Chapter XXXIV: No. 13 Bellevue Street (5)

In the heart of the little garden stands a laurel tree, a shoot from Petrarch's own sacred laurel tree. More young shoots and saplings are springing up about it, all issuing from the great root that lies deep underground--the root of five hundred years ago; and the tree overshadows all the garden and the little crystal brook that sparkles along by the side of the wall. As I gazed at the stately shape, with its shining black berries and its glossy dark leaves, I knew that I had found the keynote to much of Petrarch's music--not always that of his best and most inspired moods. The resemblance of the name of Laura to the _laurel_; the antique fable of the transformation of Daphne into a laurel, and its adoption by Apollo as his emblem; the old superstition that the laurel was shielded against thunderbolts; his desire to win the laurel crown as the guerdon of his pains, both amorous and poetic,--were chains of tradition and convention which Petrarch had not strength to break, pompous, meaningless hieroglyphics which he felt it his duty to interpret to men, hinderances and trammels to the development of his genius. The laurel tree of Petrarch's garden is a fair type of one phase of the poet's own speech, prone to derive its significance from extraneous sources and overloaded with borrowed metaphor. But the laurel receives a new meaning if we picture to ourselves Madonna Laura reclining in its shadow on the banks of the little river, with flowers scattered all about her garments and little Loves disporting in the air about her wreathed head. Then it becomes instinct with life and vitality, and we wonder why Petrarch deemed it needful to resort to the dead and withered husks of antique fable for what lay there at his own cottage-door, and waited but to be lifted from the sod--a wealth of poetic illustration and conceit.

Since the day when I made the memory of the Vaucluse my own, I have read how a great festival was held there in the summer-tide in honor of Petrarch. I have read how they came, those intellectual debauchees, and rioted and revelled and wrangled and jarred, and poisoned the chaste, calm waters of the sacred river with the hot fumes of literary dissension and argument. I have read how they came, with their heads full of quotations and their notebooks full of impressions and hints for effective rhapsody--how they feasted on the silver trout of the Sorgue, and gathered Laura's roses to adorn their buttonholes, and stripped the consecrated laurel of its leaves to make garlands for their own dull heads, and poured forth international compliments, and glorified one another, and hugged themselves for delight at their fine comprehension of the poet, and fell on their knees before him, and immolated their individual hearts and souls at the shrine of his genius; and, lo! there was not a true appreciater of Petrarch among them all! The right appraiser of Petrarch has been there before and since, but he was not there then. The noise and the bustle and the wisdom of the multitude held him aloof, and he waited until a more convenient season. He comes by preference in the spring-time, knowing that then Nature and Petrarch sing in unison. He is a poet, because it takes a poet to understand a poet, no less than a hero a hero. He is of such simple, foolish mould that when he thinks there is no one near to spy him out he casts himself down upon the sod and kisses it with all tenderness, and caresses the daisies with his finger-tips, greeting them as his younger brethren; for there is something stirring in him which draws him nearer to earth's heart than other men, and he loves to dwell upon his common origin with flower and leaf. He does not fall down and worship Petrarch, because he knows that Petrarch is only one expression of the great power that lives behind all thought and speech--one part of the great whole that lies spread out before him on the river and the cliff. But he takes the old poet by the hand and looks straight into his eyes, and reads there what is written in his own heart, and says, "We twain are brethren and friends, sovereign and equal, for evermore."

If Petrarch had lived earlier in the centuries of Christianity, he would have been a monk. His genius would have found expression in the cloister-life, for the first monks were poets and philosophers. But he lived at a period when that beautiful principle of asceticism was no longer at one with genius. The fine essence of spirituality was gone from it, and it had hardened into senseless form and matter; and the law of his own mind forbade his pledging himself irrevocably to what in one mood seemed highest and most precious, but what another mood might contradict and openly defy. He knew that, although that ascetic temper which took possession of his soul at times when his genius was loudest, most clamorous, most importunate, was the basis of all monastic principle, he might not imprison it, fleeting, evanescent, within the dungeons of vows and formalism. And to-day, no less than in Petrarch's time, the same spirit walks the earth, shines through the actions and speech of all high souls, and yet refuses to bind itself to dull external shows and symbols.

If Petrarch had not withdrawn himself to the solitude of the Vaucluse, I doubt if we should know more of his passion for Laura to-day than could be told in a score of sonnets. For with his mind overloaded by the sights and sounds and honors that were heaped upon him, he never could have separated her from the contingent circumstances that surrounded their intercourse in Avignon. But there, on the banks of the Sorgue, he viewed her image from afar, dismissed all the attendant episodes of palace and revel, court and council, and beheld only the ideal--or rather the real--Laura in her own worth and significance. Surely, never was there verse through which showed so plainly the Nature under whose auspices it was brought forth as those songs of Petrarch. I seem to feel that they were written in solitude, not sublime, but pleasing, and in a narrow valley shut out from contemplation of aught else. And I know, as I leave the Vaucluse behind me, how deep a hold the memory of the loved fountain must needs have taken upon the poet's mind, for I too have made me a picture of a river, and a grotto, and a shadowy pool, and a low brown house, and a stately laurel tree, which will always live in my sense. And these things resolve themselves into one with a few scattered sonnets, and a shadowy gold-haired form, and a handful of sweet small roses, and, lo! I have made incarnate and have bound fast to me for ever that beautiful old-time idyl of the Vaucluse.

