distillery, then a sprightly dog fully alive to the work of detecting the stealthy steps of thieves and burglars, he felt thirsty. So he followed some of the men up a sort of ladder or steep steps to an upper floor, and there he saw a bright liquid looking like water running over the refrigerator; he lapped, and was a lost dog. It was pure spirit; he liked it, and returned to it again and again. The sensation of getting drunk was very agreeable to him; he went up the steep steps not the usual broad way to sin drank to excess, became hopelessly drunk, came down, often falling headlong, lay down by the fire in a stupid condition until he was sober, sleeping off his debauchery, and then again went up to get drunk as before. This was the evil life he was leading when we saw him. A more wretched, ill-conditioned, blackguard-looking dog never was seen. It may well be asked, why was such conduct allowed? In a busy place such an unusual falling away from virtue

in a faithful dog may not have been at first observed. Possibly the upper classes in a distillery do not take much notice of dogs, whilst the lower classes may have had a sneaking kindness for, and sympathy with, a dog in doing that which they would only be too glad to do themselves if they could. However that may be, the vice had been acquired beyond all hope of reform, and the very curiosity of a literally drunken dog, a lapse unexampled, even in a distillery, of a moral nature, proof in all former experience against the temptations of such an alcoholic Paradise, was enough to let him lie, an example to mankind, on the office hearth-rug of an Irish distillery. What his end may be, or may have been, it is painful to contemplate. To imagine a bull-terrier with delirium tremens is not pleasant, and the M.R.C.V.S. called in on such an occasion would not be in an enviable position. It would be probably pronounced rabies, as everything else is, and the end would be anything but peace.

|

She had heard of anodyne drugs that send patients to sleep under the surgeon's knife. She preferred to remain awake. Among her friends of former days was a loyal soldier, by name Miyoshi. Fate willed that he should die by his own sword. He had disembowelled himself in her presence, and with a wide wound gaping in his bosom, had composed and written his death song. She had witnessed this thing with her own eyes. It was her notion of the example a samurai ought to set, and though a woman, she preferred to emulate such a spirit rather than to take refuge from pain in narcotics. With that she lay down and bared her bosom to the knife. Dr. Sato proceeded with the operation. He made two incisions under the left breast, and two smaller incisions above. The morbid growth was removed, and twenty stitches were put in. During the whole process the old lady never made a movement or uttered a groan. Not until Dr. Sato asked whether she had suffered much pain did she open her eyes and reply quietly that the cutting of live flesh is never without suffering. Her son, who was by her

A JAPANESE PATIENT. At Surugadai, in Tôk yô, we read in the Sei-i-Kwai Medical Journal, lives Mr. Tanabe, a gentleman in easy circumstances. His mother, an inmate of the same house, has attained her sixtieth year, but until quite lately was a hale and hearty lady, much beloved for her virtues and esteemed for her accomplishments. The changes of these topsy-turvy times have not shaken her adherence to the faiths and fashions of ancient days. In her eyes the Japanese samurai still exists, though his name has been erased from the national ledger, and his place usurped by inferiors. A few months ago her wonted health began to fail. She was attacked by a malignant disease formerly held fatal, and now known to be curable only by extreme measures. At the Hongo Hospital Dr. Sato told her that a severe surgical operation could alone save her life. Was it possible that a lady of her age should survive such a method of treatment? Dr. Sato said there was good hope, and after anxious consultation her family consented to follow his advice. The old lady at once became an inmate of the hospital. After she had under-side throughout, would now have answered gone the necessary preparation, Dr. Sato himself undertook the operation, in the presence of the chief surgeons of the Naval and War Departments and of the Imperial University. Two deep incisions in the bosom had to be made, and the assistants were about to administer chloroform. The old lady asked what was the nature of the medicine. Being told that its function was merely to deaden pain, she said that she had no need of such things.

the various inquiries that had come by telegraph and messenger, but the old lady insisted on writing four letters herself to reassure her friends. Dr. Sato declared, as well he might, that he had never, in all his experience, encountered so much fortitude and power of endurance. The Nichi Nichi Shimbun tells the story as an evidence that the old samurai spirit survives in Japan.

British Medical Journal.

For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co.

Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

From The Nineteenth Century.
ITALY IN 1888-89.

BY RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.

approaching five to one. Mendicity, formerly amounting to a public nuisance, had become comparatively rare; the most im portunate beggar that I encountered was a Sister of Charity. A supply of water, faulty alike in quality and quantity, had been replaced at great cost by one of firstrate purity and abundance; and, as a result, typhoid fever, formerly endemic, had been expelled from the place. In the old quarter, or città vecchia, another vast operation was about its beginning. Lying below the level of the sea, it was still a constant or frequent nest of disease. But municipal enterprise had the remedy prepared in a great evisceration (svisceramento). The peccant part was sentenced to disappear altogether; and, partly with change of levels, partly with a system of powerful pumping, a new quarter was to rise. Considerable spaces have been recovered from the sea; and more aggression

