manner of expression by Shiel, who was long his Irish rival for eloquence in the House of Commons, that "he brings forth a brood of lusty thoughts, without a rag to cover them." Twice O'Connell's violence brought him, despite his cunning, into the meshes of the law. The first time was in 1831, when he had begun and was carrying forward his violent agitation in behalf of repeal. He was arrested by order of the lord-lieutenant, on the charge of holding meetings in violation of the proclamation. O'Connell was not yet ready to brave English justice; and after entering a plea of not guilty, he withdrew it, and pleaded guilty. The government, on the other hand, dared not proceed further; and the agitator was not brought up for judgment. His second arrest and trial took place twelve years later, in 1843. Once more monster meetings had been held, and O'Connell is said to have addressed a quarter of a million people on the historic hill of Tara. His language was so violent and threatening that Sir Robert Peel, then prime - minister, resolved to bring the turbulent "counselor " once more to justice. He was arrested, with his son and some others, and indicted for conspiracy, sedition, and unlawful assembling. The trial attracted the eager attention of the three kingdoms. The court-room was guarded by soldiers, and the judge was escorted to and from his house by a strong force of redcoats. O'Connell defended himself with vigor, though he was now nearly seventy years of age; but, after a trial of over three weeks, he was sentenced to imprisonment for a year, a fine of two thousand pounds, and to give security for good behavior for a period of seven years. The severity of this condemnation, however, had so serious and alarming an effect, not only among the Irish, but among the radical English, that the House of Lords, tempering its judicial severity with discretion, had the prudence to reverse the sentence on a writ of error; and after having been confined for four months, O'Connell found himself once more at liberty. He received an ovation at Dublin that seemed like old times. But he was old, and the government, rather by letting him free than by condemning him, had effectually shorn this Samson of Repeal of his locks. The cause of repeal was effectually dead; the magician had lost his art of magic; the great and tempestuous career of the "counselor" was over; and unhappily he survived not only his glory as a patriot, but the gratitude and trusting allegiance of the people for whom he had struggled so long and so doughtily. the massiveness and quality of the literature which gathered about this renowned drama. In Goethe's lifetime, the wonder had grown colossal among the critics as to what the purpose of the "Faust"-poem could be, and endless speculations made their appearance under this inquiry. Goethe, knowing the value of mystery as an element in fame, left the critics unaided, and even augmented their difficulty by confessing that he himself did not fully know its purpose. He withheld his sanction from each and every theory put forward; so the interest in "Faust" was kept in a living condition, and cumulative withal. After a perfect comprehension of any subject, we pass on to something else, no longer inspired by curiosity or the charm of mystery. It will be remembered that the First Part of "Faust" is the form of the poem most read, and likewise the part that is truest to the chief points of the mediæval myth on which the poem was founded. The Second Part, finished in the author's eighty-second year, though it uses largely the elements of the saga, has a marked departure from the plot thereof, especially as regards the destiny of Faust, who, according to all the legendary forms, went to hell at the close of his earthly career. The broad philosophy of the poet, in the Second Part, overrides the legend, in making for Faust a heavenly destiny at last, on the ground that he had never given up the struggle against evil, and that the errors, sins, and sufferings through which he had passed should naturally end in the salvation of his hero. Goethe, when a youth and in love with Lilly, for a brief time entertained the idea of taking her in marriage and coming to America. Had he done so, it is not certain that "Faust," as a drama, would have been written; but, had he written in English and to an American public, there had been no great wondering about the purpose of his drama. The American would readily have seen and said: "Goethe is a poet who believes in working up the poetic material of his own nation in its honored past. Having already succeeded so marvelously on the road to fame by turning into drama the brave chronicles of Götz von Berlichingen, the Iron Hand,' the last of the lordly barons who stood valiantly for class prerogatives, how could be neglect the one gigantic myth of the Fatherland in whom the ages of magic and sorcery expired? His inevitable purpose was to convert the myth into an immortal poem, taking all the freedom in method which genius, in the great master, uses. We will see how he succeeded." Having thus settled the matter of purpose by reading the myth and the poem together, no library would have known afterward a hundred volumes, or a dozen even, which, like vessels fitted out to find Sir John