of standing refuses to show his books to an author who has a joint interest in any work he has published. Of course, it would be rash to make a general statement when the contrary has been confidently asserted; there may be firms of high reputation who decline to permit an inspection of their accounts; but we can positively say that Mr. Murray, Messrs. Macmillan, and some others who might be named, have never made any difficulty in opening their books.

THE Frankfurter Zeitung says that the Grand Duchess of Saxe-Weimar has sent to the administrative committee of the "Goethe-Haus" at Frankfort a series of documents which will be of great service to them in their restoration" of the poet's house, or more strictly of his "Vaterhaus.' They were found among the collections at Weimar, and consist of a complete set of bills relating to the rebuilding of the house by the poet's father, an account of which is given by his son Wolfgang in the "Wahrheit und Dichtung." These bills reach as far as the year 1755, and throw the fullest light upon every little detail of the construction of the house, from the color-washing of the ceiling and the hanging of the walls "mit Tapeten' down to the simplest door-latches. The rooms can thus be "restored" to their exact appearance at the time in which Goethe's parents lived in them.

RURAL LIFE IN RUSSIA.-Usury is the great nightmare of rural Russia at present, an evil which seems to dog the peasant proprietor in all countries alike. The "Gombeen Man" is fast getting possession of the little Irish owners. A man who hires land cannot borrow on it; the little owner is tempted always to mortgage it at a pinch. In Russia he borrows to the outside of its value, to pay the taxes and get in his crop. The "bondage laborers," i.e.,

men bound to work on their creditor's land as interest for money lent, receive no wages and are in fact a sort of slaves. They repay their extortioners by working as badly as they can -a "level worst," far inferior to that of the serfs of old, they harvest three and a half or four stacks of corn where the other peasants get five. The Koulaks and Mir-eaters, and other usurers, often of peasant origin, exhaust the peasant in every way; they then foreclose the mortgages, unite the small pieces of land once more, and reconstitute large estates. A Koulak is not to be trifled with; he finds a thousand occasions for revenge; the peasant cannot cheat the Jew as he does the landlord, and is being starved out-the mortality is enormous. In the rural districts of England the death rate is 18 per 1,000. In the whole of Central Russia it reached 62 per 1,000 at the last revision in 1882. "The famine, now so frightfully common, is not owing to barrenness of the soil, for the mortality is greatest where the land is best. The birth rate in these provinces is 45." "The usurers are able to oppress the peasants by the help of the tax-gatherer, eg., they are obliged to sell their corn in September, when it is cheap, in order to pay the tax, and buy it again in winter, when it is dear, to live." The tax-gatherer knows that if he sells up the peasant he becomes a beggar and can pay no more; flogging, therefore, is resorted to, and insolvent peasants are flogged in a body. Last winter an inspector of Novgorod reported that in one district 1,500 peasants had been condemned to be flogged for non-payment of taxes. Five hundred and fifty had already suffered, and the Ministry was interceded with to procure a respite for the rest." "One third of our peasants have become homeless, downtrodden, beggarly batraks." "The area of cultivated land has diminished by one fifth and in some places by a quarter of its former amount." Land yields nothing," is the general outcry. "It is abandoned to the wasteful cultivation of the cottiers," says Stepniak-no prejudiced witness against them. The Nihilist remedy is to give the peasants more land, i.e., to enable them to mortgage further, and to divide still more as population increases. The other remedy proposed is to reconstitute large estates, which is being done already, but in the worst manner and by the worst men in the country; a wage-receiving class would then be possible," it is said. The artificial creation of a system of peasant pro

prietors in order to increase their well-being, it is allowed now on all hands, has failed entirely in Russia.-Nineteenth Century.

