounter or the civic assembly, can have a good _mise en scène_ for its exhibition. Deportment is the great thing; and in social life who can deny what charm is given to friendly intercourse--even though one may know that feelings are not very deep--by the studious attention to a pleasant way of saying or doing things?--so different from the heedless bluntness of some other races, which, even while it may proceed from no unkindness, yet gives, at any rate, the impression of disregard for the feelings of others. What a regard to appearances is not revealed in such common expressions as "Être de mauvaise tournure" and "Avoir bonne tournure," as applied to either man or woman? And as for the women, who can excel a Frenchwoman in the art of looking if not elegant, yet at any rate spruce, by the aid of even meagre materials, and in the art of "savoir faire," of which our English "tact" hardly preserves the aroma? What dynasty or party shall rule the destinies of France may be uncertain. Bonapartist, Legitimist, Republican may be in the ascendant or may be hurled from power, but under each or all, whether for good or evil, _manners_ will rule until the French cease to be French; for when they meet you do not they say, naturally, "Comment vous portez-vous?" ("How do you _carry_ yourself?")?

If a Frenchman should unintentionally run against you, would he not ask your pardon with the politest possible bow? If a German should encounter you in the same unintentionally unceremonious way, would he not in all probability, after the recoil, look at you with inquiring eyes, with a mixture of phlegmatic coolness and curiosity, and partly as an exclamation, partly as an interrogation, utter the monosyllable "So!"? He would not be so much occupied in trying to parry the blunder gracefully as in thinking of its cause, with that love of sifting which involuntarily exhibits itself even in little things, or with that tendency to take even jokes gravely which originated the fable of Pope Joan, and led a learned commentator, in his annotations on Thucydides, to cite, with all the ponderous clang of a critical Latin note, the factions "of the Long Pipes and the Short Pipes, mentioned by Mr. Diedrich Knickerbocker in his _History of New York_," as a grave historic parallel to the factions at Athens and those of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines! Wonderful is the exactness in research, as well as the gravity, of the Teuton--his reflectiveness, his going to the bottom of the minutiæ of facts, as well as his recourse to his "inner consciousness" when the concrete fails him. Thoroughness, quiet, plodding thoroughness--a looking at things in all their bearings, an exhaustive (as well as exhausting) treatment of a subject, whether of fact or of speculation, a constant striving to _find out_ all about whatever he takes in hand--is not this one of his most marked characteristics? And so, is it not natural that his greeting should be, if he is gravely polite, "Wie _befinden_ Sie sich?" ("How do you _find_ yourself?")?

Lastly, the Anglo-Saxon greeting has its revelation of character no less than the others. No corner of the earth is ignorant of the representatives of that sturdy race whose commerce is worldwide; whose inventions have revolutionized ways and means of getting and doing and having things; whose enterprise is boundless; whose self-contained courage is resistless in onset as it is strong in resistance; whose busy going to and fro, or whose steady home-work, always has an eye to the main chance; whose stateliness as shown in the conservative wealth of the Old England is matched by its progressiveness as developed in the New; whose Anglo-Saxon _homes_ are models of what is nowhere else so readily found, "home comforts," won by hard work or conserved by happy inheritance. Has not the Anglo-Saxon a character all his own--a compound, doubtless, of the good (and often the bad) elements which he has absorbed with his natural acquisitiveness from others? And can the same number of words better gather up the sum and substance of it than his salutation, "How do you _do_?"?

J. A. H.

SEASONABLE READING.

I once wrote for a monthly magazine an out-door paper--a summer study, intended to enliven the reader's feeling rather than enlighten his understanding--and timed the production of it so that it should appear during the winter. The thought that it would be read only by bright firesides cheered me not a little in the writing. The editor, endeavoring to propitiate that thoughtless creature, "the general reader"--in matters of art but another name for "the general prejudice" or "the general ignorance"--notified me in January that he would prefer to hold the contribution till summer came again, when it would be regarded as "more appropriate, and just the thing to be read under green arbors and spreading beeches." I was glad to know that he thought it just the thing to be read anywhere, but nevertheless resolved to lay before the general reader, or the general prejudice, or the general ignorance, my little protest.

