sort of expectation of reaching the clouds; | We have to put forth all our will to adand, if what we do looms larger in other vance not only forwards, but upwards. people's eyes, we often know quite well that we are not really putting half as much labor into it as we spent upon the scrambling attempts of earlier years. On a smaller scale, every one who has produced any kind of work of art knows what different kinds of effort are required for beginning, carrying on, and finishing any design. Most people probably feel that in the first sketch there is a nameless charm which is almost inevitably obscured as the work advances, to reappear, if all goes well, in a different form as it draws towards its completion. Here the uphill part of the work comes in the middle, while the beginning and the end seem almost to do themselves. Probably few experienced artists would attach much importance to their own judgment of the value of their work during the familiar uphill stage. Not only in painting, but in all sustained effort, there is sure to be a time when the general plan or effect, clear enough at the outset, is lost sight of in the labor of working out details before it can be restored in its fulness. But in painting this is actually visible to the eye, because, as long as any one part is less complete than the rest, there is a real discord of color which the painter must disregard while he steadily pursues the processes required for bringing out the ultimate harmony, until, as the long labor draws to its close, every separate touch acquires an almost magical power and value as it falls into the place prepared for it by previous toil and sacrifice. Something of the same kind happens in most lives. Youth is full of interest and picturesqueness, like a sketch freshly dashed off by the hand of a master, and age may have all the stately harmony of a finished picture; but the intermediate stage is apt to be blurred and confused with a multitude of details. Happily the pressure of business generally distracts the attention of the artist in life from the inevitable flatness (if we may be permitted suddenly to reverse our metaphor) which attends its middle period. The most romantic of us have scarcely time to miss from their own lives at their fullest that picturesque effect which is often so marked in youth and in old age, and which is to the flatness of middle age what the hills are to the plains. The slowness with which time passes in youth is another point which almost forces us to think of it as of an uphill road. Rejoice as we may to run the race, we can. not climb as fast as we shall descend. Every step on an uphill road not only brings us nearer to the goal, but also requires a victory over the force of gravitation; so that it is no wonder if our steps are slow. But when we have passed the watershed, and begin to tend downwards, we have only to yield ourselves passively to the same force, and we are carried forward with but little effort of our own quickly and more quickly as the path grows steeper. The involuntariness of much of our action as life advances is a startling change to those who care to notice it. Once perhaps it was a daily act of self-denial to set to work at all. Later in life not to work would be the severest of penances. The act of engaging in labor may be uphill work only at the outset of life; but the work itself which we do may become ever more and more arduous, if we are not content with quantity of effect, but aspire to perfection in quality. Those who are possessed by this ambition will find the whole of their life's journey lying uphill. There are for them no level plains on which to settle down to reap the reward of former toil. For them the shades of evening bring no relaxation of effort. Their expectations may be less unlimited as time goes on, and less of their strength will be wasted in vain endeavors to grasp at what is beyond their reach; but the upward strain will not be relaxed; it will only be economized, as experience takes the guidance of their steps. And with the lifelong toil of ascent comes the lifelong expansion of horizon; the journey which is all uphill must needs conduct the wayfarer to fresher air and serener solitudes; away from the crowd and the smoke, up to the heights from which what is mean and trivial falls out of sight, and the sounds of strife are hushed. A freshness more exquisite than the freshness of youth is reserved for some of the aged; but it can be attained only by a path which lies from first to last uphill. Uphill work, both literally and figuratively, means work in two directions at once; literally, it is going forwards while we raise our own weight; figuratively, it is doing things and learning how to do them at the same time; thus lifting ourselves on to a higher platform of moral or intellectual being. There is always in some senses an ascending slope before us, which we may scale if we will. But happily it does not rest with ourselves to decide whether the general tenor of our lives shall be that of