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sity, and "timbre" of the sound. Generally speaking, the heart's action is quickened, and the pressure of blood in the arteries increased, though sometimes the converse effect is produced; these results depending, no doubt, on the idiosyncrasy of the individual. So, too, powerful results are produced on the nervous system, sometimes stimulant, sometimes sedative, as in Canon Harford's experiences quoted above. Music is thus clearly seen to be a potent medicine, and there seems to be no reason why its effects should not be studied, like that of any other drug. Only by this study shall we be able to discover the proper dose, and the proper quality of it to administer, as well as the frequency of its repetition and the diseases it can cure. To this excellent object the Guild of St. Cecilia is apply. ing itself, and it certainly deserves the support of those who love music, and who also love their fellow-men. Whether the scientific aims indicated will ever be arrived at, is, of course, open to question. But at least there can be no doubt that if those persons-and there are thousands of them-who are capable of giving pleasure by music, would devote some of that talent to soothing the mind, or alleviating the pain of the sick and the suffer. ing, they would be doing a great and charitable work.-Chambers's Journal.

THE DECAY OF LITERATURE.—Mr. Joseph Ackland, under the above heading, contributes a valuable paper to the March number of the Nineteenth Century, in which he shows with ⚫very considerable success that the advance in elementary education has been followed by some unpleasant evidence of literary decadence :

The most remarkable phenomenon of literature (he asserts), if the word may be applied to these lower grades, during the last fifteen years, has been the rise and extraordinary growth of weekly papers of a scrappy character and of very various degrees of merit or demerit. While some have endeavored to supply useful and elevating reading matter, a considerable number of those most widely circulated have been fostered by appeals to the love of gambling and sensationalism inherent in human nature. Taking good and bad together, some of the most prominent of these were commenced at the dates prefixed to their

names:

1878. Illustrated Family Novelist. 1880. Modern Society.

1881. Tit-Bils.

1883. Cassell's Saturday Journal. 1884. Illustrated Bits. Scraps.

Great Thoughts.

1888. Answers.
Pick-me-Up.

1890. Comic Cuts.
Funny Cuts.
Illustrated Chips.
Pearson's Weekly.

1892. Pearson's Society News.

Most of these publications have been pushed to circulations counted by hundreds of thousands, and concurrent with their growth has been the establishment of newspapers combining with the ordinary news the same scrappy and sensational elements; notably the People has attained a large circulation. Such papers as the Family Herald, depending entirely on fiction, and the Christian Herald and the Christian World, appealing to the religious sentimeat, but combining the element of fiction with their more serious matter, seem to have largely extended their circulation. Of one of these it was said a few years since, by a member of the editorial staff, that if the chapter of the novel was left out for a week or two the circulation went down by thousands.

Has the growth of this class of reading matter anything to do with the decadence of literature of a more solid and useful character? If it has, is the connection that of cause or of effect? It is curious, at the least, that these periodicals commenced their great movement in 1881 and following years, and the decay of literature commenced in 1885; and concurrently the one has steadily increased while the other has steadily declined. Happily no opportunity has arisen during the period under notice to compare the effect of war on the output of literature; the effect of political or electoral movements could only be traced by an examination of the figures at greater length than is now possible.

As a result of the entire examination, are we to say that the Elementary Education Act has failed to accomplish what was expected of it? The answer to that question must be emphatically in the negative; it has caused life and movement in some directions, and, if those directions are not precisely what might be desired, efforts must be made to divert the newly awakened energies to worthier pursuits. The intellectual faculties of the bulk of the nation were too long in bondage; it should not cause any wonder that, when the shackles of ignorance were struck off, there was a rush

to the Elysian fields of fancy and pleasure; it will require time to learn the lesson that the truest liberty and the purest delight are to be found only in the voluntary acceptance of the nobler servitude to knowledge and reason. The imagination which craves for fiction must be trained to find in the marvels of science and the deductions of philosophy the only fascinations which will yield abiding satisfaction. With this object some national effort to advance secondary and technical education, and to make the connection between elementary schools and the Universities a reality, ought to be vigorously undertaken.

A BUTTERFLY'S BATH.-Standing on the banks of the Hope River in Jamaica one brill. iant July day, watching the dragon-flies or "darning needles" darting over the water, I saw a sight that was entirely new to me, and one that filled me with wonder. A beautiful butterfly, of a sort common in the West Indies, known to the naturalists as Victorina Steneles, and oddly banded with pale green and deep black bars across its wings, floated lazily down to the water's edge and settled on the damp sand. There was nothing unusual in this sight, for nearly all butterflies like to sip the moisture out of the wet earth along a stream's edge or by some puddle. Thinking this the action of a thirsty butterfly, I was turning away, when my attention was caught by actions decidedly unusual.