Most people are aware that the effects of Nature are so evanescent that the painter generally makes his study as if he were observing an eclipse. Down go a few strokes; into the spaces go notes, signs, symbols--all in the shortest kind of shorthand. Six months afterward, when the picture is made amid other scenes, the sketch and notes are used, to be sure, so far as they go, but the artist uses his good memory more. All people know that a book or canvas gives us not Nature, but an interpretation, a translation, a few selections, a memory of Nature. If the work be good, we are glad to abstract our eyes, for the time, from all else. We can do this best when the scene from which the work was studied is shut farthest away from sight. Summer landscapes themselves are one thing, and we enjoy them in summer: such landscapes utilized--they cannot be reproduced--by art, are another thing, and these we enjoy at the winter fireside, when the eye sees nothing without except leaden clouds and effacing snow. Not even the average American would take a landscape-painting under his arm if he wished to get the good of it, and go set it up in the glare of an open harvestfield or in the darkness of a deep wood, although these objects may have made the picture. He would enjoy Nature just as well, no doubt, during such a proceeding, but would he get the good of art? What would the painter do to the critic or buyer who subjected his work to such a test? Poison him at the very least. And this is what the literary artist should complain of, rather than desire, at the hands of an editor. He should not want the little bit that he selected, narrowed, intensified, idealized, and then imperfectly transcribed from memory, brought out and set up before a reader whose eye is filled at every glance with the overpowering and inexhaustible realities of Nature herself.

Just the thing to read in the blistering days of July, if anything can be read then, is a graphic description of a snowstorm, or a lively account of the way a polar bear invaded the ice-hut of a benumbed Eskimo, or a history of the Washington Monument: something cold. Ice is as grateful in your dog-day literature as in your August julep. No one will hold that at such a time he prefers to contemplate a picture of Sahara or of a frying-pan. On the same principle, let us have, in art, our green leaves and warm colors amid the frosts of midwinter. Only the atmospheric extremes, summer and winter, can be seriously considered in "seasoning" periodical literature, the months our almanacs call spring being neither one thing nor another. In capricious April, however, a vision of golden and placid October would seem to be the proper thing, as would the freshness of May in the mellow melancholy of autumn. If editors receive more censures than compliments for publishing certain articles, into which the element of "news" does not enter, six months after the seasons of which they treat, there is one obscure contributor at least who considers the necessity a virtue.

C. H.

[According to the theory of "C. H.," the Christmas number of a magazine should be filled with midsummer idyls, while Christmas carols would be the appropriate reading in July or August. He thinks this would provide a grateful relief--like ice on a hot day or a blazing log on a cold one--from the effects of any intensity of temperature in the opposite seasons. But this is confounding sensations with mere conceptions, and seeking to "cloy the hungry edge of appetite by bare imagination of a feast." The ice cools and the fire warms, but a description of one or the other in place of the reality would make its absence only the more intolerable. Reynolds the dramatist tells us that one of his summer pieces was damned, owing to a scene in which the actors were served with plentiful libations of cool drinks--a tantalizing spectacle that drew a storm of hisses from the hot and thirsty audience. We hope the editor whom "C. H." has so inconsiderately assailed may not be tempted to revenge himself by exposing his contributor to a similar mishap.--ED.]

A HINT FOR THE CENTENNIAL.

The interest in the approaching Centennial celebration at Philadelphia is daily widening and extending, and if those entrusted with its management prove themselves competent for the work, and show that they are duly inspired with its breadth and its significance to the world, before the end of the present year there will not be a hamlet in the land whose citizens are not made prouder of their nationality and individually anxious to contribute something to its glory. It should be made the grandest occasion of the kind which the world has ever witnessed, for if it be anything less than that, it will fail to respond to the honest aspirations and generous pride of the American heart. Aside from the museum proper--the collection of past and present manufactures, past and present implements of industry--every day should witness some grand tournament, like that trial of grain-reapers which took place at the exposition at Paris in 1855. The scene was a splendid field of grain forty miles from the city. Three machines--one English, one French (from Algiers), and one American--were the weapons of the contest. The audience was a crowd of curious witnesses gathered from every quarter of the globe. At a signal from the judges' stand the fine machines started and moved each over its allotted acre, cutting down and raking the grain like magic. The Algerian machine did its work in seventy-two minutes, the English in sixty-six, and the American in twenty-two minutes! A French journal at the time said of the American machine, "It did its work in the most exquisite manner, not leaving a single spear ungathered, and it discharged the grain in the most perfect shape, as if placed by hand for the binders. It finished its piece most gloriously." The contest was finally narrowed down to three reapers, all American, and the champion won its laurels amid the most deafening shouts of applause.

SHRIMPS.

Some one has said that he who first swallowed an oyster was a brave man, but many will agree that the one who first devoured a shrimp bodily was still braver. Not but that the shrimp may possess desirable nutritive qualities--may indeed be exceedingly palatable to those whose imaginations are proof against the sight of its jointed legs and arms and its ugly physiognomy. But in India, at least, where dead human bodies are often seen floating down the sacred Ganges literally covered with these crustaceans, the appetite for them must be sensibly affected. Many of Her Majesty's subjects there will never touch a shrimp after once witnessing this spectacle in the Ganges. The animal, however, may not be the common shrimp (_Crangon vulgaris_).

