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such a course might improve matters, and could hardly make them worse. It is "Matilda! I'm sick of telling you! Day after day, year after year, it's always the same thing! Why will you sweep the wall with your dress?"

Or, "Tilda, you have left every thing in disgraceful confusion on the writing-table; and how often am I to remind you not to stoop your shoulders!"

Of course this is mere nagging, but the moment 'Tilda retorts there is a squabble. Everybody pities poor 'Tilda, but, though she may deserve compassion, it must not be supposed she is blameless. Very few mothers are incurable naggers, and it takes two to squabble; so that if mademoiselle did not meet the maternal progs and digs with "Mamma, you are always at me! do try to leave me alone!" or, "I don't want to be improved; if you want to get rid of me don't bother all the color out of my cheeks, and all the flesh off my bones; and then perhaps I shall get married!" she would probably soon cure her parent of her failing, and find soft, motherly smiles succeeding to what a witty author has called " an eye like ma's to threaten and command."

We have all known people joined by the closest family ties who apparently spend their days in constant warfare, and yet, when parted, almost live on each other's letters; and if death has called one of such away, we have seen the survivor left far more inconsolable than many who have lived in a perpetual interchange of what may be called Count Fosco's sugar-plums. Then comes endless self-reproach, not only for harshness shown to the deceased, but for so much time worse than wasted which might have been made enjoyable by an harmonious intercourse now forever out of reach. There is something almost too tragic for the present occasion in the sublime words of George Eliot, yet we cannot resist quoting them as a precious warning to all squabblers:

"When Death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity."

It is at such times that the desire to reform others, and a praiseworthy wish not to be trodden upon-those two cloaks of self-deception under which squabblers are never tired of showing themselves-turn out to be only miserable masquerades which have all along been transparent to every eye but their own, and in fact no disguises at all.

What, then, is the real cause-good, bad, or indifferent-of this seemingly despicable and dreary habit? To adopt a familiar rule, nothing can lead us more truly to discover causes than an examination of the conditions of existence. For example, malignant fevers are most common where overcrowding, want of ventilation, and want of cleanliness, prevail: whence, it is a received opinion that these things produce fevers; so, if we ask where squabbling most flourishes, the answer will be in dull, isolated, vulgar, uneducated, or idle homes. Whoever heard of people who live in a whirl of refined society squabbling?

Now, why is this? Nature abhors a stagnation almost as much as she does a vacuum; and we believe she urges certain forlorn people to squabble, under various self-deceiving pretexts, with the real object of circulating their blood. Much in the same way does she perform the useful task of developing a baby's lungs by prompting it to roar for the moon; and these delusions are necessary, because, of course, neither babies nor their elders would adopt such troublesome methods as brawling and squalling merely for the good of their

free not,

From these idolatrous arms you shall be torn;

You are fated from my days to pass and be not, Like all of rare and fair they have ever worn! I am doomed, although the stealthy doom I see not;

I feast, albeit I die to-morrow morn!

health "if they knew it." Here, we suspect, Full soon, I know it, while they shall strain to lies the key to the whole mystery, and what conversation does for those who can converse, squabbling accomplishes for such as cannot; and this reminds us of the case of a young gentleman who for several weeks had inade himself very agreeable to a certain young lady, though not in the way of flirtation; and, as we have said our little say about squabbling, we will conclude this paper with the circumstance which brought their intimacy to a premature close. Well, they saw so much of each other that in time the young lady imprudently took to diverting herself by picking the young gentleman to pieces, or, in other words, by telling him to his face all the good! and bad she thought of him. After thus bantering on to a considerable extent, but with perfect impunity, she at last one day ventured to say:

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You or your love, you are fated soon to falter And vanish away, since here no sweet thing dwells;

No voice among blithe birds that take for psalter

The world at spring-tide, caroling what it tells;

No light, no flower, no moon that fails to alter,

No song, no mellow minglement of bells!

Yet, though you vanish, memory shall cling dust-like

To hours when your first kiss first met my mouth!

Though on loved lands the annulling snow lie crust-like,

Can we forget the old winds that blew from south? Forget the old green of lands where lingers rust-like

The dull disfeaturing leprosy of drouth? And I, in reverent and memorial manner,

Shall dream of you divinely and be stirred, As sad Arcadia dreams of how Diana Made silvery limbs and laughter seen or heard

As some rude crag-tower that wild grasses banner,

Dreams of how lit there a great white strange bird!

