This made me despair of surprising the town, as I well knew we could
not reach it before the day was fairly broke. But as I was certain
there was no making a retreat without being discovered, and harassed on
re-passing the river, I determined to push on at all events. I formed
my detachment into two divisions, one to march by the lower or river
road, the other by the upper or Pennington road. As the divisions had
nearly the same distance to march, I ordered each of them, immediately
upon forcing the out-guards, to push directly into the town, that they
might charge the enemy before they had time to form.

The upper division arrived at the enemy’s advanced post exactly at
eight o’clock: and in three minutes after I found, from the fire on the
lower road, that that division had also got up. The out-guards made but
small opposition, though, for their numbers, they behaved very well,
keeping up a constant retreating fire from behind houses. We presently
saw their main body formed; but from their motions, they seemed
undetermined how to act.

Being hard pressed by our troops, who had already got possession of
their artillery, they attempted to file off by a road on their right,
leading to Princeton. But, perceiving their intention, I threw a body
of troops in their way; which immediately checked them. Finding,
from our disposition, that they were surrounded, and that they must
inevitably be cut to pieces if they made any further resistance, they
agreed to lay down their arms. The number that submitted in this manner
was twenty-three officers and eight hundred and eighty-six men. Colonel
Rahl, the commanding officer, and seven others, were found wounded in
the town. I do not exactly know how many they had killed; but I fancy
not above twenty or thirty, as they never made any regular stand. Our
loss is very trifling indeed—only two officers and one or two privates
wounded.

I find that the detachment consisted of the three Hessian regiments of
Lanspach, Kniphausen, and Rahl, amounting to about fifteen hundred men,
and a troop of British light horse; but immediately upon the beginning
of the attack, all those who were not killed or taken pushed directly
down toward Bordentown. These would likewise have fallen into our hands
could my plan have been completely carried into execution.

General Ewing was to have crossed before day at Trenton ferry, and
taken possession of the bridge leading out of town; but the quantity
of ice was so great that, though he did every thing in his power to
effect it, he could not get over. This difficulty also hindered General
Cadwallader from crossing with the Pennsylvania militia from Bristol.
He got part of his foot over; but finding it impossible to embark his
artillery, he was obliged to desist.

I am fully confident that, could the troops under Generals Ewing and
Cadwallader have passed the river, I should have been able, with their
assistance, to have driven the enemy from all their posts below
Trenton. But the numbers I had with me being inferior to theirs below
me, and a strong battalion of light infantry being at Princeton above
me, I thought it most prudent to return the same evening with the
prisoners and the artillery we had taken. We found no stores of any
consequence in the town.

In justice to the officers and men, I must add that their behavior upon
this occasion reflects the highest honor upon them. The difficulty of
passing the river in a very severe night, and their march through a
violent storm of snow and hail, did not in the least abate their ardor;
but when they came to the charge each seemed to vie with the other in
pressing forward; and were I to give a preference to any particular
corps I should do great injustice to the others.

Colonel Baylor, my first aid-de-camp, will have the honor of delivering
this to you; and from him you may be made acquainted with many other
particulars. His spirited behavior upon every occasion requires me to
recommend him to your particular notice.

I have the honor to be, etc.,

    G. W.

THOMAS JEFFERSON.

    As a composition, the Declaration [of Independence]
    is Mr. Jefferson’s. It is the production of his mind,
    and the high honor of it belongs to him clearly and
    absolutely. To say that he performed his great work
    well would be doing him an injustice. To say that
    he did excellently well, admirably well, would be
    inadequate and halting praise. Let us rather say
    that he so discharged the duty assigned him that all
    Americans may well rejoice that the work of drawing
    the title-deed of their liberties devolved upon
    him.—_Daniel Webster._

    After Washington and Franklin there is no person who
    fills so eminent a place among the great men of America
    as Jefferson.—_Lord Brougham._

Washington.

His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first order;
his penetration strong, though not so acute as that of a Newton, Bacon,
or Locke; and as far as he saw, no judgment was ever sounder. It was
slow in operation, being little aided by invention or imagination,
but sure in conclusion. Hence the common remark of his officers, of
the advantage he derived from councils of war, where, hearing all
suggestions, he selected whatever was best; and certainly no general
ever planned his battles more judiciously. But if deranged during the
course of the action, if any member of his plan was dislocated by
sudden circumstances, he was slow in a re-adjustment. The consequence
was, that he often failed in the field, and rarely against an enemy
in station, as at Boston and York. He was incapable of fear, meeting
personal dangers with the calmest unconcern. Perhaps the strongest
feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every
circumstance, every consideration was maturely weighed; refraining
if he saw a doubt, but when once decided, going through with his
purpose, whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity was most pure, his
justice the most inflexible I have ever known; no motives of interest
or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his
decision. He was, indeed, in every sense of the word, a wise, a good,
and a great man. His temper was naturally irritable and high-toned; but
reflection and resolution had obtained a firm and habitual ascendency
over it. If ever, however, it broke its bounds, he was most tremendous
in his wrath. In his expenses he was honorable, but exact; liberal in
contributions to whatever promised utility; but frowning and unyielding
on all visionary projects, and all unworthy calls on his charity.
His heart was not warm in its affections; but he exactly calculated
every man’s value, and gave him a solid esteem proportioned to it.
His person, you know, was fine, his stature exactly what one would
wish; his deportment easy, erect, and noble, the best horseman of his
age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback.
Although in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved
with safety, he took a free share in conversation, his colloquial
talents were not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of
ideas nor fluency of words. In public, when called on for a sudden
opinion, he was unready, short, and embarrassed. Yet he wrote readily,
rather diffusely, in an easy and correct style. This he had acquired
by conversation with the world, for his education was merely reading,
writing, and common arithmetic, to which he added surveying at a
later day. His time was employed in action chiefly, reading little,
and that only in agriculture and English history. His correspondence
became necessarily extensive, and with journalizing his agricultural
proceedings, occupied most of his leisure hours within doors. On the
whole, his character was, in its mass, perfect, in nothing bad, in a
few points indifferent; and it may truly be said, that never did nature
and fortune combine more completely to make a man great, and to place
him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have merited from
man an everlasting remembrance. For his was the singular destiny and
merit of leading the armies of his country successfully through an
arduous war, for the establishment of its independence; of conducting
its councils through the birth of a government, new in its forms and
principles, until it had settled down into a quiet and orderly train;
and of scrupulously obeying the laws through the whole of his career,
civil and military, of which the history of the world furnishes no
other example.

THOUGHTS FROM WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING.

ON BOOKS.—It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with
superior minds and these invaluable means of communication are in the
reach of all. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their
most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.

God be thanked for books! They are the voices of the distant and the
dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.

Books are the true levelers. They give to all who will faithfully use
them, the society, the spiritual presence of the best and greatest of
our race. No matter how poor I am. No matter though the prosperous of
my time will not enter my obscure dwelling. If the sacred writers will
enter and take up their abode under my roof, if Milton will cross my
threshhold to sing to me of paradise, and Shakspere to open to me the
worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin
to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of
intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though
excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live.

ON LABOR.—Manual labor is a great good, but only in its just
proportions. In excess it does great harm. It is not a good when
made the sole work of life. It must be joined with higher means of
improvement or it degrades instead of exalting. Man has a various
nature which requires a variety of occupation and discipline for its
growth. Study, meditation, society, and relaxation should be mixed up
with his physical toil. He has intellect, heart, imagination, taste, as
well as bones and muscles; and he is grievously wronged when compelled
to exclusive drudgery for bodily subsistence.

ON POLITICS.—To govern one’s self (not others) is true glory. To serve
through love, not to rule, is Christian greatness. Office is not
dignity. The lowest men, because most faithless in principle, most
servile to opinion, are to be found in office. I am sorry to say it,
but the truth should be spoken, that, at the present moment, political
action in this country does little to lift up any who are concerned
in it. It stands in opposition to a high morality. Politics, indeed,
regarded as the study and pursuit of the true, enduring good of a
community, as the application of great unchangeable principles to
public affairs, is a noble sphere of thought and action, but politics,
in its common sense, or considered as the invention of temporary
shifts, as the playing of a subtle game, as the tactics of party for
gaining power and the spoils of office, and for elevating one set of
men above another is a paltry and debasing concern.

ON SELF-DENIAL.—To deny ourselves is to deny, to withstand, to renounce
whatever, within or without, interferes with our conviction of right,
or with the will of God. It is to suffer, to make sacrifice, for duty
or our principles. The question now offers itself: What constitutes
the singular merit of this suffering? Mere suffering, we all know, is
not virtue. Evil men often endure pain as well as the good and are
evil still. This, and this alone, constitutes the worth and importance
of the sacrifice, suffering, which enters into self-denial, that it
springs from and manifests moral strength, power over ourselves, force
of purpose, or the mind’s resolute determination of itself to duty.
It is the proof and result of inward energy. Difficulty, hardship,
suffering, sacrifices, are tests and measures of moral force and the
great means of its enlargement. To withstand these is the same thing
as to put forth power. Self-denial then is the will acting with power
in the choice and prosecution of duty. Here we have the distinguishing
glory of self-denial, and here we have the essence and distinction of a
good and virtuous man.

ON PLEASURE.—The first means of placing a people beyond the temptations
to intemperance is to furnish them with the means of innocent
pleasure. By innocent pleasures I mean such as excite moderately;
such as produce a cheerful frame of mind, not boisterous mirth; such
as refresh, instead of exhausting, the system; such as are chastened
by self-respect, and are accompanied with the consciousness that life
has a higher end than to be amused. In every community there _must_
be pleasures, relaxations and means of agreeable excitement; and if
innocent ones are not furnished, resort will be had to criminal. Men
drink to excess very often to shake off depression, or to satisfy
the restless thirst for agreeable excitement, and these motives
are excluded in a cheerful community. A gloomy state of society in
which there are few innocent recreations, may be expected to abound
in drunkenness if opportunities are afforded. The savage drinks to
excess because his hours of sobriety are dull and unvaried, because
in losing consciousness of his condition and his existence he loses
little which he wishes to retain. The laboring classes are most exposed
to intemperance, because they have at present few other pleasurable
excitements. A man, who, after toil, has resources of blameless
recreation is less tempted than other men to seek self-oblivion. He has
too many of the pleasures of the man to take up those of the brute.

    [End of Required Reading for November.]

AUTUMN SYMPATHY.

By E. G. CHARLESWORTH.

    The primrose and the violet,
    The bloom on apricot and peach,
    The marriage-song of larks in heights,
    The south wind and the swallow’s nest;
    All born of spring, I once loved best.

    But now the dying leaf and flower,
    The frost wind moaning in the pane,
    The robin’s plaintive latter song,
    The early sunset in the west;
    All born of autumn, I love best.

    Tell me, my heart, the reason why
    Thy pulse thus beats with things that die;
    Is it thine own autumnal sheaves?
    Is it thine own dead fallen leaves?

    —_London Sunday Magazine._

REPUBLICAN PROSPECTS IN FRANCE.

By JOSEPH REINACH.

On the very morrow of Gambetta’s death, and when that catastrophe had
been interpreted by the immense majority of European opinion, as also
by many Frenchmen, as the certain presage of the approaching triumph
of advanced Radicalism—triumph to be followed by violent interior
discords that would infallibly bring about the fall of the Republic and
the re-establishment either of Empire or of Royalty—I said that these
predictions would not be realized, and, moreover, that Gambetta’s death
would but serve to hasten the triumph of his political ideas and party.
I will cite, word for word, what I wrote at the end of January in a
paper that appeared in this Review on February 1:

“We even believe we may predict that the realization of several of
Gambetta’s ideas will meet with fewer obstacles, at least among a
certain fraction of public opinion, to-morrow than yesterday. A
formidable reaction will take place in favor of the great statesman
whom we weep, a reaction in favor of his theories and his principles.
In short, we shall most likely witness the contrary of what has taken
place for some years. It was enough that Gambetta should defend a
theory for it to be attacked with fury. From henceforth it will often
suffice that an idea was formerly held up by Gambetta for it to be
enthusiastically acclaimed. As in the story of Cid Campeador, it is his
corpse that leads his followers to victory.”

What I foretold six months ago has been fulfilled in every point. Those
very Castilians who during Cid’s lifetime suspected him of the darkest
designs and reviled him as a criminal—what did they do after his death?
They put the hero’s corpse in an iron coffin, and the black gravecloth
on the bier was the standard which, in the front rank of battle, led
the Spanish army to victory. And so has it been, or nearly so, with
French Republicans and Gambetta. The political history of our country
during the last six months may be thus summed up: Out of Gambetta’s
death-bed has arisen a first (not complete) victory for his ideas and
friends; from the party more specially organized by him have been
chosen most men now in office, that they may execute his will.

As a matter of fact, just after the excitement of the first few days,
as soon as it became necessary for the Republicans to unite and stop
the Royalists who thought the fruit already ripe, what ministers did
the President of the Republic call for? M. Jules Ferry, who for the
last five years had been, if not the direct coadjutor, at least the
most invariable and faithful political ally of Gambetta, was made Prime
Minister; M. Waldeck-Rousseau, the late Minister for Home Affairs under
Gambetta, and M. Raynal, the late Minister of Public Works, were both
recalled to the same offices. M. Challemel-Lacour, Gambetta’s most
esteemed and devoted friend, was named Minister of Foreign Affairs, and
M. Martin Feuillèe, Under-Secretary of State for Justice on November
14, Minister of Justice; M. Margue, Under-Secretary of State for Home
Affairs, resumed the same post. General Campenon could have been
Minister of War had he wished it. And a great pity it is he declined
his friends’ proposals. Thus, in its general bearings, the Ferry
Ministry is the Gambetta Ministry without Gambetta.

