been added to our knowledge of the spe- the herrings. Not that quarrelling is unicies. We are told, for instance, that with formly pleasing to the fastidious fish, for "circular-net trawling," as distinguished in Scotland, for instance, it is believed from the old system of the hanging nets, that if in a brawl on the beach any blood a prodigious slaughter of the fish takes should be shed the shoals will desert the place, for these nets when being lifted place. So, too, in Sweden, there must be tighten upon the herrings and squeeze no angry discussion in the boats previous great numbers of them to death; and to hauling in the nets, as the fish are when it happens that the haul is too great frightened away by exhibitions of bad to be got to the surface, and either the temper. Women have singularly sinster net gives way or the fishermen have to influences upon fisheries. Thus, in the cut and let all go, the whole mass of Isle of Skye if a woman crosses the water squeezed-up fish sinks to the bottom. It the luck is ruined, and at Hamburg they is said, further, that when this has fre- say a woman must not meddle with the quently happened during a great shoaling, nets unless she says the Lord's Prayer the herrings have in subsequent years re- first. In Lapland and elsewhere the same fused to pass over the spot, but turned superstition prevails that female interferaside and visited waters to which they ence will scare the herrings. Deplorable had hitherto been strangers, in preference to relate, the clergy are not less odious to to returning to haunts that were once this fish. Did they not all decamp from their favorites, but now polluted. What part of Galway because the new parson degree of truth there may be in this novel, said he was going to tithe the fishery? and certainly interesting, theory it is dif- In Lancashire a clergyman preached ficult to say, since so much evidence to against the non-observance of the Sabbath the contrary can be easily supplied. The by the fishermen, but the "toilers of the spots where the susceptibilities of the sea" met in conclave, and to neutralize herrings have not been shocked by the the effect of the curate's meddling with useless massacre of their relatives are far the fish, made a small rag effigy of the more numerous than those which they re- reverend gentleman, and piously burnt it fuse to visit because, as is suggested, so in propitiation of the herrings' outraged many dead herrings were once lying there. feelings. Again, when herring fishing, no However this may be, a striking illustra- one should talk of pigs. The herrings do tion is given of the theory in question not approve of swine, they say. Nor if a that when circular-net trawling had cov- man has a good fishing-ground will he be ered certain spots at one end of Loch doing wisely if he builds a church within Fyne the herring refused for several years sight of it, for herrings have a mortal to go into that lake, but, turning aside aversion to churches. That the ringing when they came to the familiar entrance, of the bells frightens a shoal is a widepassed on to the mouth of the Clyde, and spread belief, and not only herring but poured into the astonished river the myr- the bream in Sweden and pilchard on the iads which had hitherto been the prosper- Cornish coast are supposed to dislike and ity and pride of Loch Fyne. That this remove out of hearing of the sound. That avoidance of that famous haunt has not they have a "king" which leads them in continued is a matter for general congrat- their pilgrimages is an old belief, and they ulation, for, whatever the reason may be, say that the sudden death of their royal there is no doubt that a Loch Fyne fish- guide strikes consternation into the hosts, "the Glasgow magistrates," as the Scotch and that it is to this cause, the panic call them by way of compliment is the caused by the loss of their king, that those prince of herrings, and if the strewing of wonderful instances of wholesale suicide dead fish upon the bottom drives them by herrings, when they drive up in shoals away it is a matter of public interest that high and dry on the beach, are due. they should not be strewn, for the Loch Numbers of other explanations, all as Fyne herring is a thing of beauty, and good as these, could be easily cited. It should, if possible, be kept a joy forever. is not probable, however, that any one Fishermen have themselves a number of except some fishermen here and there explanations for the whims of herrings, will accept them as sufficing to account and, what is more to the point, they be- for the mysterious disappearance of the lieve them. Thus, it is only a short while herring myriads. The importance of this ago that a man was brought up for ill-fish commercially, the great numbers of using his wife. He admitted it; but said that he did not beat her from any particular want of affection, but simply to attract

families who depend upon its capture for their livelihood, the influence its abundance or the reverse has upon the pros

