= tigers; but, if you would send some one along that road, perhaps he might find it, and we will be pleased if your highness will keep it, as you are going away from this to-morrow." He grinned a broad grin as he finished, and I spotted his game; so, sending along the lállá about a quarter of a mile, we found a very sufficient young wall-eyed buf. falo tied by a piece of straw-rope to a little tree! We had barely time to get the little brute put out in a proper place before nightfall; but he was duly taken, and we shot a fine tigress, and wounded and lost a tiger, the next day. The morning after the baits have been tied out a shikárí should go to see the result, untying and bringing in those that have not been taken, and following up the tracks from any that bave, so far as to ascertain fully whereabouts the tiger is likely to be found later in the day. I have mentioned above the lállá, and that brings me to the subject of shikárís. A really first-class tiger-shikárí is extremely rare. The combination of qualities required to make him is seldom found in a native. I shall best explain what he should be by describing the lállá. And first as to his name. Lállá means in Upper India a clerk of the Káyat caste, to which our friend belonged; so that, though utterly ignorant of all letters save those imprinted on a sandy ravine-bed by a tiger's paw, he was nicknamed the lállá by the people, and thereupon his real name disappeared forever; and, when he was afterward killed by a tiger, no one had any idea what it was. He was a little, wee man, so insignificant and so dried and shriveled up that, as he used to say, "No tiger would ever think of eating me!" His early days had been passed in catching and training falcons for the nobles of Upper India, and in shooting birds for sale in the market. He had come down to Central India to make a bag of blue rollers and kingfishers, whose feathers are so much valued in the countries to the east for fancy-work, when he was caught, nobody knows how, by a gentleman with a taste for bird-stuffing, from whom he passed into the possession of a sportsman who put him on tigers, and eventually he came to me with a little experience of the business. His early training had made him exceedingly keen of eyesight and in reading the signs of the forest; while in his many wanderings he had accumulated a store of legends of demons and devilry, and a wild jumble of Hindoo mythology that never failed, when retailed over a fire at night to a circle of gaping cowherds and village shiká. ris, to unlock every secret of the neighborhood in the matter of tigers. Such an oily cozener of reticent gónds never existed. Then, miserable as he looked, he could walk about all day and every day for a week in a broiling sun, hunting up tracks, with nothing but the thinnest of muslin skull-caps on his 1 hard nut of a head, and would fearlessly penetrate into the very lair of a tiger perfectly unarmed. He had a particular beaming look which he always wore on his ugly face when he had actually seen or, as he said, "salaamed to" a tiger comfortably disposed of for the day; and in late years, when I had to leave all the arrangements to him, I hardly hoarse coughing roar of a charging tiger that no one, to the very close of his tiger-shooting, hears without a certain quickening of the blood. The first two shots hit fair, but did not stop her; and she was not more than a few yards from the elephant's trunk when the third ball caught her clean in the mouth, knocking out one of her canine teeth and passing down the throat into the chest. She could do no more, but lay roaring and wor recollect ever going out when he reported the "find" a likely one without at least seeing the game. He could shoot a littlesay a pot-shot at a bird on a branch at twenty paces-and kept guns, etc., in beautiful order. But he soon came to utterly despise and contemn every thing except tiger-hunting, for which he had, I believe, really an absorbing passion. Even bison - hunting he looked down on as sport not fit for a gentleman to pursue. For ten months in the yearrying her own paws.till I put an end to her he moped about, looking utterly wretched, and taking no interest in any thing but the elephant and rifles; and woke up again only on the 1st of April, opposite which date "Tiger-shooting commences "will be entered in the Indian almanac of the future, when the royal animal shall be preserved in the reserved forests of Central India to furnish sport for the nobility of the land! Poor old lállá! He fell a victim in the end to contempt of tigers, bred of undue familiarity. I was very ill with fever in the June of 1866, and meditating a trip home, and had sent out the lállá with a double gun with another shot in the head. She was a lean greyhound-made brute, scarcely bigger than a panther. The lállá was avengedbut the