reporters, and penny-a-liners, have an attainments, or for personal position in enormous power of previous instruction the country, with any brewer or banker in any matter, and an almost unlimited power of subsequent exaggeration of that matter, and this has sufficed to make of the modern newspaper one of the most potent of all possible agencies for good or for evil.

THOMAS GIBSON BOWles.

From Time.

A PEASANT HOME IN BRETON.

ever raised to the House of Lords; but they only represent brains, and brains, though unofficially courted, secretly coaxed, and sometimes abjectly entreated in private, are not yet officially recognized in public as an existing force in the daily This power of the press is, in our own life of Great Britain. It may be that the country, the youngest of all the powers. time will come when this also will be It is far younger than Parliament, younger changed. If so, it will be well. Meanthan parties and party government, young-time, the newspaper press has no great er than Cabinets; yet Parliament, parties, cause to be ashamed of the part it has and Cabinets have to count with it. Were played in the past, while it has the greatthe press not strangely divided against est cause to look forward with confidence, itself, not only by natural commercial yet with a deeper sense of responsibility, rivalry but also by unnatural and incom- to the part it may, if it will, play in the prehensible petty jealousies, Parliament, future. parties, and Cabinets together might well tremble before it; but such as it is, and such as it is granted to be, it is one of the most potent and pregnant forces now found in the kingdom. Yet, according to our English custom, we are still disposed to deny not only its importance but also its very existence. Just as we know that thirteen gentlemen, who form the Cabinet, decide upon our destinies, trace out our future, make peace and declare war, while we ascribe their acts to the sovereign acting by and with the advice of that Privy Council, which is never assembled; just as we know that party organization, finding its expression in party votes, decides whether these thirteen gentlemen shall retain their posts or another thirteen be put in their place, while we yet ascribe the decision to the collective wis dom of the fittest and properest persons in the country; just so there are policies adopted, acts done and forborne, and appointments made, in pure and simple obedience to the behests of that press, which, nevertheless, has up to this moment no recognized place in the British empire. In every other department of human activity due, and occasionally undue, recognition has been given to those who by their talents have raised themselves above their fellows; but the press has never yet been officially recognized. Beer and banking, riches, romance, and poetry, have been ennobled; baronetcies have been showered upon lord mayors, sheriffs, and doctors, and music-masters have been knighted, but never yet has the fountain of honor flowed even for the ablest, most enterprising, and most successful of those who have organized with so much success the daily brains of the nation. There are men among them who can challenge com. parison, either for personal qualities and

PASSING out through the fortified gateway, with its honorable scars left by the centuries of siege and conflict, we found ourselves in the lime and chestnut avenues haunted by magpies, which lead through the land of Cockaigne. The sleepy, silent fields all round were whitening to the harvest of the buckwheat flower and the mellowing corn. The apple-trees, twisted into strange shapes by reason of their burden of ruddy fruit, bowed like good citizens to the wheat or the blossom in the fields, instead of dwelling apart in the proud seclusion of orchards. The heat lay like a veil upon the lowlands and the hills beyond. Wherever the stream widened into pools, the indefatigable women were washing, their red kerchiefs and blue dresses making gay reflections in the water. Now and again a strange Arcadian flock passed slowly by. A cow or two, a decrepit horse, a solitary sheep, a giant pig with hungry teeth, perchance a goat or an ass, always a wolfish-looking dog, go about in company, but not always in harmony. They are tended by a shepherdess who might have gained experi ence in the real Arcadia, or in the service of Abraham for the matter of that, judging from the number of her venerable wrinkles and her mummy-like appearance. is always either a primeval grandmother or a tottering infant who drives these strange teams afield. But the most frequent apparition of all was a figure clad in rusty black garments with a benign and rosy face, who took off his broad beaver

It

hat to us with a benedictory smile. In | tles, which stand always in readiness for this, as in all our walks about the Côtes- the purpose beside each bed. On one du-Nord, we came upon what the guide- side of the room we saw the huge chimbooks call "objects of interest" in abun- neyplace with its sheltered corner for the dant measure. First the deserted spa, wooden settle on winter evenings. Above with its grass-grown promenade and neg- this settle a wooden prong was stuck into lected fountain of water that is strongly the wall to hold a solitary dip. There were suggestive of old pennies, once a place of great mahogany cupboards with brass pilgrimage for dyspeptic and fashionable handles, bunches of fragrant herbs hang. Bretons. Next, beyond the beech wood, ing from the beams, and finely carved oak a beautiful château, rising with its peaked dressers that moved us to envy, whereon roofs and tourelles above the trees, hav- gleamed copper pans and curious old ing somehow escaped the ravages of the china bowls. The bonne femme stood at Revolution. Lastly a ruin of great resort the table in the centre, mixing some unyet much less interesting to our thinking savory concoction for supper. Presently than the château (of Conninais), whose no- she brought us a great soup tureen full of toriety was first made apparent to the rich milk. A fat baby and a lean pig English race by Mrs. Norton's afflicting slumbered peacefully side by side on the verses. But resting here on the green hearth, the hens wandered in and out slope below the empty colombier tower, it pecking at the baby's shoes. The old fortunately occurred to us that we were grandmother, who looked as if she might hot and thirsty after our walk, and that it fly away on a broomstick, scowled and would be well to go and procure milk at muttered at us in a dark corner, the cows the farmhouse close by. We accordingly put their mild heads through the door and made our way to it, and lighted upon the were welcome to walk in if they liked most perfect example of a Breton inte- the pigs and sheep often availed them. rior ever seen off the walls of the Acad- selves of the privilege. The father stood emy. The floor of the one living-room smoking on the step, three sturdy little was as dirty as possible. Lits clos, boxes, boys rushed away at our approach and with the outer side cut away and filled up took up their station on the wall of the with a curtain, stood one above another courtyard, from whence they flung stones against the wall. As these are always too and scornful remarks at our heads. All short for people to stretch themselves these live and move and have their being out in at full length, the dying are lifted in the one room of that farm at La Gaout and laid on boards supported by tres raye.

