EVERY SATURDAY:

A JOURNAL OF CHOICE READING, PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY, 219 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON:

NEW YORK: HURD AND HOUGHTON;
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PRINTED BOOKS AND LITERATURE.

It is a curious commentary on the connection between printing and literature that the first book printed in England was upon the Game of Chess; so independent is literature of the art of printing, that it stands aside and lets one of the books that are no books take the place of honor. It sometimes almost seems as if the most excellent printing were applied to merely commercial uses. The remarkable industry of Life Insurance, for example, which has discovered a market value for the Bore, hitherto regarded as the drone of society, has made use of all the refinements of printing. When we gaze upon one of their seductive circulars, with its chaste borders in red and its quiet refinement of old style type with delicate head and tail pieces, as if symbolizing the absence of any body in the intervening literature, and then turn to some dumpy, dingy copy, say of the Merchant of Venice, illegible almost by reason of battered type, we take courage in a mournful kind of way, and consider that printing does not make literature. Indeed, it is a curious fact, which bibliographers ought to notice, that apparently the more inane and useless a book is, the more choice does it look in its dress. Look at the volumes of. poetry which get printed and published, but remain, as Coleridge says, 66 as good as manuscript," and see if the eye is not often feasted by a beauty of page and general elegance which seem to justify the book in standing, if not moving, in the best society.

There is a grain of comfort in this reflection for those who, like the essayist Henry Rogers for example, look with despair upon the accumulation of books, and with hopefulness in some overruling fate which disposed of the Alexandria library. There is an enormous mass of books no doubt in the world, but when we subtract the books to be read from the books which simply serve some temporary purpose, the remainder is small enough to restore cheerfulness, and when again we divide, setting apart those books which are themselves the origin and cause of other books, there is hope even for the man of business, that in his leisure moments he may read and enjoy them all.

The practical use to which every student or reader may put this discovery, is in the right he may claim to select his reading. Since the mere fact of something being in print lays no compulsion upon him to read it, for there is a splendid impossibility of his reading everything, he may have the most dense ignorance of the great mass of what goes by the name of literature, and retain his selfrespect. Some idle reader of advertisements and book notices saunters along with us as we go to our work, and speaks of this or that new book, and we may bravely admit our utter ignorance of it. We need give ourselves no more concern about it than we do about the young women who comb their hair and shake bottles in advertisements of hair oil. Yet it requires oftentimes no small courage to be ready with our ignorance. It is like the mention of a name to us in conversation with a friend, who appeals

to us for a sort of moral support as he is about to tell a story. You know .? We gently incline our head, trying not to commit ourselves to a plump acknowledgment. It is not of the slightest consequence to the story, but we are so anxious to oblige a friend. And in discourse of many books we are apt to give tacit admission of an acquaintance with them. Yes, we have merely seen it, we say, and bow — on the counter, we mentally explain, but it sounds as if we had glanced through it, at least.

The dispersion of literature by the manifold instruments of books, magazines, and papers, and the universal spread of a common-school education have conspired to cheapen, not the real value of literature, but its apparent value. Every one reads, nearly every one writes. Books

that have cost labor are condensed into a review article, strained into a weekly journal, scattered in short paragraphs through the daily papers. Gossip about authors, tattle about their work, vulgar comparisons and the easy praise of good-natured, hard-worked noticers, help to make the act of reading an indolent diversion. Printing gives active employment to many men, from authors of books down to the rag-pickers, but it is an open question whether it has positively increased the volume of real literature. That depends for its nourisment upon other conditions than simply mechanical ones. It is even independent of writing, though it could not long remain so, nor flourish without it; but it caused writing, as much as thought ever caused anything, and the awakening of human thought, which was contemporaneous with the invention of printing, found other forms of activity also.

The really new things in literature are born not 80 much of other literature as of the elements in nature and human nature which are ever ready for generation. The books which produce books are not independent of the books that have preceded them, for the real literature which greets the world is always marked by the fulness with which it holds to all real relations in life, but it is never possible to trace the connection as one of immediate cause and effect.

NOTES.

A fourth edition of the January number of the Atlantic Monthly is called for, an indication that there is a permanence in our periodical literature, and that articles live longer than a month.

- The readers of EVERY SATURDAY will turn with pleasure to the new story just begun by MM. ErckmannChatrian, entitled "The College Life of Maître Nablot," based on the adventures of a young collegian during the Louis Philippe era. The simplicity and healthfulness of these literary copartners, with their rare skill in storytelling and historical accuracy, make us welcome with pleasure every new production by them.

