anywhere my anti-stylograph pen-filler? I have mislaid or lost it. You know what I mean the apparatus for injecting into it its supply of ink?" "No, sir," I answered; "I have not." Then I went out. I walked away, my head down, and both hands in my empty pockets. I had lost my salary, my two guineas a week the fourteen guineas through Tommy. Then the gall in my heart mounted. I ground my teeth; my eyes sparkled with rage; I clenched my fists in my pockets; I cast myself into the hedge, and glowering before me into the glaring, dusty road, cursed Tommy. At that moment my eye rested on something glittering before me on the road: it flashed in the sun like glass. I paid no attention to it at first, but its light at tracted my curiosity, and presently I stooped to see what it was. I picked up a little glass vessel, with a nozzle at one end of the tube, and an india-rubber receiver at the other. I knew at once what it was the lost filler of the anti-stylograph pen. Then the thought rushed scalding through my brain, "Under the circumstances, what would Tommy do? Would he not at once return to the governor, and say to him, Sir, you discharged me because I did my duty; now I heap coals of fire on your head - for your evil I return good: here is the ink-injector of your anti-stylographic pen, which you had lost, but I have had the felicity to find'?" Then I sprang up and said, “I will not do it. I renounce you, Tommy. I will be led by you no more." Pacified by having formed this resolution, I sat down in the hedge again. I had no purpose where to go or what to do. I had no money in my pocket. My mother's property, my one pound four shillings and threepence three farthings, had all been swindled out of me by Tommy. Tommy had cleaned me out completely. I drew forth my pockets and let them bang on either side of my thighs, limp evidences against Tommy. Then, hardly knowing what I did, I filled my left palm with dust out of the road, and amused myself with charging the little ink-syringe with it, and driving it forth again in a cloud, by compressing the india-rubber vessel at the end. I thought of nothing all the time, and observed nothing but this toy, till I was roused by a voice addressing me, and then I looked up. Opposite me stood a farmer, as I conjectured by his dress and "That! Oh, that is the best possible of medicines, the very elixir of life, a compound of the rarest and most valuable of all condiments. Its scientific name is Tond'apameibomenos prosephepodas - okusAchilles." The farmer was immensely impressed with the words -a line of the Iliad which rose uncalled for to my lips. "And now," he said, "might I make so bold as to ask what that medicine is good for?" "Every malady man is heir to. We all come to it at last, and the sooner the better." "I'm bad in my liver," said he. "Now, if I may take the liberty to ask, does it touch the liver?" "Touch the liver!" laughed I, with bitterness in my tone; "it touches it more strongly than calomel or podophyllin." Is it to be swallowed?" 66 May I you'll excuse the freedom, but I do suffer shocking of the liver may I further inquire how you would administer it?" "I would throw it in people's eyes," said I savagely. "Dear heart alive! and what good would that do?" "Now, look you here," I said. I was in a bitter and scornful mood. My misfortunes had made me so. I was in no merciful mood, I had had no mercy shown to me. I was in a reckless mood, - my idols were broken, I had no more faith. Now, attend to me. What is the centre and seat of all sensation and life? Is it not the head? You see with your head, you taste, you smell, you hear, you think with your head. Your head is the focus of all your powers, it is to you what the root is to the flower; and Aristotle well said that man is an inverted plant. His bulb is upwards, and his branches downwards. If you desire the ཝཱ R. ROBERT FLOPJOHN, M.C.S., Salaperimental Chemistry, Leyden, is visiting this town for a few days only. He is in possession by a concatenation of evidence at a conclusion of a panacea for all maladies, having arrived which has escaped all empirics. Dr. R. F. has practised for a number of years in the principal towns of the Continent, and tried his specific on a number of complicated cases, and has,never known it to fail. In offering this new health of a plant, you nurture the root,- The farmer was greatly impressed. Dang it!" said he, "I wish you would throw your dust into my eyes. I don't mind paying you for it. What is your charge?" "Five-and six for such as you," I said. "There now," said he, "blow away." "Try me," said I. "Well, I will," he said. "Come along. It's not far off to our place, and if I might make so bold as to ask you to take a bite of dinner with us, I'd take it kindly. Here's another five-and-six, paid aforehand for the old lady; and if she is better, dang it! in a day or two we'll have you throw your dust in our eyes again." Ten minutes after I had deserted the paths of Tommy, I had half a guinea in my pocket. like bringing out an untried article. For over It was really amazing to see how my As time passed, and I found that I had more patients than I could attend to, I extended my operations. I advertised in every country paper I could hear of. I spent hundreds of pounds in advertisements, and every hundred I spent thus, brought me in ten per cent. that is, a thousand pounds. Of course I could not attend to all who sought an interview. I therefore did up little parcels of dust in blue, red, and gold paper. I had them stamped as quack medicines, and sold them at 25. 