poor fellow was beyond any help that the sight of his enemy might have afforded him and notwithstanding every care-for he was the favorite of everybody who knew him-he sank under the exhausting drain of so many fearful wounds. LOVE AND AMBITION. to shoot some birds for their feathers with "I LOVE you, I love you,” the fond wave a view to salmon-flies. He came upon the tracks of a tiger, and, contrary to all orders, tied out a calf at night as a bait, and sat over it in a tree with the gun. The tigress came and received his bullet in the thigh, going off wounded into a very thick cover in the bed of a river. The plucky but foolish lállá followed her in there the next morning by the blood; but soon found that tracking up a wounded tiger with a gun is a very different thing from following about uninjured tigers without intent to disturb them. Before he had gone a dozen paces the tigress was upon him, his unfired gun dashed from his hands and buried for half its length in the sand, his turban cuffed from his head to the top of a high tree by a stroke of her paw that narrowly missed his head, and himself down below the furious beast, and being slowly chewed from shoulder to ankle. He was brought in a dozen miles to Khandwá, where I was, by some men who had gone in for him when the tigress left him. The fire of delirium was then in his eye, and he raved of the tiger's form passing before him, red and bloody. But he recognized me when I came to him, and conjured me to go out forthwith and bring in her body next day if I wished to see him alive. I knew that the natives have a superstition to this effect; and, though I was then in a high fever, I sent off my elephant at midnight to a village near the spot, following myself on horseback at daybreak. Much rain had fallen, and all old tracks were obliterated. The jungle was also very green and thick, and I spent the whole day till the afternoon, hunting, as I afterward found, in a wrong direction. At last I came on a fresh trail, with one hindfoot dragging in the sand, and then Ì knew I was near the savage brute. We ran it up to a dense jáman-cover in the river-bed, and I had barely time to get the people on foot safely up trees when the tigress came at me in the most determined manner. She looked just like a huge cat that had been hunted by dogs-her fur all bedraggled and standing on end, eyes glaring with fury, and emitting the sang, EDITOR'S TABLE. THE culture prevalent in America is fully calcu SOME of our readers may recall one of Punch's society pictures which depicted an English and an American young woman playing billiards, with a legend below which ran, as nearly as we can recollect, as follows: "American girl.—Oh, what a horrid scratch! English girl (much shocked). You should not talk like that; that's slang; say what a beastly fluke." Punch, always so keen, HE London Times, in an article upon Cardinal McCloskey's visit to Rome, the general tenor of which cannot be complained of, takes occasion to repeat an opinion about American culture which is very generally entertained abroad. "In a democratic community," it remarks, "the baldness of life becomes very apparent to the rich and idle, and, as social distinctions are few and uncertain, the attractions of a creed which carefully cultivates the aesthetic side of religion, and which claims the inheritance of a grand historical tradition, are almost irresistible to a large class of minds. In every society there are those 'faint hearts and feeble wings that every sophister can lime,' and in America, where, in spite of the diffusion of elementary education, a high aud thoughtful culture is rare, the same influences which here tempt many to the distractions of ritualistic vanities, or even across the border-watchful, and truthful, never sent an arrow land, are very potent with a certain superfine class who would gladly ape the externals of an aristocracy." The italics in this extract are our own. We may as well mention here that the Times article concludes by asserting that the Roman Church can never become a dominant influence in America, inasmuch as the forces that she wields are confronted by something greater, healthier, and more enduring the strength of manly and intelligent individuality, nowhere wanting among men of English blood. Assenting fully to this utterance, we yet wish to say a word or two as to the nature of American culture, which the Times thinks is so rarely "high and thoughtful," and its power as a check to the spread of Romanism. In a certain sense it is no doubt true that "high and thoughtful culture" is rare in America, over-refined and æsthetic dilettanteism not being so common with us as in England. In the entire domain of æsthetics, we must yield the palm to England; and those "silent Greeks," too fastidious to enjoy or to perform any thing in literature below