severe, respectable, and absolutely unpicturesque--she was picturesque
in every motion. His well-made clothes sat stiffly on him, and the first
idea he conveyed was that he was carefully dressed. Even a woman would
not have thought, at the first glance at least, of how _she_ was
dressed. She only impressed one with a sense of the presence of graceful
and especially emotional womanhood. The longer one looked at the two the
deeper the contrast seemed to become. Both, for example, had rather thin
lips; but his were rigid, precise, and seeming to part with a certain
deliberation and even difficulty. Hers appeared, even when she was
silent, to be tremulous with expression. After a while it would have
seemed to an observer, if any observing eye were there, that no power on
earth could have brought these two into companionship.

"I won't take this as your final answer," he said, after one or two
unsuccessful efforts to speak. "You will consider this again, and give
it some serious reflection."

She only shook her head, and once more seated herself on the steps of
the monument as if to suggest that now the interview was over.

"You are not walking homeward?" he asked.

"I am staying here for awhile."

He bade her good morning and walked slowly away. A rejected lover looks
to great disadvantage when he has to walk away. He ought to leap on the
back of a horse, and spur him fiercely and gallop off; or the curtain
ought to fall and so finish up with him. Otherwise, even the most heroic
figure has something of the look of one sneaking off like a dog told
imperatively to "go home." Mr. Sheppard felt very uncomfortable at the
thought that he probably did not seem dignified in the eyes of Miss
Grey. He once glanced back uneasily, but perhaps it was not a relief to
find that she was not looking in his direction.

CHAPTER II.

THE EVE OF LIBERTY.

Miss Grey remained in the park until the sun had gone down and the
stars, with their faint light, seemed as she moved homeward to be like
bright sparkles entangled among the high branches of the trees. She had
a great deal to think of, and she troubled herself little about the
mental depression of her rejected lover. All the purpose of her life was
now summed up in a resolve to get away from Keeton and to bury herself
in London.

She knew that any opposition to her proposal on the part of those who
were still supposed to be her guardians would only be founded on an
objection to it as something unwomanly, venturous, and revolutionary,
and not by any means the result of any grief for her going away. Ever
since her mother's death and her father's second marriage she had only
chafed at existence, and found those around her disagreeable, and no
doubt made herself disagreeable to them. She had ceased to feel any
respect for her father when he married again, and he knew it and became
cold and constrained with her. Only just before his death had there
been anything like a revival of their affection for each other. He had
been a man of some substance and authority in his town, had built
houses, and got together property, and he left his daughter a not
inconsiderable annuity as a charge upon his property, and placed her
under the guardianship of the elderly and respectable Nonconformist
minister, who, as luck would have it, afterward married his young widow.
Minola had seen so many marriages during her short experience, and had
disliked two at least of them so thoroughly, that she was much inclined
to say with one of her heroes that there should be no more of them. For
a long time she had made up her mind that when she came of age she would
go to London and live there. She still wanted a few months of the time
of independence, but the manner in which Mr. Augustus Sheppard was
pressed upon her by himself and others made her resolve to anticipate
the course of the seasons a little, and go away at once. In London she
made up her mind that she would lead a life of enchantment: of
delightful and semi-savage solitude, in the midst of the crowd; of wild
independence and scorn of all the ways of men, with books at her
command, with the art galleries and museums, of which she had read so
much, always within easy reach, and the streets which were alive for her
with such sweet and dear associations all around her.

Miss Grey knew London well. She had never yet set foot in it, or been
anywhere out of her native town; but she had studied London as a general
may study the map of some country which he expects one day to invade.
Many and many a night, when all in the house but she were fast asleep,
she had had the map of London spread out before her, and had puzzled her
way through the endless intricacies of its streets. Few women of her
age, or of any age, actually living in the metropolis, had anything like
the knowledge of its districts and its principal streets that she had.
She felt in anticipation the pride and delight of being able to go
whither she would about London without having to ask her way of any one.
Some particular association identified every place in her mind. The
living and the dead, the romantic and the real, history and fiction, all
combined to supply her with labels of association, which she might
mentally put upon every quarter and district, and almost upon every
street which had a name worth knowing. As we all know Venice before we
have seen it, and when we get there can recognize everything we want to
see without need of guide to name it for us, so Minola Grey knew London.
It is no wonder now that her mind was in a perturbed condition. She was
going to leave the place in which so far all her life literally had been
passed. She was going to live in that other place which had for years
been her dream, her study, her self-appointed destiny. She was going to
pass away for ever from uncongenial and odious companionship, and to
live a life of sweet, proud, lonely independence.

The loneliness, however, was not to be literal and absolute. In all
romantic adventures there is companionship. The knight has his squire,
Rosalind has her Celia. Minola Grey was to have her companion in her
great enterprise. It had not indeed occurred to her to think about the
inconvenience or oddness of a girl living absolutely alone in London,
but the kindly destinies had provided her with a comrade. Having
lingered long in the park and turned back again and again for another
view of some favorite spot, having gathered many a leaf and flower for
remembrance, and having looked up many times with throbbing heart at the
white, trembling stars that would shine upon her soon in London, Miss
Grey at last made up her mind and passed resolutely out at the great
gate and went to seek this companion. She was glad to leave the park now
in any case, for in the fine evenings of summer and autumn it was the
custom of Keeton people to make it their promenade. All the engaged
couples of the place would soon be there under the trees. When a lad and
lass were seen to walk boldly and openly together of evenings in that
park, and to pass and repass their neighbors without effort at avoiding
such encounters, it was as well known that they were engaged as though
the fact had been proclaimed by the town-crier. A jury of Keeton folk
would have assumed a promise of marriage and proceeded to award damages
for its breach if it were proved that a young man had walked openly for
any three evenings in the park with a girl whom he afterward declined to
make his wife. Minola did not care to meet any of the joyous couples or
their friends, and even already the twitter of voices and the titter of
feminine laughter were beginning to make themselves heard among the
darkling paths and across the broad green lanes of the park.

From the gates of the park one passed, as has been said already, almost
directly into the town. The town itself was divided in twain by a river,
the river spanned by a bridge which had a certain fame from the fact of
its having been the scene of a brave stand and a terrible slaughter
during the civil wars after Charles I. had set up his standard at
Nottingham. To be sure there was not much left of the genuine old bridge
on which the fight was fought, nor did the broad, flat, handsome, and
altogether modern structure bear much resemblance to the sort of bridge
which might have crossed a river in the days of the Cavaliers. Residents
of Keeton always, however, boasted of the fact that one of the arches of
the bridge was just the same underneath as it had always been, and
insisted on bringing the stranger down by devious and grassy paths to
the river's edge in order that he might see for himself the old stones
still holding together which had perhaps been shaken by the tramp of
Rupert's troopers. On the park side of the bridge lay the genteeler and
more pretentious houses, the semi-detached villas and lodges and
crescents of Keeton; and there too were the humbler cottages. On the
other side of the bridge were the business streets and the clustering
shops, most of them old-fashioned and dark, with low, beetling fronts
and narrow panes in the windows, and only here and there a showy and
modern establishment, with its stucco front and its plate glass. The
streets were all so narrow that they seemed as if they must be only
passages leading to broader thoroughfares. The stranger walked on and
on, thinking he was coming to the actual town of Dukes-Keeton, until he
walked out at the other side and found he had left it behind him.

Minola Grey crossed the bridge, although her own home lay on the side
nearest the park, and made her way through the narrow streets. She
glanced with a shudder at one formal official looking house of dark
brick which she had to pass, and the door of which bore a huge brass
plate with the words "Sheppard & Sheppard, Solicitors and Land Agents."
Another expression of dislike or pain crossed her handsome, pale, and
emotional face when she passed a little lane, closed at the further end
by the heavy, sombre front of a chapel, for it was there that she had
even still to pass some trying, unsympathetic hours of the Sunday
listening to a preacher whose eloquence was rather too familiar to her
all the week. At length she passed the front of a large building of
light-colored stone, with a Greek portico and row of pillars and high
flight of steps, and which to the eye of any intelligent mortal had
"Court House" written on its very face. Miss Grey went on and passed its
front entrance, then turning down a narrow street, of which the building
itself formed one side, she came to a little open door, went in, ran
lightly up a flight of stone steps, and found herself in dun and dimly
lighted corridors of stone.

A ray or two of the evening light still flickered through the small
windows of the roof. But for this all would seemingly have been dark.
Minola's footfall echoed through the passages. The place appeared
ghostly and sad, and the presence of youth, grace, and energetic
womanhood was strangely out of keeping with all around. The whole
expression and manner of Miss Grey brightened, however, as she passed
along these gaunt and echoing corridors. In the sunlight of the park
there seemed something melancholy in the face of the girl which was not
in accord with her years, her figure, and her deep, soft eyes. Now, in
this dismal old passage of damp resounding stone, she seemed so joyous
that her passing along might have been that of another Pippa. The place
was not very unlike a prison, and an observer might have been pleased to
think that, as the light step of the girl passed the door of each cell,
and the flutter of her garments was faintly heard, some little gleam of
hope, some gentle memory, some breath of forgotten woods and fields,
some softening inspiration of human love, was borne in to every
imprisoned heart. But this was no prison; only the courthouse where
prisoners were tried; and its rooms, occupied in the day by judges,
lawyers, policemen, public, suitors, and culprits, were now locked,
empty, and silent.

Minola went on, singing to herself as she went, her song growing louder
and bolder until at last it thrilled finely up to the stone roofs of the
grim halls and corridors. For Minola was of that temperament to which
resolve of any kind soon brings the excitement of high spirits, and she
sang now out of sheer courage and purpose.

Presently she stopped at a low, dark, oaken door which looked as if it
might admit to some dingy lumber-room or closet; and this door opened
instantly and she was in presence of a pretty and cheerful little
picture. The side of the building where the room was set looked upon the
broadest and clearest space in the town, and through the open window
could be seen distinctly the glassy gray of the quiet river and even
the trees of the park, a dark mass beneath the pale summer sky. Although
the room was lit only by the twilight, in which the latest lingering
reflection of the sunset still lived, it looked bright to the girl who
had come from the heavy dusk and gloom of the corridors with their
roof-windows and their rows of grim doors. A room ought to look bright,
too, when the visitor on just appearing on its threshold is rushed upon
and clasped and kissed and greeted as "You dear, dear darling." Such a
welcome met Miss Grey, and then she was instantly drawn into the room,
the door of which was closed behind her.

The occupant of the room who thus welcomed Minola was a woman not far
short probably of forty years of age. She was short, she was decidedly
growing fat, she had a face which ought from its outlines and its color
to be rather humorous and mirthful than otherwise, and a pair of very
fine, deep, and consequently somewhat melancholy eyes. These eyes were
the only beauty of Miss Mary Blanchet's face. She had not good sight,
for all their brightness. When any one talked with her at some little
distance across a room, or even across a broad table, he could easily
see by the irresponsive look of the eyes--the eyes which never quite
found a common focus with his even during the most animated interchange
of thought--that Miss Blanchet had short sight. But Miss Blanchet always
frankly and firmly declined to put on spectacles. "I have only my eyes
to boast of, my dear," she said to all her female advisers, "and I am
not going to cover them with ugly spectacles, you may be sure." Hers was
a life of the simplest vanity, the most innocent affectation. Her eyes
had driven her into poetry, love, and disappointment. She was understood
to have loved very deeply and to have been deserted. None of her friends
could quite remember the lover, but every one said that no doubt there
must have been such a person. Miss Blanchet never actually spoke of
him, but she somehow suggested his memory.

Miss Blanchet was a poetess. She had published by subscription a volume
of verses, which was favorably noticed in the local newspapers and of
which she sent a copy to the Queen, whereof Her Majesty had been kindly
pleased to accept. Thus the poetess became a celebrity and a sort of
public character in Dukes-Keeton, and when her father died it was felt
that the town ought to do something for one who had done so much for it.
It made her custodian of the courthouse, entrusted with the charge of
seeing that it was kept clean, ventilated, water-besprinkled; that when
assizes came on, the judges' rooms were fittingly adorned and that
bouquets of flowers were placed every morning on the bench on which they
sat. This place Miss Blanchet had held for many years. The rising
generation had forgotten all about her poetry, and indeed, as she seldom
went out of her own little domain, had for the most part forgotten her
existence.

When Minola Grey was a little girl her mother was one of Miss Mary
Blanchet's chiefest patronesses. It was in great measure by the
influence of Minola's father that Miss Blanchet obtained her place in
the courthouse. Little Minola thought her a great poetess and a
remarkably beautiful woman, and accepted somehow the impression that she
had a romantic and mysterious love history. It was a rare delight for
her to be taken to spend an evening with Miss Blanchet, to drink tea in
her pretty and well kept little room, to walk with her through the stone
passages of the courthouse, and hear her repeat her poems. As Minola
grew she outgrew the poems, but the affection survived; and after her
mother's death she found no congenial or sympathetic friend anywhere in
Keeton but Mary Blanchet. The relationship between the two curiously
changed. The tall girl of twenty became the leader, the heroine, the
queen; and Mary Blanchet, sensible little woman enough in many ways,
would have turned African explorer or joined in a rebellion of women
against men if Miss Grey had given her the word of command.

