EDITOR'S TABLE.

A

RECENT paper by Charles O'Conor, on "Democracy," takes the ground that the only hope for the permanency of the institutions of our country lies in the extinguishment of governmental borrowing. Just so long as governments are enabled to borrow money, there will be recklessness and corruption: recklessness because the public are indifferent to public extravagances that are to be paid for at some far-off, indefinite time; corruption because the power to borrow money indefinitely enables the politician to enter into schemes for his aggrandizement, and to cover his expenditures in all the incertitude of floating and bonded debt. This is all true, and the remedy for the evil is likely to come soon in a sharp and effective manner. Borrowing will necessarily cease with many of our State governments and munici palities in the same way that it ceases with many merchants-that is, by bankruptcy. It will be simply impossible for many of our local governments to go on increasing the public debt in the way many of them have done in the past and are now doing. There is a limit to the capacity of the tax-payer; a point beyond which revenues cannot be stretched; a period when an ever-swelling debt becomes a burden greater than can be endured.

But even if it were practicable for governments to go on borrowing money indefinitely, there are still supreme reasons why the power to do so should be withdrawn from them. The ability to pay, for instance, may remain intact, and yet the burden of paying become onerous; then the direct collection of money for current expenditure brings the citizen into closer contact with the government, awakens his concern, stimulates his interest, and leads him to hold the administration of the funds to stricter account than would otherwise be the case; and nothing, perhaps, would so effectually keep government to its few legitimate duties as the necessity of paying as it went. Just so long as there is a great unknown future which may be discounted in the way of bonds, governments will be tempted by schemers and enthusiasts into endless improper enterprises. Tammany Rings and Crédits Mobiliers are possible only where there exists the power of borrowing. The tax-collector may be enabled to appropriate a small proportion of his collections, but the directness and simplicity of our affairs under a no-credit system would reduce corruption to its minimum.

Doubts very likely arise in many minds, and arguments in all. We are so inured to the idea of a local government full of enterprises and lavish of expenditure, laying out

parks, opening streets, furthering railways; building school-houses and markets, and other public structures; constructing wharves, dredging rivers, erecting bridges, laying sewers, that we are rather startled at the idea of doing all this with money in hand. But when we come to look a little into these things we'll find that the debt-system not only increases extravagance and prompts enterprises that should not be undertaken, but continually shifts cost from where it should fall, upon the interests specially concerned, to the shoulders of the public at large. We see debts continually created for special ends, and to the benefit of a class which the public as a whole must eventually pay for. Revenues, moreover, are not looked after; it is so much easier to issue bonds than to form careful systems by which cost may be liquidated by special taxes. It would not be at all difficult for a partnership of businessmen to so conduct affairs in a city like New York that its incoming funds from licenses, rentals, etc., would be ample for all its expenditures. Governments general as well as local should be put on the no-credit basis, although just at present the crying evil in America is the extravagance of local governments, which touch so many of the ordinary details of life, and so many of which are running up their indebtedness with dangerous speed.

PERHAPS nothing can better illustrate the badness of our current municipal methods than the way street-paving is usually done. In New York the charter and the laws upon this question have been so tampered with that chaos has ensued. Streets can now be newly paved only by consent of a certain proportion of the owners of property on the street; this consent is almost impossible to be obtained, and so the pavements are likely to become intolerable, mere repairing in many instances being insufficient. Now, it is entirely obvious that the wear and tear of street-pavements are caused solely by vehicles. When a street is first opened, the grading and paving may well be assessed upon the adjacent property, because this property is enhanced in value by access being given to it; and the cost of replacing pavements removed for building sewers, or setting gas or water pipes, should fall upon the special interests concerned; but the cost of repaving streets, and the cost of all repairs with the exceptions made, should be paid from a special tax upon vehicles. There can be no disputing the justice of this. The friction is caused solely by vehicles, and they ought to make good the wear and tear they have caused. Just now the omnibuses and a few public trucks pay licenses, but the sum thus collected is fairly infinitesimal beside the amount expended to