classic perfection, are indisputably more abundant there than here. But in speculative reasoning, in inquisitive thought, in taste for science and philosophy, in a culture that takes cognizance of all that is purely intellectual, we do not think our people inferior to any other in the world. All the great writers have constituencies in America equal to those elsewhere; it was here, indeed, that Herbert Spencer found a hearing before he did in his native land; and here the foremost thinkers are never without eager and respectful listeners. If æsthetic culture is rare with us, robust intellectual culture is very far from being so. And the kind of more directly to the mark than in this in- swoop," and says to her partner, "I reckon if you don't squeeze me tighter, Mr. Smith, I shall slide;" talks about "a piggy young lady"-but here we have made a blunder; a second look shows us that it is not the Yana piggy young lady," but one of the immaculate Englishmen of the story, who, in referring to the fact that our Yankee Venus is the daughter of a porkmerchant, thus characterizes her; and of course English slang, "you know," is quite right and proper, "you know"-orders her partner "to keep his pecker up"-but this again is distinctly English slang, although put in the mouth of a Yankee-and so on. Our smitten Mr. Smith is dazzled by the beauty and strange sayings of his divinity, but doesn't win her. Queer and vulgar as the daughter of the pork-merchant is, Mr. Smith is not alone in his admiration, his making the seventeenth proposal she had received that year alone, the sixty-ninth being the grand total! It is refreshing to know that a pretty American woman can make so many conquests, notwithstanding the drawback of vulgarity and slang. It would not be a bad idea for some of our story-writers to amplify the idea in the Punch anecdote with which we begun this paragraph, aud write a story in which the slang and manners of an English young woman shall be set "cheek by jowl" with the slang and manners of an American. It is only in this way that people on both sides of the Atlantic can be brought to see themselves as others see them. THE Social reformer must have more courage than the political, since society is, after all, a tyrant more severe than what we are pleased to call "political principles." The bravery of Mrs. Crawshay, an English lady with a very revolutionary idea, is, for instance, worthy of our admiration. She is bold enough to make a proposition which runs counter to the tenor of all the traditions and customs of English society. Looking abroad over the country, her philanthropic heart is distressed to see so many "gentlewomen born" in an impecunious and needy condition. The inexorable code of society compels them to sit idle with folded hands, to become objects of polite charity on the part of family friends and distant relations, and thus to pass useless lives, a burden both to themselves and to others. Why not, asks truly chivalrous Mrs. Crawshay, defy social considerations, and become "domestic helps?" Why not "go into service," make up beds and dust drawing-rooms, wash dishes and sweep carpets-nay, why not preside Amurrica," ," and Paris "Parris;" is in- over the concoction and serving up of wellvited to dance, and talks about the "Boston cooked dishes in rich and aristocratic manslow," the "New York slide," the “Saratoga | sions? We can fancy the shock which this T proposition must give the sedate but penniless English maiden of good birth, and fear that Mrs. Crawshay will not be very abundantly thanked for her suggestion by the class for whose benefit she has imagined it. Like many enthusiasts with the best intentions, it is to be feared that Mrs. Crawshay very much under-estimates the difficulties in the way of thus creating a new avocation for female gentility out at elbows. When the ideas of birth and rank which prevail in England, and particularly among English women, are considered, the plan must be dismissed as hopeless. It must occur to the practical mind that to call a "lady born" to account for a badly-swept room or an over-cooked steak were a task full of stormy probabilities; nor can we imagine any one more to be pitied than that "master of the house" who should be called upon to "give notice" to a pretty, well-bred creature, the daughter of a country rector, who bent her neck too stiffly to the yoke of his spouse. It is ungracious, perhaps, to deprive Mrs. Crawshay of what little encouragement she may have derived from the assurance of a London paper that it is the customary thing for a Washington or Saratoga belle," on returning to the "old folks at home," to quietly put off her pride with her silks, and don calico, descend to the murky regions of the kitchen, and, in short, to do the "old folks'" cooking; but, unhappily, we are far from so blissful a Utopian