March 3, 1866.] the way the world is going, and the future does not cess, according to the modern standard, with your | they are not solving its problem. They cannot see common people. Are you a success with your middle class? They have the power now; what have they made of themselves? what sort of a life is theirs? A life more natural, more rational, fuller of happiness, more enviable, therefore, than the life of the middle classes on the Continent? Yes, you will say, because the English middle class is the most industrious and the richest. But it is just here that you go a great deal too fast, and so deceive your-powerful help, "the Parliament of this class has selves. "What brings about, or rather tends to bring about, a natural, rational life, satisfying the modern spirit? This: the growth of a love of industry, trade, and wealth; the growth of a love of the things of the mind; and the growth of a love of beautiful things. There are body, intelligence, and soul all taken care of. Of these three factors of modern life, your middle class has no notion of any but one, the first. Their love of industry, trade, and wealth is certainly prodigious; and their example has done us a great deal of good: we too are beginning to get this love, and we wanted it. But what notion have they of anything else? Do but look at them, look at their lives. Some of us know your middle class very well, - a great deal better than your own upper class in general knows them. Your middle class is educated, to begin with, in the worst schools of your country, and our middle class is educated in the best of ours. What becomes of them after that? The fineness and capacity of a man's spirit is shown by his enjoyments; your middle class has an enjoyment in its business, we admit, and gets on well in business and makes money; but beyond that? Drugged with business, your middle class seems to have its sense blunted for any stimulus besides, except religion; it has a religion narrow, unintelligent, repulsive. All sincere religion does something for the spirit, raises a man out of the bondage of his merely bestial part, and saves him; but the religion of your middle class is the very lowest form of intelligential life which one can imagine as saving. performed exploits unrivalled not merely in the six centuries during which Parliament has existed, but in the whole history of representative assemblies. The exploits are there all the reforms we have made in the last five-and-thirty years." "Let us distinguish," replied the envious foreigners, "let us distinguish. We named three powers did we not?which go to spread that rational humane life which is the aim of modern society: the love of wealth, the love of intelligence, the love of beauty. Your middle class, we agreed, has the first; its commercial legislation, accordingly, has been very good, and in advance of that of foreign countries. Not that free-trade was really brought about by your middle class: it was brought about, as important reforms always are, by two or three great men. However, let your middle class, which had the sense to accept free-trade, have the credit of it. But this only brings us a certain way. The legislation of your middle class in all that goes to give human life more intelligence and beauty, is no better than was to be expected from its own want of both. It is nothing to say that its legislation in these respects is an improvement upon what you had before; that is not the question; you are holding up its achievements as absolutely admirable, as unrivalled, as a model to us. "You may have done - for you- much for religious toleration, social improvement, public instruction, municipal reform, law reform; but the French Revolution and its consequences have done, upon the Continent, a great deal more. Such a spectacle as your Irish Church Establishment you cannot find "What other enjoyments have they? The news- in France or Germany. Your Irish land-question papers, a sort of eating and drinking which are not you hardly dare to face,- Stein settled as threatento our taste, a literature of books almost entirely re- ing a land-question in Prussia. Of the schools for ligious or semi-religious, books utterly unreadable by your middle class we have already spoken; while an educated class anywhere, but which your middle these schools are what they are, while the schools class consumes, they say, by the hundred thousand; for your poor are maintained in the expensive, unand in their evenings, for a great treat, a lecture just, irrational way they are, England is full of enon teetotalism or nunneries. Can any life be imag-dowments and foundations, capable by themselves, ined more hideous, more dismal, more unenviable? if properly applied, of putting your public education Compare it with the life of our middle class as you on a much better footing. In France and Germany have seen it on the Rhine this summer, or at Lau- all similar funds are thus employed, having been sanne, or Zurich. The world of enjoyment, so lib- brought under public, responsible management; in eralizing and civilizing, belongs to the middle class- England they are left to private, irresponsible manes there, as well as the world of business; the whole agement, and are, in nine cases out of ten, wasted. world is theirs, they possess life; in England the You talk of municipal reform; and cities and the highest class seems to have the monopoly of the manner of life in them have, for the modern busiworld of enjoyment, the middle class enjoys itself, ness of promoting a more rational and humane life in as your