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after analyzing Corneille, and explaining how out offence, be called a truism. He seems, he wrote as he did because he was a Norman also, to labor under a fear of being considered by birth and had been an advocate by profes- a materialist, against which imputation he sion, he quotes the following charming little vindicates himself, according to the manner poem addressed to a young lady who had not of French writers, by talking about l'idée, been quite civil to him. He says with truth, le droit, and so on. And all this is worked Le sujet est léger, le rhythme court, mais up into a good many pages of not merely on y retrouve la fierté de l'homme, et aussi harmless but laudable rhetoric, the general l'ampleur du tragique." The verses are prob- result of which appears to be that the world ably new to our readers. They are well worth in which we live is composed of a great deal reading:of matter, and more or less spirit, capable of making eloquent protests against its rival and partner when the occasion requires it to do so. Whether all this is or is not philosophy, M. Deschanel has written an amusing little book and said many things worth remembering.

"Marquise, si mon visage

A quelques traits un peu vieux,
Souvenez-vous qu'a mon age

Vous ne vaudrez guère mieux.

"Le temps aux plus belles choses
Se plait a faire un affront,
Et saura faner vos roses

Comme il a ridé mon front.

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From The London Review, 30 July. BATHING AT THE SEASIDE. LONDON has grown much larger, and the Thames much dirtier, and the principles of health have become better understood, and the terrible battle of existence is more fiercely and eagerly and closely contested now than in the days not very long gone by, when the frugal Mrs. Gilpin proposed to her well-to-do husband, John, to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of their married life, and signalize the very first holiday they had ever taken by a simple dinner at the suburban village of Edmonton. The modern Mrs. Gilpin would be more likely to address her husband at breakfast somewhat in this fashion: "It's two years, dear, since we had a dip in the Last year, after the failure of Whirligig and Grumby, you did not think it prudent to increase our expenditure until we had pulled up those losses; but we have been so fortunate since, that I really think we can afford a month at Ramsgate, or, at least, at Margate, this year. It would do the chil

sea.

The last four stanzas in particular are brim-dren a world of good, and I am sure no one ful of spirit, and the mixture of pride and wants a little rest, fresh air, and recreation vanity which they display is so remarkable that it seems impossible that it should have ever occurred in more than one person.

M. Deschanel does not himself inspire much confidence; but he is full of wit and shrewd ness and entertaining illustrations. His great theory is, that the circumstances to which his different chapters relate affect a writer's literary works, and this may, we trust with

more than you do yourself, you dear, hardworking slave of a man!" To which the modern "linen-draper bold," who, instead of being "a train-band captain," is a sergeant in a volunteer corps, might reply, "Except yourself, you dear, devoted slave of a wife and mother!" And thereupon the trip to the seaside is settled.

How did our ancestors get on without trips

to the seaside? How did people contrive to summer. Far more tempting are the cool live without spending at least one month of plash of the ocean brine, and that peculiarly the twelve at a watering-place? It is sur- fresh and invigorating odor which comes from prising what a modern invention, histori- the open sea. Even as we sit broiling and cally speaking, the English system of sea- working, with the yellow atmosphere of Lonbathing is. We pride ourselves, as a nation, don stretching away over our field of vision, upon our cleanliness in all things, but still we fancy a faint scent of sea-breeze comes in more, if possible, upon the attention which at the open window, and intimates that a dewe pay to the purification of our persons than lightful "header" may be within the range to our clothing and our residences. It is dif- of possibility. Unless cleanliness be acceptficult to realize the fact that our marine wa-ed as a very modern handmaiden of godliness, tering-places are all of modern growth, and how are we to judge of the piety of our forethat our grandfathers and grandmothers were fathers? The luxury of the heathen Romans educated in a hydrophobic terror of water, in their baths and modes of bathing was so and an avoidance and exclusion of fresh air offensive and repugnant to Christian morality, and ventilation, which are not to be account- propriety, and decency, that studied neglect ed for by any theory of folly and ignorance of the person became a distinguishing charcombined with which we are acquainted. acteristic of those early Christians who set Not that all English watering-places are only themselves most zealously in pious opposition of the modern growth of one or two genera- to pagan customs. And when we remember tions. The inland mineral springs, which were the foundation of medicinal bathing, are nearly all of ancient date; but their proper and decorous use bears no proportion to the length of their existence. As to the seaside resorts, it is not wonderful that, in the old days of naval warfare and piratical prowlings, people whose business did not naturally compel them to live near the coast, kept as far out of the reach of chance visitors from the ocean as possible.

