EDITOR'S TABLE.

WR

have sometimes taken occasion to

sny that the corruption in official places so prevalent in our country is not a crime peculiar to the United States, nor one due to democratic institutions. We are glad to find the New York Evening Post uttering similar views. Of course it was not our purpose, nor is it the purpose of our contemporary, to defend the malfeasances of our public men, or in any way to weaken the public detestation of crimes of this character. But so many people are prone to believe that Tammany rings and Crédits Mobiliers are special outcomes of democratic governments, and consequently to take an altogether gloomy view of the future of our country, that it is well to look into the records of other nations, and see if history justifies this opinion or these apprehensions. That peculation has been rife in Russia, the most monarchical of countries, is well known; it is also known that France under the despotic rule of the late Napoleon was really rotten to the core in all its political life. Great Britain, however, presents a very different picture; and that country lies so close to us socially and politically that the unhandsome contrast our public records exhibit causes, naturally, no little chagrin-many of us forgetting all the time bow different a story until recently the mother-country had to tell. The Post, in the article we have referred to, refreshes the memory of its readers with a few facts in evidence that political profligacy is not the offspring of popular institutions. Our readers will be glad to have us reproduce them :

"Walpole's habit of buying up members of Parliament, which gave rise to his famous maxim that 'every man has his price,' and which was so openly followed that his agents stood at the door of the House with bags of guineas in their hands to be given to the serviceable voters, is well known. But this shame, as May reports, was carried to greater perfection by Pelham, under George II., and was continued under George III. Lord Bute kept a special pay-office in the Treasury, where the members who supported his measures flocked for their rewards. Sometimes he distributed as much as a hundred thousand dollars in this way in a single day. His mode of raising loans was to assign a large part to the members at ten per cent. discount from the market price. Of one of these, amounting to fifteen million dollars, more than a million went to those who voted for it. . . . Lord Grenville was no less profuse in his gratuities and bribes, and so unrestrained that a gift to his supporters came to be regarded as 'a customary compliment.' Lord North's loan of sixty million dollars, to carry on the iniquitous and disastrous American War, was one-half of it assigned to the House at a profit of over four millions. . . . Another mode of securing votes was by the grant of lucrative contracts to members and their friends, by which the people were robbed and stupendous private

fortunes accumulated in the course of a few months.

"But the people who elected these members were just as corrupt as their representatives. Elections to Parliament were made either by boroughs, which were owned by certain noble lords, or by open sale in the market. Those members sent from the boroughs were the mere slaves of their patrons, voting with them always, or voting against them at the cost of their political lives. Those who succeeded by purchase were the slaves of others who advanced them the money. Popular elections were, in fact, not a conflict of principles, but a rivalry of great houses for the mastery. The Duke of Portland once spent forty thousand pounds in contesting a district, and Lord Spencer on another occasion spent seventy thousand. Contested elections have

been known to cost one hundred and fifty thousand pounds, which was all laid out, of course, in hiring editors and agents, and debauching the electors. The Nabob of Arcot, though a foreign prince, owned eight members of the House of Commons, and even so pare and virtuous a man as Sir Samuel Romilly bought a seat, as the only way in which an independent man, or a man of convictions, could attain influence in the councils of his country. "The practice is detestable,' he said,' but it is better than belonging to some great lord.' The price of seats ranged from two to ten thousand pounds. They were often bought on speculation, and the buyer expected to realize the purchase-money again out of the sale transactions, our Crédit Mobilier scandals sink of his votes. Compared with these flagitious into insignificance; even Tweed's efforts at 'statesmanship' dwindle into contempt; and the Canal and Indian rings, which fill us with horror, are Liliputian imitations of a Brobdingnagian model."

Every reader of history is familiar with these facts, but many readers of history are prone to forget them. It may be said that

that peculation in any of its forms would not dare to trifle with it. In some particulars our methods need reforming: the primary meeting and the caucus should be shorn of their powers, and the opportunities to do mischief must be brought down to their minimum; but these reforms of method will come, we may be assured, in due time, if the public feeling against public corruption, already well aroused, be strengthened and organized. If all those people who look upon our future so despairingly will take, in view of the lessons of history, a more hopeful survey of affairs-will but recognize that a little prolonged effort and struggle will assuredly in the end clean the Augean stables of our political life-we shall soon be able to make all the scandals of the day matters of by-gone history, just as the English have all the shameful doings of their Parliaments a generation or two ago.