Shakespeare would say, in hugger-mugger, the great body of the community, incalculable imand possesses life only by reading in the newspapers, portance. Do you suppose we should tolerate in which it does devoutly, the doings of great people. France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, your London Well then, we do not at all want to be as your mid-corporation and London vestries, and London as dle class; we want to learn from it to do business and to get rich, and this we are learning a great deal faster than you think; but we do not, like your middle class, fix our consummation here: we have a notion of a whole world besides not dreamed of in your middle class's philosophy; so they too, like your Your middle-class man thinks it the highest common people, seem to us no success. They may pitch of development and civilization when his letbe the masters of the modern time with you, butters are carried twelve times a day from Islington they make it? In your provincial towns you do better; but even there, do the municipalities show a tenth part either of the intelligence or the care for the ends, as we have laid them down, of modern society, that our municipalities show? 66 6 to Camberwell, and from Camberwell to Islington, | up with your aristocracy, they have been too much and if railway-trains run to and fro between them influenced by it, have taken, half insensibly, an arisevery quarter of an hour. He thinks it is nothing tocracy's material standard, and do not believe in that the trains only carry him from an illiberal, dis- ideas; certain it is that their intelligence has no armal life at Islington to an illiberal, dismal life at dor, no plan, leads them nowhere; it is ineffectual. Camberwell; and the letters only tell him that Your intellect is at this moment, to an almost unexsuch is the life there. A Swiss burgher takes ampled degree, without influence on the intellect of Heaven knows how many hours to go from Berne Europe." to Geneva, and his trains are very few; this is an While this was being said, I noticed an Italian, extreme on the other side; but compare the life who was one of our party, fumbling with his pocketthe Swiss burgher finds or leaves at Berne or Gene-book, from whence he presently produced a number va with the life of the middle class in your English of gray newspaper slips, which I could see were Engtowns. Or else you think to cover everything by lish. "Now just listen to me for a moment," he saying: We are free! we are free! Our news- cried, " and I will show you what makes us say, on papers can say what they like!' Freedom, like the Continent, that you English have no sense for industry, is a very good horse to ride, but to ride logic, for ideas, and that your praise and blame, havsomewhere. You seem to think that you have only ing no substantial foundation, are worth very little. got to get on the back of your horse Freedom, or You remember the famous French pamphlet before your horse Industry, and to ride away as hard as our war began in 1859: Napoleon the Third and you can, to be sure of coming to the right destina- Italy. The pamphlet appealed, in the French way, tion. If your newspapers can say what they like, to reason and first principles; the upshot of it was you think you are sure of being well advised. That this: The treaties which bind governments would comes of your inaptitude for ideas, and aptitude for be invariable only if the world was immovable. A clap-trap; you can never see the two sides of a power which should intrench itself behind treaties question; never perceive that every human state of in order to resist modifications demanded by general things, even a good one, has its inconveniences. feeling, would have doubtless on her side an acWe can see the conveniences of your state well quired right, but she would have against her moral enough; and the inconveniences of ours, of news-right and universal conscience.' papers not free, and prefects over-busy; and there are plenty of us who proclaim them. You eagerly repeat after us all we say that redounds to your own honor and glory; but you never follow our example yourselves. You are full of acuteness to perceive the ill influence of our prefects on us; but if any one says to you, in your turn, The English system of a great landed aristocracy keeps your lower class a lower class forever, and materializes and vulgarizes your whole middle class,' you stare vacantly at the speaker, you cannot even take in his ideas; you can only blurt forth, in reply, some clap-trap or other about a 'system of such tried and tested efficiency as no other country was ever happy enough to possess since the world was a world.' I have observed in my travels, that most young gentlemen of our highest class go through Europe, from Calais to Constantinople, with one sentence on their lips, and one idea in their minds, which suf-view,' and so on. Still very well; there is the fices, apparently, to explain all that they see to them: Foreigners don't wash. No doubt, thought I to myself, my friends have fallen in with some distinguished young Britons of this sort, and had their feelings wounded by them; hence their rancor against our aristocracy. And as to our middle class, foreigners have no notion how much this class, with us, contains; how many shades and gradations in it there are, and how little what is said of one part of it will apply to another. Something of this sort I could not help urging aloud. "You do not know," I said, "that there is broken off, as one may say, from the top of our middle class a large fragment, which