hended in their full force by those who have | mental impressions that had previously passed Now for the sequel. On careful inquiry, in some of their aspects, but to be viewed with apprehension and corrected by medical treatment, if possible, not exhibited to gratify the morbid curiosity of such as are always hunting for miracles and mysteries.* One or two points in reference to both these cases should be noted, in order that their bearing may be fairly appreciated. In each family the elder brother, who may be fairly presumed to have been the product of the highest physical vigor of the parents, partially escapes the taint, which appears in the elder Eddy only as intellectual predisposition, and in the elder Has a tendency to vertigo. Again, of the two Eddy boys, who are mediums, the elder and stronger, a man of vital temperament, and about thirty years of age, produces the materializing phenomena, while the younger and punier of them is a trance-medium. I speak conventionally when I talk of the phenomena produced by these mediums; for, having made it a rule not to trouble myself with investigating public séances where the probabilities are that all the necessary facilities for optical deception have been prearranged, I did not apply any tests whatever, and limited my inquiries to the detection and description of the epileptic predisposition. And if any reader should say that it is impossible for a The case of the Eddy brothers, whose séances were noticed in my recent article, furnishes another illustration of the same state of facts. The father was a Methodist exWhat is styled credulity has its physiological horter of the most emotional type. The basis, in the majority of instances, so far as I have mother was a compound of religious enthu- observed, either in the existence of peculiar nersiast and fortune-teller. The maternal ances- vous experiences or in a predisposition that renders them possible. In the course of my intimacies try was actively concerned in the ancient with students, and with highly-cultivated persons, manifestations at Salem. The two youngwho were incapable of credulity in the ordinary acer brothers, mediums, have always been ceptation of the term, I have frequently observed subject to what the neighbors style "queer the phenomenon of an inherited predisposition battling for existence with the rational intellect, on spells," and the father had fits. The elder occasions when the nervous system was laboring brother is a Swedenborgian minister- that under excessive exhaustion. At such times, or in is to say, holds tenets peculiarly akin to periods of great nervous tension, inherited superthe doctrines of spiritualism. I investigated stitions very frequently assert themselves spontaneously, with something of their original force, the case in October last, some weeks after even with persons of the highest intellectual cultthe work on spiritualism had been submitted, ure. A man who has had trance-experiences at a and consequently was not able to include the period of nervous debility, or under the influence data in the forthcoming work—a thing to be of an anesthetic agent, knows experientially that such experiences are real, and that they bring with the more regretted because the facts are typthem a train of very singular and inexplicable psyically illustrative of the correlation that subchical impressions. In good health he may have sists between epilepsy and the paroxysms of no interest in such things, except to say truthfully the spiritual medium. Into the laws that that they may occur, and to concede their existence as strange psychological facts-morbid but real govern this correlation I will not now inproducts. On the other hand, in a very large class quire, as I have had my opportunity on that of persons, who, owing to favorable conditions in question. Physiologists cannot tell why it is life, know nothing of these phenomena experienthat a tomcat with blue eyes is always deaf, tially, the predisposition exists, and shows itself in what is generally termed credulity-that is to say, nor why gout is correlated with psoriasis. in a tendency to accept and dwell lovingly upon The facts are matters of observation, for the marvelous. In resolving this problem, it is which, in the present state of physiological worth the while to remember that all our psychiscience, no rational explanation can be ascal possibilities are potential in the nervous system, and that, comparatively speaking, these possigned; but they are none the less facts of sibilities vary exceedingly in different individuals, frequent occurrence, and of unquestionable are partly hereditary, partly acquired, and result validity. Again, in the phenomena of spirit- in that variety of intellectual biases that contact ualism, whoever will take the trouble to in- with men continually illustrates. The point I wish to impress particularly, however, is that the tenvestigate the nervous states and hereditary dency to believe in strange psychic phenomena is predisposition of one medium