1d. per packet. The injector I sold separate at 55. But even this did not satisfy me. I announced that I would give away a packet to every one who would apply to After I had puffed dust into the eyes of me gratis. I put this advertisement in the farmer's wife, and promised to call something like three hundred newspapers, again, I hastened to the office of the prin- and the result was that applications poured cipal local newspaper and inserted an ad-in to me from every quarter. I am afraid vertisement: to say how many thousand packets of administered a few of your powders with such an unpronounceable name, and a wonderful cure has been effected. I would not be without them in the house for worlds." These will suffice; they are taken at random from a vast pile of similar letters. Indeed every post brings me in recognitions of the wonderful results that have followed on the throwing of dust into people's eyes. common road-dust I thus distributed free | "My child was suffering from the thrush. I of charge. With each packet I enclosed a printed form, to the effect that though the powder was given gratis, yet the necessary apparatus for its injection into the eyes could not be given away without a small charge of five shillings to cover the outlay of its manufacture. These little squirts of glass and india-rubber cost me three-halfpence each, of the manufacturer. I know that I sold thirty-six hundred of them, which alone brought in £900, less their cost, which was £22, 10s.; so that the net profit I made was £877, IOS. After that I had numerous orders for packets of eye-dust. On an average I sold five to each syringe; and that, at 2s. 1. each, amounted to 1912, 10s. By visits and personal attendance on cases I made as much as £25 per week, or £1300 per annum. That made per annum, Sale of squirts, dust, 66 Professional attendance, с £877 10 £4090 0 o I have not deducted the cost of advertis ing and printing, nor of the red, blue, and gold paper in which I wrapped up the dust, nor of the sealing-wax impressed with my seal (without which none was genuine). Roughly calculated, throwing dust in folk's eyes brought me in an annual income of £3500. But the most extraordinary feature of the case was, that I received testimonials as to the efficacy of my remedy from all quarters, without any solicitation. I subjoin a few a very few as samples: Case 1.-J. B. O'Kelly of Gormanstown, Ireland, says: "I have suffered from rheumatism for years. I expected to be in bed the last attack five or six weeks as usual. The Tond'apameibomenos-prosephe-podas-okus-Achilles powder soon eased my pain, particularly in the back; I am now able to go about the house as usual." Case 2. Hypolite Alphonse d'Aurelle of Sauveterre writes: "I have been affected for eighteen months with acute headache, which had quite incapacitated me from work. I am now, thanks to the application of five of your eye-powders, entirely free from pain, and able to return to my business." Case 3 Henry Walker of Bristol says: "The eye-powders have completely cured my chilblains. I have been a martyr to this distressing complaint every winter since I was a child. The chilblains form on hands, feet, ears, and, most distressing of all, on the point of my nose. Since I have used your eye-dust, my chilblains have entirely disappeared." Case 4.-A lady from Liverpool writes: | You might suppose that those who had once tried my remedy and found it to fail, would have given it up in disgust. No such thing. They went on with it with unshaken credulity, till laid hold of by some other quack. I was not, however, quite easy in mind that the nature of my specific would not be found out and my method "blown." I therefore cast about for a more durable foundation than common road-dust on which to rear the fabric of my fortunes. There was an ugly lady who was still an old maid, very rich, who suffered from a complication of imaginary disorders. I attended her for some time, and blew a great amount of dust into her eyes. At last I proposed to her, and she became her fortune. I have no love for her; my wife, and made me absolute master of indeed her presence inspires me with disgust. This, however, I do not let her see. I still blow dust into her eyes, as I find that the secret of success in this do into the eyes of all the world; and I world consists in maintaining the outward demeanor and expressing the sentiments of Tommy, but modelling the conduct upon the principles of Harry. From The Quarterly Review. THE NATURE OF DEMOCRACY.