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when we have to give expression to the the space which it occupies in the thoughts national pain and regret which a public and imaginations of the people, beside calamity like the Prince of Wales's immi- it in character, for while our national nent danger causes us, and find no words trouble has no claim to the character of at hand except those which paint the very that kind of shock to the affections which different emotions excited by the most the dreaded opening of a sudden grave in bitter individual bereavements, - bereave- one's own home or family produces, it has ments which alter entirely the colour of a much more in it of wide social and politilife, and separate, as if by an impassable cal significance, much more of that immegulf, the future from the past. The feeling diately intelligible meaning to the intellect of the English people about the Prince's and imagination of which the stunning illness has been as sincere and real as pos- blow of a private affliction so seldom adsible. No doubt the excitement of the mits. The gloom which this illness and rapidly recurring telegrams may have danger bring with them to the nation at tended to make the public suspense and large is neither nearly so acute as that restlessness, which were thoroughly real, which would spring from a similar danger look more like the restlessness of passion- to every home, nor quite so mild as that ately clinging hope than it could be. or which would be due to universal dread of ought to be. There has been a very gen- a sad ending for the hero or heroine of a uine regret for the good-natured Prince thoroughly popular fiction, like Dickens's himself; there has been deep sympathy Little Nell, a dread which brought him, with his wife, who is in as true a sense the it will be remembered, hosts of letters delight of the people as any woman whom pleading eagerly against her death. It is the millions only hear of, and at best very something between the two, less purely rarely see from a distance, could be; there imaginative than the latter, far less absorbhas been a real and earnest fear of another ing and paralyzing than the former, but heavy calamity falling upon the Queen, certainly of the two nearer the latter in and further darkening a lot which for ten degree and kind. The sufferings and years back has certainly not been a bright griefs of the Royal Family constitute to one; and there has been, beyond all this, Englishmen at large a sort of vivid paraa feeling of genuine pity and awe at the ble of human calamity, into which we all prospect of so sudden and sad a termina- enter the more deeply because we know it tion to a career promising to be so bril- fascinates all alike, a lesson in sympaliant, and yet that has not hitherto been thy, not in fortitude, in geniality and by any means what the nation could have breadth of feeling, not in patience or wished and hoped. Moreover, every one courage. Like the imaginative troubles has felt, what many of the papers have of fiction the sympathy which the griefs justly pointed out, that the Prince's suffer- of the Royal Family excite in us is a feeling and danger is in some respects repre- ing indefinitely strengthened, even in kind, sentative of the similar private calamities by the number of those who share it, by of which almost every separate household the conspicuousness of the grief which has had its own bitter experience, an ex- calls it forth. Like that, again, it purifies, perience differing from the present one as it was said that all tragedy purifies, only in this, that the area of sympathy "by pity and by fear," - pity for the sorwas so much narrower, while now it is row which is so like our own, fear due to wide enough to include the entire nation. the lesson so vividly impressed on us that Hence the public are apt to feel as if the no elevation of rank or destiny can mitination were now lending its sincerest sym-gate the severity of these bitterest of hupathy to each family's own share in those "old, unhappy, far-off things and trials long ago," of which we have all only too vivid a recollection, no less than to the great royal calamity of the hour, and with this comes something of a glow of satisfaction in this new sense of national unity. But after allowing for all these different sources of the vivid public feeling of the moment, it is impossible to deny that the language in which the Press has striven to embody that feeling has been entirely beyond and beside the truth, - beyond it in intensity and the impression conveyed of

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man sufferings. But then, on the other hand, the fact that the grief which calls out our sympathies is real and present, and not an artistic or represented trouble, makes it, of course, graver in one respect, though it is less vividly placed before us in others, than any merely painted sorrow. Still it cannot be doubted that the national pain and regret is nearer in kind to that elicited by a vivid story of human trouble, than to that due to the threatened breaking of our own closest ties.

