"I looked at the body," says the policeman, in court, "and said, "He's been dead four days.' I thought he had been drowned and washed up. I pulled him out, and then found he was alive and quite sensible."

The prisoner, on being asked if he wished to put any question, said:

"No, sir. I don't care to trouble him. I don't remember any thing about it. He says he pulled me out; so I am much obliged to him. All I know is, that I found myself very wet at the police-station, and didn't like it. He says I had been dead four days, so I suppose I must have come to life again."

"I think," says the magistrate, "you were very drunk, and I must fine you ten shillings."

"Oh, make it five; I'm out of work."

A fierce-looking old woman was charged with begging at Guildhall.

The magistrate told her she was not allowed to beg.

"But I will, though!"

"You cannot be allowed to break the law with impunity, and I commit you to prison for twenty-one days."

Prisoner (vehemently). “I mean to do it, though; and, what is more, that vagabond Hill" (the inspector)" is the cause of this, and when I come out I will throw a pint of vitriol in his face!"

"You will have no gin where you are going."

"Oh, indeed!" (ironically).

"Nor shall you participate with the other prisoners in the usual Christmas cheer."

Prisoner (mockingly). "Is that all? Good-morning. A merry Christmas to you!"

With which parting compliment she flourished out of the dock.

The London beggar is a troublesome personage. He is oftener plucky than meek. He argues with the magistrate, and looks upon his trade as one persecuted by tyrannical laws.

A poor old fellow, wellnigh naked, was put into the dock for begging.

A sergeant testified that he saw the prisoner walking along singing, begging, and trembling, and so arrested him.

"What was he doing?
Magistrate.
Sergeant. "Trembling, sir."
"Was be all alone?"

"Yes, sir."

Prisoner. "I wasn't trembling for the purpose. It was the cold, sir."

"Well, take care you don't tremble in company. This time you appear to have trembled alone; so you are discharged."

As he left the court, prisoner was heard to say, sotto voce, that the magistrate was a wery good chap."

Never was the philosophy of cynical indifference to fate carried to greater lengths than by one Dennis Haggerty, a prisoner not long ago summoned to answer the charge of picking pockets at Guildhall. Haggerty did not care to deny that or any other charge that might be brought against him. He looked upon his position as the result of sheer, inexorable fate; nay, he contemplated his return to a similar position in the future with an eye at once calm and prophetic.

The bench asks him if he has any thing

"Nuffen," he replies, doggedly.

The bench calls his attention to the fact that "nuffen" is not a plea recognized by society.

"Well, then," retorts the prisoner, a little tartly, "I have this yer to say: I sha'n't be honest no more; it's no use."

"Do you mean that you shall continue to steal?"

"Yes, that's wot I does mean. I can't get no work. I've tried to get it. A prig I is, and a prig I means to be."

The prisoner is sternly sentenced to hard labor for six weeks.

"Yer may make it ten weeks if yer likes," replies Haggerty. "I can't do nothin' but thieve; and thieve I means to, whenever I gets the chance."

Haggerty clearly does not regard life in the light of a blessing.

Not long ago a familiar figure in the streets of the East End was a short, thickset, fiercelooking man, with a somewhat rubicund nose, and stubby hair not too intimately acquainted with brush and comb. He was known to the rather squalid neighborhoods which he haunted as "Richard the Third," but, being brought up at Worship Street one day for creating a disturbance, he said that his name was Smith, but that he had never had a Christian name that he knew of.

"Richard the Third," it appears, was a street-tragedian, and gained a precarious but exciting livelihood by reciting Gloster's speeches, and other Shakespearean utterances, about the streets. One evening he was caught making a great noise in Canrobert Street, Bethnal Green. He was 66 spouting Shakespeare," as

the unreverential policeman said, to a boisterous and admiring crowd of street-urchins and area-slatterns. He brandished a short wooden sword in his hand, and was evidently engaged in a terrific combat with an imaginary Macduff, whom he heroically bade to come on," and asked, "What need I fear of thee?" The policeman came up, and, being perceived by the tragedian, was exhorted to "take any shape but that." He refused, however, to suspend the scene, exclaiming, "Macbeth shall never vanquished be!" whereupon the officer, prosaically concluding that Macbeth was halfseas-over, arrested him. Macbeth thereupon quietly sheathed his sword, and exclaiming,

66

No matter; 'tis the fate of greatness," submitted to his destiny. It seems hard that the genial player should have been fined ten shillings, or a week's imprisonment.