Yet, let me at least love Fortune while she blesses,

Nor vainly cavil at bliss because it flies; Let me not dim the sun with doubts and

guesses,

But pluck the flower-like day before it dies;

Catch the fleet hour by back-flung robe or tresses,

And plunge a long strong look in her sweet eyes!

But ah! the vanity of desire, when kneeling, We yearn for utterance that no god will teach!

When, at the finite bounded heart's appealing, An infinite boundless love evades its reach! When the waves of deep ungovernable feeling Dash powerless on the baffling gates of speech!

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How am I blest that have not met with scorning,

Yet walk where worthier feet might well have trod,

Being thrilled as earth at April's earliest warning,

Through amplitudes of winter - withered sod,

Or shadowy meadows when the feet of morning Are beautiful upon the hills of God!

The illimited love I bear you ever urges

My ardent soul through deeps of distance new,

While far aloof, where mind in spirit merges, Fresh deeps of distance ever rise to view, Like those dim lines that seem, o'er leagues of surges,

Bastions of mist below the vaulted blue!

Oh, for a hand its ruinous blows to dash on The expansive spirit's narrowing chains and bars!

Oh, for a voice that lordlier phrase might fashion

Than this cold human phrase, which frets and mars!

Oh, for a heart with room for all its passion, As hollow heaven has room for all her stars!

EDGAR FAWCETT.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

DURING the progress of the Beecher

trial, we refrained from uttering an opinion as to the guilt or innocence of the accused. Now that the legal trial is finished, we consider it our duty to form one of the great jury of the public, before whom the case now stands—a jury whose verdict is as important to the great interests of morality and justice as that of the twelve men before whom the trial was conducted.

The legal evidence of adultery by Mr. Beecher seems to be almost nothing. There probably never was a case of a similar nature so almost wholly empty of evidence directly supporting the accusation. In adultery suits there are very generally a great many facts educed that unmistakably indicate the illicit intercourse of the persons accused. They are seen together under suspicious circamstances; their correspondence gives evidence of their amours; it is even usually possible to show when and where the crime has been committed. In the Brooklyn trial there was almost nothing of this nature in the least entitled to credit. Mr. Beecher and Mrs. Tilton were once found together by Mr. Tilton, who describes the accused as being flushed in the face. This is a rather slight incident upon which to base so grave a charge as adultery. There was really nothing important educed in the long trial but certain letters, and the testimony of those who asserted that Mr. Beecher had declared his guilt to them. Now the testimony of these witnesses does not establish the fact that Mr. Beecher was confessing adultery; he did confess a wrong done to Mr. Tilton, but that the wrong was adultery there is nothing

whatever to show.

There is not the least legal evidence of the fact. The general public may construe the meaning to be this, or they may construe the meaning to be something else; but we cannot see how a jury bound down to the facts submitted to it has any authority to assume that utterances wholly vague and indefinite in character have a definite meaning. Mr. Beecher emphatically denies that he made any such confessions; and while the witnesses may have honestly assumed that his accusations against himself were of the sin of adultery, there is no abso lute evidence whatsoever that they were so. All this is also true of the much-talked-of letters of Mr. Beecher. That these letters show that the writer is very contrite for a certain wrong there is no denying; but there is no just ground for assuming that this wrong was adultery. The letters contain a great deal, indeed, that renders the theory of adultery wholly inadmissible.

It would be unjust under any circumstances to find a man guilty of a crime under such purely constructive evidence-by boldly declaring that utterances and circumstances wholly clear under one explanation must mean something more and something different; and assuredly the reputation of those connected with this case demands a fair and liberal interpretation of whatever is obscure, doubtful, or even suspicious in any of the facts elicited. It is assuredly a great deal easier to believe that Mr. Beecher is innocent of the crime of which he is accused, notwithstanding all the circumstances so industriously and ingeniously marshaled against him, than to believe a man of his character and standing could have fallen so low. Do those who believe him to be guilty fully realize what it is they affirm? They are not declaring simply that Mr. Beecher is an adulterer, but the most brazen-faced hypocrite in the land, and not only a hypocrite but an audacious perjurer-that he is wholly without truth, without conscience, without principle, without honor. But hypocrisy and perjury are simply parts and continuations of the crime, it is argued in some quarters. It is quite true that one crime leads to another; and ordinarily protestations of innocence are not of much value. But in this case the protestations have been made with so much solemnity, with such earnest directness, with such passionate and heart-wrung fervor, that if the man is really guilty then he is absolutely the most unprincipled wretch in Christendom. Any clergyman guilty of this sin, and who, while still declaring before God and man his innocence, could deliver such an address to his congregation as Mr. Beecher did a few nights after the close of the trial, would be a monster. The word is none too strong. No! Mr. Beecher's guilt under all these circumstances is inconceivable. No man