Except some secondary modifications made necessary by the change of
circumstances, the political program is about the same. Abroad an
active and steady diplomacy, the regular development of our colonial
politics, the consolidation of the protectorate in Tunis; at home
the constitution of a strong government, the methodical realization
of social and democratic reforms, the policy of _scrutin de liste_,
whilst awaiting the abolition of _scrutin d’arrondissement_. The
principal bills adopted last session, except the Magistracy bill, are
but legacies from the Gambetta Cabinet. Both cabinets are animated by
the same national spirit—national above all, but also progressist and
governmental. The halo imparted by the presence of a man of genius
is certainly wanting; but Carlyle’s _hero-worship_ is by no means a
democratic necessity. There is certainly reason for rejoicing when a
nation acknowledges and appreciates in one of its sons, sprung from its
midst, an intellect of the highest order. But when Alexander leaves
lieutenants profoundly imbued with his spirit, formed in his school,
most desirous and capable of continuing his work—when these men,
instead of being at variance, remain, on the contrary, more strongly
bound together than ever—there is certainly no reason for complaining
and giving way to discouragement.

Then it is not only in parliament that the _opportunist_ policy is
again getting the upper hand. Throughout the whole country it has
regained the ground it had lost by the intrigues of hostile parties.
The great majority of Republicans have now recovered from a number of
diseases for which Gambetta had always prescribed the remedy—remedy,
alas! that too many refused to stretch out their hand for. The mania
for decentralization is forgotten. The necessity for a strongly
constituted and vigorous central power is almost universally understood
and acknowledged. Demagogue charlatans are for the most part unmasked.
Our foreign policy is steadier—we are no longer afraid of Egyptian
shadows. Intransigeants of the Right and Left still continue to see
in our colonial enterprises but vulgar jobbing, and to denounce and
revile them in every possible way. But the great mass of the nation
is no longer to be made a fool of, and has understood the necessity
of extending France beyond the seas. There is a story of an English
peasant who locked the stable door after the horse had been stolen.
Happily for France she has several horses in her stables. If she has
lost, at least for a time, her beautiful Arabian steed on the borders
of the Nile, that is but an additional reason for taking jealous care
of the others.—_The Nineteenth Century._

IN 404 Honorius was emperor. At that time, in the remote deserts of
Libya, there dwelt an obscure monk named Telemachus. He had heard of
the awful scenes in the far-off Coliseum at Rome. Depend upon it, they
lost nothing by their transit across the Mediterranean in the hands of
Greek and Roman sailors. In the baths and market-places of Alexandria,
in the Jewries of Cyrene, in the mouths of every itinerant Eastern
story-teller, the festive massacres of the Coliseum would doubtless be
clothed in colors truly appalling, yet scarcely more appalling than the
truth.

Telemachus brooded over these horrors till his mission dawned upon
him. He was ordained by heaven to put an end to the slaughter of
human beings in the Coliseum. He made his way to Rome. He entered
the Coliseum with the throng, what time the gladiators were parading
in front of the emperor with uplifted swords and the wild mockery of
homage—“_Morituri te salutant._” Elbowing his way to the barrier, he
leapt over at the moment when the combatants rushed at each other,
threw himself between them, bidding them, in the name of Christ, to
desist. To blank astonishment succeeded imperial contempt and popular
fury. Telemachus fell slain by the swords of the gladiators. Legend
may adorn the tale and fancy fill out the picture, but the solid fact
remains—_there never was another gladiatorial fight in the Coliseum_.
One heroic soul had caught the flow of public feeling that had already
begun to set in the direction of humanity, and turned it. He had
embodied by his act and consecrated by his death the sentiment that
already lay timidly in the hearts of thousands in that great city
of Rome. In 430 an edict was passed abolishing forever gladiatorial
exhibitions.—_Good Words._

ALL merit ceases the moment we perform an act for the sake of its
consequences. Truly in this respect “we have our reward.”—_Wilhelm von
Humboldt._

CHAUTAUQUA TO CALIFORNIA.

By FRANCES E. WILLARD, President N. W. C. T. U.

I.

I.—SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.

In one thing Chautauqua and California are alike—each is a climax, and
both are “made up of every creature’s best.” My sufficient consolation
for missing one of them this year is, that I saw the other. Let us
speed onward, then, taking Chautauqua as our point of departure, in a
Pickwickian sense only, unless for the further reason that it has the
high prerogative of making all its happy denizens believe it to be
the center of gravity (and good times) for one planet at least; the
meridian from which all fortunate longitude is reckoned and all lucky
time-pieces set. Our swift train, “outward bound,” races along through
the old familiar East and the West no longer new.

       “Through the kingdoms of corn,
        Through the empires of grain,
        Through dominions of forest;
        Drives the thundering train;
        Through fields where God’s cattle
        Are turned out to grass,
        And his poultry whirl up
        From the wheels as we pass;
    Through level horizons as still as the moon
    With the wilds fast asleep and the winds in a swoon.”

From a palace car with every eastern luxury, we gaze out on the
dappled, pea-green hills of New Mexico and the wide, empty stretches
of Arizona, stopping in Santa Fe—Columbia’s Damascus, in Albuquerque—a
pocket edition of Chicago, and in Tucson—the storm-center of
semi-tropic trade. But the “W. C. T. U.” is a plant of healing as
indigenous to every soil for good as the saloon for evil, and in the
first city the Governor’s wife has accepted leadership; in the second
that place is held by a lovely Ohio girl, the wife of a young lawyer;
and in the third a leading woman of society and church work, whose
husband is one of Arizona’s most honored pioneers, consents to be our
standard-bearer. These way-side errands, with their delightful new
friendships and tender gospel lessons over, we hasten on to California.
Some token of its affluent beauty comes to us on Easter Sabbath in the
one hundred calla-lilies sent from Los Angeles, five hundred miles
beyond, to adorn the church where we worship in Tucson, that marvelous
oasis in the desert. “Go on, and God be with you,” says the friend who
escorts us to the train; “you’ll find Los Angeles a heaven on earth.”
And so, indeed, we did, coming up out of the wilderness on a soft
spring day, between fair, emerald hills that stood as the fore-runners
of the choicest land on which were ever mirrored the glory and the
loveliness of God.

We visited the thirty leading centers of interest and activity in the
great Golden State during the two months of our stay, but when the
courteous mayor of this “city of the angels” welcomed us thither,
and children heaped about us their baskets of flowers, rare, save
in California, we told “His Honor” that of all the towns we had yet
visited—and they number a thousand at least—his was the one most fitly
named.

Southern California, and this its exquisite metropolis, have been a
terra incognita even to the intelligent, until the steam horse lately
caracoled this way. Now it is thronged by emigrants and tourists, men
and women of small means reaping from half a dozen acres here what a
large farm in Illinois could hardly yield, and invalids hitherto only
an expense to their friends, finding the elixir of life in this balmy
air, and joyously joining once more the energetic working forces of
the world. Flowers are so plenty here that banks and pyramids alone
can satisfy the claims of decorative art; baskets of roses are more
frequent than bouquets or even _boutonnieres_ with us. Heliotropes and
fuchsias climb to the apex of the roof, while the common garden trees
are oranges, lemons, limes, citrons, figs, olives and pomegranates.
Strawberry short-cake can be had all the year round from the fresh
fruit of one’s own garden, and oranges at the rate of nine thousand
to one tree, and in some cases fifteen inches in circumference, have
been raised in this vicinity. Riverside and Pasadena are adjacent
colonies and bear a stronger resemblance to one’s ideal Garden of Eden
than any other places I ever expect to see. Through groves of rarest
semi-tropic fruit trees you ride for miles, in the midst of beautiful,
modern homes, for the American renaissance is not more manifest in the
suburbs of Boston or Chicago than in Southern California. Fences are
nowhere visible, the Monterey cypress furnishing a hedge which puts
to blush the choicest of old England; the pepper tree with drooping
branches, and the Australian gum tree, tall and umbrageous, outlining
level avenues whose vistas seem unending. Above all this are skies
that give back one’s best Italian memories, and for a background the
tranquil amplitude of the Sierra Madre Mountains. What would you more?
“See Naples and die” is an outworn phrase. “See California and live”
has been the magic formula of how many restored and happy pilgrims! The
tonic of cold water has electrified this soil, seven years ago an utter
desert, so that now three years of growth will work a transformation
that fifteen would fail to bring about east of the Mississippi. To
my thinking this result is but a material prototype of the heavenly
estate that shall come to our America when its arid waste of brains
and stomachs, usurped by alcohol, shall learn the cooling virtues of
this same cold water. In Riverside my host planted in May of 1880,
two thousand grape cuttings (not roots, remember), and in September,
1881, gathered from them two hundred boxes of grapes. Pasadena was
founded by a good man from Maine, and is exempt from saloons by the
provisions of its charter. Here, from six acres, a gentleman realized
thirteen hundred dollars, clear of all expenses, last year, by drying
and sacking his grapes, instead of sending them to the winery. “The
profits were so much larger that hereafter his pocket-book will counsel
him, if not his conscience, to keep clear of the wine trade,” said the
wide awake temperance woman who gave me the item. In Pasadena, Mrs.
Jennie C. Carr, whose fruit ranche and gardens, largely tilled by her
own hands, disclose every imaginable variety which the most extravagant
climate can produce, sells at three thousand dollars per acre, land
purchased by her for a mere song six years ago. In Santa Ana and San
Bernardino, also near Los Angeles, there is the same luxuriance and
swift moving life. A county superintendent of schools told me he had
one school district that includes 160 miles of railroad, and has a town
of 800 people, where three months ago there was silence and vacancy.
At San Diego, the most southerly town in California, we found the _ne
plus ultra_ of climate for consumptives, its temperature ranging from
fifty-five to seventy-five degrees, and its air dry. San Diego is
the oldest town in the State, having been established as a Catholic
“Mission” in 1769. It is now altogether modernized and is Nature’s own
sanitarium, besides being a lovely land-locked harbor of the Pacific.
Santa Barbara, which we missed seeing, has a grape vine sixty years
old, and a foot through, which in 1867 bore six tons of grapes, some
of whose clusters weighed five pounds each. The railroad will soon
make this beautiful town accessible to rapid tourists to whom the
ocean is unkind. Twenty-one missions were founded over a century ago
by Franciscan friars in Southern California. They brought with them
from Spain the orange and the vine. They were conquerors, civilizers,
subduers of the soil. They brought cattle, horses, sheep, and—alas!
hogs. They conquered the land for Spain without cruelty, baptizing
the Indians into the church and teaching them the arts of peace. Then
followed the Mexican, then our own conquest of their territory, and now
the Anglo-Saxon reigns supreme in a land on which Nature has lavished
all she had to give. Upon his victory over the alcohol habit, depends
the future of this goodly heritage. If he raises grapes he will
survive; if he turns them into wine he must succumb.

II.—SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY.

We crossed the famous and dangerous “Tehachapi Pass” at night, and
wended our way slowly through this notable valley, three hundred miles
in length by thirty-five in width, stopping to found the W. C. T. U. in
its four chief towns, Fresno, Tulare, Merced, and Modesto.

Irrigation is the watchword here, and as it takes capitalists to carry
this through on a scale so immense, large farms are now the rule. For
instance, we passed over one seventy-three miles in length by twenty in
width. Later on, it is to be hoped these immense proprietaries may be
settled by men whose primary object is to establish and maintain homes.
At present, in the agricultural line, “big enterprises” are alone
attractive. “Alfalfa,” a peculiarly hardy and luxuriant clover—imported
by Governor Bigler from Chili—is the first crop, and grazing precedes
grain. This plant “strikes its roots six feet or more into the soil,
and never requires a second planting, while every year there are five
crops of alfalfa and but two of wheat and barley.”

Varied indeed is the population of this valley. One day we dine with a
practical woman from Massachusetts, who declares that the sand storms,
which most people consider the heaviest discount on the valley, are
“really not so bad, for they polish off the house floors as nothing
else could.” The next we meet a group of earnest, motherly hearts from
a dozen different States, and almost as many religious denominations,
united to “provide for the common defense” of home against saloon. Next
day a lawyer from Charleston invites us to his cozy residence, “because
his wife knows some of our Southern leaders in the W. C. T. U.” The
next we make acquaintance with half a dozen school ma’ams from the
East, who have taken a ranche and set up housekeeping for themselves;
and in the fourth town visited an Englishman born in Auckland, New
Zealand, the leading criminal lawyer of the county, and instigator of
the woman’s crusade in Oakland, who gives us a graphic description of
that movement, which was a far-off echo of the Ohio pentecost.

So we move on at the rate of two meetings a day, with the hearty
support of the united clergy (except the Episcopal, and often they
helped us, too), and the warm coöperation of the temperance societies,
emerging in San Francisco, Monday, April 16, 1883.