keep the streets even in the poor repair that we find them. There was a time when nearly all the carrying of merchandise was done by public cartmen or licensed vehicles, but the growth and centralization of business have led every wholesale trader and very many others to set up their own vehicles, and these pay no license. Our streets are crowded with ponderous trucks transporting heavy merchandise hither and thither, crushing and grinding up the pavements, all of which pay nothing whatever toward restoring that which they injure. Look at the thousands of ponderous ice-carts that grind up the pavements, which property by assessment, or the general public by tax, must pay for! Every vehicle should be taxed on a scale graduated according to weight and purpose for which it is used. Not even the light buggy-wagon should escape; not the private carriage; not the market-wagon from the country. There should be no free list. If all were taxed fairly to an extent just sufficient for the purposes in view, none would have a right to complain. Even a portion of the cost of cleaning the streets should be included in this tax, inasmuch as the accumulations removed are largely caused by this travel. This principle should also be applied to the wharves, and indeed to every thing when it is practicable to do so. The cost of collecting ashes and garbage should be paid for by those benefited thereby. This is the rule with the Croton water supply; it should be the rule in every thing else. The police are for the benefit of the whole; the lighted streets are for the benefit of the whole let the cost of these departments be met by special taxes falling upon every individual, but all other expenditures should be refunded by the special interest or class concerned. There is nothing delusive or illusive in these suggestions; they are simply the plain common-sense principles that control all private business, and when introduced into public affairs will work a great revolution for the better.

OUR English cousins seem never to be tired of talking and writing about the habits and manners of Americans. We do not please them in any thing we say or do, and hence the question is likely to arise ere long whether Americans sufficiently consider their dignity in becoming guests of a people who have for them always the critical and rarely the kindly word. We believe it to be true that no nationality is ever fully in sympathy with any other nationality; there is something in the whole mode of thought and grain of character of each people that is strange and repellent to the mode of thought and grain of character of every other people; and hence when we see two nations in constant

contact with each other, each of which profoundly believes in itself, there are pretty sure to be all sorts of collisions and antagonisms. One might argue that the people of the United States and Great Britain are too nearly allied to justify the hatred and ceaseless bickerings that exist between them; but this very nearness is undoubtedly an aggravating cause. The bitterness of family jealousies is proverbial. English social circles tolerate with equanimity the strange manners of the Orientals, but resent the slightest violation of etiquette on the part of those who are supposed to have the same maxims of breeding; and the American, tolerant enough of the peculiarities of all distinctly foreign races, is exasperated at the hauteur, the rude bruskness, and the lordly assumptions of John Ball. In these frictions neither Englishman nor American sees the other quite rightly, and each magnifies greatly the defects exhibited by the other. Nations as well as individuals that profoundly believe in themselves are very apt to be excessively disagreeable to other nations in possession of the same selfconfident patriotism. But it seems to us that the irritation which Englishmen feel toward Americans is continually on the increase. The bad taste or bad breeding of one of their own set is forgotten as soon as the occasion passes; but the bad taste or bad breeding of an American is magnified by watchful eyes, and cherished with a perennial passion. One nowadays can rarely take up an English journal without finding something fisagreeably critical of our people—often unfairly critical and unnecessarily disagreeable. It is not wise nor in good taste for one to be forever dwelling on the defects of his neighbors; they have their defects, no one will deay, but in this world of glass houses it is only prudent to refrain from seeing and fretting over all the evil ways of other people; and if our English friends hence wouldn't put under the microscope so ceaselessly, it would be better for their and our peace of mind.

As an instance of what we have to encounter from unfriendly critics abroad is the subjoined wholly gratuitous piece of critieism from the correspondent of an English newspaper:

"As regards private society, there can be no doubt that our transatlantic friends are made very welcome, and they would be made still more welcome but for one peculiarity, which nine-tenths of them seem unable to get ril of, unless, indeed, when a lengthened residence in Europe works a cure. This pecuarity on the part of nearly every American ne meets is a profound self-consciousness of his being American-a self-consciousness which erntinually provokes him to comparison. He seems to be haunted by the notion that the English people have a poor opinion of Ameriea, and that he must on all occasions prove the superiority of every thing American to

every thing European. This is patriotic, but tiresome. An Englishman is not anxious to defend the institutions of his country in argument, because he considers them impervious to attack. But an American has not arrived at this pitch of complacency, and especially within the first month or two of his stay over here he must needs go about making all manner of comparisons between this country and his own, of course to the advantage of the latter. He does not see how heartily tired of this painful self-consciousness his English friends become, nor yet the admirable selfcontrol with which they refrain from arguing with him, and replying to his reflections with obvious retorts."

