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The following day we returned to the Hermit's Island, and the next we went back to Berkley's, whence, the season being about over, we made our way to the hill-country of North Georgia to spend the summer in the pleasant valley of the Coosawattee, where the bass-fishing is the best that I know of in the world.

MAURICE THOMPSON.

FROM NEW YORK TO AS

THIS

PINWALL.

HIS summer a large propeller, carrying twenty-five passengers in the steerage and eighty or thereabout in the cabin, made a pleasant voyage from New York to Aspinwall, arriving (so uninterrupted was the journey) at the end of the nine days and a half allowed by the directors on shore for her passage.

To those who have been upon the sea, any record of such a trip might be but half interesting, but to those to whom the ocean seems mysterious and dreadful (it being far away), the slightest trifle respecting it or its belongings is entertaining reading.

There was a tall, broad-shouldered woman on board, dressed in many colors, but having the visage of a blacksmith, who had never seen the ocean nor a steamer before.

She sat upon a camp-chair upon the hurricane-deck for five hours, her wits steeped, drowned in the most bewildering astonishment. Nothing was comprehensible to her; she could not understand the use of a single belonging of the ship. She did not know enough even to ask questions; she was as incapable of understanding as a child would be if it were made seventy years old in a second. There may be many millions in the country as ignorant as she was, and many millions more who understand, but who have seen nothing; to any of these, as I have said before, any notes from any note-book of the sea may be interesting.

There were five stow-aways-that is, five wretches who were arraigned before the captain within the first hour out for trying to steal a passage. One admitted out and out that he tried" the game," and was d-d sorry that he had been ketched, for they wanted to see him up there (in New York) very bad! He tossed his misshapen head in the direction of the vanishing city, and, laughing, showed a full set of teeth, yellow with tobacco, but viciously strong in spite of it.

The old commander, flaming with indignation, ordered him into the pilot-house, a prisoner. The next man seized his cap from his head when his turn came, and shivered from head to foot. God knew he would work! he cried. They stopped him, and asked how much money he had. He acted "not a cent" by giving a deprecating look to all and by then sinking upon himself, growing shorter by an inch, and looking dragged and helpless in an instant. He also went to the pilot-house. The third was an awkward boy with a round, flushed face and a vacant eye.

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day, perpetually engaged with the elements, and wholly oblivious of man.

There was a short lady with short hair, an indifferent face, a pleasant smile, and a habit of ferreting for things not known to her. Before twenty-four hours had elapsed she had been in the steerage, in the fire-holes, and had gone through the captain's chartrack.

And he turned to walk toward the pilothouse before he was ordered to do so, apparently turning the matter over and over, She discovered that the steerage atmosand ruminating upon it. phere had no oxygen in it at six in the mornThe next was a neat, honest man, who, ing, and that people were often found sensetaking off his hat, bowed, and said:

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The last was another stupid boy-cold, frightened, and all abroad. He shook his head.

"I came with him, sir," indicating the last prisoner with a backward motion of his thumb.

"That's all right, but what's your idea in coming aboard a ship in this fashion? You have no clothing, no money, no object, no means to get beyond Aspinwall, where you'll die of fever. You should be glad that we found you, young man. Pilot-house!"

Half an hour later this reckless, unclean, and hungry crowd, having but one small bundle in the midst of it, crept down the black precipice of the steamer's side, and, scared by the foaming waves, and confused by the noise and violence of the wind, hung until the pilot-boat seemed safe beneath them, into which they dropped, one after the other, between the siftings of the ship!

All the steerage, reaching, noisy and motley, above the bulwarks, jeered furiously until the tossing boat was half a mile away, while the cabin, eighty strong, leaned over the rail, feeling a little shocked.

Among the eighty passengers were the usual rough bachelors who sang choruses after cocktails; the usual people who go to their state rooms at the port of exit, and never emerge until the destination is made; the group of ladies who, being alone, are subjects for talk; the aristocrats, cajoled for a few hours, but scorned thereafter with a sort of paper-scorn that always broke at a smile or a bow; the pitiables whom all pitied, and the more pitiable still, whom the pitiables pitied in their turn; and there were the common run of oddities, the intelligent woman, the silent man, the homely gentleman, the lady of the single dress, and the corps of old travelers (cool, steady persons, who got all things and all favors in spite of iron-like rules).