state. According to Mrs. Crawshay's cheerful informant, it has been the habit, "from time immemorial," for American young ladies in good society to do the cooking and housewerk for their families. There are, no doubt, evils in the present condition of domestic service in both countries; but we cannot think that Mrs. Crawshay has found a feasible cure for its imperfections. After all, many employments have become open to "gentlewomen born" within recent years, and proper spheres for their labor and usefulness are coming into view every day. It is still" respectable to be a governess or a companion; nor does a lady forfeit respectability by keeping books or copying legal documents; whereas, to become a menial," to find herself on a par with the butler and the footman, would be a degradation such as most English gentlewomen would rather starve than accept. Ir was Juvenal, or some other philosophical ancient, who distinguished man from the brute creation by describing him as a "laughing animal;" and a great deal of speculation has been spent, both in remote and in modern times, on the causes of laughter, from Aris totle to Kant. A living student of races, however, tells us that he has found a human community which does not laugh-a most melancholy, jokeless, funless people. A recent account of the Veddas, a tribe inhabiting a region in Central Ceylon, is indeed full of interest. That they never laugh or smile, and cannot be made to laugh or smile, is not the least of their peculiarities. The discovery and detailed description of the appearance and habits of the Veddas must be a godsend to Mr. Darwin. Perhaps they are the "missing link" which he has so laboriously sought in vain. They are so very low in the scale of humanity that they nearly resemble the monkeys which share with them their native forests. They mostly roam wild in the woods and jungles. They are dwarfish, with "ape-like thumbs" and long hair. They sleep in caves or roost on the branches of trees; their sustenance consists of honey, lizards, monkeys, and such game as, with exceeding skill, they kill or capture. They neither wash themselves nor can count, and appear to have no memory. Their language is a strange jumble of confused, chattering sounds. They have a religion, but it is of the vaguest and most reasonless kind. It is singular enough that a race są near akin to the brutes should universally practise virtues in which the civilized races are, to speak mildly, somewhat defective; for we are assured that the Veddas "never steal, never lie, and never quarrel!" Though wives are the subjects of barter and sale, constancy to the marriage relation and mutual affection between the parents and the children are observed as existing among them to an extraordinary degree. These, then, must be primitive and instinctive virtues. Though the Veddas laugh not, they cry, and that on easy provocation. Were they supposably capable of philosophizing on the conditions of human existence, they would be regarded as cynical and misanthropic; such views as they take of life appear to be sad and dismal. Thus they are really a most interesting study, and well worthy of Mr. Darwin's serious attention. IN Mrs. Stowe's "We and our Neighbors " occurs the following passage: In those countries where marriages are made with little or no regard to the tastes of the persons most concerned, and where the opportunity to "become acquainted with each other's dispositions, habits, and modes of thought " is never afforded at all, it so happens that "the wail and woe and struggle to undo marriage-bonds" are least known. It is perhaps true that divorce often " comes in our day from the dissonance of more developed and widely-varying natures," but this development is just the thing that it is most difficult to foresee in youth; and we may be sure that young people fascinated with each other are certain to be blind to those seeds of defects and differences that are to ripen into evil and discord. So long as human nature is what it is, men and women really in love, and not making cool calculations as to marriage, will be incapable of studying each other's moods and tempers, at least in their minor manifestations. We doubt, therefore, whether there is much virtue in Mrs. Stowe's panacea. Divorces are sure to be tolerably numerous wherever the means for divorce are easy, inasmuch as a certain proportion of marriages are inevitably unhappy; but the number of divorces is no criterion of the extent of matrimonial infelicity. In one country the dissonance between the parties to the marriage-bond is borne with what patience it can be, inasmuch as there is no relief; in another country the exist ence of a legal remedy brings the "wail and woe" into public observation. We doubt if any just person, with opportunities for wide and close observation, would say that marriages