EDITOR'S TABLE.

WE

If,

ers charge them with. No man can recollect the time in this country when political abuse was not rank and ferocious, but many can recollect the time when political calumny found little justification in the facts. then, by persistent scandal, and satire, and denunciation, political life has grown worse -if the stream of calumny from the fountain has poisoned all the current below it is high time that we planned a remedy for the evil by going to the source. The unjust accusation and the calumnious innuendo are the evils that we ought to take up first in order, if we hope to get our politics back to a state of purity. Not that we should cease to make uncompromising warfare upon corruption wherever discovered, or for an instant abate the severity of punishment for all offenders; but in order that good men may assume public responsibility, we should punish those who wrongfully accuse as well as those who wrongfully do.

E see with regret that the peculiar weapons of the political newspapers have been borrowed by novelists and dramatists, who, under the pretext of serving public morals, cystallize into art the noisome scandals of the hour, and endeavor to create amusement by exaggerations that darken the shadows and distort the features of our political life. It is very certain that the elevation of politics is not to be secured by making fiction and the drama vehicles of coarse satire upon those who fill public places. It is of course very important and desirable that corruption, inefficiency, and vulgarity among officials should be held up for public scorn, but care must be taken how this is done, lest the purpose in view be defeated. While it is right enough to denounce, with all the force that language is capable of, the misdoings of public men, yet generalizations that assume a universal defection because of the iniquities of a few, are apt to be very hurtful. And it is just generalizations of this character that the novel, the satirical poem, and the drama, are prone to exhibit. These satirical delineations are written more to amuse than to awaken indignant judgment, and really debauch public taste and tone by familiarizing the people with pictures of successful effrontery and vulgar chicanery. There is but one way that literature can serve the cause of morals, and this is by awakening disgust for evil and setting examples for emulation. Pictures of depravity may be actually alluring, even while given in the name of virtue. If we laugh with a vulgar schemer, we half-way indorse his sinful ways; if we are amused by the devices of a rogue, we have almost lost our detestation of his roguery; and if we te h ourselves to believe that trickery and deceit characterize whole classes of men, we shall be prone to look upon these vices as necessary weapons in the warfare of the world.

heart, and not, as is now too often the case, to cause the idle laugh, to fill the imagination with unwholesome ideals, to undo all faith in human nature, to empty the mind of all feeling of respect or veneration, and to convey the secret conviction to the heart that all the world is fillse, and that success must be won by any means at hand, fair or foul. These productions are wholly offensive in an art sense and wholly injurious in a moral one; but if it were possible to have a really high-toned political novel, something devoted to other purposes than the delineation of the low, mean, and distasteful features of political life, we might hope to see substantial good effected thereby.

Just so long as political calumny is confined to the partisan press, we can do something toward restricting its influence, but if art and literature are to make common cause with the vulgar partisan, the public mind will soon be wholly demoralized. The partisan scandal is directed toward individuals, while the literary or dramatic characterization is made typical of a class. The picture we sometimes see in the novels and plays of the day, of a vulgar, ignorant, declamatory, and scheming Congressman, enters the public imagination as a sort of photograph of the whole class. People, no doubt, detest the picture a good deal at first, but they laugh at it a good deal more, and in the end cease to be concerned in the disreputable facts which it portrays. It may be asserted in defense that satirical pictures of vice have been common in all ages, but it cannot be shown, we think, that they have ever accomplished any good. If they have brought shame and confusion on a few individuals, they have more than balanced this good by an undermining of the public sense of evil-by substituting an attitude of derision and mirth for the high one of righteous anger. Literature and art are designed for intellectual enjoyment, but what intellectual pleasure can be derived from some of our recent political novels, which only serve to amuse those coarse minds that can laugh at extravagant and overdrawn pictures of depravity?