Franklin in the arctic mysteries of snow and ice, should explore the fields of erudition to attain its ultima finis. Both the German and the American are, doubtless, compensated for their different tendencies. Götz von Berlichingen, the warlike baron, died July 23, 1562, which gives him in chronology a later place than Faust occupied, though Faust was deemed the contemporary of Luther. In 1525 he rode the weighty winecask out of Auerbach's cellar at the Leipsic fair a cask which the physical force of the company present could not remove. As the light of the Reformation began to spread, the darkness of the preceding periods culminated and expired in Faust, showing that the deepest darkness just precedes the day. To what extent Faust was a personality, whether he was a man or wholly a myth, may not be determined to the satisfaction of all, but it is certain that he is a strongly representative person, that his name characterizes an epoch as real to Europe at one time as science is at the present day. I take the position that he was not a man, but a myth, claiming that the representative character he held as respects the conflict of humanity in the perfect form of the saga, first printed at Frankfort, 1587, one hundred and sixtytwo years before Goethe was born, is strong evidence, if not fully conclusive, of this view. The fact, unquestioned by any, that all the characteristic stories that had in previous ages been told of other magicians became fastened on Faust, implies that the national imagination created him. The bewildering impossibilities which surround Faust disguise a central figure, who permanently stands for the darkness and doubt, the temptation, and varied antagonism, which encompass man on the battle-field of life; also for those diviner longings and idealizations which induce painful dissatisfactions with the actual limitations of life, whose walls none may escape. It is because each man and woman of the world is, in these respects, a little Faust, that the saga and the poem are of undying interest. Asia, from time immemorial, made the conflict inherent between matter and spirit. The example of Goethe, at once so successful in working up the historical materials of his own country's past into the attractions of dramatic form, was productive of results in other lands: it led Walter Scott to immortalize the chivalric legends of his country in the middle ages both in verse and in story. The Waverley Novels are a success on the same line, as the great Scotchman, Thomas Carlyle, gave us to understand in these words: "If genius could be communicated like in struction, we might call this work of Goethe's the prime cause of 'Marmion' and 'The Lady of the Lake,' with all that has followed from the same gifted hand." It will be remembered that Scott's first literary enterprise was the translation of the drama "Götz von Berlichingen," written when Goethe was twenty-three years of age. Though this drama is easily translated and understood, it is far otherwise in the case of "Faust," as all translators confess. The subject lies very much in the weird realm of mystery and the occult powers; in the great and misdirected forces of the soul. It is the ambitious and false solution of the problem of life, ending, as all such attempts must forever end, in teaching the wisdom and goodness of the limitations of the natural laws against which the maddened ambition rebels. It teaches the futility of all leagues with the devil-that is to say, of all instrumentalities not morally sacred for winning the highest wisdom and happiness; that the harmony between our sky and our earth, our ideals and our actual facts, can only come by well-directed efforts in so struggling against evil, whether it be within or without, as to secure the rightful conquest over it. "He that overcometh shall inherit all things "the only solution worth trying for each and every form of the problem. The Faust story reached the ears of Shakespeare, and was once recognized in "The Merry Wives of Windsor." Marlowe, in England, had written a play about Faust, and different authors in Germany had attempted a transmutation into tragedy before the gifted Goethe lifted upon the mountainous saga the hand of a creator. Among them all one only made the grand success. The word Faust is now the eternal monument of Goethe's genius : "Striving to be gods, the angels fell: Striving to be angels, men rebel." Well may we glorify the wisdom of all natural orbits and spheres. In them all may shine and do shine, from seraph to glow worm; out of them all are dimmed and broken at last. Preserved, saved, is the member of the spiritual world who is persistent in his struggle against evil; thus teaches one of the closing stanzas of the Second Part of "Faust." "With joy the heavenly hosts go forth to meet him." As Faust rises from the terminus of his earthly pathway of error, sin, and repentance, up to heaven, the prologue to the First Part, which opens in heaven, seems to grow into truer consonance with the end. If the devil in "Faust" is too much of a scholar and a gentleman in his accomplishments to answer the common conception, let it be remembered under what numerous forms of the more exterior refinements, not unfrequently of mental and social cultivation, the poison