-If the reader wishes to miss the choicest paper in this number of EVERY SATURDAY, he will do well to avoid the article entitled "America as seen from Europe," an address delivered in Berlin on Thanksgiving Day by the Rev. Joseph P. Thompson, from whose manuscript we have the privilege of printing it. It is a little late for a Thanksgiving Day sermon, but the special merit of this sermon is, that it fits every day in the year like a glove. Americans at home are contracting a very large debt of gratitude to Mr. Thompson for the services he is doing them with pen and voice abroad. It is seldom that so eloquent a voice and so skilful a pen go together.

nearly completed, and all the papers are copying the statement seriously. It is a fact, however, that the third and last volume of Forster's "Life of Dickens was announced for publication in London on the 29th of January.

- The London Court Journal gives the following penphotograph of Mark Twain: "Mark Twain is a remarkably handsome man, standing over six feet four, with fine red whiskers and hair to match, and is said to excel in feats of strength, and especially in dancing the sword dance." Such an American as this could scarcely fail to be a success in England; but, unfortunately, the portrait, though flattering enough to satisfy any man's vanity, is hardly a likeness. It may make the groundlings, who don't know him personally, laugh; but it will cause the judicious to grieve, the judicious who know that Mr. Clemens is a slightly built gentleman of medium height, with unaggressive brown hair, and no whiskers whatever. If he is much given to dancing the sword dance on his native heath, he is the possessor of an accomplishment which, up to the present time, he has modestly hidden from his most intimate friends.

- Mr. Bayard Taylor is collecting materials for a joint biography of Goethe and Schiller. Where is the biography of Beethoven, by A. W. Thayer, which has from time One volume has been published to time been announced? in Germany we believe, but has Mr. Thayer become so Germanized that he cannot translate into his native tongue his own work?

A. Williams & Co. are about to publish "The Seven Gray Pilgrims. A Personal Romance by a Subaltern of Artillery." Under this title lies a work presumably by an American of Irish birth or descent, who has discussed in a temperate but earnest spirit the questions connected with Irish life and recent history, especially as regards

landlordism. It has about it the air of a real narrative concealed under fictitious names, and inquires seriously into the causes of Irish poverty, with suggestions as to their removal.

-It will be remembered that Harvard College in the spring of 1872 announced the terms and conditions on which the degrees of Master of Arts, Doctor of Philosophy, and Doctor of Science, would thenceforth be given. They are no longer mere compliments, but given in consideration of passing certain examinations. At the beginning

At

of the year 1872-73 there were two candidates for the degree of Master of Arts, five for that of Doctor of Science, and seven for that of Doctor of Philosophy. At the end of the year two candidates for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, and one for that of Doctor of Science passed satisfactory examinations and received their degrees. the present time there are thirty-five candidates for the several degrees, all but five being bachelors of the university, indicating that the new system is likely to lead to a longer stay at Cambridge, and the growth about the college of a distinct scholastic society.

- The dignifying of degrees which had formerly been mere compliments, indeed in the case of Master of Arts, purchasable by any one who had survived his graduation three years, ought to do something toward imparting a distinctive character to university education in the eyes of young men. This and the endowment of fellowships, hardly likely for some time to come to be mere comfortable sinecures to students, will be likely to make Cambridge more than ever a literary and scholarly neighborhood. the interest of literature such a result is much to be desired,

In

for from the young men thus devoted to learning and letters should come the fresh and skilled book-work now done so often at hap-hazard. Publishers of books and magazines would learn to turn to these men when they desired special topics treated which were not beyond the years of recent graduates, and the work put into their hands would be for them a training the more valuable that it could be accompanied by some degree of leisure and freedom from anxiety.

-

- A chapter in a recent English work, "A Whaling Cruise to Baffin's Bay and the Gulf of Boothia" is devoted to particulars collected from the survivors of the Polaris who were for two months shipmates of the author. The Academy, in a review of the book, says, "For the credit of the American admiralty it is hoped that its secretary was in no way responsible for the dispatch of an expedition so thoroughly unfitted for the work it was expected to perform." The Polaris wintered, it will be remembered, at a point farther north than any winter quarters of previous Arctic expeditions.