It is not seldom that lunatics at large fall into the hands of the London police, and are brought up in the police-courts. Policemen can scarcely be expected to be experts in mental phenomena. Scenes at once amusing and pathetic naturally ensue. A favorite delusion with these strayed lunatics seems to be that they are the queen, the Prince of Wales, or some other august character.

In this wise was a lunatic afflicted who was recently found, at four in the morning, wandering in the neighborhood of Stafford House, the town-residence of the Duke of Sutherland. The porter of Stafford House complained to the police that this young man

On being brought up at Bow Street, the young man was asked if he wished to put any questions to the constable.

"No, sir," he replied; "he has only made one mistake. I was not with the Prince of Wales; the Prince of Wales was with me. I believe that, under the lunacy laws, I am the prince's sovereign."

Magistrate. "You will be remanded for a week for inquiries."

Prisoner. "Of course you will allow me to stop at Stafford House in the mean while?"

The magistrate feared he could not promise that; he would be very comfortable at the house of detention.

Prisoner. "Well, sir, if not there, I have other houses in London. The Duke of Portland's house, in Cavendish Square, is also mine. I could stop there."

Magistrate. "Haven't you any smaller houses?"

Prisoner. "No, sir; I fear I have not." It turned out that he had escaped from a Peckham asylum that morning.

A similar case was that of a good-looking man of middle age, who declared himself to be the eldest son of the queen. A doctor testified that this prisoner, who gave his name as Albert Saxon," had told him that the queen was coming to see him, and own him as her son.

Prisoner. "Yes, sir; she promised to come and see me on the 10th of July last, but she has not been yet. I received a message from her to-day, and she promises to come to-morrow."

Doctor. "The delusion is a fixed one."

Prisoner. "It is not a delusion at all. I am the most sensible man in all England, and I say I am Albert Saxon, the queen's first-born."

A not more doubtful case was that of a woman who was most unjustly sentenced to imprisonment for a month with hard labor.

Being brought into court, she gave her name as Margaret Freestone, and began to talk loudly, making love to the jailer, whom she seized over the dock. There was a laugh in court, at which Dicker, the door-keeper, shouted, "Silence!"

It afterward appeared that the poor thing had been deserted by her husband, and was clearly mad in consequence of her calamities.

Lovers' quarrels among the lower orders now and then find a rather unromantic sequel in the police-courts. The outraged sweetheart of Drury Lane or Smithfield is not slow to resent abuse by having her Tom or Jerry arrested and charged with assault; but, womanlike, relents when she finds him really in the clutches of the law, and seeks to undo her retributive work.

A "domestic servant" of comely presence thus arraigned her somewhat violent lover on a charge of threats and assault. She was engaged to him, she said; but, finding he was not a "respectable person," broke off the match. Accidentally meeting her in Islington, he told her that if she did not walk with him he would be a "wood-demon "to her. He threatened to knock her down, and was really so abusive that she was forced to call a policeman. Brought up in Clerkenwell Court, defendant, in a very excited state, thus explained the situation:

"My lord, I loved her too well to harm her. If I said one word to hurt her feelings, I am sorry, for I love her still. My mamma will stand up and speak for me. Would I wear her likeness; would I have it set in a ring and wear it on my finger-oh, I have it here!—if I had not the fondest, most sincere, the most lovable kindness for her? mamma speak, my lord."

Let my

Whereupon his " mainma "took the stand, and testified that he was a good lad, and helped support his brother and family.

The magistrate said there was no doubt the defendant was very excitable, whereon the latter exclaimed: "O my lord, take my word, I will never harm her!" He was bound over to keep the peace, and the lovers left the court arm-in-arm.

A more elderly swain, in the shoemaking line, was brought up for "willfully annoying" a comely widow, who testified thus:

"He professes to be in love with me, and wants to marry me. He asked me to forgive him for writing certain letters to me, and then caught hold of me. I told him to leave, and a friend took me from him."

Prisoner. "Didn't I tell you that my intentions were honorable?"

Widow. "You might have said so." Prisoner. "I went as an honorable suitor, and don't you think my intentions were honorable?"