that the ancient name of a public bath has come down to our own times as a synonym for a place of the most infamous resort, we shall cease to wonder at the long and stern contest which Christianity has been forced to wage against a system of deep demoralization fostered under the semblance of cleanliness, and at the strange tales of the boastful negligence of washing by even eminent and learned churchmen, laymen, and ladies of the early and middle ages. The plain truth Mr. D. Urquhart, the champion of the is, that with the ancient Romans bathing was Eastern mode of bathing, whose writings resorted to, not for ablution, but for luxury. upon the subject induced an Irish physician, Those masters of the world, when they abanDr. Barter, of Blarney, to erect the first doned the grim severity of their republican Turkish bath ever seen in Christian Europe, manners, and adopted the sensualism and efgives an amusing account of the comments feminacy of the Lydians and Sybarites, spent made by a Turkish lieutenant of a man-of- a large part of their time in baths, which they war who, whilst smoking, was watching the adorned in the most profuse splendor, makablutions of an officer of a British man-of-ing them shine with costly marbles and prewar, which lay near. "Allah be praised! "cious stones, with silver and with gold. Here he said, taking the amber from his mouth; "that poor devil wishes to be clean, if he only knew how. See! how he dabbles, and throws back upon his face and neck the foul, thick, greasy, nasty puddle. And now he rubs down and presses into his skin all that filth with a damp towel, and feels quite satisfied that he is washed and clean. Allah be praised!" But the Turkish bath is only a form or a copy of the old Roman and Grecian hot-air bath, and, how charming soever may be its cleansing and restorative powers, the thought of it is by no means agreeable or refreshing in these scorching, sunny days of

they would sit for hours, reading, conversing, receiving friends, and killing time in a hundred ways, of which the least objectionable was mere indolence. We have but to read Juvenal, to know the corrupt uses to which the system was turned; and there can be no doubt that the vicious indulgences which cloaked themselves under a pretext of salubrity, had much to do with the decay and ruin of the vast Roman Empire. The strong, hardy, and withal dirty Northmen seem to have extinguished the system of hot bathing in which imperial Rome had so long revelled; but for some reason or other it sur

vived in the Eastern Empire,-probably be- | passing to and fro. Belgravia will be a descause that part of Europe was less influenced ert,-Tyburnia like a city in a fairy tale, than the west by the example of barbarian where all the people are mysteriously asleep, manners. When the Turks took Constanti-and the gallant young prince has not yet arnople in the fifteenth century, they were as rough, unkempt, and unwashed as any Goth or Hun that ever marched under Alaric or Attila; but they were not slow in adopting the system of bathing which they found in full existence among the people they had conquered, and it must be added that they were equally quick in assimilating those vices which the supple Greek had preserved through all the changes of government and religion. The Turks became externally clean, and internally, in many cases, foul enough. The excessive stress which their faith lays upon personal ablutions made them the more ready to adopt a system which they found made to their hands; and it has thus come to pass that the luxury of bathing has never quitted the shores of the Bosphorus from the days when the rude Thracian first softened his primeval manners to the existing moment. The Turkish Bath," as we have said, is but the ancient Greek or Roman bath revived.

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This, however, is not what an Englishman understands by bathing. The Romans had their hot-baths in this island, and a species of sweating-bath has always been known among the Irish peasantry; but the modern Briton's idea of a bath is for the most part associated with a cold plunge in the river or the

sea.

At this time of year, thousands of Londoners are looking forward with eager anticipation to the salt sting and savor and renovating freshness of a dip in the cool waves off Margate, or Ramsgate, or Brighton, or Scarborough, or Hastings, or some other of the many delightful watering-places with which our shores are thickly sprinkled. Many of our weary workers are off already; many more will depart in the coming weeks of August, and until the autumn is far advanced the lodging-house keepers will know no rest from their profitable toils. London is already thinning; in a short time longer, the Strand and Cheapside, Oxford Street and the parks, will exhibit an unmistakable and most obvious difference in the number of persons