THOSE who advocate phonetic spelling are accustomed to assert that the opposition to it comes almost exclusively from men past middle age. Youth is ever hospitable to new ideas, they affirm, while age becomes fixed in its ruts of habit and prejudice. What PT if this be true? Inasmuch as life and living, ti so far as we can measure them, consist solely of relation and association, why is it not only perfectly natural but absolutely necessary for our well-being that the associations out of which our existence is built up should be tenaciously held to? What sort of life would that be in which, day by day, every thing must be newly learned, and one's whole gar ner of impressions be ceaselessly undergoing metamorphosis and reconstruction?

Every one, no matter how firmly wedded to the established orthography, must admit that his dislike to changes in the spelling of words arises from long familiarity with them in their present guise. There is no fundamental reason, in most cases, why the forms of words should not take some other shape, and in many instances good reason why proposed alterations should be made. It is sim

these citations lose their force because the corruption they refer to belongs to a past period; that now, although parliamentary elections are by no means without stain, it is yet very rare that we hear of bribery in Parliament, or of official malfeasance of any kind. | But, in truth, if the appalling condition of affairs described in the extract from our contemporary has nearly ceased to be, this circumstance is full of consolations for us-it indicates what can be accomplished in the way of reform almost within the period of one sovereign's reign, and it shows that de-ply because one's eye has been long trained to mocracy cannot tend to a decay of probity, recognize words by a certain definite combiinasmuch as the great reforms in affairs in nation that a change is resented. While this Great Britain have come about at the very is all true, the assumption that this trainperiod when republican and liberal ideas haveing, this habit of mind, is some light thing been advancing, and while aristocracy has been losing something of its supremacy.

The change wrought in England has been really almost marvelous. There was a time when its better men doubted whether it would be possible for English society to survive the ourrent bribery and corruption; but the change came, and this fact ought to inspire all honest Americans with the assurance that it is possible to create a public sentiment which shall reach so thoroughly through all classes,

that could be and ought to be thrown off upon the first demand, is a serious mistake. Habit of mind makes up the existence of mind. Life consists of memories, associations, experiences, and impressions, all growing out of its relationship to the things about it. If mind have any fibre, any power of retention, any form of settled action, it cannot fall under the dominion of every new theory brought before it. If it were possible to live in a state of mental celibacy, with the mind

Lore

wholly unwedded and unrelated to its surprroundings, then a man could become a Turk

thes

those who find pleasure in the bustle and animation of Long Branch or Saratoga? He should see that, if everybody was in search of secluded and quiet farm-houses, he would have to pay very much more for his coveted privileges, and find in the thronged neighborhood resulting that his seclusion and quiet had both taken their places among the lost arts. Let each taste have its sway. Because a man likes his regular dinner and must have a spring-mattress to sleep upon, he needn't growl so fiercely at those who attain health and find amusement by roughing it in the Adirondacks. One may detest fishing, without setting down all who go a-fishing as so many fools. The bee finds honey often in the most unpromising flowers; and there are human natures capable of extracting pleasure from all kinds of conditions.

the pr by going to Constantinople, an Arab by a bear sojourn in the desert, a Celestial by a visit to Peking. It is, therefore, simply absurd to make the tenacity of one's habits a matter of reproach. It would be rather trying to one's comfort to be under the necessity of training the palate for new flavors at every dinner; or to find it necessary to undergo a distinctly new experience and adjustment every time a new garment is put on; and equally vexatious would it be to find in every new book strange and unknown combinations of letters. It is certain that the letter cis pretty nearly useless in the language, as it has, except in its connection with h (as in ch), always either the sound of k or of s. But a e day marz book printed with this letter omitted, kan alme English i Their Par ways turning up for can, sent for cent, and so on, would seem to everybody greatly disfigured. We are told that we should get used to changes of the kind. Not altogether. For many years now we in America have been printing color, and words of like termination, with

ggle

Augen

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from

reason

made

en long

n definite

ented. W

n that tis

omitted, but so tenacious are early impressions that to this day we, for our part, never see the word color without feeling that somehow all the color has been taken out of it. And "getting used to it" is no defense of a change in established usages. One might teach himself to become a Turk, or to get used to a Mongolian diet, or to like Carlyle's

English, or to undo all his sum of likings and dislikings, and take upon himself a new entity, as it were; but why should he do so? In some things he is compelled into new relationships-there is a gradual change going on in all organisms, in all mundane thingsand these inevitable changes are enough without any forcing processes.