laborious ascent or of gentle downward | at eighty-one years of age, is recorded this gliding. The force of gravitation need not be always regarded as a type of the depraved tendencies of the human heart. There is a time for all things, says the wise man, and if there is a time for learning, so is there, happily, a time for forgetting; and also a time for idly applying and enjoying what we have learned. There is a time for scrambling upwards, and a time for lying on the grass in the valley; a time for climbing fruit-trees, and a time for letting the ripe fruit drop into our mouths. Even Christian, who was not the man to flinch from his share of climbing, found rest and refreshment in the Valley of Humiliation, and it would be a poor view of 'life which valued nothing that was not gained by the sweat of our brow. Let life tend ever so steadily upwards in its moral and spiritual aspects, and intellectual labor be ever so strenuously directed towards higher and higher levels of attainment, still there will be in the outward life pauses from all activity, and welcome and gentle relaxations of effort, when our wisdom is to sit still and receive the riches which flow into our souls from above. Hard work is no doubt a cure for many evils, and the taste for it a most excellent one to acquire if we can; but not to be able to abstain from it for a time, not to have any idea of enjoyment without it, is a miserable slavery and blindness. week. England has always been the home of political refugees, and some of them have prospered here as they might never have done if left in their own land. The French immigrants who fled before the Edict of Nantes merged themselves almost at once in the population, and prospered so exceedingly that some of their names are among the best known in the land, and peers, millionaires, great bankers, prosperous men in all ranks of life are proud to the last degree that their ancestors_ran away from France, homeless, moneyless, and almost friendless, as proud almost, indeed, as if they had come over as mercenaries, to carve out estates by their courage and their cruelty. There are no walks of life in which the observer does not stumble upon Germans who have adopted England as their home, and become so prosperous and so satisfied that they do not teach their children German, and remember Germany chiefly because they have still living relations there. But for an Italian Carbonaro under sentence of death to break prison, to land in England a penniless refugee, to obtain office in a great government institution, to become so trusted by English aristocrats and statesmen that they were always doing jobs for him- jobs are jobs, whether beneficial or not - and finally to obtain for thirty years the control of the great English_reservoir of the materials of learning, and die at a great age universally honored and regretted, this is, so far as our memory serves us, an unique career. It is at variance with much that one thinks of Italians, and all that one believes of Englishmen. That an Italian should prove himself the most practical of the practical and hardestheaded of the hard-headed, that he should fight English officials every day of the week on their own roped-in ground and in their own way, with minute and report and evidence before committees, and invariably beat them, is hardly less surprising than that English officials, trained to regard an Italian as an effeminate visionary, a foreigner as an interloper, and a Carbonaro as a dangerous fanatic with a possibility of an assassin in him, should recognize the man's capacities, and enter into his dreams, and support him, even hotly, against dislike and obloquy and national prejudice. It was not only Maecenas, but Agrippa who fought for Panizzi, an English Agrippa, Protestant, insular, and single-tongued. THERE is something, to our minds, curi- Such a career in a prosaic age is at least ously picturesque and separate in the ca- an interesting one, as interesting as the reer of Sir Anthony Panizzi, whose death, | fact that this foreigner, who was asked, The most exquisite pleasure which we ever take in the work of our own hands or brains is probably derived from some rapid achievement wrought without conscious effort in some direction in which we have lately been working hard. After making a series of laborious studies, with perhaps little apparent result, we suddenly find ourselves rendering an impression, either in words or in color, with an unstudied felicity which has gone far beyond the result of all our former labor, and perhaps by means of which we can give no complete account. Such moments are like those in which, after a long, steep climb in the shadow up the jutting shoulder of a mountain, we suddenly turn a corner, and find ourselves face to face with the whole expanse of the western heavens. From The Spectator. possibly ever will exist, and they fight its battle from decade to decade successfully, only dreading the men who will believe that learning and democracy can go to when in prosperity, by