of moral evil lurks and disseminates itself. The wilds of grossness cannot retain Mephistopheles. He adapts himself to parlor, studio, and the professor's gown, in these modern times; knows habiliments of silk and broadcloth with golden ornaments, so that the symbols of lion, ass, poodle, and serpent, do not express all that appears in his manifoldness. That "Nature is the living garment of the Deity," that the "spiritual world" (Geisterwelt) "is not closed," except as the closed inner sense and the dead heart of man shut it out ("Dein Sinn ist zu, dein Herz ist todt "), and that the divine agency is incessantly active in weaving the texture of the living cosmos, are among the many exalted sentiments of this poem. The love of Nature which always distinguishes Goethe is displayed in not a few of its passages; it was his permanent consciousness that he was a part Nature, and in accord with its order and spirit. In a former article I spoke of the first universal type of the human conflict with life's limitation in the character and acts of the first woman, Eve, the earliest aspirant for deific knowledge; in looking over the last two lines of the Second Part of "Faust," it is somewhat gratifying to find the great poet fully confessing to the high rank and *JOURNAL, July 17, 1875. quality of the womanly influence in leading humanity to continually higher levels: "Das Ewigweibliche * Zieht uns hinan." "The forever womanly Leadeth us upward and on." Goethe, born at Frankfort, 1749, dying at Weimar, 1832, had a long term in which to work out a great series of literary and I may also say scientific results, for he was what his countrymen have always called him- the "Many-sided." His genius was too calm to be tragic after the manner of Shakespeare; too serene to leave a display of dead bodies on the stage. But, without killing the body, life is often deeply tragical. To speak in metaphor, high mountains may be seen on his landscape, but not broken, wild, jagged, and volcanic, like the wildest of natural scenes. No Vesuvius or Niagara expresses him. Still, in temperament and variety, he may justly be compared to a mountain such as South America not elders with a whole body, or four sound legs. They are so unused to kindness that if you touched one it would bite your hand off like a wild beast, supposing that you were going to injure it. Were you to remain alone in a bazaar at night, shut up with them, it is probable that they would attack you in a pack, and kill you. There is a story of a sea-captain who drank a little too much, and lay down in a public place. In the morning, only a gnawed bone or two, his sailor's cap and tattered clothes, told the horrible story. It is quite possible that this should happen, the animals are so starved. Their habits are regulated by laws of their own. I have grown, in the solitude of Salahiyyeh, to learn them. At night, when profound stillness reigns in the village, you suddenly hear a dog coming down from the Kurdish burial-ground on the roots of the mountains. He communicates some news to the dogs nearest the borders of the village. There is a chorus of barking; it ceases, and a single dog is commissioned to bear the news to the dogs of our quarter. They set up a howl, which ceases after a few minutes, and Whatever the canine news is, in about twenty minutes it is passed round to all the dogs of Damascus. one of our lot is detached, and flies down the unfrequently contains, and which in tempera-gardens to the dogs near the Báb Salahiyyeh. ture runs up through all the latitudes and zones of the earth, bearing their respective flora on its sides, and lifting its summit high above its cloudy banners in the eternal light of sun and stars. His English biographer, I think, summed up quite happily the opinion of the highest grade of literary persons when he said, "Goethe was a poet whose religion was beauty, whose worship was of Nature, and whose aim was culture." E. G. HOLLAND. CRUELTY TOWARD ANIMALS IN DAMASCUS.t A FEW words about the street-dogs, as I have become very familiar with their habits and customs. In all Eastern towns they have sprung up from the time of the Creation; they multiply extensively, they belong to nobody, they are not held sacred, but, as they are the town scavengers, nobody kills them. In Brazil, the vulture, a large, black, repulsive bird, supplies the place of dogs, and is therefore protected by a twenty-pound penalty. With the Moslem it is a sin to take life, but it is allowable, or rather it is the practice, to torture, maim, and ill-use short of death. These poor brutes live on the offal of the town, they sleep in the streets, they bring forth their young on a mud-heap, and at a tender age the pups join the pack. They are ill-used by the whole population, and, like Ishmael, their hand is against every one, and every one's hand is against them. The people beat them, kick them, stone them, so that out of eighteen thousand you will not see a dozen *Pickering's second edition of the Second Part of "Faust," as completed in 1831 (London, 1842), translates the last stanza thus: "CHORUS MYSTICUS. Being has grown. "Das Ewigweibliche "-the ever-compassionate-the eternally womanly-leadeth us on. From The Inner Life of Syria, Palestine, and the Holy Land, from my