the soft side o' me poor mother, an' I was sint wud a sore heart over the hills to that little chapel, foreninst ye, on Christmas Eve, for to larn for to sarve the midnight

mass.

"Well, sir, Father Myles was the broth av a priest. He never thought av nothin' but the souls av the faithful departed, an' av the sinful meandherins av some av his flock; an' in regard o' dhrink he was cruel hard. Av he got the taste av a smell o' sperrits off av a boy, he was at him like a cock to a blackberry. He'd pick an' pick an' pick at him, until he wouldn't leave a fitther on him, an' ye'd do all sorts to get out av his claws.

"I wint up to the chapel, and he fairly bothered me wud et cum sperrit-tew tew oh, till I kem away wud an ass's load av Latin in my head, but all rowled up like a plate av stirabout, so that whin I had a Dominny' all right, av I was to be sint to Botany for it, I couldn't bowl out the vobiscum.

"Blur an' ages (says I), what'll I do at all at all? I must only thry an' bother him wud the bell."

Jerry paused, threw a sheep's eye at my flask, which I pretended not to perceive, and taking a prolonged pull at his dhudeen, continued

"Divil sich a night ever kem out av the sky, for snow. It bet all ye ever heerd tell av. The flakes was as big as hin's eggs, and there was a wind blowin' that wud tie the sthrings av yer brogues.

666

Yer not going for to sind the gossoon out sich a hard night?' says me poor father.

"There's no help for it,' says me mother.

66

"He'll be smuthered wud the cowld. Be sed be me, and let him stay where he is.'

66 6

Ile inust sarve midnight mass," says me mother. "There'll be no wan to hear it,' says me father, a little rough.

But Father Macmanus must say it,' says me mother. She got the betther av him, av coorse, an' I was sint out to crass that very hill, for we wor livin' below there in the bog."

That must have been a damp spot, Jerry," I interposed.

66

Damp, avic! It's betther nor half the year undher wather, an' the very snipes has the newralgy. It's only fit for a say gull, or a dispinsary dochthor."

A more dreary looking region I never beheld. Even in the bright summer sunlight it looked a dismal swamp.

"I had four good mile to put undher me," Jerry resumed, "four good mile, as bad as tin, for it was all up hill, an' I, only I knew the short cuts on me road as well as a crow, be me soul an' it's in the bottom av the lake here among the salmin bad cess to thim, why won't they take the illigant flies that yer anner is timpting thim wud — I'd be, as shure as there's a bill on a crow."

"It was tough work, yer anner, sthrugglin' agin' wind an' snow, an' I goin' entirely agin' me likin,' an' not a word av what Father Myles had discoorsed to me in the mornin' but was clane bet out o' me head. More nor twice't I was goin' for to turn back. but somethin' tould me to go on. There was a wake at Phil Dimpsy's, an' a dance at a sheebeen beyant Glendalough, but somethin' sed, go on, Jerry, yer wanted, an' on I wint, wud snow-balls as hard as marvels stickin' to me brogues."

66

By Jove, Jerry, if I had been in your place, I'd have left Father Macmanus in the lurch," said I.

"So ye wud, and that's just yer ignorance," retorted Jerry, in an offended tone. Av ye hear me out, ye'll see that I was in the right in purshuin' the path, but folly yer own way. Av ye don't like the story, ye can lave it, sir." A golliogue restored mutual confidence, and he resumed

"Whin I got up to the chapel, there wasn't a stim av light, an' I crept round to the vesthry doore, and knocked respectful like, but no answer. I knocked agin; no answer. I riz the latch, and pushed the doore, the last sod was burnin' out, an' there wasn't a bandful o' fire.

"He hasn't come yet,' says I to meself, so I'll humor the fire,' and I wint for to stir it, whin I felt me heart drop

into me brogues, and me hair fly up to the ceilin', for forenenst me stud Father Myles Macmanus, as white as if he was bein' waked, and lookin' quare an' murnful. He was in his vestmints reddy for his mass.

"I cudn't spake. Me tongue was that dhry in me throat, that ye cud have grated a lump av sugar on it. I comminced for to shake like a dog that's too long in the wather, an' I was that afeard that me stomik was saysick.

"He never sed a word, but kept lookin' at me, quare and murnful.

66

"I sthruggled wud a patther and avry; it gev me courage, for, sez I, afther a little, 'It's a terrible night, yer riverince.'