III.—SAN FRANCISCO.

I am glad we did not so far forget ourselves as to arrive on Sunday,
for it appears that certain good, gifted, and famous persons, who shall
be nameless, telegraphed to certain Christian leaders of their intended
arrival on that day, and received answer: “The hour of your coming will
find us at church. The Palace is the best hotel.” Now on an overland
trip, an absent-minded traveler might fail to note the precise date
of his arrival in the metropolis of the Pacific, but that would be no
excuse to our guid folk yonder, whose Sunday laws have been smitten
from their statute books, and Christians hold themselves to strict
account for their example, which now alone conserves the Christian’s
worship and the poor man’s rest.

San Francisco is probably the most cosmopolitan city now extant. Its
three hundred thousand people sound the gamut of nationality in the
most varying and dissonant chorus that ever greeted human ears. The
struggle for survival is an astonishing mixture of fierceness and
good-nature. Crowding along the streets, Irish and Chinaman, New
Englander and Negro, show kind consideration, but in the marts of
trade and at the polls “their guns are ballots, their bullets are
ideas.” Old-time asperities are softening, however, even on these
battlegrounds. The trend is upward, toward higher levels of hope and
brotherhood. Eliminate the alcohol and opium habits, and all these
would (and will ere long) dwell together in unity. Lives like those
of Rev. Dr. Otis Gibson, and Mrs. Captain Goodall, invested for the
Christianizing of the Chinese, or like that of Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper,
devoted to kindergartening the embryo “hoodlum,” or that of Dr. R. H.
McDonald, the millionaire philanthropist, consecrated to the temperance
reform, are mighty prophecies of the good time coming.

San Francisco is the city of bay windows, and its people, beyond any
other on this continent, believe in sunshine and fresh air. In like
manner, they are fond of ventilating every subject, are in nowise
afraid of the next thing simply because it is the next, but have broad
hospitality for new ideas. Rapid as the heel taps of its street life
is the movement of its thought and the flame of its sympathy. Much as
has been said in its dispraise, Mount Diablo—the chief feature of its
environs—is not so symbolic of its spirit as the white tomb of Thomas
Starr King, which, standing beside one of its busiest streets, is a
perpetual reminder of noble power conserved for noblest use. Everybody
knows San Francisco’s harbor is without a rival save Puget Sound and
Constantinople. Everybody has heard of its “Palace Hotel,” the largest
in the world, and one that includes “eighteen acres of floor;” of
its “endless chain” street cars, the inevitable outgrowth of dire
necessity in its up-hill streets; of its indescribable “Chinatown;” of
“Seal Rock,” with its monster sea-lions, gamboling and howling year
out and year in, for herein are the salient features of the strange
city’s individuality. For a metropolis but thirty-four years old,
the following record is unrivaled: Total value of real and personal
property, $253,000,000; school property, $1,000,000; 130,000 buildings;
11,000 streets; 12 street car lines; 33 libraries and reading-rooms; 38
hospitals; 316 benevolent societies; 168 newspapers, and—the best fire
department in the world!

The two drawbacks of this wonderful city are its variable climate and
its possible earthquakes. A witty writer warns the intending tourist
thus: “Be sure to bring your _summer_ clothes. Let me repeat: be sure
to bring your _winter_ clothes.” To state the fact that in August
one may see fur cloaks any day, and in January a June toilet is not
uncommon, is but another way of stating that the galloping sea breeze,
unimpeded by mountains, rushes in moist squadrons on the shore, and
has all seasons for its own, in which to battle with the genial warmth
of this most lovely climate. As to earthquakes, there have been but
three since 1849, and these were insignificant calamities compared
with one year of our domesticated western tornadoes. Less than fifty
lives have been lost in California by earthquakes, thirty-seven of
these occurring in the country outside of San Francisco, and less than
a hundred thousand dollars worth of property has been destroyed, while
two millions would not cover our loss by cyclone in a single year,
to say nothing of the number of victims. Civilization seems to have
a naturalizing effect on fleas, snakes and earthquakes, west of the
Sierras, but acts as a tonic upon hurricanes east of the Rockies. Will
our scientists please “rise to explain” this mystery so close in its
relation to human weal and woe?

    [To be continued.]

TO MY BOOKS.

By LADY STIRLING-MAXWELL.

    Silent companions of the lonely hour,
    Friends, who can never alter or forsake,
    Who for inconstant roving have no power,
    And all neglect, perforce, must calmly take,
    Let me return to you; this turmoil ending
    Which worldly cares have in my spirit wrought,
    And, o’er your old familiar pages bending,
    Refresh my mind with many a tranquil thought:
    Till, haply meeting there, from time to time,
    Fancies, the audible echo of my own,
    ’Twill be like hearing in a foreign clime
    My native language spoke in friendly tone,
    And with a sort of welcome I shall dwell
    On these, my unripe musings, told so well.

EARTHQUAKES—ISCHIA AND JAVA.

PHENOMENA AND PROBABLE CAUSES.

These violent convulsions that from time to time shake and rend the
earth, are among the most terrible calamities that come upon men,
causing immense destruction of property and of life. Their occurrence
is often most unexpected.

Villages, cities, and whole districts of densely populated countries
sink beneath a sudden stroke, overwhelmed in a common ruin. If any
warning is given, the alarming premonitions rather confuse and paralyze
effort, because, with the appalling certainty of disaster, there is
nothing to show in what form it will come, or to indicate a place of
refuge.

While the recent horrors at Ischia and in Java excite much painful
interest in the public mind, they naturally recall similar scenes
of other years. Earthquakes of less destructive violence are very
frequent, and suggest greater power than is exerted. Even the slight
trembling, or vibratory motions, that produce no material injury,
remind us of the prodigious forces that may at any moment burst their
barriers with great violence.

In every perceptible shock we feel the mighty pulsations of the
agitated molten mass whose waves dash against the walls that restrain
them; or the struggling of compressed elastic gases, that must have
vent, though their escape rend the earth. The crust between us and the
seas of fire, whose extent no man knoweth, may be in places weakening,
cut away, as the inner walls of a furnace by the molten metal; so the
danger may be nearer and greater than is known or feared. A devout
man finds refuge and a comfortable assurance in the truth, “The Lord
reigneth; in his hands are the deep places of the earth. The strength
of the hills is his also.”

There are records of earthquakes more ancient than any books written
by men. They antedate the earliest chapters of human history, and
probably belonged to the pre-adamite earth. If no human ear heard their
tread, the footprints are still visible. In all mountainous regions
the evidence of their upheaval by some mighty force is too plain to be
doubted. The marine fossils found far up on their heights, the position
of strata, often far from horizontal, with immense fissures, and chasms
of unknown depth, all tell of disturbances that may have taken place
before the historic period. If in those primitive times mountains were
literally carried into the midst of the sea, and vast tracts of the
ocean’s bed shoved up thousands of feet, it was only a more terrible
display of the gigantic powers still in action, and of whose workings
the centuries have borne witness.

No country seems to have escaped these terrible visitations, though
some suffer more than others. Volcanoes being of the same origin, they
are more frequent in volcanic regions, and perhaps by their shocks the
seething caldrons have been uncovered.

The same localities, as Southern Italy, and the neighboring island of
Sicily, have, from a remote period, at times been terribly shaken. From
1783 to 1786 a thousand shocks were made note of, five hundred of which
are described as having much force. Lyell considers them of special
importance, not because differing from like disturbances in other
places, but because observed and minutely described by men competent to
collect and state such physical facts in a way to show their bearing on
the science of the earth. The following, collected from Lyell, Gibbon,
Humboldt, and the encyclopædias, are facts respecting some of the
principal earthquakes on record. Their statements, much condensed, are
not given in chronological order, but as we find them:

In 115, of the Christian era, Antioch in Syria, “Queen of the East,”
beautiful in itself, and beautiful for situation, a city of two hundred
thousand inhabitants, was utterly ruined by earthquake. Afterward
rebuilt, in more than all its ancient splendor, by Trajan, the tide of
life and wealth again flowed into it, and for centuries we read of no
serious disasters of the kind. All apprehension of danger removed, the
people became famous for luxurious refinements, and, strangely enough,
seem to have united high intellectual qualities with a passionate
fondness for amusements. In 458 the city was again terribly shaken,
and twice in the sixth century. Each time the destruction was nearly
complete; but each time, in less than a century, the city was restored
again, but only to stand until 1822, and from that overthrow it has
never recovered, being now a miserable town of only six thousand
inhabitants. The destruction of five populous cities, on one site,
involved a fearful loss of life. Probably more than half a million
thus perished. The most destructive earthquake in that, or any other
locality, of which we find any mention, was in 562. An immense number
of strangers being in attendance at the festival of the Ascension,
added to the multitudes belonging to the city. Gibbon estimates that
two hundred and fifty thousand persons were buried in the ruins.

Among the earliest accounts of earthquakes having particular interest,
is the familiar one of that which destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii
in the year 63—about sixteen years before those cities were buried in
scoria and ashes from Vesuvius.

Of modern earthquakes three or four are here mentioned as presenting
some interesting phenomena. That of Chili, in 1822, caused the
permanent elevation of the country between the Andes and the coast. The
area thus raised is estimated at one hundred thousand square miles, and
the elevation from two to seven feet. Shore lines, at higher levels,
indicate several previous upheavals of the same region, along about the
same lines. The opposite of this, a depression of land, was occasioned
in the island of Jamaica in 1692, when Port Royal, the capital, was
overwhelmed. A thousand acres or more thus sank in less than one
minute, the sea rolling in and driving the vessels that were in the
harbor over the tops of the houses.

The earthquake of New Madrid, below St. Louis, on the Mississippi,
was in 1811, and interesting as an instance of successive shocks, and
almost incessant quaking of the ground for months, and at a distance
from any volcano. The agitation of the earth in Missouri continued
till near the time of the destruction of the city of Caracas, in South
America, and then ceased. One evening, about this time, is described by
the inhabitants of New Madrid as cloudless, and peculiarly brilliant.
The western sky was a continual glare from vivid flashes of lightning,
and peals of thunder were incessantly heard, apparently proceeding,
as did the flashes, from below the horizon. Comparatively little harm
was done in Missouri, but the beautiful city of Caracas, with its
splendid churches and palatial homes, was made a heap of ruins, beneath
which twelve thousand of its inhabitants were buried. Just how these
events were related we know not. Whether the same pent-up forces that
were struggling in vain to escape in the valley of the Mississippi,
found vent in that distant locality, God only knows. The supposition
allowed may account for the relief that came to the greatly troubled
New Madrid. The evils they dreaded came but in part—enough only to
suggest the greater perils they escaped. Over an extent of country
three hundred miles in length fissures were opened in the ground
through which mud and water were thrown, high as the tops of the trees.
From the mouth of the Ohio to the St. Francis the ground rose and fell
in great undulations. Lakes were formed and drained again, and the
general surface so lowered that the country along the White River and
its tributaries, for a distance of seventy miles, is known as “the sunk
country.” Flint, the geographer, seven years after the event, noticed
hundreds of chasms then closed and partially filled. They may yet, in
places, be traced, having the appearance of artificial trenches.

Fissures are occasionally met in different parts of the country, which
extend through solid rock to a great depth. “The Rocks” at Panama, N.
Y., have been elsewhere described, and furnish a profitable study.

A more remarkable chasm of this kind extends from the western base of
the Shawangunk Mountain, near Ellenville, Ulster County, N. Y., for
about a mile to the summit. At first one can easily step across the
fissure, but further up it becomes wider, till the hard vertical walls
of sandstone are separated by a gorge several feet wide, and of great
depth. At the top an area of a hundred acres or more is rent in every
direction, the continuity of the surface being interrupted by steps
of rocks, presenting abrupt walls. The gorge traced up the mountain
becomes a frightful abyss, more than a hundred feet wide. Among the
loose stones at the bottom large trees are growing, whose tops scarce
reach half way to the edge of the precipice. Most such disruptions
of rocks and mountains were doubtless caused by earthquakes at some
unknown period.

The great earthquake at Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, was in 1755.
“The ominous rumbling sound below the surface was almost immediately
followed by the shock which threw down the principal part of the city;
in the short space of six minutes, it is believed, 60,000 perished. The
sea rolled back, leaving the bar dry, and then returned, in a great
tidal wave, fifty feet, or more, in height. The mountains around were
shaken with great violence, their rocks rent, and thrown in fragments
into the valley below. Multitudes of people rushed from their falling
buildings to the marble quay, which suddenly sank with them, like a
ship foundering at sea; and when the waters closed over the place no
fragments of the wreck—none of the vessels near by, that were drawn
into the whirlpool, and not one of the thousands of the bodies that
were carried down ever appeared again. Over the spot occupied by the
quay, the water stood six hundred feet deep; and beneath it, locked in
fissured rocks, and in chasms of unknown depth, lie what was the life
and wealth of the place, in the middle of the eighteenth century.”