are really more infelicitous in America than elsewhere. MR. BAYARD TAYLOR having assaulted that pestilence of our railway-cars, the newspaper and lozenge peddler, some one has hastened to the defense of the nuisance by declaring that "Bayard Taylor himself would frown and perhaps rave if he could not buy a paper or a book, if he happened to be without reading-matter in a railway"The wail and woe and struggle to undo train." This champion mistakes the matter marriage-bonds in our day come from this wholly., It is not a question as to whether dissonance of more developed and more widely-provision for the supply of newspapers, varying natures, and it shows that a large proportion of marriages have been contracted without any advised and rational effort to ascertain whether there was a reasonable foundation for a close and life-long intimacy. It would seem as if the arrangements and cus books, or refreshments, is to exist for railway travelers, but whether venders are to be permitted to persecute every person in the car by his rude, unmannerly method of offer toms of modern society did every thing that ing his wares. could be done to render such a previous Every station may be fur nished with stands for the sale of such articles as may be in demand; or a vender might be permitted to expose his wares in some part of each train; but the present method of a number of noisy boys ceaselessly promenading the cars, shouting out their wares, thrusting their papers and candy-parcels, without so much as "by your leave," into everybody's lap, is an unmitigated nuisance, which no traveling public but an American one would tolerate. And pray why should Mr. Taylor or any one else "rave" if he could not obtain reading-matter in a car? Why should he want paper or magazine if every two minutes he must be interrupted in its perusal by troublesome peddlers, and live through his journey ever on the alert to keep his lap clear of articles rudely thrust iuto it? If every traveler who finds articles of merchandise thrust into his lap without his consent would instantly fling the articles out of the window (very few would object if he threw the vender after them), this nuisance would soon cease. Correspondence. PHILADELPHIA, Pa., To the Editor of Appletons' Journal. DEAR SIR: I have just read, in your issue of the 18th instant, the letter of Professor John Wise, which recalls some incidents of a year ago that might as well be "journalized." It is known to many readers of the JOURNAL that the Franklin Institute, of this city, held one year ago its first exhibition for sixteen years! On this occasion, the Institute had a huge array of managers, embracing many intelligent and thoroughly scientific minds, but, unfortunately, also embracing a few antiquated specimens of the genus old fossil," who, as is too often the case, held their positions by money - power rather than scientific attainments, and these few constantly nullified the well-studied arrangements of the majority, who were compelled to abandon many projects of interest rather than have a quarrel in the board. Among the most interesting of these projects was an arrangement made with Professor Wise for a series of balloon-ascensions in the interest of science-which ascensions were to be from the roof of the large exhibition building. At an early day, arrangements for the first ascension were completed. An elegant, large balloou, constructed expressly for the occasion, was inflated. About twenty persons, invited guests, reporters, etc., were upon the roof, all of whom were required to man the guys preparatory to "letting go." Two gentlemen, who were to make the ascen-. sion with Professor Wise, were seated in the basket, and the professor was adjusting the valve-cord, etc., when suddenly a tumult was heard at the window through which access was had with the roof. A glance in that direction revealed the presence of one of the before-described "managers"-who had arrogated to himself the direction of the exhibition-in the act of throwing a man through the window. He now violently approached the balloon, ordering people off the roof, and abruptly informing "Mister" Wise that "this thing" must stop, that there could be no more balloon-ascensions from this building, etc., etc. The professor gave a contemptuous yet pitying glance at this redoubtable manager of a scientific institution, and quietly gave the word to his friends to "let go," and in a moment was floating gracefully to the skies; and this was the last of the series of ascensions in the cause of science. I will mention one more incident in which this time-honored institution allowed itself to be compromised by this individual. The State Fish Commissioners proposed to exhibit the process of artificial hatching of fish, together with a fine display of fish so hatched, and of nearly a dozen varieties of