There was a madman who wore enormous shoes, who spoke to no one, yet who ate famously. He had a pile of manuscript in his state-room, and he added to it daily. He rolled twelve cigarettes each morning, and wandered bareheaded at all hours of the day and night all over the enormous deck, turning his face upward to the heavens in the evening, and downward at the waters in the

less in the lower "trays" (her name for their sleeping-quarters). In the fire-room, away down beneath the engines, she saw men shoveling coal without cessation for two hours in a temperature of 120° Fahr. In the captain's cabin she found that the ship would pass Hatteras in the night-"a blessing," she cried, in a little ecstasy, "without parallel!" "Yes, indeed," cried the other ladies (who knew nothing about it). On a bright afternoon, while the people were lolling upon the hurricane-deck with their novels, their tatting, and their ennui, this lady came aft, crying: "I have found out another of the pretensions of man! Neither the first, second, nor third officer knew the length in feet of a nautical mile, and the first only was at all sure that it was longer than the shore-mile. Two old exsea-captains had to be told, and, when the commander of this great vessel wakes up, I'll see if I can bring him down!" This catchand-go manner was very telling among the dull weight of people, and gossip stood gingerly aloof from her.

There was one of those children, the contemplation of whose futures, calculated from present conditions and projected fifty years, fill one with an uneasy awe. Her name was Moll; she was barely two, her skin was fair, her hair bright, glossy, and yellow, her forehead full (too full, in fact), and her little figure muscular and tireless. She could run like a deer, and, no matter how the vessel rolled, the little creature, with her eye on her object, would stagger, turn, climb up the deck, or plunge down the hill, as it happened, with a coolness that was astonishing. She was often shot out of her mother's state-room by the action of the ship, on her way to the deck, and would cruise among the long limbs of the negro waiters with great nonchalance, catching at this or that pantaloon just as the lurching of the ship made it convenient. Few places in the vessel were unknown to her. She often found her way into the horrible horde in the steerage, and she was a well-known habituée of the butcher and barber shops, and she often assisted the keeper of the wine-room in his endless duties. She could scream with a shrillness and a long-windedness that outdid the bo'sun's whistle, and her temper was at times intensely vixenish. Yet, in moments of peace, the spectacle of her little body, with its bright face and wild, golden hair, flinging itself here and there in a wild chase after some sight she ached to see, something near the engine-room, or down the cabin, or down the sky-light, where the cooking went on, or in the first-officer's room, where they made the reckoning, or aft when they went to throw the log, was spirited enough, and all the other children on board

sank out of notice, and did their tricks and played their games with insignificance.

The way to Aspinwall led the ship among the islands of the West Indies, and then across the fitful Caribbean - a sea whose temper blows hot and cold in the same ten minutes, and causes the watch to "oil up" and to keep a weather-eye.

To the already entrancing effects produced by the extraordinary hues of the sky, the sea, and by the shapes of the clouds, whose beauties had become more and more surprising each day since the ship quitted the latitude of Lower Florida, were now to be added the fresh colors of the land, tempered by an atmosphere whose pearly obscurity put the tints of sleep upon all things.

The passengers, rendered languid by heat and ennui, carried their chairs and their books to the port-side of the deck, and gave themselves up to dumb, wide-eyed gazing, saying little and thinking less. Even the "intelligent lady" was silent with the rest. There was a long island, whose yellow beach, ragged cliff of sand, and dense growth of tropic verdure, were materialistic enough for almost every eye, but then and there it became the most tender vision of a land-separated, suspended, half-breathing destiny, yet resting upon nothing. The water below it did not touch it or even meet its shore; it became a part of the nothingness. And so did the sky. The blue became an ineffable dream of blue. Behind it arose a white, medieval city of clouds-its mighty walls and its huge towers lifting themselves-shall I say it?— prayerfully toward the-above! All was in the midst of repose. Colors became halfcolors, lines faded, the noises of the water grew far off, the palm-trees mingled together, and the land, the sea, the sky, the clouds, buried in so much warmth and haze, seemed a dreamed revelation of heaver.

Cuba came into sight in early morning. There seemed to be a cliff only, and a green table-land, and a slender light-house. Every man on board gazed at it, and either said in substance, or acquiesced when it was said: "What a land of tragedies is that! treacherous does its quiet seem! Who would live upon it?"

