from the highest authority that the botanical works of Russia are of so distinguished an order that other nations will have to acquire the Russian language in order to study them; and the same with mineralogy. That such men suffer, like their compatriots, from the universal jobbery and stupidity is but too true. If there be a first-rate scientist at the head of a class, he has the melancholy certainty that his successor, appointed by imperial command, will be a man in every way opposed and inferior to himself. The world did not need the example of the Czars to be con: vinced that the sway of an absolute monarch is doubly baneful, as embodying in himself alone that responsibility which on this gigan. tic scale. no mortal man can wield, and thereby prohibiting all exercise of this great educator of mankind to all below him. The subjects of an autocrat remain virtually, like the serfs under their former masters, in perpetual nonage. Under these circumstances the word "reform" addressed to an Executive which, while it most wants it, is most interested to prevent it is a mockery. The Czar may be absolute; but as long as he continues so, though his subjects are drilled and governed to death, he stands helpless in the centre of a vicious circle. All he can do is to order Tchinovniks to control Tchinovniks-in other words, to set the evil to remedy the evil. The more safely and sadly, therefore, may it be predicted that, while absolutism lasts the principles of government will never cease to be oppression and repression. With the continuance of this rule-and what we have stated gives no hope of its relaxation-there may soon be nothing good left to encourage. And this is the natural tendency of Absolutism. In Dr. Johnson's words, “ a country governed by a despot is an inverted cone.' -Quarterly Review.

SUICIDE AMONG GERMAN CHILDREN.-A curious return has been made concerning some 289 instances of suicide by school children in the German Empire during the six years 1883 to 1888 inclusive. The interest of the return. centres in the motives assigned for these extraordinary acts. Among the cases which could be so explained, the largest proportion appear to have been attributable to fear of punishment. This, perhaps, might have been expected, nor is it altogether surprising that such extreme terror should be chiefly exhibited among pupils of the elementary schools. The fact that 20 per cent of all the

collected cases fall into this particular class should, however, afford food for reflection. It is certain that undue severity has been practised, or, at least, undue apprehension has been aroused, in every one of these instances, seeing that the little victims were so far thrown off their balance by it as to be driven to the extremity of suicide. It would be unjust to assume that for these exaggerated fears the teachers are wholly, or even mainly, responsible; but, on the other hand, no really efficient teacher would ever leave upon a child's mind an impression so horrible as to precipitate such a crisis as this. The child who takes his own life rather than face an angry teacher must believe, rightly or wrongly, in the ferocity of the teacher; and it is much to be feared that children of tender years, even when they are not so terrorstricken as this, are apt to nurse a suspicion that most strangers and some friends-the teacher in particular among the latter-are human wolves. To eradicate this mischievous misapprehension ought to be one of the first tasks of a successful preceptor. Among the high-school pupils the suicides are almost exclusively boys, and here the most common motive is dread or disappointment in connection with examinations. Mental derangement and thwarted ambition comes next in order, while precocious sentiment claims its share to the extent of four boys and one girl, whose unhappiness is recorded as due to une affaire de cœur. It is some satisfaction to be able to add that these emotional young people were all past the elementary school stage. -Lancet.

A NEW SENSATION.-Monsieur Carron, a Grenoble engineer, has invented a machine which will be the delight of the lovers of sensational emotions. The inventor has thought of those who are fond of such strong sensations as are experienced upon a swing, or upon Russian mountains, particularly where the descent is rapid. To increase this emotional feeling, he proposes to give to the public the impression of a vertical fall of 1000 feet (300 metres, the height of the Eiffel Tower). The project is a new one, and practical, if M. Carron's calculations are correct. At the end of a fall of 300 metres, the velocity acquired is 77 metres per second. Very rapid trains only travel about 30 metres per second, so never has the human species travelled at this rate before. The sensation that will be felt is that of giddiness; it is easy to fall the