Earthquakes, of especial interest, from their recent occurrence and
destructive effects, are those of 1857-58, in the kingdom of Naples,
and in Mexico; but we have not room to more than mention them. The
past summer will be remembered as the period of at least two terrible
disasters from earthquakes, in localities distant from each other.
The first, July 28, was at Ischia, a beautiful island at the north
entrance of the bay of Naples. The principal town, Cassamicciola, was
mostly destroyed, and much injury done at other places. The town was
a noted health resort, and it is feared many distinguished strangers
perished in it. The shocks began in the night, when a majority of the
citizens, who frequent such places, were in the theater, and the scene
there was terrible. Lamps were overturned; clouds of dust arose, and
then the walls of the building opened, and fell, giving no opportunity
for escape. The ground opened in many places, and houses and their
inhabitants were swallowed up. The hotel Picola Sentinella sank into
the earth, with all its inmates. The number destroyed, first estimated
at three thousand, was much larger, but how much is not yet certainly
known. Years must elapse before the town is restored, when it will be
with a new class of inhabitants.

The sad tidings of disaster in Italy were soon followed by still more
startling intelligence from Java, where, as in regions bordering on
the Mediterranean, earthquakes are not a new experience with the
inhabitants. A recital of the calamities occurring in Java during
the last century would make a gloomy chapter in history, suggesting
the insecurity and transitory nature of all earthly possessions. The
island is one of the largest and, commercially, most important, in the
Indian archipelago, six hundred and sixty miles in length, and the
width varying from forty to one hundred and thirty miles. It is densely
populated, and governed by a Dutch viceroy. In the mountain range
extending through the center, with a mean elevation of seven thousand
feet, are many volcanoes; and earthquakes are of frequent occurrence,
as in other volcanic regions. In 1878 record was made of some sixteen,
in different parts of the island. One of the most famous, accompanied
by a vast eruption of Papandayang, the largest of the volcanoes,
took place a hundred years ago, overwhelming an area of a hundred
square miles, and destroying three thousand people—the island at that
time having fewer inhabitants. There were two similar eruptions from
volcanoes at the same time, respectively one hundred and thirty-four
and three hundred and fifty-two miles from Papandayang, suggesting the
fact that the power of producing them, and the earthquakes, may operate
through a field of vast extent, and breaks through where the barriers
give way. It is safe to say both have the same origin.

Ischia and Java, though almost antipodes, are companions in disaster,
and possibly felt the dashing of the same billows, striking with
violence here or there, according as some mighty impulse drove them
on. The great calamities of the past summer, besides their appeal to
our humanity, will be of interest to scientific men, and may throw
light on the relations of earthquakes and volcanoes, and their cause,
after which they have been searching a good deal in the dark, and with
results not yet satisfactory.

The accounts of the last fearful disaster are yet incomplete, and may
not all be verified. The latest, and apparently most reliable reports,
place it among the most terrible calamities known in the history of
the race, since the deluge. The earth trembled and shook—rocks were
rent—buildings tumbled in ruins. A large part of the city, full of
wealth and life, sank out of sight. Tidal waves carried destruction
along the coast. Volcanoes belched forth smoke, ashes and lava,
overspreading fertile valleys; and when the sulphurous clouds that hung
over them, black as night, were lifted, turbulent waters rolled over
fifty square miles of pasture lands that the day before were covered
with flocks, and the homes of men. It is estimated that seventy-five
thousand people perished. It may be a few thousand less, or more,
as there are yet no data from which to form more than a proximate
estimate. The whole number will not be known till the graves and the
sea give up their dead.

LOW SPIRITS.

By J. MORTIMER GRANVILLE.

There is enough in the daily experience of life to depress the feelings
and rob the mind of its buoyancy, without having to encounter lowness
of spirits as a besetting mental state or malady. Nevertheless, it so
frequently assumes the character of an affection essentially morbid,
attacks individuals who are not naturally disposed to despondency,
and gives so many unmistakable proofs of its close relations with the
health of the physical organism, that it must needs be included in the
category of disease. The constitutional melancholy which distinguishes
certain types of character and development, is a setting in the minor
key rather than depression. Within the compass of a lower range,
individuals of this class exhibit as many changes of mood as those
whose temperament is, so to say, pitched higher, and who therefore seem
to be capable of greater elation.

It is important to ascertain at the outset whether a particular person
upon whom interest may be centered is not naturally characterized by
this restrained or reserved tone of feeling! Unhealthy conditions of
mind are generally to be recognized by the circumstance that they offer
a contrast to some previous state. The movable, excitable temperament
may become fixed and seemingly unimpressionable, the self-possessed
begin to be irritable, the calm, passionate. It is the _change_ that
attracts attention, and when low spirits come to afflict a mind wont
to exhibit resilience and joyousness, there must be a cause for the
altered tone, and prudence will enjoin watchfulness. Mischief may be
done unwittingly by trying to stimulate the uncontrollable emotions.

There are few more common errors than that which assumes lowness
of spirits to be a state in which an appeal should be made to the
sufferer. We constantly find intelligent and experienced persons,
who show considerable skill in dealing with other mental disorders
and disturbances, fail in the attempt to relieve the pains of
melancholy. They strive by entreaty, expostulation, firmness, and even
brusqueness, to coerce the victim, and prevail upon him to shake off
his despondency. They urge him to take an interest in what is passing
around, to bestir himself, and put an end to his broodings. This would
be all very well if the burden that presses so heavily on the spirit
simply lay on the surface, but the lowness of which I am speaking
is something far deeper than can be reached by “rallying.” It is a
freezing of all the energies; a blight which destroys the vitality, a
poison which enervates and paralyzes the whole system.

It is no use probing the consciousness for the cause while the
depression lasts—as well look for the weapon by which a man has been
struck senseless to the earth, when the victim lies faint and bleeding
in need of instant succor. If the cause were found at such a moment,
nothing could be done to prevent its further mischief. Supposing it to
be discovered that the malady is the fruit of some evil-doing or wrong
management of self, the moment when a crushed spirit is undergoing
the penalty of its error is not that which should be selected for
remonstrance. It is vain to argue with a man whose every faculty of
self-control is at its lowest ebb. The judgment and the will are
dormant. The show of feeling made by the conscience in the hour of
dejection is in great part emotional, and the purposes then formed
are sterile. The tears of regret, the efforts of resolve, elicited in
the state of depression, are worse than useless; they are like the
struggles of a man sinking in the quicksand—they bury the mind deeper
instead of freeing it.

The state of mental collapse must be allowed to pass; but here comes
the difficulty; the moment reaction takes place, as shown by a slight
raising of the cloud, it will be too late to interfere. The mind
will then have entered on another phase not less morbid than the
depression which it has replaced. There is no certain indication of
the right moment to make the effort for the relief of a sufferer from
this progressive malady. The way to help is to watch the changes of
temperament narrowly, and, guided by time rather than symptoms, to
present some new object of interest—a trip, an enterprise, a congenial
task—at the moment which immediately precedes the recovery. The soul
lies brooding—it is about to wake; the precise time can be foreknown
only by watching the course of previous attacks; whatever engrosses the
rousing faculties most powerfully on waking, will probably hold them
for awhile. It is a struggle between good and healthy influences on the
one hand, and evil and morbid on the other. If it be earnestly desired
to rescue the sufferer, the right method must be pursued, and wrong
and mischief-working procedures—among which preaching, persuading,
moralizing, and rallying are the worst and most hurtful—ought to be
carefully avoided. When the thoughts are revived and the faculties
rebound, they must be kept engaged with cheering and healthful subjects.

There is no greater error than to suppose good has been accomplished
when a melancholic patient has been simply aroused. The apparently
bright interval of a malady of this class is even more perilous than
the period of exhaustion and lowness. The moment the mind resumes
the active state, it generally resumes the work of self-destruction.
The worst mischief is wrought in the so-called lucid interval. The
consciousness must be absorbed and busied with healthful exercise,
or it will re-engage in the morbid process which culminates in
depression. The problem is to keep off the next collapse, and this can
be accomplished only by obviating the unhealthy excitement by which it
is commonly preceded and produced. Healthy activity promotes nutrition,
and replenishes the strength of mind and body alike; all action that
does not improve the quality of the organ acting, deteriorates it and
tends to prevent normal function.

VEGETABLE VILLAINS.

By R. TURNER.

THE LARGER FUNGI.

To become acquainted with the bulkier of these villains, we must visit
their favorite haunts. An occasional one may occur in any kind of
place, as has already been explained. A good many, especially of the
edible sort, and notably the common mushroom, grow in open pastures.
To get among crowds of them, however, we must resort to close woods,
especially of fir and pine. There they grow on tree-stumps, fallen
trunks, and on the ground, in great variety and abundance. If we go at
the proper season their profusion will astonish us. This time of plenty
varies from early to late autumn with the character of the weather.
Clad in waterproof wraps and with leather gloves on hand, we may make
a fungus foray into the dripping woods amid russet and falling leaves
with comparative comfort; and even on a “raw rheumatic day” there will
likely be much enjoyment for us and still more instruction. It will
be strange, indeed, if we do not find some kinds to eat and very many
to think over. We ought to get examples, at least, of nearly all the
different families. Let us consider them in a general way as novices
do. A host of them have gills like the mushroom; and so we may take
that best known of them all as a type of the whole class. Mushroom
spawn runs through the soil in a rootlike way, absorbing the organic
matter it falls in with and every here and there swelling out into
roundish bodies, each consisting of a tubercle enclosed in a wrapper.
The tubercle bursts through the wrapper as growth goes on, and soon
above ground appears the well-known form of the mushroom, with a stalk
supporting a fleshy head by the center, and on the under surface of
this head radiating gills, which are at first covered by a veil that
finally gives way and leaves only a ring round the stem. These gills
are originally flesh-colored, but afterward become brown and mottled
with numerous minute purple spores. If we were to investigate further
by means of the microscope, we should find that the spores are not
contained in any case, and that they are produced in fours on little
points at the tips of special cells. Of the other kinds belonging to
this order of agarics, some differ from the mushroom in being poisonous
and others in being parasitic. There is much variety, also, in the
tints of gill and spore, different kinds having these white, pink,
rosy, salmon-colored, reddish, or yellowish, or darkish brown, purple
or black. Again, in some the stem is not central, but attached more or
less laterally to the head; in others there is no stem, and the gills
radiate out from the substance on which the agaric grows. The ring
round the stalk, too, often varies, or is sometimes wanting. There
are many other differences, and it is by these that we are able to
distinguish the one kind from the other: but, of course, little more
can be done here than merely to indicate this infinite variety. Dr.
Badham, in his admirable work on the “Esculent Funguses of England,”
puts this quaintly, as he does many other facts. “These are stilted
upon a high leg, and those have not a leg to stand on; some are
shell-shaped, many bell-shaped; and some hang upon their stalks like a
lawyer’s wig.”

These gill-bearers, are, however, but one order in this extensive
division of plants. Nature’s plastic hand is never weary of shaping
fresh forms. It is lavish of variety, and never works in a stinted
or makeshift way. In place of gills we find in another order tubes
or pores in which the spores are produced. These tubular kinds
are sometimes fleshy, as in the edible boletus, or woody, as in
the polypores, popularly called sap-balls, which every one who
knows anything about woods and their wonders must have seen on old
tree-stumps, often growing to a great size. In yet another order,
spines, or bristles, or teeth, take the place of gills and tubes. In
the puff-balls the spores ripen inside a roundish leathern case, which
afterward bursts and discharges them as a fine dust. Then there is an
extensive class in which the spores are not produced in this offhand
way at all, but are carefully enclosed in little cases, or rather, I
should say, loaded into microscopic guns, as in the pezizas; and very
beautiful objects these are under the microscope.

Poisonous, putrescent, strange in shape, or color, or odor, as many
of the larger fungi are, it is little to be wondered at that contempt
has been a common human feeling with respect to most of them, and a
crush with disdainful heel on occasion the lot of a good many. The
popular loathing has run out into language. Under the opprobrious
term “toadstool,” a whole host of kinds is commonly included. The
puff-balls are known in Scotland as “de’il’s sneeshin’-mills” (devil’s
snuff-boxes), an epithet which expresses with a certain imaginative
humor, and a dash of superstition, the idea of something so utterly
base that it ministers to the gratification of demons, tickling their
olfactory organs with satanic satisfaction. Indeed, in this country
the mushroom is almost the only favored exception to the popular
verdict of loathing. It has gained the hearts of the people through
their stomachs, and ketchup has overcome popular prejudice by its fine
flavor. But there are many others on which cultured palates dote.
Truffles are dear delicacies, which few but rich men taste, for fine
aroma and flavor command a high price. The Scotch-bonnets of the fairy
rings, besides possessing a certain bouquet of elfin romance, cook
into delicacies full of stomachic delight. Then there are chantarells
and morels and blewitts, and poor-men’s-beef-steaks, over which
trained appetites rejoice. A score of dainty little rogues at least
there are, and a still greater number of kinds that are nutritive
and fairly palatable. In some European countries the edible ones are
a really valuable addition to the food of the people—not from being
more plentiful than with us, but from being more eagerly gathered and
diligently cultivated. One sort or other is used as food by every
tribe of men. Not only does the edible mushroom occur in all habitable
lands, but in certain foreign parts—as in Australia—there are forms of
it very much superior in quality to our English ones. Then, of course,
every clime has its own peculiar edible kinds. The native bread of the
Australians is an instance in point; it looks somewhat like compressed
sago, and is a fairly good article of diet. The staple food of the
wild Fuegians for several months each year is supplied by a kind which
they gather in great abundance from the living twigs of the evergreen
beech. Then there are some not very pleasant, according to our ideas,
which can be safely used, and are thus available in times of scarcity,
as, for instance, the gelatinous one which the New Zealand natives
know as “thunder-dirt,” and one somewhat similar that the Chinese are
said to utilize. A curious trade has of late years sprung up between
New Zealand and China. A brown semi-transparent fungus, resembling the
human ear, grows abundantly in the North Island. This the Maoris and
others collect, dry, and pack into bags, for export to China, where
it is highly prized for its flavor and gelatinous qualities as an
ingredient in soup. It is a species nearly related to our Jew’s-ear.
The value of this fungus exported from New Zealand in 1877 was stated
at over £11,000.—_Good Words._

    When we reflect how little we have done
    And add to that how little we have seen,
    And furthermore how little we have won
    Of joy or good, how little known or been,
    We long for other life, more full, more keen,
    And yearn to change with those
    Who well have run.
                         —_Jean Ingelow._

A TALENT for any art is rare; but it is given to nearly every one to
cultivate a taste for art; only it must be cultivated with earnestness.
The more things thou learnest to know and enjoy, the more complete and
full will be for thee the delight of living.—_Platen._

FROM THE BALTIC TO THE ADRIATIC.