"I know your mind is made up, dear, now that you have come," Miss
Blanchet said when the first rapture of greeting was over.

Minola took off her hat and threw it on the little sofa with the air of
one who feels thoroughly at home. It may be remarked as characteristic
of this young woman that in going toward the sofa she had to pass the
chimney-piece with its mirror, and that she did not even cast a glance
at her own image in the glass.

"Mary," she asked gravely, "am I a man and a brother, that you expect me
to change my mind? You are not repenting, I hope?"

"Oh, no, my dear. I have all the advantages, you know. I am so tired of
this place and the work--dear me!"

"And I hate to see you at such work. You might almost as well be a
servant. Years ago I made up my mind to take you out of this wretched
place as soon as I should be of age and my own mistress."

"Well, I have sent in my resignation, and I am free. But I am a little
afraid about you. You have been used to every luxury--and the
carriage--and all that."

"One of my ambitions is to drive in a hansom cab. Another is to have a
latch-key. Both will soon be gratified. I am only sorry for one thing."

"What is that, dear?"

"That we can't be Rosalind and Celia; that I can't put on man's clothes
and liberty."

"But you don't like men--you always want to avoid them."

Miss Grey said nothing in defence of her own consistency. She was
thinking that if she had been a man, she would have been spared the
vexation of having to listen to Mr. Augustus Sheppard's proposals.

"I suspect," Miss Blanchet said, "that people will say we are more like
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza."

"Which of us is the Sancho?"

"Oh, I of course; I am the faithful follower."

"You--poor little poetess, full of dreams, and hopes, and unselfishness!
Why, I shall have to see that you get something to eat at tolerably
regular intervals."

"How happy we shall be! And I shall be able to complete my poem! Do you
know, Minola," she said confidentially, "I do believe I shall be able to
make a career in London. I do indeed! The miserable details of daily
life here pressed me down, down," and she pressed her own hand upon her
forehead to illustrate the idea. "There, in freedom and quiet, I do
think I shall be able to prove to the world that I am worth a hearing!"

This was a tender subject with Miss Grey. She could not bear to disturb
by a word the harmless illusion of her friend, and yet the almost fierce
truthfulness of her nature would not allow her to murmur a sentence of
unmeaning flattery.

"One word, Mary," she said; "if you grow famous, no marrying--mind!"

Little Miss Blanchet laughed and then grew sad, and cast her eyes down.

"Who would ask me to marry, my dearest? And even if they did, the buried
past would come out of the grave--and----"

She slightly raised both hands in deprecation of this mournful
resurrection.

"Well, I have all to go through with my people yet."

"They won't prevent you?" Miss Blanchet asked anxiously.

"They can't. In a few months I should be my own mistress; and what is
the use of waiting? Besides, they don't really care--except for the sake
of showing authority and proving to girls that they ought to be
contented slaves. They know now that I am no slave. I do believe my
esteemed step-father--or step-stepfather, if there is such a word--would
consent to emancipate me if he could do so with the proper
ceremonial--the slap on the cheek."

The allusion was lost on Miss Blanchet.

"Mr. Saulsbury is a stern man indeed," she said, "but very good; that we
must admit."

"All good men, it seems, are hard, and all soft men are bad."

"What of Mr. Augustus Sheppard?" Miss Blanchet asked softly. "How will
he take your going away?"

"I have not asked him, Mary. But I can tell you if you care to know. He
will take it with perfect composure. He has about as much capacity for
foolish affection as your hearth-broom there."

"I think you are mistaken, Minola--I do indeed. I think that man is
really----"

"Well. Is really what?"

"You won't be angry if I say it?"

Minola seemed as if she were going to be angry, but she looked into the
little poetess's kindly, wistful eyes, and broke into a laugh.

"I couldn't be angry with you, Mary, if I had ten times my capacity for
anger--and that would be a goodly quantity! Well, what is Mr. Sheppard
really, as you were going to say?"

"Really in love with you, dear."

"You kind and believing little poetess--full of faith in simple true
love and all the rest of it! Mr. Sheppard likes what he considers a
respectable connection in Keeton. Failing in one chance he will find
another, and there is an end of that."

"I don't think so," Miss Blanchet said gravely. "Well, we shall see."

"We shall not see him any more. We shall live a glorious, lonely,
independent life. I shall study humanity from some lofty garret window
among the stars. London shall be my bark and my bride, as the old songs
about the Rovers used to say. All the weaknesses of humanity shall
reveal themselves to me in the people next door to us and over the way.
I'll study in the British Museum! I'll spend hours in the National
Gallery! I'll lie under the trees in Epping Forest! I _think_ I'll go to
the gallery of a theatre! _Liberté, liberté, cherie!_" And Miss Grey
proceeded to chant from the "Marseillaise" with splendid energy as she
walked up and down the room with clasped hands of mock heroic passion.

"You said something about a man and a brother just now, dear," Miss
Blanchet gently interposed. "I have something to tell you about a man
and a brother. _My_ brother is back again in London."

Miss Blanchet made this communication in the tone of one who is trying
to seem as if it would be welcome.

"Your brother? He has come back?" Miss Grey did not like to add, "I am
so sorry," but that was exactly what she would have said if she had
spoken her mind.

"Yes, my dear--quite reformed and as steady as can be, and going to make
a great name in London. Oh, you may trust him to this time--you may
indeed."

Miss Grey's handsome and only too expressive features showed signs of
profound dissatisfaction.

"I couldn't help telling him that we were going to live in London--one's
brother, you know."

"Yes, one's brother," Miss Grey said with sarcastic emphasis. "They are
an affectionate race, these brothers! Then he knows all about our
expedition? Has he been here, Mary?"

"Oh, no, dear; but he wrote to me--such beautiful letters! Perhaps you
would like to read them?"

Miss Grey was silent, and was evidently fighting some battle with
herself. At last she said:

"Well, Mary dear, it can't be helped, and I dare say he won't trouble to
come very often to see _us_. But I hope he will come as often as you
like, for you might be terribly lonely. I don't care to know anybody. I
mean to study human nature, not to know people."

"But you have some friends in London, and you are going to see them."

"Oh--Lucy Money; yes. She was at school with us, and we used to be fond
of each other. I think of calling to see her, but she may be changed
ever so much, and perhaps we shan't get on together at all. Her father
has become a sort of great man in London, I believe--I don't know how.
They won't trouble us much, I dare say."

The friends then sat and talked for a short time about their project. It
is curious to observe that though they were such devoted friends they
looked on their joint purpose with very different eyes. The young woman,
with her beauty, her spirit, and her talents, was absolutely sincere and
single-minded, and was going to London with the sole purpose of living a
free, secluded life, without ambition, without thought of any manner of
success. The poor little old maid had her head already filled with wild
dreams of fame to be found in London, of a distinguished brother, a
bright career, publishers seeking for everything she wrote, and her name
often in the papers. Devoted as she was to Miss Grey, or perhaps because
she was so devoted to her, she had already been forming vague but
delightful hopes about the reformed brother which she would not now for
all the world have ventured to hint to her friend.

CHAPTER III.

THE MAN WITH A GRIEVANCE.

Late that same night a young man stepped from a window in one of the
rooms on the third floor in the Hôtel du Louvre in Paris, and stood in
the balcony. It was a balcony in that side of the hotel which looks on
the Rue de Rivoli. The young man smoked a cigar and leaned over the
balcony.

It was a soft moonlight night. The hour was late and the streets were
nearly silent. The latest omnibus had gone its way, and only now and
then a rare and lingering _voiture_ clicked and clattered along, to
disappear round the corner of the place in front of the Palais Royal.
The long line of gas lamps, looking a faint yellow beneath the hotel and
the Louvre Palace across the way, seemed to deepen and deepen into
redder sparks the further the eye followed them to the right as they
stretched on to the Place de la Concorde and the Champs Elysées. To the
left the young man, leaning from the balcony, could see the tower of St.
Jacques standing darkly out against the faint, pale blue of the
moonlighted sky. The street was a line of silver or snow in the
moonlight.

The young man was tall, thin, dark, and handsome. He was unmistakably
English, although he had an excitable and nervous way about him which
did not savor of British coolness and composure. He seemed a person not
to take anything easily. Even the moonlight, and the solitude, and the
indescribably soothing and philosophic influence of the contemplation of
a silent city from the serene heights of a balcony, did not prevail to
take him out of himself into the upper ether of mental repose. He pulled
his long moustaches now and then, until they met like a kind of strap
beneath his chin, and again he twisted their ends up as if he desired to
appear fierce as a champion duellist of the Bonapartist group. He
sometimes took his cigar from his lips and held it between his fingers
until it went out, and when he put it into his mouth again he took
several long puffs before he quite realized the fact that he was puffing
at what one might term dry stubble. Then he pulled out a box of fusees
and lighted his cigar in an irritated way, as if he were protesting that
really the fates were bearing down upon him rather too heavily, and that
he was entitled to complain at last.

"Good evening, sir," said a strong, full British voice that sounded just
at his elbow.

The young man, looking round, saw that his next-door neighbor in the
hotel had likewise opened his window and stepped out on his balcony. The
two had met before, or at least seen each other before, once or twice.
The young man had seen the elder with some ladies at breakfast in the
hotel, and that evening he and his neighbor had taken coffee side by
side on the boulevards and smoked and exchanged a few words.

The elder man's strong, rather under-sized figure showed very clearly in
the moonlight. He had thick, almost shaggy hair, of an indefinable dark
brownish color--hair that was not curly, that was not straight, that did
not stand up, and yet could evidently never be kept down. He had a rough
complexioned face, with heavy eyebrows and stubby British whiskers. His
hands were large and reddish-brown and coarse. He was dressed
carelessly--that is, his clothes were evidently garments that had cost
money, but he did not seem to care how he wore them. Any garment must
fall readily into shapelessness and give up trying to fit well on that
unheeding figure. The Briton did not seem exactly what one would at once
assume to be a gentleman. Yet he was not vulgar, and he was evidently
quite at his ease with himself. He looked somehow like a man who had
money or power of some kind, and who did not care whether people knew it
or did not know it. Our younger Briton had at the first glance taken him
for the ordinary English father of a family, travelling with his
womankind. But he had not seen him for two minutes at the breakfast
table before he observed that the supposed heavy father was never in a
fuss, had a way of having all his orders obeyed without trouble or
misunderstanding, and for all his strong British accent talked French
with entire ease and a sort of resolute grammatical accuracy.

"Staying in Paris?" the elder man said--he too was smoking--when the
younger had replied to his salutation.

"No; I am going home--I mean I am going to England--to-morrow."

"Ay, ay? I almost wish I were too. I'm taking my wife and daughters for
a holiday. I don't much care for holidays myself. I hadn't time for
enjoyment of such things when I could enjoy them, and of course when you
get out of the way of enjoying yourself you never get into it again;
it's a sort of groove, I suppose. Anyhow, we don't ever enjoy much, our
people. You are English, I suppose?"

"Yes, I am English."

"Wish you weren't? I see."

Indeed, the tone in which the young man answered the question seemed to
warrant this interpretation.

"Excuse me; I didn't say that," the young man said, a little sharply.

"No, no; I only thought you meant it. We are not bound, you know, to
keep rattling up the Rule Britannia always among ourselves."

"I can assure you I am not at all inclined to rattle the Rule Britannia
too loudly," the young man said, tossing the end of his cigar away and
looking determinedly into the street with his hands dug deeply into his
pockets.

The elder man smoked for a few seconds in silence, and looked up and
down the long straight line of street.

"Odd," he said abruptly. "I always think of Balzac when I look into the
streets of Paris, and when I give myself time to think. Balzac sums up
Paris to me."

"Yes," said the younger man, talking for the first time with an
appearance of genuine interest in the conversation; "but things must be
greatly changed since that time even in Paris, you know."

"Changed? Not a bit of it. The outsides of course. The Louvre was half a
ruin the other day, and now it's getting all right again. That's change,
if you like to call it so. But the heart of things is just the same.
Balzac stands for Paris, believe you me."

"I don't believe a word of it--not a word! I mean--excuse me--that I
don't agree with you."

"Yes, yes: I understand what you mean. I'm not offended. Well?"

"Well--I don't believe a bit that men and women ever were like that. You
mean to tell me that people were made without hearts in Paris or
anywhere else? Do you believe in a place peopled by cads and sneaks and
curs--and the women half again as bad as the men?"

The young man grew warm, and the elder drew him out, and they discussed
Balzac as they stood in the balcony and looked down on silent
moonlighted Paris. The elder man smoked and smiled and shrugged his
shoulders good-humoredly. The younger was as full of gesture and
animation as if his life depended on the controversy.

"All right," the elder said at last. "I like to hear you talk, but Paris
is Balzac to me still. Going to be in London some time?"

"I suppose so: yes," in a tone of sudden depression and discontent.

"I wish we might meet. I live in London, and I wish you would come and
see me when we get back from our--holiday we'll call it."