"Are ye reddy to sarve me mass?' says he, in a voice that mad me shiver, for it was as if it kem out av a nailed coffin.

"I'm reddy, yer riverince,' says I, 'but there's not a crayture stirrin'. I kem up the boreen, an' there wasn't a thrack.'

"Are ye reddy to sarve me mass?' says he agin, in the same awful voice.

"Will I light the althar, yer riverince,' says I. He sed nothin' to this, but waved me wud his hand for to go before him. Me knees was rattlin' together, like pays in a mug, but I lurched before him, out into the dark chapel, and it was as dark as the velvet on yer anner's collar, barrin' one little light, in th' althar, that med the place look like the bottom av the lake. An' now kem the fear on me that I cudn't ansur right, an' that I was av no more use nor that ould ram that's nibblin' over in th' island there; but it's truth I'm tellin' ye, from the minit he comminced, the whole av the risponsis kem to me as if they wor wrote in letters av light on the wall, and I sarved his mass as well as if I'd been in Maynooth Collidge for a quarther.

"Yer not a Catholic, Misther Bowles, an mebbe ye never heerd a mass, or was in a chapel nayther?' This was put interrogatively.

"I am not a Catholic, Jerry, but I have been in a Catholic church, and have heard mass more than once," I replied.

"I'm glad of it, for ye'll undherstand what I'm goin' to tell ye, sir. At the ind av the mass, when all is over, the priest comes down the step av th' althar, and comminces wud the Day Profundis or prayer for the dead. Well, sir, I was reddy wud me risponsis, whin he turns to me, an' he sez- oh murther, how I shake whin I pondher on thim words -sez he, 'Pray!' sez he, 'pray for the sowl av a dead man. Pray!' sez he, pray as ye hope to be saved. Let yer prayer be as white as the snow that's fallin' from heaven this blessed night.'

6

"I threw meself on the steps av th' althar, and prayed my best. I was found there the next mornin' by Tim O'Shaughnessy, who kem up to reddy the chapel for first

MR. GLADSTONE'S TRANSLATION OF HOMER'S SHIELD OF ACHILLES.

BY THE REV. T. H. L. LEARY, D. C. L.

IF ever there was an accomplished scholar whose genius was spoiled by a twist, Mr. Gladstone is that scholar. He has read and written much on the Homeric poems, but all that he has written on them unhappily bears the clear impress of the tortuous mind in which it has been moulded, and the essay that prefaces his metrical version of the Homeric Shield is no exception. Here, as elsewhere, Mr. Gladstone's besetting sin is a passion for theorizing, singularly impatient of research and singularly unsupported by fact. His mind, filled to the fullest and inspired only with its pet theory, turns to Homer, not to test the coinage of his active brain, but to give it currency. In his critical remarks on the Homeric Shield, Mr. Gladstone asserts that "legend does not enter into the representation of the shield," nor yet religion and he thinks himself "warranted in saying that the entire absence of tradition from the Homeric Shield not only accords with the recency of Greek national or quasi-national existence, but also with the belief that art had not yet become, so to speak, endemic in Greek." Had the poet been disposed from the exigencies of his aim to make legend the chief ornamentation of the shield, he could have most certainly found ample material for his purpose in the Greek legend of the War of the Seven Chieftains against Thebes, the voyage of the Greek Argo, and the family legends of the divine house of the god-like Achilles. The true account of the omission seems to be, not that of Mr. Gladstone, but that Homer and Virgil treated the shields of their respective heroes in simple consistency with the dominant principles of their respective epics. Patriotism was the key-note of the Eneid, and true to his patriotic aim Virgil emblazoned the shield of Æneas with the legendary lore of Rome and with the trophies and triumphs of the Roman race. mer, singing not of war and of warriors alone, and true only to the universality of his creative genius, consistently laid heaven and earth under tribute to glorify and beautify the shield of his hero, Achilles. Virgil singing to the Romans of war and his warrior (arma virumque cano) and of his country's glory, was simply consistent in limiting his ornaments to warlike subjects.