The first answer that occurs to this is, that it is not true. Altogether too large a proportion of Americans abroad are greatly enamored of English life and institutions, and the comparisons they ceaselessly institute are to their country's disadvantage. There are other travelers who go to Europe with immense expectations, and discover that after all there are a few compensating things on this side of the Atlantic; the comparisons they make, with too much freedom, perhaps, arise from the interest they take in the contrast of the two civilizations, instead of from that frightful" self-consciousness" which the critic sets his lance at. And then as to the retorts which the Englishmen do not utter, why, doubtless the critic does not hear them-one always only sees and hears that which he is interested in seeing and hearing-but the often-rasped tympanum of the American hears them far too frequently for his temper or his peace of mind; and let us say that if this critic will take into his confidence a few Americans, he will learn that here the same identical complaints are made of the traveling John Bull in our midst-who is reported by critical and over-sensitive observers to be ever supercilious, contemptuous, arrogant, depreciative, and prone no less than the American abroad to be "patriotic but tiresome."

Under all the circumstances it might work well if both sides stopped nagging. This, however, is probably asking too much. The pleasure of fault-finding is something that the ordinary man or woman is wholly unwilling to forego.

IN a recent address, ex-President Woolsey, of Yale, boldly advanced the idea that men who feel themselves well qualified for office should openly and frankly propose themselves for it. This is the English fashion; in the United States, our public men are, to appearance at least, more shy and modest. There is a perverse streak in the average human nature which leads people, the moment it is known that a man would really like an office, to object to him on that very account. The very fact that he wants it is considered an excellent reason why he

should not have it, no matter what his qualifications may be. The escape from the dilemma is not a very difficult one. Instead of committing the frank impropriety of asking to be a candidate outright, the office-wisher has only to mention the matter confidentially to one or two intimate friends. Then little complimentary paragraphs begin to appear in the papers; the idea of the propriety of electing a certain gentleman to a certain office seems often, strangely enough, to strike several editors at the same time. Then, in the caucus or convention, the name is launched, laudatory speeches are made, and the nomination is carried. Of course, the candidate is not present; of course, he is overcome with surprise when he is waited on by a committee to conduct him "before the convention," though it is a curious coincidence that the committee knows exactly where he is, and finds him with delightful facility; and, of course, he is only induced to accept the nomination by the evidences that he alone can lead the party to triumph, and that he must fain sacrifice his own wishes and convenience to the country, the state, or the township, as the case may be! It must be confessed that these little subterfuges and hypocrisies are not a favorable beginning of a public career, nor do they augur well for the scrupulous uprightness of the would-be public servants who employ them. There is really nothing disgraceful in the desire to occupy an office of trust and honor, and there is no reason why a man who knows that his experience and talents qualify him for it should not express the desire, or why he should be voted against on account of such an expression. The chances are that an honest and capable man who openly confesses that he desires an office will fill it far better than one who pretends that he does not.

M. GAMBETTA is deserving of no slight praise for declining the duel proposed to him by that young imperialist fire-eater, Paul de Cassagnaç. In this country, where dueling has gone out of fashion, and has grown happily discreditable, it is not easy to appreciate the moral courage which is required of a Frenchman, especially a Frenchman who is prominent in the public eye, and has a reputation for personal fearlessness to sustain, in refusing a challenge. That Gambetta has had the nerve not only to decline to set himself up to be shot at or lunged at by a political enemy, but to say that his life is needed by his party and France, and is not at the disposal of a hot-blooded young man who imagines he has been insulted, is one more proof of the ex-dictator's sound sense and good judgment. It must not be forgotten that Gambetta is himself an eager partisan

and a man of warm passions. He is from the sunny South, and his manhood has been for the most part passed in the Bohemia of Paris. But he has very serious work before him to aid in fully establishing the republic; and he has little leisure or disposition for the dangerous by-plays of what is still too much regarded in France as manly gallautry. It is to be hoped that he has credit enough to set a new fashion, and to recall to the French mind the truth which has been found out long ago in England and America, that a man who kills another in a duel does not prove himself right, nor is he who is killed proved thereby to be in the wrong. The union of the rapier and the pen in Paris sanctums has been too productive of false notions of honor, not to speak of the tragedies which have now and then resulted from

it; and the sooner it is divorced the better it will be for the good of French society and the tone of the press. That "the pen is mightier with the sword" is the Parisian rendering of Bulwer's famous motto; but the belligerent journalism which has adopted it has not proved its truth by the event. Gam

betta will have added one more claim to the gratitude and admiration of all his rightminded countrymen by showing that it really requires more courage to decline than to accept a duel.