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There is a singular piece of mosaic literature appearing in Lippincott's Magazine, from month to month. Under the title of "The New Hyperion" a writer whose name is there signed Edward Strahan is carrying forward a sort of mock roundabout travel sketch, professedly a travesty of Mr. Longfellow's Hyperion" yet substantially a reproduction of Saintine's "Le Chemin des Écoliers." "Promenade," says the sub-title of Saintine's book, "de Paris à Marly-le-Roy en suivant les bords du Rhin; " "From Paris to Marly by way of the Rhine," adds Mr. Strahan's "New Hyperion." The apparent explanation of this literary coincidence is found in the sketchy illustrations, chiefly humorous, by Doré and others, which illustrate both Saintine's work and Edward Strahan's effort. These were drawn to accompany the incidents of the roundabout journey which Saintine takes, and probably electrotypes from them for use in the American magazine called for incidents so similar in the accompanying text that it was less of a strain to transfer Saintine's than to produce new ones. The vulgarizing of Mr. Longfellow's hero, Paul Flemming, and his friend Baron Hohenfels, serves the purpose of the " gag" in the localization of the drama, and it is curious to observe how the lightness and freshness of the Frenchman's wit disappear under the exigency of the travesty. The whole thing is an ingenious "oversetting" of a French conceit into a heavy joke, ill conceived and in bad taste throughout. But why does Edward Strahan ignore Saintine? He puts at the head of his first article, "The author's vignettes neatly copied by Gustave Doré ;" why does he not add, "and his best material appropriated by X. B. Saintine"?

Reforms in economy move slowly in our country. Now that public attention is fixed upon Congress and toothpicks, and has not wholly ceased to murmur about Mr. Williams's landau, it would be worth while to reform away one horse from the preposterous carriages in which the great public finds it necessary to travel in our cities and towns. Perhaps if we can get rid of one of the two horses, and reform away the pole and shrink the carriage into a plain cab, there may be a shrinkage in the expense of this luxury, and a less haughty demeanor on the part of the driver. It is hard for a man who is paid five dollars for taking a passenger a mile or so, to avoid feeling that he has done his passenger a special favor.

- Mr. Gladstone has been elected foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sci

ences.

VOL. I.]

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD.

CHAPTER V. DEPARTURE OF BATH, SHEBA: A PASTORAL TRAGEDY.

THE news which one day reached Gabriel, that Bathsheba Everdene had left the neighborhood, had an influence upon him which might have surprised any one who never suspected that the more emphatic the renunciation the less absolute its character.

It may have been observed that there is no regular path for getting out of love as there is for getting in. Some people look upon marriage as a short cut that way, but it has been known to fail. Separation, which

was the means that chance offered to Gabriel Oak by Bathsheba's disappearance, though effectual with people of certain humors, is apt to idealize the removed object with others notably those whose affection, placid and regular as it may be, flows deep and long. Oak belonged to the eventempered order of humanity, and felt the secret fusion of himself in Bathsheba to be burning with a finer flame now that she was gone that was all.

His incipient friendship with her aunt had been nipped by the failure of his suit, and all that Oak learnt of Bathsheba's movements was done indirectly. It appeared that she had gone to a place called Weatherbury, more than twenty miles off, but in what capacity whether as a visitor, or permanently, he could not discover.

Gabriel had two dogs. George, the elder, exhibited an ebony-tipped nose, surrounded by a narrow margin of pink flesh, and a coat marked in random splotches approximating in color to white and slaty gray, but the gray, after years of sun and rain, had been scorched and washed out of the more prominent locks, leaving them of a reddish brown, as if the blue component of the gray had faded, like the indigo from the same kind of color in Turner's pictures. In substance, it had originally been hair, but long contact with sheep, seemed to be turning it by degrees into wool of a poor quality and staple.

This dog had originally belonged to a shepherd of inferior morals and dreadful temper, and the result was that George knew the exact degree of condemnation signified by cursing and

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1874.

swearing of all descriptions better than the wickedest old man in the neighborhood. Long experience had so precisely taught the animal the difference between such exclamations as "Come in!" and "Dye, come in!" that he knew to a hair's breadth the rate of trotting back from the ewes' tails that each call involved, if a staggerer with the sheep-crook was to be escaped. Though old, he was clever and trustworthy still.

The young dog, George's son, might possibly have been the image of his mother, for there was not much resemblance between him and George. He was learning the sheep-keeping business, so as to follow on at the flock when the other should die, but had got no further than the rudiments as yet still finding an insuperable difficulty in distinguishing between doing a thing well enough and doing it too well. So earnest and yet so wrong-headed was this young dog, (he had no name in particular, and answered with perfect readiness to any pleasant interjection), that if sent behind the flock to help them on, he did it so thoroughly that he would have chased them across the whole county with the greatest pleasure if not called off, or reminded when to stop by the example of old George.