Nevertheless, the language in which the public feeling has been expressed has been

almost exclusively suitable to the keenest vous temper of exaggeration, and contriblanguage of private affliction, the anguish uted to the sentimentalism, as distinguished of lacerated hearts; and this is mischievous from the real sentiment of the moment, by not only because it is false, but because, writing in Bulwerian capitals about the being false, it throws an air of insincerity feelings of the Wife and the Mother for over the very different, but equally true, the Husband and the Son. No doubt a emotion which is really and universally remark made by the Times on the same felt. Men who over-express their feelings day, and which has, we think, been misinor express them unfortunately are very terprèted into an implied assertion of the apt to be thought destitute of the feeling divine right of Kings, is true, and has a they have, and that is unquestionably the valuable political drift,- we mean that tendency of the extravagant and indeed the personal relation of the reigning family utterly inappropriate language in which to the nation is closer, and probably more the papers have been so freely indulging cordial, because it is none of our making, this week. Take, for instance, the following because it has come down to us as our from the Standard of Monday:-"Four family relationships come down to us, from days of unparalleled anxiety have now a tradition of indefinite length and variety. been spent, and a dread suspense still is Nobody can doubt that our national feelmaster of the public bosom. We wait, ing for the troubles of the Royal Family is and hold our breath; read and despond, far keener than would be any feeling for and then return and read again, and re- the troubles of the family of a President fuse to be utterly downcast. At such a chosen by ourselves, even though he had lacerating moment genuine comfort there been chosen for life, unless he were a man can be none. But even in the midst of of great and very exceptional character, the national anguish it is something to be which had profoundly impressed itself on able to feel that this paralyzing blow, this the affections of the people, and this it overflow of grief, is making of us one fam- would be simply absurd to assert of the ily." The language could not possibly be character of the Prince of Wales. Presiintenser if war had brought death into dent Lincoln, in a time of very great naevery home. If it were true language, if tional trial, betrayed a homely magnawe were really "holding our breath," nimity which, no doubt, did make such an if the sorrow we feel were really "an-impression in only four years' time, on the guish," if the blow were really "paralyz- very heart of a great people. The Prince ing," we ought to be and should be quite of Wales, on the other hand, had he been unequal to reading with keen interest not Prince of Wales, but by any political books like the biography of Charles Dickens, and George Eliot's and Mr. Trollope's serial tales, or discussing the Tichborne case, or the Megæra Commission, or the translation of Sir R. Collier to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Every one knows that these would not and could not be his real interests, if he were watching in terrible suspense by a bed where death was struggling with life for one in whose lot his own is bound up. When, therefore, we find any one saying, as one of our public writers did expressly say, and many of them said in effect,

chance elected to succeed the present head of the English nation, and then fallen into this deadly sickness, would have roused in our hearts a kindly commiseration, but nothing more. It is, doubtless, the historical character of the tie, and the fact that we are compelled to think of him, even from his birth, as in a close relation to us, which creates half the strength of the relation, half that customary feeling of recip rocally belonging to each other, which, whatever men may say, lies at the root of almost all natural affection. To point out this is not in any sense an assertion of the We all stand within the Palace to-day. divine right of Kings, but it is an asserIt is our home for the moment, our hearth, the tion that a long past creates relations a centre of our hopes and fears," we regret great deal broader and stronger than we language so extravagant, because it tends can intellectually gauge, and the grasp of to conceal, and even excite revulsion which reaches far beyond anything that against, the true sentiment of the nation. the mere rationale of the relation would Even the Times, when it assumed on Sat- lead us to suppose. Nor can anything be urday and Monday that there was nothing more useful to us than to be made to feel to which the nation could possibly attend from time to time that whatever anomaexcept the Prince of Wales, that all lies may surround the political institutions other subjects had lost their interest for Englishmen,-gave in far more than we should have expected of it to this mischie

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into which the nation has grown, they gain, through the mere fact of long existence, a tenacity of hold upon us which it

would be exceedingly difficult for any amount of wisdom and statesmanship to replace. In England at least, habit, and that dumb affection which springs out of habit, put forth, as it were, the mortar which holds the stones of the political edifice together, and if we were once to break up the tradition, it would be very long before reason could furnish us with a cement nearly as strong.

