interminable country dance, with many | essential of church worship. But even violent bumps and jumps in it, till the in the time of Mr. Hardy's Wessex, choirs were in their decline. Their position had been injured by such mishaps as at Christmas-tide befell those choir members who, over-tired by exertions at a dance on the Saturday night, fell in the seclusion of their gallery into deep slumber during the sermon, and, when suddenly roused and called to action, plunged into the rattling tune 66 'very fiddlers as well as the dancers get red in the face." But in this bemused and bemortalized Arcady dancing is found to be tiring, as well as enlivening," ," when the limbs are less young than once they were, and the dancer has experienced that "loss of animal heat" which Mr. Stevenson finds a sufficient explanation of all the cooling emotions of middle age. "You of "The Devil among the Tailors." be bound,' says Fairway, 'to dance at A similar mischance befell Father Christmas because 'tis the time o' year; Mathew, who had hired a barrel-organ you must dance at weddings because which, instead of the desired Adeste 'tis the time o' life. At christenings fideles, produced the strains of "Moll folks even smuggle in a reel or two, if in the Wad." But even barrel-organs 'tis no farther than the first or second assisted to displace the Wessex choirs ; chiel. And this is not naming the and, most of all, the errors of the songs you've got to sing. . . For my choristers themselves in introducing part, I like a good, hearty funeral as clarionets. "Time was long and well as anything. You've as splendid | merry ago now! when not one of the victuals and drink as at other parties, and even better. And it don't wear the legs to stumps in talking over a poor fellow's ways as it do to stand up in hornpipes."" varmits was to be heard of; but it served some of the choirs right. They should have stuck to strings and keep out clar'nets, and done away with serpents. If you'd thrive in musical religion, stick to strings, says I.' 666 'Strings are well enough, as far as that goes,' said Mr. Spinks. "There's worse things than serpents,' said Mr. Penny. 'Old things pass away, 'tis true; but a serpent was a good old note; a deep rich note was the serpent.' "Clar'nets, however, be bad at all times.'" But it must not be supposed that death begets no more serious thoughts in the laborer. Indeed, the inevitableness of death is far more impressed on his mind than on theirs who in the towns lead a more crowded and ample life. Its tragedy is felt, though unspoken; for the peasant is not apt, as Gabriel Oak said, in making a map of his mind upon his tongue. The pitifulness of some minor incidents of death The choir practices and carol singing rings in Mother Cuxsom's lament over gave to Wessex villages an unwontedly the dead Mrs. Henchard. "Well, idyllic air. Yet the fever and the fret poor soul, she's helpless to hinder that of all this unintelligible world vexed or anything now. And all her shining even these serene moments. Number keys will be took from her, and her seventy-eight, "a good tune," cupboards opened; and things a' didn't" always a teaser; "but there was always "Old Wiltshire,' "the psalm tune," said Henchard, "that would make my blood ebb and flow like the Occasions such as weddings or fune- sea when I was a steady chap." And rals, however, were rare in Wessex. beside these joint achievements there The one constant and universal pleas- were individual triumphs that dwelt ure was music — principally in the form sweetly in the memory of the musiof choir performances; the choir, that cians. Such was the performance of is, of stringed instruments, general ere" neighbor Yeobright," remembered the organ had attained its present long after his death : equality with the prayer-book as an wish seen anybody may see; and her little wishes and ways will all be as nothing!'" was 66 "No sooner was Andry asleep and the first whiff of neighbor Yeobright's | Cantle (late of the Bang-up Locals), wind had got inside Andry's clarinet, boasted an extreme excellence of unthan every one in the church feeled in derstanding. Only two in all the a moment there was a great soul among gallery of Arcadian portraits are of 'em. All heads would turn and they'd professed idiots; but these are of a say, "Ah, I thought 'twas he ! " One Shakespearean quality. Of Leaf it Sunday I can well mind- -a bass viol might be said, as Hazlit said of Slenday that time, and Yeobright had der, that he is "a very potent piece brought his own. 