Thus much for the dogs. On the farther side of Norcombe Hill was a chalk-pit, from which chalk had been drawn for generations, and spread over adjacent farms. Two hedges converged upon it in the form of a V, but without quite meeting. The narrow opening left, which was immediately over the brow of the pit, was protected by a rough railing.

One night, when Farmer Oak had returned to his house, believing there would be no further necessity for his attendance on the down, he called as usual to the dogs, previously to shutting them up in the outhouse till next morning. Only one responded

old George; the other could not be found, either in the house, lane, or garden. Gabriel then remembered that he had left the two dogs on the hill eating a dead lamb (a kind of meat he usually kept from them, except when other food ran short), and concluding that the young one had not finished his meal, he went in-doors to the luxury of a bed, which latterly he had only enjoyed on Sundays.

[No. 9.

It was a still, moist night. Just before dawn he was assisted in waking by the abnormal reverberation of familiar music. To the shepherd, the note of the sheep-bell, like the ticking of the clock to other people, is a chronic sound that only makes itself noticed by ceasing or altering in some unusual manner from the wellknown idle tinkle which signifies to the accustomed ear, however distant, that all is well in the fold. In the solemn calm of the awakening morn that note was heard by Gabriel, beating with unusual violence and rapidity. This exceptional ringing may be caused in two ways-by the rapid feeding of the sheep bearing the bell, as when the flock breaks into new pasture, which gives it an intermittent rapidity, or by the sheep starting off in a run, when the sound has a regular palpitation. The experienced ear of Oak knew the sound he now heard to be caused by the running of the flock with great velocity.

He jumped out of bed, dressed, and tore down the lane through a foggy dawn, and ascended the hill. The forward ewes were kept apart from those among which the fall of lambs would be later, there being two hundred of the latter class in Gabriel's flock. These two hundred seemed to have absolutely vanished from the hill. There were the fifty with their lambs, enclosed at the other end as he had left them, but the rest, forming the bulk of the flock, were nowhere. Gabriel called at the top of his voice the shepherd's call,

66

Ovey, ovey, ovey!' Not a single bleat. He went to the hedge a gap had been broken through it, and in the gap were the footprints of the sheep. Rather surprised to find them break fence at this season, yet putting it down instantly to their great fondness for ivy in winter-time, of which a great deal grew in the plantation, he followed through the hedge. They were not in the plantation. He called again: the valleys and farthest hills resounded as when the sailors invoked the lost Hylas on the Mysian shore; but no sheep. He passed through the trees and along the ridge of the hill. On the extreme summit, where the ends of the two converging hedges of which we have spoken were stopped short by meeting the brow of the chalk-pit, he saw the younger dog standing against

the sky dark and motionless as Napoleon at St. Helena.

A horrible conviction darted through Oak. With a sensation of bodily faintness he advanced: at one point the rails were broken through, and there he saw the footprints of his ewes. The dog came up, licked his band, and made signals implying that he expected some great reward for signal services rendered. Oak

looked over the precipice. The ewes lay dead at its foot- -a heap of two hundred mangled carcasses, representing in their condition just now at least two hundred more.

Oak was an intensely humane man: indeed, his humanity often tore in pieces any politic intentions of his bordering on strategy, and carried him on as by gravitation. A shadow in his life had always been that his flock ended in mutton-that a day came and found every shepherd an arrant traitor to his defenceless sheep. His first feeling now was one of pity for the untimely fate of these gentle ewes and their unborn lambs.

It was a second to remember another phase of the matter. The sheep were not insured. All the savings of a frugal life had been dispersed at a blow; his hopes of being an independent farmer were laid low-possibly forever. Gabriel's energies, patience, and industry had been so severely taxed during the years of his life between eighteen and eight-and-twenty, to reach his present stage of progress, that no more seemed to be left in him. He leant down upon a rail, and covered his face with his hands.

