he was a warm-hearted man, ever ready to do a kind act to a friend, and entertaining no real bitterness against any one unconnected with the Clarendon Press. He possessed an immense stock of stories, many of them rather more racy than decorous, and his conversation was famous for profusion of anecdote and vigor of epithet. His intellectual energy, his width of knowledge, and his extraordinary powers of work combined to reuder him a man of mark, and had he possessed a little more tact and self-control his career would have been really brilliant.

MISCELLANY.

THE BAMBOO. To note something of the physical structure of the bamboo, and a few of its most common uses, will be to give some conception of the wealth of its resources. In observing its nature, the difference between the male and female plant will be at once noticed. In the male bamboo the substance of the stem is solid throughout, and, light though it is, there is no stronger or tougher staff than that on which the old man leans in Burma or Siam, or that with which in these countries men take the law into their own hands and administer the summary punishment known as bamboo backshish." But it is from the far more abundant branches of the female plant that the wants of mankind are so bountifully supplied. Built like a modern man-of-war in water-tight compartments, each joint of the stem is separated from the next on either side by a thick solid partition; and it would be hard to describe how this simple construction adapts it to practical use, or how much may be manufac. tured with ease from a single stem. To make a water-bucket, for example, it is only necessary to cut off a length of the branch near the root, where the girth is large, leaving the bulkhead at one end untouched. With a handle easily made from the higher part of the same branch, the bucket is complete-finished and polished by nature, lighter and probably more watertight and better fitted for rough usage than any manufactured rival. In the same way, at the extremity of the branch, are to be found-almost ready-made-thimbles and pipe-bowls and pipe-stems of any size required.

The same tubes, if split perpendicularly at regular intervals without being cut through, may be flattened out so as to form an almost level flooring for boat or cottage. Endless

other illustrations may be given of the marvellous way in which the bamboo, by its generous and ever-ready help, seems to court the friend. ship of man.

If the houses in a Burmese village are largely built of bamboo materials, nearly everything within them seems to come ultimately from the same source. Beds and furniture, matting and sunshades, bird cages and baskets, fans and umbrellas, all owe their chief substance to the bamboo; while in a land where lacquer so largely takes the place of earthenware, the same material is conspicuous as the groundwork of unnumbered household vessels from the laborer's rice-platter, bought for a few pence, to the costly vase or betel-box of pliant texture and finest polish. In all alike the lacquer, which gives to each vessel its charm of color or finish, is laid over a framework of fine bamboo wicker. Then, if we leave the house for field or river, we are everywhere met by the same ubiquitous material. It is this which, either as stout railing or living hedge, encloses the garden or field. With this the villager climbs the toddy-palm in quaint shoes made for the purpose. His shelter in the country cart, in his boat it is transformed into masts and yards, and decks and awnings, and forms the main part of the permanent structures in which whole families live for months together on a Burmese river.

In war, too, no less than in peace, the bamboo holds an honorable place. The main strength of many a formidable stockade is the chevaux de frise of stout pointed bamboo. It serves for flag-staff and spear-shaft and swordsheath, and even for one of the most telling weapons of offence. In front of every position of the enemy in a Burmese war, among mimosathorns and grass and scrub, the ground is sown with invisible caltrops in the form of simple sharp pointed lengths of split bamboo-a weapon inflicting deep poisonous wounds, and which proves more harassing to infantry, whether in skirmish or charge, than any valor of the enemy or any natural strength of earthwork or stockade.

But it is not for the natives of the country only that the favors of the bamboo are reserved. As the sun shines on the evil and on the good, so the bamboo is the faithful servant of the foreigner no less than of its own countrymen. It is a well-known characteristic of Burma, as compared with most Indian provinces, that the traveller in rural districts has no need to burden himself with tents. This is partly owing to Buddhist liberality, which gives free shelter in

monasteries, and in frequent rest-houses, built as works of religious merit. But no less thanks are due to nature also, which plants at every turn the inexhaustible bamboo groves, from which, with no other aid than a woodman's knife, may be made all that the traveller needs for use or comfort. Owing to the universal presence of this invaluable plant, there is no country where barracks and hospitals, houses and offices, stables and outbuildings, can be so quickly and cheaply, and even substantially constructed; and there is not an emergency great or small in which in the Englishman's house, in such a country, the services of the bamboo are not the instant and effective re. source. If temporary shelter is needed for man or beast; if unexpected visitors descend with a host of followers, in a few hours they may be as comfortably housed as if they had been long expected. If fuel is wanted for cooking, stakes or trellis for the garden; if a tobacco-pipe has to be cleaned, even if needles and thread are exhausted-the bamboo will supply what is wanted with a readiness which would hardly be believed.