Catching shrimps for market is quite an extensive industry, and in France mostly pursued by women, who wade knee deep into the water, pushing before them a net sewed around a hoop at the end of a long stick. A pannier or bag tied around the waist receives the animals from the net. In winter the shrimp retires from the beach into deeper water. It is then caught in boats with nets, made now of galvanized wire, which resists the action of the sea-water and is a great improvement upon the old twine net. In feeding, the shrimp grasps its minute prey by the short rake-like appendages between the legs proper and the tail, and passes it along up to its claws, and then to the mouth. These appendages serve also as a brush when the shrimp makes its toilet. To do this it stands as high as it can on the tips of its long legs, and bends its head and claws under its body, and when these are duly brushed the lobes of the tail are subjected to the same process.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

The Poetical Works of William Blake, Lyrical and Miscellaneous.
Edited, with a prefatory memoir, by William Michael Rossetti.
Boston: Roberts Brothers.

The Poems of William Blake, comprising Songs of Innocence and
of Experience, together with Poetical Sketches and some
Copyright Poems not in any other edition. London: Basil Montagu
Pickering.

It does not add to the mere delight of reading Blake's poems to know that in point of time they preceded the writings of Cowper, Wordsworth and Burns, but assuredly it enhances our estimation of their merit, and should have great weight in determining the literary rank of their author. His first volume, called _Poetical Sketches_, printed only for private circulation after lying for six years in manuscript, appeared in 1783, and then only by dint of the kindly efforts of influential and prosperous friends, notably Flaxman the sculptor. The _Sketches_ were written between the ages of twelve and twenty. The _Songs of Innocence and Experience_ appeared between 1787 and 1794, and were united in one volume in the latter year. It is by the poems contained in these two volumes, although he published or left in manuscript many other compositions, most of which are collected in one or the other of the editions now before us, that he is best known. During his lifetime his writings never achieved any general literary success. It fared with his poems as with his paintings, only in a minor degree: they were highly esteemed by the initiated, by his personal friends, by a few men whose keen natural perception of genius enabled them to discern it in spite of the eccentricity and inequality of his work; but to the general public, on whose recognition depends the reputation of the artist, his verses as well as his drawings were a sealed, or at least an enigmatical, book. His verses have no literary atmosphere about them: they smell neither of the midnight oil nor of that smoke of fame the fumes of which Byron tells us "are frankincense to human thought." They seem to have been written as spontaneously as a bird might warble on a bough, and no bird was ever more careless of auditors than Blake. It was not until twelve years after his death that a selection from his poems was given to the general public by the elder Pickering, and twenty-four years after (eleven years ago) a more general interest was created in his work, both as artist and poet, by a long and elaborate biography of him written by Mr. Gilchrist, and accompanied by a selection from his poems made by Mr. Rossetti. Subsequent to this publication appeared a voluminous critical essay on his genius by Mr. Algernon Charles Swinburne. The former of these two books was calculated to induce and foster a more general knowledge and appreciation of Blake's poetry. We can hardly say as much for Mr. Swinburne's essay. The exaggerated and fantastical epithets of praise, the involved and overloaded method of criticism, would have the effect upon most readers of creating a distaste in advance for the writings so heralded. The "Prefatory Memoir" prefixed by Mr. W. M. Rossetti to the most recent edition of the poems is of a different character, and may be commended to all readers who are about to make acquaintance with them.

But the best and most efficient introduction that a true poet can have is the general publication of his works. Let them speak for themselves to lovers of poetry, and no other prophet or expounder is needed. This is no place for extended comment on Blake's characteristics as a poet. His best songs are worthy to be ranked with those of the early Elizabethan dramatists, and they are not like them as a copy is like an original, but rather resemble them as the inspirations of a kindred genius. To find the superiors of some of Blake's songs we must go to Shakespeare. The faults of his best poems are always superficial, and often mere errors of carelessness and of the absence of literary workmanship, but the hand that strikes the keynote is the hand of a master. Such pieces as the "Lines to the Evening Star," the songs beginning "Memory, hither come," "How sweet I roamed from field to field!" "Love and Harmony combine," and the "Address to the Muses," in the _Sketches_, are full of melody and sweetness, and have a certain lyrical perfection in which Blake excels; while in the _Songs of Innocence_ the poems called "Night" and "Ah Sunflower!" seem to be equally beautiful. "A Little Boy Lost," in the _Songs of Experience_, is perhaps the best known of all the poems, and is quoted, with an unlicensed change of title, in Mr. Emerson's _Parnassus_. The disorder of Blake's mind, which was a very real and positive fact, undoubtedly had a detrimental effect on his work, both in art and literature; and there is often a sense of "sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh" as he touches on some one of the subjects which were potent to disturb his brain. But when he sings for the love of singing, with no memory of the outer world and its terrible problems, the solving of which lay heavy on his heart and brain, then he is all sweetness, melody and harmony, and gives us not only the delight of his exquisite verses, but that other joy that comes from the sense of breathing an atmosphere of devotion, purity, and genial sweetness.

Les Pléiades. Par le comte de Gobineau. Stockholm and Paris.