so close was its proximity to the bunga- | heavy jungle. This was valuable, as the low. The sounds became fainter; sud- district did not abound in very extensive denly stopped. Congratulating himself forest, and timber was in request. It is upon having "settled" the devil, for the possible that the sound of felling in this present at any rate, E re-loaded his jungle might be echoed by the opposite gun, and sending the servants to their hill, but even then, other circumstances rooms, we returned to our own, to com- combined to stultify this supposition; the pose ourselves to slumber again if possi- echo would be heard on the hill where ble; but I am fain to confess that my the sounds were made, not on that which apprehensions were quickened and my produced it. No felling was going on nerves by this time quite unstrung. Any there at that time, and had any one atthing tangible one might grapple with and tempted to fell and carry off timber by surmount, but this mysterious intruder stealth, the act must have been detected. baffled and filled one with undefinable Throughout the entire jungle did Edread of what, it was impossible to con- subsequently extend his investigations jecture. without discovering a sign of human being having been engaged in any such operation. And then, who would, who could, go into the depths of a Ceylon jungle at dead of night without even a streak of moonlight to direct their steps, for any purpose whatsoever? Most natives are timorous of even walking on the high-road in darkness. Lights would have been of little use, and moreover would have been likely to lead to the discovery of their whereabouts. But the main fact remained to overthrow all the possible explanations we could devise — no felling had taken place in any part of the jungle. Some time elapsed, it may have been a quarter of an hour, and my quakings having somewhat subsided, I was dropping off into a restless doze, when suddenly a whole battery of blows resounded in the immediate vicinity, succeeded by thundering crashes in quick succession. Then came a violent rush of wind, followed by a volley of what seemed to be missiles, in the shape of stones, sand, and other loose materials hurled down upon the roof of the outside buildings with the noise of a hurricane. The sudden alarm almost deprived me of my self-possession, and E- could scarcely repress his indignation, so firmly did the conviction rest in his mind that human agency was at work. His muttered imprecations were not a few, and I pitied the poor "devil," whoever he might be, who might at that moment have fallen under the lash of his vengeful feelings. cause, This fact goes far also to disprove any supposition which might be urged on the ground of volcanic agency, which would leave some traces of its action. Neither is Ceylon subject to earthquakes or disturbances resulting from this though it is not altogether exempt from After this we heard no more, the fiend them, as, in the autumn of 1874, I myself having apparently exhausted his displeas- experienced a shock one night which we ure. Daylight came at last, and with it found was attributable to a slight earthmy nerves recovered their wonted equilib-quake which was felt more or less in difrium. ferent parts of the island. Directly after the matutinal cup of Time passed on. I was not so brave coffee, E- went out, traversed every as formerly about being left alone at part of the small belt of jungle adjacent, night, and that day week Ehad occaand came back thoroughly disappointed sion to attend a medical committee meetand nonplussed with the result of his in- ing at Cooroovagalan, and could not vestigations. Not a trace of a tree having return home till the following morning. been touched was perceptible, nor was I might have accompanied him had I felt there a vestige of any substance whatever equal to the ride, but my nerves were in on the roof of the buildings in the com- so shaken a state that I could not sit my pound. horse, and had to give up the attempt and remain at home. As night advanced, my fears redoubled. Dinner over, I kept the servants about the bungalow as long as I could, but at length they had finished all I could find for them to do, and, not wishing to display any feelings of nervousness, I was obliged to dismiss them. I could, however, hear them in conversation outside over their rice, and summoned up No satisfactory solution of the mysterious noises we heard has ever been offered, and we can arrive at no conclusion. It has been suggested that they may have been produced by an echo. The strip of jungle ascended the hill, on the other side of which was a deep valley. On the opposite side of this valley rose another range of hills, covered with a tract of courage to retire for the night. Just before"turning in" an impulse led me to push aside the curtain over the doorway, and gaze upon the solitude around. The tall pillars and bare scaffolding, half-built walls and dark corners looked weird and desolate enough; and with a feeling of insecurity I dropped the curtain and extinguished my lamp. The convivial domestics outside had by this time ceased their chattering; all was still, when upon my startled ears fell the unwelcome but familiar sound of a heavy blow - an axe falling upon a tree! Horrified and unnerved, and dreading that the events of the previous week were about to be reenacted, to what extent I could form no limit or conception, I hastily sought my pillow, bathed in a cold perspiration. Whether imagination or not this time I cannot determine, but if it was the pezazi again, bent upon terrifying us poor human beings, he desisted for that night, and relinquished his intention; for no more of the dreaded sounds did I hear; nor