If men grow with their years more and more tenacious of accustomed methods, this is only because experience has taught them the advantage of established forms. And if it has sometimes happened that men beyond middle age have too stubbornly resisted a new thought, an investigation into the facts would show, we are convinced, that the wise negative of advanced age has far more often saved ociety from injudicious novelties than it has

hecked genuine progress.

I we venture upon a word or two in reard to the summer vacations, it is not with e intention of assuming the self-appointed Bice of instructor and guide. It is always ficult to understand why there must be hibited so much irritation by those who

one kind of recreation against those bo have other ideas of enjoyment. Be

se one likes the seclusion and quiet of a -house in his summer rest, why must he Ok down with such lordly contempt upon

Now, if we were to follow the example of many of our contemporaries, and flower into advice, admonition, and instruction, in this matter of summer recreation, we should be tempted to apply the too-many-timesquoted advice of Punch on the marriage question, and say-don't! For, after all, are these summer vacations all that poets and newspaper correspondents from the wateringplaces assert them to be? Do people return from their vacations as refreshed as their hopes had promised and the theories of vacations had held forth? In many instances there is a great strain of exertion previous to a vacation in order to snatch from pressing business the time necessary for the planned expedition; and a corresponding excess of labor after the vacation is over in

of lasting fête. It is in human nature to weary of unbroken pleasure, just as it does of unbroken labor, while each derives a felicity from its contrast with the other. We may be sure, therefore, that he who succeeds in carrying his pleasures and his rests along parallel, as it were, with his duties who doesn't plunge into a month of holidays at one season, at the expense of excessive labor all the rest of the year -is really deriving from his recreations the best attainable results. This, however, is simply our view of the matter. As we said at the beginning, let each taste have its own course. We are content that men and women shall follow the bent of their minds; but if any of our readers deplore a necessity which excludes them from the watering-places and the long tour to the Adirondacks or the White Mountains, they may be assured that a vacation broken up into little episodes in the way we have suggested would not be without its ample rewards and its abundant charms.

THE English have always been a dining and wining people. Dr. Johnson's hearty "I like to dine, sir," was but the echo of a chorus of centuries of burly bons-vivants. Alfred's feasts were doubtless no less lusty, though it is to be hoped they were less scandalous, than those of "Gentleman George," at Carlton House. An English novel without the literary hospitality of a series of dinnerparties scattered through its pages would be a rash venture. Fancy Dickens's or Thackeray's stories without their feasts, solid and substantial, their jovial wine - passing and punch-drinking, their facetious, after-dinner speech - making! Imagine what even the plays of Shakespeare would be without the revels of Timon and Macbeth, of Sir John Falstaff and Sir Toby Belch, the gorgeous banquets of the Plantagenets, the merrymaking of the gay folk of the comedies! Of how many humorous English stories is the dinner-table the central scene! The English idea of hospitality is to hurry the guest to Pall Mall to dinner. If an Englishman dines you, it is because he wishes to do the right and proper thing by you, to honor your social credentials, to compliment at once the introducer and the introduced. If he asks you to breakfast, it is because he personally likes you. The two invitations may be compared to the kiss upon the forehead and the kiss upon the lips: the one means respect, the other affection. So it is that the English of all ranks and conditions, in every highway and by-way of life, smooth their path and speed their way with gastronomic lucubrations. When joint-stock company seals a large contract; when a father betrothes his daughter; when a son comes of age; when

order to bring up and adjust the business accumulated in the interim of pleasure. And a period of enforced idleness abruptly and sharply thrust into the routine of labor is apt to throw the pleasure-seeker off his bal. ance-be either attempts too much, and returns from his vacation exhausted and fagged, or, in a reaction from excessive application, becomes unnerved in wistful and uncertain idleness. In both of these cases each takes his tonic of rest and pleasure in too strong and condensed a dose. It would be better with each if the vacation had been distributed through the summer-season-a sail of two or three hours one day, a whole or a half day's fishing upon another occasion, an excursion to the sea-shore or to the mountains a third time, and so on. This division of one's pleasures would keep them always fresh and attractive; there would be no excessive fatigue, no weariness, none of the ennui which sometimes overtakes the pleasure-seeker in spite of himself. The recreation would be interwoven, as it were, with one's occupation—would give to each day or week its relish, and make of summer a sort

e to

the good-natured uncle or the adventurous brother goes for a journey; when a ship comes home laden with fortune; when statesmen meet for the session, or part for the grouseshooting; when dusky potentates visit the English shore; when "glorious Apollos "inaugurate their president; when a play is to be brought out; when a long - liugering, wealthy aunt dies at last, and leaves Jenkins her fortune-on all such occasions the English hasten to get their legs under the mahog. any, and discuss this or that event, leisurely and ruminatingly, over the walnuts and the wine. It is just at this midsummer period that the season of English dining reaches its

acme.