receives the best education the country can give, the same education as our aristocracy; which is perfectly intelligent and which enjoys life perfectly. These men do the main part of our intellectual work, write all our best newspapers; and cleverer people, I assure you, are nowhere to be found." "You English, on the other hand, took your stand on things as they were: If treaties are made,' said your Times, they must be respected. Tear one, and all are waste paper. Very well; this is a policy, at any rate, an aristocratical policy; much may be said for it. The Times was full of contempt for the French pamphlet, an essay, as it called it, conveying the dreams of an agitator expressed in the language of an academician. It said: No one accustomed to the pithy comments with which liberty notices passing history, can read such a production without complacency that he does not live in the country which produces it. To see the heavy apparatus of an essay brought out to solve a question on which men have corresponded and talked and speculated in the funds, and acted in the most practical manner possible for a month past, is as strange as if we beheld some spectral re strong, practical man despising theories and reveries. The sentiment of race is just now threatening to be exceedingly troublesome. It is to a considerable extent in our days a literary revival.' That is all to the same effect. Then came a hitch in our affairs, and fortune seemed as if she was going to give, as she often does give, the anti-theorists a triumph. The Italian plot,' cried The Times, has failed. The Emperor and his familiars knew not the moral strength which is still left in the enlightened communities of Europe. To the unanimous and indignant reprobation of English opinion is due the failure of the imperial plots. While silence and fear reign everywhere abroad, the eyes and ears of the Continent are turned continually to these Islands. English opinion has been erected into a kind of Areopagus.' "Our business went forward again, and your Eng lish opinion grew very stern indeed. Sardinia,' "Clever enough," was the answer, "but they show said The Times, 'is told very plainly that she has not much intelligence, in the true sense of the word, deserted the course by which alone she could hope - not much intelligence of the way the world is either to be happy or great, and abandoned herself going. Whether it is that they must try to hit your to the guidance of fatal delusions, which are luring current public opinion, which is not intelligent; her on to destruction. By cultivating the arts of whether it is that, having been, as you say, brought | peace she would have been solving, in the only pos shown you; in America you scold right and left, you get up a monster memorial to deprecate the further effusion of blood; you lament over the abridg ment of civil liberty by people engaged in a struggle for life and death, and meaning to win; and when they turn a deaf ear to you and win, you say, 'O, now let us be one great united Anglo-Saxon family and astonish the world.' This is just of a piece with your threatening Germany with the Emperor of the French. Do you not see that all these blunders dispose the Americans, who are very shrewd, and who have been succeeding as steadily as you have been failing, to answer: We have got the lead, no thanks to you, and we mean to astonish the world without you.' We do not hold you cheap for saying you will wash your hands of all concerns but your own, that you do not care a rush for influence in Europe; though this sentence of your Lord Bolingbroke is true: The opinion of mankind, which is fame after death, is superior strength and power in life.' We hold you cheap because you show so few signs, except in the one department of industry, of understanding your time and its tendencies, and of exhibiting a modern life which shall be a signal success. And the reaction is the stronger because after 1815 we believed in you as now-a-days we are coming to believe in America. You had won the last game, and we thought you had your hand full of trumps, and were going to win the next. Now the game has begun to be played, and we have an inkling of what your cards are; we shrewdly suspect you have scarcely any trumps at all." sible way, the difficult problem of Italian indepen- | dence. She has been taught by France to look instead to the acquisition of fresh territory by war and conquest. She has now been told with perfect truth by the warning voice of the British Parliament that she has not a moment to lose in retracing her steps, if indeed her penitence be not too late. Well, to make a long story short, we did not retrace our steps; we went on, as you know; we succeeded; and now let us n.ake a jump from the spring to the autumn. Here is your unanimous English opinion, here is your Areopagus, here is your Times, in October: It is very irregular (Sardinia's course), it is contrary to all diplomatic forms. Francis the Second can show a thousand texts of international law against it. Yes; but there are extremities beyond "Unless you change, unless your middle class all law, and there are laws which existed before even grows more intelligent, you will tell upon the world society was formed. There are laws which are im-less and less, and end by being a second Holland. planted in our nature, and which form part of the human mind,' and so on. Why, here you have entirely boxed the compass, and come round from the aristocratical programme to the programme of the French pamphlet, 'the dreams of an agitator in the language of the rhetorician!' And