"vor to chatty and zee volks go by,"— the rustic equivalent to paying a round of calls. If, indeed, a man has had the good fortune to be brought up in the country, he will possess an invaluable knowledge of the class below him, for he will have mixed with it on an equality almost impossible in later life. Himself a dirty little imp of six or seven, he will have chased butterflies with the village boys, and have felt a respect for the boys of eleven or so quite uninfluenced by the amount of their fathers' incomes. Did not those of the elder boys who were "not on my side, father," threaten to ravage the garden at midnight in revenge for some outbreak of "cockiness" on the part of their youthful neighbors? This wider sympathy and comprehension between man and man may be put down as not one of the smallest of the advantages of living in the country.

But there is always the wrong side of the tapestry, and two capital objections to life in the country come to mind at the moment. One is, of course, the weather, which invariably does the wrong thing at the wrong moment. "Providence," said the farmer, when told that Providence had sent the drought which was spoiling his rootcrop, "Providence mostly does things wrong, but sometimes the Almighty is too much for him." Unfortunately, the occasions when Providence is overcome in the matter of weather are few and far between. The other terrible drawback is the universal prevalence of the village spy. People who live on breezy commons or "in silent woody places" may be exempt from this plague, but it may almost be said that for the man who lives in a country village there is no such thing as privacy. Who knows or cares, if you live in London, how many joints of butcher's meat are consumed every week at your dinner-table? In the country, on the contrary, the local butcher will mention the fact to the cook next door, who will tell her mistress, who will tell the curate's wife when she comes to tea and muffins at half past four. Miss Ferrier gives us in "Destiny" a picture illustrating this

very point in village life, and it is as accurate now as it was when it was drawn sixty years ago. One of her characters always spends the morning hour when the tradesmen are making their rounds looking out of the parlor window for the better convenience of spying on the purchases of the neighbors, on which he comments to his wife in the following terms: "Kitty, my dear, there's a leg of pork, a calf's head, and a rump steak gone to Mrs. Martha Budgell. What can she be doing with three meats? Single lady-bad healthonly two servants—very rich, to be sure

and three meats. Very odd, ain't it, Kitty, my dear. . . And there, there, I declare, is a delicate little turkey poult to Mr. Mogg. Sure there must be some mistake there! white meat! white fowl!

Good la! come here, my dear, only see! here's the fishmonger, and sure if he ain't taking a pair of soles to the Moggs!-well, this is the very strangest thing-ain't it, Kitty, my dear. to think of the Moggs, with three hundred thousand pounds, having white meat, white fish, white fowl! I declare I should not wonder if their soup was white too!" There are many men who find it really impossible to live under the constant scrutiny of their neighbors. They lead the most blameless and open of existences, and yet the knowledge that the petty details of their households are being spied and commented on makes life absolutely intolerable to them. These sensitive people will certainly be more at ease as insignificant items in a crowd, than in the prominence of living in one out of the half-a-dozen "gentlemen's houses" in the ordinary English village. London neighbor is too busy with his own work to care what is happening next door, while in the country there are sure to be people whose only way of killing time is to take a deep interest in the domestic details of their own and others' lives. For whether he lives in the country or the town, man's great object during the whole of his short life is to kill time as effectually as possible by work or play, and he thinks that he has passed a well-spent day, who can

The

Of course, one great argument against living in the country is the absence of society. And if society must always mean parties in great houses, this is quite true. You cannot expect very young people to enjoy living all the year round in the country. In the summer, with tennis, picnics, boating, and now bicycling, the country is bearable enough,-but in winter "Towered cities please us then, and the busy hum of men." For the noise of a crowded room, the bright lights, the flowers, and the general air of gaiety are immense factors in the enjoyment of the very young. But for people whose pleasure in society consists in liking "good talk," the country is no such bad place. A country house party is one of the most favorable places for talk imaginable, and even the humble two or three guests, who are all the dweller in the small villa is able to assemble, will sometimes make conversation decidedly worth listening to. But, it will be urged, where in the country can you meet people who will be worth inviting for