various ages up to three years. A fish-culturist, residing several miles from the city, had volunteered to take charge of the matter during the exhibition (six weeks), and without remuneration-wholly in the interest of science, a sacrifice which he could ill afford, being a poor man-and arrangements had been nearly perfected with the institute to furnish the necessary aquaria, when the matter came to the knowledge of the aforesaid manager, who declared that the matter was illegitimate in such an exhibition, being neither scientific nor mechanical; and he actually bullied the managers into a dismissal of this feature. Numerous operations of this kind caused great discontent, particularly among exhibitors, many of whom have objected to the forthcoming "Centennial" being located here, inasmuch as its principal features are to be scientific and industrial. And this, by-the-way, reminds me that only last week I saw a communication in a prominent New York paper from a well-known writer, saying that the forthcoming exposition was in no wise a national affair. It is to be sincerely hoped that the JOURNAL will assure its readers that, whatever local features may find a lodgment there, the management will be purely national, and that all matters, scientific or useful, will have a fair show, whether aquatic, terrestrial, or aërial. WACAUTAH. ON Literary. ficulty. Thus, an inland student, having got the typical idea of an insect from the study of a common grasshopper, for example, is much better prepared to understand the gen eral structure of the crustacea, though he may never have seen the few forms peculiar to fresh water. In the same way, after having studied the common earthworm, he can form a better idea of the complicated structure of many marine worms, though these he may never see." From the abundance of material, and the comparative ease with which the specimens may be preserved for cabinet use, shells and insects have always formed the favorite collections of children; and with these, accordingly, Dr. Morse commences the study of zoölogy. Beginning with such familiar types as the snails, he proceeds upward to clams, mussels, and oysters; then to insects; then to the crustaceans; then to worms; and finally to the family of vertebrates. A couple of chapters on "Natural Groups" and "Classes and Sub-kingdoms " furnish as much in the way of generalization as the pupil can com prehend at the start. The illustrations in this volume call for special notice. The drawings were in every case made from the animal, expressly for the present work; they are all American, and, with few exceptions, they are entirely new. Each of them, moreover, is made in outline, in order to facilitate their being copied by the pupil-a practice. warmly insisted upon by Dr. Morse. THOUGH Professor Youmans's "ClassBook of Chemistry" (New York: D. AppleNLY a teacher, of course, can pass an ton & Co.) is nominally a new edition of a authoritative verdict upon a text-book book published as long ago as 1882, it is in designed primarily for use in schools, such a reality a new work-new not merely in the question being practical rather than literary; sense of being "revised and enlarged," but so we shall make no attempt here to do more as an exposition of the science of chemistry than describe the plan and contents of Dr. on a basis entirely different from that on Edward S. Morse's "First Book of Zoology which the original work was founded, in(New York: D. Appleton & Co.). The feat- volving a restatement and readjustment of ure in which it differs most from ordinary nearly every proposition. Explaining this text-books for beginners is that, instead of point in his preface, Professor Youmans says: k aiming to give a more or less complete view" The first edition represented the state of of systematic zoölogy, thus too often wearying and confusing the minds of those who take up the study for the first time, it endeavors in method to follow the course one naturally pursues when he is led to the study by predisposition, and in scope to cover only a few of the leading groups in the animal kingdom. "The main thing at the outset," says Dr. Morse, "is to teach the pupil how to collect the objects of study; this leads him to observe them in Nature, and here the best part of the lesson is learned: methods of protection for the young, curious habits, modes of fabricating nests, and many little features are here observed which can never be studied from an ordinary collection. Hence, collecting in the field is of paramount importance. Next, the forming of a little collection at home prompts the pupil to seek out certain resemblances among his objects, in order to bring those of a kind together. In this way he is prepared to understand and appreciate methods of classification. Finally, having grasped the leading features of a few groups, he