and honest publisher, sells them by the | is at this moment writing it for the third hundred thousand. However, Chatrian time. We have few writers so conscienhas never left the railway, and has risen tious, and I do not suppose that you have to a very honorable post. He is caissier many. We have none more sincere, more des titres, and his salary must be some upright, more humane, more zealous in deten or twelve thousand francs a year. He fending the true against the untrue, right is married, and has three children. He against might. We have no better patriots, has a pretty house at Raincy, in the ban- if patriotism consists in denouncing the lieue, and he possesses great influence in follies of ambition, decrying false glory, his neighborhood. It was to him that the not seeking a quarrel with any one, but brave Colonel Langlois owed his success wishing that a people unjustly invaded at the elections of last February. should defend itself to the last. Such is the meaning and morality of all these national tales which the authors of our ruin denounce to the public with signal hypocrisy. EDMOND About. Erckmann, who is not married, is an exile, without near relations. He had a grand-niece at Strasbourg, who has married a German. Broken down by this sorrow, he wandered for a long time on the borders of our dear native land, the door of which is shut to him as to so many others. Before the war he had settled in the pretty valley of the Zinzel, to live after the fashion of the Ami Fritz. He is the best liver in the world; he adores the good wine of Alsace, sauerkraut, ham, the crayfish of the Zorn, the beer of Strasbourg, and he gladly loses himself in the clouds that rise from his pipe. What he loves, perhaps, still better, is shooting in the woods, long expeditions in the mountains, and discussions without end with a small group of friends. A most worthy man, in truth, this Erckmann, and a droll fellow, too. He had decayed teeth, which gave him pain from time to time. So he had them all taken out at one sitting, and now with a set of gums, as fresh and rosy as an infant of six months old, he munches the most solid of food and the softest of crusts. With his cheeks a little hollow, his fat chin, his long moustaches, and his bourgeois country dress, he looks like a colonel on half pay. After having long wandered like a tormented spirit near the lost paradise of Alsace-Lorraine, he has settled in the neighborhood of Saint Dié, in the Vosges, with worthy friends who are connections of his. I went to see him there two years ago, and mechanically, in spite of ourselves, across the mountain paths we penetrated into Alsace. I learned on this occasion the secret of his joint work with the good Chatrian. The two friends see one another very rarely, whether at Paris or in the Vosges. When they do meet, they elaborate together the scheme of a work. Then Erckmann writes it, Chatrian corrects it, and sometimes puts it into the fire. I can quote as an example, a certain story conceived in an anti-clerical spirit, and intended for the XIXme Siècle. Erckmann MEN often pray that they may live to what they call a good old age. Yet it is to be feared that a great portion of humanity never appears to so little advantage as it does in the evening of life. Nor is this to be wondered at. People's dispositions depend largely upon the state of their constitutions. If a man is strong and robust, there is small credit due to him for being cheery and sweet-tempered. On the other hand, if a man is troubled with many aches and pains there is little blame owing to him if he is discontented and querulous. Now, there can be no doubt that a large number of old people are discontented and querulous, and it is equally clear that their failings have their origin in the frailties of their flesh and blood rather than any serious defect in their mental composition. At the same time it must also be said that in addition to their physical weaknesses and the contemplation of their failing powers old people have much to aggravate them. In the first place, the young are apt to display no consideration for their feelings. Many young men assume that old men have had their day and that it is time for them to make way for those who are pressing on their heels. If the old men can be thrust aside, well and good; if they decline to be removed from their places before death takes them, the chances are that they are regarded as nuisances, and their transmutation is spoken of as a thing to be desired. Indeed, it often happens that they are shown that it is difficult to tolerate their presence, and that the same would not be tolerated if it were not for the fact that blood is thicker than water. | with all the bitterness of his nature. It At many a fireside does the old grandfather sit, a sort of chilling influence on the gay striplings who have life before them, and can barely be patient with the poor old man who has left life behind him. Who cares to talk with him? Who sympathizes with his hopes and aspirations? Hopes and aspirations, forsooth! What business has he with such things? At any rate, it is supposed that he ought not to have any which pertain immediately to this world, though, after all, this world, wicked though it is, is the world in which the loves and joys of most of us are wrapped up. Whatever property he possesses it is felt that he is in duty bound to give to some one else, and very few of those who have constituted themselves his protégés feel any compunction in attempting to wheedle whatever they can from him. He has the sense to perceive all this. He has the discrimination to detect that he is laughed at, sneered at, regarded as a being of the past, put upon one side as if he were nothing, petted as if he were a child or a person of weak intellect, and in other ways, possibly unintentionally, mortified and insulted. Can it be wondered at that he often makes peevish attempts to resent the treatment which he receives; that he is induced to take misanthropical views of life and his condition? Verily a man must have a wonderful mental and physical constitution if he can remain cheerful, hearty, frank, and good-natured during the period in which he awaits the writing of finis to the chapter of his life. Some manage to do this, of course; but they are brave souls, who are largely favored by exceptional circum stances. may be that age is disposed to monopolize certain privileges and to presume upon its rights, but every excuse can be made for this by reasonable minds. It would be strange if an old man did not display irritation when he sees youngsters whose heads he has patted when they have been children, whom he has, perhaps, nursed upon his knee, acting flippantly and arrogantly towards him. It would be still more singular if he failed to feel dismayed when he perceives one, whom he has considered barely worth his notice, suddenly rushing to the front and making the running at a tremendous pace. He could, perhaps, bear with equanimity being beaten by a