must certainly be, "In London." Which brings us to the conclusion that the real way to make the most of country life is to be a Londoner, and to live in the country near enough to town to enjoy the society of London friends who will form at any rate a welcome seasoning to the indigenous neighbors. And if you can persuade some of your London friends to settle near you, your happiness will be greater still. This applies chiefly to the inhabitants of villadom. The man who inherits an estate of his own has duties and pleasures of quite a different kind, into which it is not proposed to enter here. But to be the contented inhabitant of a villa it is well to be a Londoner, to whom the mere escape from bricks and mortar will be a pleasure unknown to those who take country surroundings as a matter of course. Add to the pleasures more properly belonging to the country a certain amount of social life, partly supplied by London friends, and you will have the satisfaction to a very great extent of eating your cake and having it still.

Cycling and Heart Disease. It is calculated that more than a fourth of our adult population "cycles" or meditates cycling. Of this fourth a very considerable proportion have reached or passed middle age. It cannot but be that a number of these are the victims of "heart disease." What is the effect of cycling upon a person with a heart affection? The answer is that everything depends upon the nature of the affection. We have long ceased to regard all heart affections as of an identical degree of seriousness, and long left off the unscientific practice of wrapping all victims of heart disease in metaphorical cotton wool. It is now understood that most sufferers from cardiac trouble profit by exercise, and that some are advantaged by a good deal of exercise, and that of a vigorous kind.

Cycling, whilst dangerous in affections of the aortic valves, is often of great service in uncomplicated mitral disease. Of course it must be cycling in moderation. Hill climbing and fast riding are peremptorily excluded, as is also riding which causes an approach to breathlessness. The great point for the beginner in such cases is, we hold, that he should spend adequate time and money in preliminary tuition, and not be in too great a hurry to be "off on his own account." Whilst on this subject we cannot but express surprise at the general incompetence and want of intelligence of the average "cycle" tutor. As a rule he is one of the stupidest creatures breathing. There would appear to be an excellent opening for both men and, women tutors in this new amusement and recreation.

From The Atlantic Monthly. CHEERFUL YESTERDAYS.

It is a mistake to suppose that we did not have, sixty years ago, in New England, associations already historic. At home we had various family portraits of ancestors in tie-wigs or powdered hair. We knew the very treasures which Dr. Holmes describes as gathered in his attic, and never were tired of exploring old cupboards and hunting up traditions. We delighted to pore over the old flat tombstones in the Old Cambridge cemetery, stones with long Latin inscriptions, on which even the language is dead, celebrating virtues ending in issimus and errimus. The most impressive of all was the Vassall monument, raised on pillars above the rest, and bearing no words, only the carved goblet and sun (Vassol), the monument beneath which lie, according to tradition, the bodies of two slaves:

At her feet and at her head Lies a slave to attend the dead, But their dust is white as hers.

This poem was not yet written, but Holmes's verses on this churchyard were familiar on our lips, and we sighed with him over his sister's grave, and over the stone where the French exile from Honfleur was buried and his epitaph was carved in French. Moreover, the "ever-roaming girls" whom Holmes exhorted to bend over the wall and "sweep the simple lines" with the floating curls then fashionable,-these were our own neighbors and sweethearts, and it all seemed in the last de gree poetic and charming. More sug gestive than all these were the eloquent fissures in the flat stones where the leaden coats of arms had been pried out to be melted into bullets for the Continental army. And it all so linked us with the past that when, years after, I stood outside the Temple Church in VOL. XII. 601

LIVING AGE.

London, and, looking casually down, saw beneath my feet the name of Oliver Goldsmith, it really gave no more sense of a dignified historic past than those stones at my birthplace. Nor did it actually carry me back so far in time.