is enabled to comprehend the character of the cognate groups with less dif chemistry as it prevailed at the time of publication, and had been long established; but the revised edition (published in 1868), though adhering to the old theories, recognized that they were undergoing important modifications. These modifications have been long in progress, and having at length issued in a new system of chemical doctrine, which has generally been accepted by chemists, it has been adopted in the present volume, and explained and applied as fully as the plan of the work will allow. The present position of the science is, therefore, of special im portance in relation to its exposition." At the same time, this position is not the final one of a science which has attained its full development. The new theories mark an important step in the progress of chemistry; they harmonize a wider range of facts, and give us a more consistent philosophy of the subject than the theories they supersede; yet they are far from being complete. And this fact has been kept constantly in mind in the preparation of the "Class-Book." "In this volume," says Professor Youmans, "I have aimed to preserve somewhat the transitional T the st considerable class, both in and out of school, who like to know something of the science, but who are without the opportunity or the desire to pursue it in a thorough experimenthe ital way. Some acquaintance with the subject te is now required as a part of every good edufcation; but books designed for laboratory i use, and abounding in technical details, are ill-suited to those who do not give special and thorough attention to the subject. I have here attempted to furnish such an outline of the leading principles and more im-portant facts of the science as shall meet the in needs of the mass of students in our highschools, seminaries, and academies, who go -no further with the subject than to study a brief text-book, with the assistance perhaps of a few lectures, and the observation of some accompanying experiments." Aside from the revision and restatement of principles, much new matter has been added under various heads, among them "Spectrum Analysis." The chapter on this is one of the most valuable in the volume, and is a very complete and lucid exposition of the " most brilliant and startling of all modern discoveries." Notwithstanding the additions, however, the present edition is smaller in compass than the original one, being thus brought into more manageable limits for school use. tance in 1876 of substituting a "civilian Here is a specimen of the style of these "I have traveled over earth's domain; I have traveled over the cliffs to find the eaglet's nest; I have visited the lazar-houses of the earth; I have stood upon the lofty peaks of the snow clad mountains; I have walked the beach of the rolling ocean; I have picked up pebbles from the shore of time; I have heard the wind as it lashed the angry waves, felt the keen lightning as it flashed around and saw the snow-cap as it bursted; I have me; I have seen the mighty ship, that genius created by the brain of man to waft the merchandise of nations over the bosom of broad oceans; I have penetrated the deepest forest of the home of the savage; I have stood upon the banks and looked across the rivers of the Eastern World; I have visited the sepulchres of past ages; I have beheld the ruins of ancient temples built by man to offer up therein prayers to Deity; I said to myself, What is this? why were all those temples built?' and the answer was, 'They are the home of thought. 'Tis the finger of God pointing to the dome of thought which develops to man a progressive eternity."" เ And here is a specimen of their philosophy: "Spirits cannot get wet, nor cold, nor burned, nor even suffer pain. We go through cold air without feeling it, and so don't have to bundle up with shawls, cloaks, and overshoes to protect us from the weather. I shall have a double opportunity now to come and see you. I don't want to be selfish, or I should have come oftener. (Do you go horsebackriding?) No, I have not been on horseback since I came here. Oh, would it not be nice for you to go and see so many people as you do without your horse and buggy! All we have to do here is to have the desire, and we go with it." SECULAR criticism must necessarily feel self-distrustful when it comes to deal with the literature of angels, and we hardly know how to record our opinion of "Angels' Messages, through Mrs. Ellen E. Ward, as a Medium" (Nashville, Tennessee: Henry Sheffield, M. D.). Were the messages from men, we should say that they are as stupid, vulgar, and commonplace in thought, and as crude in expression, as any we had ever received, and that they could not deceive any one in whom credulity had not attained the proportions of an intellectual frenzy. We