Private Journal, by Isabel Burton. London: 1875. I cultivated the affections of those of our quarter, and found that in attachment and fidelity they differ in nothing from the noblest mastiff or most petted terrier; every time my husband or I went out, a dog was sent on guard by their community to accompany us to the border of his boundary, when he appeared to pass us on to a friend in the next boundary, to wag his tail for a bow, and to take his leave, as a savage chieftain would frank you from tribe to tribe. If a stranger comes, they set up a chorus of barking, and follow him in crowds. If a dog goes into another territory, all the others fly at and fasten on him, as if they said "Who's that, Bill?" "A stranger." "Then 'eave 'arf a brick at him!" If an English dog comes among them, they bark around and try his mettle, and he has to settle the question for himself the first day, like a new boy at a public school. A butcher in Beyrout had an awful-looking English bulldog, which had an ugly reputation, and when he turned out, every pariah fled from the bazaar. I brought with me a St. Bernard pup, a perfect beauty, as big as a young calf. He was so unusually big that I have seen country donkeys and ponies shy at him, probably mistaking him for a wild animal; but the dogs were not afraid of him-he was so good-tempered that they used to worry him in packs, just like human beings. But the bull-terriers, though they were only pups, the streetdogs dared not even look at. They used to fly at the sight of the leopard, and the leopard worried them, but never touched the bullpups. I established two caldrons to collect the leavings of the house-the good was given to the poor, the refuse to the street-dogs; not less than fifty used to live near, and crowd round our door. Every time I came out they formed a flock around me. There were two in particular that I used to compassionate--one was paralyzed in its hind-quarters, and used to drag itself along by the fore-paws. I one day rolled up some medicine in a ball of meat, and threw it to the poor creature, who swallowed it greedily, and got well. The other was a half-starved, mangy, idiotic-looking cur, with one eye, too weak to fight for itself. When the caldron of food came out it got nothing, so I used to set its portion apart. No matter when I went out, where, or for how long, you would see these two poor mis- at seeing them? In a place where no authority There is a pious custom here to the benefit of the lower animals. When a good Moslem is on his death-bed, or when during life he wants a petition to be granted, he does not give to the poor, but he leaves a legacy for bread for the dogs. Often he makes a vow, "If I gain such and such a cause, I will devote so much money to feeding the kiláb: " and you often see some one with a basket surrounded by dogs, throwing the fragments until all is distributed. There is also the Diyyet; if a man kills a pariah it is hung up by the tail, and he is obliged to buy as much wheat as will cover the body up from muzzle to tip, which is made into bread and given to the dogs. My husband tells me that in former times, at home, the same penalty was paid for killing the king's cats. My pups led me into several scrapes. One day when the baker came, one and all seemed to take a dislike to him. I was on the housetop, so I saw only a very long man, apparently fighting with the air, screaming and spinning, in a cobweb-like pattern, all over the courtyard. I began to laugh, supposing he was dancing some new measure, or acting a play for the servants. Suddenly, I found to my horror that he had a bull-pup hanging to each arm and each leg. I flew down-stairs, called them off, gave him restoratives, dressed his wounds, and made him a present, especially a new suit of clothes. I was sincerely grieved and shocked, and he was very good, and never said a word more about the matter. Many people would have brought me to the tribunal. They never did such a thing before nor since. One, however, was a sneaking little thing, who secretly hated the Jews - I suppose she knew them by their dress. Some of them were very much attached to us, but the moment they came in she would go and sit by them, and when no one was looking she would take a sly bite at their legs, and then, instead of running away, sit looking the picture of innocence. None of the other three ever did so, and at first I would not believe them until they showed me the mark of her teeth. I was obliged to correct her, and ever after to shut her up when any of them called. I scarcely know if this is a good moment to introduce an appeal for a "humane society" in Damascus; I believe it could easily be arranged if our consul-general would ask the Wali to favor the merciful project-if Europeans would form it, and make it rather a distinction to admit influential natives. While I was there I had to be my own humane society, and frequently was in trouble with the natives, caused by rescuing some unhappy brute from their cruelty. To set forth the necessity of the society, I must detail a few of the horrors I have seen. In doing so I shall rend the heart and excite the anger of my readers, especially of women of fine feeling-I will be judged by them. If they feel so much at reading these things, what must