Ho

On this account one can only reject Mr. Gladstone's theory as untenable, and can accept only the former part of the old but clever criticis n of Lord Kames, who tells us half the truth when he observes that "the decorations of a dancingroom ought all of them to be gay. No picture is proper for a church but which has religion for its subject. Every ornament upon a shield should relate to war; and Virgil with great judgment confines the carving upon the shield of Eneas to the military history of the Romans. That bearing is overlooked by Homer, for the bulk of the sculpture on the Shield of Achilles is of the arts of peace in general, and of joy and festivity in particular." Nor is Mr. Gladstone altogether in harmony with the facts of the Homeric Shield when he affirms that legend is "entirely absent; "'forgetful, as he is, of the legendary "rich-haired Ariadne," and also "of Daidolos in Knossos," to say nothing of the legendary "Linus, who sang of yore.' Unaccountable indeed would it be to find a poet such as Homer, so devoted to legend, repudiating it in the ornamentation of a shield which is a very microcosm of his characteristic poetic

art.

Mr. Gladstone thinks, further, that the religious element is wanting, and that religious rites and observances are conspicuous by their absence, not only from the scenes depicted on the shield, but, even more startling still, from the Homeric poetry. But bere, as elsewhere in Homer, religion is interwoven with the whole texture of the narrative, and fashions and colors its every hue and form. A god (Vulcan) constructs the shield at the request of a goddess (Thetis) for the son (Achilles) of the goddess. It is made in the abode of the gods, and on it are depicted the divin

ities of earth and sea and heaven, "the unwearying sun," "and stars that

"Crown the blue vault every one; Pleiads, Hyads, strong Orion, Arctos, hight to boot the Wain." On it blaze, in blazon of gold, the divinities" Ares and Athene," leading the onset of the fiery fight. On it blaze the bright forms of the "sacred" banquet, and the figure of the sacred" minstrel. Is this an exclusion of religious rite and economy? Is there no allusion to sacred rite and ceremony in the "nuptial hymn as it peals long and -none in the "sacrificial feast" none in "the consecrated circle of the judges in synod," where Mr. Gladstone destroys by diluting the force of Homer's language by giving "venerable" for "sacred" or crated?

loud

66

conse

It is not in the time and tumults of a war such as Homer depicts that we should expect the most marked manifestations of the normal rites and ceremonies of the Hellenic cultus; but we see enough, and more than enough, in the Iliad to warrant the rejection of Mr. Gladstone's unaccountable theory respecting their absence from the Homeric poetry. Read we not of prayer, of sacrifice- both "great and standing institutions of religion; " of the burial rites of the dead; of the solemn procession of the Trojans to the shrine of the goddess Pallas at the bidding of the family priest Helenus; read we not of sacrifices to the manes of the departed heroes, of their souls flitting to the shades beneath? Is it not Apollo, the god, that sends and that takes away the pestilence, each time, too, at the bidding of his faithful priest, thus enforcing the power of prayer to Heaven? In this, as in all other Greek expeditions, is it not the prophetic priest (Chalcas) of the gods (the Mantis) that is made to guide the minds of men, to determine their designs, to shape their purposes, whether by flight of bird, by dream, by the sacrificial omen? Is not almost every line of the Homeric poem ablaze with the shining footprints of the gods, moving with majesty and might amidst the affairs of men, listening to their prayers, and at times punishing the sins of mortals? With such evidence of the all-pervading element of religion in the Iliad, it is in sooth the puzzle of all literary puzzles to understand Mr. Gladstone's assertion that not only are the observances of religion all but absent from the Homeric poems, but that "the observances of religion filled no large place in the Greek mind, even in the Homeric times," of which they are the truest transcripts.

The next theory of Mr. Gladstone is equally without foundation in fact. I give it in his own words: "Never was outward Fact so glorified by the Muse. Nowhere in poetry, to my knowledge, is there such an accumulation of incidents without crowding. The King is glad as he watches his reapers and his crop; but with this exception, there is hardly anywhere the description of a pure mental emotion. It is sometimes well to employ statistics in aid of criticism." On the contrary, to my mind most of the incidents and character of the shield are necessarily inspired with "pure mental emotion," charged as it is with so much of impassioned life in its most active forms, and appealing as it does so vividly to some of the most potent of human passions and sympathies. Now that Mr. Gladstone is here mistaken Mr. Gladstone is himself a practical proof, showing, as he does, in his verse, that the "pure mental emotion is not limited to the King "glad as he watches his reapers,' - for is there not pure mental emotion in the entrancement of the women, who, in the nuptial dance, Each one standing By their porches, gaze entranced?

"blithe of thought," who are made by Mr. Gladstone to express their mental emotion with unmistakable force :— They too, frisking, shouting, singing, Stamp the time upon the floor.

