ON SPIRIT RAPPING.

THE SO-called science, which is the subject of these remarks, seems of late to have lost much of its hold on the public mind. Last winter London was as attentive to "spirits" of an ethereal and unsubstantial character, as a great bulk of its population is to spirits of a far more practical and exhilarating nature. To what is this apathy to be attributed? Is it because this science has been fairly tried in the popular balance, and has proved wanting in efficient grounds of belief? Or has it only lost its exciting influences on account of the superior attractions of other and more recent wonders? Has the star of the Davenports waned before the more powerful luminary of Chang the giant, or been obfuscated by the passing brilliancy of "Anak the Anakin"? Or again it may be that the charms of those "dark seances," (the revelations of which should have been extremely gratifying, as the mercenary "spirits" refused to attend gentlemen in the dark at a lower charge than 10s. 6d. a head) have paled before the thrilling spectacle of the fierce magician who plunges the glittering steel (apparently) into the breast of a lovely and innocent maiden, who, notwithstanding this attention, reappears in a few moments blushing and unharmed. Whatever the cause, the fact remains, that the "spirits" are no longer "the best thing out." But before we finally dismiss them and their exhibitors to limbo and oblivion, let me say a word to those, if such there be, who have ever given a moment's serious thought to those phenomena which are usually included under the title of spirit-rapping. Whether these phenomena are natural or not; whether, that is, they may yet be explained by some as yet unknown laws of nature, I will not attempt now to discuss. In dealing seriously with this subject, we must of course at once dismiss, as unworthy of our attention, all those merely artificial dodges which have earned for spiritualism the bad name it now bears. But this I would say in defence of this would-be "science," that to brand it summarily with the title of an imposture, is as unsatisfactory as it is unfair. Such is the spirit of hard incredulity which has been opposed to almost every discovery of physical or natural science. Will it not be worth the while of those who have a wish to arrive at some truth on this subject, to attempt at least the investigation of that which is now derided

Deep in the bosom of the wintry main,
Sole remnant of some earthquake of old time,
Rears high its head, a huge storm-shrouded rock
And there Fate, armed with hammer and with nail,
Seized him who stole the thunder-bolts of Jove,
And bore him, livid, to the hoary peak,

And chained him fast with jeer and mocking laugh,
That called the English vulture o'er the sea,
With beak and claw to prey upon his heart.

His regal splendour all has vanished now;
His sun has set, and night is coming down.
Alone, abandoned, and in chains he lies;
An English soldier guards his chamber door,
And nought but sea girds the horizon round.
O'er naked rocks and hideous woods, and sky,
And white sails fleeting as his hopes have fled,
Lone desolation and the ceaseless roar

Of headlong breakers dashing on the reefs,
And moaning winds, are all that now remains.
Farewell the imperial robe, the dancing plume!
Farewell the steed of snow that Ceasar rode !
No more shall drummer beat to arms,-no more
Crown bind his brows,-kings kneel before his feet,
Cling to his robes-no more an Emperor ;
Napoleon dead,-but Buonaparte remains.
Then-as a Roman soldier wounded sore
By Parthian shaft-once more in dreams he sees
The flames of Moscow-when a sentinel
Stops him and he wakes up a prisoner.
Kings guard his son; another clasps his wife ;
More vile than sow that wallows in the mire,
His senate that adored him, mocks at him.
By the lone shore, when the north wind is still,
On battlements that fall in dreary decay,
Dreaming he walks, the captive of vague fears.
On hills, on billows, in the heavens he sees
With flashing eyes, the fight of yesterday,
And lets his sad thoughts wander forth at will.
His grandeur and his glory,—where are they?
The mighty calm of nature folds him now!
The eagles pass on high and know him not!

Monarchs, his jailors, have surrounded him, And closed him in impenetrable lines.

His spirit sinks,—and night by night more clear,
The phantom death does rise before his face,
Like the chill breaking of a mystic day,
And his soul flutters eager to be gone.

See now he lays his sword beside his bed,
And lies down by it, saying, ""Tis to-day."
O'er him he throws Marengo's martial cloak;
Fame from the Nile, the Danube, and the Tiber
Sits on his brow, "Now I am free," he cries,
"I conquer now! I see my eagles come!"
But as again he sinks his head,-to die,
He hears a footstep in the lonely house,
And Hudson Lowe stands by the open door.
Then as a Titan, torn by regal beaks
And talons, loud he cries, " My cup is full !
Lord it is finished now! God I implore Thee,
It is enough!" but the voice answers No."
"CHATIMENTS," par VICTOR HUGO

OUR BOBBY.

