No. 1001. -8 August, 1863. Reader, CONTENTS: PAGE 1. Frisky Matrons, Saturday Review, 243 2. Was Nero a Monster? Cornhil Magazine, 247 3. Pollard's First Year of the American War, Reader, 258 4. Mignet's Speech on Macaulay, Saturday Review, 260 5. Mr. Glashier's last Balloon Ascent, 263 6. Mr. Church's Icebergs, Atheneum, 264 7. Searches for the Source of the Nile, St. James's Magazine, 267 8. Zadkiel, Reader, 270 9. Darkness in High Places, Saturday Review, 271 10. A Winter Cruise on the Nile, Reader, 273 11. Dr. Lankester on the Microscope, 276 12. Decimal Weights and Measures, Spectator, 277 13. Vegetable Morphology, John G. Macvicar, D.D., 279 14. Wild Scenes in South America, Examiner, 280 15. American Cotton by Free Labor, Ashton and Stalybridge Reporter, 283 16. George Cruikshank's Works, Reader, 285 17. John T. Sullivan, Esq., National Intelligencer, 286 POETRY.-A Soldier's Wreath, 242. Imitated from the Troubadour Sordel, 242. July, 242. Faith, 242. Pin and Needle Money, 266. Past and Present, 287. For Shame, 288. Nile, 288. Short ARTICLES.—New Materials for the History of Men, 257. The Romish Church on Beards, 265. Fog Signals, 265. Charles Kingsley's Sermons on the Pentateuch, 265. Literary Items, 286. Locusts in the East, 286. LITTELL, SON PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY SON & CO., BOSTON. For Six Dollars a year, in advance, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded free of postage. Complete sets of the First Series, in thirty-six volumes, and of the Second Sories, in twenty volumes, handsomely bound, packed in neat boxes, and delivered in all the principal cities, free of expense of freight, are for sale at two dollars a volume. ANY VOLUME may be had separately, at two dollars, bound, or a dollar and a half in numbers. ANY NUMBER inay be had for 13 cents; and it is well worth while for subscribers or purchasers to complete any broken volumes they may have, and thus greatly enhance their value. A SOLDIER'S WREATH. Kind eyes, unto your tale half-told, O PUREST lilies, leaning low, Ye speak because ye must ! Rouse from your languor pining ! Too oft will heavy laws constrain O red, red roses, lend your glow The lips, compelled to bear With summer sunlight shining ! A message false ; too often fain O bluest harebells, listlessly, To speak but what they dare; Full oft will words, will smiles betray, No longer silent quiver, But tears are always true ; Your fairy chimes ring full and free Looks ever mean the things they say: Above the singing river ! Kind eyes, I trust to you ! Sweet blossoms, ye, of peace and love, Her looks were kind-oh, gentle eyes, Love trusts you! Still he sends By you his questions, his replies, He knows you for his friends. A soldier's wreath to fashion, Oh, gentle, gentle eyes, by Love And twine about a pictured face. So trusted, and so true To Love, ye could not if ye would DORA GREENWETAL -Cornhill Magazine. Goes tidal treasures flinging ; JULY. TO-DAY, the meek-eyed cattle on the hills Lie grouped together in some grateful shade ; Or slowly wander down the grassy glade, Might carry to a sufferer pale To stand content, knee-deer, in glassy rills. A balm of surest healing, The wandering bee, in far-secl uded bowers, A breeze from Northern homesteads hale Hums its low cheerful anthem, free from care ; Through the miasma stealing. Great brilliant butterflies, fragile as fair, Float gracefully above the gorgeous flowers. The sun pours down a flood of golden heat Upon the busy world ; so hot and bright, That the tired traveller, longing for the night, Seeks some cool shelter from the dusty street. The grass and all green things are sear and The parched earth thirsts for water, and men sigh And give us song for weeping. For cooling showers. All nature waits for rain. ANNE G. HALE. -New England Farmer. dry ; FAITH. . God's Truth for steady North-point-nothing IMITATED FROM THE TROUBADOUR SORDEL. fear ; Her words, methinks, were cold and few; We parted coldly ; yet How kind a glance I met ! Yet sweeter for surprise, One moment in her eyes ; Not lightning, darkness, beasts, or evil men, Wanderings in forest or in trackless fen, pen near. Oh, which shall I believe, ller words that bid me grieve ? What matter! Now I trust, As Day, above all cloud, walks down the west On silent floor of many-colored flame, Lifted to view its warrant and its claim. Macmillan's Magazine. NN From The Saturday Review. where piquant gossip is always to be had, and rose-colored chintzes make perpetual youth. in the decline of that remarkable outburst of in a definite and practical channel. She vis- | or stay at an English country-house. Let us ited the poor, she taught in schools, she