The young man turned half away and leaned on the balcony as if he were
looking very earnestly for something in the direction of the Champs
Elysées. Then he faced his companion suddenly and said,

"I think you had much better not have anything to do with me: I should
only prove a bore to you, or to anybody."

"How is that?"

"Well--in short, I'm a man with a grievance."

"Ay, ay? What's your grievance? Whom has it to do with?"

The young man looked up quickly, as if he did not quite understand the
brusque ways of his new acquaintance, who put his questions so directly.
But the new acquaintance seemed good-humored and quite at his ease, and
evidently had not the least idea of being rude or over-inquisitive. He
had only the way of one apparently used to ordering people about.

"My grievance is against the Government," the young man said with a
grave politeness, almost like self-assertion.

"Government here: in France?"

"No, no: our own Government."

"Ay, ay? What have they been doing? _You_ haven't invented anything--new
cannon--flying machine--that sort of thing?"

"No: nothing of the kind--I wish I had--but how did you know?"

"How did I know what?"

"That I hadn't invented anything?"

"Why, I knew it by looking at you. Do you think I shouldn't know an
inventor? You might as well ask me how I know a man has been in the
army. Well, about this grievance of yours?"

"I dare say you will know my name," the young man said with a sort of
reluctant modesty, which contrasted a little oddly with the quick
movements and rapid talk which usually belonged to him. Then his manner
suddenly changed, and he spoke in a tone of something like irritation,
as if he had better have the whole thing out at once and be done with
it--"My name is Heron--Victor Heron."

"Heron--Heron?" said the other, turning over the name in his memory.
"Well, I don't know I'm sure--I may have heard it--one hears all sorts
of names. But I don't remember just at the moment."

Mr. Heron seemed a little surprised that his revelation had produced no
effect. He had made up his mind somehow that his new friend was mixed up
with politics and public affairs.

"You'll remember Victor Heron of the St. Xavier's Settlements?" he said
decisively.

"Heron of the St. Xavier's Settlements? Ah, yes, yes. To be sure. Yes, I
begin to remember now. Of course, of course. You're the fellow who got
us into the row with the Portuguese or the Dutch, or who was it? About
the slave trade, or something? I remember it in the House."

"I am the fool," Mr. Heron went on volubly--"the blockhead, the idiot,
that thought England had principles, and honor, and a policy, and all
the rest of it! I haven't lived in England very much. I'm the son of a
colonist--the Herons are an old colonial family--and you can't think,
you people always in England, how romantic and enthusiastic we get about
England, we silly colonists, with our old-fashioned ways. When I got
that confounded appointment--it was given in return for some old
services of my father's--I believe I thought I was going to be another
sort of Raleigh, or something of the kind."

"Just so; and of course you were ready to tumble into any sort of
scrape. You are hauled over the coals--snubbed for your pains?"

"Yes--I was snubbed."

"Of course: they'll soon work the enthusiasm out of you. But that's a
couple of years ago--and you weren't recalled?"

"No. I wasn't recalled."

"Well, what's your grievance then?"

"Why--don't you see?--my time is out--and they've dropped me down. My
whole career is closed--I'm quietly thrown over--and I'm only
twenty-nine!" The young man caught at his moustache with nervous hands
and kicked with one foot against the rails of the balcony. He gazed into
the street, and his eyes sparkled and twinkled as if there were tears in
them. Perhaps there were, for Mr. Heron was evidently a young man of
quicker emotions than young men generally show in our days. He made
haste to say something, apparently as if to escape from himself.

"I am leaving Paris in the morning."

"Then why don't you go to bed and have a sleep?"

"Well, I don't feel like sleeping just yet."

"You young fellows never know the blessing of sleep. I can sleep
whenever I want to--it's a great thing. I make it a rule though to do
all my sleeping at night, whenever I can. You leave Paris in the
morning? Now that's a thing I don't like to do. Paris should never be
seen early in the morning. London shows to the best advantage early; but
Paris--no!"

"Why not?" Mr. Heron asked, stimulated to a little curiosity.

"Paris is a beauty, you know, a little on the wane, and wanting to be
elaborately made up and curled and powdered and painted, and all that.
She's a little of a slattern underneath the surface, you know, and
doesn't bear to be taken unawares--mustn't be seen for at least an hour
or two after she has got out of bed. All the more like Balzac's women."

Perhaps the elder man had observed Mr. Heron's sensitiveness more
closely and clearly than Heron fancied, and was talking on only to give
him time to recover his composure. Certainly he talked much more volubly
and continuously than appeared at first to be his way. After a while he
said, in his usual style of blunt but not unkind inquiry--

"Any of your people living in London?"

"No--in fact, I haven't any people in England--few relations now left
anywhere."

"Like Melchisedek, eh? Well, I don't know that he was the most to be
pitied of men. You have friends enough, I suppose?"

"Not friends exactly--acquaintances enough, I dare say--people to call
on, people who remember one's name and who ask one to dinner. But I
don't know that I shall have much time for cultivating acquaintanceships
in the way of society."

"Why so? What are you going to London to do?"

"To get a hearing, of course. To make the whole thing known. To show
that I was in the right, and that I only did what the honor of England
demanded. I trust to England."

"What's England got to do with it? England is only so many men and women
and children all concerned in their own affairs, and not caring twopence
about you and me and our wrongs. Besides, who has accused you? Who has
found fault with you? Your time is out, and there's an end."

"But they have dropped me down--they think to crush me."

"If they do, it will be by severely letting you alone; and what can you
do against that? You can't quarrel with a man merely because he ceases
to invite you to dinner, and that's about the way of it."

"I'll fight this out for all that."

"You'll soon get tired of it. It's beating the air, you know. Of course,
if you want to annoy the Government, you could easily get some of us to
take up your case--no difficulty about that--and make you the hero of a
grievance and a debate, and so on."

"I want nothing of the kind! I don't want any one to trouble himself
about me, and I don't care to be taken in hand by any one. If Englishmen
will not listen to a plain statement of right, why then----But I know
they will."

The conviction itself was expressed in the tone of one who by its very
assertion protests against a rising doubt and tries to stifle it.

"Very good," said the other. "Try it on. We shall soon see. I have a
sort of interest in the matter, for I had a grievance myself, and I have
still, only I went about things in a different way--looking for redress,
I mean."

"What did you do?"

"It's a longish story, and quite a different line from yours, and it
would bore you to hear, even if you understood it. I got into the House
and made myself a nuisance. I put money in my purse; it came in somehow.
I watch the department that I once belonged to with the eye of a lynx.
Well, I shall look out for you and give you a hand if I can, always
supposing it would annoy the Government--any Government--I don't care
what."

Mr. Heron looked at him with wonder and incredulity.

"Terrible lack of principle, you think? Not a bit of it; I'm a strong
politician; I stick to my side through thick and thin. But in their
management of departments, you know--contracts, and all
that--governments are all the same; the natural enemies of man. Well, I
hope to see you. I am going to have a sleep. Let me give you my
address--though in any case I think we are certain to meet."

They parted with blunt expression of friendly inclination on the one
side and a doubtful, half-reluctant acknowledgment on the other. Heron
remained standing in his balcony looking at the changes of the moonlight
on the silent streets and thinking of his career and his grievance.

The nearer he came to England the colder his hopes seemed to grow. Now
upon the threshold of the country he had so longed to reach, he was
inclined to linger and loiter and to put off his entrance. Everything
that was so easy and clear a few thousand miles off began to show itself
perplexed and difficult. "When shall I be there?" he used to ask himself
on his homeward journey. "What have I come for?" he began to ask himself
now.

Times had indeed changed very suddenly with Victor Heron. He had come
into the active world perhaps rather prematurely. When very young, under
the guidance of an energetic and able father who had been an
administrator of some distinction in England's service among her
dependencies, he had made himself somewhat conspicuous in one of the
colonies; and when an opportunity occurred, after his father's death, of
offering him a considerable position, the Government appointed him to
the administration of a new settlement. It is hardly necessary for us to
go any deeper into the story of his grievance than he has already gone
himself in a few words. Except as an illustration of his character, we
have not much to do with the story of his career as an administrator. It
was a very small business altogether; a quarrel in a far off, lately
appropriated, and almost wholly insignificant scrap of England's
domains. Probably Mr. Heron was in the wrong, for he had been stimulated
wholly by a chivalrous enthusiasm for the honor of England's principles
and a keen sense of what he considered justice. The Government had
dealt very kindly with him in consideration of his youth and of his
father's services, and had merely dropped him down.

This to a young man like Heron was simply killing with kindness. He
could have stood up stoutly against impeachment, trial, punishment, any
manner of exciting ordeal, and commanded his brave heart to bear it. But
to be quietly allowed to go his way was intolerable, and, being accused
of nothing, he was rushing back to England to insist on being accused of
something. A chief of any kind in a small dependency is a person of
overwhelming greatness and importance in his own sphere. Every eye there
is literally on him. He diffuses even a sort of impression as if he were
a good deal too large for his sphere, like the helmet of such portentous
size in the courtyard of Otranto. To come down all at once to be an
ordinary passenger to England, an ordinary "No. 257, au 3me" at the
Hôtel du Louvre in Paris, an obscure personage getting out at the
Charing Cross station and calling a hansom, nobody caring whence he has
come, or capable, even after elaborate reminder, of calling to memory
his story, his grievance, or his identity--this is something to try the
soul of a patient man. Mr. Heron was not patient.

He was a young Quixote out of time and place. He never could let
anything alone. He could not see a grievance without trying to set it
right. The impression that anybody was being wronged or cheated affected
and tormented him as keenly as a discordant note or an inharmonious
arrangement of colors might disturb persons of loftier artistic soul. In
the colonies queer old ideas survive long after they have died out of
England, and the traveller from the parent country comes often on some
ancient abstraction there as he might upon some old-fashioned garment.
Heron started into life with a full faith in the living reality of
divers abstractions which people in England have long since dissected,
analyzed, and thrown away. He believed in and spoke of progress, and
humanity, and brotherhood, and such like vaguenesses as if they were
real things to work for and love. People who regard abstractions as
realities are just the very persons who turn solid and commonplace
realities into shining and splendid abstractions. Young Heron regarded
England not as an island with a bad climate, where some millions of
florid men made money or worked for it, but as a sort of divine
influence inspiring youth to noble deeds and patriotic devotion. He was
of course the very man to get into a muddle when he had anything to do
with the administration of a new settlement. If the muddle had not lain
in his way, he would assuredly have found it.

He had so much to do now on his further way home in helping elderly
ladies on that side who could not speak French, and on this side who
could not speak English; in seeing that persons whom he had never set
eyes on before were not neglected at buffets, left behind by trains, or
overcharged by waiters; in giving and asking information about
everything, that he had not much time to think about the St. Xavier's
settlements and his personal grievance. When the suburbs of London came
in sight, with their trim rows of stucco-fronted villas and cottages,
and their front gardens ornamented with the inevitable evergreens, a
thrill of enthusiasm came up in Heron's breast, and he became feverish
with anxiety to be in the heart of the great capital once again. Now he
began to see familiar spires, and domes, and towers, and then again
huge, unfamiliar roofs and buildings that were not there when he was in
London last, and that puzzled him with their presence. Then the train
crossed the river, and he had glimpses of the Thames, and Westminster
Palace, and the embankment with its bright garden patches and its little
trees, and he wondered at the ungenial creatures who see in London
nothing but ugliness. To him everything looked smiling, beautiful, alive
with hope and good omen.

Certainly a railway station, an arrival, a hurried transaction, however
slight and formal, with a customs officer, are a damper on enthusiasm of
any kind. Heron began to feel dispirited. London looked hard and
prosaic. His grievance began to show signs of breaking out again amid
the hustling, the crowd, the luggage, and the exertion, as an old wound
might under similar circumstances, if one in his haste and eagerness
were to strain its hardly closed edges.

It was when he was in a hansom driving to his hotel that Heron, putting
his hand in his waistcoat pocket, drew out a crumpled card which he had
thrust in there hastily and forgotten. The card bore the name of

    "MR. CROWDER E. MONEY,
    Victoria street,
    Westminster."

Heron remembered his friend of Paris. "An odd name," he thought. "I have
heard it before somewhere. I like him. He seems a manly sort of fellow."

Then he found himself wondering what Mr. Money's daughters were like,
and wishing he had observed them more closely in Paris, and asking
whether it was possible that girls could be pretty and interesting with
such an odd name.

DRIFT-WOOD.

THE SPINNING OF LITERATURE.

"Of making many books there is no end," sighed a preacher in times when
industrious readers might presumably have kept the run of current
literature. Our advantage over Solomon is the utter hopelessness of
reading the new works, not to speak of standard acres in the libraries.
In this holiday season, chief hatching-time of books, it is pleasant to
see them flocking out in numbers so vast. "Germany published 11,315
works of all classes in 1873, 12,070 in 1874, 12,516 in 1875." We rub
our hands over statistics like these, because they check any mad
ambition to master German contemporary literature; and besides, there
are "1,622 newspapers and periodical publications in the German empire."
As for the new works in our own tongue, the only way of getting through
them would obviously be to do as legislators do with the laws they
pass--"read them by title."