'Twas the Hundred of imbecility; " of Joseph Poorgrass, and thirty-third to "Lydia," and when as of Joseph Rugby, that "his worst they'd come to "Ran down his beard fault is that he is given to prayer, and o'er his robes its costly moisture but nobody but has his fault." The shed," neighbor Yeobright, who had faults of the others are less easy to just warmed to his work, drove his bow find. Their hard work is stoically into them strings that glorious grand done. Hezzy declared that he had that he e'en a'most sawed the bass viol" defied the figure of starvation nineinto two pieces. Every winder in the and-twenty years on nine shillings a church rattled as if 'twere a thunder- week." "I've tended horses fifty storm. Old Passon Gibbons lifted his years," said the hostler in the Hand of hands in his great holy surplice, as if Ethelberta, "that other folk might he'd been in human clothes, and seemed straddle 'em." Yet of discontent there to say to hisself, ""Oh for such a man is nothing; the picture left upon the in our parish ! " › ›› mind is of a people cheerful, kindly, and amusing. But, for their author, there runs through the pleasant land of his invention a stream of sadness. "The view of life as a thing to be put up with, replacing the zest for existence which was so intense in early civilizations,' which, Mr. Hardy thinks, 66 must ultimately enter thoroughly into the coustitution of the advanced races," has already entered his own soul. The villagers are content to realize "the welljudged plan of things; Mr. Hardy Providence, which denied all sense of music to Dean Stanley, and allowed so little to Macaulay that he is only once recorded to have distinguished any one tune from any other, granted to these peasants a fine sensitiveness of ear and voice and even of jaw. For "Once,' said Michael Mail, I was sitting in the little kitchen of the Three Choughs at Casterbridge having a bit of dinner, and a brass band struck up in the street. Sich a beautiful band as that were! I was sitting eating fried liver and lights, I well can mindah, laments its "ill-judged execution." I was! —and to save my life I couldn't He finds the face of Egdon Heath help chawing to the tune. Band played "perfectly accordant with man's nasix-eight time; six-eight chaws I willy-ture neither ghastly, hateful, nor nilly. Band plays common; common ugly, neither commonplace, unmeantime went my teeth among the fried ing, nor tame, but, like man, slighted liver and lights, true as a hair. Beautiful 'twere! Ah, I shall never forget that there band!'" So they passed their lives, biding in their cheerful old inn, free from the cares and questionings of the new spirit. The "horse sense," which is the chief lesson of the school of life, sustained them, and the calm conceit which grows in the quiet places of the world. Some of them, like Granfer and enduring." Yet it was on Egdou EDMUND B. V. CHRISTIAN. From Chambers' Journal. SOME SINGULAR SIGNS. Lancashire announces the following A shop-sign in London reads: "Plots TRAVELLERS in China often derive amusement from the peculiarities of shop-signs there, many of which are couched in the most eloquent and poetical terms. In America, too, may be seen sign-plates of such curious occupations as hose-restorers, artificial-ear makers, child-adopters, salad-mixers, and so forth. But it is not necessary to leave the British Islands in order to find business announcements quite as curious in their way as those in other Another singular business announcelands. In the Isle of Man, over the ment over a certain photograph gallery shop of a barber who supplies custom-is, "Misfit photographs for sale." ers with all kinds of fishing-tackle, the This, we are told, brings many customwriter was amused to read the follow-ers. Mothers, for instance, who have ing: "Piscatorial Repository, Tonso- little children, often buy pictures of rial Artist, Physiognomical Hairdresser, children with long hair when the hair Cranium Manipulator and Capillary of their loved ones hasn't grown, and Abridger, Shaving and Hair-cutting send them round to friends at a diswith Ambidextrous Facility, Shampoo- tance. Brides' photographs are also ing on Physiological Principles." On said to sell very well. a signboard in the town where the writer lives may be read this phonetic announcement, "Shews Maid and Men dead Hear; " and when we add that it is over a cobbler's shop, the reader may discover its meaning. A poetical shoemaker hung up