66

If a king who is "glad" is inspired with a "pure mental emotion" according to Mr. Gladstone, how can he deny a like emotion to the "smiling town," to women "entranced," to man and maid blithe of thought, who are actually described as overmastered by their pure mental emotion? Nor is this all. Mr. Gladstone's prose criticism as well as his poetry refutes his theory; as when he writes these very remarkable words, which he evidently had forgotten: "The spirit which pervades the action of the shield is therefore the spirit of joy: joy in movement, joy in repose; joy in peace, and joy in battle; anywhere and always joy." If gladness is a pure mental emotion " in Mr. Gladstone's eyes, may not "joy "be equally so? and granting this, may we not conclude that after all "a pure mental emotion," so far from being conspicuous by its absence, actually pervades the whole action of the shield? Incidentally it is to be noted that Mr. Gladstone lays very unnecessary stress on the comparative absence of epithet in describing the beauties and graces of the shield's ornamentation. The truth probably is that Homer here, as elsewhere, assumes the perfection of the qualities of what he describes, as he does in dealing with the personal loveliness of Helen, and the charms of Andromache, to whom he never once applies any epithet of beauty, though all his translators have filled in his outline with colors of their own.

"at

Mr. Gladstone can claim credit for little beyond good intentions as a translator. He has aimed, he tells us, great fidelity in a word, at the representation of Homer as he is." Now the metrical work before us sins chiefly in its want of fidelity to the original. The poet's hexameters move with dignity, with grace, with a measured music peculiarly their own that lingers in the heart as well as the ear; even as a marvellous melody that once heard is never forgotten. The metrical form here given as a substitute, if not as an equivalent, for Homer, is a Tate and Brady measure, neither dignified in diction nor sweet in cadence. Its metrical sins and poetical licenses are legion. Take for example they" ending one line, and "Brooked it not " beginning the next; "that" ending on one line, and "Crown" beginning another line.

46

It affects But the fault is not limited to metrical form. the archaic form of the language. A translator seeking to "represent Homer as he is" would have tried to reproduce the poet's characteristic alliteration and his play on words. For example, Homer tells us that "there arose a suit, for two men were suing each other;" that the men "were robed in robes of gold," a characteristic which totally disappears in every portion of this version. Some of the Homeric terms here find no expression at all, and as a setoff Mr. Gladstone presents words which have no warranty at all in the Greek; while in other cases he has clearly misconceived, and so misconstrued the mind of his author. He has drawn on his own imagination for the terms we have marked in italics: "firmly plies," "rare devices," "swarms of speaking men," with a host of other such interpolations. Then the Homeric term for "flashing" (literally with face-of-fire") is oddly rendered "swarthy." The Greek word for "with haste," or "without stopping," as applied to "the carrier lad," is here diluted and destroyed by the substitute "unwearied." For the more Homeric stately steer," we have "weighty ox," apparently written after a visit to a cattle-show.

66

In one passage Mr. Gladstone gives "harp" and in Again, we another passage "lyre" for the Greek term. have "honey sweet" as a translation, and rightly, of the Greek term which elsewhere is incorrectly rendered "luscious (fruitage). "Maidens grown of age to_wed" misses the delicate compliment paid to them by Homer, these maidens brought many oxen to their parwho says Here Lord ents, as presents from the many suitors. Derby, true to his instinctive perception even of the most delicate touches of the poet, well renders it "many-suit

MR. GLADSTONE.

There he wrought Earth, Sea, and Heaven,
There he set the unwearying Sun,
And the waxing Moon, and stars that
Crown the blue vault every one;
Pleiads, Hyads, strong Orion,
Arctos, hight to boot the Wain.
He upon Orion waiting,

Only he of all the train
Shunning still the baths of ocean,
Wheels and wheels his round again.

There he carved two goodly cities

Thick with swarms of speaking men.
Weddings were in one, and banquets,
Torches blazing overhead,
Nuptial hymns, and from their chambers
Brides about the city led.

Here to pipe and harp resounding
Young men wildly whirling danced;
While the women, each one standing
By their porches, gaze entranced.

There placed he two fair cities full of men :
In one were marriages and feasts; they led
The brides with flaming torches from their bowers,
Along the streets, with many a nuptial song;
There the young dancers whirled, and flutes and lyres
Gave forth their sounds, and women at the doors
Stood and admired.

It is impossible to compare these versions with Mr. Gladstone's without feeling, even without the charm of rhyme, how superior they are, as more true to the form and spirit of the original and more poetical in tone, reading as they do more like original poems.