living, not a long and confirmed criminal, would be strong enough, nor his heart hard

enough, nor his conscience dead enough for such a crime. Mr. Beecher's situation has been often compared to that of the guilty clergyman in Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter." But Dimmesdale only concealed his sin; he was not a hypocrite, inasmuch as he did not continue in his sin, and he was overwhelmed with remorse; he did not preach a doctrine of morality that he did not accept and endeavor to act upon; and he never added falsehood or perjury to his offense. Fond as romance-writers are of depicting great crimes, it yet remains for a master of fiction to paint a character so atrociously wicked as Mr. Beecher is if the charge against him be true. We are asked by his accusers to believe too much. Confronting the whole mass of purely constructive evidence stands the character and life of the man-and these should outweigh every thing but very positive evidence of guilt. And not only does the man's but the woman's character fully deny the probability of the crime. In such a sin there must be not only a man who does violence to all right principles, but a woman who outrages her instincts, who proves false to husband, children, faith, and her long life of virtue. Mrs. Tilton with pathetic eloquence pleads her innocence; and she like Mr. Beecher is entitled to the benefit of every doubt that pertains to the question.

BUT, while we think that there is little or no direct evidence of Mr. Beecher's guilt, and can but assume under all the circumstances that he is innocent, we are far from being in sympathy with those social conditions and those emotional spasms out of which the sickening scandal arose. Mr. Beecher had no right to so conduct himself as to fall under suspicion. Next to the obligation of living an upright life is the duty of making that uprightness to appear, and of avoiding all conduct that might have a suspicious seeming. It is exacted of a woman that she shall not only be virtuous, but that her conduct shall be so circumspect and guarded that no one shall have occasion to call her virtue in question. No less than this is due from clergymen; no less, indeed, is possible with any man who would guard his reputation from stain and dishonor. Men whose ways are circumspect as well as upright never fall under suspicion. We may be quite sure of this. A man's worst enemy rarely finds it possible to circulate ill-reports of him in those things wherein his conduct has been wise as well as honorable; the slanderer usually ferrets out some weakness or takes advantage of some imprudence so as to give his tale a coloring of possibility. No one suspects the soldier who is notoriously brave of being a coward; no one dreams of charging dishonesty upon the merchant whose long life has been conspicuously just and honorable. There are lives of both men and

women that no breath of scandal ever dares to touch; and hence we may be assured that suspicion will not reach nor conspiracy trouble him whose goings and comings are wisely ordered. And, of all men, the goings and comings of a clergyman should be directed by caution and wisdom. As the world goes, prudence and discretion rank only just below the cardinal virtues. It is imperatively necessary that a leader and teacher of men shall be pure and upright; and it is also supremely necessary that a wise, calm, and superior judgment should control all his actions. In this view of the case, Mr. Beecher deserves the censure of all right-minded persons. Nor is this all. Not only has the conduct of this great preacher been censurable, but many of his utterances have been exceedingly mischievous. Men are to be kept in the paths of holiness solely by a ceaseless self-repression-by a firm control of all those emotions and sentiments which begin by captivating the imagination and end by subduing the heart and undermining the whole moral structure. There is no safety for that man or woman who has not elevated reason to the highest place-who has not brought all passions and emotions under the dominion of a cold and rigid judgment. But this affluent preacher gives the whole rein to emotion and fancy. Instead of teaching men to moderate their transports, he instructs them to indulge in frenzies of feeling; and out of paroxysms no permanent good ever has nor ever can come. These effusions of sentiment, so identified with a large class of people in our country; this substitution of rhetoric and exclamation for logic and close deduction; this parade of liberality, under which vices lose their name and righteousness forgets its hatred of evil; these extravagances of assertion and unctuous methods of expression that heat the blood and fire the brain-these, one and all, are hurtful instruments in the hands of a teacher. Paroxysm is a dangerous sort of firework in the social circle and in public places; no man is safe for himself, nor safe as a public guide, whose way of life is not wisely governed, and whose instructions are not directed by reason rather than emotion.