Earlier ages, that had not reached this happy hopelessness, produced
great bookworms. When the old monks had devoured their convent
libraries, they were fain to pay vast sums occasionally for extra
reading, as St. Jerome did for the works of Origen; whereas now a
reviewer can only glance at his "complimentary copies" of new books, so
numerous are they. Bacon argued against abridgements, as if the body of
literature could be compassed in his day. A century or two ago there
were prodigious Porsons and Johnsons; but such gluttons are now rare. It
is true that Mill, between his fourth and eighth years, read in the
original all Herodotus and a good part of Xenophon, Lucian, Isocrates,
Diogenes Laertius, Plato, and the Annual Register, besides Hume, Gibbon,
Robertson, Miller, Mosheim, and other historians; while before the age
of thirteen he had mastered the whole of Homer, Virgil, Horace, Sallust,
Thucydides, Aristotle's Rhetoric and Logic, Tacitus, Juvenal,
Quinctilian, parts of Ovid, Terence, Nepos, Cæsar, Livy, Lucretius,
Cicero, Polybius, and many other authors, besides learning geometry,
algebra, and the differential calculus. But that lad was crammed
scientifically like a Strasbourg goose; our ordinary modern writers are
not walking cyclopædias, and are rarely prodigious readers. It is no
longer a reproach even for a man not to know all the literature of his
specialty; while, as for general reading, when the "Publisher's
Circular" tells us that the different books that mankind have made are
numbered by millions, we sit down in a most comfortable despair, and
pick to our liking.

Thanks to modern fecundity, critics rarely molest authors with demands
for the _raison d'être_ of a new book. The reviewer's question used to
be, "Why did the man publish? What need was there? What is he trying to
show?" One pontiff is said to have suggested burning up all the
different books in the world, except six thousand, so that the rest
might be read. There used to be pleas for condensations, as if people
were still fondly hoping to compass the realm of literature and science,
the blessed era of hopelessness having not yet dawned. But it is idle to
plead against diffuseness now, when writers are paid by the page or
line. "I want," said the editor of "La Situation" to Dumas, "a story
from you, entitled 'Terreur Prussienne à Francfort'--60 _feuilletons_ of
400 lines each; total, 84,000 lines." "And if it makes only 58?"
responded Dumas. "I require 60, of 400 lines each, averaging 31 letters
each line--744,000 letters." At noon of the day agreed upon, the
manuscript was in the hands of M. Hollander. If Sir Critic ever came
with foot-rule and condensing-pump to gravely detect diffusiveness in
the "Terreur Prussienne," it must have diverted the high contracting
parties.

It is said that a dialogue of Dumas the elder created a revolution in
the French mode of paying romance literature. Dumas, who was reckoned by
the line, one day introduced, they say, into his _feuilleton_ this
thrilling passage:

    My son!
    My mother!
    Listen!
    Speak!
    Seest thou?
    What?
    This poniard!
    It is stained--
    With blood!
    Whose?
    Thy father's.
    Ah!!!

After that Dumas was paid by the letter. To say sooth, the same
incident, with a different catastrophe, is related of Ponson Du Terrail,
who, one day, in his "Resurrection de Rocambole," filled about a column
with dialogue of this character:

    Who?
    I.
    You?
    Yes.
    He shuddered.

Accordingly, as the story goes, the author being summoned before the
editor of the "Petit Journal," was notified that if this monosyllabic
chat went on, he would be paid by the word. "Very well," replied the
obliging novelist, "I will change my style;" and next day, M. Millaud
was astounded to find the _feuilleton_ introducing a pair of stammerers
talking in this agreeable fashion:

     "Wou-wou-would you de-de-de-deceive me, you wr-wr-wretch?" said
     the old corsair in a tone of thunder.

     "I ne-ne-ne-never de-de-de-deceived an-an-an-anybody,"
     exclaimed Baccarat, imitating the other's defect in
     pronunciation.

     "Wh-wh-wh-where is Ro-ro-rocam-bo-bole?"

     "You ne-ne-never will kn-know."

"He will make all his characters stutter soon," said Millaud. "We had
better pay him by the line." Of course this is a story _faite à
plaisir_, as is also the one that as soon as Dumas made his first
contract by the line, enchanted with the arrangement, he invented dear
old Grimaud, who only opened his mouth to utter "yes," "no," "what?"
"ah!" "bah!" and other monosyllables; but when the editor, who knew the
cash price of "peuh" and "oh," declared he would only pay for lines half
full, Grimaud was slaughtered the next morning. However, these yarns
show that the French can satirize their jerky, staccato style of
_feuilleton_, with each sentence staked off in a paragraph by itself,
like some grimacing clown, who expects each particular joke or
handspring to be observed individually, and to be greeted with separate
applause. Across the channel we of course find the English journals
going to the other extreme, in insular pride, and packing distinct
subjects into the same paragraph.

Greek and Roman Tuppers used, no doubt, to "reel off a couple of hundred
lines, standing on one foot;" but the veneering of a thin layer of ideas
upon a thick layer of words is naturally the special trait of our age of
cheap ink and paper, of steam printing, and of paying for writing by
long measure. The "Country Parson" is a favorite writer of this sort,
whose excellence is in "the art of putting things," rather than in
having many things to put. The essays of the "Spectator," "Guardian,"
"Tatler," "Rambler," rarely gave only a pennyworth of wit to an
intolerable deal of words; but our modern periodical essay achieves
success by taking some such assertion as "Old maids are agreeable," or
"Old maids are disagreeable," and wire-drawing it into sundry yards of
readable matter. Macbeth's

    The Devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac'd loon!
    Where got'st thou that goose-look?

would supply a modern playwright with a square foot of gold-beaten
invective. "True poems," said Irving, "are caskets which enclose in a
small compass the wealth of the language--its family jewels." But when
poems are paid by the line, bards are pardonable for diffuseness. And
then, besides diffuseness, our age has wonderful literary fecundity. Few
people know how much painters paint, and how much great writers write;
for the bards of a single poem, as Mr. Stedman shows, are exceptional,
and rich quantity as well as rich quality is the usual rule for
greatness, whether of novelist, poet, essayist, metaphysician, or
historian. So here we come upon another source of the accumulated floods
of literature. The other day I was looking through a prodigious list of
the works of Alexandre Dumas, _père_. There were 127 of them, mostly
novels--"Monte Christo," "Three Musketeers," "Bragelonne," and the rest
that we used to read. They made 244 volumes; but the plays were not
included, and many slighter miscellanies did not seem to be there; and
the posthumous work on cookery was certainly not there; and of course
there was no effort to collect everything from "Le Mois," "La Liberté,"
and the half dozen other journals he edited or wrote in; so that I doubt
not the writings of this illustrious man, if ever brought together in a
complete edition, would make at least 150 works of 300 or 400 stout
volumes. And in English literature we have many Salas and Southworths. I
remember an announcement in the "Lancet" that "Mr. G. A. Sala is
completely restored to health, and in the full discharge of his
professional duties." An expressive term, that "full discharge"!

Again, some popular authors employ apprentices to do the bulk of their
work, only touching it up with mannerisms, and so turn out much more
than if they wrought it all. The world, too, has now accumulated a
myriad handbooks of facts and compilations of statistics, which enable
writers with a fondness for theory, like Buckle, to have all their
material ready to spin into generalization. Then there is a popular
education toward prolixity in the telegraphic part of newspapers. The
associated press writers from Washington seem to be selected for their
inability to be terse and pithy, and dribble out the simplest fact with
pitiful iteration. The special news-writers, being often at their wits'
end for their dole of day's work, can hardly be asked to be laconic. The
special messages which the ocean wires bring, doubtless with exquisite
terseness and picturesqueness, are most carefully interwritten and
diluted; so that, for example, the words "Thiers spoke at Coulmiers"
become "M. Adolphe Thiers, president of the French Republic before the
accession of the present Chief Executive, Marshal MacMahon, delivered an
address, or rather made some remarks partly in the nature of an oration
or speech on subjects connected with matters of interest at the present
time, at the town of Coulmiers, which is situated"--and here follow a
dozen lines from the Cyclopædia, but dated at Paris, giving the
geography, history, and commerce of Coulmiers. One can fancy in the
"Atlantic cable" columns of the "Morning Meteor" the tokens of a
standing prescription to dilute foreign facts with nine parts domestic
verbiage; and this kind of "editing" educates mankind to padding and
patching with superfluous material.

It is harder for French writers to be prolix. The French writer is
inevitably epigrammatic first, and, if diffusive afterward, it is with
malice aforethought. If we compare, for example, publicists like Guizot
and Gladstone, while each has that perfect command of his material,
instead of letting the material command him, which marks the skilful
writer, yet the Englishman sometimes seems to require two or three
consecutive sentences to bring out his thought, whereas M. Guizot packs
it into one. But Guizot deliberately goes on to put the identical
statement into two or three paraphrased forms. For example, in the
"History of Civilization in Europe" there is usually a terse sentence or
two in each paragraph which contain the whole of it, packed into
briefest compass; were these key sentences repeated on the side of the
page as marginal notes, the reader could master the book by mastering
the margins. When an English writer is diffuse, he cannot help it; when
a French writer is diffuse, he effects it by sheer effort at repetition.

And we humble hack scribblers, who confidingly slip our daily, and
weekly, and monthly mites into the vast mass of current reading turned
out for an omnivorous public--let us hope that the world's maw may long
remain unsated and the market unglutted.

GROWTH OF AMERICAN TASTE FOR ART.

While to many it has seemed a pity that the Johnston gallery should be
broken up, yet this distribution of its treasures scatters the seeds of
art education. Besides, the prices obtained at the sale must impress
many wealthy men with a conviction valuable to the interests of art;
namely, that pictures, like diamonds, are a safe investment, as well as
a source of enjoyment and fame. Considering that the times are hard, and
that pictures are luxuries, the sum thus paid for art treasures, so soon
after the centennial purchases, is a proof of the number of good patrons
that can be counted on when works of value are for sale. But the works
must be of value. At a former auction in New York "old masters" brought
these prices: Madonna Del Correggio, $30; two Murrillos, $160 and $90; a
landscape of Salvator Rosa, $55; a Tintoretto, $115; a Guido, $35; "St.
John," by Sir Joshua Reynolds, $15--and so on. Every few months we find
a so-called Titian or Raphael going for the price of the frame. Such
auctions tell a story as emphatic as that of the Johnston gallery.

When the German painters were considering whether they should send
canvases to the Centennial Exposition the "Allgemeine Zeitung" reminded
them "that their works bring twice as much in America as in Germany."
But each successive sale here shows that most buyers now know what is
worth getting and what is not, though naturally some painters are the
rage who will be forgotten fifty years hence. Still, the cynics are
wrong in decrying the eagerness to buy painters who are in fashion. What
harm in a millionaire's ordering a picture _d'ameublement_, to suit a
particular room or panel, or in his ordering from the bookseller a
hundred volumes of current novels? If the picture be good, whether
bought by the foot for furnishing or whether painted under the
microscope, its sale may aid the profession of art.

Comparing the Johnston sale with some of the famous auctions of the past
four years at the hotel Drouot, we find that in the Paturle collection
twenty-eight canvases bought $90,000, being all works of masters. The
general prices were not higher than the Johnston prices, but Ary
Scheffer's Marguerites brought 40,000 and 35,000 francs; a Troyon,
63,000; and Leopold Robert's admirable "Fishers of the Adriatic," 83,000
francs. The gallery of the Pereires brought 1,785,586 francs, which was
rather higher than the Johnston total, but I believe there were more
masterpieces. A head by Greuze brought 32,500 francs. The highest prices
seemed to be carried off by the Dutch painters, who were in force, and
three works by Hobbema, a country residence, a forest scene, and a
windmill, brought respectively 50,000, 81,000, and 30,000 francs.

The prices for good pictures, taking into account agreeableness of
subject and state of preservation, seem to be much the same in New York
and Paris, though French newspapers fancy American taste for art to be
at barbarian pitch. They should learn otherwise from the American
painting and sculpture in Paris, London, Vienna, Florence, and Rome;
they might learn otherwise from the discriminating appreciation of their
own artists at such sales as Mr. Johnston's. The worst statuary as well
as by far the best at Philadelphia last year was Italian, and some of
the worst painting as well as the best was Spanish. There is some
monstrous governmental art, no doubt, with us, but as for popular taste,
there is nothing in America so vulgar as the cheap glass necklaces, tin
spangles, and painted trinkets on the sacred images in the churches of
Southern Europe. American travellers speak of the contrast between the
beautiful cathedral and its hideous painted images bedizened with trash
to which dollar-store jewels are gems of art; and the approaches to a
splendid church or castle are very likely bedecked with clumsy,
unvolatile angels, most terrestrial and unlovely. It is true that the
decoration of temples and the adoration of images, whether under heathen
or Christian auspices, has always fostered art; but American popular
taste, low as it is supposed to be, would hardly set up in churches
statues of painted wood only fit for tobacco shops. In Rome, where
American taste is looked down upon, they have annual shows of painted
wooden figures of saints and angels, in all hues, each uglier than the
other, to be sold for putting upon the altars as votive offerings. In
fact, wherever the "Latin race" is, the popular taste runs to blocks of
the Virgin and Child resembling the lay figures in a tailor's shop.

