We return at four, and, having set both the grease off thoroughly and expedistoves alight, go off to the village market- tiously. I remember how at our first esing. We buy a leg of mutton - an say we used cold water and no soda, and economical joint, savory when hot, and wondered why the plates wouldn't come with mint sauce easily transformed into clean. Now we are great adepts in the lamb when cold. We have a stock of use of the dishclout. Cook generally potatoes on board; but we want a few does the washing and I the drying. Then peas and some bread, with the materials we put the plates in the rack and everyfor a salad. One or two grocery trifles thing else in its proper place. The boat complete our purchases, and we return thus being snug for the night, there is well loaded. The mutton is put in the nothing to detract from the enjoyment oven, and the peas and potatoes are pre- with which we indulge in a gossip over a pared. The cloth is laid; and while the final pipe. cook goes for a spin in the gig, I again set about entrapping the fish that lurk in subaqueous depths. We dine at seven, calmly and contemplatively. We postpone the task of "clearing away," and go on the roof to smoke and enjoy the gloaming, and perchance to tinkle the merry banjo. Inexpressibly beautiful is the aspect of tree and field and flowing river in the soft and fading light. Nature is in her silent mood, but she is by no means inarticulate. The mellow note of the thrush comes from yonder thicket, and many less notable songsters make her voices heard. The quaint cry of the corncrake comes lightly on the breeze, and in the group of elms the other side of the meadow the ringdove is singing to its mate. The low of distant cattle and the cry of their herd fall pleasantly on the ear; and anon there is a splash as a fish leaps from the water. The moon rises behind the trees, the stars come out, and the whole scene is eloquent of beauty and peace.

But we cannot idle the whole evening in contemplation. We adjourn to the kitchen, where the kettle is steaming away. We abjure after-dinner coffee on the river because we like to feel sleepy at eleven o'clock. But the plates and dishes must be washed. It is a great mistake to leave this job until the following morning. Sufficient for the day is the washing up thereof. We always put a good lot of soda in the water, as it fetches

Quiet pleasures of this kind are not all that a house-boat affords. It is very agreeable to entertain a party from town. To most people a house-boat- which as often as not is dubbed a boat-house-is quite a curiosity. Its structure is the subject of admiring comment, its internal arrangements evoke expressions of delighted surprise. Appliances which would be thought very ordinary on land are marvels of ingenuity on a house-boat. On learning that we sleep on board we are sure to be asked whether we are not afraid of being drowned. Our flower-boxes on the roof are regarded as horticultural achievements. When our cooking and dish washing exploits become known, they excite the utmost admiration in the breasts of the fair. All this is very pleas. ant. Equally gratifying is it to display one's dexterity with the punt-pole: to take our visitors away for afternoon tea, either round by the weir, with its cascades, cataracts, and foaming eddies; or, better still, up some quiet backwater, where the waterlilies bloom and the trees stretch overhead. Moored in such a spot, we cut bread-and-butter and put out the cups and saucers, and with infinite patience get the kettle to boil over the spirit-lamp, only to discover that we have brought everything with us except the tea. Then it is that we reflect that civilization and the near neighborhood of a well-stored kitchen have their advantages after all.

A GENTLEMAN who had to do with the | but I think I have mentioned this matter just making and tuning of pianos told me some in the way I heard it. I remember it struck years ago that a piano has one note which cannot be brought into tune with the rest of the notes, but growls with them, and therefore is called the wolf note. By altering the pitch you can move the wolf note about from one part of the piano to another, but you cannot get rid of it. I know nothing about music,

me as a strange thing. A somewhat similar difficulty is the wrinkle or cockle which often comes when you are pasting down a photograph. You can easily chase the wrinkle about from one part of the paper to another, but you find it very hard to get rid of it alto. gether.

Notes and Queries.

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FREDERICK SPEE (1591-1635), Jesuit, social reformer, and national poet-a threefold appellation claiming for its subject qualities very rarely found in combination should be held, on this account if on no other, deserving of general interThat he is scarcely known in this country we may conclude from the fact that he is not once mentioned by Mr. Lecky in his account of the witch-burnings, although in Germany his name is inseparably connected with the first suc cessful attempt at their repression.

est.

Besides Fr. Spee, of Jesuit national poets - I mean poets who sang naturally in their native tongueone but the martyr Southwell. He indeed, between the exercises of his thirteen rackings, found certain intervals of enforced leisure, during which, without any scruple, lest he were omitting some more excellent thing, he could pour out his melodious plaints and praises, to his own solace and God's greater glory, in verse which his countrymen would not willingly let die.

Jesuits, as both their friends and their enemies will, I take it, admit, are not often either reformers or poets; and the reason is not far to seek. The Jesuit in his nor Frederick Spee was born in 1591 at mal state is absorbed in the work of in- Kaiserswerth, near Düsseldorf, in the dividual direction: as regards institutions principality of Cologne. His father, Pehe is conservative, and concerned to make ter Spee, was seneschal of the little town under the Kurfurst Truchsesz. He was the best of what he finds. If only he may a staunch and loyal man after a quiet sort, pursue his apostolic fishing undisturbed, he is inclined to allow the ancient pieras the one incident recorded of him indiheads and breakwaters to stand as long as cates. At a great banquet of notables, wind and wave may suffer them. As to the prince, who was rapidly drifting into poetry, the Jesuit is for the most part efforts to restrain him, when warm with Lutheranism in spite of the emperor's without the leisure necessary for its production. Moreover, he commits himself wine made a violent speech full of the to no course which he cannot pursue with current antipapal slang, and then asked a definite object, and of which he cannot each of his noble guests in turn, with the give an account, if called upon, minute by exception of the churchmen, if he had minute. Literature as such, except as a not said well. When they had all assented, classical exercise for his pupils, has a he turned to Spee, who was in waiting, tendency to irritate him as a possible dero- with "Now, Master Peter, how say you?" gation from the unum necessarium. In Spee answered simply that he was of antheology, mathematics, physical science, other mind, receiving his master's rebuke in anything that admits of exact treatment, of "Tush, thou art but a fool!" with a he is often an adept; but philosophy has quiet laugh. With such a father it need of late become too literary and senti- hardly be said that Frederick was brought mental to engage his sympathy, and as to up a staunch Catholic. There is nothing recorded of his childhood except that he poetry, even when this is most purely religious, he is inclined to exclaim, in veriest went at an early age to the Jesuit college zeal for his Master and not at all in at Cologne, and that his school career was grudging, "Ut quid perditio hæc ?" Thus exceptionally brilliant. In his nineteenth it is that, although there are many hun-year he entered his two years' novitiate at dred volumes of Jesuit verses, these Trèves. In 1613, he is teaching grammar are almost all ludi in the learned languages and belles-lettres in his old college at — i. e., scholastic exercises, prize poems, etc. With the solitary and partial excep

Hist. Rat. in Eur., vol. i.

I do not reckon Spee's contemporary, Angelus Silesius, a Jesuit poet, although both a Jesuit and a poet, seeing that his poetic fame had certainly culminated before he joined the society.