We

ture; and though, like Giant Pope, he has grown so crazy and stiff in his joints that he can do little more than sit in his cave's mouth, yet still he grins at pilgrims as they go by, and bites his nails because he cannot come at them. This new book of his is little more than a series of infirm grins at the critics that misapprehend him, at the worn-out, leprous world that does not read his books, and at the slavish, wretched writers that do succeed in being read. are, personally, exceedingly well disposed towards Mr. Robert Buchanan; we have always regarded him as quite a gifted person in certain ways, and accordingly we have been afflicted, in reading "Master Spirits," to notice what an instrument this book will undoubtedly be in the hands of those ill-affected people that do not like Mr. Buchanan. For ourselves, we hardly know how to proceed; thistles are so tall and so prickly around the den of Giant Pope, and the very air, like that about the grave of Archilochos, is so full of hellebore and the poison of wasp stings, that a single step will embarrass us. The opening chapter of the book is intended to chastise and correct us at the outset. It is entitled "Criticism as one of the Fine Arts," and is so excessively inartistic, so languid, so commonplace, so diffuse, that it may be considered as showing on a small scale the internal anatomy of Mr. Buchanan's mind, -a mind gifted with some perception of the features of nature, some slight knowledge of men and books, and a profound ignorance of itself. That a book which consists of a string of unconnected, desultory, and prejudiced essays in infantile criticism should open with an article whose very aim is to show that criticism must be unbiased, artistic in form, complete, adult, is a curious fact in the intellectual development of the writer.

We shall not take the reader very carefully through the book. Having been doomed ourselves to its slow and complete perusal, we feel, in looking back, that to urge the task on others would be inhuman. Briefly, then, the second essay is a sort of fairy tale about Dickens, a spasmodic effort to say something startling about a writer, whom, being dead, Mr. Buchanan is willing to praise. It is not exactly stupid, it is not exactly clever, and Mr. Buchanan is never quite dull, but it is simply unimportant. The next -on Tennyson, De Musset, and Heine is worse than unimportant; it is positively shallow and misleading, being solely occupied with the laudable design of showing that De Musset was a sensualist and Heine a mocker, while Tennyson is the pure and spotless flower of the chivalry of English poetry. Very good; no doubt this is the first and most obvious side on which the three great lyrists display themselves; but we have had, unfortunately, the valuable distinction pointed out before, penny readings have rung with it, debating societies have prosed over it, and Mr. Buchanan need not have taken up thirty-five pages in telling us anything so excessively trite.

As the author is so desultory, perhaps we may be excused for making a digression. It was just at this point in our reading that we hit upon a new idea, and we cannot refrain from taking our readers into our confidence about it. It is our profound conviction that Mr. Buchanan is looking out for the poet-laureateship. We cannot sketch his attitude of mind, as it seems to reveal itself, in any politer form. We have had two Laureates who have uttered nothing base; one still walks among us, and may he do so for many decades yet! But Mr. Buchanan undoubtedly feels that it is as well to be ready for any emergency, and in lieu of the two terse lines of delicate eulogy which sufficed Tennyson in speaking of his dead predecessor, we have many pages of Mr. Buchanan's rather open flattery of his own still-living predecessor. It is wonderful that Mr. Buchanan, who is, we repeat, really a gifted person, should not have perceived that to pay so very many and so very heavily perfumed compliments to Mr. Tennyson was to overact his deftly chosen rôle. If Mr. Buchanan is to be the next Poet-Laureate, well and good; we need not moot the advisability of doing away with the office till the time comes. In the mean while the man who warmly praises none of his contemporaries should beware of making the present office-bearer his sole exception.

By far the best part of the book is a series of Scandinavian studies: the first on Danish poets; the second, much better done, on the Old Danish Ballads, with translations, which would have been quite excellent but for the characteristic omission of any reference to Dr. Prior's labors in the same direction; the third, on Björnstjerne Björnsen's great trilogy of “Sigurd Slembe," is the best paper in the book, eloquently and sympathetically written, and illustrated with exceedingly fine translations. With Mr. Buchanan's judgment of Björnsen's position in the literature of the North we do not quite coincide. It has always seemed to us that Ibsen is facile princeps among living Scandinavians. The fourth of these studies, on Danish ballad-romances, is not quite so well done.