after another, generally the intellectual representative of an inuntil he has exhausted the list of available herent but often latent possibility of experiencing candidates, will find that the phenomena are them. Dr. Maudsley styles this latent neurosis. For example: the possibility of experiencing a so constantly associated with the epileptic premonitory dream must exist in the hervous orneurosis as to be justly classifiable with the ganism before a person can concede the reality of symptoms of that special type of nervous de- such a phenomenon. In other words, strange beliefs generation. Such being the case, clairvoyare the exponents of exceptional nervous susceptibilities. Good physical conditions, not rational ance and trance must be considered simply analysis, have been mainly instrumental in diminas the psychical exponents of certain morbidishing the popular interest in exceptional psychic states of the tissues of the brain-very strange facts. person to be indifferent as to the question whether the phenomena produced by the elder Eddy are genuine or spurious, I have simply to answer that I had previously witnessed similar phenomena in my own room, under conditions of test prescribed by myself, and that the important point with me was to verify the epileptic predisposition in as many instances of spiritual mediums as I could possibly or conveniently observe. Thus, having verified the materializing phenomena in several instances, and knowing, as a scientific verity, that they may occur, although I have an exceeding interest in the nervous traits and predispositions of a medium who can produce them, I am neither startled nor curious as to the feats themselves. From the scientific aspect, they are the least important phenomena of spiritualism - startling, astonishing, adapted to captivate the popular imagination, and to the production of sensational reports in the newspapers; but mere nervous tours de force that no man cares to witness after he has once decided whether they are real occurrences or not. Of course, after witnessing phenomena of this type, and while reviewing one's mental memoranda of them, the question always comes up whether they may not have been mere phantasms, optical illusions, reflex spectra, or something of such nature. For myself, I will say that I have lived in the world thirty-five years, and that, both as respects vision and hearing, I have always been noted for accuracy and delicacy of perception, and for mathematical distinctness of impression as to objects cognizable by the senses. A delusive sensation is something unknown to me. I have been, at various periods, subject to presentimental dreams and to waking premonitions, but, except in nervous fever, or under anesthesia, the nervous state known as clairvoyance is not within the circle of my experiences. As to impunity from what is generally styled nervousness, I could, I think, shake hands with a ghost at midnight without the slightest tremor, the fact being that I am so indifferent and unsympathetic in these matters that I am often ashamed of my own apathy when in conversation with persons of more enthusiastic temperament. The source of this indifference lies, no doubt, in the fact that I have an abiding and unfashionable sympathy with those higher spiritual forces and those higher aspects of spiritual culture that give | religion its vitality and its historical value and significance, and that, in view of the latter, with their deep but silent influence in redeeming human life to the higher good and the higher beautiful, the phenomena of spiritualism seem to me but morbid and fantastic mockeries of the really spiritualizing and ennobling. I have, hence, a peculiar immunity as respects illusion in regard to these phenomena, because of a thorough contempt for the moral and intellectual attitude of persons who can pass their lives in practising them. The investigation of them, indeed, has been with me but one of the minor aspects of a comprehensive series, with a view to unfold and demonstrate the scientific basis of religion. But I must frankly own, nevertheless, that the phenomena are in many cases real and genuine, and that, as such, psychological science cannot properly disregard them. This one warning let me give to amateur investigators unless you are thoroughly trained to habits of exact scientific investigation, and have passed patient years in the practical study of the anatomy, histology, functions, and forces of the nervous system, relegate this field of inquiry to men who make a specialty of neurological studies. If you have had such a training, and can unravel the details of a nervous organism, centre by centre, then, as a preliminary step, visit insane asylums and hospitals and prisons, and make yourself familiar from life with all the shades and varieties of morbid nervous phenomena. As an initial memorandum, you will find that, in insane asylums, along with every species of hallucination and delusion, the vision of spirits of the dead and the periodical paroxysm