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have had to do with emigrants, and I know that all, even those who are destined to prosper most in the end, have to go through a period of despondency and home sickness. This is particularly the case with mechanics and persons of that class, who, finding things not exactly as they are here, think that all is wrong, and lose heart. A labouring man-healthy, hard-working, sober and thrifty-cannot fail, I believe, to do better in the New World than he could possibly do here. For a farmer, taking with him money enough to buy his land and stock, or partly stock if the prospect seems good. But the British farmer, at least if he has reached middle-age, with his fixed habits and ideas, accustomed as he is to all the aids and appliances of a long-settled and highly-civilized country, with the mechanic always at hand to do for him what the American or Canadian does for himself, is hardly the man for the life of a pioneer; he is likely to do better by taking one of the farms in the East which are left vacant by the adventurous Americans and Canadians moving west. Of mechanics I

believe there are nearly enough for the present both in Canada and the United States, though, of course, the increase of the general population is always making fresh openings, especially in the West. Domestic servants are in demand, particularly such as can cook; but they must not expect the same punctilious divisions of household labour which there are here; they will have to follow the general rule of the continent, by mixing trades and doing things which here they would say were not their place. The class of callings which, I must repeat, is over-stocked, almost as much as it is in this country, is the lighter and more intellectual class, such as are commonly sought by the sons of gentlemen and educated men. Let not any man cross the Atlantic in quest of these, for if he does he is not unlikely to be an example, by no means the first, of highly-educated men seeking in vain for the humblest and coarsest employment that he may eat bread. I have only to add that any emigrant, English, Scotch, or Irish, who comes to Canada will find himself among friends.

CHRISTMAS GIFTS.

'WE

HAT a nuisance Christmas is !' This amiable remark was made by a lady who was evidently selecting Christmas presents with no great relish for the task. And it is a remark which has probably been made, audibly or inaudibly, by more than this speaker! 'I think it is so nice to remember one's friends at Christmas-said another lady, apropos of the question of Christmas tokens. The two speakers were representatives of two classes of people and Christmas givers, who, with many varying shades between them, are always pretty distinctly marked,-the people who love to live in the lives of others, and the people who think anything 'a bore' that calls them out of themselves, and makes it necessary for them to think of others. Some people have a latent but strong conviction that any expenditure they are called upon to make for others is an injustice, and an oppression to themselves. Of course, to such people, Christmas is a nuisance, since, if they will do nothing else, they find themselves expected, at least, to send Christmas cards to their friends, and even Christmas cards may be felt a burden. Such people, if they were more honest, would not profess to give Christmas presents at all !

But Christmas gifts are like a great many other things,-wedding gifts included-good or bad, according to the spirit in which they are bestowed. When they are given for the credit of the donors, to gratify the spirit of ostentation or even merely because it is expected,' or because there is an obligation in advance to be discharged on account of anticipated gifts from others, they loose all the sweet meaning of a gift, to the givers at least, if not to the receivers ! When Christmas gifts come to be a sort of unadmitted barter, they loose all the grace of gifts, without the satisfaction of purchase. For it is almost

sure to turn out, as some one has cynically observed, that A. gives to B. something he cares for to get from B. something for which he does not care at all. From which, it may be easily observed, that comparatively few people have what may be called the genius of giving-in which is implied not only nice perception and tact, but sufficient consideration for others-their tastes and wants, to understand what will be an acceptable gift for any particular friend—consequently very mal-a-propos gifts are often made even by people who are not at all stupid in other things. But it is only those who are not too self-absorbed to live a little in other people's lives, who can give attention enough to the wants and wishes of their friends to present them with just the thing they were wishing for? In the dearth of ingenuity or attention or tact or sympathy, whicheverit may be that is lacking, Christmas cards are a resource for the many perplexed people who like to show their friends that they remember them at Christmas, without too great an expense of money or thought, and who can in this way include a much wider circle of friends in the Christmas greetings. And the really beautiful and artistic designs of many of the cards make it possible to give real pleasure by sending one, apart from the more special pleasure of being remembered at a time when to most of grown up persons the day is apt to have more sad than merry' associations, and so a token of remembrance from the friends whom life's changes have left is all the more appreciated. Some very practical people consider even Christmas cards a

nuisance' and a 'tax.' Let us hope that they better bestow the price of their alabaster boxes: and, in the meantime, let us be glad that bonds of affection are strengthened and old ties re-knit and lonely hearts made glad by this pleasant Christmas custom in a world wherein for most people the sorrows are apt to overbalance the joys. F.

TH

PROPHECY.

HERE seems to be an instinctive fondness for prophecy in human nature. To prophesy and to be prophesied to, seems to be alike congenial. It does not appear to be at all necessary that there should be any fulfilment, or any signs of fulfilment. After repeated failures, if the prophet is only loud and self-confident enough, people are as ready to believe as ever. The prophetic office so very conspicuous in semi-barbarous times does not seem to wane in importance in civilization. We see the confidence reposed in Vennor's weather predictions, notwithstanding constant failures, and also the ready ear that is given to every interpreter of the Book of Revelations, if only he foretells the immediate end of the world and deals satisfactorily with the marks of the beast and the number 666. A certain class of people take great satisfaction in predictions of England's decline and downfall. I had always thought that this kind of prophecy was enjoyed chiefly by a few snarling Americans like Hawthorne, and Germans like Heine and Hegel with whom the wish was father to the thought; but it seems we have a full-fledged prophet of this description in Montreal. One difference between them, however, is very noticeable. The Continental and American prophets base their predictions on England's vices and depravities, but Mr. Boodle bases his, on her virtues and good qualities. So long as England is rapacious and unprincipled in her dealings with her neighbours, ready to fight with or without provocation, she is great, and going on to a glorious maturity, but as soon as she begins to prefer justice in her domestic and foreign relations; when by the passage of the Reform Bill she extends political rights to a larger class of her citizens she shows signs of decay and old age; when she finds out that she has has been waging an unjust war on the South African Boers her ' flag is disgraced by concessions to a victorious enemy.' With a show of italics as if he had made a great discovery, he announces that the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832-the first step in a series of reforms by which England has given equal rights to all classes of her citizens -was The first great mark of England's decline.'