We believe it can be shown that political corruption in this country has steadily developed in almost an exact ratio with the increase of indiscriminate censure of public men. Originally scandal and loose accusation were principally the weapons of mendacious or hot-headed partisans. It was a sort of legitimate thing in political warfare to defame the character of an opponent to the utmost. The result was, that very soon a sort of natural selection began. Men of high tone and principle refused to be targets for indiscriminate dirt-throwing, and gradually gave place to those less sensitive and less scrupulous, until now in too many instances public office is filled by men who frankly accept the situation by practising all the roguery their accus

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Ir was perhaps in a wholly beneficent : spirit that our Park Commissioners furnished all the small town-parks with an abundance of 12 seats for the weary visitors to these green in-t closures. But, like many other charitable devices, the result has wofully defeated the good intentions of those kind-hearted gentlemen. The park-seats, instead of proving a feature of attractiveness, have been the means of rendering these public resorts unmitigated nuisances, so that ladies can no longer promenade or linger in them with any sense of security. The reason of this is that the seats draw to the parks nearly every idle and dirty vagabond of the town. Bleareyed and bloated topers, ragged and vicious tramps, soiled and untouchable wretches of all kinds, gather in these places, and stretch themselves upon the ever-ready seats-some of them sleeping off a debauch, and others closely watching every passer-by, as if with some malicious intent. A slightly better class-that is, a class just above begging and vagabondage-go there to smoke their rank pipes, to eject their filthy tobacco-juice right and left over the promenade, and to help to their full degree to render the places noisome and offensive. Of course there are many better people interspersed among these, but the vagabonds are quite numerous enough to render the parks just what we have asserted them to be-great nuisances to a large class who would otherwise like to enjoy them. Now, the remedy for this evil is to remove the free seats, and substitute therefor chairs at a small charge, after the custom generally adopted in Europe. The idea of perfect democracy in our public places is no doubt very fine in theory; although why it is specially democratic to provide free seats in a park more than free seats in au omnibus is not so clear; but, if free seats means loungingplaces for all the worthless wretches of the city, the parks have lost one essential democratic feature they have ceased to be places of resort for the whole people, inasmuch as the reputable class are practically excluded

It is possible to conceive of the political novel or play so written as to tend to the elevation of public taste-first, by being within itself high in tone and pure in art; and while by no means failing to denounce❘ evil or to make effrontery and vulgar portraiture ridiculous, so handling these themes as to awaken all the better impulses of the

EL

no pleasure-park in the world open to vehicles are carts or business-wagons admitted; hence, if it is right to make a distinction in vehicles, it would be right to make a distinction in persons, and to order the exclusion of every man who comes in rags or dirt, who makes a pool of tobacco-juice upon the pavement, who salutes the nostrils of unoffending citizens with the horrible aroma of a filthy pipe, or in any other way makes himself an object of abhorrence to decent folk. A park is a sort of public parlor, to which everybody is under obligation to come in decent apparel and in his best bebavior.

A very different picture in the particular we have dwelt upon is presented in most of the European parks. There the seats are usually chairs, which are furnished by attendants at a nominal price—a penny in England or a sou in Paris. This price, small as it is, serves to exclude vagabonds, and acts as a sort of natural selection in the class of people it brings to the parks, and is notably a means of extending the use of the grounds and of enhancing the pleasure of those who resort to them. When one thinks of the rowdies that congregate in Union Square or at Madison Park, and then recalls the charming domestic scenes he has witnessed in the gardens of the Luxembourg or at the ChampsElysées, he is ready to head a crusade against the New York outcomes of our democratic leniency. In the Paris parks one will often see a wife and husband seated in their chairs, with their little ones playing about them; the man will be reading to his spouse, and the woman will be engaged in some light bit of sewing or embroidery, while every now and then the little ones will come for a smile or a kiss. The picture is so calm, so restful, so domestic, so wholly felicitous, that the observer will be completely charmed by it, and will' wonder why our people have so little genius for extracting pleasure from conditions so simple. But let a family try this experiment here. In a few moments the immovable seats would be neighbored by some ogling toper, and the fair group would become the victims of vulgar laughter or ribald jests from all the assembled mob of rags and dissoluteness. Let us pull up our free and very detestable democratic seats in the Darks, and adopt some plan whereby these Pleasure-grounds may be made secure and

women,

If we had not already given so much space to a rather slight matter, we should endeavor to draw a political lesson from the subject-to show how even the mendicancy of a free seat in a park encourages idleness and dissoluteness, and that there can be no such thing as free bestowing without certain demoralizing results. The poor woman who pays her penny for her chair would be compensated by the dignity of proprietorship, the inward satisfaction that she was enjoying what she had earned and purchased, the knowledge that she was in reputable company; and all these satisfactions would be enhanced by the liberty of moving her chair to such positions or to such companionships as she might elect. However, all these deductions and arguments are certain to be of no avail; we run our governments here in the interest of the good-for-nothing, and hence the vagabonds are sure to remain. Perhaps, however, there might be a compromise-one portion of the parks with free seats, and another where one might have a chair and be at his ease at a safe distance from frowsy rags, tobacco spitters, pipesmokers, and all other forms of pleasureground plagues.