Widow. "I go in fear of him."

Prisoner. "I lodged in her house, and left; and, thinking she would make a good wife, and cheer me for life, I went to arrange the little matter, and have no doubt, if we

had been left alone, I should have done so, and that my visit would have been pleasing. But, instead of that, the place was crowded with people, and I found that all my hopes were blighted, and that I was not wanted. I caught hold of her to embrace her, and was only as bold as the occasion justified."

Magistrate. "Why do you not leave her alone?"

Prisoner. "Because I thought she wanted me to come, and that I was encouraged. I told her that my hat covered my family. I don't, however, know, after all, that I am acting right in taking such an awful responsibility on me, as I am in indifferent health, and she is a woman with two strong sons."

He was bound over to keep the peace. Dogs sometimes appear in august places. It is said that on one occasion, when Lord North, then prime minister, was addressing the House of Commons, a dog ran in, and, jumping on a table in front of the Speaker, began to bark loudly. "I see," said Lord North, looking around smilingly, "that I am interrupted by a new member." The dog barked again. "But," continued the premier, "it is not in order for a new member to speak twice in the same debate."

An amusing case having reference to a dog occurred not long ago at Worship Street. One Stubbs, a green-grocer, was charged with cruelty to one of these faithful animals, when the following colloquy took place :

Magistrate. "What is the act of cruelty?"

Counsel. "Throwing a bunch of carrots at the dog."

Magistrate (sternly). "Do you mean that that was intentional cruelty?"

Counsel. "I shall be able to satisfy you that there was great cruelty. The heavy bunch of carrots struck the dog on the back, and, even at this lapse of time-five weeksit is still in pain."

Magistrate. "Have you any witness? "
Counsel. "I have the dog, sir."

The dog was here brought into court and put down, whereon he straightway began to jump and frisk about, showing no signs of any injury.

Magistrate. "How do you say it is injured?"

Counsel. "Its coat is all off its back." Magistrate. "But you can't say that was done by the carrots. Do you say the defendant had any animus toward the owner of the dog?

A lordlier larger impulse to adore, The more his eminent glories waned and dwindled,

As that ethereal voice allured the more. And then, with bitterest pangs, he felt the fleeting

Of all his luminous loftiness and pride, And shuddered with the dark thought of not

meeting

That vague invisible love before he died!

And still the summoning voice came sweet and

eager,

Though touched with semitones of divine regret,

And hourly growing meagre and more meagre, He journeyed on, desiring, yearning yet; Till now he vanished utterly, and the tender Lulled waves of tropic ocean smiled above Him that in all the morning of his splendor Superbly had gone down to meet his love!

EDGAR FAWCETT

find his favorite hope in this way promoted. It is a regret with us to see the years lapse by and still nothing done toward establishing an art gallery worthy the leading city of the Western Hemisphere; and we at one time hoped that a grand aquarium was upon the eve of formation here; but projects like this music-college only give assurance that the day cannot be far distant when other equally zealous persons will immortalize their names, and bring our hopes to fruition.

If any of our millionaires are meditating an art gallery, we hope they will take a hint from Mr. Julian Hawthorne's utterances given in this week's Miscellany." Allowing something for its humorous exaggeration, there is still a great deal of truth in what he utters. It would be impracticable, of course, to give separate rooms or compartments to all the small pictures of a gallery; but a truly grand plan, one conceived and carried out with liberality and under a high æsthetic inspiration, should recognize the fact that a great picture cannot be fully understood or enjoyed unless separated from all confusing forms and distracting colors. One, absolutely, does not fairly see, and does not fully know, what a picture is, unless exhibited under conditions of entire isolation from other paintings, and with surroundings in tone and character that are in harmony with its key of color. If it should be impossible to give a distinctly separate compartment to every important picture, it would be practicable to break up the gallery into many compartments, grouping pictures of similar tone and quality together. Paintings will never confer the pleasure nor exercise the influence they are capable of until we wholly reform our methods of displaying them. The European galleries, the greatest of them, confuse and confound in a very chaos of color and form, and the art-student has to struggle desperately with the conditions that surround each picture in his effort to comprehend it. It would be a gratifying thing if the great art-gallery of New York, when it comes (and it surely will come), should initiate the needed reform, and set the rest of the world an example.