the Italian executioner of Modena to compensate him for the loss he had sustained by pulling down his scaffold without any fee for its erection, and who dated his reply from "the King-gether, and that the treasure-house of dom of the Dead," and promised to pay in learning ought not to be a sort of crypt the next world, became a thorough En- where learning accumulates and moulders, glishman, and deserved fully from England but a source whence learning is diffused. the patronage he received. Nor is it the Whenever the Museum is attacked, these less interesting because his success is not people just describe it, just let the nation very difficult to explain. Panizzi owed, of see what sort of treasure-house it is, and course, his first step out of his troubles to the national feeling always awakes, just as the personal regard of Mr. Roscoe, and to it awakes to pride in the Bank, or English his friend's influence with Sir Henry Ellis, commerce, or the East London dockyards. and owed his hold over many statesmen, The Museum is immensely great then, adeven Brougham, who cordially liked so few equately great, then it shall go on, whether men, to his own character; but his suc- one quite understands its greatness or not. cess was mainly due to the fact, which he | Mr. Panizzi had, from first to last, the full had either discovered or accidentally hit advantage of that feeling. Everybody who upon, that the English, so little of a dreamy understood felt that his ideas were very people, possess in a quite exceptional de- large. The conflict about him never took gree business imagination, that they like the form of saying that he was too limited. big plans better than little plans, if only Whenever it became loud enough to attract they are practical plans, and big organiza- attention, it was always found that he tions better than little organizations, if only was wanting something or other that took they will get along without too much rum- men's breath away, the whole literature ble. That is one of the secrets of Lord of England, every book in the world, the Beaconsfield's success, and it is not till it greatest reading-room on earth, something is discovered that his "big things are as big, and yet as conceivably attainable, never practical things, that he will be thor- as if he had been a Stephenson or a Bruoughly discredited, and it was the secret of nel, or a man of the type which it suits Mr. Panizzi. He planned as Englishmen Englishmen to think is specially national. like to plan, on a scale of twelve inches to It was quite shocking for Mr. Panizzi to the mile. There is no idea in the world want so much, but then the people rather more dreamlike than that of the old Alex-liked that kind of shock, and they let him, andrian Museum, the collection in one spot in moderation, have his way. We never of all the materials of human learning, remember Mr. Panizzi thoroughly beaten. with men qualified to use them, but the It is curious that in the only dispute in dreamy idea has been in no slight measure which he displeased the public, it was berealized in the great building which most cause he seemed to them, for once, too Englishmen regard mainly as a gigantic small for the work they wanted. He never box of curiosities. There is hardly a sub- would let them have that printed catalogue ject of human knowledge which cannot be on the scale they wanted it, though he did better studied in the British Museum than give them the catalogue he thought better, anywhere else, or about which some quiet, and they were quite angry. Nonsense little-known man, connected in some way about a book too big to make! Put an with the building, is not, if you can get army of men to it, and let it fill a cathefairly at him, the deepest mine of informa- dral. It was an annual quarrel once, that tion. If you want to dive into any depart about the catalogue, though it has dropped ment of thought demanding concrete mate- now; and the best-remembered sentence rials for its working out, no matter what, in the discussion is Joseph Hume's solitary whether rare feathers, or Chinese treatises, indulgence in the gigantesque; his magor anything between, the British Museum nificent threat, that if the curators and is the place, if only you understand it, and the librarian gave him so much trouble, he can hit upon the invisible man who, nine would move for the name, date, and author. times out of ten, be you never so much ship of every book in the British Museum, an expert, can tell you what you did not as an emergent return to the House of know before. The people do not know Commons. The public laughed with enthis, but the men who guide Parliament on joyment at that sally, but if the old econothis kind of subject, and who are, there- mist had kept his word, and obtained his fore, trusted, do; they know that nothing order, as he would have done, for he was like the British Museum ever existed, or dreaded by departments as the fish-insect is by bibliopoles, the public would have would, we fancy, have done as much. He