The lord-mayor, the ideal British host, is feasting the bishops and the ministers, worshipful companies of fishmongers, and the royal Arab from Zanzibar. Ere long Mr. Disraeli and his colleagues will discuss the victories and mishaps of the session, over whitebait and fine old crusted port, at Greenwich. The Star and Garter is the scene of perpetual revel, while in many a quaint old city tavern heavy men of moneyed interests are comparing notes with the aid of barons of beef and choice vintages. The fashionable season thus ends, as it began, with content

ing the lusty British palate, and warming

cockles of the British heart.

the world. The English law is as yet notoriously deficient in protecting the health and condition of the children of the manufacturing districts; and, unless more vigorous reforms are made, the prospect is that factorylabor will become more weak and more scarce, while the bill for parish relief will become a heavy burden to the tax-payer and a discour agement to the philanthropist.

Literary.

HE third volume of Mr. Bancroft's "Na

tive Races of the Pacific States" is devoted to myths and languages. It is not so interesting, perhaps, to the general reader as the earlier volumes, but it marks a new stage in Mr. Bancroft's great work, and deals with a higher order of phenomena. In it we pass the frontier which separates mankind from animal-kind, and enter the domain of the immaterial and supernatural; phenomena which philosophy purely positive cannot explain. We contemplate the Indian, not simply as a wild though intellectual animal, struggling with its environment, but as a human being, possessed of the faculty of speech, and groping after an explanation of the eternal mysteries of life, death, and futurity.

This volume shows the same patient in

dustry, the same affluence of materials, and

rather more than the literary skill of the two preceding ones. Mr. Bancroft seems to acquire self-confidence as he advances; facility has come by practice; and a certain crudeness of expression, which was noticeable in the opening volume, has now entirely vanished. Indeed, some of the chapters in the present volume are models of what compilation should be: the expositions are clear, the narrative animated, and the style picturesque and pleasing.

AN eminent Englishman of science reports, after careful investigation, that the physical stamina of the children employed in factories is steadily deteriorating. The number of those who are unfit to work on full time is increasing. This is attributed less to the hard labor these poor little creatures have to undergo than to the wretched habits of the factory operatives. Too early marriages, slovenliness, intemperance, want of proper open-air exercise, and the excessive use of tobacco, are noted as main causes of the deterioration. Whatever the causes, the fact is an alarming one. It is a serious question whether children should be allowed to engage in exhausting factory-labor at all-whethergy," the devotion to this hard work from an early period is not itself a prominent cause of the bad habits observed. But, if children are to be so employed, there is no doubt that their hours of labor should be limited; and a further duty is cast on the mill-owners. This is, to so look after the habits of their operatives that the children may have a chance of entering upon their cheerless life-work with tolerably good constitutions. In Germany parents are not allowed to derive any income from the labor of their children until they have had a thoroughly good schooling, and have grown wellnigh to manhood and womanhood; the consequence is, that Germany contains both the healthiest and most efficient race of laboring young men and women in

The first and larger part of the volume is assigned to "Myths"-under which general term Mr. Bancroft inoludes the various religions or cults of the Pacific tribes, their moral and political maxims, and their historical traditions and legends. All these are classified under "Creation Myths," or such as deal with the origin and end of things; "Physical Myths; 19 "Animal Mytholo"Gods, Supernatural Beings, and Worship; " and myths of the "Future State." The creation myths, like those of all barbarous or semi barbarous peoples, are strangely grotesque and puerile mal being represented as the creator in most of them. Some of them, however, indicate a dim perception of physical laws; and a few hint at the idea of a supernatural god operating through natural agencies. Mr. Baucroft has not attempted to classify these myths, and any description would be inadequate; so we will content ourselves with a single favorable specimen, taken from the traditions of the Southern California nations:

an ani

"Two great beings made the world, filled it with grass and trees, and gave form, life,