MARSHFIELD in the Moor, so called from its being situated on a commanding height in an undulating country, is a place of a considerable importance-in its own estimation; for it numbered among its officials -not to speak of the church-sexton, a milkman, and a stray postboy, who employed himself chiefly in eating, drinking, and smoking a short pipe-a single police officer, known in the neighbourhood by the more euphonious title of "the Bobby," but whose ancestral pedigree, had he possessed one, must have betrayed the somewhat unpleasing appellation of Tomkins. Tomkins indeed he was called by none, save blind old squire Griggs, the magistrate; but that did not prevent his name being a bane to him throughout life. He couldn't abide it-Tomkins! The first syllable he didn't mind, but the "kins," the termination of so many offensive names, such as Dobkins, Hopkins, Wilkins, had indeed been the cause of a deep shade of melancholy, which had spread itself over the otherwise happy character of Tomkins' life.

In analysing all great characters, we should first seize on their principal features, and then see how they are applied to the practices of daily life. We can do this briefly in the case of Tomkins.-First of all it should be noticed that he was what might be called a Stoic; when once he had made a resolution he never gave it up, and this arose from the fact that when once an idea entered into his head it never came

out again. Duty well performed was Tomkins' very just idea of perfection, but this theory he was unfortunately never able fully to carry out, owing to the lack of opportunies which his sphere of action presented. Secondly, rumours in the village declared that Tomkins combined the philosophy of Epicurus with that of the Porch, for he was not unfrequently seen, it was said, at a late hour of the night spending a pleasant evening at the village inn with some jovial friends, on some of whom he might not have unreasonably exercised his official functions as they went home, had he not been incapacitated from some mysterious cause only known to himself.

The appearance of this gentleman was commanding. He was not one of your mild-looking inexperienced "Bobbies," who slink round a corner whenever they see a row going to begin. He was, as I have said, of a commanding attitude, which was rendered still more so by an abdomen-to use an entomological expression-which was already of no ordinary size, and which was apparently rapidly on the increase. His face was flat and round, and his whiskers small and scrubby, and his nose, which was semi-circular, had been for a long time discovering a rosy hue towards the tip, which according to the owner thereof (and who could know better?) was occasioned by its being frost-bitten during active service on a winter's night

in a very hard frost. Some people said they knew

better. But how should they?

If we have been long in dwelling on the character and appearance of this estimable man, we can console ourselves with the reflection that the consideration of a great mind is always of the greatest benefit in comparing and improving our own.

It was seldom that Tomkins had anything to do in his official capacity, and it was noticed that on this account the epicurean philosophy gained greater hold on his mind. But one very hot Summer, as the dogdays came on, the following placard was seen posted in the village :—

NOTICE.

All Dogs found without owners and
unmuzzled in the village of Marshfield
in the Moor, will be immediately
drowned.

No sooner had this notice appeared than visions of active service commended began to float before the eager eyes of "Our Bobby." He had lately had some misgivings, owing to the rarity of the occasions on

which his services were required. But here was a field for enterprise and advancement.

Now at the time of which I am writing, I was reading for the bar, and had acquired a habit in the Summer months of lying in the shade in my garden, which adjoined the village road, and studying the English Constitution. I had then a beautiful young retriever, of which I was very fond, and who was likely to turn out a very valuable dog. One day, some time before this notice was posted, Frisk (such was his name) being of an amiable disposition, made up to Tomkins in the village and attempted to caress him; in return for which Tomkins kicked him : whereupon Frisk seized Tomkins by the leg and inflicted a severe bite thereon. This scene having been witnessed, much to the mortification of Tomkins, by certain small boys who had been in the habit since the event took place, of provokingly asking him how his poor feet were, Tomkins had, as I presume, taken a resolution of avenging himself some day, by fair means or foul, upon the unfortunate Frisk. However this may be, I was one day deeply engaged in perusing Hallam, in my favourite spot in the garden, with my dog beside me, when a majestic step was heard in the road outside. Frisk instantly disappeared in that direction, and in a minute or two I heard him barking loudly down the road. I took no notice till after I had perused another page, I heard a tumult of juvenile voices, mingled with distant cries of "Hooray," "Go it, old chimbley pot," evident manifestations of something going on that was highly amusing to the unsoaped youth of Marshfield-in-the-Moor.

With half a suspicion in my mind, I threw away Hallam, jumped the garden gate, and took a short cut in the direction of the noise. Coming on the road again a little further down, I beheld before me the Marshfield police force, with Frisk under his arm, with his head poking out behind, proceeding with a majestic mien to a canal a hundred yards farther on, and followed by a crowd of urchins, shrieking, hooting, grinning, and apparently highly enjoying themselves.

"Mr. Tomkins," shouted I, "that's my dog you've got there."

Tomkins' proceeded as before.'