How

Afterward, when the sun had dissipated the mists, and permitted the inland hills to be seen - hills that rose slowly to great heights-then the impulse was to pity Nature and to decry the beings that did so ill in plain sight of so much that suggested God. "It would be a good thing if some of the mountains flared up and overtook these mischief-makers."-" They have turned the island into a rat-pit."-"Is Spanish blood poison?"

And so on.

The American flag was perceived one day floating upon the top of an island of moderate size. Several people cheered and said, "It does one's heart good to see the stars and stripes, even after so short an absence from port," and they shook hands with effusion. Some one said, and it was true, that that was the only land covered by an American flag in the West Indies. And the Homely Gentleman said, also truthfully: "It is owned by a Baltimore company, and it is a

heap of guano. Speak to those patriots, some one, and tell them not to cheer so loudly."

The steamer sailed into the harbor of Aspinwall at between four and five o'clock on a Sabbath morning. The lofty hills and mountains, that almost surround the bay, were enveloped in the most delicate mists. And they assumed at that time a warm purple, while those of the farthest ranges were cooler and cooler as their distances were greater. The air was indescribably soft. It pressed upon the face with grateful coolness, yet it did not stir. The sky was without a cloud, intensely blue, and tranquillizing to look at. The town is built upon a small net-work of earth partly natural and partly manufactured, and behind it, that is, in the immediate rear of the second row of buildings, is an ugly swamp, out of which springs the rankest vegetation. The place has long since decayed; the people live upon what tarrying travelers choose to spend, and the few white people that are residents are invalids. From the water the place appears to be a neat, shaded hamlet with several white, two-storied buildings, with fine façades, many red-tiled houses, a number of broad sheds at the water-side, and it appears that all is finely interspersed with overhanging palms and oaks, and that the gardens are shaded with broadleaved bananas and mango-trees. Two or three ocean-steamers lay at anchor at that time, two or three consuls' flags hung languidly from their staffs, and it would have taken a sharp eye to detect any thing unprosperous or unclean about the spot. Indeed, the voyager looked forward with impatience to many strolls in the tree - arched lanes that he fancied, and he determined upon purchasing many mementoes of this retired and lovely spot.

But he barely reached the head of the pier when he beheld, to his astonishment, on the farther side of a hot railway-yard, one of the most unclean and wretched tenementhouses that it was his fortune ever to have

seen.

Its first story is full of shops.

This is the beginning of the main thoroughfare. It is not all so bad, yet it is bad enough. There is a quarter of a mile of shambling houses. Some of them are frame, some have two stories and balconies, but the greater part are twenty feet high and in advanced stages of decay. The shopkeeping interest is divided between German Jews and the natives. The former keep domestic and foreign goods, and their shops resemble somewhat the ordinary country-stores at home. The sale of the natural and spontaneous products of the land is turned over to the natives, who add to this simple and innocent manner of gaining an income the allurements of the true American bar.

When the ship's passengers were all turned free along this hot street, with their hands full of money, then every available inch of room was piled with fruit, shells, grasswork, and cages of paroquets.

The Jews came out to their doors, the clerks took off their hats, and Aspinwall made ready to receive its profits. But the people, dumb and staring, went on, with their parasols, to seek the city. They came to pools of begreened water filling whole squares,

and bordered here and there by huts of scantling, and by hen-coops half submerged in the horrible flood. The fowls and the people lived on raised floors, and a splashing board often led to land. A truly mag nificent bronze statue of Columbus, fine, both in conception and in execution, stood with its small fence upon the edge of a pool like this. The faces of the main figure and that of the statue of an Indian, whom the great man had aroused, were turned seaward; not committing, happily, the satire of gazing upon the effects of civilizing influence upon the new-found land. One hardly delays to examine the work, for the bad odors that arise from the green pond are overpowering. Farther on, in an arid field, is a fine and dignified memorial, with bronze medallions, to a few shrewd financiers who had dreamed that this spot was to be a great entrepot, and had urged people to spend a quantity of money upon a railroad. Travelers smile at the monument, and recall that in their lives they have never seen a failure possess so fine a gravestone.