distance named, but difficult to pick one's self up again after such a fall. Herein lies the inventor's secret. Construction: A cage in shape of a ball or mortar-shell, in the head of which is a chamber 3 metres diameter by 4 metres of height, capable of holding 45 persons comfortably seated in well-stuffed arm-chairs, circularly arranged round the room; the floor is a mattress with springs of 50 centimetres in height; the issuing or narrow point of the bomb beneath is fitted with a series of cones interlocking each other. The total height of the apparatus is 10 metres and weighs 4 tons. From the top of the Eiffel Tower this gigantic shell is allowed to slide with its load; but is not crushed by coming in contact with the earth, for the inventor has provided a large basin or pond full of water-or, more properly, a well, excavated in the shape of a champagne glass, with a diameter at top of 50 metres and a depth of 55 metres; at the depth of 28 metres to the bottom the diameter is 5 metres. The shell, ou its arrival, is received by this yielding cushion and displaces 30 tons of water; the wave pro. duced by the fall is spent at the edge of the basin. According to M. Carron the reaction of the shock to the passengers is annihilated. The shell after its fall would float, and a landing stage would be put to it for the passengers to disembark; then the shell is again raised by an apparatus to the top of the tower to begin again the emotional descent. The price is fixed at 20 francs per passenger, a moderate sum for such sensational enjoyment. Great towers lose their attractions without accessories; hence this invention is recommended to the projectors of the forthcoming Chicago Exhibition. The Americans, being fond of licking creation, will no doubt adopt his ingenious contrivance.-Le Pelil Parisien.

HOW THE JAPANESE MANAGE CHOLERA.—Sir Edwin Arnold gives an interesting account of the splendid way in which the Japanese offi. cials deal with a visitation of cholera, such as they are now enduring. Their central idea is to isolate each case as it occurs, and, as the police are pretty well omnipotent, this is not so difficult as it would prove elsewhere. As soon as a case is declared, a policeman arrives at the house and carries off the patient to the hospital. The people dread this intensely; indeed, their nature is so sensitive that many women and even men die actually from the depressing fact of being there, in spite of good

treatment, kindly and brave nursing, and fearless and devoted medical assistance. Fear of going there makes the poor people conceal the beginning of the attack, and allow the insidious symptoms to go on, hoping to pull through, thus giving medical science too little opportunity of action and causing the malady to be fatal in seventy cases out of a hundred. The rigid system of isolation is nevertheless kept up, and to this is due the fact that the disease passes from individual to individual, without any great leaps and bounds, and that the daily returns are now happily declining. Moreover, the hot weather is coming to an end. Constant showers of rain have flushed all the open drains and ditches, so that if there is no recrudescence of the dreadful plague. it may be hoped that Japan may be quit this year of the penalty of her neighborhood to China, with a death tribute of not more than 20,000 lives. How long will science allow the cholera bacillus to carry off its thousands in this way? Sir Edwin Arnold speaks very highly of the bravery and good sense shown by the Japanese people. At no time has there been the slightest difficulty in procuring nurses, bearers, and people to disinfect and carry away the corpses.-Hospital.

A NEW SOCIAL DANGER.-Opponents of dancing have had a somewhat novel argument suggested to them. Some person whom we cannot but regard as over-cautious has discovered that even the drawing-room carpet is the home of dangerous microbes, and must not be disturbed, lest the infective swarm should arise and poison the atmosphere. With every allowance for the unknown components of dust, the objection is, in our opinion, certainly as whimsical as it is probably original. Such regular cleansing as a carpet undergoes ought to free it from any seriously morbific influ. ence, the more so that a dancing-room is less than any other exposed to such mischievous agency. Far more real is the disqualification from which this otherwise healthy form of amusement has always suffered in the opinion of medical men in consequence of its customary methods. The excessively late hours, the indigestible suppers, the needless glasses of wine, the close heated air, and the frequent after chill, though by no means essential to dancing, have done far more to injure its repute among reasonable people than any fan. cied bacillus or morbid spore is likely to do. -Lancet.

I.