But the more clearly we recognize this, the more clearly are we bound to protest against the exaggeration of sentiment which reflects a certain amount of ridicule on the real feeling of the nation, and promotes strong reaction at the next available opportunity. The writers who have been exaggerating so extravagantly the intensity of the popular feeling, and writing as if business were almost neglected, work laid aside, politics forgotten, science and art empted of their interest, and the English world exclusively employed in buying evening papers and running after bulletins, have contributed only to falsify a sincere interest, and create a feeling of disgust at the travesty of a valuable as well as honourable anxiety.

we can

Canning's "Needy Knifegrinder hardly recall a song, or a story, or a bon mot which has exercised an important influence on politics. The art of political squibbing seems itself to have disappeared for we do not allow that the "Battle of Dorking" comes within that designation. It is different, however, in America, where humour has very often of late years had high political or social effect, has brought certain truths home to the popular mind as nothing else could. By far the most formidable enemy encountered by President Jackson in his war on the National Banks was the man whom it is said he refused on his death-bed to forgive, Seba Smith, who published as "Major Jack Downing" a series of letters full of true Yankee humour- - Yankee as distinguished from Western-humour spiced and flavoured with keen intellectual insight. The " "Bigelow Papers," with their humourous scorn of slavery and of wars for its extension, were a most important contribution to the Abolitionist cause, as was the song about John Brown's soul, to which the North marched to the conquest of the South. There is no humour in the meaning of that song, but there is in its form, and in the tune which accompanies it, and it kept the link between abolition and victory incessantly before the minds both of soldiery and people. Lincoln's humourous sayings, more particularly his remark about "swapping horses while crossing AMERICANS have at least one genial streams," and his rebuke to the perfervid quality. They do appreciate Humour. Of abolitionists who were pressing him to go all the differences between society there too far ahead of the national sentiment, and society here, we do not know one "I don't know, gentlemen, that I ever remore striking than the political power ceived a deputation straight from God which, across the Atlantic, humour ap- Almighty before," had all the influence of pears to exercise over the masses of the great speeches, as had before his time the people. We have nothing of the kind left really wonderful burst of glowing fun in in England. A stroke of pictorial humour which Senator Hale, sitting in his place is, indeed, occasionally appreciated, and because he was too fat to stand, repudiated individual statesmen have sometimes bene- the annexation of Cuba. That was fited or suffered from caricature, but the speech, no doubt, but it was the humour English require to see fun in order to be in it, and not the eloquence, which desimpressed by it. The judgment of Eng-troyed the formidable order of the Lone lishmen on O'Connell was distinctly affect- Star. Bret Harte's "Heathen Chinee " ed by "H. B.'s" drawing of him as the has distinctly modified the popular appre"Big Beggarman"; Sir J. Graham never ciation of the Chinamen, and helped to quite got over the "Little Dirty Boy"; beat down the previously threatening disand Lord John Russell's influence waned like felt to them in Massachusetts, where from the day Punch sketched him as the they are competing with the powerful small lad who chalked up "No Popery!" "Order of St. Crispin," the great political and then ran away in a fright. The ideal Union of Shoemakers, which returns oneof him in the British mind as the man of third of the State House of Representaundaunted pluck, who would cut for the tives. The New York papers declare that stone or take command of the Channel much of the recent victory of decent citiFleet, suffered from the drawing. But zens over the Tammany Ring is due to since the days of the Anti-Jacobin and some pictorial jokes issued, by an artist

From The Spectator. THE POLITICAL INFLUENCE OF HUMOUR

IN AMERICA.