* MONSIEUR EDMOND SCHERER, the author of the powerful and widely circulated pamphlet which we have placed at the head of this article, is well known to large numbers of cultivated Englishmen as one of the most intelligent and judi cious, and one of the best instructed, of French critical writers. He is remarkable not only for his knowledge of English lit 1. La Démocratie et la France. Etudes par Edmond Scherer, Sénateur. Paris, 1883. 2. Towards Democracy. Manchester and London, 1883. 3. The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters, and other Organic Laws of the United States. Parts I. and II. (quarto). Second Edition. Washington Government Printing Office, 1878. other consists of mere tokens which, like the English half-sovereign of the future, are merely called by an old name, because there is a conventional understanding that it shall still be used. It is urgently necessary to rate all this currency at its true value; and, as regards a part of it, this was done once for all by Sir J. F. Stephen, in his admirable volume on "Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality." But the political smashers are constantly at work, and their dupes are perpetually mul tiplying, while there is by no means a corresponding activity in applying the proper tests to all this spurious manufacture. We Englishmen pass on the Continent as masters of the art of government; yet it may be doubted whether, even among us, the science, which corresponds to the art, is not very much in the condition of political economy before Adam Smith took it in hand. In France the condition of political thought is far worse. Englishmen abandon a political dogma when it has led to practical disas ter; but no Frenchman was ever converted, or even affected, by a demonstration that a government or an institution, which he abstractedly prefers, has worked badly in practice. The nation is so sincerely and so naturally at the mercy of all abstractions and generalizations, that it can only be influenced by a successful erature, but for his singular sympathy | tual circulating medium was base from with its spirit. But M. Scherer is not the first; another was once good coin, but solely a man of letters. He is an experi- it is clipped and worn on all sides; anenced and observant politician. If the color of his political opinions has to be given, he must be classed as a Republican. He is not a Legitimist, nor an Orleanist, nor a Bonapartist, under disguise. He did not accept the republican form of government as a merely provisional arrangement, unavoidable in the existing circumstances of France. He thought that the establishment of a republic was inevitable, and that the experiment should be honestly tried, and tried out to the end. When the National Assembly, having constructed the new Constitution, proceeded under its provisions to the election of senators for life in 1875, M. Scherer was one of the candidates of the left centre for these seats, and he was chosen by a considerable majority. From the point of view thus obtained, he has surveyed French politics for nearly ten years, and the picture which he draws of republican government in actual operation is melancholy to the last degree. Englishmen on the whole viewed with strong disapproval the attempt of the Duc de Broglie's government to dragoon the French electorate into returning a majority resembling that which had controlled the National Assembly, and the complacency with which they saw its defeat may have blinded them to the true results of an experiment in government, which was for the first time left to its natural course by Marshal Mac-attack on them. Mahon's resignation of the presidency of M. Scherer, so far as our knowledge the French republic. We shall presently extends, has been the first French writer quote a portion of M. Scherer's account to bring into clear light a truth of the of the methods by which the French political system is made to discharge the duties of government; but, meantime, the greatest merit of his pamphlet does not seem to us to lie in its exposure of the servility of the deputies to the electoral committees, or of the public extravagance by which their support is purchased. It lies rather in M. Scherer's examination of certain vague, abstract propositions, which are commonly accepted without question by the Republican politicians of France, and indeed of the whole Continent. In our day, when the extension of popular government is throwing all the older political ideas into utter confusion, a man of ability can hardly render a higher service to his country, than by the analysis and correction of the assumptions which pass from mind to mind in the multitude, without inspiring a doubt of their truth and genuineness. Some part of this intellec greatest simplicity, which, nevertheless, in modern Continental politics is the beginning of wisdom. His subject is democracy, and he affirms that democracy is nothing but a form of government.