have I, from that day to this, ever been troubled with anything intangible to cause alarm or raise suspicions of a superstitious nature in my mind. As might have been expected, after this occurrence all sorts of reports and vague stories were brought to our ears, such as that of a mason who, sleeping in an open shed in company with several other workmen, deposed to having actually seen the pezazi in propriâ persona, and went so far as to give a vivid description of his chain, horns, and cloven foot in regular order! Another man, a Jaffna Tamil, had occasion to sleep in a small store standing alone on the patina some few hundred yards from any other dwelling, and he calmly asserted with great seriousness that nightly did the Evil One pace the narrow verandah in front of his room, clanking his chain, and from time to time knocking for admittance. Samuel, who professed Christianity, stated that on the arrival of this unwelcome visitant from the unknown world, he read aloud his Testament by the light of his solitary lamp, and after repeated unsuccessful demands to enter, the uninvited guest was forced to take his departure, unable to endure the reading of Holy Writ. All these stories we took for what they were worth; and gradually the natives became less importunate, and, as time went on, the rumors died a natural death. But the fact remains, and will be forever impressed upon my memory, that MR. LOWELL says somewhere that the art of writing consists largely in knowing what to leave in the ink-pot. We may add that the art of publishing consists largely in knowing what to leave in the waste-paper basket. As an experienced editor, that is a discovery our author must have made long ago-but he has been too severe with himself. How many volumes of Lowell's prose works, if not in the waste-basket, are almost as effectually buried in magazine and newspaper columns? How many ink-pots between 1838 and 1880 have been absorbed by the blotting-paper of oblivion? A brief review of Mr. Lowell's working life will give the reader some notion of what the world has not got, and will serve to call attention to the condensed wealth contained in such unpretentious little volumes as "Among my Books," and "My Study Windows." The "Lowles" from Yardley, Worces tershire, left Bristol for America about two hundred and forty years ago. There was evidently "stuff" in the family, as the town of "Lowell," a shire town of Middlesex, Massachusetts, is named after them. Charles Lowell, a respected Unitarian minister at Boston, was the father of the present poet, and determining that his son James Russell should have a liberal education, he sent him to Harvard University, where he entered at fifteen, became "class poet," graduated at nineteen, and on leaving college was recommended to study law. Whether Mr. Lowell's faculty for promoting litigation was imperfect or insufficiently cultivated is of little consequence to posterity; had he been a successful lawyer, he might have become a professional politicianthe world would then have probably lost a poet and a statesman. About a year seems to have satisfied him that human nature, from a legal point of view, was Biglow Papers," on which we have unproductive perhaps dull. At At all already so fully dwelt.* "A Fable for events, in 1841 he published a collection Critics" also appeared in the year '48. of poems called "A Year's Life." As In 1851 Mr. Lowell visited England, they have never been reprinted, and we France, and Switzerland, and lived for have not seen the original volumes, they some time in Italy. Such essays as E may have been poetical digests of inter-"Dante" show how deeply he imbibed esting cases. Some, however, have been the spirit of Italy's greatest poet, and republished; but we fail to find in the how closely he studied the schools of exquisite plaint of "Threnodia," "Irene," Italian painting and the relics of the My Love," "To Perdita, singing," or Roman or Greco-Roman sculpture. Of "The Moon," the least allusion to the the Greek sculpture there is little enough "Prisoner at the Bar," "Costs," or even in Italy; only a few marble replicas of a a" Fee Simple." The mature taste which few fine statues -the originals of all the cancels early work is not always to be finest Greek statues were in ivory or relied on. Why Mr. Tennyson should bronze. He joins in the abuse of Mihave only retained one exquisite line in chael Angelo at present fashionable, and the whole of his prize poem "Timbuc- the reader may be referred to the section a poem full of mature and sustained beauty is to us as great a mystery as why Mr. Ruskin seems anxious to bury forever all his more important writings which the world, however, will too" not willingly let die. However, "to fresh woods and pastures new," in company with Mr. Robert Carter, did Mr. Lowell betake himself in 1843, and the Pioneer, 66 a literary and critical magazine," supported by Edgar Poe, Hawthorne, Parson, Storey, and others, was pioneered through three monthly numbers, when the publisher failed, and the venture was wrecked. Every one must buy his experience, and the interests of authors and publishers get a little mixed sometimes-especially those of authors-still, the great matter is to find one's "sealegs on the voyage of literary life. In 1844 the verses including "A Legend of Brittany," ""Prometheus," ""Rhocus," and some sonnets, showed at least that the poet and philanthropist was beginning to stand firm upon that quarter-deck on which the great anti-slavery battle was to be fought and won. on Italy," printed in the "Fireside Travels," for a variety of impressions de voyage, probably unlike what was printed before them, but very similar to what has appeared since. We