I have felt I lent our camel to groom No. 2. He had to ride seventy-two miles to Beyrout, wait two days, and return. He knew exactly how he would have been obliged to treat the animal in my presence. Presently I noticed a strange odor in the stables, and found that it did not eat, and that the tears streamed from its eyes. The man said it was fatigued, and would be all right in a few hours. I rode down to the town on the donkey, and then met one of our "Do you know about your camel?" "When you ride back, make it kneel." "Make that camel kneel." I removed the cloth that covered him, and to my horror saw a large hole in his back, uncovering the spine. It was already mortifying. "Explain this!" I said. The man confessed that he had never taken There was a small pariah dog that lived dressing to go down and take it in-for none Another night I heard cries of distress throwing huge stones as big as a melon against a dead-wall, from which issued howls of agony. I dispersed them right and left. Some fell down on their knees, others ran, and others jumped over the wall. I was left alone; it was very dark, and I said to myself, "Where can the victim be? It must have escaped in the confusion." I was going away, when I perceived something brown near the wall. I lit a match, and found a large bundle tied up in a sack. I thought perhaps it was a girl, or a baby, but it was a big pariah dog: they had caught it asleep, laid a huge stone on its tail, bundled head and fore-legs into a sack, and were practising the old Eastern habit of killing by stoning. The difficulty was, how to let the poor animal out: it would, perhaps, think that I had done the cruel act, and fly at me. However, I could not go back to sleep and leave things thus, so I mustered courage. Firstly, I cut the strings with my knife, and pulled it off the head and body, leaving the stone for my own protection; and then, finding that it did not hurt me, I managed with considerable effort to remove the weight. The wretch behaved better than many human beings-he crawled up, licked my hand, and followed me home. I saw a donkey, staggering under a load fit for three, in a broiling sun. It passed our fountain and turned to drink. The man, grudging the moment, gave the donkey a push that sent it with a crash on the hard stones, crushed under its load, bleeding at the nose from thirst and over-exertion. Maddened by the loss of time this would entail, the owner jumped upon its head and tried to stamp its brains out with his wooden boots. The servants, hearing the noise, and seeing what I was about, thought the human brute had attacked me, and set upon him like hornets. I did not stop them till he had received his deserts. Then we obliged him to unload his donkey, to let the beast drink, to wash its wounds, and to wait while it ate barley from my stable. I also sent a servant on horseback to tell the whole story to his master. The fellow had acted, in fact, as a Lancashire "purrer" treats his wife. A man brought me his favorite cat, with back and hind-quarters crushed by a boy, and asked me if I had any medicine to cure it. I said: "Do let me have it killed; one of my servants will blow its brains out-it is horribly cruel to keep it alive one moment." "May God forgive you such sinfulness!" he replied. "I will put it in a room, and let it die its natural death" (starvation). Half an hour afterward I saw that the boys were torturing it in the street. I sent a servant to bring it in, and to dispatch it with a bullet. The man was very much shocked. A boy brought a donkey to water at the fountain near our house. It was evidently worn out with fatigue and thirst, and had either a strained back or a disease in the loins, so that the suspicion of any thing touching its back was a terror to it. Every time the poor beast put down its head to drink the boy touched the tender place with a switch, which made the whole body quiver. It might have been a cabman establishing a raw." I called a servant, who took the donkey away, letting it first eat and drink, and sent it back to the master. The boy was never sent again. I saw a girl of about twelve or thirteen jumping on a nest of kittens on the road-side, evidently enjoying the distressing mewing of the mother. I have often seen boys steal pups in the mother's absence, carry them away perhaps for a quarter of an hour, play at ball with them on the hard stones, and throw them down maimed and to starve. I have seen parents give pups and kittens to their children for this purpose, to keep them quiet. The worst thing I saw was not done by a boy or by a brutal boor, but by an educated man, and, moreover, a European, in charge of an establishment at Beyrout. He used to tie up his horse, a good, quiet beast, and with a cow-hide thong beat its head, eyes, and the most tender parts for ten minutes. His sister used to ride the horse, but lately it had become fractious and ill-tempered through bad usage. Any one who understood animals could see that the poor brute's heart was broken from beating and starvation, or from inability to eat. The first time I saw this cruelty I", "gave him a bit of my mind." My dragoman (Mulhem Wardi) held me back. "For God's sake, Sitti, don't speak to him; he will strike you; he is a madman." I begged him to