A little farther still is a cool villa, occupied by a consul, and farther yet is a Gothic church, built of a fine brown-stone, opening its wide doors hospitably. A little way off the sea comes up in musical ripples upon a brown shore, and a few half-dressed boys patter about for shells, with an eye to the main chance, however. These few things, the half-dozen official houses, the two monuments, and the church, compose the best of Aspinwall. All the rest is degraded, ugly, and dangerous.

In the living-quarter of the place one sees more nakedness, uncleanliness, and squalor, than it is likely he ever dreamed of. Poverty, heat, refuse, indolence, and foul scents, are everywhere. Tenements, two stories high, soiled from their door-posts to the highest points a man can reach, stand in the mud, and show three black-brown heads at every window and door. Ducks, children, pigs, mingle together in the boiling puddles, and one goes by under a fire of chaff from the women who impudently line the way.

The people are short, and brown in color commonly, though now and then there is a black. The nationalities are sadly mixed, as they are in all the towns this way, there be ing a composite population of Jamaica negroes, Aztecs, and Peruvians. These, having intermarried, have produced a host of mongrel people, vicious in temper, devoid of intellect, and easily content to sleep or steal, as chance suggests.

They are not exactly stupid; but, on the other hand, it is impossible to say that they are worth a rush to the world, or to any interest in it.

As I said before, they are all concerned in getting money from the people who tarry in passing through the place on their way to Panama. Each passenger had half a dozen dollars to spend in purchasing the specialties of the place, and, after they bad impressed the physique of the town upon their minds, they lay about with full hands among the booths, and for a couple of hours the chaffer and dicker were a little spirited. The ladies of the cabin, in fresh muslins, every one, and

being looked upon as aristocrats, for the moment carried things with a high hand, and beat the natives down in their prices with a vengeance. They domineered over the whole town with infinite glee, and bought twopence worth. One would have fancied, from the amount of talk and disputation that went on, and that roused the echoes of the place like the noise of a dreadful combat, that the white wives and sweethearts were buying the natives out "stick, stock, and stone." They bought fruit very liberally, and numbers of baskets at thirty-five cents apiece. They ransacked the town for novelties, and, having found many, examined them, made all necessary inquiries, and said, "How strange!" and went off at ease. They entered with great spirit into the gossip of the place, and came away with many Indian family troubles on their minds to work out in the calm of the voyage on the other side of the isthmus.

The men did quite as well. The glasses at the bars gave out a prosperous tinkling all along the line of shops, and the perfume of the strange liquid of Angostura filled the air. They, too, purchased fruit and annoyed the shopkeepers, and it was not, until the honest spendthrift dogs remembered dinnertime that the sprinkle of dimes and halfdimes in Aspinwall came to an end.

But the passengers had done really one good stroke of business with the uninformed and miscalculating natives. They had bought large sums of silver dollars at eighty-five cents each with their greenbacks; and silver had been worth almost that in New York on the day they left. The quiet joy that always comes with a good achievement spread through the ship, and the jangle of money was heard everywhere as the proud possessors turned it gently over and over in their hands.

The Intelligent Lady heard of the bargains, and she said: "But instead of paying you in American dollars, which are worth, of course, one hundred cents, they have given you Peruvian dollars, which are reckoned at eighty only in San Francisco."

How many curious ways there are of getting square!

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But in some black chink and wee
Of some old fireside creep-
To sleep, and wake, and sleep,
By the great log's yellow glee,
And slowly find, no doubt,
All the family-secrets out.

"From the hearth-fire's viewless flail I can see the spark-chaff fly, Ere that ashy film and pale

Furs the embers by-and-by.
How much better taste have I
Than my relative, the Snail,

Toasting here, as fate appoints,
My extravagant hip-joints!

"Hear the clock's quick tick, above Even the bitter north-wind's roar; Hear old grandma, like a dove,

Coo her surreptitious snore; Hear the lovers laugh-and more, See the lovers making love! And hear the purr of that Tawny Sybarite, our cat!

"How I hearken, while I bask, To the hum the kettle makes! In his dull prosaic task

How much merriment he takes!
Ah, for me that kettle makes
All the nightingale I ask,

Except it be, mayhap,
The pine-log's bubbling sap!
"Why does Mary grow so pink
If she has not had a kiss?
It is fine, you lovers think,

To be making love like this.
Yet a pleasant blaze, I wis,
And a cozy little chink,

Bring quite as much content To the cricket temperament! "While the golden-rods, in seas,

Plume the lanes and dales with gold, While a glory smites the trees,

And the sumach-leaves burn bold,
In my longing heart. I hold
These, and pictures like to these,

Waiting days more bleak and drear,
That my fireside voice can cheer!