The leading thought on this subject is that art has made greater strides
in the United States within the past twenty years than for the century
preceding. Twenty years ago there was comparatively no art public at
all. There were not a quarter part as many foreign pictures here as
to-day; there were not a fourth part as many American artists. The
department of American water colors has been substantially created
within ten years. The facilities for art education have been quadrupled
within the same period, and the wealthy who form galleries have
multiplied in like proportion. American progress in science and
mechanism, though so great, falls short of American progress in taste
and American productivity in the fine arts.

                        PHILIP QUILIBET.

SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.

PROTECTION FROM LIGHTNING.

Prof. Clerk Maxwell says that the ordinary lightning rod is a great
mistake. It acts to discharge electricity from the clouds at all
possible opportunities, but these discharges are smaller than would
occur without the rod. The true method is to encase the building in a
network of rods, when it will take its charge quietly like a Leyden jar.
Taking the case of a powder mill, it would be sufficient to surround it
with a conducting material, to sheathe its roof, walls, and ground-floor
with thick sheet copper, and then no electrical effect could occur
within it on account of any thunderstorm outside. There would be no need
of any earth connection. We might even place a layer of asphalte between
the copper floor and the ground, so as to insulate the building. If the
mill were then struck with lightning, it would remain charged for some
time, and a person standing on the ground outside and touching the wall
might receive a shock, but no electrical effect would be perceived
inside, even on the most delicate electrometer.

This sheathing with sheet copper is not necessary. It is quite
sufficient to enclose the building with a network of a good conducting
substance. For instance, if a copper wire, say No. 4, B. W. G. (0.238
inches diameter), were carried round the foundation of the house, up
each of the corners and gables, and along the ridges, this would
probably be a sufficient protection for an ordinary building against any
thunderstorm in this climate. The copper wire may be built into the wall
to prevent theft, but should be connected to any outside metal, such as
lead or zinc on the roof, and to metal rain-water pipes. In the case of
a powder-mill it might be advisable to make the network closer by
carrying one or two additional wires over the roof and down the walls to
the wires at the foundations. If there are water or gas pipes which
enter the building from without, these must be connected with the system
of conducting wires; but if there are no such metallic connections with
distant points, it is not necessary to take any pains to facilitate the
escape of the electricity into the earth. But it is not advisable to put
up a tail pointed conductor.

STEAM MACHINERY AND PRIVATEERING.

Mr. Barnaby, a prominent English naval constructor, has written a
memorandum on the British mercantile marine as an adjunct to the navy in
time of war. He points out that privateering has been made obsolete, not
merely by popular feeling, but also by the progress of the arts. A
privateer, he thinks, must be prepared to meet regular ships of war of
about the same strength. This the introduction of steam machinery has
made impossible. War ships are built for security, merchant steamers for
economical work, and the different objects have necessitated different
arrangements. In a word, the machinery of war ships is carefully
disposed below the water line, that of marine vessels is usually above
the water line. The latter would therefore be much more subject to
injury from shot than the other. This state of things excludes from
service as privateers all but the swiftest vessels, and Mr. Barnaby
thinks that the use of the merchant marine "would be confined to ships
that could save themselves by their speed if they met a ship of war,
whether armored or not," and that only those which can steam eleven and
a half or twelve knots an hour can be considered serviceable for
privateering. This limits the number of vessels available for this
service to 400 or 500, and the common idea that England can, in case of
war, "cover the sea" with her ships is proved to be untrue. Even these
vessels could not be used as privateers except against certain nations.
The Government would be compelled to buy them, and this would cost, he
estimates, a hundred to a hundred and fifty million dollars. This
addition to the regular fleet he thinks would enable England to "close
up every hostile port, and the slow steamers and the helpless sailing
ships might cross the seas in such security (privateering not being
admissible) that merchandise would be as safe in the English ship as in
the neutral." The fault in all this reasoning is that a ship of inferior
speed is certain to meet with a swifter antagonist, and therefore become
a capture. Our experience with the Confederate cruisers was that the
efforts of a very large navy may be eluded and defied for years, without
regard to the sailing qualities on either side.

MAN AND ANIMALS.

The influence upon animals of their association with man formed the
subject of an interesting discussion in the British Association meeting.
Mr. Shaw read a paper "On the Mental Progress of Animals During the
Human Period," and Dr. Grierson mentioned an instance of intelligence
which had come under his own notice. Five years ago a barrel was put up
in his garden at the top of a high pole. The barrel was perforated with
holes and divided in the centre. In the course of two days two starlings
visited the barrel, and returned on the following day, and in about a
week afterward two pairs of starlings came and occupied it, and brought
up their young. They were very wild starlings, and readily took flight
when any person went near the barrel. In the second year four pairs of
starlings occupied the barrel, and they were much tamer than the
previous ones, and this last year there were a number of pairs of
starlings so tame that they would almost allow him to take hold of them.
They had now changed their mode of speaking, for the starlings in his
garden frequently articulated words.

THE LIMBS OF WHALES.

Whales have rudimentary limbs, and Prof. Struthers concludes that such
muscles existed in the whale-bone whales, but in ordinary teethed whales
they were merely represented by fibrous tissue. These muscles existing
in the true bottle-nosed whale had a special interest, as the teeth in
that whale were rudimentary and functionless. He had found these muscles
in the forearms of whales largely mixed with fibrous tissue, so the
transition was easy. Prof. MacAlister of Dublin thinks that whales were
not of very ancient origin, for the existence of the rudimentary limbs
tends to show that a sufficient length of time has not elapsed since the
use of the limb was essential to the earlier animal to produce its
complete obliteration.

OUR EDUCATIONAL STANDING.

The advance which this country has made in educational facilities of all
grades within its hundred years of life was summarized as follows by
Prof. Phelps, President of the National Educational Association:

"Prior to 1776 but nine colleges had been established, and not more than
five were really efficient. Now there are more than 400 colleges and
universities, with nearly 57,000 students, and 3,700 professors and
teachers. Then little was done for the higher education of women. Now
there are 209 female seminaries, 23,445 students, and 2,285 teachers.
There are also 322 professional schools of various classes, excluding
23,280 students and 2,490 instructors. Then normal schools had no
existence. Now there are 124, with 24,405 students and 966 instructors.
There were then no commercial colleges. Now 127 are in operation, with
25,892 students and 577 teachers. Then secondary and preparatory schools
had scarcely a name by which to live. Now 1,122 are said to exist,
affording instruction to 100,593 pupils, and giving employment to 6,163
teachers. The kindergarten is a very recent importation. In 1874 we were
blessed with 55 of these human nurseries, with 1,636 pupils and 125
teachers. Now 37 States and 11 Territories report an aggregate of more
than 13,000,000 school population, or more than four times the total
population of the country in 1776. Then the school enrollment was of
course unknown. Now it amounts to the respectable figure of about
8,500,000. Then the schools were scattered and their number
correspondingly restricted. Now they are estimated at 150,000, employing
250,000 teachers. The total income of the public schools is given at
$82,000,000, their expenditures at $75,000,000, and the value of their
property at $165,000,000. The number of illiterates by the census of
1870 above the age of ten years, in round numbers, was 5,500,000. Of
these more than 2,000,000 were adults, upward of 2,000,000 more were
from fifteen to twenty-one years of age, and 1,000,000 were between ten
and fifteen years. Of the number between fifteen and twenty-one years it
is estimated that about one-half have passed the opportunity for
education."

SURFACE MARKINGS.

Mr. James Croll, in a letter to "Nature" (July 13, 1876), incidentally
mentions the lessons that may be derived from the configurations of the
earth's surface.

     "Given the hardly perceptible wearing of water and time, a
     cañon a mile deep, and many hundreds of miles long, has
     resulted from the flowing of a stream. Given glacial 'abrasion'
     and time enough, then valleys of rounded section and firths and
     lake-basins of a particular kind probably resulted from the
     flowing of ice.

     "Where a stream flows from source to mouth on a gradual slope,
     there has been no great disturbance of level since the stream
     began to work. Where ice fills the dales there are no cañons.
     Where ice has filled dales and has left fresh marks, cañons are
     short and small. In mountain regions, where ice-marks are rare
     or absent, cañons are of great depth and length, apparently
     because their streams have flowed in the same channels ever
     since the mountains were raised. But where cañons are marked
     features, these lakes, firths, and dales of rounded section are
     very rare, or do not exist. It seems therefore that hollows
     which have, in fact, been carved out of the earth's surface may
     be known for water-work or for ice-work by their shape, and
     that firths, dales, and lakes may mark the sites of local
     glacial periods; and cañons the sites of climates that have not
     been glacial since the streams began to flow."

THE OLDEST STONE TOOLS.

One of the problems which geologists now propose to themselves is to
ascertain definitely whether the existence of man before the close of
the glacial epoch can be certainly proved. The method of proof consists
in the examination of formations older than those of that epoch, in the
hope of finding in them bones or implements of human origin. Mr. S. B.
J. Skertchly thinks he has done this. In the valley sides around the
town of Brandon, in England, "are preserved patches of brick-earth,
which are valuable as affording the only workable clay in the district.
Whenever these beds are well exposed they are seen to underlie the
chalky boulder-clay of glacial age. Of this there cannot be the
slightest doubt, for the glacial bed is typically developed and not in
the slightest degree reconstructed. In these beds I have been so
fortunate as to find palæolithic implements in two places; and in one of
them quantities of broken bones and a few fresh-water shells. The
implements are of the oval type, boldly chipped, but without any of the
finer work which distinguishes the better made palæolithic implements.
Although it would be rash to lay too great a stress upon the characters
of these implements, it is nevertheless worthy of remark that they do
belong to the crudest type. Equally rough specimens are found in the
gravels above the boulder-clay, and even among neolithic finds. Still
these very antique implements certainly do seem to belong to an earlier
stage of civilization, if we regard them as examples of the best
workmanship of their makers." These, he thinks, are the oldest specimens
of man's handiwork known, and prove him to have lived before the
culmination of the glacial epoch.

ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH PEOPLE.

An anthropologist, M. Turbino, has written a paper on the relations of
the people who inhabit Spain and Portugal, from which it appears that
those civilized races present a heterogeneity that reminds us forcibly
of the condition in which the savage tribes of America were at the time
of the discovery, and indeed are still. There is found in the Spanish
races no unity of origin or of physique. There is not only
dissimilarity, but also antithesis and opposition. M. Turbino endeavored
to show that the same diversity existed in the region of morals, in
language, in art, and in the ideas of right and law, and that thus there
is really no Spanish race and no means of establishing in the Iberian
Peninsula a centralized state.

Broca, in discussing these facts, asserted that the same state of things
exists everywhere; that the idea of race as applied to the people of
the present political divisions is untrue. The only great barriers of
states are their geographical limits.

THE ENGLISH METEORITE.

Prof. Maskelyne, of the British Museum, seems to be particularly
gratified by the fall of a metallic meteorite in England. He says:

     "It is, indeed, an iron meteorite, and the special interest of
     this statement lies in the fact that, though our great
     collection of 311 distinct meteorites at the Museum contains
     104 indubitable iron meteorites, the falls of only seven of the
     latter were witnessed. The collection contains eight stony
     meteorites that have fallen in the British Islands; but the
     Rowton meteorite is only the second iron meteorite known as
     having been found in Great Britain."

It weighs seven and three-quarter pounds, is angular in shape, and he
supposes that it is but the fragment of a much larger aerolite, since
one loud explosion was heard and rumbling sounds, which may have denoted
others, were heard before it fell.

THE BOOMERANG.

Mr. A. W. Howitt, after many years' observation in Australia, reports
that the boomerang, though a singular, is not the marvellous instrument
which we are told of in some books of travel; especially does he deny it
the power of continuing its flight after striking its object, and also
the power of returning with exact aim to the thrower's hand. That might
be in an instrument which was made with theoretical perfectness, but as
it is the return flight is very wild. He had a trial made by several
natives, one of them a boomerang thrower of great skill. The ground was
good, and the only drawback was a light sea breeze. He found that the
throws could be placed in two classes, one in which the boomerang was
held when thrown in a plane perpendicular to the horizon, the other in
which one plane of the boomerang was inclined to the left of the
thrower.