"There is no other civil or judicial service into which men are compelled but this. In the time of war the state can compel the service of her sons for her defense, if they do not volunteer; but a state of war is altogether an exceptional condition. In a condition of peace any compulsory service in the making or administration of law is essentially a hardship and an outrage. To be forced to compel this service is to acknowledge slavery to precedent, and confess to scantiness of resources. To force men unpaid, or only inadequately paid, into the service of the courts, to drag them away from their business or their families, imprison them under the charge of officers, and annoy them for days, or weeks, or months, as the case may be, with the details of affairs in which they have no interest whatever, is oppression, against which our people would have kicked long ago but for this hallucination about the sacredness of the jury-trial."

We most heartily concur with the opinion here expressed, and hope to see the time when this view of the question will become much more general. The theory that because A and B have quarreled over some idle matter, or on account of a little money, twelve men must be forcibly taken from their pursuits and be compelled to sacrifice their own personal interests, in order to determine the justice of the dispute, is an outrage which our contemporary does not character

arbitrary than the compulsion of military service during the time of war. For this the draft is resorted to only at the last extremity, and when drafted a man is not only privileged to send a substitute, but he is often aided in his efforts to obtain one. The compulsory feature is reduced to its minimum. But in jury-matters a man is not permitted to send a substitute; no matter how much his personal interests may suffer by the required service, he obtains no consideration on this account; sickness alone excuses him ; and these facts make jury-service one of the most arbitrary and oppressive things in the world. Think, as in the recent Brooklyn case, of men being forced to surrender nearly six months of their time in order to adjust a miserable scandal, and realize the atrocious injustice of the institution!

A remedy for the evil is not difficult to find. In cases of capital crime it may still be necessary to retain the system, removing from it, however, its compulsory feature, so far at least as to select for jurors those only who would not personally or in business suffer by the detention. In the immense range of other questions juries as now constituted are quite unnecessary. Men should be selected and paid for this service just as judges and other officers of the court are selected and remunerated; or all civil cases might be decided by benches of judges, just as appeal and many other classes of cases are now decided. The way to remedy the evil can easily be found just as soon as the public feeling is aroused against it, which has only been delayed because of the popular traditional ideas of the sacredness of the institution. No doubt the jury-system was originally all that is claimed for it. It was the barrier against the despotic mandates of kings; it interposed between authority and the people an important safeguard. But the conditions that rendered the jury so indispensable to the liberties of the people in former times have passed away, and it is now quite time that we employed some method suitable to the requirements of our present civilization.

In the first place, it is a settled thing with every Englishman that America is a fair and legitimate subject for his sneers and mendacious misrepresentations. In the next place, it is a settled thing with every Bostonian that New York is a fair and legitimate subject for his contempt and depreciation. Perhaps we deserve a good many of the sharp things that are said of us, not only in Bostou, but in other of the upright and model municipalities of the land; but then sometimes the sneer and the assertion are rather gratuitous. When, for instance, we find a Boston paper deploring the failure

here of Thomas's orchestral performances, and declaring that "New York has had the exquisite music of the most perfect band in the world lavished upon its dull, coarse ear in vain," indignation is smothered in surprise. But the accusation is so worded, however, that, if the asserted fact full to the ground, the rest is a very good but unintended compliment to us. What authority has this critic for saying that the "exquisite music of the most perfect band in the world " has been lavished upon our 66 dull, coarse ear" (" dull, coarse ear" is good and Bostonian) in vain? The fact is—but perhaps our amiable critic does not care for facts that uncomfortably jostle his theories-that this exquisite music" of Mr. Thomas's band has not lacked a full and remunerative following during this and all preceding sum

mers.

We say remunerative rather than appreciative, because evidently, with our " dull, coarse ears," it must be our money and not our tastes to which Mr. Thomas's success is to be attributed. However, there is something in employing our money in good directions, whatever may be the motive; and hence our Boston friend, in conceding that we have in New York "the most perfect band in the world," has only to discover that Mr. Thomas's success will keep him in our midst, to see how the facts give us praise, despite the efforts of our defamer.

THE

Literary.