of clairvoyance are of constant occurrence. I have seldom observed an insane patient carefully through any number of paroxysms without finding that the fit was either preceded or followed-generally the former-by a period of clairvoyance, during which the intelligence exhibited participated in the same preternatural aspects that are common with trance-mediums. Next, on comparing the physical symptoms that accompany the trances of spiritual mediums with the more pronounced series observed in settled insanity, the investigator will find that they are substantially identical — the exponents of what may be styled a progressive nervous dissolution. The conclusion will thus be forced upon him that the phenomena of spiritualism are symptoms of nervous perversion and degeneracy, and that the singular forces illustrated in these phenomena are the results of rapid molecular transformations of the intimate structure of the nervous centres. Lastly, in order to verify this conclusion, he will direct his inquiries especially to the nervous states and hereditary tendencies of the mediums themselves. I have no hesitation in predicting the result of such a method of investigation; for, in all the mediums that I have examined as to these points, in not a single instance have minute observation and careful inquiry failed to detect and verify the existence of the epileptic neurosis; so that, strange as the phenomena appear, when superficially examined and regarded without reference to their etiology, the moment the inquiry is directed to their causes, they resolve themselves into morbid products of nervous disturbance. On the other hand, they differ in many respects from phenomena generally classed with the products of unconscious cerebration. I will give an instance of the latter which has just been contributed to my portfolio by Dr. S. J. Parker, of Ithaca, New York, formerly a surgeon in the United States Army. "In the great Grant advance of 1864," writes Dr. Parker, a soldier came to me while acting as surgeon at the White House on York River, with a grape-shot of two ounces in weight imbedded in his forehead. The wound and laceration were frightful. The whole forehead skull was crushed from the hair over the right ear to the hair over the left, and from just above the eyes to and into the hair growing on the frontal part of the head. The ball lay under fragments of the skull just above the right eye. I extracted it without relief to the symptoms, which were as follows: on. "Although the man had walked sixteen miles after he was shot, in a military attitude, with his musket on his shoulder, he was determined to keep on walking, and I was compelled to have him thrown down and his musket taken away by force, to prevent him from continuing his monotonous military tramp. He would stop an instant, answer feebly any question put to him, then walk on. Being turned about by force, he would walk on in the new direction until he was stopped and turned again; yet taking notice of obstacles in his way, avoiding trees, fording streams of water with his usual care, and so When compelled to lie still he evinced no disposition to get up, or even to alter his position. When I compelled him to eat, he went on with the motions of eating after the food was exhausted and until I stopped him forcibly. But walking without the power to stop was the symptom that supervened whenever he was excited. He slowly and feebly answered all my questions; stated that he had no pain, did not think he was in any danger, and was not badly hurt; expressed a wish to have his wound dressed and to return to the field, but did not care particularly whether I dressed it or not; showed great muscular strength, so that it required considerable force to compel him to obey surgical orders. After he had been held fast by me and my assistants for a few minutes, he was ordered to stand and present arms. He did so very promptly, and would have died, I think, rather than stir out of his tracks, unless by some jar or concussion of the brain he was set to walking again, when off he would tramp in military style, avoiding obstacles in his way with the usual care of a conscious man." In this instance, with the ideo-motor centres of the brain completely contused, the inquirer has a case that offers a tolerably satisfactory illustration of the kind of actions which occur in unconscious cerebration. The temporal lobes of the brain, the cerebellum or locomotive centre, the vital and spinal centres, and the centres and organs of sensation, were still intact, with the possible exception of the olfactory organism. The whole sensory and instincto-motor man was still uninjured; but his movements were purely automatic, so far as could be gathered from the symptoms. This dramatic case (Huxley describes at length a very similar one in his 1874-paper before the British Association) indicates very minutely and distinctly the relative limits and traits of unconscious nervous action, as compared with voluntary movements. In the phenomena of