ELECTRICITY UBIQUITOUS.-Owing princi- | of overcoming the difficulties. In making pally to the ignorance of writers in the news-chocolate, sealing-wax, in the manufacture of papers, to the artificial system of education glass, in the grinding of coffee, and so on, care imposed upon elementary schoolmasters by the has to be exercised, or instead of the pure existing system, and also perhaps to the rate article we should obtain one highly charged at which men live, the universality of electric with dust, not usable, and therefore unsalable. phenomena is but little understood. The ser- Even the glamor of the action of electricity vant brushing a coat, cleaning windows, beat- must be taken into our corn mills, for elecing a carpet, placing a kettle on the fire to tricity is one of the principal causes assisting boil, sifting cinders, etc.; the carpenter using to make the miller white. When we brush his plane or brush; the schoolboy or girl rub- our hair, or walk over the carpet, we are genbing out the lines in his or her book; the mas-erators of electricity. In fact, it would seem ter making or mending his pen is, during the that the greater portion of the work of the time he or she is so employed, as effectually an world is done in rendering electrical phenomelectrical machine as the most elaborate ap-ena cognisant to our senses. Friction is largely paratus made by the art of Elliot or Holtz. or wholly an electrical phenomena. It must Many manufacturers find "electricity" a nuisance. In the weaving of various fabrics, such, for example, as those in which silk and wool are used, the work is very electrical. Mr. E. Bright's paper before the Society of Telegraph Engineers will give full details of the troubles arising in weaving and the methods

not be supposed that electricity is always in the way. The gilders, if they only knew, could tell a different tale, for their work is ofttimes aided by electricity, as is that of various workers with paper and so on. Electricity is as universal as gravitation.

Electrician.

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.

"Oh, there hangs in my snout a jewel of gold, And rescued from the winds the sacred fire.

Go! shame thy coward weariness, and wail.
Who doubles contest, doubles victory.

* Supposed to be sung at Crowland Minster to Leo- Go! learn to run the race, and carry fire.

fric, the Wake's Mass Priest, when news was received of Hereward's second marriage to Alftruda.

From The National Review. THE LIBERAL MOVEMENT IN ENGLISH

LITERATURE.

I.

INTRODUCTORY.

causes of Mr. Swinburne's violence. The fact is that, under a controversy apparently involving only individual preferences, radical antipathies of taste and feeling are latent which are as old as the

EVERY one who shares the instincts of history of art, and which have, in the humanity looks on with interest at a quar-present instance, been brought into colrel between authors. It arouses excite- lision by the operation of historic causes ment of the same kind as that which in as closely connected with each other as old days for I believe the thing has the Thirty Years' War was with the Refor. gone out of fashion used to be felt when mation. If any one questions the accua whisper ran through the form that there racy of this assertion he has but to refer was to be a fight after school was over; to the controversy about Pope in 1820, or as that which still rises when every and he will find that the respective posicorner of the House of Commons fills in tions of the disputants of that period are an anticipation of "a scene." We know substantially identical with those now that there will be an exhibition of human severally occupied by Mr. Arnold and nature as it really is, not merely as it Mr. Swinburne. strives to appear. The record of such combats proved a fruitful topic to the industry of Disraeli the elder. But a portion of the subject is still unexhausted, and a chapter of literary history almost equally entertaining might be written respecting quarrels about authors. If a dispute between authors has all the interest of a duel, the other attains the magnitude of a battle. As one thinks of the desperate encounters in foot-notes between rival editors of the classics, or of all the arguments discharged by the academies that fought over the merits of Tasso and Ariosto, vast materials of literary history at once present themselves. And all for the sake of some favorite poet or novelist who may have been dead and buried a hundred years! The matter-of-fact spectator of wars of this kind is apt to lift up his hands in amazement at the passions which are excited, and to wonder whether they might not be composed by some intervention like that which Virgil recommends for the pacification of belligerent bees.

So, doubtless, wondered many a sober reader while considering the astounding invectives with which Mr. Swinburne has lately been endeavoring to befoul Byron's memory. "Doest thou well to be angry," he may have been inclined to ask, "because Mr. Arnold has preferred Byron to Shelley as a poet? The question sounds reasonable enough, yet it would betray but an imperfect appreciation of the real

It is worth while to recall for a moment the outlines of a dispute which attracted great attention in its day both from the eminence of the combatants and from the intrinsic interest of the issues that were raised. The occasion of the war was the supposed attempt of Bowles to detract from the poetical reputation of Pope, whose works he had edited. Bowles's real intention was to prove that Pope was not a poet of the highest order, a proposition which every one would have agreed to without argument, if he had not thought fit to force an open door by laying siege to it with a whole park of artillery. Nothing would satisfy him but to take the position he desired by slow and regular approaches, and he advanced under cover of two prodigious axioms which he loudly proclaimed to be "invariable principles of poetry. These ran as follows: “All images drawn from what is beautiful and sublime in the works of nature are more beautiful and sublime than images drawn from art, and are therefore more poetical." And: "Subject and execution are equally to be considered; the one respecting the poetry, the other the art and talents of the poet." From these he concludes: "With regard to the first, Pope cannot be placed among the highest order of poets; with regard to the second, none was ever his superior."

I think it is obvious that if Bowles's antagonists had fixed their attention on the really weak points in his two posi