CHARLOTTE ADAMS.

A "TARTAR FIGHT" AT KAZAN, AND HOW IT WAS STOPPED.

Rooshia? Why, yes, I ought to know something about Rooshia, seein' I've lived there, off and on, this fifteen year and more; and if a young man was to come to me and ax me where's the best place for a workin' man to git on, I'd say to him, jist as I says it to you now, "Go to Rooshia!" Why so? says you. Well, jist this way. You see, cotton-mills and mowin'-machines and steam-ploughs and sich are quite new ideas out there; and they haven't got the trick of workin' 'em properly, not yet; so that any man as _has_ got it is pretty safe to git anything he likes to ax in the way o' wages. Why, _I_ knowed a man once--common factory-hand he was when he started: couldn't read nor write, nor nothin'; but he had his wits about him, all the same,--well, _he_ cum out here 'bout ten year ago, and went to some place on the Volga, with some crack-jaw name or other that I can't reck'lect. First year he was there he got as good pay as any overseer at home; next year he was overseer himself; two year arter that he owned his own mill, he did; and now, jist t'other day I gits a letter from him to say he's goin' home ag'in, with money in both pockets, and a-goin' to buy a big house and a bit o' ground, and I don't know what all. And if _that_ ain't gittin' on, I should jist like to know what is!

But you mustn't think, neither, as it's all jist as easy as supping porridge: it ain't that, nohow. I can tell yer, if you was to go into one o' them hot work-rooms on a roastin' day in July, with the thermometer anywhere you like above a hundred, you'd feel more like lyin' down in the shade and havin' a drink o' beer than workin' hard for nine or ten hours on end. They say we overseers have an easy life of it. I wish them as says so had jist got to try it themselves for a day or two. Then, ag'in, most likely there's only one road from your place to the nearest town, and jist when you want to send off your stuff it'll come on pourin' rain for ever so long, and the whole road'll be nothin' but plash and mash, like a dish of cabbage-soup; and there the stuff'll have to lie idle for weeks and weeks, and you've jist got to grin and bear it. And in them parts, instead of one good pelt and have done with it, it keeps on drip, drip, drip, for days and days in a sneaking half-and-half kind o' way, as if it hadn't the pluck to come out with a good hearty pour. The very thunder don't make a good round-mouthed peal like it does at home, but a nasty jabberin' row, jist as if it was a-tryin' to talk French. And, altogether, it is a place to try a chap's temper: it is, indeed.

Are the native workmen good for much? says you. Well, that depends pretty much on how you look at it. When you've once shown 'em how to do a thing, they'll do it every bit as well as yourself; but they take a powerful deal o' showin', they do. You see, a Rooshan has his own way of doin' everything, and tryin' to teach him any other way is as bad as eating soup with a one-pronged fork. And then to see how thick some on 'em are! Why, they may well be brave in battle, for it 'ud take a precious clever bullet to git through one of _their_ 'eads, it would. Here's one sample for yer: A friend o' mine in Mosker had got a Rooshan servant--one o' them reg'lar _Derevenskis_ ("villagers"), and so one day he sends him to the shop with two o' them twenty-kopeck pieces,[30] tellin' him to buy bread with one and butter with t'other. Off goes the chap, and never comes back ag'in; so at last his master goes to see what's up; and there he finds Mr. Ivan at the door of the shop, holdin' out the money in one hand and scratchin' his head with t'other, as if he'd forgot his own name, and couldn't find hisself nowhow. "Oh, _barin_" ("master"), says he in a voice like a fit o' chollerer, "whatever am I to do now? I've been and _mixed_ the two pieces, and now I don't know which was the one for the bread and which for the butter."

As for the Tartars, _they're_ troublesome in another way. They make prime workmen--there's no denyin' it; and I had ought to know, seein' I was over a gang of 'em myself for more'n a year--but they're the hot-bloodedest lot as ever I saw yet, and reg'lar born imps for fightin'; and when _they_ git up a shindy, look out! I can speak, for I saw the big fight betwixt them and the Rooshans at Kazan 'bout three year ago; and if you cares to hear the story, I'll tell yer jist how it all happened.

You tell me as you've been to Kazan, and so, o' course, you'll remember that the "Tartar Town," as they calls it, lies a mile or two east o' the reg'lar Rooshan quarter; and midway between 'em's a dry gully (leastways, it's dry in the summer-time, but you should jist see it arter the spring thaw!), with a little bridge over it. Now, the Rooshan gangs and the Tartar gangs, a-comin' from their work, used to cross each other jist at this bridge; and o' course there was a good deal o' chaffin' among 'em, and some fightin', too, now and then; for I needn't tell _you_ that a Rooshan and a Tartar are jist about as fond of each other as a Rooshan and a Turk. Now-a-days, the masters have had the gumption to change the hours of work, and keep 'em out of each other's way; but in _my_ time there was a scrimmage nearly every week, though nothin' like this 'un I'm tellin' of.