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WHE

bards they are, in the truest sense of the term-preserve a degree of beauty and power which affords a very high idea of what they are in the original.

The word "popular" is especially appropriate when applied to these poems, for they have all been made and preserved by the people at large. All through the dreary centu ries of Turkish oppression the fire of inspiration burned among the down-trodden Serbs with undiminished power. In lonely mountain-valleys, wherever they were secure from the brutal Janizary's wanton assaults, bands of men would meet, and recite or chant long, heroic poems, telling of noble deeds their ancestors had wrought in earlier days. Especially did they love to dwell on the valor and might of the great Servian prince Stephan Dushan, who subjugated all the neighboring provinces, overthrew the terrible Bulgarians, and forced the Greek Empire itself to sue humbly for peace. These poetic traditions of their former greatness helped to keep alive, through all their later degradation and misery, the spirit which burst out so fiercely in the first years of our century, winning and rewinning for the Servian people the liberty their ancestors had lost.

The Servian language, which comprehends, in its widest sense, the dialects of Servia proper, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Dalmatia, Montenegro, Slavonia, and part of Croatia, is by far the softest and most musical of the four great branches of Slavic speech. From the appearance of its words when written, it might not unnaturally be thought, notwithstanding the fact just mentioned, far from euphonious. But, when it is remembered that many apparently formidable combinatious occurring in such words really stand for simple sounds which we spell in a differ. ent way, a large proportion of the difficulty vanishes. For example, the seemingly unpronounceable term Rjekawicz merely represents what we would spell Reakavich. In fact, the Servian is a very harmonious language, while its softness in sound does not prevent its possessing an abundance of force and power. These lingual advantages have certainly contributed very much to the excel. lence of its popular poetry.

The history of that poetry is somewhat remarkable. Pieces of more than ordinary merit, being preserved orally through successive ages, had contributed to form a great unwritten collection, which the most skillful singers or rhapsodists," and especially the older men in each generation, were able to sing or recite at full length. In the mean time, although works on law, philosophy, rhetoric, theology, etc., had been produced by Servian scholars, of whom the number was not extremely small even in the days of Turkish tyr

the English poet Owen Meredith pub-anny, yet the treasures of their national poelished their volumes of professed translations of Servian popular poetry, the reason given, by those most competent to judge, for doubting the authenticity of both works was the fact that they are far below real Servian poetry in beauty, purity, and strength. And the high tribute to that poetry which this circumstance involves is by no means undeserved. Even in the diluted form of a translation the productions of the South-Slavic bards-for

try remained unwritten. Indeed, the very language in which they were clothed-the mod. ern Servian-was looked upon by the culti vated portion of the race with unqualified contempt, and considered unfit for any thing but conversations between "cowherds and swineherds." The dialect employed in all literary undertakings was the Old or Church Slavic, an ancient form of Servian which was used by the early fathers of the Greek Church.

Not until the beginning of the present century were any persistent efforts to rescue the true Servian language of to-day from its degraded position made by any one. And that such an effort was at last made and carried to a successful conclusion, in spite of a violent opposition, is due almost entirely to one man-Vuk Stephanowicz Karadshicz, or, as we would say, Wolf, Stephen's son, the Karadshian. Vuk, as he is commonly called, who was born in 1786, combated all the oldfashioned prejudices on this subject which prevailed among his Servian fellow-scholars with such energy and enthusiasm that he at last established the spoken language of his country in a position of honor and esteem. Having given the world an admirable Servian dictionary and grammar, as well as several other valuable works of a similar character, he next turned his attention to the poetry of his people. Some knowledge as to this field of hidden treasure had already been derived, in Western Europe, from a few specimens which an Italian traveler in Dalmatia had obtained from the Morlach mountaineers of that country. And Herder and Goethe, guided by their keen poetic instincts, had immediately given these fragments to their countrymen in a German dress, translating them from a French version of the traveler's Italian. But when Vuk, in 1815, published his first two volumes of Servian "poem-songs," gathered from the people, just as the brothers Grimm collected their famous German "Kinder- und Hausmärchen," the whole literary world of Europe was enthusiastic in their praise. Translations of the work, more or less complete, quickly appeared in the languages of various other countries, and the verdict in their favor was universal. Two more volumes soon followed those first published; and, though several similar works were afterward issued by different persons, Vuk's collection is still considered the best of all.