"Mr. Tomkins, I believe you have got my dog under your arm.”

After due consideration, Tomkins turned to the right about, and delivered himself of these awful words, "The dog I 'ave 'ere belongs to Her Majesty, and will belong to her, leastways till he's drownded."

Restraining my inclination to relieve him of a little of his dignity by knocking him down on the spot, I accompanied him peaceably to the canal, when Tomkins knelt down to tie a stone to the dog's neck. Just at that moment, as he was kneeling on the edge I came behind, and seizing Tomkins by both heels, rolled him head-foremost into the canal; at the same instant Frisk bestowed a most energetic bite on the thumb which held him, and was immediately released. Tomkins disappeared beneath the pellucid waves of the canal, and came up again, not quite a “waterbaby," but the old Tomkins begrimed with mud, and without a hat, and expressing sentiments dreadful to be heard. I walked off with Frisk, while the unhappy defender of Her Majesty's peace consoled himself by punching the heads of such small boys as were bold enough to laugh at his dilapidated condition, and was content to return home foaming with rage and vexation.

(To be concluded in our next.)

LITERARY FASHION.

"How rarely reason guides the stubborn choice,

Rules the bold hand, or prompts the suppliant voice." THE literary taste of the rising generation forms, perhaps, one of the best illustrations of the truth of the above quotation. It cannot be denied that there is growing up among us a distinct fashion in taste, which is gradually acquiring a truly Parisian absolutism; its principal characteristic, however, on a careful examination, appears to be its narrowmindedness. Its laws seem to be to the following purport: "Exalt Tennyson to the gods, Kingsley to the stars, and Browning to the moon; let your beau ideal of poetry be 'The Idylls of the king," and of prose, 'Hypatia'; but as for that race of miserable rhymesters and conceited dogmatics of the last century, let them be cast out for ever from the face of the earth."

Now this may be all very well to a certain extent; nor is it intended for one moment to dispute the superior merits of Tennyson and Kingsley to Pope and Dr. Johnson. But because they are superior, fashion finds it necessary to confine its praises exclu

sively to the one, without admitting any claims possessed by the other. And this it is which constitutes the narrow-mindedness of this school of thinkers. A sensible man will not fail to acknowledge gratefully the merits of the distinguished authors of the last century, and will assign them their place among the great writers of the world. He will not despise "the Dunciad," because he prefers "Enoch Arden"; nor will he condemn the life of Milton by Johnson, because a more unprejudiced one has been written by Macaulay or Masson.

And perhaps the man who has come in for the largest share of the obloquy and contempt of which our friends of the fashion are so liberal, is the great Samuel Johnson. What would a man at the commencement of the present century have said, had he been told that in 50 or 60 years time the common name for the genius of Fleet-street would be "An obstinate pig-headed old fool ?" We have no patience with those who, in their eagerness to find fault with every little spark of pedantry or pomposity, shut their eyes to that which really constitutes a great character. The son of a country bookseller, by his own sole efforts, raised himself to become the leading literary character of his day, and this, too, in spite of trying difficulties, often having no better study than a garret, and not a penny in his pocket but what he might obtain by the sale of an essay, or by a contribution to some periodical. But he bravely persevered in spite of these difficulties till he attained that position in society which he so richly deserved. In every circle his sound good sense made him take the first place; and are we, because such is the fashion among a certain class, to turn round and abuse a man so universally admired and respected by those who knew him and saw him face to face; we who have come into the world 100 years later, when society, manners, everything in short, wears a different aspect to what it did in his days? Judge of a man, we say, by the age in which he lived, and if we should laugh

at finding Dr. Johnson at a London club of the present day, let us ask ourselves what sort of an appearance Tennyson would have made at Button's coffee-house 100 years ago.

We are not going to discuss the poetical merits of Pope and his followers, although the "countenance of fashion may fade into a cold scorn at their heartless conceits." An unfashionable reader will

find abundance of lyrical spirit in Dryden; abundance of grandeur and salient wit in Pope; and abundance of real pathos in Goldsmith, provided he will so far transgress the bye-laws of the fashion as to take down their works from the shelves and courageously peruse them. Our feeling is akin to pity for a man who can see in such poems as the " Essay on Man," the "Vanity of Human Wishes," or the "Deserted Village," nothing but "heartless conceits."

But there is another boon for which we have to thank the last century, which our friends of the fashion seem loth to acknowledge; we mean a great legacy of first-class wit and satire. In the 17th century indeed, we have the Hudibras of Butler, the finest satire in the English language. But in the last cen

tury we find Swift writing his admirable "Gulliver," Pope his serio-comic poem, "the Rape of the Lock,” and Goldsmith his highly instructive and amusing tale, "the Vicar of Wakefield." In the present century we have no works of Satire worthy of being compared to these; and in humour the name of Hood stands in solitary majesty. Our endeavours, then, have been to show that the last century has not been without its bright spots on the page of our literature; that it, no less than those which preceded it, or that which has succeeded it, has been productive of great characters, and that if poetical talent has been more sparingly bestowed upon it, it has not wholly been withheld.