Well, sir, I'd knocked off early that evenin', and strolled back to my place with a young Rooshan merchant as I knowed--a right good feller, name o' Michael Feodoroff. Just at the bridge we stopped to have a look at the sunset; and a rare sight it was! There was the dark-red tower of the old Tartar gateway standin' out ag'in the bright evenin' sky, and the citadel-wall with all its turrets and battlements, and the gilt cupolers o' the churches in the town, and the great green plain of the Volga away below us, and the broad river itself a-shinin' wherever the light fell on it, and the purple hills beyond tipped with gold every here and there, jist like them Delectable Mountains as mother used to read about on Sundays when I was a boy.

While we were standin' lookin' at it up comes half a dozen Rooshan workmen, a-goin' home from their work, and four or five Tartars from t'other side, a-goin' home from _theirn_; and they meets jist on the bridge. As they crossed each other one o' the Rooshans pulls a bit o' sassage out of his pocket and holds it up to the foremost Tartar (a great ugly-lookin' bruiser with one eye), and says to him, chaffin' like, "Hollo, Mourad! d'ye want a bit o' grease to make yer beard grow?"

Now, I needn't tell _you_ that offerin' pork to a Mussulman is like drinkin' Dutch William's health at an Irish fair; and the words warn't well out o' the Rooshan's mouth afore the Tartar had him by the throat and was bangin' his head ag'in' the bridge-rails as if he was drivin' a nail with it.

Then, all in one minute, a whole crowd of 'em seemed to start up out o' the werry earth, and we found ourselves right in the middle of a reg'lar tearin' fight--tossin' arms and fierce faces whirlin' all round us; men strikin' and grapplin' and clawin' like fury; the broad, bearded faces of the Rooshans and the flat sallow mugs of the Tartars all blurred up together; and sich a yellin' and cursin' and screechin' a-goin' on that I a'most thought myself one o' them old Roman hemperors a-lookin' on at a wild-beast fight in the Call-and-see-'em.

I was so took aback that I jist stood and stared like a fool; but Feodoroff had his wits about him, and dragged me into a corner where we could see it all without bein' swep' in. I saw d'reckly that it was more than a plain bout o' fisticuffs, for several of the Rooshans had got out their knives, and were slashin' about like one o'clock; and the Tartars, on their side, had begun to tear out the rails o' the palisade and to crack the skulls of the Rooshans with them. Just then Ivan Martchenkoff, one o' my best men, came tumblin' down at my feet with half a dozen Tartars atop of him; and as he fell he caught sight of me, and cried to me for help.

Well, _that_ was more'n I could stand. I busted loose from Feodoroff (who tried to hold me), and leapt right among 'em. I cotched the uppermost Tartar by the scruff o' the neck, and chucked him away like a kitten; and the second I hit sich a dollop behind the ear as made him look five ways at once; but just then two o' the rips jumped upon me from behind, and down I went. Then Feodoroff flew in to save me, but the crowd closed upon him, and down _he_ went too; and I thought 'twas all up with us both.

Jist then I heerd a rumble of wheels up the slope leadin' to the bridge, and then a great shout of "_Soldati! soldati!_" ("The soldiers! the soldiers!").

Then I lay close to the ground and made myself as small as I could, for I knowed that if they fired into sich a crowd with cannon it 'ud just mow 'em down like grass. The next minute I heerd an orficer's voice singin' out, "Halt! front! fire!" But instead of the bang of a cannon there cum a hiss like fifty tea-kettles a-bilin' over, and then a great splash, and the crowd scattered fifty ways at once; and I found myself wringin' wet all in a minute. Then somebody gripped hold o' me and pulled me up, and there was Feodoroff, and beside him Lieutenant Berezinski of the garrison laughin' fit to burst. And when I looked round the whole place was a puddle o' water, with dozens of men rollin' in it like flies in treacle; and at the end of the bridge was ten or twelve sogers, and right in front of 'em a great steam _fire-engine_! Then I understood it all, and began laughin' as loud as anybody.

"You've cooled their courage this time, Mr. Lieutenant," says I.

"I think I have," says the lieutenant; "and that, too, without wasting a cartridge or killing a man. When you go home to England, Yakov Ivanovitch (James son of John), you can say that if you haven't stood fire, you've stood water, and been at the battle of Voyevoda."[31]

DAVID KER.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

THE COLORED CREOLES OF BALTIMORE.

It is well known that many French families, fugitives from St. Domingo, took refuge in Baltimore during the last decade of the eighteenth century. They gracefully and gratefully accepted favors and kindness of various kinds, but they were too proud and self-reliant to resign themselves to eat the bread of charity or lead lives of indolence. Some, born to fortune and ancient titles, employed their talents and accomplishments promptly and without hesitation. Counts and marquises became gardeners (introducing a great variety of fruits and vegetables unknown before in the United States), dancing-masters, music-teachers, drawing-masters, architects, chemists, confectioners, cigar-makers and teachers of their own beautiful language. The names of many of those _émigrés_ are now borne by the most estimable citizens of the community which first sheltered their ancestors: they are ornaments of society, distinguished in the professions and skilled in the arts and sciences.