From The Spectator.

perity of many seacoast towns, all combine | scribes London as its headquarters in the to make a thorough knowledge of its nat- visitors' book should fly, as far as possi ural history most desirable. But scientific ble from the tedious street, the well-known inquiry has hitherto failed to extort from haunt. It is perhaps excusable that the these small creatures the secret of their denizens of Leeds and Liverpool should migrations. That the direction of their look upon London only as another place journeys mainly depends upon the food of business, only a repetition on a larger supply is certain, but the reasons that scale of what he sees every day at home. prompt them to be so sudden in their It is excusable, but only on account of arrivals and departures, so whimsical in ignorance. For it is quite certain that the length of their visits, have yet to be London is no more a repetition of Leeds discovered. That self-preservation com- and Liverpool than Venice is a repetition pels them to shift their breeding-grounds of Verona, or Westminster Abbey of may be accepted as beyond question, but Manchester Cathedral. The things are what the sudden idea is that occurs simul- totally unlike. Even the Pool and the taneously to some millions of herrings, Docks of London are no more a repetition and sets them all off on the stampede to- of the estuary of the Mersey than St. gether, has still to be elicited from them. Paul's is a repetition of a stucco garden If, as is suggested, it is really the specta- temple. In fact, even in its particular cle of their murdered fellow-travellers, business aspect, the city is wholly difthat feeling is very creditable to the her- ferent from the business quarters of other rings, and circular-net trawlers should towns. As in Virgil's day, the Mantuan sympathize with them, if only for their swain went up to Rome expecting to find own advantage. it a larger edition but still like his little country town, "for so he knew puppies like dogs, and kids to resemble their mothers," but found that there was no more comparison between them in reality than there was between a cypress and an osier twig; so the Lancashire or Yorkshire man who expects in London merely a larger series of factories or a dustier line of warehouses, will find that his method of comparing great things to small is as inapplicable as that of his Italian counterpart. The mere volume of London business, the mere rush and roar of the London streets, are wholly incomparable with even the busiest of busy towns elsewhere. Liverpool may challenge the Pool, the Manchester warehouses may affect to rival Cannon Street and Paul's Wharf, Birmingham may claim as great a show of shops as Queen Victoria Street or Cheapside, Worcester may sneer at the potteries of Lambeth; but it is the conglomeration of all these together, and each element in larger proportions than any other city of the Old World can show, that makes London so unlike, so much greater than any other city in England. Then, again, the mere business quarter, or rather quarters, of London are but a part of the whole. Besides the Pool there are the Parks, besides the Bank and the Exchange there are the Public Offices and the Houses of Parliament, besides the Guildhall and the Mansion House there are the National Gallery and the British Museum. In fact, because London is the capital, and a natural capital, because it is London, it must

THE FINEST CITY IN THE WORLD. NOTWITHSTANDING the cholera scare, the capitals of Europe, from Christiania to Constantinople, the ancient cities of France and Germany, of Italy and Spain, will be filled, or are filled already, with crowds of British sightseers. Letters will be written to private friends and the public press, articles will be concocted and whole books published, on the beauties and the glories, the present pleasant ness and the poetry of the past, which are to be found in this or that town scattered up and down the length and breadth of the two hemispheres. Some enthusiastic persons will even go so far as to discover that even in England "towered cities please us then" (when we cannot get any where else), and may, perhaps, discover that, after all, the position of Berne is inferior to that of Durham, and that York and Canterbury need not shrink from the comparison with Strasburg or Amiens. But whatever else they may conspire to praise, whatever enthusiasm may be roused elsewhere, British tourists find never a word to say in favor of the capital of their own country, and the sight of London never raises any enthusiasm except for the nearest railway-station that will take them out of it. It is natural and reasonable enough, of course, that the large section of the tourist world that in

needs be infinitely vaster and more complex in life and development than other cities. It is not merely a province of houses other towns are smaller provinces of houses — but it is a nation of houses. It is the visible embodiment in stone and brick of the country as a whole.