spiritualism, on the other hand, the physiologist has to deal, not with extirpation of the anterior lobes (ideo-motor centres), but with the morbid function of those lobes, which are the great centres of perception, of volition, aud of ideation, and in which the multifarious activities of other ganglia of the nervous system become subjects of cognition and consciousness. Clair voyance is thus one of the results of morbid function of the perceptive centres of the human brain, while hallucination and illusion accompany morbid function of the sensory centres, and are by no means symptoms of such weighty import as their more quiet correlative. The latter often coexist with unimpaired intellectual faculties; the former, particularly in its settled stages, engenders an intellectual bias (aura), which is fatal to mental soundness, and invariably predisposes its victim to accept such tenets as the literature of spiritualism illustrates. In all my conversations with avowed spiritualists, during the last ten years, I have never committed the blunder of imagining that argument could be of any avail. To the few who were drifting in that direction, and who have expressed the fear that they should become spiritualists unless certain phenomena they had witnessed could be resolved, I have latterly ventured to suggest that the predisposition to accept these doctrines is in itself something that calls for medical treatment rather than for argument, and to the eradication of which tonics are better adapted than talking. In the sad case of Robert Dale Owen, for example, an inherited predisposition existed in the first instance. The intellectual bias that rendered him a life-long spiritualist, and partly vitiated the work of a brilliant mind, was but the natural result of this predisposition; and the insanity that has at last overtaken him can be justly viewed in no other light than as the final stage of the disorder. I had an hour's interview with Mr, Owen in the winter of 1873-'74, intending to discuss his case in connection with that of the late Judge Edmonds, and shall never forget the vivid impression I then had that the shadow of madness was already over him. It suffices to say that the impression led me to omit his name in the list of cases, and merely to allude to it elsewhere, lest some word of mine might hasten the impending destiny, and that the sad finale has justified that omission. A more terrible warning to enthusiastic spiritualists than the fate of this apostle of their doctrines could * Two days after the above was written, the following note, on Mr. Owen's case, from the Superintendent of the Indiana State Hospital for the Insane, was placed in my hands. The practised alienist says: "Referring to an article in which, inferentially, the insanity of Robert Dale Owen, now in my care, is connected with the celebrated Katie King impostures, I beg leave to state, for the benefit of the many persons interested, that, while I believe the merest assumption of personal Bensuous communication with spirit beings is evidence of insanity, Mr. Owen's present condition is clearly attributable to other predisposing or exciting causes than spiritualism, in any of its phases, theoretical or experimental. The whole subject of spiritualism seems, indeed, to have dropped out of Mr. Owen's thought." I have put in italics a statement of opinion as to the symptomatic value of the vision of spirits, which is almost word for word coincident with the view I have expressed in the work on spiritualism. The mere fact that spiritualism is not even alluded to in his ravings, however, by no means demonstrates the doctor's view that his speculations and investigations have had no influence in inducing them. The predisposing cause of the break-down of the nervous system was very certainly hereditary taint, and pronounced spiritualism was simply one of the stages of the disorder, but assisted to bring on the crisis. not possibly have occurred to give point to what physiology has to say on the subject. The result is, however, by no means an isolated or even an uncommon one. The last days of many a medium have been passed in the insane hospital or in slowly-progressive idiocy. What, then, is the last word that physiology has to say as to the phenomena and literature of spiritualism? Simply this: that the phenomena are invariably associated with the epileptic neurosis, either hereditary or acquired; that the apparently occult forces and the strange sources of intelligence often illustrated at séances are the exponents of an environing nervous influence, consequent upon degeneration of the nervous centres, and engendered in a manner analogous to the production of electricity by the decomposition of zinc in solution of nitric acid; that, finally, the predisposition to accept the doctrines and tenets of spiritualism is one of the consequences of such nervous disturbance, and should be treated as a symptom of nervous disorder, not argued with after the manner that one man argues with another on scientific questions.