The volume winds up with two chapters on two obscure British poets. Concerning the first, George Heath, after reading his writings and his deeply-pathetic diary, we find ourselves full of tender regret for the poor dying lad, crossed in love, broken in body, and wrapped round with dreariness and disconfort. It would have been sweet to amuse and comfort him; but now that he is dead, it is vain to try to persuade us that his verses had any real merit, save that of genuine desire after musical expression. They are much worse than David Gray's, of whom, by the way, we are told that he possessed "supreme poetic workmanship and a marvellous lyrical faculty," qualities that the author attempts to prove by quoting these words of Gray's:"In the distance calling,

The cuckoo answers, with a sovereign sound." Mr. Buchanan has evidently forgotten that a certain William Wordsworth wrote

"And the cuckoo's sovereign cry

Fills all the hollow of the sky."

As a matter of fact the "Luggie" was a work of much less promise than" Undertones." Personal bias may easily be pushed too far in either direction. The other obscure poet is even less known, but far more worthy. It was a positive delight to us to read something about the man who invented our old friend Willie Winkie, that enfant terrible who "rattles in an iron jug, wi' an iron spoon." Everybody has enjoyed Willie Winkie, but how many people know that his creator was a certain W. Miller, whose poems, as here largely quoted, seem to be all of the same tenderly humorous class? It is with something akin to remorse that we learn that this poet has lately died, in extreme penury, at Glasgow.

The end of Mr. Buchanan's book has almost made us forget the sins of the beginning, and we would lay down his critical motley as good humoredly as possible. But there are certain things in the book that it is difficult to forgive, and some things that one can hardly understand the publication of. Surely Mr. Buchanan's publisher cannot be aware of all that "Master Spirits" contains. He would undoubtedly have remonstrated against the indecency of talking of "Balaustion's Adventure" as a "mixing up of Euripides and water into a diluted tipple for groggy schoolmasters," and of an attack on Mr. Carlyle which charges him with the possession of "a heart so obtuse as never, in the long course of sixty years, to have felt one single pang for the distresses of man." Such writing is not "criticism treated as one of the Fine Arts."

FOREIGN NOTES.

Ir will be something of a relief to England to get the remains of Livingstone safely lodged in Westminster Abbey.

A CAPTAIN in the English navy has been informed by an experienced cannibal, that there is nothing so delicious as a little boy's ankle. This is rather severe on nice girl

MR. B. L. FARJEON, the author of " Blade-o'-Grass," etc., is rapidly winning a position all to himself— as the most tedious novelist that England has produced within the last hundred years.

A GREAT number of photographs of the Prince Imperial holding a flag strewed with golden bees, have been seized at a station in Paris by the French police. In France photographs show which way the wind blows.

A VIENNA journal contains the following advertisement: "Anna Agrikoi, sick nurse, watches dead bodies, repairs straw chairs, applies leeches, and makes pastry, desserts, and delicacies.' Mrs. Agrikoi, it would appear, is a rather handy lady.

A FRENCH periodical states that the sale of artificial eyes in Paris amounts to four hundred a week. The demand for artificial eyes is much greater than would commonly be supposed, and large numbers are exported to India, and even to the Sandwich Islands.

A LONDON daily journal tells of a man who "attempted to commit suicide, and died from his self-inflicted injuries a few hours afterwards." If such was the melancholy result of a mere attempt, what extraordinary ill would have befallen him had his effort been crowned with complete success?

LONDON has another illustrated weekly journal, the Pictorial World. Mr. Henry Blackburn, the author of "Artists and Arabs," "Normandy Picturesque," and several other clever books of travel, is the art editor of the Pictorial World, which is to give its readers etchings as well as wood-cuts.

A FRENCH astronomer gravely advises that, at the coming transit of Venus, astronomers should closely watch the planet, in the hope that the inhabitants thereof (if such there be), knowing the interesting conjunction, and guessing our interest in it, may strive to make their existence known to us by signalling.

FOUR women are decorated with the Order of the Légion d'Honneur, in France. They are Mme. Rosa Bonheur, the painter; Mme. Dubar, Lady Superior of the Sœurs de l'Espérance, at Nancy; Mile. Berthe Rocher, of Havre, who has founded hospitals and charitable institutions; and Lady Pigolt, who devoted herself to the service of the wounded by the war.