should say, further, that they add a new terror to futurity, and recall irresistibly to the thoughtful mind Hawthorne's wish that he might be permitted to rest two or three thousand years before being thrust into the next stage of existence. One of the most consoling items in our conception of the happiness of angels has been the belief that they are released from the petty cares, thoughts, and occupations of our earthly life; and certainly it is a little intimidating to find them, as we do in this book, discussing such topics as the "Cause of Crime," " "Dress," (6 Morphine," THE third volume of the "Ancient History "Philosophy of Government," "Political from the Monuments" series (New York: Economy," "Popular Scandal" (being a broad Scribner, Armstrong & Co.) is "Persia, from discussion of the Beecher trial and a revela- the Earliest Times to the Arab Conquest," tion of Mr. Beecher's guilt), "Drunkenness," by W. S. W. Vaux, M. A., F. R. S. Its narra"Yellow Fever," the late Democratic victory tive is more animated than that of Mr. in Tennessee, paper-money, and the impor- Smith's " Assyria," which we noticed a few The only statement in the book which affords any satisfaction is the following, from the preliminary explanation: "Spirits of the nineteenth century attack ignorance, superstition, and falsehood, in all their strongholds." Our faith in the reality of Mrs. Ward's intercourse with the spirits of the nineteenth century will depend largely upon our receiving early and authentic information that said spirits have "attacked" Mrs. Ward's angels for the ignorance and superstition which, through her mediumship, they have precipitated upon the world. weeks ago, and it is in several respects a better piece of work; still, it is inferior to the initial volume of the series. Without occupying more space than either Mr. Smith or Mr. Vaux, Dr. Birch succeeded in giving not only a fairly complete history of ancient Egypt, but a very satisfactory account of its architecture, its arts, its industries, its political system, and its religion and worship. Mr. Vaux's" History of Persia " is, perhaps, equal to Dr. Birch's "History of Egypt" as a narrative, but in other respects it is very defective. We learn scarcely more of Zoroastrianism, the national religion, than that it involved belief in a good principle and in an evil principle; and, of the Persian architecture, all we are told is that certain buildings are supposed to have been built at such and such places by a certain king. A whole chapter is devoted to a description of the principal ruins which modern investigation has discovered to us, but we gather from it nothing as to the characteristic features of Persian architecture. The want of a map, too, is keenly felt, when we endeavor to follow the alternate expansion and contraction of the Persian Empire. As is well known, Persian history touches at several points upon the Biblical narrative, and Mr. Vaux gives a special interest to his work by numerous cross-references to the latter. THE incidents which give a local flavor to Mr. Thompson's "Hoosier Mosaics" (New York: E. J. Hall & Son) would seem to indicate a state of society ruder by several degrees than that depicted in Eggleston's admirable "Hoosier Schoolmaster; " and the dialect is proportionately broader and more copious. A good deal of this dialect, indeed, shows unmistakable signs of recent manufacture, but it cannot be denied that, on the whole, it is plausible enough and quaint enough to impart a certain raciness to stories which otherwise would have very little interest. THE Athenæum has no very high opinion of "American humor," so called. It says: "There seems some probability that the wave of comic literature, which a short time ago invaded our shores from America, has finally subsided. For more than half a century we had become accustomed to the funny sayings of Mrs. Partington. Mrs. Partington, however, reached us only in driblets, utilized, as they reached us, in the facetious columns of country papers, and such publications as the London Journal and Family Herald. Nobody supposed a whole volume of Mrs. Partington would find English readers. And yet, within the last decade, we have had a dozen or more volumes of what is called 'dry,' or American, humor, every one of which found admirers fitting and not few. If the man that says he likes dry champagne would pick a pocket, the man that confesses to a taste for 'dry' humor would surely be expected to rob a church. The first to court public favor was, we believe, Artemus Ward. His book is, for the most part, typographical buffoonery, but so funny was it considered to spell two with a numeral, that more than one publisher reproduced the work, and thus stimulated the sale, just as rival costermongers stimulate the sale of their wares in a quiet street by simultaneous howls. |