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Servian popular poetry is divided into two great classes: the shenske pjesme, or woman-songs," and the junachke pjesme, or "hero-songs." The woman-songs are so called because they are almost invariably made by women. They are usually short pieces, and are sung without any instrumental accompaniment. They relate to incidents of domestic life, and are nearly always characterized by a natural and very beautiful expression of feeling, unrestrained by conventionalities and untrammeled by the requirements of more polished verse. There is about them much the same pure, unconscious pathos, alternating with outbursts of unalloyed joyousness, that shows itself in a little child's laughter and tears. The love-songs are especially tender and poetical. One of these, given in Vuk's collection, has been very literally translated into English, as follows in part:

PARTING LOVERS.

"To white Buda, to white-castled Buda, Clings the vine-tree, cling the vine-tree branch

es.

Not the vine-tree is it with its branches;
No, it is a pair of faithful lovers.
From their early youth they were betrothed;
Now they are compelled to part, untimely.
One addressed the other at their parting:

Go, my dearest soul, and go straight forward. Thou wilt find a hedge-surrounded garden; Thou wilt find a rose-bush in the garden. Pluck a little branch from off the rose-bush, Place it on thy heart within thy bosom. Even as that red rose will be fading, Even so my heart, love, will be fading.'"

Regular rhymes are not a feature of these poems; but rhymes frequently occur, and the following short piece, turned into an English stanza partly in rhyme, will serve to illustrate such cases, as well as to show the arch humor which is often found in the woman-songs:

"ST. GEORGE'S DAY.

"To St. George's Day the maiden prayed:
'Com'st thou again, dear St. George's Day,
Find me not here, by my mother dear,
Or be it wed, or be it dead!
But, rather than dead, I would be wed.'"

Another song tells of two young lovers who, being forced apart by their parents, died at the same time, and were buried together:

"Little time had passed since they were buried; O'er the youth sprang up a verdant pine-tree, O'er the maid a bush with sweet red roses; Round the pine-tree winds itself the rose-bush, As the silk around a bunch of flowers."

But some of the woman-songs are in a very different vein. They take a thoroughly realistic view of marital relations, and indicate that in Servia, as elsewhere, husbands and wives are not always "married lovers." The following piece presents a comically exaggerated picture of a lady who, it is clear, has her own notions as to "the subjection of women: ??

HOUSEHOLD MATTERS.
"Come, companion, let us hurry,
That we may be early home,
For my mother-in-law is cross.
Only yestreen she accused me,
Said that I had beat my husband,
When, poor soul, I had not touched him,
Only bade him wash the dishes,
And he wouldn't wash the dishes;
Threw, then, at his head the pitcher,
Knocked a hole in head and pitcher.
For the head, I don't mind that much;
But I do care for the pitcher,
As I paid for it right dearly-
Paid for it with one wild-apple,
Yes, and a half of one besides it."

The hero-songs are true epics. They are made by men alone, are chanted rather than sung, and correspond very closely to the heroic poems of ancient Greece. Their subjects are frequently the great deeds of Servian kings and warriors. The victories of Tzar Stephan Dushan, the sad fate of Tzar Lazar on the bloody field of Kossovo, and other notable events in the mediæval history of Servia, form the themes of a large number; while some, of more modern origin, tell of that wild and stormy strife in which, led by Czerny George, the long-despised Servians extirpated the dreadful Janizaries, and hurled the Turkish and Bosnian armies out of their land. Others refer to the second modern struggle for liberty, when, under Prince Milosh, they won back nearly all the Turks had been enabled, by internal quarrels among the followers of Czerny George, to tear from the latter's grasp. Many, also, are about the deeds and sufferings of less-noted or of ficti

tious personages. But all show more or less of the same fire and force, the same boldness of fancy, combined with the greatest beauty and gracefulness in expression. Not a few contain images drawn from the old mythological and superstitious notions still half credited in the wildest mountain-districts-such fig ures as the Vjashtitzi, or veiled women, whose visits brought death and sorrow into households; or the Vila, a mountain fairy, somewhat like the German Rübezahl.