Walking quickly to the very edge of the water, where the breezes sent in little rippling waves, the butterfly waded in so that its body and head were completely submerged, and then slowly beat its wings to and fro, seemingly in an attempt to cover them with water also. Of course it could not do this, for it was so light in proportion to the ex. panse of its wings that whenever it attempted to force them under the water its feet lost their hold on the ground and for an instant it floated on the surface. Quickly flying up from this perilous position, it regained the shore, and again began the attempt to get entirely under water. All this was a most interesting spectacle to me. I had been a student of butterflies for nearly twenty-five years, and a collector in many different countries, yet never witnessed such a sight.

The weather was not especially warm-in fact, "the doctor, as the Jamaicans call the strong sea-breeze that daily makes life more endurable, was unusually cool that day. So

it could hardly be for the purpose of cooling itself that the insect indulged in these strange proceedings, or it would have been a sight long since familiar to me and to other collectors. I was well aware that butterflies do get overheated and out of breath; often, after watching two of them fighting furiously in the hot sun, or having raced them myself across the fields, I have seen them flapping their wings lightly up and down, thereby forcing the air more rapidly through the little holes at the base of the wings through which they do their breathing, and thus cooling themselves off. Failing to fathom such queer and apparently unnatural actions on the part of this butterfly, I was just preparing to cap. ture it to make a closer examination, when I was thwarted by a third party. Evidently I had not been the only interested watcher, for at that instant a whip-poor-will dashed out from the gloom of the bordering woods, and in his attempt to capture the butterfly effectually frightened it away.

It was some months after this, on another stream in Jamaica, that I saw precisely the same performance repeated. This time, however, I was more fortunate, and quickly had the butterfly in my net, and a moment after it was between my fingers under my lens. At once all was clear to me, for here and there on the hairy covering of its velvety body, but especially near the bases of the wings, were little bright carmine patches, which on close examination, after stirring them up with a pin, proved to be made up of sores and tiny parasites. Holding the butterfly carefully between my thumb and finger by the wings so as not to hurt it, I immersed it in the water and held it there until the kicking of its legs plainly told me that it was growing uncom fortable for want of air. Then, on re-examin. ing it, I found that most of the tiny parasites had been drowned. off; and after three or four such baths I could not find one remain

ing. Then I allowed my captive to fly away, and I have often wondered just what its thoughts-if any it had-must have been concerning the giant who thus aided it to get rid of its microscopic tormentors. Since then I have ascertained, with the aid of a powerful microscope, that the minute parasite I discovered on the butterfly is armed with a most formidable proboscis, or beak, which is attached to a powerful pumping apparatus within its head. With this outfit and its eight legs, each armed with many claws, it is able

to cling to the butterfly, and extract its life juices. Thus it is plain that these pests must become a terrible drain on the butterfly's system, and it is in self-defence driven to this most effectual, though apparently very unnatural, procedure of taking a bath-for tak ing to the water is about the last thing that most of us would expect of so fragile a creature as a butterfly.- Pittsburgh Leader.

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LITERARY RESEMBLANCES.-It has been asserted by famous author that we all come into the world too late to produce anything new-that nature and life are preoccupied, and that description and sentiment have long since been exhausted. To the same intent an eloquent lecturer has said : Many of the gems of Shakespeare are older than all history, while Bulwer borrowed the incidents of his Roman stories from legends of a thousand years before. In the nations of modern Europe there have been less than 300 distinct stories, most of which may be traced before Christianity to the other side of the Black Sea. Even our newspaper jokes are enjoying a very respectable old age. A popular anec. dote is from Don Quixote,' and is Spanish,

but Cervantes borrowed it from the Greeks in the fourth century, and the Greeks stole it from the Egyptians hundreds of years back."

But not to mention plagiarism or literary theft at all, there is frequently a marked resemblance between the writings of our most famous authors that is as accidental as it is unavoidable. Even Stevenson, who has been held up as a model of originality, states that he was surprised to find in Irving's "Tales of a Traveller" the very prototype of one of his own most striking characters, "his very voice, manner, talk, sabre cut, and sea-chest." He had read Irving years before, and had apparently forgotten him, but in writing "Treasure Island" unconsciously revived, in the person of Billy Bales, an old creation of Washington Irving's. In another instance the same writer says, regarding a certain scene which he fondly imagined he had invented, that he was informed the outlines of the scene, even to the names of the three principal characters, were to be found in Pitcairn's "Criminal Trials," which he had doubtless read years before. It is the frequency of such instances as these that leads to many of the charges of plagiarism preferred against our most reputable authors, whose minds are necessarily stored with the results of wide reading, and

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There are few topics or even ideas which can be termed truly original, and writers of the present day can do little more than improve the diction of older authors. And of those older writers, Emerson says: "The originals are not original. There is an imitation model, and suggestions to the very archangels, if we knew their history." Bourdillon, at Oxford, was familiar with Latin literature, and made himself famous by his eight lines, beginning:

"The night has a thousand eyes,
The day but one;

Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun,'

But not in Greek or Roman imagery can be found so probable a source for this beautiful thought as exists in the works of the Swedish

poet, Tegner, who, in the early part of our century, wrote these words :

"Honor the King; let one man rule with might,

Day has but one eye, many has the night."