you approved not only our present, but our past, and kindly took off your ban of reprobation issued in February. "How great a change has been effected by the wisely courageous policy of Sardinia! The firmness and boldness which have raised Italy from degradation form the enduring character of a ten years' policy. King Victor Emmanuel and his sagacious counsellor have achieved success by remembering that fortune favors the bold. There you may see why the mind of France influences the Continent so much and the mind of England so little. France has intelligence enough to perceive the ideas that are moving, or are likely to move, the world; she believes in them, sticks to them, and shapes her course to suit them. You neither perceive them nor believe in them, but you play with them like counters, taking them up and laying them down at random, and following really some turn of your imagination, some gust of liking or disliking. When I heard some of your countrymen complaining of Italy and her ingratitude for English sympathy, I made, to explain it, the collection of those extracts and of a good many more. They are all at your service; I have some here from the Saturday Review, which you will find exactly follow suit with those from The Times." "No, thank you," I answered, "The Times is enough. My relations with the Saturday Review are rather tight-stretched, as you say here, already; make me a party to none of your quarrels with them." After this my original tormentor once more took up his parable. “You see now what I meant," he said, "by saying that you did better in the old time, in the day of aristocracies. An aristocracy has no ideas, but it has a policy, to resist change. In this policy it believes, it sticks to it; when it is beaten in it, it holds its tongue. This is respectable, at any rate. But your great middle class, as you call it, your present governing power, having no policy, except that of doing a roaring trade, does not know what to be at in great affairs, - blows hot and cold by turns, makes itself ridiculous in short. It was a good aristocratical policy to have helped Austria in the Italian war; it was a good aristocratical policy to have helped the South in the American war. The days of aristocratical policy are over for you; with your new middle-class public opinion you cut, in Italy, the figure our friend here has just I am no arguer, as is well known, "and every puny whipster gets my sword." So instead of making bad worse by a lame answer, I held my tongue, consoling myself with the thought that these foreigners get from us, at any rate, plenty of Rolands for any stray Oliver they may have the luck to give us. I have since meditated a good deal on what was then said, but I cannot profess to be yet quite clear about it. However, all due deductions made for envy, exaggeration, and injustice, enough stuck by me of these remarks on our logic, criticism, and love of intelligence, to determine me to go on trying (taking care, of course, to steer clear of indecency) to keep my mind fixed on these, instead of singing hosannahs to our actual state of development and civilization. The old recipe, to think a little more and bustle a little less, seemed to me still the best recipe to follow. So I take comfort when I find the Guardian reproaching me with having no influence; for I know what influence means, a party, practical proposals, action; and I say to myself: "Even suppose I could get some followers, and assemble them, brimming with affectionate enthusiasm, in a committee-room at some inn; what on earth should I say to them? what resolutions could I propose? I could only propose the old Socratic commonplace, Know thyself; and how blank they all would look at that! No; to inquire, perhaps too curiously, what that present state of English development and civilization is, which according to Mr. Lowe is so perfect that to give votes to the working class is stark madness; and, on the other hand, to be less sanguine about the divine and saving effect of a vote on its possessor than my friends in the committeeroom at the "Spotted Dog,”- that is my inevi table portion. To bring things under the light of one's intelligence, to see how they look there, to accustom one's self simply to regard the Marylebone Vestry, or the Educational Home, or the Irish Church Establishment, or our railway management, or our Divorce Court, or our gin-palaces open on Sunday and the Crystal Palace shut, as absurdities, that is, I am sure, invaluable exercise for us just at present. Let all persist in it who can, and steadily set their desires on introducing, with time, a little more soul and spirit into the too, too solid flesh of English society. - richer, we must necessarily sink to the position to which our size and our want of any eminent gift for telling upon the world spiritually, doom us. "But look at America; it is the same race; whether we are first or they, Anglo-Saxonism triumphs. You used to say that they had all the Philistinism of the English middle class from which they spring, and a great many faults of their own besides. But you noticed, too, that, blindly as they seemed following in general the star of their god Buncombe, they showed, at the same time, a feeling for ideas, a vivacity and play of mind, which our middle class has I have a friend who is very sanguine, in spite of not, and which comes to the Americans, probably, the dismal croakings of these foreigners, about the from their democratic life, with its ardent hope, its turn things are even now taking amongst us. "Mean forward stride, its gaze