I VISITED Naples, exclusively for reasons connected with the health of my family, in the winter of 1850-51. I saw it no more until the winter of 1888-89. The change, which has passed upon the city during these thirty-nine years, may without exaggeration be called enormous. At the earlier epoch, the reaction, which followed the abortive efforts of 1848-49 for national deliverance, was celebrating not only its triumph, but its Saturnalia. Personal liberty was deprived of every guarantee; and the trial of Poerio and his associates, who had assisted the king eighteen months before in establishing, as he solemnly swore, by his own free will and deliberate conviction, a free constitution, was proceeding, under a government of perjury and violence, to its predetermined issues in the judicial condemnation of this kind is in immediate contempla of the patriot culprits. But at the later tion. The old frontage of Santa Lucia is period, there lay upon the surface every to disappear; with every provision, let us sign not only of change but of transforma- hope, for a new and better one on behalf tion. There was a free press, free speech, of its picturesque and well-known group. free worship, and freedom of person, with ings. Much has been done in opening every sign of a vigorous municipal life, and enlarging thoroughfares; but the replacing the stagnant uniformity of a movement and traffic of the great streets despotism both local and central. The cry out, and that loudly, for more. The notes, indeed, of material progress sur- spirit of independent enterprise is also passed everything which could have been alive; and more than one project is at expected. The basking, loitering, lolling, work for piercing through the Vomero loafing population, so peculiarly Neapoli- with a view to a new quarter in that directan, seemed to have become extinct. The tion. To appreciate adequately the charfilth, which formerly made the city offen-acter and significance of these changes, sive to eye and nostril, had disappeared we must bear in mind that Naples, under in great measure. In all the frequented the Bourbons, was the capital of a kingparts of the city, the population was well-dom of eight millions of souls, having a clad. I made it my business to look for stockingless and shoeless feet; and I found them, between young and old, in four cases only during my whole stay. An excellent service had been organized, through the main streets, of omnibuses, trams, and steam-trams; and it was largely used, not only by the middle, but by the working class. Of the butchers' shops, as the measure of the consumption of animal food by the people, I cannot speak in the exact language of statistics; but from the evidence of the eye I should say, that they were multiplied in some proportion

court with all establishments civil and military fully organized around it, and with the social attractions which of themselves generate no inconsiderable population. The withdrawal of this great apparatus unquestionably caused an enormous vacuum. Many establishments have disappeared, and a soldier is rarely seen in the streets, while royal visits to the vast and imposing palaces are necessarily rare. The whole of this vacuum has, however, been filled since the Revolution. The population has even grown. The town, too, has been beautified even more than it has been en

larged. The site was always noble; but we have now a noble city on a noble site. Splendid gifts have been made to the public by distinguished citizens; for instance the Museum presented by Prince Filan gieri. Life is opening up for the artisans who have formed themselves into unions, and are attending lectures and schools. Art, likewise, has lifted up her head; and I had the satisfaction of witnessing an exhibition of sculpture and painting for the year,* which appeared to me full of life and promise. Is it too much to say that all this remarkable development, in so many directions, affords an unanswerable proof of the energies which thrive, as in their native atmosphere and soil, under a system of freedom and self-government?

It will readily be understood that these visible results, with which the modern Birmingham or Manchester may be well contented to compare, have not been achieved without the aid of loans; to the extent, as I have understood, of between four and five millions sterling. I have not been led to believe that other municipalities of the greater Italian cities have been behind that of Naples. It would be a mistake to suppose that these great operations, even if in all cases prudent, indicate a corresponding advance in the rural districts of Italy. Nay, Naples itself has been cited by a writer of the highest authority, Professor Villari, as exhibiting, in the quarter now condemned, an example of the extremest distress. The economic spectacle exhibited by Italy as a whole since the Revolution, is of a mixed character. On the one hand, the increase in her taxation has been vast; so vast as to reach the formidable dimensions of a political danger. On the other hand, it has not sapped the loyalty of the people to the new state of things; and, concurrently with the aggravation of the public burdens, there has been a large growth in the aggregate of national wealth. The subject is one of enormous interest both to the student of political philosophy, and in its direct and practical connection with the affairs of Europe at large.

Some readers may possibly remember or have learned that I became a public meddler in the concerns of southern Italy thirty-eight years ago. This interference was due to what would be called accident, and was of no intrinsic importance. But there was a peculiar combination of time and circumstance; and it received a marked countenance, in different forms, from the two contemporary British statesmen who were of the greatest European weight, Lord Aberdeen and Lord Palmerston. Thus it grew to be a matter of notoriety, and even in some small degree of consequence. I found it stereotyped in the memory of southern Italy in partic ular. It was at the same time fresh as an event of yesterday. The construction to be put upon this vivid recollection is not hard to supply. Meantime, I plead it as my apology for public reference to a subject which well deserves to be handled more at leisure and at large. But, rightly or wrongly, I felt at Naples as if I had in a manner mortgaged a portion of myself to Italian interests, in such a sense that if I received deep impressions upon matters, which seemed in my deliberate view to pertain to the vital interests and honor of the country, it would become a duty to bear my witness, without fear or favor, to the actual state of facts.

So far as my historical recollection serves me, no country, except France between 1789 and the empire, has ever undergone in a like space of time such changes, as have passed upon Italy in the last twenty years. Fourteen hundred years ago she lost empire, and empire which had been the proudest that the world had ever seen. With it, or shortly after this first catastrophe, she found that she had also lost the two essential conditions of national vitality, her unity and her independence, as well as those other blessings of which I will not now discuss the relative value, liberty, tranquillity, and law. The Italian republics indeed offer us a splendid episode. They may claim to be the only, or the most formidable, rivals in history to the States of ancient Greece, especially in the proof they sup

Fostered by the care and liberality of the Duke of plied that, where liberty is dearly prized, even a state of almost continuous turbu

San Donato.