revolvers, no friction matches, no city acqueduct, no steam printing presses, no sewing machines, no reaping machines, no postage stamps or envelopes; or pens of steel or gold; when there was no homopathy or hydropathy; no chloroform or teeth extracted without pain; no temperance societies; no saxhorns or cornets or seven octave pianos; no photographs; no paint-tubes for artists; no complete stenography; no lithography or etching on stone; no illustrated newspapers, and hardly a decent wood engraving; when omnibuses and street cars were not dreamed of; when dull street lamps lit with whale oil were a luxury; when there were no public schools, no special departments of science in colleges, no gymnasiums, no art unions, no literary or political clubs, no lyceum lectures, no wisely organized and widely operating philanthropic societies, no prison discipline, no good lunatic asylums, no houses of employment and reformation for young scamps, and generally very little hope of reform in young or old scamps.

"In those days people drank green tea, and ate heavy suppers, and went to bed with warming-pans and night-caps, and slept on feather beds, with red curtains round them, and dreaded the fresh air in their rooms as much as sensible folks nowadays dread to be without it. If they heard a noise in the night, they got up and groped about in the dark, and procured a light with much difficulty with flint and steel and tinder-box, and unpleasant sulphur matches, and went to their medicine-chest and took calomel, and blue pills, and Peruvian bark, and salts and senna, and jalap and rhubarb. In those days the fine gentlemen tippled old Jamaica and bitters in the morning, and lawyers took their clients to the side-board for a dram, while the fine ladies lounged on sofas, reading Byron, and Moore, and Scott's Novels."

And so far from wickedness keeping pace with and neutralizing our gladness in this material growth,--as so many prophets would have us believe all these forces have gone forth as God's evangels. Telegraph and steam are doing more to hasten such a mutual acquaintance and sense of brotherhood as shall enable the nations to say, "Our Father who art in Heaven," than all other things combined. Telegraph and steam have enabled our higher civilization to hunt to their death most of the forms of human slavery and oppression. Telegraph and steam are doing more to-day to solve the

Indian problem and settle our Mormon troubles than all our preachers and diplomats together. And the discovery of gas has changed the municipal regulations, and lifted up the morals of whole cities. Crime calls for darkness, and so gas, in turning the dark alleys of the past into the glaring thoroughfares of the present, has almost incalculably lessened the amount of street villany. So he who imagines that wickedness is increasing, because our modern civilization brings the whole world to his view, cheats himself as one might who should suppose that the gas or the electric light creates what it only reveals.

TURGÉNIEF AS A POET.

BY NATHAN HASKELL DOLE.

THE reader of Turgénief's novels, even in unsatisfactory English versions, must have been often struck with the lyric note which rings through them. It is especially manifest in his loving descriptions of Nature, but also in the melancholy, pathetic, poetic glamour which he throws around his favorite characters.

Among the latest productions of Turgénief's genius were his "Poems in Prose," or, as he himself modestly termed them, his "Senilia." One of them, dated May, 1878, is entitled, "Paseshcheye" (A Visitation), and is interesting for its sly humor and its unquestionably autobiographical bearing. It is as follows:

"I was sitting at the open window the early morning of the young May.

in the morning,

"The dawn had not as yet begun to glow; but still wan, still cool, was the dark, mild night.

"The mist had not arisen, the breeze stirred not; all was colorless and calm. But the nearness of the awakening was felt and the thin air was filled with the keen dampness of the dew.

"Suddenly, through my open window, with a musical murmur and rustling, flitted a big bird into my room. "I was startled, I looked up.

But it was not a bird; it was a little woman with wings and clad in a long, close-fitting garment that flowed below her feet.

"She was all gray, the color of mother-of-pearl! But the inner side only of her pinions glowed with a delicate ruby hue shading into rose. A garland of May lilies was pressed upon the straggling curls of her round little head, and, like a butterfly's feelers, two peacock feathers were comically shaking over her lovely, bulging brow.

"Twice she flew around under the ceiling; her sweet little face was wreathed with smiles; her big, black, brilliant eyes also smiled.