forgiven both his whim and its cost, in ad- would not have been so acceptable to formiration of the scale of the huge concep- eign librarians, or have received quite so tion. It was this liking for big and com- much foreign correspondence, but he would plete work which sustained Panizzi in his probably have been quite as successful eternal fight with the publishers, who once and quite as cosmopolitan. We take it or twice were seriously oppressed, but the real difference between the foreigner were always beaten. The public under- and the Englishman in this matter is this: stood so grand a conception as a demand The Englishman tends to be too much for one copy of every book published in absorbed in England, while the foreigner the United Kingdom, and thought Mr. thinks of the Continent, which is larger and Panizzi, even when demanding a copy, the contains more literatures, than England; surrender of which made the difference but the Englishman, once escaped from between profit and loss, or spending fifty insularity, is the more cosmopolitan of the times its value in costs over some trumpery two. He does not think the world is pamphlet, quite within his duty. The bounded on the north by the Baltic, on the library should be complete, and not com- south by the Mediterranean, on the west plete with an exception, and the publishers, by the Irish channel, and on the east by though they often received sympathy, the Vistula. We would trust the Continever got either help or compensation. nental to collect everything in every EuroEven the instinctive pity of a British jury pean tongue upon any given subject, but for a British tradesman refused permission should prefer the Englishman to insist on to make out a bill, invariably gave way be-a ransacking of Chinese records, or to colfore the feeling that the tradesman was lect Indian manuscripts ante 1200 A.D., or standing in the way of a very big and com- to make a perfect collection of literature plete idea. It was not Mr. Panizzi's idea, from the Western States of the Union. of course; but he made the law a reality, He would not think he was spending himand the public, though only half compre-self on barbarisms, as the Continental very hending some of his suits, was always often would, or be so attracted by subjects steadily on his side. merely because they were bizarre. He would miss fewer of the works of the world, though none of the works of the Continent, and would overlook Biscay and Malta sooner than Lhassa, and the smaller troubadours sooner than the hymn-reciters of Ceylon. It was a good thing for the Museum Library that Mr. Panizzi was not English, but that is no reason for entertaining a definite preference for a foreigner. Fewer Englishmen than Continentals know many languages, but more Englishmen than Continentals are interested in many literatures, and curious about all. It used to be said—was, indeed, constantly said-in Parliament, that Mr. Panizzi made a better librarian than any Englishman could have done, because he was a foreigner, because he thought of countries and subjects which no Englishman would or could have thought of; and we wonder if that was true. We rather incline to doubt it. Mr. Panizzi knew many languages, and latterly, at all events, took the true librarian's interest in filling up chinks in his collections; but an Englishman with his knowledge of language, and energy, and interest in the subject, FROM a private letter we learn that the Indus Valley State Railway, recently opened for traffic, is in good working order. This line runs up the river from Kotri to Multan, thus connecting the two remote links of the Scinde, Delhi and Punjaub Railway, which is the property of a guaranteed company. The Indus is crossed by a steam ferry between the towns of Sakhar and Rori, and the Satlaj by a magnificent iron-girder bridge near Bahawalpur. From Kotri upwards to Sehwan the line of rail runs along the foot of the Laki Hills, and is thus protected from inundation though it closely follows the course of the river. But the section from Sehwan to Sakhar must always be exposed to danger. Only last autumn the Indus in one of its wayward moods burst through the great Unsnur Bandh or embankment, and flooded the whole country as far as Jacobabad, sweeping away seven miles of the railway. At the present time trains are running over a temporary loop-line. The State Railway is now being worked by government officials, but we believe that it is ultimately intended to place it under the management of the guaranteed company, whose steam flotilla it has superseded. The importance of this new line, which has been completed about twelve months before the contract time, may be estimated from the fact that Sakhar forms the base of operations for the military force now engaged beyond the Bolan Pass. Academy. Fifth Series, Volume XXVI. } No. 1822.- May 17, 1879. {From Beginning, CONTENTS. I. MEMOIRS AND CHARTERS OF THE LENNOX, Edinburgh Review, II. SARAH DE BERENGER. 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