* These are not statements of a theory intended to explain the phenomena-that is, to tell how they are produced, as one explains the swinging of a pendulum. They are facts of observation that lay bare the causes, not of the phenomena only, but of the mental predisposition also, that has eventuated in giving spiritualism a distinctive and peculiar literature. However genuine the phenomena, and however real the superhuman intelligence exhibited by medi The citation from Mr. Lecky, page 20 of ApPLETONS' JOURNAL, July 3d, illustrates the defects of the so-called philosophical (generalizing) manner of treating these questions. It is very true, perhaps, that the phenomena of sorcery have never been disproved, but it is quite untrue that they have ceased to exist as the rationalizing process has made progress, or by specific rational action. As respects name, these phenomena have suffered many transformations from age to age, appearing now under the designation of magic, now as sorcery, now in the practices of the mystics and illuminati, now as mesmerism, finally as spiritualism. But they have been substantially the same under all their designations. The fakirs (mystics) of Hindostan and Arabia have depended upon them for ages for their influence with their respective races, and there is ground to believe that they formed the basis of the very ancient Egyptian mysteries. Salverte's history of the occult sciences shows this, I think, beyond a doubt, although he holds a different theory. The apparent death of the fakirs of the Orient has, indeed, never been equaled in the phenomena of modern spiritualism. The truth is, when the history of the Aryan races is carefully examined, it is clear that this series of phenomena has descended from the remotest ages, and that among the Greeks the mysteries unquestionably consisted mainly in their practice. It was thus, on account of the singular phenomena associated with it, that the ancients styled epilepsy the sacred madness, and it is now quite well authenticated that candidates for priests were accepted or rejected on this basis alone. That is to say, the epileptic predisposition was essential to the office, and no candidate was admitted to the study of the mysteries who was not susceptible of the paroxysm. As the conditions of living have become improved, the percentage of epileptics has diminished. This is the manner in which the progress of rationalism affects the issue and extirpates the tendency to accept marvels. Men believe in their own experiences, whether morbid or healthy, and cease to believe when the experiences cease to oc cur. ums, these facts are fatal to the system; for, if spiritualism means any thing to the great problems that trouble human life, it means that the persons who produce these phenomena and have this faculty of clairvoyance are persons of higher organization than their fellows, and that, in the course of progressive ages, the century will come when the development of this faculty will be general. If, then, it is a morbid product, and if mediums are persons of inferior rather than of superior organization, the system has no real basis, and its phenomena are of no interest except as data in scientific psychology. It is not incumbent on physiologists to construct a clock-work theory as to the manner in which nervous influence acts on environing objects. That will come by-and-by, perhaps, when the laws and properties of nervous influence have been more thoroughly investigated. At present it would be premature, although it might be ingenious, to attempt such an explanation in detail, and physiology has more premature theorizing to answer for already than is consistent with scientific exactness. FRANCIS GERRY FAIRFIELD. FLIRTATION. AROSE-BUD in its first green coat, You wrapped your shawl about your throat, And crossed the lawn, when we went boating; A brand-new world, where never sin Flash four ways, like the angel's sabre. And as my dreamy fancy sketched Far drifting on the clouds of even, I touched the shy, reluctant glove; And be between the earth and heaven? Soft fiction of the fickle mist! Flashed venom at my disappointment; But ever in this world of ours SHOULD the present insurrection in Her- having made the heirs of the last Servian zegovina prove to be an organized resistance to the Turkish tax-collectors, Montenegro would, in all probability, swiftly join in the fray. Late visitors to the latter community unite in declaring that the whole population is burning with impatience for war with the Turk. Indeed, it is not at all unlikely that the Montenegrins have excited this new rebellion in Herzegovina in the same way that they fomented and brought about the one which took place in 1860; expecting to take part, as they did then, in the conflict, and hoping to be more successful than they were at that time. And, as Montenegro is the especial protégée of Russia, it would not be very strange if this little confederation of mountain villages should, in this way, precipitate that