Truly a wonderful material it is, lending itself by every quality of its nature to the special service of man. Its larger stems combine strength and lightness in a manner equalled by neither timber nor metal. Its lighter branches bend to carry the laborer's baskets. Its joints invite the manufacture of cups and buckets. Its toughness and polished smoothness provide the carver with material admirably suited to his art. Its hollow tubes seem made for waterpipes, its dry fibrous leaves for thatch. Its lightness adapts it for ladders and scaffolding; and the ease with which it splits, into layers of any thickness, for the weaving of matting and for basket-work of every kind. Lavishly as iron is strewn under the feet of more hardy nations, there is thus provided for the Oriental in the wildest jungles a no less abundant store of simple wealth, suited to his special requirements, responding readily to the slightest effort, and encouraging the exercise of every form of ingenuity.-Blackwood's Magazine.

SMOKE IN ENGLISH CITIES.-Houses require frequent painting and whitewashing within and without; names of streets and stations, shop-fronts and sign-boards want constant renovation. Pictures, tapestry, fine needlework, books, engravings, sculpture are injured, sometimes irreparably. Curtains, blinds, and all kinds of clothing, hangings, and apparel, become discolored and dirty and demand endless

washing. What all this amounts to in money it would be impossible to say. In London

alone it has been estimated at millions of pounds yearly. The Houses of Parliament are so damaged by smoke that the cost of surface renewal amounts to £2,500 a year on the average; and Cleopatra's Needle, which has endured unchanged for scores of centuries on the banks of the Nile, is already hastening to decay in the murky fogs of the Thames. Then there is the sheer waste which is involved in our sending thousands of tons of unburned coal up through our chimneys into the sky. It has been estimated that in London alone there must be at least 100,000 tons thus belched forth annually, and this does not include the fact that of that which is actually burned a large proportion is wasted, since, owing to the defective. ness of our heating arrangements, only a small fraction of the heat evolved is really made use of. Further, to come to the evils which flow indirectly from our present system-what may be called the moral evils-these cannot be esti mated in money. They are voiceless, tragic, immeasurable. The blighting of the lives of the poor-especially of the children-the removal of all brightness and sunshine from their surroundings, their condemnation to live in courts and alleys steeped in grime, where not even a plant will grow in the window, and where a perpetual pall hides the face of the sky --what shall we say to that? Is it an evil which can be measured? The workers, producers of the nation's riches, dying by thousands and thousands, choked in the reek of their own toil; the aimlessness, hopelessness, hideousness of such a life; the folly of the nation that allows it to continue! The mere struggle with dirt itself in the more smoke-ridden quarters of our towns is one of the most depressing and demoralizing things conceivable. The scrupulous and careful housewife, coming perhaps from clean country quarters, wages at first a plucky warfare with the filthy enemy. But she is invaded from all sides. Smoke and scot entering by door and window give her no rest. No sooner is cleaning done than it has to be begun again. Furniture, linen, windows, floors, even the very food on the table-everything is defiled. And at last, worn out, beaten in the unequal struggle, she either succumbs to sickness, or resigns herself to become a slut and a sloven like those around her. Lastly but not least, comes the destruction for all of us by smoke of that supreme beauty of Nature which is one of the most precious things in our lives.-Macmillan's Magazine.

A MEXICAN GHOST STORY.-A ghost story. I heard it in the punt at evening on the little river, the buttercups winking against the low and glowing sky, the water-rats shaking, bright-eyed, at their doors.. The Duc de Montebello tells it in the Red Sea to a Colonel coming home, shaken to pieces with Indian fever. Scene, Mexico, in the war, just before the fall of the unhappy Maximilian; orders very strict against plundering, next man caught to be shot at once, whoever he may he. Next man caught, Sergeant la Tulipe, bravest, brightest, most popular of non-coms.; most deFlorable he should be the man; still, orders must be carried out, though Bazaine gave the order almost in tears, so popular with all ranks is Sergeant la Tulipe. So, as he is caught in the dusk, in the dusk they shoot him, in a dreary little ditch, his back against an adobe wall; a lantern, terrible bull's-eye, hung round his neck; and the volley over, there they lay him, still quivering, lantern and life both gone out, there can be no doubt of it, over against the adobe wall. But, before the shots rattle, la Tulipe in anguish bids the padre, endeavoring to guide his last footsteps aright-bids him carry the message of his death, his honorable death in action, to his poor old mother at Plessis-sur-Saône, "Estaminet, Débit de Tabac, Vins et Cidre,' over painted crossed billiard-cues tied with blue ribbon. And the padre promises and the Sergeant says, "Souviens-toi !" thrice solemnly, before the fatal volley that, as I say, stretches him quiv. ering in the dreary little ditch where he is buried. There can be no doubt of it at all, But, observe, later in the evening the officers in the mess tent, Duc de Montebello among them, talking of this and that and somewhat of the luckless la Tulipe, deploring him, no doubt. Qui va là?" from the sentry outside. "Qui va là?" again, sharply, and then a shot; and lo, through the door of the mess tent passes la Tulipe, death in his face and on his breast, only the lantern burning round his neck, stands there calm and unearthly while a man could count ten! And then the Duc draws revolver and fires. A crash and a moan, or rather a deep portentous sign, and messieurs les officiers are alone again, with a smoking revolver and the shuttered remains of a lantern. Instantly to the grave of Sergeant la Tulipe, under the adobe wall, and see, he lies on his face instead of on his back, as they put him there, and the lantern has gone; and he lies, dead beyond a doubt of it.