In the same way, our walks, when not directed toward certain localities for rare flowers or birds or insects,-as to Mount Auburn sands, now included in the cemetery of that name, or the extensive jungle north of Fresh Pond, where the herons of Longfellow's poem had their nests,-were more or less guided by historic objects. There was the picturesque old Revolutionary Powder Mill in what is now Somerville, or the remains of redoubts on Winter Hill, where we used to lie along the grassy slopes and repel many British onslaughts. Often we went to the fascinating wharves of Boston, then twice as long as now, and full of sea-smells and crossed yards and earringed sailors. A neighbor's boy had the distinction of being bad enough to be actually sent to sea for a dubious reformation; and though, when he came back, I was forbidden to play with him, on the ground that he not only swore, but carried an alleged pistol, yet it was something to live on the same street with one so marked out from the list of common boys, and to watch him from afar exhibiting to youths of laxer training what seemed to be the weapon. (I may here add that the only other child with whom I was forbidden to play became in later life an eminent clergyman.) Once we undertook to go as far as Bunker Hill, and were ignominiously turned back by a party of Charlestown boys,"Charlestown pigs," as they were then usually and affectionately called,-who charged us with being "Port chucks" (that is, from Cambridgeport) or "Pointers" (that is, from Lechmere Point, or East Cambridge), and ended with the mild torture of taking away our canes.

Or we would visit the ruins of the Ursuline Convent, whose flames I had seen from our front door in Cambridge, standing by my mother's side; all that I had read of persecutions not implanting so lasting a love of liberty as that one spectacle. I stood by her also the day after, when she went out to take the gauge of public opinion in consultation with the family butcher, Mr. Houghton; and I saw her checkmated by his leisurely retort, "Wal, I dunno, Mis' Higginson; I guess them biships are pretty dissipated characters." The interest was enhanced by the fact that a youthful Cambridge neighbor, Maria Fay, was a pupil in the school at the time, and was held up by the terrified preceptress to say to the rioters, "My father is a judge, and if you don't go away he will put you all in jail." The effect of the threat may have been somewhat impaired by the fact that her parent was but a peaceful judge of probate, and could only have wreaked his vengeance on their last wills and testaments. At any rate, there stood the blackened walls for many years, until the State was forced to pay for them: and there was no other trace of the affray, except the inscription "Hell to the Pope" scrawled in charcoal on a bit of lingering plaster. We gazed at it with awe, as if it were a memorial of Bloody Mary-with a difference.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

From Harper's Magazine. L'HONNEUR BRITANNIQUE EST SAUF. On Wednesday afternoon M. Brossard was buried in the Cimetière de Passy, a tremendous crowd following the hearse; the boys and masters just behind Mérovée and M. Germain, the chief male

mourners. The women walked in another separate procession behind.

Béranger and Alphonse Karr were present among the notabilities, and speeches were made over his open grave, for he was a very distinguished

man.

And, tragical to relate, that evening in the study Barty and I fell out, and it led to a stand-up fight next day.

There was no preparation that evening; he and I sat side by side reading out of a book by Châteaubriand-either "Atala et Réné" or "Les Natchez," I forget which. I have never seen either since.

The study was hushed; M. Dumollard was de service as maître d'études, although there was no attempt to do anything but sadly read improving books.

If I remember aright, Réné, a very sentimental young Frenchman, who had loved the wrong person not wisely, but too well (a very wrong person indeed, in his case), emigrated to North America, and there he met a beautiful Indian maiden, one Atala, of the Natchez tribe, who had rosy heels and was charming, and whose entire skin was probably a warm, dark red, although this is not insisted upon. She also had a brother, whose name was Outogamiz.

Well, Réné loved Atala, Atala loved Réné, and they were married; and Outogamiz went through some ceremony besides, which made him blood brother and bosom friend to Réné-a bond which involved certain obligatory rites and duties and self-sacrifices.

Réné

Atala died and was buried. died and was buried also; and every day, as in duty bound, poor Outogamiz went and pricked a vein and bled over Réné's tomb, till he died himself of exhaustion before he was many weeks older. I quote entirely from memory.

This simple story was told in very touching and beautiful language, by no means telegraphese, and Barty and I were deeply affected by it.

"I say, Bob!" Barty whispered to me, with a break in his voice, "some day I'll marry your sister, and we'll all go off to America together, and she'll die, and I'll die, and you shall bleed yourself to death on my tomb!"

"No," said I, after a moment's I'll marry thought. "No-look here! your sister, and I'll die, and you shall bleed over my tomb!"

Then, after a pause.