HE most surprising of recent discoveries in natural history is unquestionably that of plants which possess the power not only to catch and destroy animal prey, but to digest and absorb its nutritive elements by a process analogous in all respects to that which goes on in the human stomach. Several monographs on the subject have appeared both in this country and in England during the past year or two, and we in our science department, as well as the scientific journals, have made the leading facts familiar to the public, but Mr. Darwin's "Insectivorous Plants" is the first systematic and authoritative exposition of the matter, and, as is customary with that author, it is thorough and exhaustive.

The greater portion of Mr. Darwin's observations are devoted to the Drosera rotundiflora, popularly called "sun-dew," which grows wild in many parts of England, and which belongs to the family of Droseraceæ, which includes upward of one hundred species, ranging in the Old Word from the arctic regions to Southern India, the Cape of Good Hope, Madagascar, and Australia, and in the New World from Canada to Tierra del Fuego. His attention was first drawn to it in the summer of 1860 by finding how large a number of insects were caught by its leaves on a

Insectivorous Plants. By Charles Darwin, M. A., .F. R. S. With Illustrations. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

heath in Sussex, and, believing that this could hardly be attributable to accident, he forthwith began an elaborate series of experiments, the results of which are given in detail in the present work. "These results have proved highly remarkable, the more important ones being first, the extraordinary sensitiveness of the glands to slight pressure and to minute doses of certain nitrogenous fluids, as shown in the movements of the sopossessed by the leaves of rendering soluble called hairs or tentacles; secondly, the power

or digesting nitrogenous substances, and of afterward absorbing them; thirdly, the changes which take place within the cells of the tentacles when the glands are excited in various ways."

The plant has been frequently described in the various scientific journals, but it may be well, before proceeding further, to refresh the reader's memory with a description of it. It bears from two or three to five or six leaves, generally extended more or less horizontally, but sometimes standing vertically upward. The leaves are commonly u little broader than long. The whole upper surface is covered with gland - bearing filaments, or tentacles," as Mr. Darwin calls them, from their manner of acting. The glands were counted on thirty-one leaves, and the average number to a leaf was one hundred and ninety-two; the greatest number being two hundred and sixty, and the least one hundred and thirty. Each gland is surrounded by large drops of an extremely viscid secretion, which, glittering in the sun, have given rise to the plant's poetical name of the "sun-dew.". A tentacle consists of a thin, straight, hair-like pedicel, carrying a gland on the summit. The tentacles on the central part of the leaf are short and stand upright, and their pedicels are green. Toward the margin they become longer and longer, and more inclined outward, with their pedicels of a purple color. Those on the extreme margin project in the same plane with the leaf, or more commonly are considerably reflexed. A few tentacles spring from the base of the footstalk, and these are the longest of all, being sometimes nearly one-fourth of an inch in length. The glands, with the exception of those borne by the extreme marginal tentacles, are oval, and of nearly uniform size, viz., about of an inch in length. They have the power of absorption, besides that of secretion; and they are extremely sen sitive to various stimulants, namely, repeated touches, the pressure of minute particles, the absorption of animal matter and of various fluids, heat, and galvanic action. Insects furnish the chief nutriment of the plant (the roots being very poorly developed), and these are captured by means of the viscid fluid surrounding the glands. As soon as even the smallest insect is thus entangled, the tentacles bend slowly inward from all directions and carry it to the centre of the leaf, where it is digested and absorbed; after which, the tentacles reëxpand very slowly, being then ready for further prey. The chemical changes which take place in the plant during this entire process are most remarkable, and are described by Mr. Darwin with great minuteness of detail; but we can only find room for

the paragraph (summarizing his numerous experiments) in which he proves that the leaves "are capable of true digestion, and that the glands absorb the digested matter:"

"The gastric juice of animals contains, as is well known, an acid and a ferment, both of which are indispensable for digestion, and so it is with the secretion of Drosera. When the stomach of an animal is mechanically irritated, it secretes an acid, and when particles of glass or other such objects were placed on the glands of Drosera, the secretion, and that of the surrounding and untouched glands, was increased in quantity and became acid. But, according to Schiff, the stomach of an animal does not secrete its proper ferment, pepsine, until certain substances, which he calls peptogenes, are absorbed; and it appears from my experiments that some matter must be absorbed by the glands of Drosera before they secrete their proper ferment. That the secretion does contain a ferment which acts only in the presence of an acid or solid animal matter, was clearly proved by adding minute doses of an alkali, which entirely arrested the process of digestion, this immediately recommencing as soon as the alkali was neutralized by a little weak hydrochloric acid. From trials made with a large number of substances, it was found that those which the secretion of Drosera dissolved completely, or partially, or not at all, are acted on in exactly the same manner by gastric juice. We may therefore conclude that the ferment of Drosera is closely analogous to, or identical with, the pepsine of animals."