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HAILSTONES AS LARGE AS CRICKET BALLS. --The storm that swept over Brisbane at the beginning of December was the most destructive experienced in the colony for very many years. From an account of the storm given by the Australian Christian World we learn that the phenomenal feature was the size of the hailstones, which did no little damage "About mid-day the first signs were perceptible in the heavens, and until three o'clock in the afternoon heavy banks of clouds were rapidly rising at an unusual height in the air. Some idea as to the nature of the storm may be gathered when it is mentioned that though the hail only lasted about thirty minutes, yet hardly a house in Brisbane but what suffered more or less; while in the outlying districts the damage done to fruit and vegetable crops was very serious. Some of the hailstones were as large as cricket balls, though the more common size was that of a hen's egg. These fell with such great force that both the plate glass and galvanized roofing of many houses were cut through as though they were thin tissue. One man while closing his office door received a nasty cut on the forehead. Another person narrowly escaped a serious accident with his horse and cart; he had to lie down in the cart with his head under the seat, and though escaping serious injury was badly bruised; a horse at Woolloongabba broke out of the yard and was killed; the tops of some of the 'buses were so 'riddled' that bags had to be used to protect the passengers; several severely cut after the hail had forced its way through their hard felt hats; one man, who was driving, got struck on the side of the head and had to be carried home." Another remarkable fact is that in one district the hail was said to be lying twelve and eighteen inches deep in some parts. One result of the storm was a sudden rise in the price of glass, which by the next morning was at a very high premium. In some cases the price rose 250 per cent. in less than twenty-four hours.

men were

WILD ELECTRICAL PROJECTS.-When will scientific education be sufficiently diffused to enable inventors to understand that electricity is but one of the forces of nature, like heat and light and gravitation, and no more capable of working miracles than these are? According to quite a multitude of dreamers electricity is the power of the future, which will supply

us with light, heat, mechanical power, and even with life itself. The monster gooseberries of the " stupid season" are now supplanted by new applications of electricity. In spite of the sad warning presented by the failure of the late Sir C. W. Siemens's sensationally heralded marvels in promoting horticulture by means of the electric light, we have further accounts of galvanizing the soil to stimulate its productiveness. Another inventor on the other side of the Atlantic ripens whiskey by placing incandescent lamps inside the barrel. Long ago, when patents were very costly, a dreamer of electrical dreams secured for himself the monopoly of an improved steam boiler, which was to be worked without coal or other fuel by simply passing platinum wires through the water, making them red hot by means of a galvanic current, and thus getting up and keeping up the steam. A similar device has been more recently proposed for warming railway carriages, and seriously and approvingly described in one or more of our engineering journals. The inventor is described as 'M. Tommasi, the French electrician," who proposes to keep up the temperature of railway carriage foot-warmers ' by means of the heat due to an electric current traversing a high resistance." The platinum wire was neither more nor less than this, but the foot-warmers are to obtain their resisted current "by a dynamo driven off an axle of the train, and the circuit passes through all the warmers; a simple device allows of the footwarmer being thrown out of circuit should it become unbearably hot." The electric current is to be applied to the foot-warmers charged with acetate of soda, which, by present arrangements, are so readily heated by immersion in hot water, and retain their heat for so many hours. Instead of such direct heating we are to first heat a boiler, losing heat in the production of steam, losing more in working the steam engine, very much more in the dynamo, and more again in transmission. The cost of such electric heating would be at least twenty times as great as the direct heating, not to mention cost of apparatus.-Gentleman's Magazine.

A "FREE LANCE" ON HIS LEADER.-What impressed me most about Garibaldi was the immense triceps, or shoulder muscles, he had. They were just like two half cocoanuts sticking up underneath his white Mexican mantle. From Heenan and Morrissey to Mace (Sayers had a remarkably small arm) I never saw any