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named Nast, in Harper's Weekly, a publi-intellectual effort so swift and so keen? cation of vast circulation and clean of Is it that to their habitual reserve or pecuniary corruption. We have not seen gloom humour brings more pleasure than these drawings, but the consensus of New it brings to other men, giving in addition York opinion about them is complete. to enjoyment a sense of mental relief, or It is, we suppose, in this, the power of is it that Americans are essentially hubringing a subject home to the millions morous, though only a few can express that the efficacy of humour in America the hunour latent in them? We suspect lies. These masses do not read the long the former is the case, for the only people speeches, and are not very attentive to as sad and reserved as the Americans, well-reasoned argument, getting weary of the Bengalees, have precisely the same its length; but they all enjoy and remem- faculty of appreciating rhymed jests, ber a rhymed joke, or a rough epigram, though they like them a little more bitor a short story, which tickles their some- ter than the Americans do. Or is the what peculiar fancy, and reveals clearly to explanation, after all, the much simpler. themselves their half-thought-out convic- one that the Anglo-Saxon people everytions. That we can understand, but what where loves rhymed humour, as it loves still perplexes us is the universality of this rhymed sentiment, but that this love is faculty of appreciation. Humour could only developed when the race has received hardly be subtler than it is in the "Heath- a little education? The Lowland Scotch en Chinee," yet the "point" was taken at are in some respects very like the Ameronce throughout the States by labourers icans. With them also education is unias fully as by graduates, and with exactly versal, and wanting in humour as some of the same effect. The wild men of the them are, there is not a nuance in Burns' West enjoyed Artemas Ward's lectures far more than the English did the epithet of "much-married" which he affixed to Brigham Young did him as much harm as the Seventh Commandment and the descriptions of Saint Abe and his Seven Wives will be relished by roughs in California as much as by the self-indulgent philosophers of Boston. What is there in this grave and rather sad people which makes their appreciation of this form of

humour which they are unable to appreciate. If this suggestion is true- and we make it with fear and trembling - England will get something more from education than she expects, an antidote against misery more efficacious than anything except the religious sense. The appreciation of the tragic does not increase with cultivation, rather perhaps diminishes, but culture develops the perception of every kind of humour.

grance of Russia leather. We can vouch from personal observation for the flourishing condition of the Hyères and Nice, where trees from seeds sown in 1859 are said to be now sixty metres high. We hope that experience will confirm Professor Gubler's anticipations of the remedial virtues of the Eucalyptus.

THE FEVER TREE. The cultivation of the Eucalyptus globulus is making great progress in the South of France, Spain, Algiers and Corsica; nor is this to be wondered at, remarks the Medical Times and Gazette, if an account lately given of its virtues by Professor Gubler, in the Bulletin de Thérapeutique, is even partially true. It is a native of Tasmania, where it was of old known to the natives and settlers CHINA, as a remedy for fever. It prefers a marshy soil, The Mittheilungen contains a réin which it grows to a gigantic height with sume of the scientific journeys of Freiherr von great rapidity. It dries the soil by the evapo- Richthofen in Central China. This gentleman, ration from its leaves, and shelters it from the who, as geologist, accompanied the Prussian exsun, thus preventing the generation of marsh pedition to Eastern Asia, afterwards independmiasm. Its wood is hard as teak. Every part ently spent several years in travelling in Furof it is impregnated with a balsamic, oil-of-cam- ther India and California. His explorations in phor-like odour; and, besides a notable quantity China began in 1868, and terminated in the of astringent matter, it contains a peculiar ex-middle of 1870; and in making known the extractive, which is supposed to contain an alka-traordinary richness of the country in coal and loid allied to quinine. At any rate, its efficacy iron, the mainstays of commerce and industry, in intermittent and marsh fevers has gained for mark an important epoch in our knowledge of it in Spain the name of the "fever tree." It is the land. Her von Richthofen's latest route lay a powerful tonic and diffusible stimulant, does in a direct line across the country from Canton wonders in chronic catarrh and dyspepsia, is an to Pekin. His reports on the provinces of excellent antiseptic application to wounds, and Hunan, Hupeh, Honan, and Shansi, have been tans the skins of dead animals, giving the fra- published, in English, at Shanghai,

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