That a plant and an animal should pour forth the same, or nearly the same, complex secretion, adapted for the same purpose of digestion, is a new and surely a wonderful fact in physiology; and even more wonderful is the structure of the plant, by which, in the absence of a nervous system, so complicated a process is accomplished. Perhaps the most striking feature of this structure is the extreme sensitiveness of the glands to pressure. Says Mr. Darwin on this point:

"It is an extraordinary fact that a little bit of soft thread, of an inch in length, and weighing of a grain, or of a human hair, Too of an inch in length, and weighing only 7st of a grain, or particles of precipitated chalk, after resting for a short time on a gland, should induce some change in its cells, exciting them to transmit a motor impulse throughout the whole pedicel, consisting of about twenty cells, to near its base, causing this part to bend, and the tentacle to sweep through an angle of above 180°. That the contents of the cells of the glands, and afterward those of the pedicels, are affected in a plainly visible manner by the pressure of minute particles, we shall have abundant evidence when we treat of the aggregation of protoplasm. But the case is much more striking than as yet stated; for the particles are supported by the viscid and dense secretion; nevertheless, even smaller ones than those of which the measurements have been given, when brought by an insensibly slow movement, through the means above specified, into contact with the surface of a gland, act on it, and the tentacle bends. The pressure exerted by the particle of hair, weighing only of a grain, and supported by a dense fluid, must have been inconceivably slight. We may conjecture that it could hardly have equaled the millionth of a grain; and we shall hereafter see that far less than the millionth of a grain of phosphate of ammonia in solution, when absorbed by a gland, acts

on

and induces movement. A bit of hair, of an inch in length, and therefore much larger than those used in the above experiments, was not perceived when placed on my tongue; and it is extremely doubtful whether any nerve in the human body, even if in an inflamed condition, would be in any way affected by such a particle supported in a dense fluid, and slowly brought into contact with the nerve. Yet the cells of the glands of Drosera are thus excited to transmit a motor impulse to a distant point, inducing movement. It appears to me that hardly any more remarkable fact than this has been observed in the vegetable kingdom."

Among the other insect-eating plants described by Mr. Darwin, the most remarkable is the Dionaea, a small plant which grows only in a limited district of North Carolina, and which catches its prey by the quick closing together of its double-lobed leaf when touched. It is not possible, however, for us to follow the author further in his interesting observations; but must content ourselves with recommending the book to all lovers of natural history. We recommend it especially to those who are inclined to distrust Mr. Darwin as a biologist, for scarcely any of his works illustrates so conspicuously the tireless industry with which he accumulates facts, and the extreme care with which he guards his conclusions.

MR. FRANK LEE BENEDICT is an excellent illustration of what a moderate amount of talent can accomplish by steady work and careful cultivation. It is no very long time since his literary efforts were confined to a monthly periodical, designed specially for circulation among the semi-cultured multitude, and but two or three years have elapsed since "My Daughter Elinor" introduced him for the first time to the general public. The utmost that could be said of "My Daughter Elinor" was that it was a plausibly mediocre first work, and little more could be added concerning bis two or three following ones; but in "St. Simon's Niece" (New York: Harper & Brothers) we have distinctly a novel which is deserving of very high praise. It may be urged, indeed, that the story is sensational, that it is unnecessarily painful, that it compels us to associate with bad company, that it reveals a perilous tendency on the part of the author to indulge in morbid mental anatomy, and that its tone altogether is too cynical and blasé to be healthful-all this may be said with truth, yet without impairing the fact that the novel is one the power of which not only compels recognition, but fairly drives out for the time being all consciousness of these or any other defects. The plot, to begin with, is intensely dramatic, and at the same time coherent and "thinkable; " it is developed with such skill that the interest is maintained from first to last; and there is scarcely a single character who does not furnish, in the course of the story, an adequate reason for his (or her) existence. Few creations of modern fiction are more distinctly individual or more vividly portrayed than St. Simon, the handsome, witty, wily, unscrupulous adventurer and swindler, and the even more handsome, witty, wily, and unscrupulous niece of