Soon in the hurry of war all this is forgotten,

and the unhappy Maximilian himself being shot, undergoing the fate of poor Sergeant al Tulipe against an adobe wall of a rather better class, all return to France, to forget in the joys of the boulevard and the coulisses that such things ever had been. And the padre goes too, to enjoy himself as a padre may in a brilliant capital, and forgets all about la mère la Tulipe, who lives and cooks, amid the click of the billiard-balls, away in the little estaminet in seepy Plessis-sur-Saône, and wonders what her gars is after that he does not write. Till one day, meeting M. le Duc somewhere, perhaps on the boulevard, M. le Duc asks him if ever he has remembered the dying Sergeant's request, and the padre says, " Ma fois, ma fois, oui-parfaitement !" and that some day he will do it "tout à l'heure," but does it not; till one night, going home late, as sometimes a padre will, round a corner he meets the Sergeant, lantern at neck, gray, reproachful ; and the padre, with a yell of terror, falls dead. Only, the Duc said, the bonhomme met a 66 chiffonnier, je crois,” with a lantern and stick with nail at the end. Still, conscience and fear and the night did the rest, and the padre fell and died. 'Indubitablement."-Cornhill Magazine.

THE EXTINCTION OF THE MOGUL DYNASTY.The old king, Hodson himself admitted, had but been a tool in the hands of others. The real culprits were his two elder sons, who had first incited the populace to murder, and then led the way in mutilation, hacking off the limbs of little children, and pressing them, dripping with blood, to the lips of the dead mothers. These young fiends were now in Hodson's toils. He came to Wilson for authority to capture them. To his disgust Wilson hesitated. A passionate appeal from the deathbed of Nicholson at last settled the question. Wilson gave in, stipulating only that, as he had already got the father on his hands, he should not be bothered as to the fate of the sons. And with such a promise, rammed

home with the remark that he would much rather have brought the whole family in dead than alive, Hodson went out.

At eight o'clock next morning, with his lieutenant Macdowell and a hundred picked sowars, Hodson rode once more slowly out of Delhi toward the tomb of Humayoon, where the two princes and their cousin had taken sanctuary. Half a mile from it he halted, and having arranged his force so as to make escape impossible, sent in to inform the princes that he had come to take them alive or dead.

There was a long wait, and then a messenger came out to know whether, if the princes surrendered, their lives would be spared? Hodson gave his answer in two words-" Unconditional surrender," and the man went back. Another hour passed, an hour and a half. From the distant tomb there arose continuously the hoarse roar of the mob-six thousand strong and armed to the teeth-demanding to be led against the infidel. Then at last, at the

end of two hours, came the welcome news of surrender. Sending forward ten troopers to meet the princes, Hodson drew up the rest across the road. Hardly had he done so when the prisoners, seated in a bullock-cart, surrounded by the escort, and followed by a couple of thousand armed retainers, reached the line.

Certainly not!" replied Hodson; and, with an order to the escort to get into Delhi as quickly as possible, bade the driver move on. The crowd attempted to follow. Hodson waved it back; while Macdowell, wheeling apart his men to allow the cart to pass, reformed in stantly behind it. Hodson gave the word to advance. The troopers moved forward, at a walk, upon the mob. Step by step, yard by yard, they forced it back along the road, till it disappeared through the great archway into the immense garden of the tomb. Under the wall Hodson halted the troop. Then, taking with him Macdowell and four sowars, he rode, revolver in hand, up the marble steps, and reining in his horse, beneath the shadow of the arch, called out to the thousands in front of him to lay down their arms. There was a murmur of anger. Again Hodson thundered out his order. And then, "God knows why," said Macdowell afterward. "I never can understund it," they began to obey. For two long hours the English officers stood in the garden, while, from a thousand hiding-places, the rebels brought our their arms, and piled them in a native cart. At last all was ready. The precious time necessary for the escort to hurry the princes along the road to Delhi had been gained.