But it is not of this high and noble class that I desired to speak: it is of a more humble but not less worthy set of French people who came here at the same time. I allude to the colored creoles who were the born slaves of these ladies and gentlemen. Some shared the dangers of their flight from St. Domingo: others found a way, by tedious voyages, to join their old masters and tender their services, not as slaves, but as honest, humble, faithful servants. It was honorable both to master and slave that such cordial relations should have existed under such trying circumstances. Some of the creoles were good cooks, bakers, snuff-makers, laundry-women, etc.; and the most beautiful and touching part of this relation between the master and their former slaves was that hundreds of the latter laid the profits of their labor at the feet of their white friends with reverence and devotion. Many old ladies and gentlemen, accustomed to every attention from the best trained servants, were altogether incapable of helping themselves, and were dependent on the bounty and tender care of their former slaves. Most of the better class of French _émigrés_ retained all their former habits of domestic life, such as taking a cup of coffee before rising in the morning and an eleven-o'clock _déjeuner à la fourchette_, while those who could afford it had a modest _petit souper_ at nine o'clock in the evening. At the latter were often found the élite of this French society. Music, dancing and refined conversation were indulged in for two or three hours: old memories and stirring events were recalled and the bonds of nationality and family affection were more closely knit. French only was spoken at these soirées, and the elegant manners of the old school were observed in perfection.

The most remarkable of this set was a Madame Valanbrun, the widow of a gentleman of large fortune and high position in St. Domingo. He died before the Revolution. She was only twenty-five when the massacre took place, beautiful, accomplished and fascinating. Her estates were extensive, and she lived in one of the principal cities of the island. At the time of the outbreak she escaped to a Baltimore vessel, accompanied by several of her house-servants, and saved a part of her fortune--plate, jewels and some gold coin. Arriving in Baltimore, she found several of her friends already there. With the elastic temper peculiar to the French, she determined to make the best of her changed circumstances. Having purchased a large house in a cheap part of the city, she fitted up her own suite of rooms on the second floor. Here she received company, and was attended by her servants as if she had been a queen. At that period snuff-taking was very fashionable and almost universal. Some of madame's servants were very expert in making snuff, cigars and cigarettes: these articles they sold at high prices, for they soon became well known. Others of her servants made confections, cakes, sweetmeats, which they carried around in baskets: some made dresses, and others went out as nurses. The arrangements for all these various employments were made by the servants themselves, but the profits were carefully reserved for the queen bee of the hive.

For many years Madame Valanbrun was the centre of the French society of Baltimore. She had few acquaintances outside of this circle, but the most distinguished foreigners who visited the city--French, Spanish and Italian--and several young Americans ambitious to become better acquainted with the French language, were glad to have the entrée of her salon.

Time wore on. The Bourbons were restored to the throne, and many French families returned to France to seek their lost fortunes. Some were successful, but most of them were doomed to disappointment and continued poverty. Madame Valanbrun remained contented with her humble but comfortable lot. By degrees her corps of servants was reduced by death, a new race of competitors sprang up, and her income each year grew less and less.

In 1832, when the Asiatic cholera fell upon Baltimore like an Alpine avalanche upon a quiet Italian village, the colored creoles suffered more, relatively, than any other portion of the population, probably because they lived in the more confined streets in the centre of the city. The venerable physician who furnished most of the particulars for this sketch said: "I was passing through a narrow and rather dirty street one day during the height of the cholera, when I met Dr. B----, who asked me whether I did not know Madame Valanbrun: if so, would I go with him to see her in one of the houses near? He had been there a few hours before, and thought she had a severe attack of cholera. We went, and found the venerable old lady _in articulo mortis_. She was much changed, and the surroundings indicated an equally great change in her circumstances which it was melancholy to witness. But one feature redeemed all that was disgusting in the picture: round the squalid bed five or six old negroes, men and women, knelt in deep devotion like fixed statues, offering up their prayers to the Throne of grace for the departing soul of their beloved mistress, whose life had been so chequered by the sunshine of pleasure and the clouds of adversity. She had just received the last rites of the Church. The priest had retired to perform similar duties elsewhere, leaving the humble but devoted blacks to watch the last breath of life and to close the eyes of their lifelong friend and mistress. I never felt more veneration at the deathbed of any of my own kindred, or deeper respect for mourners than I then felt for those faithful servants of Madame Valanbrun. The old lady died that evening. She devised the small remnant of her property to be divided among her old servants in common.

"Among these colored Creoles were some remarkable women. Well do I remember Suzette, Fanny, Clementine, as faithful watchers at sick beds: many precious lives did they save by their skill, judgment and fidelity. They were not _eye_-servants, working for money only: they worked from the purest motives of benevolence, from the sentiment of Christian charity.

"Another instance of fidelity came under my notice when I was a student of medicine in 1819. I boarded at a good old Frenchman's, whose few domestics were French creoles. One of these was the washerwoman. When quite young she had left St. Domingo with her old mistress, who had been kind to her in the days of prosperity on the island. The old lady managed to save a small portion of her wealth, and lived quietly with her former servant, now her faithful friend. Madame Curchon, as she grew older, required more comforts than her slender means could afford, and Lizette determined to take in washing. She soon obtained as much as she could attend to, and spent her earnings in making madame comfortable in her old age.