One of the most singular instances of the expression of the same idea by authors of undoubted originality is perhaps the following: Shakespeare, in Henry V., says, "If he be not fellow with the best king, thou shalt find him the best king of good fellows." Pope, in his "Dunciad," embodies a similar idea in this line: "A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits." Samuel Johnson strikes out as follows: "This man I thought had been a lord among wits, but I find he is only a wit among lords." Cowper has it: "A fool with judges, among fools a judge." Of Napoleon, Walter Scott said: "Although too much of a soldier among sovereigns, no one could claim with better right to be a sovereign among soldiers;"' while Macaulay, in his "Life of Addison," says: "He was a rake among scholars and a scholar among rakes."

A striking but undoubtedly accidental resemblance has been noted between Mrs. Browning and Edgar A. Poe, which extends, however, to but one line. In one of her poems the former says:

"With a rushing stir uncertain, in the air, Whittier, writing also of the sea, says:

the purple curtain."

While in "The Raven" Poe has it:

"And of the silken, sad uncertain, rustling of

each purple curtain."

George Herbert wrote: "No sooner is a temple built to God, but the devil builds a chapel hard by." Burton, a contemporary, in his "Anatomy of Melancholy," says: "Where God hath a temple, the devil will have a chapel." Nathaniel Drummond, a Scottish poet, put the idea in a poetic form :

"God never had a church but there, men say, The devil a chapel hath raised by some wiles.

I doubted of this saw, till on a day

I westward spied great Edinburgh's Saint
Giles."

Half a century later Defoe expressed the idea in the form in which it is now generally quoted :

"Wherever God erects a house of prayer

The devil always builds a chapel there."

A somewhat singular literary coincidence has been pointed out as existing between Mrs. Burnett's "Little Lord Fauntleroy" and a story called "The Red Rose Knights," which was published in Chatterbox in the year 1883. In both stories titled boys come from foreign countries to ancestral homes situated in large parks. Each arrived unaccompanied by his parents. The fathers are dead. One boy is called Lord Fauntleroy, the other Sir Florence. In each home a guardian only is provided-no lady appears. The boys are pictured as wearing flowing curly hair, dressing in black velvet and lace collars, and as straight and handsome. This is in all probability a mere accidental resemblance, but sufficiently odd to deserve mention,

Many years ago attention was called to the resemblance in many respects between Whittier's" Worship of Nature,'' and an old poem called "The Temple of Nature," which he had undoubtedly read and re-read in his early days. In The Temple of Nature" we have:

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'The ocean heaves resistlessly,
And pours his glittering treasures forth,
His waves - the priesthood of the sea,
Kneel on the shell gemmed earth—"

"They kneel upon the sloping sand,

As bends the human knee,

A beautiful and tireless band,

The priesthood of the sea.

They pour their glittering treasures out
Which in the deep have birth.”

Tennyson gave expression to a thought that the world welcomed when he wrote:

"'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.''

But prior to the appearance of "In Memoriam," the late Lord Houghton had written a short poem, which concludes as follows:

He who for love has undergone
The worst that can befall,
Is happier thousandfold than one
Who never loved at all."

Again, Tennyson sadly sang :

"That a sorrow's crown of sorrows Is remembering happier things.' But Dante had long before expressed this thought in

"No greater grief than to remember days Of joy, when misery is at hand.”

Attention was called to the strange coincidence of thought in the final stanza of poems by Whittier and Tennyson, each comparing his own death to a summons to set sail upon the sea of eternity. Whittier wrote: "I know the solemn monotone

Of waters calling unto me;

I know from whence the airs have blown
That whisper of the eternal sea.
As low my fires of driftwood burn,
I hear that sea's deep sounds increase,
And, fair in sunset light, discern

Its mirage lifted isles of peace." And Tennyson, in his exquisite "Crossing the Bar":

"Twilight and evening bell,

And, after that-the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell
When I embark ;

For tho' from out our bourne of time and place

The floods may bear me far,
hope to see my pilot face to face

When I have crossed the bar."

-Detroit Free Press.

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IV. Early Social Self-Government. By SIR JOHN SIMON... Nineteenth Century..... 760 V. Emerson's Meeting with De Quincey. By P. L........ Blackwood's Magazine........ 768 VI. The Evolution of the Daughters. By MRS. SHELDON

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..Gentleman's Magazine.... 844
.Macmillan's Magazine.... 851

858

859

XVI. Some Skylark Poems. By JAMES ASHCROFT NOBLE,
XVII. Life in the Sage-Brush Lands of Southern California.
By GEORGE H. BAILEY...

XVIII. Begging Letters and their Writers..
XIX. FOREIGN LITERARY NOTES...

XX. MISCELLANY .....

NEW YORK:

E. R. PELTON, PUBLISHER, 144 EIGHTH STREET.

AMERICAN NEWS Co. AND NEW YORK News Co., General Agents.

Terms: Single Numbers, 45 Cents. Yearly Subscription, $5.00,
Entered at the Post Office at New York as second-class matter.

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