The Native Races of the Pacific States of North America. By Hubert Howe Bancroft. Volume III. Myths and Languages. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

and motion to the various animals that people land and sea. When this work was done, the elder Creator went up to heaven and left his brother alone upon the earth. The solitary god left below made to himself men-children, that he should not be utterly companionless. Fortunately, also, about this time, the moon came to that neighborhood; she was very fair in her delicate beauty, very kind-hearted, and she filled the place of a mother to the men-children that the god had created. She watched over them, and guarded them from all evil things of the night, standing at the door of their lodge. The children grew up very happily, laying great store by the love with which their guardians regarded them; but there came a day when their heart saddened, in which they began to notice that neither their god-creator nor their moon foster-mother gave them any longer undivided affection and care, but that instead the two great ones seemed to waste much precious love upon each other. The tall god began to steal out of their lodge at dusk, and spend the night-watches in the company of the whitehaired moon, who, on the other hand, did not seem on these occasions to pay such absorbing attention to her sentinel-duty as at other times The children grew sad at this, and bitter at the heart with a boyish jealousy. But worse was yet to come: one night they were awak ened by a querulous wailing in their lodge and the earliest dawn showed them a strang thing, which they afterward came to know was a new-born infant, lying in the doorway The god and the moon had eloped together. their Great One had returned to his place be yond the ether, and, that he might not be sep arated from his paramour, he had appointe her at the same time a lodge in the great fir mament, where she may yet be seen, with he gauzy robe and shining, silver hair, treadin celestial paths. The child left on the eart was a girl. She grew up very soft, ver bright, very beautiful, like her mother; bu like her mother also, oh, so fickle and frail She was the first of womankind, from her a other women descended, and from the moo and as the moon changes so they all chang say the philosophers of Los Angeles."

It will be seen from this that, however d fective they may be as cosmogonies, t myths of these native races are not destitu of poetry. In fact, a striking poetic unde tone pervades nearly all the myths whi attempt an explanation of physical pl nomena; in illustration of which we que the following pretty story of the Yosem nations, as to the origin of the names a present appearance of certain peaks and of er natural features of their valley:

"A certain Totokónula was once chief the people here; a mighty hunter and a go husbandman, his tribe never wanted food wh he attended to their welfare. But a chan came: while out hunting one day the you man met a spirit-maid, the guardian angel the valley, the beautiful Tisayac. She was as the dusky beauties of his tribe, but wh and fair, with rolling, yellow tresses, that over her shoulders like sunshine, and b eyes, with a light in them like the sky wh the sun goes down. White, cloud-like wi were folded behind her shoulders, and voice was sweeter than the song of birds; wonder the strong chief loved her with a and instant love. He reached toward her, the snowy wings lifted her above his sig and he stood again alone upon the dome, whe she had been.

"No more Totokónula led in the chase or heeded the crops in the valley; he wandered here and there like a man distraught, ever seeking that wonderful, shining vision that had made all else on earth stale and unprofitable in his sight. The land began to languish, missing the industrious, directing hand that had tended it so long; the pleasant garden became a wilderness where the drought laid waste, and the wild beast spoiled what was left, and taught his cubs to divide the prey. When the fair spirit returned at last to visit her valley, she wept to see the desolation, and she knelt upon the dome, praying to the Great Spirit for succor. God heard, and, stooping from his place, he clove the dome upon which she stood, and the granite was riven beneath her feet, and the melted snows of the Nevada rushed through the gorge, bearing fertility upon their cool bosom. A beautiful lake was ta formed between the cloven walls of the mountain, and a river issued from it to feed the valley forever. Then sang the birds as of old, slaving their bodies in the water, and the odor of flowers rose like a pleasant incense, and the trees put forth their buds, and the corn shot up to meet the sun and rustled when the breeze crept through the tall stalks.

"

Tisayac moved away as she had come, and none knew whither she went; but the people called the dome by her name, as it is indeed known to this day. After her departre, the chief returned from his weary quest, and, as he heard that the winged one had visited the valley, the old madness crept up into his eyes and entered, seven times worse than at the first, into his empty soul; he turned his back on the lodges of his people. His last act was to cut with his hunting-knife the outline of his face upon a lofty rock, so that if he never returned his memorial at least should remain with them forever. He never did return from that hopeless search, but the graven rock was called Totokónula, after his name, and it may still be seen, three thousand feet high, guarding the entrance of the beautiful Valley."