person who has been buffeted about by time like he himself has, but the case is almost intolerable when he suffers defeat and has the bread taken out of his mouth by an individual who is just entering upon the serious business of life. Old men are displaced daily by youthful rivals. At any time you may hear their murmurs and perceive their unhappy condition. They have not the philosophy to accept their discomfiture as one which has been decreed by fate, and they have not the strength to grasp the prizes which lie before them and are secured by bolder hands than theirs. So they fall back, in their trouble, upon the stale device of abusing youth, of expressing contempt for youth's works, and railing against society for its patronage and toleration of youngsters. As they are being put upon the shelf they derive such solace as they can from pouring into compassionate ears the story of their wrongs; a proceeding which often excites as much contempt as pity. Youth may learn one lesson from all this. It must be remembered that age natu- It should see that it must make its position rally expects to receive a certain amount of before it gets old if it wishes to retain redeference from youth. We are sorry to spect. It should perceive that age to be have to say that it does not always even happy needs an established status, and command respect. A young man is in- that if it has not laurels to repose upon it clined to be particularly resentful when he will meet with scanty consideration. The sees a would-be rival in the shape of an despised senility of dotage is simply the old man, and he is apt to indicate his re-apotheosis of a life of failure. It will sentment in unpleasant ways. He seems ever be 'so; and, however much lovers of unable to see that he ought gracefully to the traditional past may bewail the fact, allow his elders to take the initiative ex-age will not command respect on account cept when his own abilities are of an un- of its white hairs and tottering limbs. deniably superior order. Indeed, he does not hesitate to regard that weight which is occasionally permitted to attach to age as a personal affront to himself, as a grievance which he is bound to fight against Indeed, we fear that white hairs and tottering limbs, when they are all that an old man has to rely upon, will mostly excite contempt and give rise to an opinion that he is cumbering the earth too long. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. An extra copy of THE LIVING AGE is sent gratis to any one getting up a club of Five New Subscribers. 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 & GAY. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. Fast fled the deer by grove and glade, With hunter's horn and hollo. Like furious demons hunted. W. A. From The Fortnightly Review. LORD ALTHORPE AND THE REFORM ACT OF 1832. say, "Althorpe, you tell us, passed the Bill. It was his frankness and his high character and the rest of his great qualities which did it. But was it good that he should have passed it? Would it not have been better if he had not possessed these fine qualities? Was not some higher solution possible? Knowing this bill by its fruits, largely good, but also largely evil, might we not have had a better bill? At any rate, if it could not be so, show why it could not be so. Prove that the grave defects in the Act of 1832 were necessary defects. Explain how it was that Althorpe had no choice, and then we will admire him as you wish us." But to this biog rapher a man of that time, then in the House of Commons on the Whig side, and almost, as it were, on the skirts of the "ALTHORPE carried the bill," such is the tradition of our fathers, "the bill," of course, being the bill to them the great Reform Act of 1832, which was like a little revolution in that generation,- which really changed so much, and which seemed to change so much more. To have been mainly concerned in passing so great a measure seems to many of the survivors of that generation, who remember the struggles of their youth and recall the enthusiasm of that time, almost the acme of fame. And in sober history such men will always be respectfully and gravely mentioned, but all romance has died away. The bill is to us hardly more than other bills; it is one of a great many acts of bill-such questions would have seemed Parliament which in this day, partly for good and partly for evil, have altered the ever-varying constitution of England. The special charm, the charm which to the last you may see that Macaulay always felt about it, is all gone. The very history of it is forgotten. Which of the younger generation can say what was General Gascoigne's amendment, or who were the "waverers,” or even how many Reform "Bills" in those years there were? The events for which one generation cares most are often those of which the next knows least. They are too old to be matters of personal recollection, and they are too new to be subjects of study: they have passed out of memory, and they have not got into the books. Of the wellinformed young people about us, there are very many who scarcely know who Lord Althorpe was. impossible. To him the Act of 1832 is still wonderful and perfect - the great measure which we carried in my youth; and as for explaining defects in it, he would have as soon thought of explaining defects in a revelation. But if ever Lord Althorpe's life is well written, it will, I think, go far to explain not only why the Reform Bill was carried, but why that bill is what it was. He embodies all the characteristic virtues which enable Englishmen to effect well and easily great changes in politics: their essential fairness, their "large roundabout common sense," their courage, and their disposition rather to give up something than to take the uttermost farthing. But on the other hand also he has all the characteristic English defects: their want of intellectual and guiding principle, their even completer want of the culture which And in another respect this biography would give that principle, their absorption has been unfortunate. It has been kept in the present difficulty, and their hand-totoo long. The Reform Act of 1867 has mouth readiness to take what solves it shed a painful light on the Reform Act without thinking of other consequences. of 1832, and has exhibited in real life what And I am afraid the moral of those times philosophers said were its characteristic is that these English qualities as a whole defects. While these lingered in the merits and defects together—are betbooks they were matters of dull teaching, ter suited to an early age of politics than and no one cared for them; but now Mr. to a later. As long as materials are defiDisraeli has embodied them, and they are cient, these qualities are most successful living among us. The traditional sing- in hitting off simple expedients, in adaptsong of mere eulogy is broken by a sharp ing old things to new uses, and in extendquestion. Those who study that time ling ancient customs; they are fit for |