AN English writer speaks of the untidiness of Americans in dress. Is this true? There is something in it, we fear. The smart young men of the towns can scarcely be excelled anywhere either in elegance or tidiness; but we do not think there is quite so much shabbiness among the middle and lower classes in England as here. We must except the dowdy cockney woman, and note that harmony of color in female dress is not so well maintained there as it is with us in any class below the highest. But one notices, almost as soon as he puts foot in London, how much better dressed and more respectable looking are the omnibus and cab drivers

than ours. You see there no such ragged vagabonds as those that preside over our Broadway omnibuses. The railway-guards are always neatly attired, and so even are the porters. But, then, every thing about an English railway-station is orderly, and they are often rendered attractive by flowers cultivated on each border of the track. A compulsory commission of railway directors ought to be sent to England to study their railway-stations. In regard to attire, the English writer from whom we have quoted speaks of the American dress of " shady black, with a great deal of shirt-front not always of the cleanest." The shady black will be recognized by American readers as a by-gone style in the cities, but we believe it still maintains its sway in some of the smaller towns. The expanse of shirt-front, however, has still its adherents even in the towns, and, as it happens, is most often found among those whose avocations call for a compact and well-closed dress. Altogether we fear that the free and independent citizens of America are not as a whole well dressed, and that they can borrow of the "pauper laborers" abroad a lesson or two in neatness of attire.

ENGLISHMEN have been a little ashamed of their effusive hospitality to the shah last year, and are evidently not in the mood to be very demonstrative over any stray sable sovereigns who may happen to wander Londonward. That very respectable Arab, the Seyyid Burghash, of Zanzibar, has found scant welcome in the English capital. He was relegated to a fashionable West-End hotel, and quite unembarrassed by the perplexities of the shah, who found it so difficult to decide between the multitude of his invitations. The Seyyid has not even risen to the dignity of being a lion. Yet his dominions, if not so populous or powerful, are nearly as vast as those of the Persian monarch; and, personally, he is quite as estimable and well-mannered a gentleman. Were there any danger that, like the shah, he might become the ally of a rival, no doubt he would have been surfeited with reviews and routs, Guildhall banquets, displays of fleets, and palace-garden parties. But Burghash knows only too well that England holds his fate in her palm, and that it is only by conciliating her that he can hope to retain a crown that is any thing but secure on his Arabic head. He has a brother reigning over in Muscat who would be more than glad to unite the patrimonies of Saïd in his own person. Indeed, for some years the ruler of Zanzibar has been little more than the sceptred vassal of England. Her warships are ever stationed in his seas, looking after the slave-dhows on the east African coast, and his dominions are freely used for freedmen's settlements. When he signed the now famous treaty with Sir Bartle Frere he risked not only a lucrative source of unholy

commerce to his subjects, but even his life; for the dusky lords of his realm were not very secret in their threats of assassination. He went, therefore, to England rather to conciliate than to be petted; besides, a very laudable curiosity led him to desire to see the greatest of cities. That his visit will have the good result of still further impressing him with British power, and therefore of confrming him in his new policy against the most abominable traffic which the lust of gain ever inspired savage-hearted men to pursue, is heartily to be hoped. The doings of England on the east African coast are wholly beneficent, and should have the approbation and encouragement of the civilized world.

THE Saturday Review is afraid of the influence upon art of the present rage in England for pictures and articles of vertu. It says:

"It is impossible to contemplate without some alarm the consequences of a rush of rich people, without education, taste, or the capacity of appreciating any thing above the common level of a life given up to animal instincts and mere material aggrandizement, into the various fields of art and cultivated refinement. As it is, a deplorable impulse has been given to the demand for pictures suited to the capacity of persons who have no love for art, and whose only aim is to get talked about on account of what they buy. The same remark applies to the collections of china and pottery which are now being turned out all over the country, and the bulk of which is either spurious or in a bad style. All this may be a fine thing for the dealers, but it is very sad for the future of the aesthetic life of England. On every side we see art corrupted and debased, and the higher influences of social intercourse paralyzed by an inroad of ignorant people who scatter their money without knowledge or discretion, and for the sole purpose of vulgar ostentation."