consider his country, his profession, the European name before natives, his pretensions to be a gentleman. "But look," he said, in a whining tone; "look what the horse is doing!" The poor beast was standing quite quiet, with despair in its eyes. I could not speak politely. "You make me sick, sir. Your horse is broken-hearted-it hasn't even the courage to kick you." He then said that he was of too nervous and sensitive a disposition; and I told him that in that case he ought to be locked up, for that he was a dangerous man to have charge of a public institution. I told his consul-general what had occurred, and he agreed with me that it was a scandal that pained the whole community; but it was not an official matter which could be reported to the embassador. I heard afterward that he had lost his appointment for roughness to those under him. It was a thousand pities, for he was a clever professional. I heard a story that is not bad if true-but I will not vouch for it-that a person with a sense of humor sent for him, but put a loaded revolver on the table close to hand. "What is that for?" said the horse-tor turer. "Oh, that," said the person, "is in case you get one of your nervous and sensitive attacks while you are attending on me!" It was added that this episode did him good. I was walking one day through the village of Bludán, our summer quarter in the AntiLebanon, and I saw a skeleton donkey standing near a cottage, holding up one foot, of which the hoof was hanging by a mere thread. I called to some of the villagers. "Whose animal is that?" An old woman came out and claimed it as her property. as if I were an imbecile. "Who could carry it there if it was dead?" "Will you sell it to me for twenty-five piastres (fifty pence)? If I can cure it, the luck is mine; if I can't, my money is lost." To this she joyfully agreed, though she could hardly help laughing in my face at what she supposed to be my knowledge of ass-flesh. I paid my money, and drove home my donkey, but it was so weak that two hours on its three legs were required to reach our garden close by. I need not say that its last days were happy. A thick litter was spread in a soft, shady place under the trees; a large tub of fresh water, and another of tibn and corn, stood by it during the rest of its time; its hoof was washed, bandaged, and doctored daily. It grew fat, but the vet. discovered that a young hoof had begun to grow, and that from total neglect the worms had eaten it away. There was no hope that it could ever move from that spot, so I had it shot, which the villagers thought very sinful. They admired the mercy, but they never could understand the necessity of putting an animal out of its misery. I will not quote any more cases. What I have said will suffice to show the daily occurrences of this kind, the brutality of the lower orders, and the utter indifference of the better classes. Every person of good feeling will know what a trial it is to witness acts of cruelty and oppression, especially when exercised upon women, children, and dumb brutes. I respect the Moslem's thorough regard for the sanctity of life, which among us, perhaps, is too little regarded.* In Europe I should have complained to the police. But here there is no legal penalty for barbarous acts, and one must often become one's own police. But, right or wrong, I could not, and I never will, remain a quiet spectator of brutality. I would rather loose the esteem of those who are capable of condemning me. People of delicate health, selfish dispositions, and coarse minds, can always bear the sufferings of others placidly. These will probably disapprove of me, but I can bear it. I am sorry thus to be my own trumpeter, and to tell how much good I did; but on these occasions I have sat with and explained to the offenders why these acts are so sinful and shameful, how Allah made the animals, gave them to our care, recommended them to our mercy, and expects an account of our stewardship; how faithful, patient, and long-suffering the poor dumbling is; how dependent on our will; how it has all the toil, too often starvation and bodily injuries, at our hands. I often wonder what the brutes must think of the human race, and what a disappointment many of us "higher animals" must be to the lower. The people have listened and thought, and said, "Sitti, I never heard all this before, and I really will try not to do it again;" "How came that about?" I asked, point- and they deserve the high praise not only of ing to the foot. "Well, I don't know, Sitti. Hard work over the stones." "Why is it so thin?" "You see it could not work any more, and we couldn't afford to keep it idle, so we turned it out, and these four months it has only had what it can pick up on the mountain." (The mountain was as bare of vegetation as my paper.) "What are you going to do with it?" "We had arranged to-night to drive it out on to the mountain, and tie it to a stone, and then the wolves will come and eat it." "Alive?" I asked, in horror. "Why, yes, Sitti," she said, looking at me understanding me, but of allowing themselves to be guided by a woman and a stranger. During the last fifteen months of our residence no cruel acts took place near my house at Salahiyyeh, or at our summer quarter above Bludán. I maintain