fixed on the future. Well, and ignoble as our middle class looks," he says, "it since these great events have lately come to purge has this capital virtue, it has seriousness. With fri- and form them, how is this intelligence of theirs devolity, cultured or uncultured, you can do nothing; veloping itself? Now they are manifesting a quick but with seriousness there is always hope. Then, sense to see how the world is really going, and a too, the present bent of the world towards amusing sure faith, indispensable to all nations that are to be itself, so perilous to the highest class, is curative and great, that greatness is only to be reached by going good for our middle class. A piano in a Quaker's that way and no other? And then, if you talk of drawing-room is a step for him to more humane life; culture, look at the culture their middle, and even nay, perhaps even the penny gaff of the poor East- their working class is getting, as compared with the Londoner is a step for him to more humane life; it culture ours are getting. The trash which circuis - what example shall we choose?—it is Strath-lates by the hundred thousand among our middle more, let us say, it is the one-pound-eleven-and-class has no readers in America; our rubbish is for sixpenny gaff of the young gentlemen of the clubs home-consumption; all our best best books, books and the young ladies of Belgravia, that is for them which are read here only by the small educated but a step in the primrose path to the everlasting class, are in America the books of the great reading bonfire. Besides, say what you like of the idealess- public. So over there they will advance spiritually ness of aristocracies, the vulgarity of our middle as well as materially; and if our race at last flowers class, the immaturity of our lower, and the poor to modern life there, and not here, does it so much chance which a happy type of modern life has be- matter?" tween them, consider this: Of all that makes life liberal and humane, of light, of ideas, of culture, -every man in every class of society who has a dash of genius in him is the boon friend. So says my friend, who is, as I premised, a devotee of Anglo-Saxonism; I, who share his pious frenzy but imperfectly, do not feel quite satisfied with these plans of vicarious greatness, and have a "By his bringing up, by his habits, by his in- longing for this old and great country of ours to be terest, he may be their enemy; by the primitive, always great in herself, not only in her progeny. unalterable complexion of his nature, he is their So I keep looking at her, and thinking of her, and friend. Therefore, the movement of the modern as often as I consider how history is a series of spirit will be more and more felt among us, it will waves, coming gradually to a head, and then breakspread, it will prevail. Nay," this enthusiast often ing, and that, as the successive waves come up, one continues, getting excited as he goes on, "The nation is seen at the top of this wave, and then anTimes itself, which so stirs some people's indigna- other of the next, I ask myself, counting all the tion, what is The Times but a gigantic Sancho waves which have come up with England on the Panza, to borrow a phrase of your friend Heine, — top of them: When the great wave which is now a gigantic Sancho Panza, following by an attraction mounting has come up, will she be at the top of it? he cannot resist that poor, mad, scorned, suffering, Illa nihil, nec me quærentem vana moratur. sublime enthusiast, the modern spirit, following it, indeed, with constant grumbling, expostulation, and opposition, with airs of protection, of compassionate superiority, with an incessant by-play of nods, shrugs, and winks addressed to the spectators, - following it, in short, with all the incurable recalcitrancy of a lower nature, but still following it?" When my friend talks thus, I always shake my head, and say that this sounds very like the transcendentalism which has already brought me into so many scrapes. I have another friend again (and I am grown so cowed by all the rebuke my original speculations have drawn upon me that I find myself more and more filling the part of a mere listener), who calls himself Anglo-Saxon rather than English, and this is what he says: "We are a small country," he says, "and our middle class has, as you say, not much gift for anything but making money. Our freedom and wealth have given us a great start, our capital will give us for a long time an advantage; but as other countries grow better-governed and Yes, we arraign her; but she, Of the too vast orb of her fate. he dreamt that" Here he paused, and extricated | Trafalgar Square fountains; I turned off the pephimself from the meshes of his sentence. Toby sat up for toast. "What did you dream?" asked Madame, becoming lazily interested. 