But, while the immediate effect of the mania may be all that the Review describes, we may well believe that the influences under which this class are brought are sure to elevate them above" the common level of a life given up to animal instincts and mere material aggrandizement." It is odd indeed to find the Review in one breath denouncing the incursion of rich uncultivated people into the domain of art, and in the next speaking of their lives "given up to animal instincts and mere material aggrandizement." If, moreover, these people are to remain uncultivated under the experiences so bitterly deplored, where is that elevating and refining influence of art of which we hear so much? should judge that art, even if not elevating, is at least instructive; and men who blunder in buying pictures and pottery in the beginning would be very likely to learn something if they continued their expenditures in this direction. Exclusiveness takes many odd forms, but the exclusiveness that raves because uncultivated people give signs of developing out of their condition is certainly

We

a strange phase of human nature. It may be said to belong specially to English human

nature.

A LONDON cynic ventures the not very good-natured remark that the new Albemarle Club, which has just been opened for the reception of members of both sexes, has no reason of existence, the objects and virtue of clubs being to enable men to get away, for a peaceful hour here and there, from their wives. Certainly, men of this stamp will not be found at the Albemarle, whither they may be remorselessly pursued by their betterhalves. It is a curious and brave experiment; a sort of gentle social concession to the women's rights advocates; an olivebranch extended to the many ladies who complain of clubs as nurseries of anti-domestic habits in their husbands. Not only may paterfamilias drop in after a field night in the House, or a trip out of town, for his chop and the newspapers, but mamma and the girls may resort thither for a cream after the opera, or a gossip after the ball. Its results on the domesticity of the members have yet to be seen; they can hardly be otherwise, one would think, than injurious. The club will be one more attraction beyond the walls of home. It is better for one parent to be away nights than for both to be so; and it will take the world, with its pretty decided notions about the social proprieties, some time to be convinced, even by example, that clubs are proper places for ladies, or ladies the right sort of animate furniture for clubs. Nor can we conceive that the establishment of such a club will conciliate the true, homeloving wife and mother. She will not go to it herself, and will be likely to prefer that, if her husband must go to a club at all, he should go to the old-fashioned ones of Pall Mall, and not to a resort where he will meet ladies of the less retiring kind. Women's clubs, pure and simple, have not flourished in London; it remains to be seen how ladies will fare in one which ignores sex, and brings men and women together in a sort of manlike familiarity, which is certainly opposed to our previous ideas of English character.

lish, and very few translations of equal spirit and fidelity have appeared in English at all. It is no secret, we believe, that the little volume is the joint work of Rev. James Freeman Clarke, of Boston, and his daughter Lilian; and the translations carry with them the proof that they were a labor both of love and of leisure. Some of them were evidently made many years ago, and all of them are characterized by that finish and precision which indicate careful and leisurely work.

stantial argument? Are they not, moreover, | lightful.* No equally varied collection of
more and more liable to be tempted by con- the minor gems of German and French
siderations of personal convenience the long-lyrical poetry has hitherto appeared in Eng-
er they are kept in polite but stringent du-
rance? It is obvious that, in an agreement
reached by this compulsory method, votes
have been changed rather than opinions; and
a verdict of this kind does not really repre-
sent the opinions of the jury, and hence is an
untruthful and therefore valueless declara-
tion. It is clear, moreover, that a jury, es-
pecially in a case that has been long pro-
tracted, should be freely supplied with offi-
cial and duly authenticated reports of the
proceedings in full. The human memory is
frail, and in this way alone would the jury
have a full survey of the matters, often of
the deepest importance, on which they have
to decide" according to the law and the evi-

dence."

IN foreign criticisms of American affairs the disposition to take up some exceptional fact, and base thereon a sweeping censure or a bitter satire, is sometimes vexatious, but often amusing enough. Everybody on this side of the Atlantic, for instance, knows that the yearly exodus of visitors to Europe is prompted mainly by a desire to see historic places, to study the treasures of art, and to learn the ways of the different peoples. One would naturally assume these motives to be of a kind to win the respect of our foreign critics. The frequency with which they are asserted, the numberless occasions in which American writers urge upon our countrymen the necessity of the culture derived from European travel, can leave no observant person in doubt as to the American attitude on this subject. And yet some recent utterances by the New York Herald-utterances marked by its peculiar vein, which to some people would appear to sound like truth and earnestnesshave been seized upon abroad as representative of our ideas and expectations in regard to European travel. We do not go there to study and observe, it seems, but to proselytize. The army that every summer leaves our shores is not composed of students and pleasure-seekers, but of missionaries, whose purpose is to convert Europe to American ideas. Some people deplore the extent to which we are becoming Europeanized in our ideas by the contact of so many of our people with Old-World habits and institutions; and others croak over the great amount of money we are spending abroad; but small is the number, we imagine, who rejoice in the yearly exodus as a part of a great national scheme for converting Europe into the American way of seeing and doing things.