MR. GREG, who has won some just reputation as a thoughtful, precise writer of essays, is disposed to be despondent about the velocity and headlong rush of modern existence. "Fast life"-by rail and telegraph, oceansteamers and extreme-bred horses-seems to him a melancholy product of high civilization. Following in the Carlylese vein, he thinks that society, under its present high pressure, is going to the dogs, and that the only hope of the future is derived from the reflection that wealth, after a while, may tire of luxury. It seems to us that this rather depressing essayist mistakes the wear and tear of rails and wires, of screws and loco

motives, for that of the human tissues. A man does not wear himself out any more sitting in a railway-train and going at the rate of forty miles an hour, than did Dr. Johnson rumbling in big coaches over Scottish roads at six miles an hour; nor does the physical strength become any more impaired lying on the cushions of a Cunard cabin than bumped about in the narrow quarters of a merchantman. The truth is, that our great modern improvements are, as has been well said, "facilities, not frictions; savings, not augmentations, of human wear and tear." Mr. Greg says, in a deprecatory tone, that "Mr. Pitt, in traveling, was no better off than Pericles or Agamemnon. If Ruth had wished to write to Naomi, or David to send a word of love to Jonathan, when he was a hundred miles away, he could not possibly have done it under twelve hours. Nor could we to our friends fifty years ago. In 1875 the humblest citizen can convey such a message, not a hundred, but a thousand miles, in twelve minutes." Where is the harm, and where the wear and tear? Life is made the longer, not the shorter; for so much the more can be crowded into the same period of existence, and that without a whit more physical worry and exertion. Mr. Greg has his counterpart in complainers of another sort, who maintain that life is becoming too luxurious.

ly indolent and easy. Which is the truth—

that we live too feverishly fast, or too luxuriously? The answer would seem to be that, on the whole, the ills and goods of progress are mutually compensating in our age. But Mr. Greg has, perhaps, overlooked the proud fact that the average duration of human life is increasing.

AN interesting statement has just been made of the ages at which marriages are legal in the various states of Europe. It is evident at a glance that there is a marked difference, in respect to the legal restrictions on marriage, between the northern and generally Protestant countries, and the southern and Catholic countries. This has, no doubt, partly a moral and partly a physical reason. The Danish or Russian youths are several years slower than the Italians or Spaniards in reaching physical puberty. So we find that, while in Russia marriage cannot be legally contracted until the males are eighteen and the females sixteen, and in Denmark until the males are twenty and the females eighteen, on the other hand Spanish youths may marry at fourteen (males) and twelve (females); and it is the same in Greece and Hungary. As Italy has become more liberal and progressive, the standard has been raised, and is now put at eighteen and fif. teen respectively. The states which have the highest standard are Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt, where a man must be twenty-five and a woman twenty-one before they can legally marry. The marital legislation of the south

seems to have been generally based on purely physical considerations, while that of the north has taken into account mental and moral maturity, and the capacity to engage in business, and thus support a family. The paternal care of the German governments for the social well-being of their subjects is es pecially apparent. France has, like Italy, raised the standard of age, which is now placed at eighteen and fifteen respectively; and this is the general tendency. The Catholic Church seems to have favored early marriages for wherever this rite has been regarded as exclusively a matter of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the marriageable ages are found to have been put lowest.

THE

Literary.

HE first two volumes of Mr. Kinglake's History of the Crimean War" appeared in England in 1863; the third and fourth in 1868; the fifth was published at the close of the last year, and the work is not yet finished. In this country the republication of the work has wisely been put into less formidable shape; the five volumes have appeared as three, and the intervals have been

somewhat different from those named above; but the whole published matter of the history is laid before us, and enough is now in pos session of American as well as British readers to warrant the formation of an opinion of the book, which the still unfinished portion is not likely greatly to change.