great war between the European powers which the most skillful diplomacy has of late been barely able to prevent. Montenegro-or, as its inhabitants call it, Tzernagora, that is, "Black Mountain "—has rather more than eighteen hundred square miles of territory, and a population of about one hundred and thirty thousand souls. It is a mere cluster of mountains, covered in most places by thick, dark forests. There are no towns really worthy the name: Cettigne, or Zettinje, the capital; Rjeka, a port on Lake Scutari, and the other most important places, being actually nothing more than large villages. The dwellings of the poorer people are miserable huts, and there is no truly wealthy class in the country. Cut off from the Adriatic by the Austrian province of Dalmatia, they have very little commerce; their densely-wooded or bare and rocky mountains are not suitable for grazing, and the system of agriculture they pursue in the little plateaus and valleys interspersed through their land is, even to-day, too primitive in character to afford them much more than a subsistence. Game does not abound; and only one stream, flowing into Lake Scutari (or Skadar, as they call it), offers any advantages for fishing. Being thus restricted in the most usual modes of supporting existence, and, in a measure, besieged in their | mountain refuge, they long ago fell into the habit of acquiring the good things of this life by taking them away from their neighbors, especially the Turks. In fact, they may be said to have lived for a number of centuries mainly by war, and their history consists chiefly of one long struggle against the armies of the Ottoman Empire. When the great Slavonic kingdom of Servia was at the height of its power, Montenegro formed part of it, and then comprised, in intense. They had then just gotten news of the outrage at Podgoritza, in Albania, where two Montenegrins, flying from the rabble of the town, had sought refuge in the barracks, but had been thrust out by the soldiers, and butchered before the eyes of the Turkish officers. Their countrymen were nearly wild with excitement at this report. Every man was armed to the teeth, and the strenuous efforts of their rulers were hardly competent to prevent their instantly seeking revenge at the scene of the outrage. But the influence of Russia helped to preserve peace, and satisfaction was afforded by the Turkish Government. It was evident, however, that the Montenegrins were greatly disappointed at losing this opportunity for war, and it is not probable that they will allow another one to escape them. That these hardy mountaineers are good king the vassals of Sultan Bajazet I., the Montenegrins, led by their Prince Ivo the Black, a relative of the Servian royal family, retreated into their mountain-fastnesses, and declared themselves independent. But they have never been recognized as a free state by the nations of Europe, and the Turks have never relinquished their claim to authority over them. Yet, although the sultans quickly began trying to enforce this claim, it was long before even a semblance of control could be obtained by them in the Black Mountain. In 1516, the ruling prince of Montenegro resigned the secular power into the hands of the vladika, or GreekCatholic archbishop, making the government purely theocratic. Russia became the pro-fighters is proved by their almost uniformly tector of the country in 1710, agreeing to pay it an annual subsidy of eight thousand ducats, the consideration being that it should keep a portion of the Turkish forces engaged by frequent incursions. Four years afterward the Turks invaded Montenegro in great force, and succeeded in conquering it; but they were obliged to retreat soon afterward, and the little mountain state again proclaimed its independence. In 1796, the Pasha of Scutari attacked it with a large army, but suffered a disastrous defeat, losing no less than thirty thousand men. No more attempts to carry the war into their country were made until 1882, and the great expedition against them in that year also signally failed. Since 1851, the secular and religious governments have been separate, as of old; the vladika being the canonical, and the gospodar the temporal ruler. Yet, it has been noticed by travelers that many of the people still use the former title when speaking of their actual sovereign, the gospodar. During the war between Russia and the allied powers of Europe, Turkey sent a strong army under the renowned Omar Pasha to bring Montenegro into subjection; but this attempt, like so many others of the same kind, was without success. In 1860, however, when the Turks had suppressed the insurrection excited by the Montenegrins in Herzegovina, they pushed on into the country of the latter, and, after a hard struggle lasting two years, finally forced them to acknowledge the authority of the Porte. But it is very evident that these irrepressible Tzernagorzes are now on the point of another warlike movement. A German trav eler, who has more than once sojourned