By the author of “German-American Housekeeping,” etc.

    [Concluded.]

Travelers are like conchologists, vying with one another in picking
up different shells, and herein lies the unending interest of their
records.

In the roundabout route from the Baltic to the Adriatic and
Mediterranean, Cassel, the electorate in former years of Hesse-Cassel,
afforded a most suggestive visit. To be sure, its history is not
altogether pleasant to an American, for the fact that the old elector
hired his troops to England to fight us during the Revolutionary
war, is not a savory bit of German history. Even Frederick the Great
saw the meanness of it, for when he heard they were to take their
route to England by Prussian roads, he sent word, “if they did so, he
would levy a cattle tax on them.” Perhaps some of the money paid by
England at that time was laid up in the public treasury and expended
afterward upon the extravagant ornamentation of the grounds of the
elector’s summer residence, “Wilhelmshöhe.” The palace is in itself
one of the most magnificent in Europe. Above the cascades in front
of it is the highest fountain on the continent. One stream, twelve
inches in diameter, is thrown to the height of two hundred feet. The
colossal Hercules which crowned the summit of this artificial grandeur
was thirty feet high, and the cascades are nine hundred feet long.
The whole arrangement is said to have kept two thousand men engaged
for fourteen years, and to have cost over ten million dollars! Jerome
Napoleon occupied this palace of Wilhelmshöhe when he was king of
Westphalia.

A walk of three miles under the straight and narrow road shaded by lime
trees, leads one back to Cassel, after this visit to Wilhelmshöhe.
The town is beautifully situated on either side of the river Fulda,
and has a population of thirty-two thousand. The beautiful terrace
overlooking the _angarten_, crowned by its new picture gallery, offers
as delightful promenades as the celebrated Dresden Terrace. The strains
of sweet music coming up from the _angarten_ (meadow) while one is
looking at the beautiful Rembrandts and Van Dykes in the gallery,
give the enchantment which one never fails to find in a German town.
Napoleon carried away many of the most valuable pictures from the
Cassel gallery—but it is redeemed from the number of horrible Jordaens
and Teniers by possessing the “pearl of Rembrandts,” a portrait of
“Saskia,” his wife.

Chemical products, snuff included, are manufactured in Cassel, and
it is quite a wide-awake business place—the old town preserved for
picturesque effect, and the new town building up for enterprising
manufacturers.

Leaving Cassel any day at one o’clock, one can reach Coblenz at
half-past seven in the evening, and the Bellevue Hotel will shelter one
delightfully for the night, provided a room on the _hof_, or court,
is not given. Four hundred feet above the river at Coblenz stands the
old fortress of “Ehrenbreitstein.” How fine its old gray stone and
its commanding situation is! No wonder Auerbach, the novelist, in his
“Villa on the Rhine,” devoted so many pages to Ehrenbreitstein, the
Gibraltar of the Rhine. It cost the government five million dollars.
With its four hundred cannon, and capacity to store provision for ten
years for eight thousand men in its magazine, well may it scorn attacks
“as a tempest scorns a chain.”

Instead of driving up to see this monstrous fortress, one may prefer
to wander into St. Castor’s Church in the early morning, and, like
a devout Catholic, kneel and pray. It may be more restful to thus
“commune with one’s own heart and be still,” than to keep up a
perpetual sight-seeing. Charlemagne divided his empire among his
grandchildren in this very church. It dates to the eighth century,
and is one of the best specimens of Lombard architecture in all the
Rhine provinces. Coming out in the morning about ten o’clock, the sun
will light up the severe outlines of the great old Ehrenbreitstein
across the river, and the thought comes to one, did Luther compose his
celebrated hymn, “_Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott_” (A mighty fortress
is our God), while in such a moment of inspiration as this scene
produces upon the mind?

We left Coblenz at ten o’clock on the steamer “Lorlei” for Mainz. This
romantic name for our boat, the waters we were plying, St. Castor’s
Church on the left, and Ehrenbreitstein on the right, brought a
strange combination of war, romance and religion to the mind. The
only prosaic moment which seized me was in passing the Lorlei Felsen
on the Rhine—when instead of remembering Lorlei, I exclaimed, so my
companions told me: “O! here is where they catch the fine salmon!”
Rheinstein was to my mind the most beautiful and picturesque castle of
all, and being owned by the Crown Prince is kept in becoming repair.
The little “_panorama des Rheins_” is a troublesome little companion,
for it leaves one not a moment for calm enjoyment and forgetfulness,
constantly pointing out the places of interest and crowding their
history and romance upon one.

The Dom at Mainz is a curious study for an architect—combining as it
does so many styles and containing such curious old tombs.

Frankfort, the birthplace of Goethe, and the native place of the
Rothschilds family, has too much history to detail in an article like
this. When it was a free city it had, and still retains, I believe, the
reputation of being the commercial capital of that part of Germany.

Goethe preferred little Weimar for the development of his poetical
life. His father’s stately house in Frankfort, still to be seen, was
not equal to his own in Weimar.

But let us leave the river Main and the river Rhine and look up
Nuremberg and Munich before we follow our southern course to the
Adriatic. An erratic journey this, but have we not found some shells
which the other conchologists overlooked?

Nuremberg seems to have lost more in population than any German city we
know of. Having once numbered 100,000, it now claims only 55,000. It is
a curious fact that Nuremberg toys which were so celebrated formerly,
have been surpassed in this country, and now American manufactures in
this line are taken to Nuremberg and actually sold as German toys.
This was told me by a gentleman interested in the trade. But buy a
lead-pencil in Nuremberg if you want a good article very cheap—perhaps
you can learn to draw or sketch with one, being inspired with the
memory of Albert Dürer.

Nuremberg is Bavaria’s second largest city, and attracts more
foreigners or visitors than Munich, perhaps, yet to the mind of the
Bavarian Munich is Bavaria, as to the Frenchman Paris is France, and
to the Prussian Berlin is Prussia! No traveler can be contented,
however, without some time in Nuremberg, although I dare say many go
away disappointed. The old stone houses with their carved gables, the
walls and turrets, St. Sebald Church, and the fortress where Gustavus
Adolphus with his immense army was besieged by Wallenstein, are things
which never grow tedious to the memory. In this fortress now they keep
the instruments of torture used in the middle ages to extract secrets
from the criminal or the innocent, as it might chance to be. A German
in Berlin laughingly told me when I described the rusty torturous
things, that they were all of recent manufacture, and were not the
genuine articles at all! But new or old, genuine or reproduced, they
make one shudder as does Fox’s “Book of Martyrs.” I know of no church
in Germany more worthy of study than St. Sebald’s. In it one finds a
curious old gold lamp, which swings from the ceiling about half way
down one aisle of the church. It is called _die ewige lampe_, because
it has been always burning since the twelfth century. It is related of
one of Nuremberg’s respectable old citizens that he was returning in
the darkness one stormy night to his home, and finally almost despaired
of finding his way, when a faint light from the St. Sebald’s Church
enabled him to arrive safe at his own door. He gave a fund to the
church afterward for the purpose of keeping there a perpetual light.
When the Protestants took St. Sebald’s, as they did so many Catholic
churches in Germany after the Reformation, the interest money which the
old man gave had still to be used in this way according to his will. So
_die ewige lampe_ still swings and gives its dim light to the passer-by
at night. Our American consul told me a characteristic story of an
American girl and her mother, whom he was showing about Nuremberg, as
was his social duty, perhaps. They were in St. Sebald’s Church, and
he related the story of the lamp as they stood near it. Underneath
stands a little set of steps which the old sexton ascends to trim the
lamp. “Oh!” said this precocious American girl, “I shall blow it out,
and then their tradition that it has never been out will be upset.” So
she climbed the steps fast, and as she was about to do this atrocious
thing our consul pulled her back, and said she would be in custody in
an hour, and he would not help her out. The mother merely laughed, and
evidently saw nothing wrong about the performance. It is just such
smart acts on the part of American girls abroad which induce a man
like Henry James to write novels about them. The fine, intelligent,
self-poised girls travel unnoticed, while the “Daisy Millers” cause the
judgment so often passed upon all American girls by foreigners, that
they are “an emancipated set.”

It was our good fortune while in Munich to board with most agreeable
people. The _Herr Geheimrath_ (privy counselor) had retired from active
life of one kind, to enjoy the privilege of being an antiquarian
and art critic. He had his house full of most valuable and curious
treasures. The study of ceramics was his hobby, and fayence, porcelain,
and earthenwares of the rarest kinds were standing around on his
desk, on cabinets, and on the floor. He edited _Die Wartburg_, a
paper which was the organ of _Münchener Alterthum-Verein_, and wrote
weekly articles _Ueber den Standpunkt unserer heutigen Kunst_. His
wife was formerly the _hof-singerin_ (court-singer) at the royal opera
in Munich, but was then too old to continue. Every Saturday evening
she would give a home concert, and would sing the lovely aria from
“Freischutz,” or Schumann’s songs.

St. Petersburg never looked whiter from snow than did Munich that
winter. The galleries were cold, but the new and old Pinakothek were
too rich to be forsaken. Fortunately the new building was just across
the street from the _Herr Geheimrath’s_. If it had only been the
old Pinakothek I found myself continually saying, for who cares for
Kaulbachs, and modern German art, compared with the rich Van Dykes,
the Rubens, the Dürers, and the old Byzantine school? I should say the
Munich gallery is superior to the Dresden in numbers, but not in gems.
But they have fine specimens from the Spanish, the Italian, and German
schools.

The Glyptothek is Munich’s boast. There is a stately grandeur in this
building that suggests Greece and her art. On a frosty morning, to
wander out beyond the Propylæum and enter through the great bronze door
of the Glyptothek, one feels like a mouse entering a marble quarry. I
presume there is no such collection of originals in any country but
Italy. Ghiberti, Michael Angelo, Benvenuti, Cellini, Peter Vischer,
Thorwaldsen, Canova, Rauch, Schwanthaler, are all represented by
original works. But it needs a warm climate to make such a collection
of statuary altogether attractive.

Going from Germany to Italy, one takes the “Brenner Pass,” generally,
over the Alps—the oldest way known, and used by Hannibal. After winding
around the side of these snowy peaks, and being blinded by the mists
enveloping the landscape, trembling with admiration or fear, as the
case may be, a glimpse of sunny Italy is most encouraging.

To reach the Adriatic and Venice is enough earthly joy for some
souls. Elizabeth Barrett Browning felt so; and all people feel so,
perhaps, who, as Henry James and W. D. Howells, give themselves up to
Venice, and write about her until she becomes identified with their
reputation. But let Venice and the Adriatic be silent factors in this
article, and let Verona, Florence, and Rome substitute them.

We alighted at Verona at midnight, and in the pale moonlight, which
gave a ghastly appearance to the quaint old place. “The Two Gentlemen
of Verona” were not to be seen that night. The streets were silent, yet
I thought perhaps they might greet us in the morning; but their shadowy
old cloaks are only to be seen thrown around a thousand beggars, who
are as thick as bees and as ugly as bats.

“The tomb of Juliet” is also a deception—a modern invention; but the
house of Juliet’s parents (the Capuletti), an old palace, stands as it
did in the days when Shakspere represents its banqueting halls and good
cheer.

The scenery from Verona to Florence, with the exception of a few views
of the Apennines, is very tedious—nothing beyond almond orchards,
which in March, the time of the year I saw them, resembled dead apple
trees. You will be surprised to hear that the Italian gentlemen wore
fur on their coats. They were, I imagine, traveled gentlemen, for the
genuine Italian, whether count or beggar, has a cloak thrown over his
shoulders in bewitching folds. When he pulls his large felt hat over
his magnificent eyes so that it casts a dark shadow over his mysterious
face, and stands in the sunshine, he looks simply a picture.