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thing like it. It would have made two of theirs. And the sabre he used! Two of the Life Guards' blades forged into one would just have made it. Many a time have I seen that awful sabre sweeping right, left, right, left, like clockwork, as he mowed down the enemy like grass, seated on his old white charger, leaving a lane" (that is the only word) for us who followed him closely. "Avanti! avanti !" rang from his lips all the while, and his trumpet voice rose high above the loudest artillery fire. His strength was simply Herculean, and was only surpassed by General Dunne. As an instance of Garibaldi's enormous strength, I remember late one night leaving the Caffè di Europa, in Naples, with some brother officers, and seeing the General just passing on foot with only one attendant. We followed him, as he was going toward an unlighted and dangerous part of the city, which swarmed with Borboni-ex-soldiers, sbirri, lazzaroni in the pay of Francis II. He was going to visit one of his dying soldiers, a boy of seventeen. We had not long to wait like lightning two men sprang at him, right and left, simultaneously, knife in hand. Ere their blades, raised to strike, could fall, Garibaldi had each one by the throat, raised high in air to the full extent of his arms. He then knocked them together two or three times, and let them drop on the stones. You may guess that our swords were out. But no! The great hero said, Leave them alone; the poor fools have had their lesson." That was the kind of man-the demigod-that he was; just as he was when the tyrant Rosas in South America hung him up by the thumbs in face of a blazing tropical sun for four mortal hours. That night Garibaldi escaped. In two days he had Rosas in his power, and when some of his men, many of whom were vaqueros and bull-fighters, drew their long navajas, and were actually—such is their brutified nature-proposing to skin Rosas alive, Garibaldi not only furnished him with an escort of his own bodyguard to the frontier, but even collected together every horse, bullock, and single article that had been looted from Rosas, amounting in specie and jewels alone to several thousands of pounds, and had him and his immense wealth conveyed to a place of safety. The Neapolitans realized this side of his character to such an extent that I have seen whole battalions of them actually kneel down in the dust as "The Liberator" passed. He had only one formula for them, roaring out, "Rise! that is the attitude of slaves, not of freemen!" They even carried

their worship to a blasphemous pitch; and of one occasion I have a very vivid recollection, and the only one on which I, or, I believe, any one else, ever saw Garibaldi lose his temper. There was a grand fête in his honorprocessions, bands, banners, flowers-everything that makes an Italian festa so delightful. Garibaldi came out on the balcony of the hotel to address the people. Suddenly his eye caught the principal banner-a huge affair bearing the Latin inscription "Iosephus Niceanus Redemptor Italia," so arranged that at the first glance only the "I.N.R.I." caught the eye. Garibaldi beckoned the bearers toward the balcony. They came with a proud smile of exultation, and held it higher for his inspection. The General seized it, tore it from its staves, and, tearing it to tatters, flung them in the faces of the cheering crowd with one word which dominated all their united voices like a trumpet blast—“ Ragazzi !" (canaille), and without vouchsafing another word, went inside. Not all their cheers, all their deputations, could get him to appear before them again. For concentrated scorn of tone, for the most intense contempt and fury expressed in his features, it might well have been his friend, the greatest orator of our time, the facile princeps—Gavazzi.—Pall Mall Gazette.

WHAT IS LITERATURE ?—In his eloquent address on Friday to the students of the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching, Mr. John Morley gave the following definition of literature: "Now I am going to deal with another question with which I ought to have started. That is, what is literature? Literature consists of all the books-and they are not so many-where moral truth and human passion are touched with a certain largeness, sanity, and attraction of form; and my notion of the literary student is one who through books explores the strange voyages of man's moral reason, the impulses of the human heart, the chances and changes that have overtaken human ideals of virtue and happiness, of conduct and manners, and the shift. ing fortunes of great conceptions of truth and virtue. Poets, dramatists, humorists, satirists, masters of fiction, the great preachers, the character writers, the maxim writers, the great political orators, they are all literature in so far as they teach us to know man and know human nature. This is what makes literature, rightly sifted and selected and rightly studied, not the mere elegant trifling that it is so often and erroneously supposed, but a proper in