The length of time consumed, and the dimensions the work has attained, are prima facie and in this case trustworthy indica tions of the thoroughness with which the la bor has been carried out; and perhaps the first of the obvious good qualities of Mr. Kinglake's study of a period so recently past is the determined fairness which has refused to be hurried in the sifting of materials, in order to reap the reward of that quick popu larity which comes to a work of absorbing contemporary interest. Had Mr. Kinglake hastily put together what seemed the ample and undisputed facts, ready to his hand at a time when the Crimean struggle was a theme uppermost in the minds of all English readers, his book would have been more quickly seized upon, more eagerly read by the great multitude, and sooner famous than it will be upon its conclusion according to the present plan. But his scheme was not that of many works to which the public is enticed by the feeling of the time alone-works like several which have been offered to American readers on the history of our own civil war, for instance but was of a more enduring kind. When Mr. Kinglake announced a history, he meant a history; not a scrap-book of single glimpses at the field, taken in the heat of the fight, or even recorded by those anomalies, the people who imagine themselves unprejudiced because they are without enthusiasms in times of action. He had in mind a broad and accurate picture of the whole, not a portfolio of sketches of the parts; and be has carried out his scheme with so much of

the true historian's spirit, that he has escaped censure from all but those whose views remain prejudiced, and won deserved praise from the best of the actors as well as of the

"Men in the foremost of the enemy's ranks brought their firelocks down to the charge, but did not spring forward at the double' in advance of their comrades. The whole col

ing.

*

The third volume of the American edition, which has been recently published, and which especially leads us now to look back at the scheme of the work, is altogether devoted to the battle of Inkerman and its attendant struggles. Its introductory portion comprehends the "Combat of the Lesser Inkerman," a sketch of the Dormant Commission and Sir George Cathcart, and a chapter

on "The Retention of Balaklava." Then, about the fiftieth of its three hundred pages, it takes up the main battle of Inkerman, dividing it into an introduction and seven "periods."

We will not attempt, in the space at our command, to follow this subdivision further. To do so would be to give a thorough synopsis of the volume, which we must leave to the reader. But we choose a few paragraphs descriptive of incidents only, for citation, if only to convince the reader, if he needs convincing, that the style of Mr. Kinglake's narrative, as well as the merit of his comments, has not grown less noticeable since those earlier volumes which sketched for us some of the most brilliant passages of the war.

Here is an episode, a feat of arms in the "second period" of the battle-where a little body of Englishmen, with certain colors, had been cut off from the main body by a great force of Russian troops:

"In this strait, Burnaby remembered what he had been able to achieve on the Ledgeway by striking there at a column with only a small knot of men, and, perceiving that now mere defensive resistance was hopeless, he judged that, by comparison with so blank a resource as that, an attack which would be wild under other conditions might be in reality prudent. His men at this moment were falling back very fast, but still he did not despair of being able to rally them and get them to charge.

- some

"He had no brother officer near him; but Bancroft-the hero of the fight on the Ledgeway-stood yet at his side, as did also a sergeant of the line who had mingled with the guards, and was doing splendid service. Isaac Archer, Joseph Troy, John Pullen, Edward With Hill, and William Turner, were near. these, besides ten or twelve more guardsmen, some men of the line-there gathered and fronted under Burnaby's appeal some eighteen or twenty men. Burnaby told them to close together, and then said, 'Are you ready?' The men answered by their act. They sprang forward. In front of them all at that moment, giving splendid example to others, were Isaac Archer and the sergeant of the line. There were some Russians in loose order advancing in front of the column, but our people, as Archer expresses it, 'knocked them out of the way,' and then there was nothing except air and smoke between the solid column and the little knot of its English assailants.

The Invasion of the Crimea: Its Origin, and an Account of its Progress down to the Death of Lord Raglan. By Alexander William Kinglake. Volume III. Battle of Inkerman. New York: Harper & Brothers.

along with it-continued to advance against the English. Yet, down to this moment, the little bevy of English was still advancing against the column. Of the two, which would halt or hold back? Not the Russians; for, this time at least, with English colors retreating before them, they came on with set purpose; and, while their people in front gave a voice to the eagerness of the force by their shouts and fierce yells, the whole mass was ing numbers by the multitudinous strains of a kept in glad consciousness of its overwhelmhymn roaring up from its depths. Must it, then, be the eighteen or twenty English who, as was natural, would have to yield? Not they, if their captain could choose, for his shout was now again heard: 'Get close together and charge them once more, my men!' Desperate as his appeal might sound, he was obeyed. 'I thought it perfectly useless,' says Bancroft, with his soldier-like simplicity; 'I thought it perfectly useless, so few of us trying to resist such a tremendous lot; but, for all that, I did so.''