Ir is a question whether the policy of the law, in shutting up a jury, and keeping them in confinement for a long-protracted period, is really best calculated to further the ends of justice. When the jurymen retire to consult about their verdict, they are fresh from the evidence and the summing up of counsel; and, as it is not usual to grant them records and papers by which to refresh their memories, it would seem that their best recollection, and hence best judgment, would be that of the first hour or two. Suppose that they disagree; is not their confinement longer an encouragement for the more willful to exerHE title of "Exotics: Attempts to docise a pressure on the others—a pressure, mesticate Them," can hardly be retoo, by no means inspired always by sub-garded as happy, but the book itself is de

THE

Literary.

About two-thirds of the poems are taken from German sources, and the names of Goethe, Heine, Geibel, Rückert, and Tholuck, come up most frequently in the table of contents. The French authors represented are Victor Hugo, Ed. Pailleron, and Malherbe. To these are added a few translations from the Latin, chiefly of Horace; and the volume closes with remarkably spirited renditions of some of the aphorisms from the "Gulistan" of Saadi. All the poems are short, seldom filling more than one page; the longest and one of the best is Goethe's "Epilog in memory of Schiller.

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It is our intention to quote one or two of the poems-enough to enable the reader to catch the fragrance of these exotics, and to estimate whether the attempt to domesticate them has succeeded; but, before doing so, we must give a moment's attention to the preface, which is quite as good as any thing else in the book. It is very brief and sketchy, but it contains more wise and suggestive hints on the art of translating and the requisites of success in its practice than can be gathered from many an elaborate essay; hints which are the fruit at once of wide knowledge of what has been accomplished by others, and of personal experience and experiments. The allusions, similes, and illustrations, are particularly happy, as, for instance, this: "Most poetical translations resemble the reverse side of a piece of Gobelin tapestry. The figures and colors are there, but the charm is wanting. . . . A successful translation," he adds, "must produce in the reader unacquainted with the original the same sort of feeling which that conveys. The ideal of a translation would be one which, if the original were lost, would remain forever as immortal. Without any thought of it as a translation, it should give us so much pleasure in itself as to live a life of its own in literature. Is this impossible? We have some examples to prove that it can be done." For literal accuracy, Mr. Clarke evidently cares little. The essential spirit is the attraction of a poem, and, if that has evaporated, of what advantage is the residuum? The test-question of the success or failure of a translation might, he thinks, be this: "Can you recite your version aloud, in the presence of men of taste, so as to give them real pleasure?" If the poem is worth repeating aloud for its own sake, and gives satisfaction, that is enough.

Now for the promised quotations, the first

* Exotics: Attempts to domesticate Them. By J. F. C. and L. C. Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co.

of which shall be a little poem of Goethe's, which has been translated before, but never with such spirit:

"THE RULE WITH NO EXCEPTIONS.
"Tell me, friend, as you are bidden,
What is hardest to be hidden?
Fire is hard. The smoke betrays
Its place, by day-by night, its blaze.
I will tell, as I am bidden,
FIRE is hardest to be hidden.

"I will tell, as I am bidden!

LOVE is hardest to be hidden.
Do your best, you can't conceal it;
Actions, looks, and tones, reveal it.
I will tell, as I am bidden,
LOVE is hardest to be hidden.

"I will tell, as I am bidden'

POETRY cannot be hidden.

Fire may smoulder, love be dead;
But a poem must be read.
Song intoxicates the poet;
He will sing it, he will show it.

He must show it, he must sing it.
Tell the fellow then to bring it!
Though he knows you can't abide it,
"Tis impossible to hide it.

I will tell, as I am bidden,
POEMS never can be hidden."

It can hardly be necessary for us to say that the two following are from Heine:

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of ancient history from records which are contemporary, or nearly so, with the events narrated. These records have hitherto been published in such shape that the knowledge to be derived from them was confined to archæologists and philologists, and the object of the present series is to place them within reach of the ordinary historical student, who may thus perceive for himself the light which they throw on the manners and customs, the language, literature, and history of the earlier civilizations. Each volume is to be written by a scholar, who, in addition to his general acquirements, is known to have made a special study of the field which he undertakes to cover.