strument for a systematic training of the imagination and sympathies and of a genial and varied moral sensibility." Further on in his speech he made the following remarks on the literary style likely to prevail: "The probabilities are that we are now coming to an epoch, as it seems to me, of a quieter style. There have been-one of them, I am happy to think, still survives-in our generation three great giants of prose writing. There was, first of all, Carlyle, there was Macaulay, and there is Mr. Ruskin. Those are all giants, and they have the rights of giants. Few can bend the bow of Ulysses. We are now in progress to a quieter style; and I am not sorry for it, because truth is quiet. Milton's phrase always lingers in my mind as one of imperishable beauty where he regrets that he is drawn by I know not what from beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies. I think that truth in all its order and walks, that quiet moderation and judgment are more than the flash and the glitter even of the greatest genius. I hope that your professors of rhetoric will teach you to cultivate a language in which truth can be told -an eloquence without trick, without affectation, without mannerisms, and without any of that excessive ambition which overleaps itself as much in prose writing as it does in other walks. I have made it clear that we conceive the end of education on its literary side to be to make a man and not a cyclopædia, to make a citizen and not a book of elegant extracts. Literature does not act with knowledge of forms, with inventories of books and authors, with finding of the key of rhythm, with the varying measure of the stanza, or the changes from the involved and sonorous periods of the seventeenth century down to the staccato of the nineteenth century, or all the rest of the technicalities of scholarship. Do not think I contemn these. These are good things to know, but they are not ends in themselves. The intelligent man, says Plato, will prize those studies which result in his soul getting soberness, righteousness, and wisdom, and will less value the others."

LORD GEORGE GORDON'S CONVERSION TO JUDAISM. The story of Lord George Gordon and his connection with the riots of 1780 has often formed a fruitful theme for writers. It has again been laid under contribution by Millicent Erskine Wemyss, who contributes an article on the subject to the March number of Temple Bar. The most remarkable inci

dent in Lord George Gordon's career was bis conversion to Judaism. The story, though oft told, will bear repeating. His lordship's attachment to Christianity doubtless received its deathblow in 1786 when he was excommunicated by the Archbishop of Canterbury for refusing to give evidence in the Ecclesiastical Court. From that time Christianity yielded to the superior attractions of Judaism and in due course he embraced the latter faith. By the Jews he was welcomed as a second Moses." He was something more than a convert in name, for he conformed to all the ceremonies of the ancient fathers, and expected all who professed the same religion to do likewise. In the following year Lord George, after being let out on bail in a libel case, fled to Holland, whence he returned to England and hid himself for some time in Birmingham, consortiug there entirely with Jews, and adopting their dress and manners. So thoroughly did he carry out these customs, that when he was again put on his trial at the Court of King's Bench, he was attired in a Jewish garb and decked with a long and flowing beard," and when in Newgate "he fasted according to the rites of the Jewish Church." Lord George Gordon is generally regarded by posterity as having been mad, and his conversion to Judaism is adduced as an argument in favor of this assumption. The author of the article in Temple Bar, however, believes him to have been not mad, but extravagantly vain.—Jewish Chronicle.

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ENGLISH OFFICERS AT POTSDAM.-German officers have fully returned the attention they received last autumn at Aldershot when a party of them in uniform, belonging to the 7th or Bismarck Cuirassiers, suddenly made their appearance one day at Aldershot for the purpose of inspecting the camp, and took the authorities by surprise. They went away with a most favorable impression of all they had seen, as we fully described at the time. The Times correspondent at Berlin states that the courtesies then shown these distinguished German soldiers by the commander at Aldershot were on Monday more than amply returned by Prince William of Prussia, who invited several English officers now staying in Berlin to go out to Potsdam and inspect the Hussars of the Guard, of which his Royal Highness is commander. The party, which was under the guidance of Colonel Swaine, C.B., British Military Attaché there, consisted of Colonel Talbot, Ist Life Guards, Major Ker Fox, and