dec- accompany him in fancy to the first of those orated churches, she embroidered altar-cloths, festive scenes. He will find the conditions she carved poppy heads, she scrubbed brasses, which are supposed to govern such an entershe dipped into the Fathers, and was tolera- tainment more or less reversed. Whoever bly conversant with the stock arguments had charge of the Japanese ambassadors last against Geneva and Rome. Her patristic re- year must have attempted to explain to their searches may have been shallow, and her puzzled excellencies the object and meaning æstheticism may have now and then moved a of a ball. It is intended, he probably said, smile, but, upon the whole, they refined and to enable the youth and beauty of each sex to idealized her nature, and added to her mental mingle in the dance. Hither fair maidens culture. The collapse of transcendentalism, flock, for the purpose of captivating their fuand the loss of a sphere of useful employ-ture husbands. Their mothers attend at the ment, have left an aching void in many a fe- cost of much physical suffering, not so much male bosom. The young lady of our time from the promptings of parental instinct, as lives more in and for the immediate present. from a high, perhaps an exaggerated, sense M. Victor Hugo would discern no touch of of decorum. The active element is the marthe Infinite about her. She has little to draw riageable element in the assemblage. The her out of herself and her own concerns. lovely and animated teetotums that spin Earnestness has given place to well-bred apa- round the room do so out of pure girlish glee. thy and cynicism. The nearest approach to The gracefulbeings that thread the maze of enthusiasm she can conjure up is on the sub- Lancers or quadrille are all fancy-free, and ject of dress. Her manners have undergone own as yet no lord and master. It is, in short, a remarkable alteration, which would siinply the single young ladies in England who dance, make her grandmother's hair stand on end. while the married are content to guard the They have become exceedingly frank and public morals by lining the walls, and peepopen. To talk slang is as much a feminine ing at the performance through any chink in accomplishment as to play the piano, or war- the wedge of palpitating humanity in their ble a ballad. In short, young ladies are many front. If this be an item in the latest report degrees more like their brothers than they on English customs carried back to Jeddo, were twenty years ago. Of their own ac- nothing can be more fallacious. It has ceased cord they are divesting themselves of that air to be a correct description of a fashionable of mystery and romance with which, from the ball. Now-a-days, it is the married women days of chivalry down wards, the other sex who dance, while the young ladies too often has surrounded them, and revealing to their sit unasked. Twenty or thirty years ago, a admirers the grosser and least ethereal side dancing matron was a rarity. One saw, inof their nature, with all the pitiless exacti- deed, occasionally, a married couple com platude of a photograph. The service which cently gyrating round the room, locked in a they thus unconsciously render to the study sort of Darby and Joan embrace. But, as a of psychology is considerable, but it does not rule, married women abandoned the service add to their attractiveness. But these are the of Terpsichore to their younger and more shortcomings of young ladies, it may be said, supple sisters. Now, they are to be seen in not of young wives. Nevertheless, it is im- any ball-room capering about like so many possible to produce a satisfactory article out frolicsome lambkins. If it is the exercise of a raw material of inferior quality. Young merely which attracts them, it would be easy ladies are the raw material out of which to provide some better valve for letting off wives and mothers are to be formed ; and if their exuberant activity. Let us have gymin the former capacity they are giddy, selfish, nasia, where married women, who find a and frivolous, there is too much reason to ex- life of domestic repose rather slow, may pripect that they will continue so in the latter. vately resort for the purpose of indulging in There are no miracles wrought at the shrine feats of agility. The same sort of apparatus of St. George in Hanover Square. which exists at the foot of Primrose Hill Ifanyone doubts whether the growing prom- might be established in a more fashionable inence of married women in society be a fact quarter. With a due supply of poles to or not, be has only to attend a London ball, climb, and circular swings to fly round upon, they would by nightfall have so far reduced | brains to discover whether Miss A. knew Mr. their muscular force as to be able to adopt B., and whether Miss C. would like to meet in the ball-room a more quiet and matronly Captain D. To ask a young lady without deportment. At all events, we should be providing a beau for her was considered very spared the ludicrous exhibition of married much like obtaining her company on false women, nearing their grand climacteric, ven- pretences. In short, to take care of the turing to disport themselves on the anything young ladies, and to let the married women but light fantastic , toe. It would be absurd take care of themselves, was the principle to speak of self-respect to the woman who, kept steadily in view in dispensing country being the mother of daughters “out,” can house hospitalities. Now is altogether permit a foppish stripling, young enough to discarded. A hostess who wants her party be her son, to wbisk her off her legs in a fast to go off well thinks only of getting as many and furious galop. Such a spectacle pro- pretty, well-dressed, and fashionable young duces on a bystander the impression that a married women as she can muster, not overlaw of nature is being actually contravened burdened with any exuberant fondness for before his very eyes. One would be glad to their husbands, with whom they are on the believe that her physician had prescribed footing so well described by Millamant in The rapid and exhilarating motion for the benefit Way of the World—“as strange as if they of her health. But, alas, there is no such had been married a great while, and as wellexcuse. She is only an extreme instance of bred as if they had never been married at the license conceded by the fashion of the all.” They come down and settle like a blight day to wives. She could not play these an- on the budding hopes and nascent flirtations tics if society frowned on them. It is be- of spinsterhood. They have every advantage cause married women have been allowed to on their side — beauty, wealth, knowledge set up an impudent, but successful, claim to of the world, a semi-independent position. all the privileges of young ladies, in addition Against such a combination, no young lady to those of wives, that matrons of middle can stand. One by one, her fickle admirers age are to be seen waltzing with all the ardor desert her dard, and pass over to the of a debutante, and mothers are not ashamed enemy. In vain does she display her many to stand up in the same set of Lancers as and varied accomplishments. No one cares their daughters with the younger and hand- to look at her sketch-book, and just as she is somer partner of the two. beginning to deliver herself of an impassioned The same sort of wife-errantry, which is bravura from Didone Abbandonata, all the at its height in town in the summer, has be- world slips away to play croquet with one or come a periodical feature of the English coun- other of the piquant brides of last year. try house. In inviting an autumnal party From first to last, the married women monopof friends, there was no point which the mis- olize the attention of the male portion of the tress of the hall or park used to revolve more circle. The eye is ravished with the exquisite anxiously than the ways and means for mak- taste and variety of their dresses. Wiat ing their stay agreeable to her young lady they wore yesterday, and what they will wear visitors. About the married women she took to-morrow, are topics of absorbing interest to no thought — they would, of course, be the whole household. How their hair is wrapped up in their husbands. The soul of done, is a problem which baffles the united young maternity would overflow with sym- ingenuity of both sexes. As nothing else is pathy and delight at the sight of her well- talked about, so no one's pleasure is consulted appointed nurseries, and would never weary but the young matron's. And her pleasure of their inspection. What with children and is to flirt. Flirting, in all its branches, is servants and governesses to gossip about, the the only thing she understands or cares for. matrons, young or old, could never lack She must have an outer circle of handsome amusement. But with the young ladies it young men to dance attendance upon her. In was different. They were more difficult to the park, or at a flower show, or a fancy fair please, and only to be satisfied in one way, for the Irremediables, she would be content by the society of a certain number of agree- upon an average with fifteen. In her box at able young gentlemen. Before filling her the opera, or at a private ball, five or six of house, therefore, the hostess had to rack her her special favorites would suffice. Such are |