INTERNATIONAL literary amenities are pleasant to hear of. It is gratifying to learn, says the London Athenæum, that Messrs. Ifenry Holt & Co., of New York, have sent that admirable Russian novelist, M. Ivan Turguénieff, a letter, enclosing a thousand francs, in token of their appreciation of his writings, of which they are publishing a series of English translations. M. Turguénieff, it seems, not to be outdone in generosity, proposes to present Mr. Holt with an English version of a story which is to appear, in its original Russian, in the Album contributed by Russian literary men to the fund for the benefit of the faminestricken peasants of the Province of Samara.

A FACT by no means generally known is the tendency of domesticated plants to produce branches bearing foliage, flowers, or fruit strikingly dissimilar to that of the rest of the plant. In this way new varieties which are really valuable are obtained by horticulturists. In fact, the nectarine (which nevertheless comes true from seed) is reputed to have originated from the peach. New strains of color in flowers are often produced the parent strain "breaking," or "sporting," as it is called. Last year a pink Gloire de Dijon was obtained from a sport, and quite fately a russet-like apple was shown at the English Horticultural Society, which had been produced by a tree of the orange pearmain. The scarlet golden pippin is known in the same way to have been a sport from the golden pippin, and not to have been a seedling.

A ST. PETERSBURG correspondent writes: "While upon the subject of balls I may note that at the Winter Palace the other night the ball-room was lit by 5600 wax lights, and the whole suite of saloons and supper-rooms by 26,600. The exact number of persons who sat down to supper was 1950, and your readers may judge of the cost of the feast when I say that one dish, of which there was far

more than enough for all, was of exceedingly fine asparagus. Now, they tell me that asparagus in St. Petersburg, at this time of the year, for a supper of 2000 persons, could not possibly have been bought for less than four thousand roubles, or between five and six hundred pounds." Think of three thousand dollars' worth of asparagus for an evening party!

THE life of Charles Dickens teems with interest; his death gives a most salutary lesson. An eminent medical writer gives a short summary of the various shocks to the system of Dickens, which naturally weakened him and predisposed his frame to affliction, and gives the most conclusive evidence that paralysis, which ended the great littérateur's earthly career, was due almost exclusively to that very act of his life which drew admiring thousands to listen to the delineations in person of the leading characters of his published works. On leaving the platform after reading "Copperfield," so laborious, earnest, and pa hetic were the exertions made by Dickens, his whole soul being thrown into the work, that the pulsations of his heart numbered 96, being 24 in excess of the ordinary pulse, 72; after "Marigold," 99; "Sikes and Nancy," 118; "Oliver Twist," 124. Thus, while his audiences were rejoicing over talented histrionic display, the efforts of the reader himself were driving nails into his coffin.

THOSE Who esteem long life a blessing cannot do better than take up their quarters at Trebizond, in Asia Minor, where, according to the local paper, the Trebizond, there is at present living an old gentleman, by name Ahmed, who confesses to the respectable age of one hundred and thirtyeight, and is probably some years older. Ahmed is a native of Kerassound, but has lived for many years at Trebizond, and seems likely to continue living there indefinitely, for he enjoys excellent health and spirits, though he has long survived all his relations a fact which perhaps accounts in some measure for his light-heartedness. He has from his youth upwards been a strong advocate of bodily exercise as a preservative of health, and until quite lately has been in the habit of taking long "constitutionals" daily. Ahmed is not the only instance of remarkable longevity recorded by the Trebizond. Another old man has just died in the town of that name who had reached his one hundred and twenty-fifth year, and whose intellectual faculties were said to have been unimpaired until within a few days of his death. He was, however, considered a "mere chicken" compared with Ahmed, who is beyond a doubt "the oldest inhabitant of the parish," and commanded by age. as such inspires all the respect which is, or ought to be,

AMONG the recently-acquired autographs which are exhibited in the public rooms of the department of MSS. in the British Museum, there has been lately placed the original copy of verses by Lord Byron, entitled "Stanzas to Jessy," and beginning "There is a mystic thread of life." This piece, which was one of Byron's earliest poems, was written in 1807, in the poet's twentieth year. It was sent as a contribution to Monthly Literary Recreations, in which it is printed (Vol. III., 1808, p. 22). Byron's letter, in which he forwarded the verses to the publisher, is exhibited

along with them, and shows that they were offered with some diffidence, and considerable bad grammar. It is as follows:

"

Sir,

July 21st 1807

I have sent according to my promise some Stanzas for Literary Recreations" the Insertion I leave to the option of the Editors, they have never appeared before, I should wish to know, whether they are admitted, or not, & when the work will appear, as I am desirous of a Copy

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