"About this time appeared a fine-looking negro sailor from St. Domingo. He had heard that Lizette, his former sweetheart, was alone in Baltimore, and he came in search of her. He found her. She welcomed him joyously, with her affection for him unchanged. He told her he would marry her at once and take her back to the West Indies. Lizette explained to her lover that she considered herself bound in honor to her old mistress, though no longer her slave, adding that if he would give her five hundred dollars to leave with Madame Curchon her conscience would be free of all charge of ingratitude, and she would follow him to any part of the world. He said he would not pay a dollar for her, as she was a free woman and had worked for the old lady long enough.

"This little love-story came to the knowledge of the boarders through our kind-hearted landlady, and they agreed to subscribe one hundred dollars toward the payment of the amount fixed on by Lizette: the old mistress knew nothing of this romance in low life. Some weeks passed: the man remained stubborn in his idea of right, and she in her conscientious sense of what was due to her dear old mistress. Lizette positively refused to abandon madame to an old age of poverty. Her lover finally returned to the West Indies without her. Whatever disappointment the faithful creole may have suffered, she remained true to her trust, and was for many years the comfort and companion of this poor old French lady."

Another instance of creole gratitude and fidelity is worth recording. A lady who had enjoyed wealth and luxury at home escaped the massacre, but arrived in America entirely destitute. Her feeble health required constant care and delicate food. She was accompanied in her flight by her faithful servant Fanny, who devoted herself to the care and comfort of her former mistress. Fanny rented a small brick house containing five rooms--two chambers, two rooms below and a kitchen. In the upper rooms she made her dear old godmother as comfortable as any lady could be, and when her duties called her elsewhere she placed another in attendance there. The constant piety of this excellent creole was an edifying sight. Fanny still lives, but her dear friend is no more: she believes firmly that they will again be united, to part no more.

One fact connected with these colored Creoles is worthy of mention. Although they have been living in this country for more than three-quarters of a century, they have never united themselves, as social beings, with any of our American negroes. They have treated them with kindness and politeness, helped them in poverty and visited them in sickness, but have never intermarried with them, never gone to their churches, never joined any of the various African societies so conspicuous on certain days of parade. Distinguished for their honesty, they have seldom appeared in the courts either as plaintiffs or defendants. Respected by all, they have never demanded social equality.

Scarcely a dozen of the colored creoles who originally emigrated from St. Domingo are now alive, but their descendants are numerous. They form a very worthy part of the community in which they live. They retain many of the traditionary qualities of their ancestors, and among the shiftless, dependent and often destitute negroes around them they are conspicuous for their industry, integrity and morality.

E.L.D.

GLIMPSES OF BRUSSELS.

To leave Paris for Brussels is to exchange excitement for tranquillity, a crowd for a few, the oppressive newness and vivacity of to-day for a mild animation tempered with a flavor of bygone ages. Brussels has been called a miniature Paris. I should rather consider her as the younger sister of the great city--less beautiful, less decked out, less accomplished, less versed in the ways of the world, yet keeping a certain freshness and virginity of aspect that is lacking in her more brilliant elder.

There is one thing that a foreign resident of Paris is apt to find very enjoyable in Brussels, and that is the absence of the eternal crowd that mars for many people a full enjoyment of the pleasant places of Paris. Her thronging millions overwhelm you on every festive day or joyous occasion. Any little outside show or attraction calls together in some restricted space the population of a small city. Thirty thousand people rushed to hear the Spanish students play on the guitar in the garden of the Tuileries. Twenty thousand go every Sunday to the Salon during the period that it remains open. One hundred thousand go out to the races on ordinary days, and twice that number attend the Grand Prix. Hence comes a famine of conveyances and of seats, and a plethora of companions that are far from being uniformly agreeable.

In Brussels one has enough of human surroundings. There is no lack of companionship in her gardens, her galleries, her streets and her parks. She is not a solitude, as are some of the dead cities of Italy and Germany or some of the minor provincial towns in Belgium and France. The influence of her three hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants is very comfortably apparent. But where Paris pours forth her tens of thousands, Brussels sends out some hundreds. Hence there is always room and to spare. And she is well-to-do in the world, is this pretty capital of Belgium. She is growing and thriving, and wears every mark of an active and contented prosperity. New and handsome streets meet the view on every side. Foremost among these is the elegant Avenue Louise, named after the late queen of the Belgians, which leads out to the spacious and lovely Bois de la Cambre, a second Bois de Boulogne, omitting the traces of the siege. The Avenue Louise reminds me very much of South Broad street in Philadelphia. It forms an almost unbroken row of elegant private residences, extending for full two miles to the very gate of the Bois. The centre of the roadway is macadamized and bordered with rows of trees, thus forming a charming road to the Bois for the private carriages of the Belgian aristocracy.