among them and recently published an account of his last visit to their country, in the summer of 1874, states that the war-feeling was at that time universal, deep-seated, and successful resistance for nearly five centuries to the armies which were for a great part of that time the terror of Christendom. Something is due, of course, to the natural defenses of their country, through which they have not, until very lately, allowed any roads to be made. But the people themselves have been its main defense. The German traveler before mentioned describes a band he saw in Rjeka during the Podgoritza excitement, which may be taken as a good specimen of their best fighting material. They were splendidly-formed young men, apparently as strong and active as wild mountain-stags. None were less than six feet in height, and their leader was a giant of at least seven. Each man carried a breechloading rifle, and had two revolvers and a yataghan in the red scarf around his waist. All were full of impatience to be over the border, and away into Albania. But these people are really fit for better things than war and plunder. They are intelligent, hospitable, ardent lovers of freedom, and, like the Slavonic race generally, devoted to music and lyric poetry. Their piesmas, or war-ballads, are often full of true poetic fervor, and the Vladika Pietro II., who succeeded to the sovereignty in 1830, was a poet of no mean capacity. He was also the originator of many of those improvements in the state which have very lately been carried to a much greater degree of perfection. These are the formation of a senate, the introduction of schools, the discouragement of vendettas and forays into neighboring districts, and the encouragement of home enterprise and peaceful industry. The improvements in these respects that have taken place within the last few years are now very marked. The capital has some respectable public buildings, and is the seat of a good female seminary, in which the two daughters of the gospodar sit beside those of plain citizens. The lake-port of Rjeka has some trade with the adjacent provinces, and is beginning to present a very modern and civilized appearance. And for the first time in the history of the country a good road is being constructed over the mountains, in spite of numerous almost insuperable difficulties. The only mode of traveling in Montenegro, heretofore, has been by means of narrow paths, winding up and down the sides of almost perpendicular cliffs, and along the brinks of terrible abysses. The new road, which is, probably, just being finished, will connect the country with the outside world, and throw it open to foreign influence. On the whole, there is good reason for believing that if the independence of Montenegro should be acknowledged and guaranteed by the great powers of Europe, thus giving it a definite status, and putting an end to its frequent hostilities with Turkey, it would soon become a peaceful and prosperous community. And even if it should be absorbed by the Austrian or Russian Empire, the same desirable effect might be expected to ensue. THERE can be no question of the fact that the law should be administered to the rich and the poor with equal rigor. In contrast with the course here in this matter, we are often called upon to admire the stern impartiality of British justice. In a land where rank is more reverenced and caste more rigid than in any other of the European countries, neither rank nor caste has the slightest weight in the courts of justice. But it would sometimes seem as if unnecessary pains were taken there to show that in the courts no distinction of persons exists. We have only recently been called upon to admire the stern impartiality of an Eng. lish justice in the case of a wealthy firm of London merchants charged with fraud. "When," says the account, "the heads of the firm were first brought before the magistrate, heavy bail was demanded. They were not allowed to go home while their friends hunted round for bail, but were remanded to Newgate. Their lawyer begged that they might at least be allowed to go to Newgate in a cab. The magistrate replied that if poor men were brought before him they would have to go to prison in the common that there was no difference in the offense with which the prisoners were charged, whether committed by rich or poor-conse. quently, he declined to grant the privilege applied for." Now, this act of the magistrate has been applauded as something very impartial, rigorous, and fine. Perhaps, however, a little consideration will show us that van; the course pursued in this case is not, after all, sanctioned by strict justice. It is sometimes required of justice that considerations for persons should wisely and rightly temper and mitigate its judgments. Previous good conduct, for instance, commonly qualifies the severity of a penalty that a court inflicts, just as the fact that the criminal is a notoriously bad character increases the severity of the sentence. If, then, it is proper to