rived to waken them up by kissing the lips of the somnolent beauty. It would be curious if we could have, some census year, a supplementary statement of the number of persons sleeping in the metropolis on the night of the 31st of August, in addition to the usual figures with reference to the 30th of April. We should then see the extent of our annual depletion. A division into districts would hardly be necessary. We know already, but too well, that this yearly refreshment of body and soul is only for the well-to-do. The western section of London contributes by far the largest contingent; the south, also, pours forth its holiday seekers; but the north and east have little share in the observance. Mile End and Bethnal Green are represented at the seaside by few indeed, save travelling showmen, itinerant nigger minstrels, and nomadic swell-mobsmen. Victoria Park is not abandoned with the advaning season to disconsolate nursery-maids and misanthropical "keepers," like Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, but flourishes as gayly and is as well attended in September as in May. This restriction of a good and necessary thing to the minority is one of the saddest considerations in connection with the autumnal period of recruiting. There is no time of rest and refreshment and oxygenization of the blood for those who most sorely need the change. Happily, however, the railway system of late years has done something toward redressing this evil. The excursion trains, every now and then, remind us with hideous abruptness that we are all mortal; but they enable, at a moderate expense, large bodies of our poorer fellow-creatures to spend seven or eight hours in the green rural places far away, or by the life-breathing margin of the sea, and thus allow us, who have more time and money at our disposal, to feel a little less uneasy in our consciences as we lounge in easy coat and wide-awake hat, within sight of the French coast, or on the shores of the German Ocean, or by the long-rolling waves and mighty murmur of the Atlantic deep.

From The Saturday Review.
SANCTUARIES.

has consequently corrupted on the pretence of improving it.

Whence or when the Greeks got the notion of sanctuaries, we do not know; but it is certain that, when they began to extend their territories eastward, they found and carried back with them the custom of making every temple, sacred grove, and statue of a god a sanctuary for criminal, debtor, and slave. By whatever channels the institution travelled through Asia Minor, one most vital alteration had by this time been introduced. We have seen that the refuge was originally probationary only,-a security against Lynchlaw; among the heathens it was absolute. In the temple of a god no violence might intrude, no discord might violate his domain. As the natural consequence, every holy place was perpetually tenanted by a crowd of refugees, who evaded the laws by turning the temple into a dwelling, and hailed in every new deity and in every new votive building a fresh step toward the abolition of all punish

THE recent fire in the Chapel of the Savoy suggests the curious reflection that, had such a catastrophe occurred two centuries ago, it would have been esteemed one of the greatest blessings that could possibly have befallen London. Within those spacious precincts of the ducal palace of which the only relics now are charred ruins, was collected at that time as varied a medley of nuisances as it is possible to imagine. There congregated a community of desperate exiles from the world, protected only by their chosen prison from the penalties of waging war against society; beyond the reach of law and justice; liable, most or all of them, had such a fire as that of last month driven them from their magic circle, to be hung by scores at Tyburn, hard by where now stands the Marble Arch. A strange law, that a palace should avail to protect its neighborhood against the law of the land! A most mischievous law, one would think, that inside those Savoy pre-ments. With beautiful and discriminating cincts sheriff and constable might never enter, pathos, twenty-three centuries ago, Euripides -that thief and murderer and debtor could bewailed that " they who should be driven rest as tranquilly within those four brick from the altars of the gods are instead prowalls as if there were no hindrance from law tected by them; that places which ought to against every one doing what seemed right in be a sanctuary for the just, to shelter from his own eyes. Yet it was a law which, for injury and oppression, are allowed to show all that, had its source in a kind and wise equal favor to the evil and the good." This institution of the world's most ancient law- was a result widely different from the original giver; for its origin may be traced to the six design of cities of refuge. Yet there remained cities of refuge which, on the plains of Moab, in Athens alone, till the latest moment of its Moses is related to have proposed to the independence, no fewer than seventeen of Israelites to build. The object of those cities these sanctuaries, utterly beyond the reach was that anybody who by misadventure had of law, and in which justice might be defied killed a neighbor should flee to some one of with impunity. On this point it need only them, and find in it a retreat from the fury be added, that the system was allowed to of the avenger. To protect a wilful murderer remain down to the final conquest of Greece sanctuaries were never intended. Whoever by Rome; that one of the first innovations took refuge in one was forced, even though then made by the conquerors was its abolihe clung to the altar, to give himself up to tion; and that until the time of Justinian the proper authorities for trial. If he then the Romans never disfigured their jurispruproved that he had "slain his neighbor with- dence with such a perpetual obstacle to doout guile," the law promised to defend him mestic prosperity and social order. By that from further molestation; if not, his tempo-time, as was the case all the world over, rary hiding-place was open to him no longer. It was a benevolent provision, both for giving time for the surviving relatives' anger to cool down, and for affording the innocent object of their resentment an opportunity to justify himself. Unfortunately, however, the world has refused to keep to the original model, and