Poetry, however, is by no means the only nent in Indian mythology. Thick, black ds, portentous of evil, hang threateningly the savage during his entire life. Genii ur in the flowing river, in the rustling hes of trees are heard the breathings of gods, goblins dance in the vapory twi ht, and demons howl in the darkness. All these beings are hostile to man, and must be propitiated by gifts, and prayers, and sacrifices; and the religious worship of some of the tribes includes practices which are frightful in their atrocity. Here, for example, is a ite of sorcery as practised among the Hailahs, one of the northern nations:

"When the salmon-season is over, and the rovisions of winter have been stored away, asting and conjuring begin. The chiefho seems to be principal sorcerer, and indeed possess little authority save for his connecon with the preterhuman powers-goes off to de loneliest and wildest retreat he knows of can discover in the mountains or forest, d half starves himself there for some weeks, he is worked up to a frenzy of religious innity, and the nawloks-fearful beings of some nd not human consent to communicate ith him by voices or otherwise. During all is observance the chief is called taamish, and be to the unlucky Haidah who happens by lance so much as to look on him during its ntinuance! Even if the tramish do not in

stantly slay the intruder, his neighbors are certain to do so when the thing comes to their knowledge, and if the victim attempt to conceal the affair, or do not himself confess it, the most cruel tortures are added to his fate. At last the inspired demoniac returns to his village, naked save a bear-skin or a ragged blanket, with a chaplet on his head and a red band of alder-bark about his neck. He springs on the first person he meets, bites out and swallows one or more mouthfuls of the man's living flesh wherever he can fix his teeth, then rushes to another and another, repeating his revolting meal till he falls into a torpor from his sudden and half-masticated surfeit of flesh. For some days after this be lies in a kind of coma 'like an overgorged beast of prey,' as Dunn says; the same observer adding that his breath during that time is like an exhalation from the grave.' The victims of this ferocity dare not resist the bite of the taamish; on the contrary, they are sometimes willing to offer themselves to the ordeal, and are always proud of its scars."

Among the most interesting chapters in the volume are those in which Mr. Bancroft gives a detailed account of the old Mexican religion—one of the most elaborate and complex ecclesiastical systems that the records of mankind have to show. Religion, indeed, was the very basis of the Aztec state. The highpriest stood next in authority and honor to the king, and the king himself took no important step without first consulting the high-priests to learn whether the gods were favorable to the project. Some idea of the hold which their religion had gotten upon the life of the people may be gathered from the fact that the city of Mexico alone contained two thousand sacred edifices, and that the whole number throughout the empire was estimated at eighty thousand. Each temple had its complement of ministers to conduct and take part in the daily services, and of servants to attend to the cleansing, firing, and other menial offices. In the great temple at Mexico there were five thousand priests and attendants; the total number of the ecclesiastical host must therefore have been enormous. Clavigero places it at a million. The vast revenues needed for the support and repair of the temples, and for the maintenance of the immense army of priests that officiated in them, were derived from various sources. The greatest part was supplied from large tracts of land which were the property of the church, and were held by

ing in the great temple of Mexico alone. The most acceptable offering, however, to the Aztec divinities was human life, and without this no festival of any importance was complete. The number of human victims sacrificed annually in Mexico is not exactly known, but Zumarraga states that twenty thousand were sacrificed every year in the capital alone! That the number was very great we can readily believe when we read that from seventy to eighty thousand human beings were slaughtered at the inauguration of the temple of Huitzilopochtli, and a proportionately large number at other celebrations of the kind.

The section devoted to language, though more valuable to the anthropologist, perhaps, than any that has gone before it, is rather dry reading, consisting for the most part of vocabularies and grammatical analyses. Mr. Bancroft maintains that the American languages, while analogous in some few particulars to other families, constitute an entirely independent group, deserving to rank in importance with the Aryan and Semitic groups. While sufficiently related, however, to be classed in one family, there is an astonishing variety of different languages and dialects; and this has produced one of the distinctive peculiarities of the group:

"The multiplicity of tongues, even within comparatively narrow areas, rendered the adoption of some sort of universal language absolutely necessary. This international language in America is for the most part confined to gestures, and nowhere has gesture-language attained a higher degree of perfection than here; and, what is most remarkable, the same representations are employed from Alaska to Mexico, and even in South America. Thus each tribe has a certain gesture to indicate its name, which is understood by all others. A Flathead will make his tribe known by placing his hand upon his head; a Crow by imitating the flapping of the wings of a bird; & Nez Percé by pointing with his finger through his nose; and so on. Fire is generally indicated by blowing followed by a pretended warming of the hands; water, by a pretended scooping up and drinking; trade or exchange, by crossing the five fingers, a certain gesture being fixed for every thing necessary to carry on a conversation. Besides this natural gesture-language, there is found in various parts an intertribal jargon composed of words chosen to fit emergencies, from the speech of the several neighboring nations; the words being altered, if necessary, in construction or pronunciation to suit all."

ton; " Bulwer-Lytton's "Good-Night in the

Our notice, inadequate as it is, has already overrun the space which we had intended to occupy, and we may appropriately conclude it here with a quotation of the paragraph with which Mr. Bancroft concludes his book:

"He who carefully examines the myths and languages of the aboriginal nations inhabiting the Pacific States, cannot fail to be impressed with the similarity between them and the beliefs and tongues of mankind elsewhere. Here is the same insatiate thirst to know the unknowable, here are the same audacious attempts to tear asunder the veil, the same fashioning and peopling of worlds, laying out and circumscribing of celestial regions, and manufacturing and setting up, spiritually and materially, of creators, man and animal makers and rulers, everywhere manifest. Here is apparent what would seem to be the same inherent necessity for worship, for propitiation, for purification, or a cleansing from sin, for atonement and sacrifice, with all the symbols and paraphernalia of natural and artificial religion. In their speech the same grammatical constructions are seen with the usual variations in form and scope, in poverty and richness, which are found in nations, rude or uncultivated, everywhere. Little as we know of the beginning or end of things, we can but feel, as fresh facts are brought to light, and new comparisons made between the races and ages of the earth, that humanity, of whatsoever origin it may be or howsoever circumstanced, is formed on one model, and unfolds under the influence of one inspiration."

MR. JOHN B. BACHELDER disclaims for his "Popular Resorts and how to reach Them" that it is a guide-book, preferring to have it called a "6 gazetteer of pleasure-travel;" and though the distinction is rather obscure, we are quite willing to give him the benefit of it. If we were criticising the work as a guidebook, we should say that it was incomplete and badly arranged, and that it gave indications of a decided bias on the part of its author in favor of certain localities and particular lines of travel; but perhaps such criticism does not apply to what is only a gazetteer of pleasure-travel." The book contains a fairly good map, is profusely illustrated, and will very probably prove useful to any summer traveler in the New England or Middle States the popular resorts in other parts of the country receive but little attention. Before purchasing it, however, we would advise the reader to turn to the places which he proposes to visit and see what treatment is accorded them; for it is one of the peculiarities of the work that while some resorts are described fully and in detail, others, of apparently equal importance from the tourist's point of view, receive little more than a mention of their names. (John B. Bachelder, publisher, Boston.)

VOLUME XIV. of "Little Classics" (Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co.) consists of Lyrical Poems, and the contents are: Tennyson's "Locksley Hall," "Lotos-Eaters," and "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Welling.

"High-Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire;" William Motherwell's "Jeanie Morrison" and "Sword-Chant of Thorstein Raudi; " Robert Buchanan's "Langley Lane" and "Old Politician; " Longfellow's "My Lost Youth; Poe's "The Sleeper;" Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality;" Lowell's "Ode to Happiness," "Extreme Unction," and "Commemoration Ode;" Milton's "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," and "Lycidas; " Buchanan Read's "Drifting;" Thackeray's "End of the Play;" Gray's "Elegy written in a Country Churchyard;" Hood's " Bridge of Sighs;" Ralph Waldo Emerson's The Problem; "Robert Browning's "Rabbi Ben Ezra" and "How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix;" Pope's "Mes

siah; "" Dryden's "Alexander's Feast;

Collins's "The Passions;" Scott's "Bonnets of Bonnie Dundee ; " Campbell's "Lochiel's Warning;" Macaulay's "Naseby;" Whittier's "At Port Royal;" Mrs. Browning's "Mother and Poet;' "6 'Fontenoy," by Thomas Davis; "Nathan Hale," by Francis M. Finch; "The Bivouac of the Dead," by Theodore O'Hara; and " Home, wounded," by Sydney Dobell. This collection is excellent, as far as it goes; but our criticism upon the first volume of the poems applies here also. No one of the selections could be spared, but there are not enough of them to represent fairly the classical lyrics of English poetry.