* There is no word about which a denser mist of vague language, and a larger heap of loose metaphors, has collected. Yet, although democracy does signify something indeterminate, there is nothing vague about it. It is simply and solely a form of government. It is the govern ment of the State by the many, as opposed, according to the old Greek analy sis, to its government by the few, and to its government by one. The border be tween the few and the many, and again between the varieties of the many, is nceessarily indeterminate; but democracy not the less remains a mere form of * Scherer, p. 3. government; and, inasmuch as of these | viduals, the gods are said to love those forms the most definite and determinate who die young; but nobody has ventured is monarchy-the government of the to make such an assertion of States. The State by one person democracy is most prayers of nations to Heaven have been, accurately described as inverted monar- from the earliest ages, for long national chy. And this description answers to life, life from generation to generation, the actual historical process by which the life prolonged far beyond that of children's great modern republics have been formed. children, life like that of the everlasting Villari has shown that the organized hills. The historian will sometimes speak modern State was first constituted in of governments distinguished for the loftiItaly. It grew, not out of the mediaæval ness of their aims, and the brilliancy of republican municipalities, which had noth the talents which they called forth, but ing in common with modern government, doomed to an existence all too brief. The but out of that most ill-famed of all politi- compliment is in reality a paradox, for in cal systems, the Italian tyranny. The matters of government all objects are vain celebrated Italian statecraft, spread all and all talents wasted, when they fail to over Europe by Italian statesmen, who secure national durability. One might as were generally ecclesiastics, was applied well eulogize a physician for the assiduity to France by Cardinal Mazarin and his of his attendance and the scientific beauty pupil, Louis XIV.; and out of the contact of his treatment, when the patient has of this new science with an administra- died under his care. Next perhaps to the tive system in complete disorder, there paramount duty of maintaining national sprang monarchical France. The succes- existence, comes the obligation incumbent sive French republics have been nothing on democracies, as on all governments, of but the later French monarchy, upside securing the national greatness and dig down. Similarly, the constitutions and nity. Loss of territory, loss of authority, the legal systems of the several North loss of general respect, loss of self-respect, American States, and of the United States, may be unavoidable evils, but they are would be wholly unintelligible to anybody terrible evils, judged by the pains they who did not know that the ancestors of inflict and the elevation of the minds by the Anglo-Americans had once lived un- which these pains are felt; and the gov der a king, himself the representative of ernment which fails to provide a sufficient older kings infinitely more autocratic, and supply of generals and statesmen, of solwho had not observed that throughout diers and administrators, for the preventhese bodies of law and plans of govern- tion and cure of these evils, is a government the people had simply been put into ment which has miscarried. It will also the king's seat, occasionally filling it with have miscarried, if it cannot command some awkwardness. The advanced Radi- certain qualities which are essential to the cal politician of our day would seem to success of national action. In all their have an impression that democracy differs relations with one another (and this is a from monarchy in essence. There can be fundamental assumption of international no grosser mistake than this, and 'none law) States must act as individual men. more fertile of further delusions. Democ- The defects which are defects in individ. racy, the government of the common-ual men, and perhaps venial defects, are wealth by a numerous but indeterminate portion of the community taking the place of the monarch, has exactly the same conditions to satisfy as monarchy; it has the same functions to discharge, though it discharges them through different organs. The tests of success in the performance of the necessary and natural duties of a government are precisely the same in both cases. Thus, in the very first place, democracy, like monarchy, like aristocracy, like any other government, must preserve the na. tional existence. The first necessity of a State is that it should be durable. Among mankind regarded as assemblages of indi *Villari, Machiavelli, i. 15, 36, 37. faults in States, and generally faults of It is If we turn from the foreign to the do |