WHO does not envy the angler, who, armed cap-a-pie with all the deft modern contrivances for pursuing the game of the waters, from reel-rod to bait-pouch, in these days may be seen taking train or steamboat for the mossy haunts he knows but will not tell of? To us who have to remain in the

WE

*

Literary.

E imagine that it will give the catalogue-makers some trouble to classify Mr. Drake's "Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast" under any of the usual heads. It is not a guide-book, though it will serve admirably as a guide to all points of interest in the localities treated of. It is not a history, though the reader who has finished it will find himself possessed of more facts in old Colonial and Revolutionary history than he has gathered, perhaps, from all other sources combined. Neither is it a collection of legends, traditions, and anecdotes, though each of these receive a goodly share

of the author's attention. It is all of these, in fact, and more; for, in addition to its picturesque descriptions, its curious bits of historical learning, its rehabilitations of old legends, traditions, anecdotes, etc., it presents vivid sketches of famous local personages, and of the pursuits, habits, and characteristic traits of the people of to-day. The portly volume, in short, is a sort of commonplace-book, classified by locality instead of by topics, into which a writer, who is at once an antiquarian, a student, a traveler, and an artist, has emptied the contents of his notebooks, memory, and sketch-book. The arrangement of the materials, moreover, harmonizes perfectly with their miscellaneous character; and a perusal of one of its chapters is like an actual ramble, without guide or chaperon, through an unfamiliar old townfull of surprises, of digressions, and of unexpected sights and experiences. The subject of one paragraph affords no clew whatever to the character of the next, which is more likely than not to deal with a wholly different matter. A crumbling fort, a shapeless heap of stones, an old well, or a weatherbeaten house, will furnish the text for a curi

cool and breezy he looks! What shady nooks, and deep, cool woods, and grateful solitude, and unanxious reverie, and gentle excitement, does he bring up in the fancy! Despite what people say who have never followed Peter's example, or put themselves under the quaint and genial tutelage of old Walton, angling is a manly, healthy, altogether reasonable sport, one which is always in fashion—and only those habits are always in fashion which are rooted in the core of human nature-and one of which he who once fairly tastes its joys very rarely tires. Happily our country is yet large enough for all its anglers; there is a string of trout or a basket of pickerel, blue-fish, or bass, somewhere for every man. We may rightly give

a chuckle of satisfaction at this when we think of our English cousins, who have to buy their fishing unless they are lords of the manor; and many of whom we welcome here, coming across the Atlantic as they do in shoals to enjoy free angling to their heart's

content.

stone or a family name will recall some famous exploit of "the brave days of old;" a jutting headland, or cape, or island, leads us off into nice speculations on the topography of the early voyages of Captain John Smith, of Champlain, of Cartier, or De Monts; a light-house or a ragged reef suggests some thrilling story of shipwreck and storm; and a fisherman's wherry floats us off into a description of the methods of catching, curing, and marketing fish. All this is told in a deliberately unmethodical way; but the reader finds, nevertheless, that when he has finished the chapter on Marblehead, for example, he knows the famous old town as he never knew it before.

The nooks and corners to which Mr. Drake invites us are not, as might be supposed, out-of-the-way or little-known spots, but places the names of which at least are very familiar. Beginning with Mount Desert, which, by-the-way, he describes in its winter aspect, he drops down successively to Castine, Pemaquid Point, Monhegan Island, Wells Beach, Kittery Point, the Isles of Shoals,

* Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast. By Samuel Adams Drake. With Numerous Illustrations. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Newcastle, Salem, Marblehead, Plymouth, Provincetown, Nantucket, Newport, New London, Norwich, and Saybrook. Though he has a keen eye for the picturesque, and describes the natural attractions of the several places with exceptional spirit, Mr. Drake is evidently in search not so much of geographical byways as of what is quaint and interesting in its historical, architectural, or personal aspects; and, of course, such a search would lead him naturally to those famous old towns on the New England coast which contain almost all of antiquarian interest that America has to show, and the main attraction of which lies in the past rather than in the actual present.