The royal family of Belgium appear but little in public. A series of family misfortunes, combined with the ill-health of the king, has induced them to live in comparative retirement. Of the children of the late king Leopold, but three survive, the present king, the Count de Flandres and the luckless empress Charlotte. The last, still sunk in a state of hopeless insanity, inhabits the Château de Tervueren. The king, with his wife and family, passes most of his time at the Château de Laeken. He is a great sufferer from a disease which has attacked one of his legs. The queen, an Austrian archduchess, was formerly one of the most beautiful princesses of Europe, but she has never regained either her health or her spirits since the death of her only son some years ago, and looks faded and careworn. On the king's death the crown will pass to his only brother, the Count de Flandres. This gentleman, whose wife, a beautiful and spirited lady, is a princess of the house of Hohenzollern, is as deaf as a post. He inhabits a very handsome palace in the heart of Brussels, and his own sleeping apartments are on the ground floor. One summer night the sentinel in charge was amazed to see a crowd gathered in front of the windows of the count's room, and evidently highly amused. On approaching it was discovered that the attendants had failed to close the outside shutters, and had drawn the lace curtains merely. The room was brilliantly lighted, and of course every part of it was distinctly visible from without. And there,

Dans le simple appareil
D'une beauté qu'on vient d'arracher au sommeil,

the heir to the Belgian throne was peacefully walking to and fro in a brown study, unconscious that the eyes of some hundreds of his future subjects were fixed upon his lightly-draped form. His deafness prevented him from hearing the noise outside the window, and rendered all warnings by means of sounds ineffectual. So the prince's chamberlain was aroused, and after some delay His Royal Highness was released from his very undignified position.

Among the proprietors of the new buildings of Brussels is cited the empress Eugénie. Whole rows of newly-erected and handsome shops were pointed out to me as being her property. A very strong sympathy for the dethroned imperial family seemed to be prevalent in Brussels, as well as an equally strong dislike to the Germans. I was amused to find that two animals in the Zoological Garden, a very cross monkey and a savage-looking African boar, both bore the name of Bismarck.

This Zoological Garden, by the by, is unworthy of the beautiful city to which it belongs. It is small, shabby and ill-kept, contains very few animals, and has become a sort of beer-garden, with open-air concerts and a skating-rink for its chief attractions. A very large and beautiful aquarium, a vast grotto of artificial rock-work, is really worth seeing, but its contents are of the most commonplace kind.

The picture-gallery--or Musée Royal, as it is called--has recently been rearranged, and the modern paintings that used to be on view in the ducal palace are now installed in a series of new and beautifully-decorated rooms. Thither have also been removed a number of pictures by contemporary Belgian painters that used to adorn the public buildings of Brussels. Chief among these is Gallait's noble picture of the _Abdication of Charles V_. This fine work, considered by some critics as the masterpiece of the great Belgian artist, is worthy of the pencil of Delaroche. Nor is it in style unlike the best productions of that master, recalling the _Death of Elizabeth_ by its admirable grouping and refinement of color. Verboeckhoven is seen here at his best, his _Flock of Sheep in a Storm_, a large and carefully-finished work, being replete with all the most striking characteristics of his genius. Madou's _Interrupted Ball_ is a brilliant and vivacious representation of a village festival troubled by the intrusion of a group of dandies of the Directory--gay Incroyables who chuck the country damsels under the chin, rouse their swains to jealous wrath and otherwise misconduct themselves. Rohbe's pictures of still life are perfect feasts of coloring, warm, rich and glowing as the heart of a crimson rose brimming with the sunshine and sweetness of a summer's day.

The Musée itself is a noble building, and in point of arrangement and of decoration forms a contrast to the dreary halls of the Luxembourg. The gallery devoted to the old masters contains some valuable specimens of early Flemish art, and some extremely interesting historical portraits, the gem of the collection being a wonderfully fine portrait by Holbein of Sir Thomas More.

But the most interesting point in all Brussels is the Hôtel de Ville. That marvellous edifice, that looks as though it ought to be preserved in a velvet-lined case, so delicate and elaborate are its multitudinous sculptures, lifts the exquisite tracery of its spire against the summer sky, as perfect in its beauty as when Alva and Egmont and Orange passed beneath its shadow ages ago. No spot in Europe, save perhaps the Tower of London, is more haunted by historic memories than is this perfect marvel of architectural beauty. The centuries roll back as we stand beneath its shadow. There is a stain of blood upon the stones, and Philip of Spain rides by, and the duke of Alva comes through yonder doorway, and the air is full of thronging phantoms and of cries--the wail of the Netherlands beneath the sword of the oppressor.

Around the Hôtel de Ville are grouped a series of antique buildings, the one more exquisite than the other--the ancient halls of the corporations of Brussels, among which that of the brewers shows supreme by reason of the luxury of its carvings and the care wherewith its beauty and solidity have been maintained throughout the centuries. In one of the simplest houses of the square Victor Hugo first took refuge after the great catastrophe of the _coup d'état_. It bore the number 27. A tobacco-shop occupied the ground floor. The poet's parlor was furnished in a style of bald simplicity, with chairs and a sofa covered with black haircloth. But he was wont to say, pointing to the Hôtel de Ville, "I have the most wonderful piece of carving in the world for a sideboard." In this modest abode he wrote _Napoléon le Petit_. Then, stirred by the historic memories around him, he chose the Inquisition itself for a subject, and planned his as yet unpublished tragedy of _Torquemada_. The dwelling in the Grande Place became the haunt of all the proscribed republicans of France. Yet Belgium gave them but a cold welcome and grudging hospitality. They were subjected to a series of humiliating formalities, chief among which was the requirement of the authorities that each should provide himself with a permit of residence. These permits were temporary and revocable, and their holders were obliged to go weekly to ask for their renewal at the central police-office. It is not surprising, therefore, that so few of the fugitives should have remained in Belgium. Seven thousand took refuge there after the coup d'état, but only two hundred and fifty took up their abode on Belgian soil. Yet Brussels remained, in some sense, the continental head-quarters of Victor Hugo, though never kindly or generous in her treatment of the great exile. In 1871, the rumor having gone abroad that he had offered shelter to some of the fugitive Communists, his house was attacked by an armed mob, and its inmates barely escaped with their lives.