Stupors, however, do not last forever, and Farmer Oak recovered from his. It was as remarkable as it was characteristic that the one sentence he uttered was in thankfulness:

"Thank God I am not married: what would she have done in the poverty now coming upon me!"

a

Oak raised his head, and wondering what he could do, listlessly surveyed the scene. By the outer margin of the pit was an oval pond, and over it hung the attenuated skeleton of chrome-yellow moon, which had only a few days to last- the morning star dogging her on the right hand. The pool glittered like a dead man's eye, and as the world awoke a breeze blew, shaking and elongating the reflection of the moon without breaking it, and turning the image of the star to a phosphoric streak upon water. All this Oak saw and remembered.

the

As far as could be learnt it appeared that the poor young dog, still under the impression that since he was kept for running after sheep, the more he ran after them the better, had at the end of his meal off the dead lamb, which may have given him additional energy and spirits, collected all the ewes into a corner, driven the timid creatures through the hedge, across the upper field, and by main force of

worrying had given them momentum enough to break down a portion of the rotten railing, and so hurled them over the edge.

George's son had done his work so thoroughly that he was considered too good a workman to live, and was, in fact, taken and tragically shot at twelve o'clock that same day - another instance of the untoward fate which so often attends dogs and other philosophers who follow out a train of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and attempt perfectly consistent conduct in a world made up so largely of compromise.

Gabriel's farm had been stocked by a dealer — on the strength of Oak's promising look and character - who was receiving a percentage from the farmer till such time as the advance should be cleared off. Oak found that the value of stock, plant, and implements which were really his own would be about sufficient to pay his debts, leaving himself a free man with the clothes he stood up in, and nothing more.

(To be continued.)

YOUNG BROWN.

BOOK V.

CHAPTER I. (continued.)

HONEST Lord George, therefore, was sorely puzzled. He had many doubts about his brother, and thought it quite possible that he might have gone further than he intended before he had attained to such high fortunes. He saw him, interrogated him, and his answers were by no means calculated to set at rest suspicion. He prevaricated, cursed a little, and said he was very sorry he had ever been to Scotland, and "that it was all the fault of that canting old Majoribanks," with much to the same effect, which really meant nothing but that he was angry and alarmed. He was also suffering from some bruises about the face, which led up to the inference that he had been worsted in a standup fight with somebody.

Lord George, therefore, who was obstinate and pertinacious in his way, and quite incapable of countenancing any underhanded dealing, told his brother plainly that he would ferret out the truth, and that if there were two wives in the case, he (honest George" as they called him) would stand by the first.

Down he went therefore in a yellow postchaise-and-four to Wakefield-inthe-Marsh, travelling all night to do so, and throwing his Indian outfit money about right royally. He arrived at the "Chequers" at about four o'clock on a summer's morning, making a great rumpus: and at five he bad galloped away again, feeling convinced that there was nothing worth

further notice in that business but what money could set right, bad as it was. The woman who called herself Margaret Wyldwyl still persisted in her story; she was pretty, though apparently far advanced in a consumption, and she had an infant daughter. That was all which she could make clear. She showed a box too which bore his brother's cipher and the family coronet; but there was nothing in it, though she maintained in a confused sort of way that there was, but that it had a secret fastening which she could not find. Her sister, however, or, as she seemed to say, her foster-sister, one Mrs. Giles, the wife of a publican who had been butler to old Dick Porteous, evidently did not believe the girl's story. She said there could be no marriage without a parson, as she herself knew, having been married only after having been called three times in church.

So thought honest George, leaving her a check for £50 which he found next day sent back to his hotel without a word. But his conscience was now at peace. He had done what he could to clear up a mystery which startled him; had cleared it up, as he thought, and there was an end of it, otherwise no considerations of expediency would have kept him quiet while a wrong was being done. With his own interests he had done as he pleased; he had given them up rather than shame and misery should light on his brother, but he certainly would not have compromised the interests of others. The whole affair had long since passed from his memory, and General Lord Punjaub, Commander-inChief of her Majesty's forces in India, little thought that his smart aid-decamp, Cornet Brown, was the son of her whom he had seen as the shapeless infant which his brother's widowed wife had held in her arms on the summer morning when she wept to him in vain at the village inn.

CHAPTER II. PEACE.

By far the most precious gift which a young man can possess at the outset of his career in life is the faculty of attracting the good-will of those who are placed in authority over him. It is a natural and not an acquired gift. Possibly it may depend upon causes 100 subtle for verbal analysis, words being as yet but clumsy and imperfect instruments. Like all natural endowments, however, it is of a better and higher quality than any of those which we can win by our own efforts or prayers. It makes all the difference between success and failure in every profession. The men who rise rapidly, who attain distinction and honors at an age when they have a real value, are seldom clever; they are merely the men who are liked. Talent, and even genius, though useful to the world, has never been well received by it; nor is good conduct by any means popular. ~All