The most frequent singers of these heroic songs are old blind men, strikingly like our idea of Homer. One of these blind and aged bards, named Philip, sang before Tchupich, one of Czerny George's bravest captains, a stirring poem, composed by the singer, on the battle of Salash, where Tchupich had led his countrymen to victory over the Turks. Philip was then rewarded by the Servian soldier with a splendid white horse, of the noble Herzegovinian breed, just as the bards of the ancient heroes were repaid for their lays in honor of their patrons.

It is absolutely impossible to preserve even a fair degree of the grandeur and beauty of these heroic pieces in a mere transla tion, as any one may imagine who has compared Homer's own lines with those of his best translator. Yet it may be not entirely useless to present one or two short extracts even in this weakened shape. The following lines, in which ravens bring ominous tidings of the fierce battle of Mishar, must serve to exemplify the wild, free imagery with which they abound:

"Flying came a pair of coal-black ravens,
Far away from the broad field of Mishar,
Far from Shabatz, from the high white fortress;
Bloody were their beaks unto the eyelids,
Bloody were their talons to the ankles.
And they flew along the fertile Machva,
Waded swiftly through the billowy Drina,
Journeyed onward through high-honored Bosnia,
'Lighting down upon the hateful border,
Right within the accursed town of Vakup,
On the dwelling of the Captain Kulin;
'Lighting down, and croaking as they "lighted."

Another short extract may show, in some measure, the tenderness and delicacy which arc noticeable in the passages describing beautiful women:

"Never did a lovelier floweret blossom
Than the floweret in our own days blooming-
Haikuna, the lovely maiden-flower.
White her cheeks, but tinged with rosy blushes,
As if morning's beam had shone upon them,
Till that beam had reached its high meridian.
And her eyes were like two precious jewels;
And her flaxen braids were silken tassels;
And her teeth were pearls arranged in order;
White her bosom, like two snowy dovelets;
And her voice was like the dovelets' cooing,
And her smile was like the sunshine glowing."

Some Servian poets of a more artistic kind have appeared during the present cen tury. Their works give promise of very honorable achievements by their successors in a riper era; and some-such as the "Serbianka," an heroic poem by Milutinowicz-have been translated into several foreign tongues. But none of these more polished productions are comparable to the strictly popular poetry, and the latter undoubtedly marks the highest limit yet attained by the Servian muse.

W. W. CRANE

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EDITOR'S TABLE.

WE

"E are asked, in view of our recent comments on state interference, whether we do not believe the education of the people to be a great national advantage, and, this being true, whether it is not incumbent upon the state to exact of every citizen the education of his children.

We hope we have just as high an estimate of the importance of general education as that of the most zealous believer in compulsory attendance at schools. But are we to understand that, because a thing is of indisputable public advantage, therefore it is the business of the state to employ its power and its resources to bring it about? If this is the logic of our questioner, let us look into it a little and see what it means.

There can be no doubt that religious training transcends in importance every thing else. Not only is pious and moral living of the first consideration in regard to the welfare of people here, but also in regard to their welfare in the great unknown beyond this "bank and shoal of time." If because a thing is of universal importance government is entitled to interfere for its promotion, then the state must be permitted to enforce religious faith and pious living. Congress should under this view found churches even before it establishes schools.

Cleanliness is next to godliness. The moral and physical welfare of the whole people largely depends upon their habits of cleanliness and order. Foulness is not only an injury to him who indulges in it, but, inasmuch as it breeds sickness, and is the fruitful cause of epidemics, whoever is guilty endangers the life and health of all others. Clearly, then, as cleanliness intimately concerns the safety of all, the state may interfere to enforce it-not merely by punishing those who throw filth into the streets, or compelling those who live in close dens to undergo fumigation-which the state now attempts but by dictating how often we shall bathe, and compelling every one to wear a clean shirt. Under this rule the wretches in our streets, so foul with rags and filth, would disappear; but whether we are to submit to a general supervisory regulation as to our dress and personal habits, even to serve so excellent a consummation as this, may very well be questioned.