66 Curiosity, thy name is Julia!" said Mr. Punch, playfully placing a morsel of rôtie on Toby's nose. Toby waited for the word "three." Mr. Punch forgot all about him and his toast. "I dreamt," said Mr. Punch, more apparently as a confidence between himself and the fire-irons than as addressing his fair spouse, "that I was in Paris at the Tile-Kilns; the Tuileries," Mr. Punch explained, "having been a place where hats, or tiles, were made, and crowns fitted "Yes," said Julia. " Mr. Punch was pleased with the interruption, and continued without noticing it, while Toby sat on his hind legs, anxiously regarding his master, but by him disregarded. "At the Tile-Kilns, talking to my dear cousin Louis, who told me that he had had a dream." Here, in memory of his cousin, Mr. Punch lighted a fragrant Havanna. Toby winced, but the toast remained undisturbed. "Said Louis to me," resumed Mr. Punch, inspecting the lighted end of his cigar, "I dreamt I was king of England. Odd, that!'" Mr. Punch studied the bars of the fireplace for a second, and then Yes,' said Louis to me, I dreamt that I had autocratic metropolitan power for a short time in London.' went on. 666 clean 6 6 per-castors from the gallery; I, with my own hands, placed the four lions at the base of Nelson's Column.' He looked grave at the mention of this hero, but went on quickly, and I beheaded or shot all builders who would not build good, substantial houses; I swept with one prodigious mortar all organs, German bands, and wandering minstrels from the streets; I gave Punch his safe corners for exhibition out of compliment to-' 'Don't mention it,' I said. We shook hands. I tied up all who would not tie up or muzzle their dogs; I reorganized all workhouses and prisons, and ordered that all owners and drivers of water-carts should be flogged once a day until they came out when they were wanted; I trebled the number of police, and told them that Louis expected every man to do his duty; I visited prisons for debt, sponging-houses, and found that poor debtors, in for small sums, were obliged to pay eighteen shillings for a dinner, two guineas for a private room, and were at the mercy of their jailers. These jailers of sponging-houses, Sir, I whipped and dismissed, and ordered one moderate tariff to be observed; and I discriminated between the honest, but unfortunate man, and the miscalculating swindler. 666 Then, Sir, I took command of the Fire Brigade, and kicked vestrymen and beadles into the Thames. I instituted new machinery for water-supplies. I compelled theatrical managers to pay authors according to their success, and I beheaded a dozen picture-dealers. I flogged all cab-drivers found loi"What did your Majesty do?' I asked. tering, and appointed many new and convenient "What! I found all your municipal authorities stands. Then, Sir, I hung most of the directors of talking, and I worked. I began, Sir, by making a gas-companies; then, Sir, I reorganized the gasof such places as Holywell Street; and companies; and then, Sir, I lighted London.' Your sweep from Charing Cross to the City there was one grand Majesty has done well, admirably,' I said, 'and broad way.' I suggested," said Mr. Punch, musing- I wish that some one would do all you dreamt you ly, "that St. Paul's was a difficulty. 'Bah!' replied did. You have improved Paris; but I can suggest the Emperor, I knocked Paternoster Row down, to you something which, without setting the Seine and demolished the crannies, the old houses, the on fire, might give you a notion for lighting your nooks, and alleys, while the Dean and Chapter were small streets, if you'd permit,'-but it seemed to in bed. I took away the railings that guard theme that while I was talking the Emperor lighted a Cathedral, and Sir Christopher's work seemed, with fusee, and applied it to a mortar, which was to blow a new lease of life, to rise majestically towards all the nuisances to -" heaven. Then, Sir, aided by the Unicorn from the Royal Arms, I tunnelled London, diverting the heavy traffic of vans and wagons from the public thoroughfares. Then, Sir, the Lion, co-operating with me, (a most energetic fellow, though now too much given to growling and roaring,) lashed with his tail the scavengers who did not scavenge from the street, trucks carrying nothing that stopped the way more than 'Lady So-and-So's carriage,' I suggested. Polisson!' said Louis, poking me in the ribs with his forefinger: oddly enough, I feel it now." THE chemical toys known as "Pharaoh's SerToby winked: he had no more moved than the pents" have been so widely taken up, that we may unhappy Pompeian sentinel on duty. "The Em-do good service by mentioning what was said conperor said," Mr. Punch continued, "I forbade engines to scream in or within five miles of the Metropolis, and I took away all their powers of building bridges over the streets until they had invented some way of running trains on them without any noise.' "Or,' I observed, said Mr. Punch to himself, until the horses should get accustomed to them.' 'That's Irish,' said Louis. I explained that I was not for an age or a place, but for any age and every country. Je vous crois, mon enfant,' said the Emperor, quoting Paul of the Adelphi. I made in one hour a clear way from the National Gallery to Westminster Abbey; I turned on the water in the "Where?" asked Julia, awaking for the second time during her husband's narration. Mr. Punch made no reply. Turning to Toby, he said, "Ah, Cerberus! One, two, three." Toby tossed the morsel one half inch up in the air, snapped at, and swallowed it. Patience was rewarded, and Mr. Punch went to his shower-bath. FOREIGN NOTES. cerning them at a recent meeting of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society; namely, that all mercury vapor is more or less poisonous, and that injurious effects have followed from the burning of the Serpents in close rooms. Professor Roscoe stated that, in his opinion, the inhalation of even the smallest quantity of mercury vapor should be carefully avoided. But a few months ago, two young German chemists were poisoned, while working in a laboratory in London, by absorption through the lungs or skin of the vapor of a mercury compound which they were engaged in preparing. One of the two died at the end of three days in a state of mania, and the other has become a hope |