In the first method of throwing the missile proceeded, revolving with
great velocity, in a perpendicular plane for say one hundred yards, when
it became inclined to the left, travelling from right to left. It then
circled upward, the plane in which it revolved indicating a cone, the
apex of which would lie some distance in front of the thrower. "When the
boomerang in travelling passed round to a point above and somewhat to
the right of the thrower, and perhaps one hundred feet above the ground,
it appeared to become stationary for a moment; I can only use the term
_hovering_ to describe it. It then commenced to descend, still revolving
in the same direction, but the curve followed was reversed, the
boomerang travelling from left to right, and, the speed rapidly
increasing, it flew far to the rear. At high speed a sharp whistling
noise could be heard. In the second method, which was shown by 'bungil
wunkun,' and elicited admiring ejaculations of 'ko-ki' from the black
fellows, the boomerang was thrown in a plane considerably inclined to
the left. It there flew forward for say the same distance as before,
gradually curving upward, when it seemed to 'soar' up--this is the best
term--just as a bird may be seen to circle upward with extended wings.
The boomerang of course was all this time revolving rapidly. It is
difficult to estimate the height to which it soared, making, I think,
two gyrations; but judging from the height of neighboring trees on the
river bank, which it surmounted, it may have reached one hundred and
fifty feet. It then soared round and round in a decreasing spiral, and
fell about one hundred yards in front of the thrower. This was performed
several times. The descending curve passed the thrower, I think, three
times.

     "Another method of throwing was mentioned; namely, to throw the
     boomerang in such a manner that it would strike the ground with
     its flat side some distance in front of the thrower. It would
     then rise upward in a spiral, returning in the same. This was
     not attempted, as it was decided the boomerang was not strong
     enough. A final throw in a vertical plane, so that the missile
     struck the ground violently fifty or sixty yards in advance,
     terminated the display. It ricocheted three times with a
     twanging noise and split along the centre. My black friends
     said they should soon manufacture a number of the best
     constructed 'wunken' to show me. I observed that the spectators
     stood about a hundred yards on one side of the thrower, and
     when the boomerang in its gyrations approached us, every black
     fellow had his eyes sharply fixed on it. The fact stated by
     them that it was dangerous was well shown in one instance,
     where it suddenly wheeled and flew so close over us that I and
     Toolabar fell over each other in dodging it."

A WESTERN LAVA FIELD.

Lieutenant Ruffner describes one of the great lava outflows in the West
in a way that serves to set before the reader the magnitude of the
eruptions which have made America _par excellence_ the volcanic
continent. It is in New Mexico.

From the Conejos river, in Colorado, one continuous sheet of lava covers
the face of the country to the south, for eighty miles unbroken; and
then for fifty miles further is now exhibited in outlying areas and
detached masses, separated from the main body by the exercise of the
power of erosion through prolonged ages. One hundred and thirty miles in
length, and perhaps thirty in breadth at its widest, the area of a
principality lies swallowed up for ever. From craters existing probably
in the San Antonio mountain and in the Ute Peak, near the boundary of
Colorado, and possibly from other centres, this flood poured over the
land. Reaching to the east, it was checked by the mountains of the
Sangre de Cristo range; flowing to the west, the mountains and hills of
the main divide, and the spur now between the Chama and the Rio Grande,
limited its extent. To the south it was deflected westwardly by the spur
of the mountains called the Picuris range, some fifteen miles south of
Taos. Protected by this spur, we find the east bank of the Rio Grande
for many miles free from the flux. Confined on the west by the slopes of
the Jemez mountains, the breadth of the field is narrowed. But from the
village of San Ildefonso to Pena Blanca, we find the lava on both sides
of the Rio Grande, spreading to the east as far as the Santa Fé creek.
Secondary centres in the Jemez mountains possibly contributed to this
extension, but the main force of the eruptions was probably felt further
to the north. However, in this vicinity the edges and extremity of the
field have been reached, and there has been so much erosion in places
since its deposition, that outlying masses, as in the bluffs to the west
of San Felipe, alone remain. Throughout the whole region thus depicted,
the lava field is the great and controlling element. The streams that
have eaten their way through it with untold difficulty are found in
narrow and deep cañons having no land for cultivation. A dangerous feat
for man to descend these precipices, the passage by an animal of burden
is almost impossible. The Rio Grande passes for eighty miles or more
through its black abyss, with walls of seven or eight hundred feet in
height, crowned with perpendicular cliffs of solid lava, two and three
hundred feet high. Throughout the whole region there is no agriculture.

THE PRINCIPLE OF CEPHALIZATION.

In the last of a series of papers on cephalization (or brain
development) as a fundamental principle in the development of the system
of animal life, Prof. Dana says ("American Journal," October, 1876): "I
would refer to the case among mammals for an illustration of the
principle that the lowest forms are those having their locomotive
functions located in the posterior parts of the body; and that in the
higher the forces, or force organs, are more and more forward in the
structure. For example, in the whale the tail is the propelling organ,
and is of enormous power and magnitude, and the brain is very small, and
is situated far from the head extremity in a great mass of flesh and
bone furnished with poor organs of sense; a grade up, in the horse or
ox, the tail or posterior extremity is no longer an organ of locomotion,
and is little more than a caudal whip lash, and locomotion is performed
by organs situated more anteriorly, the legs, and a well-formed head
carries a brain which is a vastly higher organ of intelligence than that
of the whale, but the legs are simply organs of locomotion, and the
hinder are the more powerful; and higher up, in the tiger or cat, the
fore legs--not the hind legs--are the organs of chief muscular force,
and these have higher functions than that of simple locomotion, and
further, the body is proportionately shortened, and the head is
shortened anteriorly, or in the jaws, and approximates thus toward the
condition of man. The existence or not of a switch-like tail, as in
ordinary quadrupeds, has little bearing on the question of the degree of
cephalization, since the organ is not an organ of locomotion, or one
indicating a large posterior development of muscular bone. But,
approaching man in the system of life, even this seems to have
significance."

CURIOSITIES OF THE HERRING FISHERY.

The hot weather last summer affected even the herring fishery. The
fishermen off the Scotch coast had been supplied with sea thermometers
by the Scottish Meteorological Society, and they found that during one
week, when the sea water showed a temperature of 58 deg. to 59 deg., no
fish were caught. But when the temperature fell to 55 deg. the herring
were caught in great abundance. Indeed, they flocked to the land in such
numbers that many nets were taken to the bottom with their weight, and
the fishermen lost considerable sums from this odd mishap. The action of
the Meteorological has produced important results. The entirely new
discovery has been made that the herring love cold water, and in seasons
when the temperature of the sea water rises, they keep away from the
land, in deeper water, between the fifteen to eighteen fathoms for which
the nets are calculated. The colder the weather the greater is the take
of fish; 1875, a year when the water was considerably and continuously
warmer than 1874, having been a poor year, while the latter was a better
one. This action of the fish makes it probable that it likes a given
range of temperature, neither too high nor too low. In cold water this
belt of agreeable temperature is found nearer the sun-warmed surface,
and the fish creep inshore. Many singular facts relating to this fishery
are known. If a thunderstorm occurs, the fishermen expect a good catch
on that day, but the next day they will get none except in deep water,
and the supposition is that the fish are leaving the land. The herring
has a strong sense of locality, always returning to the same ground.
Experienced dealers can tell by inspection in just what sea or loch a
given lot of fish were caught.

NATURAL GAS IN FURNACES.

A paper describing the use of natural gas in the puddling furnaces at
Leechburg, Pa., was presented by Mr. A. L. Holley to the American
Institute of Mining Engineers. This well is about twenty miles northeast
of Pittsburg, on one of the side tributaries of the Alleghany river. It
had been drilled in search of oil to a depth of 1,250 feet in 1871, but
none was found. A great flow of gas was developed, however, accompanied
by a slight spray of salt water, and this has continued with little or
no diminution to the present time. The gas in its escape has been
discharged through a five-inch pipe, and at a pressure of from sixty to
eighty pounds per square inch. The rolling mill of Messrs. Roger &
Burchfield is on the opposite side of the river, and it has been for
some years devoted to the production of fine grades of sheet iron from
charcoal pig metal, by puddling and in knobbling fires. The usual weekly
product of the mill has been thirty tons of No. 3 tin plates and fifty
tons of No. 24 to twenty-eight sheets.

The well was bought by this firm for $1,000, and the gas is led across
the river, a distance of 500 feet, through a three-inch pipe. It is
distributed through half-inch pipes, and at a pressure of about
forty-five pounds per square inch, to several of the furnaces. No
essential alteration in any of the furnaces has been found necessary in
the use of the gas fuel, except to brick up the fire bridge and to put
in the gas and air pipes. The old grate used for coal is loosely covered
with bricks and cinder, so that a slight percolation of air may take
place through them. The gas is admitted through a half-inch pipe, and
blows toward the fire-bridge through eighteen or twenty one-eighth inch
jets. The air is blown in, at about 2 lbs. pressure, through two one and
one-eighth-inch jets, obliquely down upon the centre of the hearth, and
a very perfect combustion is obtained. A great improvement is effected
in the quality of the product of the puddling furnaces by the combined
action of the gas and air blast. The air is blown in during the melting,
but it is then shut off until the boiling begins. It is then turned on
full, and a violent boiling action is maintained without any rabbling.
Many advantages result from the use of this fuel. The product of the
mill has increased about thirty per cent., from sixty to seventy tons of
coal are saved daily, besides the labor necessary to fire with it, and a
poorer quality of iron can be used in making the tin plate. Thus the
iron now used is credited to the furnace at $45 per ton, while charcoal
blooms have cost $80. These are certainly enormous advantages, and
though every mill cannot have a permanent gas well, it must be more
economical to produce such results by making coal into gas than to
continue using it in the solid form. The gas at Leechburg is used in
fourteen furnaces and under seven boilers. Its composition is carbonic
acid, 0.35; carbonic oxide, 0.26; illuminating hydrocarbons, 0.56;
hydrogen, 4.79; marsh gas, C H_{4}, 89.65; ethyl hydride, C_{2} H_{6},
4.39; specific gravity, 0.558. This analysis shows about 57 per cent. of
carbon and 42 per cent. of hydrogen. If the well discharges one million
cubic feet of gas daily, it would weigh about sixty tons, yielding
thirty-nine tons of carbon. Mr. Holley calculates that it equals about
150 tons of bituminous coal, such as is found in the Pittsburg region.

SOUTH CAROLINA PHOSPHATES.

In England the favorite source of phosphates of lime is the "Cambridge
coprolites." These are small, hard, gray nodules, obtained by washing a
stratum, of about one foot in thickness, lying in the upper greensand
formation in Cambridgeshire. Similar coprolites are found and mined in
other districts of England, but they are of inferior quality, containing
more oxide of iron and alumina. These give the tribasic phosphate of
lime, which results from the application of sulphuric acid to the
nodules, a tendency to "go back" to the insoluble condition. French
nodules are of inferior quality from another cause. They contain very
much silica, sometimes even forty per cent. The Cambridge coprolites are
so much esteemed that buyers of artificial manure often stipulate that
it shall be made from them. As a consequence the privilege of mining the
ground is costly, sometimes as much as $1,500 an acre being paid. The
yield is about three hundred tons to the acre. An English chemist
reports that the South Carolina phosphate, made in factories situated in
and near Charleston, ranks next in value to this Cambridge product. It
contains 54 per cent. of tribasic phosphate of lime, 14 per cent. of
carbonate of lime, 3-1/2 per cent. of iron oxide and alumina, 2-1/2 per
cent. of fluoride of calcium, and 15 per cent. of silica. It consists of
bone fragments derived from animal species which are now extinct. These
bones have accumulated in old river beds, and the mining operations are
compelled to follow the sinuosities of these streams. Though a supply
derived from such sources is necessarily limited, the quantity known to
be available is very great, and has been estimated to last a century
with a yearly extraction of 50,000 tons. In addition to the river
phosphate is a lighter deposit, occurring in a stratum of sand and clay
about two feet thick; but this is not so valuable, though it is softer
and easier ground. The river deposit is nearly black, and when ground
makes a very dark powder. It is a great favorite, and in some respects
the finest natural source of phosphatic manure in the world.

RARE METALS FROM OLD COINS.

The operations of the Government assay office in Frankfort during the
last year have developed the fact that gold, platinum, palladium, and
selenium are found in old silver coins and also in ores which were
formerly supposed to be nearly pure sulphides and oxides of lead and
silver. From 400,000 pounds of silver and 5,000 pounds of gold were
obtained twelve pounds of platinum, two pounds of palladium, and several
pounds of selenium. To obtain these the gold is first precipitated from
the solution by ferrous chloride, all the other metals by iron turnings.
The precipitate is first submitted to the action of ferric chloride to
dissolve the copper, and the residue is fused with charcoal and soda to
separate the selenium. The regulus from this operation is dissolved, and
a compound of selenium and palladium, or of these with platinum, is
obtained. They are composed of equal atoms of the two metals and form
hard brilliant plates. The presence of these metals in coins is less
remarkable than in such ores as those of Commern and Mechernich on the
west bank of the Rhine. These ores occur as small granules of galena in
a soft sandstone, their origin being still a mooted point. The ore
yields a very soft and pure lead, though the presence of pyrite prevents
the manufacture of the virgin lead used in making the best brands of
white paint.

A FRENCH MOUNTAIN WEATHER STATION.

The French government has placed on the top of the Puy de Dome a
meteorological observatory, which, as that is the highest land in
France, answers to our stations on Mt. Washington and Pike's Peak. It
is, however, constructed in a style very different from those somewhat
forbidding abodes. At the top is an observatory tower, placed on a
platform, and upon this is placed the anemometer, especially constructed
to withstand the force of the storms. Within the tower is a well hole
fifty feet deep, which leads to a tunnel more than a hundred feet long,
at the end of which is placed the keeper's house. This is a massive
building, situated a short distance from the top, where it is partly
protected by rocks. The whole work cost $45,000, and $20,000 more will
be spent in supplying it with apparatus.