It is difficult to understand the state

of mind which could lead any one to such a conclusion from such premises. Mr. Boodle admits himself, after recapitulating a lot of more or less imaginary symptoms of decay, that there seems to be no way of accounting for them except on the theory of natural decline.' He is not the first who has been misled by the analogy between the animal and the social organism. There is a very close resemblance, no doubt, in structure and function between the individual and the community; and the modes of working in the one case have thrown much light and illustration on the other. This has been admirably set forth by the greatest philosopher of modern times. But analogies between any two things are never complete at all points; they are never exact copies of each other. Although there are many curious and instructive resemblances in structure and function between the animal and the social organism, it does not follow that because the one has its inevitable period of decay and extinction, that the other has the same unavoidable destiny; and even though any proof could be adduced to this effect, no one can say what ratio there is between the lives of the two. How many decades or centuries in the life of a nation would be equal to a year in the life of an individual. There is no doubt that the earth itself will some time wax old as a garment,' but judging from the time it has already been in existence we may infer that there is a period in store for it so enormous in duration as practically to amount to an eternity; and similarly with nations. When we consider how their units are continually renewed by successive generations, how much more independent in their motions they are than those of an animal, it is reasonable to conclude that with favourable conditions, and especially with free institutions, their lives may be continued through long intervals of time. Mr. Boodle's formidable array of the symptoms of England's decay is quite superficial. A few years will overcome the worst of them. Neither the symptoms nor the energy displayed in curing them indicate a decline in the national constitution; nowhere are there any signs of age or weakness. A slight consideration of the parallel between the individual and the community will show that the case is quite the reverse. In the individual organism, youth and manhood are

that it stands on a different foundation. The large numbers of the working classes in England who have broken away from the churches and formed themselves into secular societies, have not fallen below, but have risen above the average of their class in intelligence and morality. By their experiments in co-operation they are teaching a valuable lesson to all classes of Engishmen, a lesson that may some day solve the vexed problems of capital and labour, the problems which are the most likely to disturb the future peace of England. J. G. W.

THOUGHTS ON TENNYSON'S 'DESPAIR.'

AS

S the reader turns from the poems of the early Victorian era to the productions of our contemporary bards he is constantly reminded of the truth of Hallam's saying, that literature is a garden of weeds as well as flowers.' Of the earlier singers of the reign, the greater number are now mute; while the Laureate, his voice still strong in age, might say with Matthew Arnold, To tunes we did not call, our being must keep chime.' Meanwhile, none of the later poets can be mentioned in the same breath with their predecessors. It is mournful to think how little genuine poetry is now produced. One volume of considerable power, entitled, 'Ballads and Sonnets,' by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, has issued from the press during the pist year. It is full of prettinesses, and we feel sure that the writer has the soul of poetry in him, but the spirit of the age has been too much for him, and he succumbs without a struggle to our besetting sins of literary epicurism and artificiality.

It is a pleasure to turn from such writers to the leavings of a greater spirit, Verily the funeral baked meats' are more palatable than the feasts of the 'marriage tables.' And in more senses than one Tennyson's Despair' is but a repast of 'funeral baked meats.' Ghastly and morbid, the confessions of a frustrated suicide, it yet abounds in happy turns of expression, and has here and there some of the golden lines which Tennyson has taught his readers to expect. Such are those that describe the last words and kiss of the wife who suc

ceeded in effecting what her husband failed to do :

Never a cry so desolate, not since the world began! Never a kiss so sad, no, not since the coming of man.'

Still more noticeable is the verse describing the mouldering world:

'Why should we bear with an hour of torture a moment of pain,

If every man die for ever, if all his griefs are in vain, And the homeless planet at length will be wheel'd thro' the silence of space,

Motherless evermore of an ever-vanishing race, When the worm shall have writhed its last, and its last brother-worm will have fled

From the dead fossil skull that is left in the rocks of an earth that is dead?'

From many points of view Tennyson's poem would repay study, for, like all his poetry, it is full of the human heart and the Age,' but the point to which I wish to call attention at present is the significance of the poem, as indicative, with his late volume of ballads and other poems, of a new departure in its author and in English literature. Perhaps the most successful bon mot in 'Despair' is the line, For these are the new dark ages, you see, of the popular press.' This, to my mind, is very suggestive. It indicates in a satirical way the new readers for whom the poet of the future will have to write, whom Tennyson is addressing in the present poem, and for whom many of the most popular pieces in his late volume were intended. Such especially were the‘First Quarrel,' ' Rizpah,' the Northern Cobbler' and the 'Village Wife.' The whole spirit and workmanship of these and Despair' differentiates them from their author's earlier work. The Princess,'' In Memoriam' and the 'Idylls,' with their occasional abstruseness, their allusiveness and their ideal representation of life, stand in strong contrast with the directness, the realism, the freedom from allusion of these later poems. Tennyson, in fact, seems to be writing for a different audience. later poems will please the student less, but will become the favourites of that larger public for whom American humorists write and whose requirements are studied by the modern newspaper. I have heard it said that Tennyson's 'Ballads and Other Poems' is, in some ways, the most popular work he has published. I do not know how far the sale of the volume tallies with this surmise; but it may be safely predicted that its heroic ballads and popular pathos will win their way, as passages for recitation, to a wider public than any of Tenny

His