Verona is more Italian in appearance than Florence. The principal
street runs along either side of the river Arno, and is crowded for
some distance with little picture and jewelry shops; but farther on
toward the _cascine_, or park, the street widens, and is enriched
with handsome modern buildings, most of which are hotels. This drive
to the _cascine_ and the grand hotel was made when Victor Emmanuel
allowed the impression to exist that Florence would remain the capital
of Italy. This drive is thronged with carriages about four o’clock
in the afternoon. It was here I remember to have had the carriage of
the Medici family pointed out to me. Within sat two ladies with dark,
lustrous eyes, jet hair, and a great deal of lemon color on their
bonnets. The livery was also lemon color, and the carriage contained
the coat of arms on a lemon-colored panel. The Italians are very
partial to this shade of yellow. The beds are draped with material of
this same intense hue—very becoming to brunettes, but ruinous, as the
young ladies would say, to blondes.

Every one knows of the old Palazzo Vecchio, which rises away above
every object in the city of Florence. Its walls are so thick that in
them there are places for concealment—little cells—and in one of these
the great reformer of Florence, Savonarola, was kept until they burned
him at the stake in front of the palace.

“Santa Croce” is the name of the church which contains the tombs of
Michael Angelo, Alfieri Galileo, and Machiavelli. Byron, moved with
this idea, writes:

    “In Santa Croce’s holy precincts lie
       Ashes which make it holier, dust which is
     Even in itself an immortality.”

Every American goes to Powers’s studio to see the original of the
Greek Slave. Next to the Venus of Milo it seems the loveliest study in
marble of the female figure. But “our lady of Milo,” as Hawthorne calls
her—there is no beauty to hers!

The Baptistery in Florence is a curious octagonal church, built in
the twelfth century, and has the celebrated bronze doors by Ghiberti,
representing twelve eventful scenes from the Bible. Those to the south
are beautiful enough, said Michael Angelo, to be the gates of paradise.

As often as I had reflected upon Rome and her seven hills, on arriving
there the hills seemed to be a new revelation to me, and the rapid
driving of the Italians up and down the steep and narrow streets
bewildered me not a little. I found myself on the way from the depot,
constantly asking, can this be Rome? Everything looks so new. The
houses are light sandstone, like the buildings in Paris. I was
informed that this portion of Rome was calculated to mislead me, and
that I would find our hotel quite like Paris and New York houses. The
next morning, instead of making a pilgrimage to the Roman forum, the
Colosseum, and the palace of the Cæsars, we drove to St. Peter’s, which
kept me still quite in the notion that Rome had been whitewashed, or
something done to destroy her ancient classic aspect. We spent four
hours in the great church wandering around and witnessing a procession
of priests, monks, and gorgeous cardinals. There is no gewgaw, no
tinsel in St. Peter’s as one sees in so many other Catholic churches;
although gold is used in profusion, yet it is kept in subjection to
the tone of the walls. The bronze altar over St. Peter’s tomb is
wonderfully effective in the way of concentrating color and attention.
It is almost necessary to find a niche in the base of some pillar and
sit there awhile before plunging into the immensity of this great
building, just as a bird gets ready before darting into space. But
after all, the feeling of immensity which St. Peter’s gives is not so
grateful to the religious sense as the Gothic style of architecture,
with its stained window, and deep recesses,

    “Its long drawn aisles and fretted vaults.”

There is little solemnity in St. Peter’s, little shade and no music,
only from side chapels; but there are grand proportions, perfect
simplicity, and the pure light of heaven sending a beam upon a golden
dove above St. Peter’s tomb, which radiates in a thousand streams of
light over the marble pavement.

Nothing impressed me so much in Rome or suggested the ancient glory
so much as the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla. The magnificence of
this building must have been unparalleled. It accommodated sixteen
hundred bathers at once, and some of its walls are so thick one fears
to estimate the depth. What would the old Romans have thought of the
buildings of the present generation, which fall down or burn up without
much warning. Here is solid masonry standing since the year 212.

The different arches and columns of Rome constitute one of the most
attractive features to almost every traveller. Let those who enjoy
them climb their steps or strain their eyes to decipher in a scorching
Italian sun the dates, the seven golden candlesticks, the shew bread,
and Aaron’s rod, on Titus’s arch for example. I shall wander off while
they are so occupied into the old capitol—into the room where Rienzi
stood and exhorted the people to recover their ancient rights and into
the basement below where St. Paul was imprisoned.

The present king had just been crowned at that time. I saw the king and
queen in a procession where they were driving to gratify the people,
and again we saw him unattended driving with his brother through the
grounds of the Borghese Villa. The carnival was forbidden that year
in Rome on account of the death of the King and Pope, but there were
out-croppings of it on the streets. The tinseled finery and humbug of
it seem so incongruous in ancient classic Rome. I was glad to escape it.

The old Pantheon is too important in its history for any one to write
of it, but I have always liked the following paragraph from James
Freeman Clarke concerning it: “The Romans in this church, or temple,
worshiped their own gods, while they allowed the Jews, when in Rome,
to worship their Jewish god, and the Egyptians to worship the gods of
Egypt, and when they admitted the people of a conquered state to become
citizens of Rome their gods were admitted with them; but in both cases
the new citizens occupied a subordinate position to the old settlers.
The old worship of Rome was free from idolatry. Jupiter, Juno, and
the others were not represented by idols. But there was an impassable
gulf between the old Roman religion and modern Roman thought, and
Christianity came to the Roman world not as a new theory but as a new
life, and now her churches stand by the side of the ruins of the Temple
of Vesta and the old empty Pantheon.”

ELECTRICITY.

What is it? and what some of its manifestations? The name was given to
an occult, but everywhere present, property of material things. First
discovered by the ancients in amber (Gr. _electron_) and brought into
evidence by friction. It is generally spoken of as a highly elastic,
imponderable fluid, or fluids, with which all matter is supposed to be
in a greater or less degree charged. Though such fluids have never been
discovered as entities, and their existence may be but imaginary, it
was asserted to account for facts that otherwise seemed inexplicable.

Definitions of electricity are at hand, and could be easily given; but
they do not define or accurately point out that which they designate.
All that can be said, with confidence, is that certain phenomena which
come within our observation suggest the presence of such fluids, and
are not otherwise explained. The answer to the question, “What is it?”
must be the honest confession, we do not know. But, if ignorant of what
it is, we may yet intelligently study its manifestations. The phenomena
are not less capable of satisfactory discussion because the efficient
agent producing them is unknown.

The theory of two imponderable fluids or electricities having strong
attractive and repellant forces, is adopted because probable, and it
helps make the discussion intelligible.

The awakened interest now so widely felt in this branch of natural
science is more than just the desire to know what is knowable of the
world we live in. At first, and indeed for ages, only the curious
studied electricity, and practical men asked “_Cui bono?_” But in
the present century it has become an applied science. In no other
field have our studies of nature been more fruitful of discoveries
practically affecting the multiform industries, and improving the
rapidly advancing civilization of the age.

Some of the skillful inventions for controlling and utilizing this
power lying all about us will be mentioned hereafter.

It will be well first to state a few facts that are known and mostly
established by experimental tests:

(1) The earth, and all bodies on its surface, with the atmosphere
surrounding it, are charged with electricity of greater or less
potency. This seems their permanent state, though in some cases, its
presence is not easily detected.

(2) In quantity or intensity it is very different in different bodies,
as also in the same under different conditions. In some portions of
vast objects, as the earth and its atmosphere, it accumulates, immense
currents being poured into them, while others are perhaps to the same
extent drained.

(3) Through some bodies the subtle fluid may pass with but slight
obstruction—and they are called _conductors_. In others the hindrance
is greater, and we call them _insulators_. But the difference is only
of degrees; as the best conductors offer some obstruction, and the most
perfect insulators do not completely insulate. The metals, charcoal,
water, and most moist substances, as the earth and animal bodies, offer
but little resistance. The atmosphere, most kinds of glass, sulphur,
india rubber, vulcanite, shellac, and other resins, with dry silk and
cotton, are our best insulators. Friction used to secure electrical
manifestations is the occasion rather than the cause of the electricity
thus developed or set free. That it does not cause it, even in the
sense that it causes heat is evident, since the quantity of electricity
bears no proportion to the amount of friction used to produce it.

Though, really, there are not several distinct kinds of electricity,
as statical, dynamic, magnetic, frictional, and atmospheric, the
nomenclature of the science is at least convenient, and will not
mislead. It indicates the methods of production, and makes the
discussion of the subject more intelligible. And then the electricity
developed or set free by the different methods of excitement, though of
the same kind, differs much in degree and intensity.

What is called statical electricity is the condition of the subtle
force in a state of electrical quiescence; and all electricity in
motion, however excited by friction, heat, chemical action, or
otherwise, is dynamic.

Perpetual modifications are taking place in electrical condition of all
matter, that when made apparent, at first may seem quite inexplicable.
The excited currents flow with amazing rapidity. Their actions and
re-actions baffle our calculations, and the imagination itself is
bewildered by their extent and complexity. Yet by electrical tests and
laboratory experiments, carefully employed, the laws of electricity are
now as well known as those of any other branch of physical science,
and the phenomena, if more startling, are no more mysterious than the
manifestations of heat, light and gravitation.

Atmospheric electricity is not different in kind from that brought into
evidence by the methods of the experimenter in the laboratory, subject
to his control, and much used in the arts and industries of life. The
lightning that shineth from the one part under heaven to the other part
under heaven, a bright light in the cloud, is the same as the electric
spark from the moderately charged receiver, when the positive and
negative poles are brought into contact—the same as the less intense
spark excited by passing the hand rapidly over the fur on the cat’s
back when the electrical conditions are favorable.

The storm cloud is a vast receiver and by induction becomes at times
highly charged with electricity. If the cloud is at rest, and the
heated air grows moist, that which is known as sheet or heat lightning
appears in frequent flashes. The imprisoned electricity leaps forth
from the bosom or edge of the cloud, but as instantly gathers itself
back to its source, and apparently without tension or force enough
to crash through the atmosphere to any distant object. The flashes
are unaccompanied by the noise of thunder, and may be but reflections
on the cloud from a source far beyond. We watch them without fear of
danger, and the subdued impression is that of the beautiful.

Amidst the terrific grandeur of the violent thunder storm another form
of lightning is seen; either the vivid flash that seems to envelop us,
or zigzag, sometimes forked lines that dash across the cloud earthward,
and occasionally, as in a return stroke, from the earth to the cloud.

In about the middle of the eighteenth century the identity of lightning
with electricity was fully ascertained, and since then the most sublime
and startling phenomena of our thunder storms are better understood.
Under certain contingencies they must occur. Since the different
clouds or portions of the same cloud are charged with different
electricities, positive and negative, when these by the winds are
brought near each other, or rolled together, fierce explosions follow,
and great electrical changes take place in the clouds. Vast supplies
of the imprisoned fiery fluid leap from strata to strata, or, if the
distance is not too great, and the earth is at the same time strongly
electrified, crash down to it through whatever sufficient conductors
are found. If those not sufficient to receive and convey the charge
be in the path they are dashed aside; men and beasts are killed by
the shock, trees and other less perfect conductors are scattered in
fragments.

Usually the more prominent objects as masts of ships, trees, and
buildings are struck in the lightning’s course from the cloud, but
occasionally those lowest down, near trees, and even in cellars receive
the shock. In these cases the current is probably from the earth,
whose electric condition is negative with respect to the clouds that
pass over it. In either case the opposite electricities that strongly
attract each other, and whose concurrence produces the destructive
discharge near the earth’s surface are held apart by the stratum of air
between them. When the attraction becomes too strong to be resisted by
the insulating medium they rush together, in their fiery embrace, the
flash and concussion being in proportion to the intensity of the charge.

Do lightning rods protect? Yes; but not perfectly. If properly
constructed, and of sufficient conducting capacity, they are a source
of safety, and to discard them as useless is not wise.

The instances in which buildings provided with rods have been struck
do not prove them useless; or, as some say, that the rods do harm by
attracting the lightning that they are unable to conduct to the earth
without injury to the building. The point does not attract, but only
catches the electricity that sweeps over it. When violent shocks or
explosions occur the rod may be of little service. Its office is to
prevent these by silently conducting the excess of electricity from
the air. The rod, rightly placed, conducts to the earth all it can,
lessening the evil it does not entirely prevent. But all danger is not
removed. The position of the opposite poles in the immense battery may
be such as to give the stroke a horizontal direction, and far below the
point of the rod; such currents have been known to pass long distances
through atmosphere and smite with destructive violence objects lying
in their path. Against these lateral attacks rods above our roofs are
probably little or no protection. Still the more good conductors there
are in any locality the less danger, as they prevent the accumulation
of electricity.

POACHERS IN ENGLAND.

By JAMES TURVES.

It is somewhat surprising that none of our present-day novelists,
like Charles Reade or Thomas Hardy, who are always on the outlook
for romantic realism, whether it be in incident or in fact, have had
their eyes directed to the rural poachers who abound in every shire.
Poachers, though neither quite respectable members of the church
nor of society, are more interesting characters than burglars or
ticket-of-leave men, who figure frequently in the novelist’s pages.
And, very strange to say, it has been left to a lady to write the
first accounts of poaching episodes, episodes remarkable for their
masculine touches and their wonderful grip of open-air reality; Harriet
Martineau, in her “Forest and Game Law Tales,” astonishes us by her
graphic realism and her delicacy of treatment; Charles Kingsley wrote
one or two of his pathetic ballads on the subject of a poacher and
his wife; Norman Macleod made a Highland poacher the subject of a
character sketch; and in our own times Mr. Richard Jefferies, a writer
who finds pleasure in minute description and vivid realism, has in his
own style of exact word-painting given us a pleasant book about his
own experiences as an amateur poacher. But the real poacher, the rural
vagabond, the parish character, the ne’er-do-weel, whose life is a
living protest against the game-laws, is of more lasting interest than
any amateur can ever be.