miss the "flying grace" of Howells's "Venetian Life," but this Mr. Lowell would call "cheapening one thing by another; and then, indeed, the impress left by Italy upon his mind and studies is far more important than are any of the pleasant, chatty notes made guide-book in hand. One thing is certain, that Mr. Lowell avoided travelling as other Americans are said to travel - seeing everything and looking at nothing, or, worse still, making notes, as they rush from place to place on the Continong," of what they neither have seen nor looked at. I remember myself meeting two such enterprising travellers when I was last in Rome. They were standing opposite the "Apollo Belvidere" in the Vatican. One held guidebook with pencil, and read; the other mastered as rapidly as he could the labels on each pedestal. "Wal, what's the next?" says the friend with the guideIn 1845 a prose volume of conversa- book. 'That," says his friend, stooping tions appeared, on some old poets, Chau- down to examine the label- "that's the cer, Chapman, Ford, etc., subsequent-'Pollo Belvidere." "Chalk 'im off," says ly, we suppose, incorporated in " My his friend with the pencil, and both passed Study Windows," and various hints, on without even raising their eyes to the paragraphs, and disquisitions on politics sun-god! and slavery prepare the way for some But to be at leisure, to master well, to patriotic bursts of feeling, the indignation think and write maturely, is an old-world and the eloquent wrath of "The Present feature retained by Mr. Lowell. It is one Crisis "" (1848), "Anti-Texas," and "On of his main charms; like good wine, it the Capture of Certain Fugitive Slaves will keep-ay, and bear exportation to near Washington." These were shortly boot. followed in that most momentous year '48, when the States were seething with revolution and Europe was in a blaze with Louis Napoleon's exploits, by "The Vision of Sir Launfal," and the famous 66 In December 1852 he returned to America, and in 1854 and 1855 lectured on the British poets. The substance of * LIVING AGE, No. 1899. these lectures probably reappeared in | tracted and issued in his three chief "Among my Books." In January 1855, on the resignation of Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Lowell, by that time famous and influential as the poet of the "Biglows,” accepted the chair of modern languages and belles-lettres in the Harvard College. With that passion for thoroughness which he had so humorously and forcibly expressed in the "Biglows," Mr. Lowell revisited Europe to qualify himself especially in the French and German languages and literatures for his new post. Folks thet worked thorough was the ones thet But bad work follers ye ez long's ye live; seau prose volumes, "My Study Windows," and two volumes "Among my Books.” In 1872 Mr. Lowell is again in Europe, and in 1874 Cambridge University - not U.S.A.-confers its LL.D. in the senatehouse upon one who had certainly by this time, more by the quality than by the quantity of his books, won for himself a foremost place in English literature, as well as a special throne in America, where he may well be called the prize poet of the vernacular. From the English point of view all this may seem an odd training for a politician. Indeed, our English House of Commons has always been a little shy of literary men (although it happens to have a good supply of them just now - 1880). Lord Macaulay was a fair Parliamentary sucTo this period at Dresden, 1856, we cess as far as he went, but his extreme doubtless owe those exhaustive studies, distaste for office perhaps betrayed a certhe fruits of which come out in the excel-tain sense of unfitness to excel in practilent essays on "Lessing" and "Rous- cal politics; Bulwer Lytton was a showy papers which impress the reader, succès d'estime as a debater; and John without apparent effort or design, with the Stuart Mill, although unable to keep his feeling (most reassuring) that the writer seat, left his hall-mark on every question knows so much more than he cares to say. that he opened his lips upon in the house. In 1857 to 1862 many essays, not since Lord Beaconsfield is altogether an exceprepublished, appeared in the Atlantic tional phenomenon; but our last attempt Monthly, of which Mr. Lowell became at a poet-statesman, on a truly imperial editor; and in 1863 to 1872 he edited, in scale abroad, cannot be exactly described conjunction with Charles E. Norton, the as a success, in spite of Mr. Prinsep's gorNorth American Review a kind of geous and consummate efforts on canvas. American Revue des Deux Mondes in literary importance. In 1864 appeared the pleasant "Fireside Travels" containing his gossip about "Cambridge U.S., thirty years ago; "The Moosehead Journal," full of characteristic incidents and glimpses of out-ofthe-way lonely scenery, and American travel in pleasant by-ways; experiences at sea, together with appearances of whales and jellyfish; a pensive paragraph on the sea-serpent, and a few words of sympathy for that rare monster's admirers; some notes on the Mediterranean, not unlike other people's notes on the Mediterranean, and "In Italy"- gener But they manage all these things dif ferently in America, and, indeed, they make politicians out of all sorts of stuff, for home use - but for foreign service a literary career seems to be no unnatural or unusual prelude. Mr. Howells was consul at Venice, so was G. P. R. James; Mr. Bret Harte is consul at Glasgow. Mr. Lowell, who had never made a political speech or sought his country's suf frage at home, or held any State appointment whatever, was offered the post of ambassador to Russia in 1874, which he declined; but so determined were the Americans to