MIGRATION OF THE LEMMING.

A new theory has been broached to explain the migrations of the Norway
lemming, a variety of field mouse. Every few years an immense body of
these animals leaves their habitat and proceed westward, attacking every
obstacle in front in preference to flanking it, until it reaches the
sea, which the little animals boldly enter, only to perish there. No
conceivable advantage to the lemming is known to have ever resulted from
these long and arduous marches. The losses in swimming large rivers,
from fire, the attacks of predatory animals, hunger, and fatigue, are so
great that but few reach the sea, and the remnant always perish there.
Mr. W. Duppa Crotch, who has studied the habits of these animals for ten
years, now suggests that they are moved by an hereditary instinct, and
that their prehistoric home was some country west of Sweden, and now
covered by the Atlantic. The same kind of reasoning would allot an
Atlantic origin to the progenitors of the grasshoppers, which have been
such plagues in this country for a few years, for, as stated in the
August "Galaxy," those which moved eastward in 1875 did not halt until
they perished on the ocean beach or in its waves. Mr. Crotch has thrown
new light on some of the habits of the lemming. According to him, says
"Nature," the migration is not all completed in one year, as formerly
supposed, nor do they, as stated, form processions and cut their way
through obstacles; but, breeding several times in the season, they
gather in batches, and at intervals make a move westward. Their
pugnacity, he states, is astonishing, and the approach of any animal, or
even the shadow of a cloud, arouses the anger of this small creature
like a guinea pig, and they back against a stone or rock uttering shrill
defiance. Our author found, in most examples, a bare patch on the rump,
due to their rubbing against the said buttress of support when at bay.
He wonders why a bare patch, and not a callosity, should not result from
this innate, apparently hereditary habit.

NEW DISCOVERY OF NEOLITHIC REMAINS.

A very interesting discovery of human remains has been made in a cave in
Cravanch, about two miles northwest of Belfort, France. Some workmen,
excavating in a quarry of Jurassic limestone, found the opening to the
cave, the bottom of which was covered with stalagmites, while there were
no corresponding stalactites hanging from the roof. Some of these
calcareous columns appear to be artificial piles covered with the
limestone sheeting. Between them, and also covered with stalagmite, were
a quantity of human skeletons, with the skulls raised above the rest of
the bodies. A number of weapons and implements, together with a mat of
plaited meshes, have been found, all belonging to the polished stone
period. It is thought that careful search may uncover remains of an
earlier date. The cave is quite large, a hundred feet long and forty
wide and high. It was at once taken possession of by the authorities and
placed under the charge of Mr. Felix Voulot, who hopes to extract at
least one skeleton entire.

OCTOBER WEATHER.

The most noticeable features of the month are: the hurricane of the 17th
to 23d; lower temperatures in the districts east of the Rocky mountains;
large excess of rainfall in some districts and large deficiencies in
others; low water in the rivers.

_Areas of High Pressure._--These have generally appeared in the Upper
Missouri valley, from whence their movements have been south and
eastward across the country. Their advance has been frequently marked by
high northerly winds and gales, especially when preceded by decidedly
low-pressure areas, in the more northern districts and on the Texas
coast. When rainy weather has preceded them, the fall in the temperature
has been sufficient to turn the rain into sleet and snow, while frequent
and heavy frosts have been produced.

_Areas of Low Pressure._--Nine have been traced. Excepting the hurricane
of the 17th to 23d, the centres of all have moved over the northern
sections, and further northward than during previous Octobers. They have
been frequently accompanied by barometric troughs, extending south or
southwestward toward the Gulf, in which rainy weather and high winds or
gales have prevailed.

_Temperatures._--

                   _Maximum._     _Minimum._

Albany              70 deg.         23 deg.
Boston              70  "           26  "
Buffalo             73  "           24  "
Cape May            73  "           34  "
Chicago             73  "           28  "
Cincinnati          74  "           29  "
Cleveland           75  "           26  "
Detroit             72  "           24  "
Duluth              67  "           23  "
Jacksonville        85  "           43  "
Marquette           73  "           28  "
Mt. Washington      48  "            5  "
New Orleans         84  "           50  "
New York            73  "           31  "
Pike's Peak         41  "          -2  "
Philadelphia        75  "           31  "
San Diego           80  "           48  "
San Francisco       72  "           52  "
Washington          78  "           30  "

The first frost of the season is reported from a large number of
stations, and first snow from about twenty.

_Verifications._--The average is 92.8 per cent. for the weather; 90.1,
wind direction; 91.1, temperature; 87.7, barometric changes. For the
whole country the average verified is 90.4 per cent. There were four
omissions to predict out of 3,720, or 0.1 percent.

A severe earthquake shock was felt at San Francisco at 9:20 p.m., on the
6th, lasting ten seconds; motion from northwest to southeast. A second
and lighter shock was felt the same day.

FRENCH NATIONAL ANTIQUITIES.

Probably few American travellers visit a collection of antiquities,
infinitely older than the paintings, statues, and relics of mediæval
life, or even than those of Roman and Grecian age, but which is as
freely open to them, near Paris. This is the museum which has been
established in the château of Saint Germain. France has been
particularly fortunate in rescuing fragments of the life which existed
within her borders long before the day of the very earliest races to
which history points us. These fragments have sometimes been preserved
in the most fortuitous manner, and afford unique illustrations of the
remarkable accidents to which man is occasionally indebted for his
knowledge. The fossil man of Denyse, whatever his age may have been, has
been preserved for our inspection by becoming overwhelmed in a volcanic
eruption. The skeleton of Mentone was found by Rivière while engaged in
a systematic search among French caves. Other caves in France have
preserved evidences sufficiently distinct for us to gain valuable hints
of ancient life. In fact all the ages of man, so far as they are
recognized, and all the kinds of proof concerning them, are well
represented in French collections. During the reign of the late Emperor
this museum was founded, and has received the case of many noted French
_savants_ who have won distinction in this field of research. The walls
are covered by finely painted maps illustrating the distribution of
caves, and rock shelters, and places where instruments of stone, bone,
and bronze have been found. Pictures are also exhibited which illustrate
the views of former social customs which are thought to be supported by
the material evidences assembled in the château. In the cases are not
only large collections of celts, but also the carved bones, horn, and
stones which, by their distribution through the stalagmite of caves, or
through the gravel of ancient river beds, give infallible proof of the
presence of man. One floor contains a collection not less interesting,
though illustrating the manners of a much later age. It is formed of the
military weapons, bridges, fortifications, camps, etc., which were
constructed to illustrate the "life of Cæsar," by Napoleon. This
collection is, and will probably remain, unique. At the meeting of the
Geographical Congress last year, these great engines of war were taken
to the park and exhibited in action. The museum is now placed under the
control of the historical commission for constructing the map of Gaul.
This body is publishing a series of maps and engravings to illustrate
the progress of the science of the prehistoric and subsequent periods. A
catalogue of the collections has been made and is sold to visitors.
There is also in the establishment a special library in which has been
collected by M. Gabriel de Mortillet all the books relating to
prehistoric antiquities, and which is open free on certain days to the
public.

It is found that insects preserve their colors better under yellow glass
than in any other color. The curtains of entomological show-cases and
the blinds of the room should be yellow. Only in this way can the
delicate carmine tints of some insect wings be preserved.

A student of animal nature announces a case of two hens, who by joint
efforts hatched one chick. They have since, for some weeks, been
parading the yard, each clucking and manifesting all the anxiety and
care of a true mother over this one. The hens never quarrel, or show the
least appearance of jealousy or rivalry.

M. Tresca, who has charge of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, the
institution which in Paris answers to our Patent Office, says that
drawings of new inventions are more useful than models, are cheaper, and
are very much oftener consulted. In Paris the model room is covered with
dust and rarely entered.

The French weather bureau intends not only to study the thunderstorm,
hailstorm, rainfall, inundations, and frosts, with especial reference to
their effects upon agriculture, but also to experiment upon the
asserted effect of smoke as a preventive to frost. The experiments will
be extensive and may cover a large valley.

To discover by the spectroscope the smallest quantity of a gaseous or
very volatile hydrocarbon, the Messrs. Negri introduce a small quantity
of the gaseous mixture into a tube. This mixture should not contain
oxygen, carbonic oxide, or carbonic acid; and the pressure is to be
reduced to not more than twenty millimetres. Then if a hydrocarbon is
present, the passage of a spark from a Ruhmkorff's coil will cause the
appearance of a sky-blue light. Viewed with the spectroscope, this
presents the spectrum of carbon, and generally so brilliant as to mask
totally the spectra of other gases present.

The rare metals cerium, lauthanum, and didymium have been lately
investigated by Drs. Hillebrand and Norton, in Bunsen's laboratory.
Cerium looks like iron, having both its color and lustre, but is
heavier, and has the hardness of calcite. It tarnishes slowly in dry air
and rapidly in moist air. It ignites so readily that pieces scratched
off inflame, and its wire burns more brilliantly than magnesium wire.
Lauthanum is a little harder, but also a little lighter. It tarnishes
more easily and inflames less easily than cerium. Didymium resembles
lauthanum. The metals were all obtained by electrolysis of the
chlorides.

It is stated that a week's work in Birmingham comprises, among its
various results, the fabrication of 14,000,000 pens, 6,000 bedsteads,
7,000 guns, 300,000,000 cut nails, 100,000,000 buttons, 1,000 saddles,
5,000,000 copper or bronze coins, 20,000 pairs of spectacles, six tons
of papier maché wares, over £30,000 worth of jewelry, 4,000 miles of
iron and steel wire, ten tons of pins, five tons of hairpins and hooks
and eyes, 130,000 gross of wood screws, 500 tons of nuts and screw bolts
and spikes, fifty tons of wrought iron hinges, 350 miles' length of wax
for vestas, forty tons of refined metal, forty tons of German silver,
1,000 dozens of fenders, 3,500 bellows, 800 tons of brass and copper
wares--these, with a multitude of other articles, being exported to
almost all parts of the civilized world.

The aërated beverages of which Americans are so fond should not be kept
in copper vessels, for carbonic acid (which is the gas present)
dissolves this metal with great avidity. From three-hundredths to
one-tenth of a grain of copper per gallon has been found in aërated
lemonade, ginger ale, soda water, etc.

In making the ultimate analysis of organic compounds by combustion, with
lead chromate and metallic copper reduced by hydrogen, the results
obtained are too high, on account of the expulsion of hydrogen, which
had been occluded by the copper. Heating the copper to 150 deg. C. does
not prevent the error, which may be .05 per cent.

Mayer & Walkoff, who have been experimenting on the respiration of
plants, find that the action goes on both in light and darkness, and
that changes of temperature within normal limits have little effect.
There is no direct relation between growth in length and respiration, a
conclusion that is in conflict with that of previous experiments.

The famous "Blue Grotto" in the island of Capri, Italy, has been
investigated spectroscopically. Most of the light enters through the
water, which absorbs the red rays entirely and so much of the yellow as
to make the D line scarcely visible. The green, blue, and indigo rays
are very bright, and the F and _b_ lines unite in a well marked
absorption line.

The springs of Weissenburg in the Bernese Oberland yield a water which
is popularly supposed to have the power of cicatrizing cavities in the
lungs, but its analysis shows no reason for such a power. Sulphates of
lime and magnesia are its principal solid ingredients, with chloride and
a little iodide of lithium and an organic compound having the odor of
blackberries.

The mountains about Innsbruck in the Tyrol, as well as other parts of
the Alps, present the singular phenomenon of a climate more moderate at
a considerable elevation than in the valleys. Prof. Kerner finds that
there is a warm region midway up the mountain, lying between two colder
zones above and below it. We have heretofore referred to a similar
phenomenon in Indiana.

It is remarked by anthropologists that differences of color are one of
the most marked signs of race. The Aryan word for caste is _Varanum_,
meaning color, and the Aryans are supposed to have used it to
distinguish themselves from the Dasyuf, with whom they came in contact
on crossing the Indus, when migrating from Central Asia. The first
migrating wave from that centre of human creation can no longer be
traced, and only its remnants are found among the most degraded of the
hill tribe and slave population in India. Prof. Rollesten thinks that
the earliest races of man were preëminently of the Australioid type,
which is now brown-skinned and wavy haired, with long narrow heads.

Messrs. Gladstone & Tribe have been investigating the results of the
decomposition of alcohol by aluminium. When absolute alcohol, in which
iodine has been dissolved, is poured upon finely divided aluminium in a
flask, energetic action takes place and large quantities of hydrogen are
evolved. A pasty mass remains, and this heated to 100 deg. C., gives off
alcohol, and leaves a solid residue, which liquefies at 275 deg. C.,
alcohol and an oily body containing iodine passing over. At a higher
temperature, this product was again decomposed, with formation of
alcohol, ethylene, and alumina. But the most interesting results were
obtained under diminished pressure. Then a greenish white solid
sublimed, and this was found to be aluminic ethylate. This is therefore
the second known organometallic body, containing oxygen, which is
capable of distillation, cacodylic oxide being the other.