Brussels possesses among her other sights a curiosity with which she could very well dispense--namely, the Wiertz Gallery. It is a collection of horrors depicted on a colossal scale by a man whose powers of painting were scarcely equal to those of a respectable scene-painter. A series of nightmares, expressed with a sort of epileptic violence and without any artistic value, clothe the walls of the immense studio with gigantic abominations. There is neither originality of conception nor intelligence of execution to redeem their hideousness: their horror is of the simplest bugaboo kind. A man blowing his head to pieces with a pistol-shot; a supposed corpse coming to life in its coffin; the First Napoleon in the flames of hell, with a multitude of women shaking at him the bloody severed limbs of their sons and husbands; a child burned alive in its cradle; the head of a decapitated criminal, and the visions that filled its brain,--such are some of the ghastly imaginings of this diseased and uneducated nature. Compare such works as these with Doré's crudest conceptions, and the difference between the inventions of genius and those of a morbid intellect becomes at once apparent.

L.H.H.

AN OFF YEAR.

It is a great luxury to find ourselves and the country in the midst of what Marshal MacMahon might style a _quadrennate_, and to be at the neutral and central point from which a much-vexed people can look both ways for a Presidential election. The contest of two years ago is over, and that of two years hence not near enough to beget mentionable worry. This equator of partisanship, lying midway between the two polls, is a happy medium of repose. The trade-winds of party passion blow from both sides fiercely toward it, but fail to break its calm. The average American--even the average professional American politician--possesses his soul in patience. He looks forward to no revolution, and, when he thinks of the matter at all, is entirely certain that the night of the first Tuesday in November, 1880, will bring nothing more tremendous than the usual hubbub among the telegraph-operators, the reporters and the haunters of the clubs and leagues. He doubts the due abnormal succession of the Presidents as little as he does that of the British kings, and a great deal less than he does that of some of the continental monarchs, to say nothing of the French ruler, whose septennate happens also to be within about two years of its close.

So pleasant it is to be at leisure to bestow attention on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, without thought of the usually engrossing machinery so painfully and minutely contrived for facilitating our advance to those ends! To forget the means and for once look at the object; to ignore the strife for free government, and be placidly and contentedly free; to shut our eyes on eternal vigilance, and realize that we have paid that price and have the receipt in our pockets; to intermit our nursing of the tree and enjoy the fruit; to feel that life in a republic is not necessarily and always "the fever called living,"--such is, for the present interval, our lot. Self-government is such very hard work that those engaged in it are entitled to occasional holidays. Nature demands it. Whether their stated Sabbath come once in four years or once in seven, it must come. No wonder that it is apt to prove too welcome and seductive, and that healthy relaxation should grow into harmful lethargy, Sunday into "Blue Monday." Examples of that result are abundant enough to warn us when we need warning. They have chromoed in brilliantly illuminated text, in all the languages and alphabets, the maxim about eternal vigilance, and hung it up over our council-fires and our domestic hearths. We can only venture, perhaps, to half close our eyes and view it sleepily as through cigar-smoke, or turn our backs upon it for a little while and go out into a world of other cares which takes no note of elections, constitutions, statutes or office-holding. The shorter the interval the less should our enjoyment of it be marred. Investigations into past elections serve only to interfere with it, or to assist the newspapers in interfering with it; and newspapers are our daily food or a part of it. Three-fourths of the reading-matter in the five or six thousand of them published in the Union are filled with politics, although the conductors of them, like the rest of us, are aware that politics are temporarily in eclipse. They can teach us nothing on that subject, and we want to learn nothing. Their occupation as trade-journals devoted to the art and science of government is gone. Other periodicals devoted to a specialty, whether iron, coal, calico or the Thirty-nine Articles, show judgment and compassion on their readers when a "slack" time comes by turning miscellaneous and slipping in choice literary tidbits among their regular "shop" items. The five thousand should do likewise. If they will not wholly exclude politics, they might at least sweep political news and disquisitions into a separate corner of the sheet--say among the jokes, base-ball accidents and last year's advertisements.

Could our legislators and their chroniclers only convince themselves that they are _de trop_, that the best they can do just now is to assist us in cultivating a transitory oblivion of them and their deeds, and that, instead, they are depriving us of the refreshment of our forty winks, they would show a correct understanding of the situation. If they cannot be altogether silent, they might at least give their noise another pitch, and direct it into some humdrum monotone that would not jar upon our slumbers. Do their worst, however, they cannot take from us the delicious consciousness that it will be two years before another Presidential campaign. Panoplied in that reflection, we can stand a good deal.