or Dresden, or Munich, who have never seen the inside of the National Gallery, much less paid a visit to the Neue Pinakothek, which finds its home at South Kensington. And of all the crowd who talk of the statues of the Vatican or the Venus of Milo, how many have discovered the beauties of the Townley Venus, or of For this reason it is that London is so the Comic Muse, or realized that the well worth a touring visit, if not from the Elgin marbles are the finest sculptures in inhabitants of other great towns whose the world, and that they are located in business brings them from time to time Bloomsbury? Nor are the pictures of to London, but who probably have no real Grosvenor House, and the armor and knowledge of London as a city to "do," curios of Sir Richard Wallace, so remote yet, at all events, from the ever-increas- from access as the treasures of the Green ing army of country and country-town Vaults or the Golden Chamber. For exfolks who seek recompense for the quiet peditions, are there not Hampton Court of their ordinary homes in the racket of a and Dulwick, and Greenwich Hospital, tour among foreign cities. If you must and, for scientific tastes, the Zoological visit a city, no city will repay a visit so Gardens and Kew; and for purely natural well as London. In the matter of hotels, scenery, Richmond and Bushey Parks it is now as well, or better, supplied than and the "open sewer" which, above Tedany other city in Europe. Even if the dington at least, is still full of water and change to foreign foods and modes of life beauty, and is purity itself compared with is sought, Alderman de Keyser will sup- the Rance at Dinan or the yellow Tiber; ply a courtyard and a table d'hôte, and while, to crown all, are not Windsor's bedrooms without soap, but with polished Royal Towers within an easy afternoon floors, without the trouble of crossing the outing from the centre of the town? For Channel; while the restaurant out-of- our country cousins, who really must have doors is to be found at the Healtheries, had enough of the country by the middle and the restaurant in-doors in the illus- of August, there is no tour which could trious Kettner's. Then, for historical open up such a mine of sight-seeing and buildings, the Tower is unsurpassed for produce such a magazine of new ideas as interest by the Piombi and the Bridge of a visit to London. Even in its mere Sighs, or the gloomy dungeons of Nurem- physical outward aspect, taken by itself in burg; Westminster Abbey as a piece of its infinite variety of street, and square, Gothic architecture need hardly fear com- and park, the abodes of labor, and busiparison with St. Ouen at Rouen, while as ness, and politics, and art, and pleasure, a Campo Santo, there is, of course, no of hunger and satiety, it is a marvellous place in the world which would even pre- place. But if the patriotic Englishman tend to compete with it. But even apart wishes to feel his patriotism exalted and from leviathans like these, and St. Paul's, justified, even where it is sometimes most and the Guildhall, and Westminster Hall, depreciated and condemned, let him take and Lambeth Palace, there are enough his stand on Waterloo Bridge, not as minor buildings to make the fortune of a Wordsworth did when he pronounced on score of Continental cities. Crosby Hall, old Westminster Bridge that "earth has the Temple Church, and the Middle Tem- not anything to show more fair," at early ple Hall, Christ's Hospital, St. Saviour's, dawn only, but let him do so at any hour old Chelsea Church, Chelsea Hospital, in the twenty-four, and look east, to the are not these enough for many a Murray- swelling dome of St. Paul's, or west, to guided day? Then for the enthusiastic the "massy towers" of Westminster, or lover of art who, never having looked at a along the green-outlined masses of the picture nor felt the want of it for a year, Embankment, or across to the manymust needs spend hours of rapture in gal- colored spars and sails of the clustering leries, is there any collection which, take Thames lighters and the bulky storeit all in all, is better chosen or better houses and factories behind them, and if, hung, or, even now we may say better not only for power and movement but for housed, than the neglected treasures of mere physical beauty, he does not prothe National Gallery? It would be inter-nounce London to be the finest city in the esting to take a census of those who will world-why, he is either very blind or prate to you of the art glories of Florence, very prejudiced.

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