The feast is succeeded by dancing and singing well into the night, until it is time for the real business to commence. An uncle of the bride takes her on his shoulders, and an uncle of the bridegroom does the same for him while the dance is at its height. Suddenly they exchange their burdens; and the uncle of the bridegroom disappears with the bride, hotly pursued by her female friends, who are kept at bay by the comrades of the bridegroom striving their utmost to keep them off and cover her flight. She is wrapped in a scarlet cloak; while the young women even go so far as to hurl stones and bamboos at the devoted bridegroom until he has escaped with his bride to the verge of the village. Then the ceremony is complete, and he is allowed to conduct his hard-won spouse to his abode without further molestation.

It has been suggested that in the hurling of the stones we can trace the origin of the throwing of old slippers after the wedded couples of our own land; but it seems a long way to go to Khondistan to derive the origin of the amusing custom over which so much skill is some. times exercised to ensure the slipper keeping company with them on their honeymoon.

Among the Kalmucks we have a slight variation of the programme. It seems that the man who wants to marry any particular girl has to win her by the fleetness of his horse. She is mounted on horseback, and gallops off as fast as she can go. . He follows; and if he can catch her she is his wife, and has to return to his tent with him. We are told that there has never been an instance where she has been caught if she has no desire to become his wife; but it would seem from this, that afte

he has paid her parents the price they agreed upon, she has no option but to avoid the marriage by a successful flight.

It is not unknown to many that until quite recently a similar custom prevailed in Wales. The bridegroom having won the damsel's heart, appeared with all his friends mounted, at her door on the wedding morn and demanded her from her parents. The bride's friends, likewise on horseback, refused to give her up; upon which a scuffle ensued. She was suddenly mounted behind her nearest kinsman and carried off, pursued by the bridegroom and the whole body of friends, who with loud shouts and much laughter gallop after her. It was not uncommon to see two or three hundred people riding along at full speed, crossing in front, and jostling one another, to the delighted amusement of the onlookers. When they and their horses were thoroughly exhausted, the bridegroom was allowed to overtake the bride, carry her away in triumph, the whole party finishing the day with feasting and festivity.

Sir Henry Piers gave an account of a similar kind of ceremony in the wilds of Ireland, where the interested parties met somewhere between the two dwellings to discuss the matter and make arrangements. If an agreement was concluded, the agreement bottle was drunk, and then the bride's father sent round to all his neighbors and friends to collect the wife's fortion, to which every one gave a cow or heifer. These the husband had to restore to their respective donors if the bride died childless within a certain time. On the day of bringing home, the bridegroom and his friends rode out to meet the bride and her friends at the place of meeting. Being come near each other, the custom was of old to cast short darts at the company attending the bride, but at such a distance that seldom any hurt ensued, although we do hear that on one such occasion a noble lord lost an eye, which must have gone far to sound the knell of this quaint old custom.

Another curious instance affording evidence of ancient capture occurs in a certain Arab tribe. The betrothal takes place apparently in a similar manner to that of young English people of the nineteenth century; but the marriage is only rendered complete by the husband bringing a lamb in his arms to the tent of the girl's father and there cutting its throat before witnesses. As soon as the blood falls to the ground the marriage is complete, and be retires to his tent to await his lady. A game of

hide-and-seek is played by the girl and by the people of the village, who pursue her as she runs from tent to tent. At last she is caught and led off in triumph by some of the women to her lover, who, taking possession of her, forces her into his tent.

Perhaps the Bedouin Arabs of Mount Sinai conduct their matrimonial arrangements in the strangest fashion, for when a man desires to marry, he goes to the maiden's father and makes a bid, which may or may not be accepted. Should the father think the offer sufficiently tempting, the sale is completed without the chief person concerned being consulted. When she comes home in the evening with the cattle, she is met at a short distance from the camp by her intended husband and two of his friends, and is carried off by force to her father's tent. If, however, she has time to defend herself, and suspects their errand, she defends herself like a young tigress, biting, kicking, throwing sticks and stones and anything that comes to hand at her antagonists, often injuring them severely, even though she is not altogether averse to the match. The greater resistance she makes the greater praise she receives from her companions, who record it in her favor forever after. When she is safely in her father's tent, they throw a man's cloak over her, and make a formal announcement of her future husband's name. She is placed on a camel in her bridal dress still struggling with might and main, and has to be held on by the young men, Then she is led round three times, and afterward taken into her husband's tent, the ceremony being wound up by the usual feast and presents to the bride. - Chambers's Journal.

MAY I 'AVE MY 'AT?-A prisoner was being tried in an English court for murder; evidence against him purely circumstantial; part of it a hat found near the scene of the crimean ordinary round, black hat, but sworn to as the prisoner's. Counsel for the defence, of course, made much of the commonness of the hat. You, gentlemen, no doubt each of you possess such a hat, of the most ordinary make and shape. Beware how you condemn a fellow-creature to a shameful death on such a piece of evidence," and so on. So the man was acquitted. Just as he was leaving the dock, with the most touching humility and simplicity, he said: "If you please, my lord, may I 'ave my 'at?"