that if a society "for the prevention of cruelty to animals" were established at Damascus it would quickly bring its own reward. *My husband tells me this story of the South American gaucho: "Juan, why did you cut Pedro's throat? He was an old chum of yours." "Ah, señor the pobrecito had a bad cold, and so I put him out of his misery." THE AULD WIFE. THE HE warld has had eneugh, auld man, 'Tis time that we had gane frae it To meet our bairnies three We mony a silky fleece can claim I' Rutherglen thou'st steekt eneugh An' welcome to their bens. But, Duncan, we are stoopt an' gray, Nor wair withi' the door; The time gaes lang an' lane, For the luve o' ane that's dead. An' we ha'e sought thro' creepin' years Our grim dool's counter-bane, Till we gae stiff an' sair wi' toil Yet here's the same auld pain. An' tho' we've ilk for ither tried To play the cheerin' part, An' hide, by smilin' o' the lips, The weepin' o' the heart; Yet ilk kens that the ither lo'es Far mair the gowan's snaw Upo' three little kirk-yard groes Than a' the hadden braw. That we are weary bidin' now Our darlin's we maun show; But shall ane gae alane aboon Whilst the ither left below? Oh, wad the mornin' sun might light Our twa brows quit o' care, Whilst our twa souls our bairnies clasped Where partin' cooms na mair! * L. A. W. S. * GLOSSARY.-Wat, wet; bieldin, sheltering; sheld, speckled; sleekit, sleek; bings, heaps of farm-produce; routhie, plentiful; kirns, harvestsuppers; steekt, shut up, stored; bens, inner apartments; rief, plenty; tent, watch, take care of; wair, to use; croone, moan; dool's, sorrow's; gowan's, daisy's; groes, graves; hadden, a piece of land, the stocking of a farm, the furniture of a house; braw, fine, handsome; bidin', awaiting; maun, must; aboon, above. EDITOR'S TABLE. WE have sometimes taken occasion to say that the corruption in official places so prevalent in our country is not a crime peculiar to the United States, nor one due to democratic institutions. We are glad to find the New York Evening Post uttering similar views. Of course it was not our purpose, nor is it the purpose of our contemporary, to defend the malfeasances of our public men, or in any way to weaken the public detestation of crimes of this character. But so many people are prone to believe that Tammany rings and Crédits Mobiliers are special outcomes of democratic governments, and consequently to take an altogether gloomy view of the future of our country, that it is well to look into the records of other nations, and see if history justifies this opinion or these apprehensions. That peculation has been rife in Russia, the most monarchical of countries, is well known; it is also known that France under the despotic rule of the late Napoleon was really rotten to the core in all its political life. Great Britain, however, presents a very different picture; and that country lies so close to us socially and politically that the unhandsome contrast our public records exhibit causes, naturally, no little chagrin-many of us forgetting all the time how different a story until recently the mother-country had to tell. The Post, in the article we have referred to, refreshes the memory of its readers with a few facts in evidence that political profligacy is not the offspring of popular institutions. Our readers will be glad to have us reproduce them : "Walpole's habit of buying up members of Parliament, which gave rise to his famous maxim that 'every man has his price,' and which was so openly followed that his agents stood at the door of the House with bags of guineas in their hands to be given to the serviceable voters, is well known. But this shame, as May reports, was carried to greater perfection by Pelham, under George II., and was continued under George III. Lord Bute kept a special pay-office in the Treasury, where the members who supported his measures flocked for their rewards. Sometimes he distributed as much as a hundred thousand dollars in this way in a single day. His mode of raising loans was to assign a large part to the members at ten per cent. discount from the market price. Of one of these, amounting to fifteen million dollars, more than a million went to those who voted for it. . . . Lord Grenville was no less profuse in his gratuities and bribes, and so unrestrained that a gift to his supporters came to be regarded as a customary compliment.' Lord North's loan of sixty million dollars, to carry on the iniquitous and disastrous American War, was one-half of it assigned to the House at a profit of over four millions. . . . Another mode of securing votes was by the grant of lucrative contracts to members and their friends, by which the people were robbed and stupendous private fortunes accumulated in the course of a few months. "But the people who elected these members were just as corrupt as their representatives. Elections to Parliament were made either by boroughs, which were owned by certain noble lords, or by open sale in the market. Those members sent from the boroughs were the mere slaves of their patrons, voting with them always, or voting against them at the cost of their political lives. Those who succeeded by purchase were the slaves of others who advanced them the money. Popular elections were, in fact, not a conflict