Whether the reader will draw a sufficiently favorable inference from what we have said above seems doubtful, so we will say pointedly that we have found the book a very charming one. A pleasanter volume, indeed, to carry along on a summer's jaunt it would be difficult to name, for it does not demand continuous reading, and may be dipped into at any point with the certainty of finding something both to instruct and amuse. As for those who contemplate a visit to any of the places discribed, it should be regarded as an indispensable item of their luggage.

The illustrations are profuse, numbering upward of three hundred, and are notably good. There are maps, too, and charts which will prove useful to the tourist.

Or all the attempts made in recent years to popularize science, or rather the know!edge which science has brought to light, a little volume entitled "The Childhood of Religions," by Edward Clodd, F. R. A. S. (New York: D. Appleton & Co.), is one of the most successful. Its object, indeed, is not merely to popularize the information which it imparts, but to present it in such simple and elementary form, and in such pleasing guise, that it will take hold upon the mind of children. There is urgent need of such treatises; for science will never secure its due hold upon the thought and feelings of mankind until the new light which it throws upon the things that are usually taught to children is brought before them at the same time, and children will never acquire this knowledge unless it is made at least as attractive to them as other forms of knowledge. Most of the efforts hitherto made to provide these have failed, either through lack on the part of the writers of perfect mastery of their subject, or from their inability to meet the peculiar intellectual demands of the young; and we do not recall another instance than Mr. Clodd's where perfect success has been achieved. The qualifications which Mr. Clodd brings to the task are an abounding knowl. edge of the subject of which he treats, and of all subjects related to it, a wonderful aptitude for picking out the cardinal facts and grouping them in picturesque and striking relations, and a singularly simple and clear but vivid and almost poetical style. Though treating of a subject as solemn as any that can engage the human mind, and treating it in a serious and reverential spirit, "The Childhood of Religions," from the first page to the last, is as charming as a fairy-tale, as

are

"I may take this opportunity," he says, "of remarking that my critics frequently assume that I attribute all changes of corporeal structure and mental power exclusively to the natural selection of such variations as often called spontaneous; whereas, even in the first edition of the Origin of Species,' I distinctly stated that great weight must be attributed to the inherited effects of use and disuse, with respect both to the body and mind. I also attributed some amount of modification to the direct and prolonged action of changed conditions of life. Some allowance, too, must be made for occasional reversions of structure; nor must we forget what I have called 'correlated' growth, meaning thereby that various parts of the organization are in some unknown manner so connected that when one part varies, so do others; and if variations in the one are accumulated by selection, other parts will be modified. Again, it has been said by several critics, that when I found that many of the details of structure in man could not be explained through natural selection, I invented sexual selection; I gave, however, a tolerably clear sketch of this principle in the first edition of the Origin of Species,' and I there stated that it was applicable to man. This subject of sexual selection has been treated at full length in the present work, simply because an opportunity was here first afforded me. I have been struck with the likeness of many of the half-favorable criticisms on sexual selection, with those which appeared at first on natural selection; such as that it would explain some few details, but certainly was not applicable to the extent to which I have employed it. My conviction of the power of sexual selection remains unshaken; but it is probable, or almost certain, that several of my conclusions will hereafter be found erroneous; this can hardly fail to be the case in the first treatment of a subject. When

*The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. By Charles Darwin, M. A. With Illustrations. New edition, revised and augmented. Complete in one volume. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

naturalists have become familiar with the idea of sexual selection, it will, as I believe, be much more largely accepted; and it has already been fully and favorably received by several capable judges."