Viewed from the serene vantage-ground of the philosophy of life,
poaching is mean and ignoble, and demoralizing sport to you or me, and
is not worth the powder and shot, while the fines and punishments are
out of all proportion to the joys; yet there are not wanting apologists
for it in this apologetic century. “Poaching! Man, there’s no sin in
catching a rabbit or snaring a hare. They belong to naebody. Bless
you! it’s a gentleman’s trick, shooting.” This is the opinion of any
Northern lowland ploughman’s wife, as she looks from her red-tiled
cottage-door out upon the face of the corn-growing mother earth, which
has given her sweet memories and a host of country neighbors and
friends.

Sixty years ago peasants could use their guns without let or hindrance,
and it was then a common thing for a farm-laborer to go out and have a
shot when no sportsman was in the way. Taking an odd shot now and then
was never, and is not even now, looked upon by them as poaching. But a
noted poacher, nicknamed the Otter, tells me, with a sigh, “Poaching
is not what it once was!” And it is true. Not so very long ago it
was a very profitable occupation, and comparatively respectable,
before railways and telegraph wires and penny newspapers stereotyped
metropolitan ideas into all and sundry. An old farmer is pointed out as
having made all his money by systematic poaching, and an influential
city official is said to have laid his early nest-egg by no other means
than being a good shot where he had no invitation to be. To-day even
rural society would look down upon a young farmer engaged in poaching.
It is no longer sport to gentlemen, says the Otter, and is left to
moral vagabonds, the waifs and strays, the parish loafers. The great
strides of agriculture, the game-laws, and the artificial breeding of
game have driven it into sneaking ways, and robbed it of its robust
picturesque adventures. To excel in it a man must give up his nights
and days to it—in short, he must become a specialist, and even then it
hardly pays.

A genuine poacher has great force of character; he has a genius for
field and woodcraft. He is the eldest survivor of rustic romance. His
wild life is tinged with the love of adventure, the love of moon and
stars, the knowledge of the seasons, the haunts and habits of game, and
the power of trapping rabbits in dark woodland glades. No man knows
more intimately the night-side of Nature between the chilly hours
of midnight and sunrise. In this cold-blooded age there are always
some Quixotic individuals, born in the outwardly sleepy villages and
lifeless farmsteads, with the love of midnight adventure, who wage
long warfare against the game-laws, and who only knuckle under to the
law’s severity when their health gives way or an enemy turns informer.
“Rheumatics plays the mischief with poaching!” exclaims the Otter,
referring to the long night-watches in wet ditches and beside hedges
for hares on the lea fields. Irrespective of all thought of gain, there
is an infatuation to eager spirits in this midnight sport. It appeals
to strong, healthy, brave men. Charles Kingsley, in “The Bad Squire,”
with its strong sympathy and feeling, and its cry of “blood” on all the
squire owned, from the foreign shrub to the game he sold, gives us the
poacher’s wife view, a view we are too apt to ignore or forget, with
the weary eyes and heavy heart, that grow light only with weeping, and
go wandering into the night. We forget too often that in the hearts of
common folk there is the glamor of poetic romance about poaching, and a
bitter hatred toward the game-laws. Like Rizpah’s son, many a lad has
had no other incentive than that “The farmer dared us to do it,” and
that he found it sweetened by the secret sympathy of the people. Too
often, I fear, the game-laws dare a brave rustic into poaching: he has
only this one way left to satisfy the insatiable British thirst for
field sport. It is gravely whispered that some of the most striking
men have tasted its romance; and if all stories be true, the master of
the English drama owes to an unlucky deer-poaching incident the lucky
turn in his career which sent him to London and to writing plays, and
poachers may reasonably claim Shakspere as their patron saint.

When the strong, sweet ale warms his heart, the poacher boasts of
dreadful adventures in the night, of leaping broad mill-dams when
chased, of giving fight in the dark, and discomfiting gamekeepers by
clever tricks. He paints his exploits in such heroical glory, that
the seat next the fire in the ale-house is given him by admiring and
fearing rustics. Honesty he ascribes to practicedness in the world’s
ways, and he looks upon keeping out of jail as the greatest victory
that man can achieve. He is the type of man that makes our best
soldiers, or, as he phrases it, is paid to stop the gun-shots. He
requires no almanac to tell him when the moon is to rise to-morrow,
and he could give the gamekeepers lessons. He is to be envied for his
quick feeling of life and his sympathy for field and forest sport, and
that wild exuberance of spirits which he seems to catch with his hares.
It is this rural vagabond—and not Mr. Commonplace Respectability—who
rivets young folks’ attention; his energy anywhere would achieve
success; and he is free from that unpardonable fault, dulness. In the
rustic drama of life he is the character that takes hold of us in our
best impulses—and is not that the best world of the ideal? He disdains
to shoot starlings or black-birds; he is too much a sportsman to pay
attention to such small game. He can put his hands to various ways
of living; he can collect bird’s eggs, shoot wild rock-pigeons for
a farmers’ club, gather blackberries, or, as they say in Scotland,
“brambles,” pull young ash-saplings in plantations, and sell them to
grooms in the livery stables in town.—_The Contemporary Review._

EIGHT CENTURIES WITH WALTER SCOTT.

By WALLACE BRUCE.

“The burning sun of Syria had not yet attained its highest point in
the horizon, when a knight of the Red Cross, who had left his distant
northern home, and joined the host of the Crusaders in Palestine, was
pacing slowly along the sandy deserts which lie in the vicinity of the
Dead Sea, or as it is called, the Lake Asphalites, where the waves of
the Jordan pour themselves into an inland sea, from which there is no
discharge of waters.”

This is the graphic opening of “The Talisman.” The steel clad pilgrim
was entering upon that great plain, once watered even as the Garden of
the Lord, now an arid and sterile wilderness, sloping away to the Dead
Sea, which hides beneath its sluggish waves the once proud cities of
Sodom and Gomorrah;—a dark mass of water “Which holds no living fish in
its bosom, bears no skiff on its surface, and sends no tribute to the
ocean.” It was a scene of desolation still testifying to the just wrath
of the Almighty. As in the days of Moses, “The whole land was brimstone
and salt; it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth thereon.”
The first sentence of the chapter revealed the descriptive and artistic
power of the novelist, for the desolation is made more desolate by the
introduction of the solitary horseman, journeying slowly through the
flitting sand, under the noontide splendor of the eastern sun.

Almost a century has passed since the triumph of the first crusade. The
Latin Kingdom, founded by its leaders, had lasted only eighty-eight
years. Jerusalem is again in the hands of the Saracens. The crescent
gleams on the Mosque of St. Omar. The cross has been torn from her
temples, her shrines profaned, and the worshipers of the Holy Sepulcher
murdered or exiled. The second crusade had been a failure, and its
history a series of disasters. Thousands perished in the long march
across Asia Minor. Those who reached Palestine undertook the siege of
Damascus, but the attempt was disastrous. In 1187 a powerful leader
of the East appeared in the high-souled and chivalrous Saladin. By
wise counsel he united the factions of the Mohammedans, which had
been at variance for two hundred years; and on the arrival of the
third crusade, with which event we are now dealing, he was enabled to
present a solid front of warriors “like unto the sand of the desert in
multitude.”

The land, where “peace and good will to men” had been proclaimed by the
voices of angels, and emphasized by the blessed words of the Son of
God, was again converted into a vast tournament field for the armies of
Europe and Asia: aye more, even in the mountain passes that guard the
Holy City, the mission of the crusaders was sacrificed to petty insults
and rivalries. Richard the Lion-hearted and King Philip of France were
repeating the old story of Achilles and Agamemnon. The military orders
of the Knights of the Temple and the Knights of St. John, which had
grown up in Jerusalem, founded as fraternities devoted to works of
mercy in behalf of poor pilgrims, had become powerful rivals of each
other and the clergy, and by intrigue and dissension purposely fomented
the discord. According to the historian Michaud, “On the one side were
the French, the German, the Templars and the Genoese; on the other the
English, the Pisans, and the Knights of St. John.”

These are the historical circumstances with which Scott has to deal;
and it is on a mission from such a council, made up of discordant
factions, convened during the sickness of Richard, that we find the
Knight of the Red Cross, or as he is afterward styled, Kenneth the
Scot, bearing a message to the celebrated Hermit of Engaddi. His
adventures by the way are as romantic as any recorded in the Knights
of the Round-Table; for, as he directed his course toward a cluster of
palm trees, he saw suddenly emerge therefrom a Saracen chief mounted
on a fleet Arabian horse. As they drew near each other they prepared
for battle, each after the manner of his own country. “On the desert,”
according to an Eastern proverb, “no man meets a friend.” The heavy
armor of the crusader and his powerful horse are more than an even
match for the wily Saracen. The Scottish knight might have been likened
in the conflict to a bold rock in the sea, and the swift assaults
of the Eastern warrior to the waves dashing against it only to be
broken into foam. After a long struggle, which was worthy of a larger
audience, the Saracen calls a truce, and the Mohammedan and Christian,
so lately in deadly conflict, make their way side by side, each
respecting the other’s courage, to the well under the clustered palms.

The student of history will find in the description of this
hand-to-hand conflict an object-lesson of the garb and manners of the
Eastern and Western races; and will learn more in the conversation that
follows, as they partake of their scanty meal, of the sentiments and
customs of the hostile races than can be gathered from the pages of any
history with which I am acquainted: for Sir Walter had the marvelous
faculty of absorbing history. He saw everything so vividly that he was
able to reproduce it in living forms. As we read his description, we
sit with them under the palms; we hear them now responding in courtesy,
and again in sharp discussion, as allusion is made to their respective
religions or modes of life; and, as they resume their journey, we feel
grateful to the novelist for the beautiful figure which he puts in
the mouth of the Scottish knight in answer to the Saracen’s boast of
harem-life as contrasted with a Christian household.

    “That diamond signet,” says the knight, “which thou
    wearest on thy finger, thou holdest it doubtless of
    inestimable value?” “Bagdad can not show the like,”
    replied the Saracen; “But what avails it to our
    purpose?” “Much,” replied the Frank, “as thou shalt
    thyself confess. Take my war-axe and dash the stone
    into twenty shivers; would each fragment be as valuable
    as the original gem, or would they, all collected, bear
    the tenth part of its estimation?”

    “That is a child’s question,” answered the Saracen;
    “the fragments of a stone would not equal the entire
    jewel in the degree of hundreds to one.”

    “Saracen,” replied the Christian warrior, “the love
    which a true knight binds on one only, fair and
    faithful, is the gem entire; the affection thou
    flingest among thy enslaved wives, and half-wedded
    slaves, is worthless, comparatively, as the sparkling
    shivers of the broken diamond.”

We find both soldiers courteous in conversation, and their example
teaches a good lesson to modern controversy; but the “courtesy of the
Christian seemed to flow rather from a good natured sense of what was
due to others; that of the Moslem, from a high feeling of what was
to be expected from himself. The manners of the Eastern warrior were
grave, graceful and decorous;” he might have been compared to “his
sheeny and crescent-shaped saber, with its narrow and light, but bright
and keen, Damascus blade, contrasted with the long and ponderous Gothic
war-sword which was flung unbuckled on the same sod.”

They pursue their march to the grotto of the Hermit of Engaddi; a man
respected alike by Christian and Mohammedan; revered by the Latins
for his austere devotion, and by the Arabs on account of his symptoms
of insanity, which they ascribed to inspiration. The hermit, once
a crusader, was the man whom Kenneth was to meet. He delivers his
message; but at night, while the Saracen slept, Kenneth is conducted to
a subterraneous, but elegantly carved chapel, where he meets by chance
with the noble sister of King Richard, who with Richard’s newly wedded
wife, had come hither to pray for the king’s recovery. She drops a
rose at the knight’s feet confirming the approbation which her smiles
had already expressed to him in camp, and the story of true love, not
destined to run smoothly, is fairly commenced. But as with “Count
Robert of Paris,” “The Talisman” is not so much a romance as a picture
of the strife and jealousy of haughty and rival leaders. Its value, as
a historical novel, lies in the portrayal of these discordant elements.