of principles, but a rivalry of great houses for the mastery. The Duke of Portland once spent forty thousand pounds in contesting a district, and Lord Spencer on another occasion spent seventy thousand. Contested elections have been known to cost one hundred and fifty thousand pounds, which was all laid out, of course, in hiring editors and agents, and debauching the electors. The Nabob of Arcot, though a foreign prince, owned eight members of the House of Commons, and even so pare and virtuous a man as Sir Samuel Romilly bought a seat, as the only way in which an independent man, or a man of convictions, could attain influence in the councils of his country. The practice is detestable,' he said,' but it is better than belonging to some great lord.' The price of seats ranged from two to ten thousand pounds. They were often bought on speculation, and the buyer expected to realize the purchase-money again out of the sale of his votes. Compared with these flagitious transactions, our Crédit Mobilier scandals sink into insignificance; even Tweed's efforts at 'statesmanship' dwindle into contempt; and the Canal and Indian rings, which fill us with horror, are Liliputian imitations of a Brobdingnagian model." Every reader of history is familiar with these facts, but many readers of history are prone to forget them. It may be said that these citations lose their force because the corruption they refer to belongs to a past period; that now, although parliamentary elections are by no means without stain, it is yet very rare that we hear of bribery in Parliament, or of official malfeasance of any kind. But, in truth, if the appalling condition of affairs described in the extract from our contemporary has nearly ceased to be, this circumstance is full of consolations for us-it indicates what can be accomplished in the way of reform almost within the period of one sovereign's reign, and it shows that democracy cannot tend to a decay of probity, inasmuch as the great reforms in affairs in Great Britain have come about at the very period when republican and liberal ideas have been advancing, and while aristocracy has been losing something of its supremacy. The change wrought in England has been really almost marvelous. There was a time when its better men doubted whether it would be possible for English society to survive the current bribery and corruption; but the change came, and this fact ought to inspire all honest Americans with the assurance that it is possible to create a public sentiment which shall reach so thoroughly through all classes, that peculation in any of its forms would not dare to trifle with it. In some particulars our methods need reforming: the primary meeting and the caucus should be shorn of their powers, and the opportunities to do mischief must be brought down to their minimum; but these reforms of method will come, we may be assured, in due time, if the public feeling against public corruption, already well aroused, be strengthened and organized. If all those people who look upon our future so despairingly will take, in view of the lessons of history, a more hopeful survey of affairs-will but recognize that a little prolonged effort and struggle will assuredly in the end clean the Augean stables of our political life-we shall soon be able to make all the scandals of the day matters of by-gone history, just as the English have all the shameful doings of their Parliaments a generation or two ago. THOSE who advocate phonetic spelling are accustomed to assert that the opposition to it comes almost exclusively from men past middle age. Youth is ever hospitable to new ideas, they affirm, while age becomes fixed in its ruts of habit and prejudice. What if this be true? Inasmuch as life and living, so far as we can measure them, consist solely of relation and association, why is it not only perfectly natural but absolutely necessary for our well-being that the associations out of which our existence is built up should be tenaciously held to? What sort of life would that be in which, day by day, every thing must be newly learned, and one's whole garner of impressions be ceaselessly undergoing metamorphosis and reconstruction? Every one, no matter how firmly wedded to the established orthography, must admit that his dislike to changes in the spelling of words arises from long familiarity with them in their present guise. There is no fundamental reason, in most cases, why the forms of words should not take some other shape, and in many instances good reason why proposed alterations should be made. It is simply because one's eye has been long trained to recognize words by a certain definite combination that a change is resented. While this is all true, the assumption that this training, this habit of mind, is some light thing that could be and ought to be thrown off upon the first demand, is a serious mistake. Habit of mind makes up the existence of mind. Life consists of memories, associations, experiences, and impressions, all growing out of its relationship to the things about it. If mind have any fibre, any power of retention, any form of settled action, it cannot fall under the dominion of every new theory brought before it. If it were possible to live in a state of mental celibacy, with the mind |