be represented by him abroad, that Madrid, which he accepted, was offered him in 1877, and London in allyn 1867 we have the "Second Series of 1980; for could any better appointment Biglow" and "Melibaus Hipponax;" in 1868, "Under the Willows, and other Poems;" in 1869, "The Cathedral," an extensive poem redolent of foreign travel, but interspersed with those delightful meditations and serious reflections without which Mr. Lowell's earnest nature is incapable of long exhaling itself in either prose or poetry. In 1870 the pith of many essays and magazine articles is ex have been made. Since Mr. Lowell's arrival he has had no diplomatic work of any importance to transact, and the devout wish cherished on either side of the Atlantic must be that he may have no opportunity whatever afforded him of distinguishing himself as a political agent, except in the quiet and genial direction of that entente cordiale which he is so happily fitted to promote. The style of Mr. Lowell is emphati- | consciousness a slumber! By-and-by cally his own, and yet no man reports comes along the State, God's vicar. Does so habitually half sympathetically, half she say, 'My poor, forlorn foster-child! whimsically the ring of other writers. Behold here a force which I will make dig "Homer Wilbur" is especially redolent and plant and build for me'? Not so; or resonant of the old Elizabethan mas- but, Here is a recruit ready-made to my ters. We hear the grave Verulam Lord hand, a piece of destroying energy lying Bacon, or the judicious Hooker, in - unprofitably idle.' So she claps an ugly "Our true country is that ideal realm gray suit on him, puts a musket in his which we represent to ourselves under grasp, and sends him off, with gubernathe names of religion, duty, and the like. torial and other godspeeds, to do duty as Our terrestrial organizations are but far- a destroyer." off approaches to so fair a model, and all Mr. Lowell is hard upon fine writers; those are verily traitors who resist not and, indeed, his own style, although rising any attempt to divert them from their to an occasion, never approaches the original intendment." Sometimes we get chronic elevation of the penny dreadful; an odd flavor of Swift, bright humor he prefers "was hanged to 66 was being substituted for malignant satire; at launched into eternity;" he would have others, the flowing and tender style of the poor taste to write "when the halter Jeremy Taylor comes back to us as we was put round his neck," rather than read; and this pretty close to a quaint "when the fatal noose was adjusted about essay on journalism is certainly the odd- the neck of the unfortunate victim of his est mixture of Emerson and Sterne: own unbridled passions; he will not "Through my newspaper, here, do not even call a “great fire a "disastrous families take pains to send me, an entire conflagration," or speak of "a frightened stranger, news of a death among them? horse as an "infuriated animal." Are not here two who would have me stead of rising at a public dinner with "I know of their marriage? And, strangest shall, with your permission, beg leave to of all, is not this singular person anxious offer some brief observations," Mr. Lowto have me informed that he has re-ell might be so negligent of oratory as to ceived a fresh supply of Dimitry Bruis- begin, "I shall say a few words." But gins? But to none of us does the present he never talks the current nonsense about continue miraculous (even if for a moment good Saxon English, and he boldly maindiscerned as such). We glance care-tains that our language "has gained imlessly at the sunrise, and get used to Orion and the Pleiades. The wonder wears off, and to-morrow this sheet, in which a vision was let down to me from heaven, shall be the wrappage to a bar of soap, or the platter for a beggar's broken victuals." But here is a bit of the genuine, unadulterated Lowell, in one of his rare bursts of terrible scorn and irony. It is indeed a tremendous indictment on the war material of an unthrifty mother State," this picture of a war recruit. "An own child of the Almighty God! I remember him as he was brought to be christened a ruddy, rugged babe; and now there he wallows, reeking, seething In mensely by the infusion (of Latinisms), in richness of synonym, and in power of expressing nice shades of thought and feeling." Perhaps there may be a question between the English "again rising and the Latin "resurrection;" but "conscience is superior to "in-wit," "remorse" to "again-bite;" and what homebred Englishman could ape the high Roman fashion of such togated words as "the multitudinous sea incarnadine"? Again, "mariner" is felt to be poetically better than "sailor" for emotional purposes, and most people would prefer to say, "It was an ancient mariner" rather than "It was an elderly seaman." Such shrewd perceptions abound in the dead corpse, not of a man, but of a these essays: and now, before proceedsoul—a putrefying lump, horrible for the ing, I might, with that kind of careless life that is in it. Comes the wind of facility so much in vogue with the critics, heaven, that good Samaritan, and parts point out a few slips or a little slovenlithe hair upon his forehead, nor is too ness here and there, as when Mr. Lowell nice to kiss those parched, cracked lips; opines that "Chastelard was ever poputhe morning opens upon him her eyes lar in England, or that Mr. Swinburne full of pitying sunshine, the sky yearns really owes very much to Robert Browndown to him, and there he lies ferment-ing, and quite forgets to mention D. G. ing. O sleep! let me not profane thy Rossetti, who was his real master. We holy name by calling that stertorous un- might remark upon his curious notion |