We may read the best history of the crusades, page by page, line by
line, only to forget the next month, or the next year, everything save
the issue of the long struggle; but “The Talisman,” by its wondrous
reality, makes a lasting impression upon our minds. We see Richard
tossing upon his couch, impatient of his fever and protracted delays.
We see the Marquis of Montserrat, and the Grand Master of the Knights
Templar walking together in close-whispered conspiracy. We see Leopold,
the Grand Duke of Austria, lifting his own banner, with overweening
pride, by the side of England’s standard. We see Richard dashing aside
the attendants of his sick bed, half-clad, rushing forth to avenge the
insult, splintering the staff, and trampling upon the Austrian flag. We
stand with Kenneth under the starlight, guarding alone the dignity of
England’s banner, but decoyed away in an unlucky hour by the ring of
King Richard’s sister, which had been obtained by artifice. We see the
flag stolen in that fatal absence, and the noble knight condemned to
death, to be saved only by miracle from the fierce wrath of Richard. He
is given as a present to the Arabian physician whose art had restored
the king to health. We see him again with Richard in the disguise
of a Nubian slave. We see a strolling Saracen with poisoned dagger
attempting the life of Richard, but saved by the faithful Kenneth. We
find Richard considering in his mind the giving of his royal sister
in marriage to Saladin; an affair which fortunately needed the lady’s
consent, who had in her veins too much of the proud Plantagenet blood
to know the meaning of compulsion. We see the tournament which decided
the treachery of Conrad, and the triumph of Kenneth, who turns out to
be no other than the Earl of Huntingdon, heir of the Scottish throne.
The comrade of Kenneth, and the physician who waited upon the king,
chances to be the same person, and no less renowned a hero than the
Emperor Saladin, who sends as a nuptial present to Kenneth and Edith
Plantagenet the celebrated talisman by which he had wrought so many
notable cures; which, according to Scott, is still in existence in the
family of Sir Simon of Lee.

This tale of the crusaders is so complete that we need after closing
the volume only a few lines of history to complete the record. The
city of Ptolemais was captured after a three years’ siege. More than
one hundred skirmishes and nine great battles were fought under its
walls. Both parties were animated by religious zeal. It is said
that the King of Jerusalem marched to battle with the books of the
Evangelists borne before him; and that Saladin often paused upon the
field of battle to recite a prayer, or read a chapter from the Koran.
Philip finally returns to France. Richard remains in command of one
hundred thousand soldiers. He conquers the Saracens in battle, repairs
the fortifications of Jaffa and Ascalon, but in the intoxication
of pleasure forgets the conquest of Jerusalem. His victories were
fruitless. He obtained from Saladin merely a truce of three years
and eight months, “which insured to pilgrims the right of entering
Jerusalem untaxed,” and, without fulfilling his promise of striking
his lance against the gates of the Holy City, sets off on his homeward
journey, to be taken captive and held a prisoner in a Tyrolese castle.
In brief the history of the Third Crusade is that of a house divided
against itself.

As “The Betrothed” brought us back from Constantinople and Palestine
to Merrie England, so “Ivanhoe” transports the reader, and some of
the prominent actors of the drama, from the eastern shores of the
Mediterranean to the pleasant district of the West Riding of Yorkshire,
watered by the river Don, “where flourished in ancient times those
bands of gallant outlaws, whose deeds have been rendered so popular in
English song.”

The prominent historical features which Scott illustrates in the
romantic story of “Ivanhoe” are the domestic and civil relations
existing between the Saxon and the Norman about the year 1196, when the
return of Richard the First from Palestine and captivity was an event
rather hoped for than expected; and an event _not_ hoped for by King
John and his followers.

The Saxon spirit had been well nigh subdued by the strict and unjust
laws imposed by the Norman kings. For one hundred and thirty years
Norman-French had been the language of the court, the language of law,
of chivalry and justice. The laws of the chase and the curfew,—and
many others unknown to the Saxon constitution,—had been placed upon
the necks of the inhabitants of the soil. With few exceptions the race
of Saxon princes had been extirpated; and it was not until the reign
of Edward III. that England became thoroughly united as one people.
The English language at the close of the twelfth century was not yet
born. The Saxon mother and Norman father were not yet wedded; the two
languages were gradually getting acquainted with each other; or, as
Scott has logically expressed it, “the necessary intercourse between
the lords of the soil, and those oppressed inferior beings by whom that
soil was cultivated, occasioned the formation of a dialect, compounded
betwixt the French and the Anglo-Saxon, in which they could render
themselves mutually intelligible to each other; and from this necessity
arose by degrees the structure of our present English language, in
which the speech of the victors and the vanquished has been so happily
blended together, and which has since been so richly improved by
importations from the classical languages, and from those spoken by
the southern nations of Europe.” In the first chapter—and it is always
well to read carefully the first chapter of Scott—we are introduced
to a swine-herd, born thrall of Cedric of Rotherwood, one of the few
powerful Saxon families existing in England at the time of our story.
He is attended by a domestic clown, or jester, maintained at that time
in the houses of the wealthy. With an art and unity like Shakspere,
Scott emphasizes at the very outset the chief historic feature of his
story, by putting the following conversation in the mouths of these
Saxon menials:

    “How call you those grunting brutes running about on
    their four legs?” demanded Wamba, the jester.

    “Swine,” said the herd.

    “And swine is good Saxon,” said the jester; “but how
    call you it when quartered?”

    “Pork,” answered the cow-herd.

    “And pork,” said Wamba, “is good Norman-French; and
    so when the brute lives, and is in the charge of a
    Saxon slave, she goes by her Saxon name; but becomes a
    Norman, and is called _pork_, when she is carried to
    the castle-hall to feast among the nobles. Nay, I can
    tell you more,” said Wamba, in the same tone, “there is
    Alderman Ox, who continues to hold his Saxon epithet,
    while he is under the charge of serfs and bondsmen such
    as thou, but becomes _beef_, a fiery French gallant,
    when he arrives before the worshipful jaws that are
    destined to consume him. Mynheer Calf, too, becomes
    Monsieur de _Veau_ in the like manner; he is Saxon when
    he requires tendance, and takes a Norman name when he
    becomes matter of enjoyment.”

The third chapter brings together a strange gathering under the roof
of the hospitable Cedric: Brian de Bois Gilbert, a haughty Templar;
Prior Aymer, of free and jovial character; a poor Palmer, just returned
from the Holy Land, and a Jew known as Isaac of York; all journeying
on their way to a tournament to be held a few miles distant at Ashby
de la Zouche. Lady Rowena, descended from the noble line of Alfred,
graced the table with her presence, a ward destined by Cedric, but not
by fate, to be the wife of Athelstane,—a Saxon descended from Edward
the Confessor: in the furtherance of which idea his only son had been
exiled, when it became known that he aspired to the hand of the Saxon
beauty.

At the tournament the remaining characters of the drama are introduced:
King John, with his retinue; Richard the Lion-Hearted, under the
disguise of the “Black Knight;” Rebecca, the Jewess; the proud baron
Front de Bœuf; Robin Hood, the brave outlaw, under the name of Loxley;
and Ivanhoe, the poor pilgrim, who wins the prize at the tournament
and crowns Rowena Queen of Beauty. At the close of the second day’s
tournament, in which Ivanhoe is again successful, a letter is handed
to King John with the brief sentence, “Take heed to yourself, for
the devil is unchained.” It was like the handwriting on the wall of
Belshazzar’s palace, and proclaimed the end of his kingdom.

Cedric, Rowena, Isaac, Rebecca, Athelstane and Ivanhoe depart their
several ways from the tournament, but are captured and taken to Front
de Bœuf’s castle. Cedric escapes in the guise of a monk. The castle is
stormed, and now occurs one of the most dramatic pictures in the pages
of romantic literature, destined to reveal to all time the undying
hate between the Saxon and the Norman. A Saxon woman, by name Ulrica,
had lived for years in Front de Bœuf’s castle. She had seen her father
and seven brothers killed in defending their home, but she “remained
to administer ignominiously to the murderers of her family. She used
the seductions of her beauty to arm the son against the father; she
heated drunken revelry into murderous broil, and stained with a
parricide the banqueting hall of the conquerors.” She had sold body
and soul to obtain revenge for Norman cruelties; and now, grown old
in servitude, incensed by the contempt of her masters, she determines
upon a deed, which will make the ears of men tingle while the name of
Saxon is remembered. She fires the castle and appears on a turret in
the guise of one of the ancient furies, yelling forth a war-song. “Her
long, dishevelled grey hair flows back from her uncovered head; the
inebriated delight of gratified vengeance contends in her eyes with the
fire of insanity; and she brandishes the distaff which she holds in her
hand, as if she were one of the fatal sisters, who spin and abridge
the thread of human life. At length, with a terrific crash, the whole
turret gives way, and she perishes in the flames which consume her
tyrant.”

There is another historic feature of the times emphasized in this
romance: the oppression of the Jews in England during these cruel and
adventurous times. The character of the race is vividly portrayed in
Isaac of York, in which masterly delineation Scott seems truer to
nature than Shakspere in the character of Shylock. Rebecca, his noble
and beautiful daughter, is the type of all that is pure and womanly.
Her words have the eloquence of the poets and prophets of old: “Know
proud knight,” she says, “we number names amongst us to which your
boasted Northern nobility is as the gourd compared with the cedar—names
that ascend far back to those high times when the Divine Presence shook
the mercy seat between the cherubim, and which derive their splendor
from no earthly prince, but from the awful Voice, which bade their
fathers be nearest of the congregation to the vision; such were the
princes of the house of Jacob; now such no more. They are trampled down
like the shorn grass, and mixed with the mire of the ways; yet there
are those among them who shame not such high descent, and of such shall
be the daughter of Isaac, the son of Adonikam. Farewell! I envy not
thy blood-won honors; I envy not thy barbarous descent from northern
heathens; I envy not thy faith, which is ever in thy mouth, but never
in thy heart nor in thy practice.”

The description of Friar Tuck entertaining King Richard in disguise
is in Scott’s happiest vein; and Robin Hood, with his bold outlaws,
shares the honors gracefully with knights and nobles. But it is alike
unnecessary and unprofitable to attempt a condensation of “Ivanhoe.”
No outline can convey the beauty of a finished picture. It is not to
be taken at second hand. It is only for us to indicate its relation
to history; and it will suffice to say that King Richard was gladly
welcomed by the English people, and that Ivanhoe was wedded to the
beautiful Rowena.

But, do I hear the reader ask, what becomes of the fair Jewess? Scott
has answered the question so beautifully in his preface that I borrow
his own words—a passage to my mind unsurpassed in English prose: “The
character of the fair Jewess found so much favor in the eyes of some
fair readers, that the writer was censured, because, when arranging the
fates of the characters of the drama, he had not assigned the hand of
Wilfred to Rebecca, rather than the less interesting Rowena. But, not
to mention that the prejudices of the age rendered such an union almost
impossible, the author may, in passing, observe, that he thinks a
character of a highly virtuous and lofty stamp, is degraded rather than
exalted by an attempt to reward virtue with temporal prosperity. Such
is not the recompense which Providence has deemed worthy of suffering
merit, and it is a dangerous and fatal doctrine to teach young persons,
the most common readers of romance, that rectitude of conduct and of
principle are either naturally allied with, or adequately rewarded
by, the gratification of our passions, or attainment of our wishes.
In a word, if a virtuous and self-denied character is dismissed with
temporal wealth, greatness, rank, or the indulgence of such a rashly
formed or ill-assorted passion as that of Rebecca for Ivanhoe, the
reader will be apt to say, ‘Verily, virtue has had its reward.’ But
a glance on the great picture of life will show that the duties of
self-denial and the sacrifice of passion to principle are seldom thus
remunerated; and that the internal consciousness of their high-minded
discharge of duty produces on their own reflections a more adequate
recompense in the form of that peace which the world can not give or
take away.”

THE GREAT ORGAN AT FRIBOURG.

By EDITH SESSIONS TUPPER.

After thoroughly “doing” Berne in most approved guide-book fashion;
feeding the bears—hot, dusty looking creatures; standing in the middle
of the street, heads thrown back at the risk of dislocating our necks
to watch the celebrated clock strike, we stand one evening on the hotel
terrace and take our farewell look at the Bernese Alps. Sharply defined
against a sunset-flushed sky, as if cut from alabaster, glittering
fair and white like the pinnacles and domes of a city celestial, rise
the Mönch, Eiger, Wetterhorn, and, serene and august in her icy virgin
beauty, the Jungfrau.

    “Too soon the light began to fade,
       Tho’ lingering soft and tender;
     And the snow giants sank again
       Into their calm dead splendor.”

Leaving Berne, we take our way to Fribourg, to see its wonderful
gorges and skeleton bridges, and hear its more wonderful organ. On
our arrival at this quaint old Romanesque town, we are driven to the
most delightful little hotel, hanging on the very edge of the great
ravine, upon the sides of which the town is built. Through the more
closely-built region of the town runs the old stone wall with its high
watch-towers. Spanning the great gulf are the bridges—mere phantoms of
bridges they seem from our windows. A dreary, drizzling rain sets in
soon after we arrive, and some American lads across the court-yard from
time to time send forth in their sweet untrained voices the refrain of
that mournful ballad, the “Soldier’s Farewell,”

    “Farewell, farewell, my own true love.”

A prevalent tone of _heimweh_ is in the air; eyes are filling, and
memory is stretching longing hands over the ocean, when fortunately
comes the summons to _table d’hote_. At our plates we find programs
in very bad English of a concert to be given this evening upon the
great organ in the cathedral. Thither we go at dusk, pausing a moment
to look at the grotesque carving of the last judgment over the great
door. Thereon the good, with most satisfied faces, are being admitted
to heaven by St. Peter, a stout old gentleman in a short gown, jingling
a bunch of keys; while the wicked are being carried in Swiss baskets
to a great cauldron over a blazing fire, therein to be deposited, and
to be stirred up by devils armed with pitchforks for that purpose.
We enter. Without, the ceaseless drip of the rain; within, gloom,