A second extract will give an idea of Mr. Kinglake's manner of characterizing the general features of the fighting:

"A sentence that Brownrigg heard uttered by a soldier of the Grenadier Guards tells much of the Inkerman story. The man at the time was advancing against masses numbered by thousands, but the Russians that interested him were those whom he himself might perhaps shoot down or run through, and his delighted estimate was, 'I'm d-d if there aren't scores of 'em!' That man, multiplied by the number of English bayonets in action, was the difficult foe whom the enemy thought to overwhelm by the power and weight of his columns. The attention of a field-officer (until his horse should be shot under him) might take a somewhat wider range; but, if such a one could give unity to the weak battalion or wing he commanded, that was commonly the utmost he could attempt. In such conditions, each separate gathering of English soldiery went on fighting its own little battle in happy and advantageous ignorance of the general state of the action; nay, even very often in ignorance of the fact that any great conflict was raging; and the notion of the officer commanding in this narrow sphere was always that he must fight out his quarrel with what troops he had, or, at most, ask for small reënforcements scarce sufficient to furnish one company for a German or Russian battalion. It was by uncombined though nearly simultaneous fights of this kind that some three thousand six hundred of our infantry in the first period of the action made good their resistance to twenty-five thousand, and even expunged from the battle-field no less than twenty battalions with a strength of fifteen thousand men."

A third extract, and the last, is interesting as a singular contribution to the study of lesser phenomena of battle. It is taken from one of the appendices, and refers to the use of the phrase "biting the dust"—an explanation characteristic of the accuracy with which Mr. Kinglake thinks it necessary to justify even the picturesqueness of a description :

"It would seem that this muscular action is apt to occur when a man has been arrested

by death in the act of strenuous bodily exertion; and no doubt an artilleryman, while hotly engaged and vehemently serving his gun, must in general be much harder at work than an infantry soldier busied with his firelock. In ancient times, a large proportion of the slain were killed in the act of exerting their strength to the utmost, and then it was that 'biting the dust' became almost an equivalent for being killed in battle. However hotly engaged, a modern infantry soldier does not commonly exert, while halted, any great amount of physical strength, and the instances in which he literally bites the dust" are comparatively rare."

DR. VOGEL's popular volume on "Photography," which forms the fourteenth num

ber of the "International Scientific Series," supplies a want that has very long been felt -the want of a book which should speak with the authority of a master on the scientific aspects of the subject, and yet should not be so far removed from the popular interest in its mechanical side and its results that it would seem to speak from a mountain-top of technical learning.

Within ten years the subject of this book has become of absorbing interest to people all over the world-forming at once the most attractive, the most wonderful, and the most easily used of all those scientific phenomena with which we play so familiarly nowadays. Dr Vogel's words about it, and its almost more wonderful fellow, are not exaggerated:

"Among the splendid scientific inventions of this century, two are specially prominentphotography and spectrum analysis. Both belong to the province of optics, and at the same time of chemistry. While spectrum analysis has, down to the present time, remained almost exclusively in the hands of the learned,

photography passed immediately into practical life, spread over almost every branch of human effort and knowledge, and now there is scarcely a single field in the universe of visible phenomena where its productive influence is not felt.

"It brings before us faithful pictures of remote regions, of strange forms of stratification, of fauna, and of flora; it fixes the transient appearances of solar eclipses; it is of great utility to the astronomer and geographer; it registers the movements of the barometer and thermometer; it has found an alliance with porcelain - painting, with lithography, metal and book typography; it makes the noblest works of art accessible to those of slender means. It may thus be compared to the art of printing, which confers the greatest benefit by multiplying the production of thought, for it conveys an analogous advantage by fixing and multiplying phenomena. But it does more than this. A new science has been called into being by photography-the chemistry of light; it has given new conclusions respecting the operations of the vibrating ether of light."

Dr. Vogel's book is the model of what such a treatise should be. Beginning with a history of the subject, it takes up each process in the order of its discovery, makes each as interesting to the reader as every chapter of such discovery must seem to those who

*The International Scientific Series. The Chemistry of Light and Photography. By Dr. Hermann Vogel, Professor in the Royal Industrial Academy of Berlin. With One Hundred Illustrations. New York: D. Appleton & Co.