THE publication of the "Hôtel du Petit St.-Jean," two or three years ago, brought its author general praise as a "promising writer,"

but it would be difficult to find in "Iseulte " (New York: Harper & Brothers) the fulfillment of any promise whatever. It is a thoroughly commonplace story, some of the worst faults of which come simply from a lack of painstaking on the part of the author, who seems to have thought that the war episodes (the scene of the story is laid in France) would compensate for all other deficiencies. These episodes, however, are painful and nothing more; and the public has lost its interest by this time in the kind of writing with which the " war-correspondents "have made us unpleasantly familiar. As to the characters, so called, there is no one of them who succeeds in awakening any real interest. Iseulte, who is introduced to us as "the orphan daughter of a scholar, the ward of an unscrupulous man of business, the abandoned wife of a fraudulent financier, the cousin of a savunt, and the sister of a nun," turns out after all to be a very humdrum, inoffensive, and rather stupid sort of person, in whose "trials" it is hard to feel more than a perfunctory interest. Her sister is a mere phantom; and the male characters resemble actual men in the same way and to about the same degree that a tailor's dummy does. The style is a sort of patchwork of English and French, the English being further deformed by outlandish adjectives, and such hybrids as “predeceased.”

"Iseulte," in short, is a story that is very far from creditable to an author who has shown that she can do better work.

from end to end, which could not be said of nearly all his earlier poems. It is so thoroughly dramatic that it might, with an adequate cast of actors, be produced with the highest effect on the stage. Almost all the characters who play a real part in the drama, however slightly touched, are clearly defined-Philip, whose disgust for the Queen is powerfully painted, but who remains otherwise something of a cold, cruel, and sensual shadow, being perhaps in some degree an exception." In conclusion, says: "On the whole, we

think we may say that this is a play which will compare with something more than advantage with Shakespeare's Henry VIII.’ Of course, that is by no means the finest even of the historical plays of Shakespeare — and we only mention it because it, too, contains a study of the good and of the evil qualities of the Tudor character-but then no play of any modern poet's would be likely to rank with any of the greater plays of Shakespeare. Certainly we should be surprised to hear that any true critic would rate 'Queen Mary,' whether in dramatic force or in general power, below 'Henry VIII.,' and our own impression is that it is a decidedly finer work of dramatic art."

The Athenæum, on the other hand, regards the result as not such as to encourage Mr. Tennyson to further effort in the same direction. "It could not, indeed, be otherwise.

No English poet is more essentially narrative or lyrical than the laureate. . . Never is there that collision of interest, that feud of motive, which are indispensable in a true drama; nowhere is there a situation which is really dramatic, or which might not as well, or better, have been brought before the reader by narrative. . . . While, however, the verdict upon 'Queen Mary' as a drama is that it lacks all essentially dramatic quality, that it fails to stir or to rouse, it is none the less a work of serious effort and sustained purpose. It presents vividly before the reader the state of England during this reign of terror, and gives elaborate pictures of the principal actors in the great tragedy then being enacted. So much more valuable, indeed, is the play from this point of view than from the dramatic standpoint, that it is easier and more practicable to dwell upon the separate characters than upon the progressive action."

The Academy is disposed to agree with the Athenæum as to the dramatic deficiencies of the work: "A monotonous and continuous mental distress-the distress of jealousy, of lovelessness-is only broken for a moment by hope of child-bearing. The suffering finds no vent in action, unless the cutting of Philip's picture out of its frame be action; the pain is unrelieved by incident, unless the burning of Cranmer may be considered as a relief." It concedes, however, that "Queen Mary' is full of various interest and insight; it shows powers unguessed at, and as yet scarcely to be appreciated. This is too early a day to guess at its future place and rank in English poetry and among the works of Mr. Ten

THERE is considerable divergence of opinion among the London literary journalists as to the merits of Tennyson's "Queen Mary." The Spectator agrees with us in thinking that it is full of dramatic force and fire: "We will not say that it is Mr. Tennyson's best work, but it is among his best works. It is strong

Mr. G. W. SMALLEY, London correspondent of the Tribune, gives an interesting account of the circumstances under which it was decided to put Tennyson's "Queen Mary" 3 on the stage. He says: "I believe the idea of d bringing out his drama occurred first to Mr. Tennyson during a visit to the Lyceum. He was charmed, as well he might be, with the acting of Miss Isabel Bateman, and asked to see her. In conversation with Miss Isabel and her mother, he mentioned his forthcoming) 'Queen Mary.' Presently Mr. Irving was sent