CURRENT LITERATURE.

Prof. Huxley's ingenious if somewhat shallow evasion of the Biblical
account of creation, by crediting it to Milton rather than to Moses, has
perhaps aroused many minds to inquire what modern theologians really do
think of the first chapters of Genesis. This question is answered by a
recent publication[12] by Dr. Cocker of the Michigan State University.
In the "Theistic Conception of the World" he treats the first two
chapters of the Bible as a poem, which he calls the "symbolical hymn of
creation." It has an exordium, six strophes, each with its refrain, and
an episode. He does not believe the sacred narrative intends to describe
the exact mode of forming the world, nor even to set the successive
events in order. It is an ascription, designed to embody in symbolical
language the fact that all existence is derived from God. One paragraph
will show the broad ground on which this conclusion is based:

     A cursory reading of the narrative will convince any one that
     its purpose is not to enlarge men's views of nature, but to
     teach them something concerning nature's God. It says nothing
     about the forces of nature, the laws of nature, the
     classifications of natural history, or the size, positions,
     distances, and motions of the heavenly bodies. From first to
     last, every phenomenon and every law is linked immediately to
     some act or some command of God. It is God who creates, God who
     commands, God who names, God who approves, and God who blesses.
     Strike out the allusions to God, and the narrative is
     meaningless. Clearly it was never intended to teach science. It
     has obviously one purpose, to reveal and keep before the minds
     of men the grand truth _that Jehovah is the sole Creator and
     Lord of the heavens and the earth_; and it leaves the
     scientific comprehension of nature to the natural powers with
     which God has endowed man for that end.

But the author believes that the Mosaic account is practically correct,
or perhaps we should say harmonious with the truth. It may be truthful
without being all the truth, or truthful and still be very defective. He
considers that when scientific knowledge is complete, the Scripture,
rightly interpreted, will be found in harmony with its final
conclusions. How Moses was made acquainted with the events of creation
is a matter upon which it is impossible to be positive. The author sees
no objection to the suggestion that he may have witnessed a series of
pictures or visions, the result of which upon his mind is given in the
hymn of creation. This explanation of the Biblical narrative forms but a
small part of the work, which is chiefly given to a discussion of the
views and positive discoveries of scientific men which relate to the
production of the world. It is a remarkable tribute to the overmastering
power of positive knowledge. Science and theology are mingled in an
extraordinary way, but a way that is now necessary, for there is not one
province of human thought that has not been compelled to acknowledge the
great possibilities of inductive reasoning. Dr. Cocker labors to
establish the old faith on the new ground. He is a man of great reading
and has a strong belief in the religion to which he has given his heart.
Every question is approached in the firm faith that when rightly
interpreted it will be found to sustain the Christian religion. This is
the fundamental fault of the work. It is a plea for a cause that does
not need it, for a cause that is quite as apt to lose as to gain by the
defence. The difficulty with this method of meeting the hypothesis of
science is that the scientific views are themselves in a state of
unstable equilibrium. They may topple at any moment, and then the
correspondence that eager devotees have found between them and the Bible
is a slur that falls altogether on the religion and not on the science.
This is a great error, and those who are drawn into it belittle the
cause that is dear to them. While our author is catholic in his reading,
he does not seem to assign to all writers in his field their just value.
His quotations, the fresh, the obsolete, the trustworthy, and the
doubtful, are mingled in a confusion that only the experienced can
penetrate. His book is creditable to his unshaken faith, and it
presents the religious aspect of modern knowledge in a thorough manner.

It is not strange that under the present condition of the general mind
the question as to the right of the State to teach religion at the
public expense should be regarded with unusual interest. This question
has been very ably discussed by the Rev. Dr. Spear, whose book upon the
subject,[13] originally published as a series of essays in "The
Independent," is notably thorough and notably calm and judicial in tone.
Dr. Spear considers the subject in both its constitutional and its
equitable aspect, and the conclusion to which he is led is that "the
public school, like the State, under whose authority it exists, by whose
taxing power it is supported, should be simply a civil institution,
absolutely secular and not at all religious in its purposes, and all
practical questions involving this principle should be settled in
accordance therewith." He admits that this logical result of his
argument excludes the Bible from the public school, just as it excludes
the Westminster Catechism, the Koran, or any of the sacred books of
heathenism. But, as he justly says, this conclusion pronounces no
judgment against the Bible and none for it; it simply omits to use it
and declines to inculcate the religion which it teaches. It is difficult
to see how any other view of the case can be taken consistently with the
spirit of our institutions, from the Constitution of the United States
downward; and it is a cheering promise of the disappearance of bigotry,
even in its milder forms, when we see this view set forth by a
distinguished orthodox minister of the Gospel. There still, however,
remains this question in connection with religious toleration and
religious qualifications--Does a religion one element of which is
absolute subservience to the will of a foreign potentate or prelate, the
Roman or the Greek, for example, and which undertakes to deal with a
civil relation, marriage for example, come properly within the provision
for universal religious toleration, or does it not, for the reasons
assigned, assume a relation to the State more or less political?

Captain Whittaker's "Life of General Custer"[14] can no more be
estimated by fixed biographical rules than the meteoric career of his
hero can be compared to the regular and peaceful lives of other men. Not
often, perhaps, does the biographer devote himself with such
enthusiastic _abandon_ to his task, and seldom is there to be found
within the covers of a single volume such an infinite variety of
incident and personal reminiscence. The chapters which deal with the
early youth of General Custer are exceedingly interesting photographs,
as it were, of a certain phase of American domestic and academic life.
The characteristics of the child, the sorrows of the "plebe," and the
aspirations and experiences of the cadet, are faithfully narrated. The
first service of the subaltern, and his initiation into the perils and
responsibilities of an officer in time of war, are interwoven with
Custer's own recollections of his generals and their campaigns. We are
irresistibly reminded of Lever in the style of the narration, and of
that dashing creature "O'Malley" in the adventures of our own dragoon.
The story of General Custer's wooing is quaintly told, and shines like a
bow of promise through all the clouds of his stormy career; it is a
romance by itself. _Apropos_ of the charge which we are told won the boy
general his star, we clip a bit of word painting which could only have
been written by "one who has been there":

     Were you ever in a charge--you who read this now by the winter
     fireside, long after the bones of the slain have turned to
     dust, when peace covers the land? If not, you have never known
     the fiercest pleasure of life. The chase is nothing to it; the
     most headlong hunt is tame in comparison. In the chase the game
     flees, and you shoot; here the game shoots back, and every leap
     of the charging steed is a peril escaped or dashed aside. The
     sense of power and audacity that possesses the cavalier, the
     unity with his steed, both are perfect. The horse is as wild as
     the man: with glowing eyeballs and red nostrils, he rushes
     frantically forward at the very top of his speed, with huge
     bounds as different from the rhythmic precision of the gallop
     as the sweep of the hurricane is from the rustle of the breeze.
     Horse and rider are drunk with excitement; feeling and seeing
     nothing but the cloud of dust, the scattered flying figures;
     conscious of only one mad desire, to reach them, to smite,
     smite, smite!

The author of this book is too much of an artist, too much of a poet,
perhaps, to divest his battle descriptions of anything that is doubtful
in fact, if only it is eulogistic of his hero or picturesque in its
nature. He has an eye for color, and prefers to have his picture a showy
and effective one even if some of the accessories are purely of the
imagination. We cannot consider the letters of the "Times" special
correspondent as a reliable history of the events immediately following
the battle of Gettysburg, although they are undoubtedly glowing
bulletins of the exploits of General Kilpatrick and his temporary
subordinate, General Custer. Nor can we accept the statement of the
Detroit "Evening News" for an entirely correct report of the grand
review at Washington, in 1865, when he hands down to posterity that
sober-sided old warrior, Provost Marshal General Patrick, as one who
"had ridden down the broad avenue bearing his reins in his teeth, and
his sabre in his only hand"; although the Mazeppa act in which Custer
immediately followed is not overdrawn by the "News," because that would
be "painting the lily." There are several other extracts from newspapers
of a similar nature, but we have not space to refer to them. Captain
Whittaker's book offers material for that "coming historian," but cannot
be looked upon as an entirely safe historical authority. Colonel Chesney
says, "Accept no one-sided statement from any national historian who
rejects what is distasteful in his authorities, and uses only what suits
his own theory.... Gather carefully from actual witnesses, high and low,
such original material as they offer for the construction of the
narrative. This once being safely proved, judge critically and calmly
what was the conduct of the chief actor; how far his insight, calmness,
personal control over others, and right use of his means were concerned
in the result." The great fault of this otherwise attractive biography
is the unwise partisanship which, as Captain Whittaker shows, was so
injurious to his hero in life and which even in death does not forsake
him. At page 282 Captain Whittaker says of alleged envy and jealousy of
Custer in certain quarters:

     A great deal of this was due to the boasting and sarcastic
     remarks of his injudicious friends, who could not be satisfied
     with praising their own chief without depreciating others.

Thus the author, after warning his readers of the pit into which so many
others have fallen, proceeds in the most inconsistent manner to fall
into it himself.

Had we space, we could here make many extracts entirely free from the
foregoing objections. Many new descriptions of Indian life, never before
in print, are here given; some excellent essays on the prominent phases
of American military life; and many anecdotes and biographical sketches
of the officers who fell with Custer on the "Little Big-horn," with
portraits, are also given. The volume is a very large, handsome octavo,
illustrated by two portraits of General Custer (one an excellent
likeness on steel), and many full-page woodcuts, and seems especially
seasonable as a holiday present. No biographical collection can be
considered complete without it, and we should think it would have an
especial charm to military readers. That Mrs. Custer is to receive a
share of the receipts from its sale will not lessen its circulation.

Palestine is certainly an inexhaustible source of books, and Dr.
Ridgaway[15] tells us the reason why. Travellers' descriptions of the
grand mountain scenery, its strange deserts, its ancient customs,
transmitted from the dawn of history, its trees a thousand years of age,
and its mighty ruins, contribute to and intensify the interest which the
Christian feels in that region alone of all the earth. Of late years
this country has been the scene of systematic explorations and the theme
of an important series of critical works. Dr. Ridgaway's volume deserves
a place in this series, though he has little of novelty to present. But
the author has produced just the book that was needed, the one which it
might be supposed the first traveller there would have written. Leaving
out nearly all the every-day incidents of travel, he aims to extract
from each place he saw just what is of interest to the Bible student. He
is to be congratulated on a rare ability to discriminate between the
important and entertaining and what is matter-of-course. The plan of his
journey, which was made in company with eleven others, mostly clergymen,
was to follow the route of the Israelites from Egypt to Palestine, and
then to visit every place made memorable by the life of Christ, besides
many others of Biblical interest. He tried to be critical, and
constantly discusses the pros and cons for admitting the received
location of prominent points; but in this he is not very successful, and
seems to decline at length into helpless acquiescence. He rejects the
innovations and doubts of such men as Robinson and Baker, and
acknowledges that the sacred sites have for the most part been
identified. But there is a limit to even his credulity. He swallowed
easily the "exact spot" where the cradle lay, but strained at the
fragment of a column on which Mohammed is to sit when he judges the
world, and says, "I was unable to resist the temptation to straddle it!"
Perhaps the secret of Dr. Ridgaway's success is that he has omitted
those rhapsodies which are natural enough amid such scenes, but which we
get our fill of without going to Palestine. He is too full of the real
situation to turn to fanciful imaginations, and as a consequence he
gives us the best companion to the Bible which we know of. The critical
results of his journey are small, but as a careful summary of what
others have finally settled upon his work is authentic. A large number
of engravings, of the best execution, bring the landscape and buildings
vividly before us. Many of them are from Dr. Ridgaway's sketches, others
from photographs, and the only fault we have to find is the omission of
titles to them, an omission which is artistic, but inconvenient.

--Lieutenant Ruffner[16] does not give a very assuring picture of New
Mexico, considered as a possible State in our Union. It has never
prospered; its population and area of cultivated land being smaller now
than three hundred years ago. As these changes are no doubt due to the
operation of natural causes, about which scientific men do not agree,
the immediate future of the country does not appear very flattering.
Wide as the spread of westward migration has been, it has hardly
affected New Mexico. Lieutenant Ruffner says: "The line once crossed, a
foreign country is entered. Foreign faces and a foreign tongue are
encountered." For twenty-six years the Territory has formed a part of
our country, but in that time our civilization has hardly made an
impression upon it. The author, without directly saying so, seems to
regard the scheme for making it a State with disfavor, and his readers
will agree with him. He has done his country a service by this
painstaking and impartial description of a region which few but army
officers know anything about.

--It is a very difficult thing nowadays to write a book of travels that
can interest the general public. A hundred years ago a man who had
circumnavigated the world was a remarkable object, and people would
crowd to see him, and read his works with avidity. But what a change the
last century has produced. Compare the difference of tone between 1776