Temperance in both eating and drinking is indispensable to the general welfare. We know there are prohibition laws in some places in regard to the sale of liquor; but if we admit the principle that the public or general nature of a desired end sanctions the interposition of government, then the state may take upon itself not only to regulate the

sale of liquor, but to restrict excesses among cipation, which we should say sometimes is the people in eating and drinking.

Extravagance is another tremendous evil -an evil to those who indulge in it, and to the whole people as an example of waste and self-indulgence. It is no new notion in the philosophy of government that expenditure in apparel and display in jewels or other ornaments are matters legitimately within the | control of the state.

Where shall we stop? It is not easy, indeed, to find a limit to the duties of gov ernment, if we concede that, because a consummation is devoutly wished, therefore the power of the state should be stretched forth to enforce it.

are,

As to public education by the state, there it is true, a good many reasons to be urged in its defense. But no government can be in advance of its time in this particular. A general system of public education is only possible when the public sentiment is ripe for it; and when this is the case this public sentiment would be tolerably sure in good time to accomplish unaided all that the state would fain perform. Government has done so much to embarrass, restrict, confuse, mislead, arrest, and paralyze, that, even if it be true that it has done good in this one thing of public education, there still remains a formidable indictment against it for the evils of its interference; and so altogether we for our part prefer it should learn to keep its hands off.

THAT puzzling line in "Macbeth" which declares "that nothing is, but what is not," has a certain elucidation in the vagaries of the critical mind. There are always those who are enabled to discover the evil in every good thing; but, fortunately, there are also those who are ever equal to the task of discovering the good in every thing evil. Among the minor manifestations of human perversity, ugly fashions in dress might be supposed to have no defenders-that is, after they have ceased to be fashions. We all know with what eagerness ugly devices for the adornment, so called, of the human frame will be adopted, and with what enthu siasm they for a time are defended; but commonly ugly old fashions are without respect or honor. An English writer, however, has ingeniously found a defense for all fashions, ugly or otherwise. He thinks that a good paper might be written in defense of fashion as an agency of intellectual progress and as a safeguard against error and superstition. He is of the opinion that the wits who have wasted powder and shot on the subject of the changes of fashion are in truth advocates of a moral slavery much more detrimental than the wildest vagaries of change. He is confident that a new fashion is a work of eman

and sometimes is not the case; and he asserts that ten thousand current mistakes about men and things have been exploded by a mere alteration of dress, of form, of ceremony, of habit-all of which may be true, yet one sees it but vaguely. The main argument of this writer, however, is that women's beauty is altogether superior to the influences of adornment or disfigurement-that she, in fact, gives grace to rather than derives it from the arts of the milliner or the dress-maker. "In long skirts or short," we. are told, "in spare skirts or hoops, in bonnets mighty or imperceptible in size, mountainous or absolutely flat, the result is al ways the same-the native grace and charm make beautiful the fashion. The satirist is always prophesying that woman has spoilt herself at last, but presently she overmasters the change and is more lovely than before."

It is probably often true that the loveliness of woman cannot be extinguished by the unbecoming devices of fashion, but it is a bold thing to say that her native graces and charms do not suffer therefrom. If it were true that they did not, then becoming and unbecoming would be meaningless terms in the vocabulary of fashion; the art of contrast, of adjustment, of harmony of colors, of the relation of tints to the complexion, of form and proportion, would have no existThe fact is, that many fashions are so detestably ugly that only very beautiful women succeed in maintaining their grace and charm under the adverse conditions imposed upon them. Women sometimes retain their beauty despite the fashion, but it is only a truism to say that every one of them suffers more or less by the senseless decrees of the tyrant to whom each submits.

ence.

There is one noteworthy point to be deduced from the argument we have quoted. Ev. ery one has been surprised in looking back at old portraits, paintings, or engravings, at the many frightful fashions, under the dominion of which beauty seems to disappear altogether. Women with scant skirts, with their waists close under their armpits, and overshadowed by wide-spread sails called bonnets, impress one as fantastic caricatures. And yet these very women were admired, loved, fought for, worshiped, and won. It is not enough to say that their fashions of dress did not look absurd in the eyes of the cavaliers of the time. Why did they not? Because of the insensibility of the observers ? Not in the least; but because the native charms of the wearer, the flashing eye, the rising color of the cheek, the dazzling smile, the fascination of manner and voice-things which disappear from the painted image—all these were there to charm, to captivate, and to partially overcome the great drawback of

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