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express statutes of the United States be suppressed in advance by
national officials subject to your orders. Indeed, a single word
from you to Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan will cause these confederates
to desist. Will you act, or will you take the responsibility of
consenting, as you will by inaction, to a conspiracy against law
which is within a few weeks, as soon as the elections are over, to
raise the price of food and fuel to all your beloved people? 'He
shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.' Thou art
the man!"

While the press sympathizes with Senator Chandler's position
on the subject, it is not believed that the laws invoked are ade-
quate to deal with the situation. Senator Chandler himself says
that the railroads and other corporations regard the anti-trust
laws with contemptuous amusement. The New York Morning

Journal says:

"It is precisely his attitude of good-humored indifference-this sturdy reliance upon the power of money-which makes the great public of consumers sympathize with Senator Chandler in his efforts to discipline the corporations. It is the feeling that no combination, however mighty, should assume superiority to the constituted powers of the nation, which will probably bring about interference now in this newest move for creating a giant monopoly, will put the laws operative in the case to the test, and may one day result in the creation of a governmental department expressly for keeping railroad monopolists and financiers well in check. The President's answer to Senator Chandler's appeal will meantime be awaited with deep interest."

The Chicago Chronicle thinks that the Senator is applying to
the wrong source for relief. It says:

"There will be wide sympathy with Senator Chandler in his
vigorous indictment of these evils, but irresistibly the question
arises: 'Why does he thus persistently apply to the wrong persons
for relief?' President Cleveland and Colonel Morrison are equally
impotent to accomplish anything for the betterment of the situa-
ton under legislation in force to-day. Senator Sherman, Chan-
dler's political ally and friend, gave the nation a so-called anti-
trust law under which no trust ever has been or ever can be
broken to pieces. Senator Cullom favored the people with an
Interstate Commerce Law which events have proved is enforceable
only in favor of the railroads. Why does not Chandler address
himself to these his party associates? Why does he not cry to
them: 'See what you have done, pinchbeck and spurious statesmen
that you are.
You have made of the national law a cat's paw for
railroad use. You have betrayed the people into the hands of
their oppressors. I renounce you and any party that will honor
you.' Nor would such a course be mere bandying of reproaches
without possible accomplishment of good. Senator Chandler's
party will be overwhelmingly in control of the next house. He
himself has said that it will organize the Senate. The conditions,
then, are favorable for him to secure the repudiation of Sherman's
beneficence to the trusts and Cullom's royal gift to the railroads.
If he is as influential as he is noisy he might get enacted an effec-
tive anti-trust statute, an Interstate Commerce Law really in the
interests of the people. He may rest assured that such a meas-
ure would be received at the White House in no unfriendly spirit.
President Cleveland's views on the 'communism of pelf' are suf-
ficiently well known.

"Senator Chandler should turn the batteries of his epistolary
eloquence upon his own party, the source of the evil he combats
and the only possible dispenser of an immediate remedy."

Bradstreet's has little confidence in the success of the arrangement. With regard to the objections of Senator Chandler, it says: "The President has taken no steps, and it can therefore be presumed that if any action is needed on the part of public functionaries, it will be taken by the Interstate Commission, the body to which such a duty would naturally fall. The Commission, as now constituted, has shown no indisposition to act where railroad companies evinced a tendency to overstep the law, tho it must be remembered that one of the great difficulties in securing a complete enforcement of the law arose from the fact that the infractions have been so uniformly of an underhand and hidden character. The new trunk-line agreement is, however, not liable to this criticism. It is at any rate open and above board, and if public interests are affected, the Commission could have ample opportunity to act."

02

SHALL WE ABANDON THE MONROE
DOCTRINE?

WE

HILE "all America" is discussing the bearing of the Monroe doctrine on the boundary dispute between England and Venezuela, and debating the question of the "limits of toleration" and the propriety of interference by the United States Government, attention is unexpectedly challenged by a voice cry. ing in The Globe Quarterly Review (October) for the total and definite repudiation of the time-honored Monroe doctrine, not in the interest of England or Europe generally, but for our own sake and future progress. Mr. W. R. Claxton, associate editor of The Review, argues in a vigorous article that the "doctrine" is an anachronism which we must deliberately discard as an unnecessary self-imposed limit on our own growth. He admits that, when originally promulgated, it was wise and important, but he believes that the revolutionized industrial conditions threaten to convert it into a curse rather than blessing to our national wellbeing. At the outset Mr. Claxton says:

"Believing that the presence on the American continent of any of the European powers would be injurious to the United States, Mr. Monroe announced that this Government would not enter into any of the broils of Europe,' nor would it permit 'the powers of the Old World to interfere with the affairs of the New.' When this memorable message was delivered, the great breadth of the Atlantic Ocean, the many dangers connected with crossing its turbulent waves, and the length of time consumed in its passage, made communication between its eastern and western shores not only difficult, but also very slow; and therefore it was that the position assumed by the United States at the suggestion of Mr. Monroe formed an effectual barrier against any attempt that could be made by the governments of Europe to gain a footing upon American soil. Since the year 1823, time and space, as obstacles to action, have been virtually annihilated.

"As a result of steamships and ocean telegraph lines, trade between the nations of Europe and the United States became more and more enormous, until in this day it is of inestimable importance to the inhabitants of both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

"The amount of money and goods at stake in international barter at the present time is so great that the one absorbing subject that occupies the attention of all civilized nations, and that determines their foreign as well as their domestic policy, is trade. Treaties of commerce exist between nearly all governments, and there is no government that has not a material interest in the condition of every other government. Instead of their internal affairs forming the exclusive subject of importance for each nation, and the affairs of all other peoples having for them only a sentimental interest, the whole world is so intimately connected by trade that in a very real, if not nominal, sense it is made up of one people.