sanctuaries abounded on every hand; for with the introduction of Christianity into a country, the introduction of this institution seems to have been a universal consequence. At all events, we find it, as we have already stated, spread through the great empire of the East. Just about the same time we meet

with a proof that it was established in France, | crown, while a return from his exile renin a story told of one of her kings, Chilperic, dered him at any time liable to summary juswho died about the end of the sixth century.. tice on his own recorded confession. Had this One of his sons, having incurred the royal original state of the law remained, theredispleasure, is related to have fled to the fore, in its integrity, as it issued from the sanctuary of Tours. Offended majesty ran head-quarters of the church, it would be difafter him, and demanded restitution of its ficult to detect much mischief in such a sysson, threatening, if the bishop of the place tem, or any greater anomaly than in modern refused, to ravage the church's lands there- sentences of transportation. The odium abouts. The bishop (Gregory the historian) that is associated with it belongs to a later made answer, that "Christians could not be age, when the church and the world both guilty of an act unheard of among pagans." became impurer as they grew older, and corThereupon King Chilperic wrote an auto- rupted by prosperity and wealth. By royal graph letter to St. Martin, whose tomb was concessions, by papal bulls, and monkish agin the sanctuary, requesting permission to gressions, these sanctuaries were first revolutake away his son by force. The honest tionized and then multiplied in every direcsaint,” as Mr. Hallam puts it," returned no tion. Their privileges were no longer limanswer; " and his majesty had to content himself with devastating the neighboring estates. Even so bad a Christian as he was did not dare to infringe on the privileges of a city of refuge in the sixth century after Christ.

It was probably not until after the conversion of our Saxon forefathers to Christianity that the law of sanctuary became known in this country. The Broad Sanctuary of Westminster appears to have been the first, and claims for its founder Edward the Confessor, some five or ten years before the Conquest. The original state of the law in this country, according to Blackstone, is as follows: :

"If a person accused of any crime except treason and sacrilege had fled to any church or churchyard, and within forty days after went in sackcloth and confessed himself before the coroner, and declared all the particular circumstances of his offence, and took the oath in that case provided,-namely; That he abjured the realm, and would depart from thence forthwith at the port which should be assigned to him, and would never return without leave from the king,'he by this means saved his life, if he observed the conditions of his oath by going with a cross in his hand, and with all convenient speed, to the port assigned, and embarking there; for if, during this forty days' sanctuary, or on his road to the seaside, he was

apprehended and arraigned in any court for this felony, he might plead the privilege of sanctuary, and had a right to be remanded if taken out against his will."

He remained, nevertheless, a felon all his life, and his property was forfeited to the

ited to churches and churchyards. Wherever a friar chose his house, or a great man built his palace, there the apathy of the executive and the insolence of the mob established a sanctuary; and to such an extent did this national madness spread that, at the end of the seventeenth century, no fewer than forty recognized refuges might be enumerated in London alone. One of the earliest and most curious instances of the system in our own kingdom is the sanctuary long claimed in Scotland by the descendants of Macduff, Macbeth's dethroner. Malcolm III. (Canmore), on recovering his ancestral crown in the middle of the eleventh century, granted to this clan the privilege that any one related to it within nine degrees, who had been guilty of unpremeditated homicide, should on fleeing to Macduff's Cross, near Lindores in Fifeshire, have his penalty remitted for a fine. Sir Walter Scott, in his " Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," quotes a Latin document of the thirteenth century, in which the privilege is claimed in bar of any other jurisdiction than that of the Earls of Fife. The cross itself was destroyed at the reformation; but its pedestal still remains, as also does the tradition in the family of Moray in Abercairny.

At various periods of the Middle Ages we find claims of privilege being tried and confirmed by law. Two only we select by way of example. In 1378, John of Gaunt sent two emissaries, Sir Ralph de Ferrers and Sir Allen Boxhull, to drag a fugitive from his retreat within the precincts of Westminster Abbey. An appeal was made to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who excommunicated

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