JOHN BULL has often been reproached with his insularity. Were the charge a little less threadbare we might be surprised at the silence prevailing in this country with regard to a personage who has commanded so large an amount of attention at the other side of the English Channel. While the most striking incidents in the career of Signor Francesco Crispi have long been matters of common knowledge, his life has yet not received from us that full and connected treatment which it deserves. It might have been imagined that English writers would have found in this survivor of a stormy past a subject worthy of their notice; but they have hitherto relegated him to the pens of their French confrères. At the hands of our neighbors, however, Crispi has not suffered a similar neglect. Not only has NEW SERIES.-VOL, LIII., No. 5.

the French press honored him with its most violent and insatiable animosity, but a member of the French Academy* has employed the weight of his position and the fascinations of his pen to swell the turbid stream of hostile criticism seeking to engulf the ex-premier of Italy. For the credit of the national character it was but right that from the midst of so many enemies a defender should arise, and that the accusations made by the graceful pen of one Frenchman should be answered by that of another. By his "Francesco Crispi, "t however, M. Félix Narjoux has placed more than his own countrymen under a debt of gratitude. Not only has he shown that it is still possible for a Frenchman to rise superior to national preju

dices, but he has adorned with the light touch of his nation a career among the most romantic of the age. For those who, from a calm and assured position, find enjoyment in the spectacle of their fellows tossing on the billows of the switchback, the life of Crispi cannot fail to possess an interest. Nor is it merely as a page of romance that the story of the statesman who so lately guided the destinies of Italy deserves attention; it forms an epitome of the story of his country. When, in September 1879, Crispi told his fellow-countrymen at Palermo that "Italy has known how to solve this weighty problem, the union of democracy and royalty," his words must have appealed to his hearers with no ordinary power. To all he must have spoken with the authority of a man who, for many years, had acted as one of the officiating clergymen at the marriage ceremony of which he boasted; to a few his words may have carried a deeper significance. Some there may have been among his audience whose memories would carry then back from the white-haired, military-looking figure before them to a vision of a picturesquely long-locked republican enthusiast, in whose political dictionary "king" stood for the irreconcilable enemy of his people. If such there were, for them a due appreciation of the past twenty years was possible. In the history of Crispi they could see the history of Italy in miniature; recognizing the distance which separated the monarchist from the republican, they could measure the tract over which their country had advanced. In the fact that men who had dreamt of a republic now lived and worked for a monarchy was contained a whole volume of political lectures for those who cared to read them. They must have been dull indeed if they did not perceive that, in stating Italy's problem, Crispi was stating his own private problem and the problem of men like him, and that it was exactly because Crispi and his fellows had known how to solve their problem of the union of democracy and royalty that Italy had arrived at a similar solution.

Born October 4, 1819, in the little mountain town of Ribera, in the southwest of Sicily, Crispi may truly be said to have "drunk life to the lees," whether in our definition of life we look to a numerical total of years, variety of experi

ences, or intensity and continuity of effort. Among students of history there still exist a class who derive much satisfaction from a contemplation of "the might have been." To such, a neverending vista of speculation is offered by the fact that, in his early days, family influences urged Crispi strongly toward the Church. What would have been the issue in his inner and outer worlds of his adoption of such a life? When the ingenious devotee of hypothetical cases sought to discover the results of an irresistible body meeting an immovable one, he found himself obliged to be content with "the devil of a shindy'' for an answer. Perhaps a similar conclusion is the nearest approach to a solution of the present problem at which we can arrive. From such a future Crispi was saved by his own decision of character. He resolutely resisted the pressure brought to bear on him, and, after finishing his art studies at the seminary of Monreale, entered the law school of Palermo. After an extensive course of legal reading he duly took his degree, and settled down to the practice of a profession which seemed to open to him a prosperous and honorable career. In reality, the path he was destined to reach through the portals of the law was one very different from that to which his family fondly looked forward. It is a remarkable fact that the legal profession, which tends to make its older members the most conservative of mankind, seems to have precisely the opposite effect on its younger followers. Combining intellects sharpened and tongues loosened by their professional training, with idle moments and their attendant empty pockets, it is but natural that they should desire the renovation of society and consider themselves capable of its accomplishment. Statistics of the number of revolutions in which lawyers have played an important part would well repay the trouble of compilation; their influence in the great cataclysm of the last century is too well known to need comment. In the condition of the Two Sici lies at this period there was but small prospect that the law courts would be allowed to monopolize the passionate eloquence which has since raised Crispi to the rank of the first pleader in Italy. Under the despotic government of Ferdinand II., better known as Bomba, that kingdom had