Lieutenant Clementson, both of the 19th Hussars. At the Potsdam station these officers were met by Prince William's aide-de-camp and his regimental adjutant, who conducted them to the barracks of the Guard Hussars, at the entrance to which they were received and welcomed by his Royal Highness and the major of his regiment. They were then conducted to the riding school, where guards of troopers in various stages of their turn of service were paraded and drilled, and on emerging from the manège the party was saluted by a squadron on foot, drawn up in parade dress, which then displayed its proficiency in sabre and carbine exercises, etc., as well as infantry skirmishing practice and a march past. The English cavalry officers were loud in their praise of all they saw. The dismounted squadron included the recruits of last November, and all were as smart and steady as the older soldiers of two years' standing. Prince William then showed his English visitors the men's kitchen, the corporals' mess, and the quartermasters' stores, and after lunch the party attended an officers' ride, which was in every respect perfect of its kind. After then calling on the Commandant of Potsdam and the General of Cavalry, and visiting Sans Souci, Colonel Swaine and his companions repaired to the palace on the invitation of the Prince, who showed them his library and some of his wedding presents, graciously presenting to each officer a photograph of himself, with signature and date attached. They then dined with the Prince at the regimental mess, and returned to Berlin no less impressed with the soldierly qualities of the young Hohenzollern Prince, heir to the German Crown, than with the splendid efficiency of the crack Hussar regiment which it is his Royal Highness's pride to command.-United Service Gazette.

ATHLETES PAST AND PRESENT.-We are accustomed at any rate in our more complacent moods-to repeat the Homeric boast that we "are much better men than our fathers." Such self-glorifications form a pleasing variation of the complaint that "the country is going to the dogs," or that "the young men of the present day" are absolutely deficient in this, that, or the other virtue of their ancestors. Even in Homer's time this graceful inconsistency appears to have been natural to mankind, since it is to be remarked that the same epic which, in the above-quoted passage, proclaims the superiority of the children to their progenitors, continually, and indeed offensively, re

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minds us that heroes of the type of Ajax could fling stones which three of their degenerate descendants would be unable to lift. Those who prefer to attach credit to the boast rather than to the self-depreciation will be apt to reply that in the time of Ajax the "record" was very imperfectly, and probably very inaccurately, kept, and that, whenever means have been forthcoming for the institution of a really trustworthy comparison between a present and a past generation, the past has always come off second-best. Satisfactory methods of comparison are from the nature of the case rarely available. There is no standard of moral stature, no gauge of intellectual calibre which can be conveniently applied first to the manners and minds of our forefathers and then to our own; and hence it is seldom possible to refute those who contend that our ancestors were superior in wisdom and virtue to ourselves. Ancient thews and sinews, however, have sometimes been comparable with their modern rivals by more than one unmistakable Accident may supply an index of inches, a modulus of muscles; and actual experiment proved as long ago as the Eglinton Tournament that the well-grown Englishman of that modern day was simply unable to get into the corselets and greaves of his mailed ancestors. The superiority thus demonstrated with respect to stature and dimensions has been in many ways attested also as regards strength and skill in the handling of the corporeal machine. The " record" is being continually beaten in every department of the exercise of man's physical powers. There is a progressive improvement in the "time" of the race in both senses of the word. Spaces lengthen and periods shorten under the flying feet of the pedestrian; the eye of the marksman grows quicker and truer; the cue of the billiard-player becomes an arm of precision" so marvellous as to the finest of the bygone wielders of that weapon would have seemed incredible. On the whole, there can be no sort of doubt that the "crack" of to-day is at once more dexter, ous in the game of skill, more powerful in the athletic sport, a better "stayer" in the trial of endurance than the champions who have preceded him; and not only so, but that the general standard of human prowess in each one of these forms of its display is as far, if not farther, above the average capacity of the race at any time of which we have knowledge. Man, to descend to particulars, is a tougher walker, a fleeter runner, a stouter swimmer, a surer marksman, a better oarsman, a finer horse