admit considerations of this kind in the case of a condemned person, assuredly it is right to give them weight in cases where the persons are accused but as yet remain unconvicted of guilt. Why should any unnecessary humiliation or suffering be inflicted upon any person in the preliminary stage of an accusation, when his criminal conduct is only assumed ? The horde of vagabonds brought before a London police justice may be dispatched to Newgate in a van with no special humiliation or shame felt by any of them; it is in their case no penalty; but to men of previous respectability, who may be innocent of the charges against them, it is a most degrading experience, and one that the justice which brags of its impartiality has no right to inflict. It would be improper to distinguish between rich and poor, but it is not improper to distinguish between previous respectability and notorious dissoluteness-between old offenders with every presumption of guilt and new prisoners with fair presumption of innocence. Justice may ignore distinctions of persons, but the character and antecedents of a criminal often determine whether a sentence is really light or severe. The very fact of a public arraignment is a great trial to some men, and the penalty of imprisonment, however brief, means for them endless shame and worldly ruin. To a hardened offender imprisonment is a serious inconvenience, but it gives no wound to the spirit, it is no overthrow of pride, it involves no loss of social place and esteem-it is simply a piece of bad luck, the consequences of which end with the termination of the penalty. In the case of Colonel Baker, recently condemned to a year's imprisonment for an improper assault upon a lady in the compartment of a railway-car, the punishment is no doubt justified by the crime, but the penalty is really absolute ruin, while to many men it would be comparatively a trifling matter. It is obvious that the significance and intensity of punishments vary greatly with individuals, and Justice can never be true to her high mission until her judgments are largely determined by the facts and circumstances pertaining to the offenders. This, it may be said, would not be so much a distinction between individuals as a distinction between conditions. Fortunately, there is a growing disposition to mark differences between and subsequent offenses. Between the ra youth who, in a moment of temptation, h. committed his first crime, and the hardene offender, there is assuredly a tremendous gulf, and we hope in time to see these two classes of criminals brought under distinctly different kinds of penalties-one being reformatory and, as far as possible, kindly, the other relentless and even revengeful, for against such offenders society owes nothing but the fires of her indignation. THE singular sweetness, simplicity, and purity of all Hans Christian Andersen's writings reflect the quality and give the keynote of the man himself. Of few authors can it be so emphatically said, as he himself used to say, that his works were himself. They are serene like himself, and exhibit all his delicate shades of feeling. They are ever instinct with a love of mankind, a bright way of looking upon the world (which he often called "the good world"), and, above all, a very sincere and childlike love of children. In the modern literature of Denmark, Hans Andersen is about the only name known outside of that country itself. He was one of the cosmopolitan writers, like Dickens, like Victor Hugo, like Turgeneff, like Longfellow. It is very rarely that even the greatest literary genius can impose his works upon foreign minds; it is still more rarely that a man can write as Andersen did, so as to please at once Danish and English, German and Russian children. He must rise above nationality, be something more than the scion of a race. That dear old Hans Andersen was as welcome at the firesides of St. Petersburg and San Francisco as at those of Copenhagen, indicates that, without a very wonderful imagination, and even without the highest faculty of dramatic power, he was master of the chord of Nature which touches the universal human heart. He was kind, unselfish, cheerful, fresh, clear, and simple, a gentlest teacher of the virtues, with a light, pure, graceful fancy, which lent poetry and imparted pleasure to his thoughts, and made the few simple principles he wished to inculcate easy to receive; and the emotions he thus touched are those which civilized humanity partakes in common. To even suggest that Hans Andersen's books are free from the slightest taint of impurity, seems to be doing a sort of violence to his sweet memory. Those who knew him speak of him as a sort of typified innocence. In his daily life he seems to have been utterly guileless; he was very unwilling to believe evil of any one, and was at the farthest extreme from those who indulge in lamentations over the depravity of the world. No writer has lived of whom it could be more aptly said that he saw (6 sermons in stones, books in |