the following remarkable effusion on board over his shop: 66 Blow, oh, blow, ye heavenly breezes, a Above an establishment in Liverpool not very long ago appeared the legend, Rages and Bones." In another town can be seen the inscription, "Cole and Wood, dealers in Wood and Coal;' and a street in Clifton is graced by a sign informing the passers-by that the owner thereof is a "Milliner and Mod "Teeth pulled while you wait" is a still more singular sign, said to have been set up by a dentist in Fleetwood. This curious specimen of orthography was displayed on a house in a street in Marylebone: "The Mangelling Traid removed hear from the Strete round the Cornir. Threhapense a Duzzen. N.B. - New Milk and Creme Sould Hear. Warentidd Fresh and not Stail evry Mornin'.” A dealer in ice thus attracted public Ice! Ice!! Ice !!! ice there was an inn situated at the foot of | played on a notice posted up in an Art a hill, whose double-sided signboard Exhibition in Japan to which foreignbore the following : Before the hill you do go up, You're down the hill, all danger past; At a small inn by the roadside, near a farmhouse called Highgate, can be read on a sign : Highgate hangs high, hinders none; He must have been a facetious hotel proprietor who hung up this sign in his rooms: "Indian clubs and dumb-bells will not be permitted in any of the rooms. Guests in need of exercise can go down to the kitchen and pound a steak." ers were welcomed. Here are a few examples of the rules: "Visitors is requested at the entrance to show tickets for inspection. Tickets are charged 10 sens and 2 sens, for the special and common respectively. No visitor who is mad or intoxicated is allowed to enter in, if any person found in shall be claimed to retire. No visitor is allowed to carry in with himself any parcel, umbrella, stick, and the like kind, except his purse, and is strictly forbidden to take in with himself dog, or the same kind of beasts. Visitor is requested to take good care of himself from thievely." An Englishman in Boulogne saw displayed in a shop window this notice: 66 Eating and Drinking Sold Here." Doubtless, as curious as any of the foregoing is the puzzling sign in front A notice displayed in a Norway hotel of a small shoemaker's shop at Cannes. is a curious specimen of "English as It is in English, and is thus worded: she is spoke." It reads as follows: "Repairs hung with stage-coach." The "Bath! first-class bath. Can anybody visitor for whose benefit this inforget. Tushbath. Warm and cold. mation is intended, may, after much Tub-bath and shower-bath. At any cogitation, arrive at the conclusion that time. Except Saturday. By two hours the cobbler only wishes to inform his forbore." This brings to mind another numerous patrons that repairs are exespecimen of foreigners' English, dis-cuted with diligence. THE EARLY CHRISTIANS AND CLEAN- borrow but one or two illustrations from LINESS. — In the reaction against the monstrous corruptions and unbridled sensuality of pagan Rome, Christian enthusiasts rushed to the opposite extreme. An age of asceticism succeeded to an age of sensuality. The human body which imperial Rome had pampered and indulged was now to be neglected and humiliated. A "cult of bodily uncleanliness began. A hideous, sordid, and emaciated maniac, passing his life in a long routine of useless and atrocious self-torture, became, as Mr. Lecky has said, "the ideal of the nations which had known the writings of Plato and Cicero, and the lives of Socrates and Cato. The cleanliness of the body was regarded as the pollution of the soul, and the saints who were most admired had become one hideous mass of clotted filth." To the "History of European Morals," St. Athanasius relates with a thrill of admiration how St. Anthony had never once been guilty of washing his feet. For fifty years St. Abraham the hermit washed neither his face nor his feet. Another saint had never seen himself naked. Another, a famous virgin, joined herself to a community of nuns who shuddered with horror at the very mention of a bath. This cult threatens to reappear. We note that some curates are abandoning clean collars and necks, and imitating the priests abroad in these matters; and where a complaint was made of this to a bright woman of literary tastes, she replied, "But uncleanliness is not a crime." It seems as if it threatened to become a merit. Temple Bar. For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. 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