The first volume of the series has appeared, and was prepared by the well-known Egyptologist, Dr. Samuel Birch.* It is a complete history of Egypt, beginning with Mena or Menes, the first monarch of the country, and closing with the conquest by Alexander in B. c. 332. The narrative is based mainly on the monuments, but whatever light can be derived from customs, traditions, etc., including the speculations of the Greek historians, is freely used; and, notwithstanding several enormous gaps in the records, the narrative is the most complete and probably by far the most accurate that has yet been written. Nor is it on the historical side only that it is valuable. Much that is new is told concerning the customs, habits, religion, culture, industries, and forms of government of the ancient Egyptians; and the gradual changes by which foreign conquests, domestic incursions, and the constant intermixture with various nations produced the modern Egyptian, are clearly pointed out.

As an example of the additional knowledge which these recent researches have brought to us, we quote Dr. Birch's account of the building of the pyramids. The size, dimensions, solid contents, sepulchral. chambers, fancied astronomical relations, etc., of the pyramids, we have long been familiar with, but only lately has the principle of their construction been penetrated. It appears to have been the following:

The casing of each triangular face was then smoothed from the top or apex, the masons standing on the steps and hewing away the edges of each row of stones as they descended to the base. When finished, the faces were perfectly smooth, and the top inaccessible. Each of the casing-stones capped the other so as to leave no vertical joint. The principle of the pyramid combined the power of increase in size without alteration in form, and its sloping side carried off the occasional rainfall without allowing the water to penetrate the building. Simple in shape it was eternal in duration, and exhibited a perfect mathematical knowledge of the Square and the triangle."

All pyramids were not constructed exactly alike; the oldest one (that of Meydoum) is constructed with rubble and slanting walls; but the shape and mode of finish are substantially the same. The size of the pyramid depended in a great degree on the length of the king's reign; but it is evident that those monarchs who desired to excel their predecessors in the magnificence of their sepulchres would carry on the work on a large scale and in a more rapid man. ner, by the expenditure of greater riches, or by the oppression of corvées of forced labor, which has prevailed at all times in Egypt. Some idea of what these monuments cost the nation can be gathered from the lists of laborers employed on the great Pyramid of Cheops. The causeway for facilitating the transport of the stone was built by a corvée of one hundred thousand men, relieved every three months for ten years, or in all four million men; and twenty more years, at the rate of three hundred and sixty thousand, giving seven million more men, were employed on the pyramid itself. So much exhausted were the resources of Cheops that ridiculous stories were circulated about it among the people; and the monarch, on account of the hatred the work produced, was obliged to be buried in a subterranean chamber encircled by the water of the Nile.

A few illustrations, chiefly after the hieroglyphical drawings on the monuments, help the reader to an understanding of the text.

WHEN the plan of "Little Classics" was first published, we felt that Mr. Johnson had made a mistake in attaching a couple of volumes of poems as a kind of tender to his prose series. In the first place, there are more little classics in English poetry than in English prose; and, in the second place, while in the prose field he was almost without a competi tor, when he came to poetry his work would necessarily be brought into comparison with that of a dozen others, and his limitations as to space would preclude the possibility of his facing comparison with, for instance, Palgrave's in all ways admirable “Golden Treasury."

"Very early in the life of a king the surface of the limestone-work was leveled for the base, a shaft more or less inclined was sunk leading to a rectangular sepulchral chamber in the rock itself. The distance from the entrance of the shaft or gallery to the chamber was calculated at the distance the square base of the pyramid would cover so as to exceed and not be overlapped by it. If the king died during the year the work was finished at once, but should he have lived another year a second layer of masonry was placed on the substructure of the same square shape as the base, but smaller, with the sides parallel to those of the base. The process went on year after year, each layer being smaller than the previous. When the king died the work was The thirteenth volume of "Little Clasat once stopped, and the casing or outer sur-sics" is before us. It is entitled “Narrative face of the pyramid finished. This was effected by filling up the masonry with smaller stones of rectangular shape, so that the pyramid still presented a step-shaped appearance.

*Egypt from the Earliest Times to B. c. 300. By S. Birch, LL. D. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co.

Poems," and contains "The Deserted Village," by Oliver Goldsmith; "The Ancient Mariner," by Coleridge; "The Prisoner of Chillon," by Byron; "Bingen on the Rhine," by Mrs. Norton; "O'Connor's Child," by Thomas Campbell; "The Culprit Fay," by Joseph Rodman Drake; "The Sensitive

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