In its notice of Tennyson's "Queen Mary," the Nation strikes upon one thought that we have not seen advanced elsewhere, and one that seems to us well worthy of attention: "It is plain that Tennyson has chosen his subject not merely because of its fitness for dramatic presentation, but because he felt that the lessons to be drawn from Queen Mary's reign needed to be pressed home upon the England of to-day. The subordination of English interests to the behests of Rome, the temper of the Roman Church, the quality of character fostered and developed by its teaching, the logical consequence of this teaching in the destruction of liberties and in fostering intolerance and persecution, were shown in Mary's brief reign of five years as in no other period of English history. In reading the signs of our times, it would not be surprising if Tennyson read with alarm signs of a renewal of Roman influence in English affairs, and of a revival of the authority of the Roman Church among the higher as well as the lower classes of the people. The conditions of culture and of opinion throughout Europe are such that the claims of the Roman Church, asserted as they have lately been with astonishing audacity, and pushed far enough to test the most elastic credulity, are admitted, with more or less intellectual reserve, by increasing numbers of men of weight in opinion and affairs. The Roman Church represents with a consistency to which no other church can lay claim the principle of authority in matters not merely of faith but of policy. The red-shirts of Paris, the skeptical philosophers of Germany, the modern school of scientific thinkers in Protestantism, are allies in driving a large set England, the feeblo aud confused sects of of men toward the gates if not within the walls and defenses of Rome. The love of mental repose and support, the desire to rest with absolute reliance upon a definite author

ity, are traits in many natures obviously inherited from a remote period. Few men can comfortably rely upon themselves; and the case now is such that a logically-minded man must either be content to fall back upon the reserves of his own intelligence or to haul down its flag and surrender his soul and life to the guidance, direction, and authority of the Roman Church. What this surrender and subjection mean is what Tennyson desires to bring home to the minds and to the hearts of his readers. He has no controversial purpose, but he has conceived of the reign of Mary Tudor as the time in which the principles and practices of the 'grim wolf' of Rome were most plainly displayed in England, and with terrible suffering and degradation, and loss of honor to the land. The history of these years reads itself to him into the drama, into the tragedy that he has written out-a tragedy with a whole people as its protagonist, and with the vast, vague, dreadful figure of the Scarlet Woman embodied in the miserable Mary for its heroine."

In the last number of Fors Clavigera Buskin favors his readers with another installment of his autobiographical confidences. He evidently does not recall his childhood with much pleasure, nor his parents, who were good and careful, but adhered too rigidly to the strict line of duty." Of his early training he says: My mother never gave me more to learn than she knew I could easily get learned, if I set myself honestly to work, by twelve o'clock. She never allowed any thing to disturb me when my task was set; if it was not said rightly by twelve o'clock, I was kept in till I knew it, and in general, even when Latin grammar came to supplement the Psalms, I was my own master for at least an hour before dinner at half-past one, and for the rest of the afternoon. My mother, herself finding her chief personal pleasure in her flowers, wa often planting or pruning beside me—at least if I chose to stay beside her. I never thought of doing any thing behind her back which would not have done before her face; and he presence was therefore no restraint to me but also no particular pleasure; for, from hav ing always been left so much alone, I had gen erally my own little affairs to see after; and on the whole, by the time I was seven year old, was already getting too independent mentally, even of my father and mother; and having nobody else to be dependent upon, be gan to lead a very small, perky, contented conceited, Cock-Robinson-Crusoe sort of lift in the central point which it appeared to m` (as it must naturally appear to geometria animals) that I occupied in the universe."

FEW books of recent times have receive such hearty and universal praise as Green "Short History of the English People Even Blackwood surrenders to it, and say that it is reduced to "the humiliation o being obliged to confess that we don't kno how to express ourselves about this history i ordinary words. It is simply the ideal histor which we have been looking for since ever knew what history was-the simple, straigh forward, rapid narrative, clear and strong an uninterrupted as a vigorous river, carrying yo on with it in an interest too genuine and re to leave you any time to think of stylewith a style which is perfectly adapted to t purpose, neither florid nor rigid, neither orn mental nor austere, but, far better than eithe unconscious, like the voice of a man who ha so much to say that he entirely forgets how h is saying it—a grand condition of natural ele