We should make reason the test of our criticisms; we should make our minds large enough to acknowledge the merits of all; and above everything we should be careful, because we ourselves may wear a crown of diamonds, not to despise one of pearls. SPECTATOR.

It would dance with the waves

In the cold coral caves,

[moon; Where the quick ripples laugh at the chill staring It would rest in the shade

Of some sweet southern glade

Where the long summer day is perpetual noon.

It would fain take its flight

To some tall mountain height,

That draws a dark line on the breast of the morn; Or in rapture would go

Where o'er long tracts of snow

[of the dawn;
Glance in sheets of quick flame the white lights
It would fain fly to thee
Who art dearest to me,

Who art nearest and dearest though still far away;
It would stay by thy bed
Till the shadows have fled

And the last faint star twinkle has died in the day.

THE GOLDEN FUTURE. WHO has not allowed to cross his days dreams some bright vision of days of happiness to come? he may be on the high road to ruin, body and soul, but still, like the golden glories of the distant sunset, there shines some gilded vision of the future, as fleeting and impossible to reach as the sunset itself, or the vision which flew before Tennyson's "voyagers." We cannot reach the sunset, but its golden light soothes and pleases, and perhaps these chimeras, these dreams of a bright to-morrow, are sent in kindness to soothe the present; they fade gradually, almost imperceptibly, and, like a life ebbing away slowly, give little pain by their departure. Only when they are widely broken, and fall in a moment, do they seem to crush beneath their ruins him who has harboured them. The boy who has left school with the reputation of an embryo philosopher, or statesman to be, has quietly sunk into the retirement of a country parsonage, and yet is contented and happy. The vision gilded the present, but its flight pained little. Such visions are not confined to the mind of the individual, but also influence the thoughts, and attract the mind of nations. We all know how a few years since the Temple of Peace was said to have been erected in Hyde Park, and the confident minds of political prophets sang of the eternal reign of peace, of triumphs in art, in commerce, which the Exhibition of 1851 was to inaugurate. A few years later and the scream of the eagle of the north rushing on his prey, awoke Europe from her dreams of peace, to fight and fall by thousands on Crimean snow fields. The dream fled-but somehow we are reconciled to its departure. Long ago there reigned through the ancient world the belief of an approaching age of peace and plenty, when the worn-out world was to

This

begin a fresh youth, and war to cease for ever. feeling was at its height at the close of the horrors of civil war, when democracy had brought its fruits, and its fall had inaugurated the rule of a despot. The war-worn world sighed and groaned for a rest, but 1800 years have passed, the world has torn herself by wars as bloody as before, but the Halcyon days are as far off as ever. Far off, though a Virgil might

take the opportunity to offer the grateful incense of flattery to his master, whose reign was to be marked by sheep coming of their own accord to be milked, trees "sweating" edibles, and other of the ideal rural phenomena so dear to the heart of the Pastoral Sycophant. Let us turn further north to the regions where rude and simple faith reigned in the hearts of primitive man, and we see the same belief swaying the impetuous souls of the sons of the forest. There it takes a new shape, a more tangible, a less abstract form; far down in the south was the city of Asgard the home of the Gods, the future home of the warriors of the Goths, where they were to enjoy all the rude delights their simple nature pictured. This they were to reach by a path carved with their swords. But behind the joys of Valhalla loomed a terrible form of an end to this future of bliss, as death hangs in the back-ground of all dreams of life's future; the twilight of the Gods was to come, and the Gods, the Esir, and the world were to perish in mutual slaughter and destruction. Such a belief the Jews held once, but it was broken by the destruction and ruin of their city and the dispersion of their nation. Not long ago a certain "canny" Scotchman told us strange tales of the coming of sorrows, of Antichrist, and battle of Armageddon, to be crowned by a Millenium. As it did not come then it has been postponed, and we are told it is to begin in 1866. Even now, with every new invention, every advancement in science, we are told that the golden age is coming, but it comes not. The inventions, the discoveries of science are turned by man to promote and improve means of destruction. As war becomes more and more recognised as a science, men no longer kill each other hand-to-hand, but at a long distance by the aid of science. The state of Europe, the signs of the times, tell of other things than peace.

It may be that the Sclavonian race

must have their day, it may be that the last-born Continents of America and Australia must in turn wield the destinies of the world, or it may be that democracy is to spread her awful shadow over the