brought forth a plentiful crop of secret societies-those mushrooms of the political world for whose growth darkness and an unwholesome atmosphere are the first essentials. Enrolled in various of these ever since his student days, Crispi was not long in finding his way into the "Young Italy." In the ranks of even that passionate and devoted band he speedily signalized himself by his ardor and devotion; and when at last, in January 1848, the order went forth and all Sicily blazed up into insurrection, he was appointed to high office in the revolutionary government. On the details of that abortive attempt of the Sicilians to secure their free dom it is unnecessary to dwell. The success attending their first efforts failed to encourage them to renew the struggle after the disastrous news of Novara told them that their hopes of external aid were shattered. When to this was added the fall of Catania, the capital hesitated no longer. In spite of all the efforts of Crispi and the more desperate section of the patriots, it was decided to come to terms with their late sovereign. Nothing remained for the revolutionary leaders save to wander forth into the exile in which alone their lives would be safe. But Crispi could not yet bring himself to acknowledge defeat. At his instigation the revolutionary government had accepted complete responsibility for the past. He was resolved, for his part, to deserve to the fullest the consequences which that responsibility might entail. Gathering round him a small band of desperate patriots, he attempted a last stand against the royalist troops as they entered the town. Such a contest could have no other effect save that of raising its promoter to a more distinguished place in the vengeance of the Bourbons; but calculations of utility have never been known to find a home in the supreme moments of a generous nature. The royalist troops had little difficulty in dislodging the devoted band, and on May 11 Crispi saw his name heading the list of those condemned to death without trial. It was useless to brave danger longer. For the present it was finished. The chains of the Bourbons were once more riveted around the fair neck which they had so long and so deeply galled. The dream of Sicilian liberty, rich in such early promise, was ended. Over his own future an equal darkness had settled down. He had lost

all save the privilege of a perpetual exile, with pale, ghostly memories to keep him company.

But at present it was necessary to act, and that quickly; in the long days before him there would be plenty of time for thought. Escaping from Palermo on the evening of the 11th, he succeeded in reaching a vessel, which carried him to Marseilles. Here he did not remain long. Making his way to Turin, he earned a scanty livelihood by his contributions to the Liberal papers of the day. To such straits was he reduced at this time, that the salary of 1200 francs attached to the clerkship of the little town of Vero-Lungo rendered the post a desirable one to him. He went so far as to offer himself as a candidate. But this was the furthest concession which his hunger could extract from his pride. His application took the form of a demand rather than that of a solicitation. As might have been expected, he found his offer declined in favor of some more pliant candidate. Soon, however, at the instigation of his old enemies, the Austrians, he was temporarily relieved from any fears of actual starvation. After the failure of the Mazzinist rising in Lombardy in 1853, Austria called on Piedmont to take active measures against the refugees gathered within her territories. Among these Crispi was too conspicuous a figure to escape attention. He was seized and imprisoned; an examination of his papers, however, proved nothing upon which to found an accusation, and after some time he was released under a decree of expulsion. But, in the interval, an event, destined to have a most important influence on his future, had taken place in his life. Crispi's claims to the position of representative Italian would be far less valid than they are if his rôle of conspirator and politician had never given way to one of a more tender character; if the romance of his public had found no counterpart in that of his private life. But from his earliest days the same imagina. tive power which of old time burried him into the ranks of "the Young Italy, and in more recent years enriched his parliamentary and forensic utterances with the gold of eloquence, has rendered him peculiarly susceptible to feminine influences. While not yet more than twenty one he had married, in spite of the opposition of his family, a young girl beneath him in