We sometimes think it must have been a vast relief to the Poles when partition came and the three powers for good and all put an end to their perpetually recurring agony of electing a king. To the masses of the people, who were serfs, and had no more the right of suffrage or any other attribute of liberty than their cattle, we have no doubt it was so. Only by the small minority of privileged and fussy nobles, who went armed to the hall of election, ready to silence effectually any troublesome minority-man who should undertake to defeat their choice with his veto, could the loss of the wonted excitement have been seriously felt. That it was a relief to the neighboring nations, whose peace was constantly compromised by the recurrence of Poland's stormy call for a new king, is certain enough. The change threw a few very worthy men out of business--the Kosciuskos, Pulaskis, Czartoriskis, etc.--but it did away with a much larger number who were standing nuisances, and it left the surplus energy of many more to seek more legitimate and profitable paths. Of course the fate of the Poles, prosperous though their country is beyond anything dreamed of in the days of its nominal independence, is not enviable to us. It were to be wished that they had been cured of the regular--or irregular--spasms of selecting a chief without losing their national autonomy. What we remark is, that the strain of that convulsion was greater than they or their neighbors could bear, and that all concerned, with the trifling exceptions named, must have breathed freer and deeper when it was put an end to.

E.C.B.

CONJUGAL DISCORDS.

The weaknesses and follies of woman are a theme on which men, from the sage to the clown, have at all times been eloquent. Her natural coquetry in dress, her maternal vanity, her devotion to the little elegancies of the home, to clean windows and fresh curtains, are inexhaustible sources of masculine merriment or abuse. What housekeeper ever complained of an aching back or of nervous irritation without being scolded by her "lord" for some extra work she had done in beautifying the home? Men never seem to learn that women, as a rule, cannot find life endurable in the atmosphere of dust and disorder which characterizes bachelor housekeeping, and which seldom disturbs the equanimity of the masculine mind in the least. Men and women are so different in their tastes and ways that there must always be discord and unhappiness in the household until the sexes give over trying to change or remodel those tastes and ways, and learn to respect them. Men must accept as inevitable the fact that women to be happy must have artistic, or at least dainty and cozy, environments; and women must learn to preserve their souls in quiet when men spill their tobacco and ashes over the carpets and tables, for probably no man ever lived who could fill a pipe, even from a wash-tub, without scattering the tobacco over the premises.

That the sexes will give over trying to reform each other does not seem likely to happen very soon. Indeed, one might be pardoned for believing that matrimony is specially adapted to develop all the imperfections and meannesses of human character, and that even of those matches that are made in heaven the devil arranges all the subsequent conditions. There is hardly a pure and innocent delight that unmarried women enjoy which they can carry into that blissful world bounded by the marriage-ring. One of those delights is that of squandering a little money, which is merely the equivalent of man's spending it as he likes, without accounting to any one. Few wives can do this and not be subjected to the humiliation of hearing the husband say, "My dear, are you not a little extravagant? Is all that money gone that I gave you last week?"

Men and women seem incapacitated, in the very nature of things, from understanding each other. While mutually enamored they meet as upon a bridge--a Bridge of Sighs perhaps: break this, and they are for ever separated as by an impassable gulf. Leaving aside entirely the enamored state, do men as a rule seek the society of women and prefer it to that of men? The thriving clubs, the billiard- and drinking-saloons, and the other resorts of men common all over the civilized world, seem very like a negative answer to the question. In savage life we know that the sexes do not hunt or fish or do any work together. In our modern drawing-rooms most men confess themselves "bored." They long to get away to their clubs or some other resort of their fellows. When husbands spend their evenings at home, if no one happens to call it is not common for them to enter into long and exhilarating conversations with their wives. To be sure, wives are too often ignorant of the subjects that interest intelligent men; still, not more ignorant than before marriage, when the one bridge upon which they could meet was unbroken. _Then_ conversation never flagged: it was ever new and entrancing. Both talked pure nonsense, while having the art of "kissing full sense into empty words." On the other hand, it is, I think, quite a defensible proposition, despite the inferences to the contrary drawn from the failure of the Women's Hotel, that women enjoy conversation with women more than with men when there is no possible question of gallantry or flirtation; and, finally, that the recognition of the fact that men and women are not by nature in sympathetic accord, but only attracted through the law of compensation or opposites, will do more than all other things combined to make them study each other's natures and to respect sexual biases and characteristics, the motive for that study being, of course, the consummation of the ideal marriage, where man and woman set themselves together "like perfect music unto noble words."

M.H.

A RUSSIAN GENERAL IN CENTRAL ASIA.

Afternoon in Tashkent, the burning sun of Central Asia glaring upon the dusty streets and countless mud-hovels of the great city; files of camels gliding past with their long, noiseless stride, led by gaunt brown men in blue robes and white turbans; a deep archway in a high wall of baked earth, above which appear the trees of a spacious garden, and just within the entrance two tall, wiry, black-eyed Cossacks, in flat forage-caps, soiled cotton jackets and red goatskin trousers, leaning indolently on their long Berdan rifles.

At my approach, however, the two sentinels start up briskly enough--as well they may, for they are guarding one whom every man in Bokhara would give his best horse for a fair chance of murdering. My announcement that I am expected by the governor-general is received with evident suspicion and a crossing of bayonets to bar my way; but, happily, a passing aide-de-camp recognizes me and promptly leads me in.