en, in Rossetti's ballad of that name, will have caught one phase of her characterthat of a passionate woman whom disappointed love has rendered as revengeful, as cruel, and as pitiless as a savage. Fanny St. Simon, however, is a vastly more complex character than Sister Helen; and the constant struggle between her good and evil impulses, between the careless, unselfish generosity of a born Bohemian and the fierce egotism of a woman who would commit murder rather than lose her lover, between blind passion on the one hand and the clear insight of a thoroughly worldly woman on the other, furnishes a memorable leaf out of the great book of human nature. One more feature of Fanny's character is worthy of mention: she is an admirable specimen of that rare creature in fiction who is not only represented by the author as being almost supernaturally witty and intelligent, but actually illustrates it in her recorded conversations. All the dialogue in which she participates is excellent, and portions of it read like passages out of the old comedies.

ture.

...

We infer from his closing section that Mr. Newton thinks that the chief objection to his suggestions lies against their high moral plane; but the difficulty with them is not that they are too moral, but that they are foolish. One of them, for example, is to the effect that a woman before being called upon to bear children should feel that she is "independent and self-supporting. Her husband should remember that her services in making home what a home should be, and surely in bearing the burdens of maternity, are above all price . . . and in any case where a wife performs her part with ordinary fidelity, she may fairly be considered entitled to one half the income, whatever it be, and to the same freedom in the use of her share as has the husband of his." If this meant that the wife, thus secured an equal share of the income, was to be held equally responsible with the husband for the joint family expenses, for the education of the children, and for making provision for their future, we presume few husbands would object to an arrangement which would materially reduce their special burdens; but that no such thing was in the author's mind is evident from a subsequent paragraph, in which he insists that one of the plainest duties of a father-in addition, we presume, to

"provide properly for the education and support of his children."

Not less life-like, and scarcely less striking, than the portraits of St. Simon and Fanny are those of Talbot Castlemaine, Fanny's weak, sensual, vacillating, unprincipled lover, love of whom wrecked at least two women's lives; of Roland Spencer, generous, high-giving half his income to the mother-is to spirited, and with the unsophisticated enthusiasm of youth; of Gregory Alleyne and Helen Devereux, to whom are assigned the heavy, respectable rôles. Even the minor characters are individual and skillfully drawn. Mrs. Pattaker is rather overdone, perhaps, and "the Tortoise" is too consistently and persistently idiotic; but both are genuinely humorous conceptions, and are seldom permitted to become tedious.

Almost the only fault we have to find with "St. Simon's Niece" is the occasional carelessness of style, which not seldom lapses into vulgarity. An author with a vocabulary as copious as that of Mr. Benedict ought to be above using slang in his own person under any circumstances, and it is surely a superfluity of naughtiness to manufacture it. If he insists upon it, however, it is to be hoped that he will append a vocabulary of original slang-terms to his future works. We have not the slightest idea what a "jubsy" man is, and yet, if we are to encounter the word seven times in a single story, we certainly consider ourselves entitled to a definition.

AFTER conceding to Mr. A. E. Newton all the credit due to good intentions, we are obliged to inform him that his tract entitled "The Better Way: An Appeal to Men in Behalf of Human Culture through Wiser Parentage" (New York: Wood & Holbrook) is an impertinent, feeble, and vulgar production. His cardinal premise, that the men and women of our day (and of all other days of

A CONVENTION of German editors is now in session at Bremen for the purpose of trying to induce the Imperial Government to remove some of the present restrictions upon the press. It is not very probable that much can be accomplished in this direction at the present time, but the convention may, by perfecting the union of editors throughout the country, prepare the way for the great movement which must, at some future period, break through the trammels with which old-time prejudices still strive to restrain liberty of thought throughout the greater part of Europe.

Only a few details have yet been received concerning the composition and organization of this convention. But a general notice of some of the most remarkable newspapers of the empire will serve to show what sort of material is represented therein. The first newsreputation, is probably the Allgemeine Zeitung, paper in Germany, as to tone, character, and or Universal Gazette, of Augsburg. Though it is published in an old-fashioned, provincial city, this paper is known and honored in every part of the civilized world, and has a history of which it may well be proud. Founded by the famous Cotta publishing-house, in 1798, at Tübingen, it was soon afterward removed to Stuttgart, then to Ulm, and was finally located at Augsburg, where it quickly acquired that world-wide fame which it has never censed to deserve. Its fearless advocacy of liberal principles at a time-previous to 1848when the reactionary spirit which followed Napoleon's invasion of Russia had made the German rulers almost absolute, caused it to be