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'As a result of the unifying influence of trade, it is now impossible for any government to ignore even the internal condition of other governments, if it would not sink into complete obscurity.

President Monroe's assertion that it was against our interest to enter into "entangling alliances" with European governments, Mr. Claxton asserts, is no longer true, for the demands of trade render such alliances inevitable. He continues:

"Just so certainly as trade is bringing close intercommunication of its votaries, the world over, it will inevitably bring the governments to which those persons engaged in trade owe their allegiance, into closer and closer relations with each other. However mistaken to some individuals the policy of free trade may seem, and however much they may strive to put off what to them appears an evil day, it seems inevitable that before many years shall have passed the wall erected around the United States to prevent free interchange of goods, between the people of this country and the people of every other country, will be leveled. "A necessary consequence of freedom of trade between the inhabitants of the several states of the civilized world will be greater and more frequent occasions for the governments of these states to enter into alliances with each other; and when the circumstances of the people of this country indicate the wisdom of closer relations between it and other countries, it is inconceivable that any merely sentimental devotion to a policy, which may

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have been prudent at the time of its adoption, will prevent its abandonment for another and wiser attitude toward the rest of the world."

It is sheer folly, according to Mr. Claxton, to imagine that we can prevent the powers of Europe from taking an active interest in the affairs of South and Central America, and as such an interest is likely to lead to friction and misunderstanding, the only effective way in which we can maintain the Monroe policy is by declaring a protectorate over all those countries. It is hardly possible or desirable, in Mr. Claxton's opinion, to undertake such a responsibility, even if it were to our advantage, which it is not, since we, too, must expect to find it useful to enter into alliances and agreements with other powers. Thus the situation in China and Japan can scarcely fail to be the occasion for international arrangements, into which a due regard for our own interests will certainly compel us to enter. In view of all of these considerations, Mr. Claxton urges a relaxation and gradual abandonment of the Monroe doctrine. Concluding, he says:

"In view of the utterly dissimilar conditions prevailing now the world over from those that existed at the time of its adoption, the policy inaugurated by Mr. Monroe is out of harmony with the present state of civilization; and by no possible means, short of universal abandonment of the uses of steam and electricity, can the policy again be made effective.

"This being true, to continue to treat the 'Monroe doctrine' as anything else than a fact in the history of the United States, is about as reasonable as it would be for this Government to announce that, hereafter, it will receive no representative of a foreign government that crosses the ocean on a vessel moved by steam."

TRADES-UNIONS AS A MORAL FORCE.

THE HE economic importance of the trades-unions seems no longer open to doubt. While some of the methods of organized labor are frequently criticized, all approve of the union principle and believe that the welfare of wage-workers can be promoted in many ways by wise and effective cooperation. Editor Gunton, of The Social Economist, has always regarded tradesunions as a progressive economic force, and it is therefore as a friend that he commends certain improvements to the attention of labor leaders. He holds that the unionism of the future will do more for labor than that of the present, and he attempts to indicate (in the October issue of his magazine) the line of possible development, as follows:

"It has yet to be brought home to the mass of the people that the labor question is a moral question. And the newer unionism

and wreck their bodies.

must be a moral force. Men who are powerful in trade organizations have condemned in unmistakable, unequivocal language drunkenness, gambling, and kindred evils, which drag their.victims down to the depths of poverty and chain them there, which destroy their manhood, impair their intellects, canker their minds, It is well that they do this. They are themselves examples of sobriety and good living. But still something is wanting. The trade-unionism of the future must be made a moral elevator. It must deal with the men themselves, as well as with their wages and the duration of their weekly toil. It must aid in building up character, as well as in uniting men in gigantic combinations. It is as necessary that the moral conduct of workmen should be regulated as their earnings. To make individuals better is to improve the societies of which they are members. Higher wages and shorter hours are worth striving for if, when obtained, the one is used to provide better food, more comfortable homes, and, where possible, to put by something for the dark days of sickness or periods of enforced idleness; and the other spent in healthy recreation, self-improvement, or the performance of social duties. But in how many cases do larger earnings and greater leisure mean so much more money to drink or gamble, and so much more time to spend in ways that tend to debase and degrade rather than to elevate and refine? Drunkenness, gambling, and swearing, Alderman Tillett has said, are among the greatest hindrances to the progress of trade-unionism.

Then why not seek to remove those hindrances by trade-union effort?"

Believing that it is possible and desirable to introduce into labor organizations a system which shall regulate the moral conduct of members and encourage sobriety, industry, and selfrespect, Mr. Gunton goes on to make the following suggestions:

"One of the first steps in the direction of making trade-unionism a moral force would be to remove lodge-meetings from publichouses. This could easily be enforced by rule. A landlord may allow the free use of a room for lodge purposes, but many members who are not abstainers consider themselves under an obligation to spend something 'for the good of the house.' The weak are tempted to over-indulgence, and bad habits are contracted. Teetotalers would prefer not to meet on licensed premises; indirectly they are contributing to support a traffic to which they object, which, it may be, they abhor. There are few towns nowadays in which rooms might not be obtained for the transaction of trade-union business, apart from the associations and allurements of the long bar and the snug. And in populous centers why should there not be trades-halls?—buildings which might be shared by various labor societies, habitations in connection with which there might be reading and recreation-rooms, and classes for educational advancement. . . . If lodge-meetings were held on premises where alcoholic stimulants are not sold, many members would be richer in pocket, in health, and character. A greater amount of poverty is the product of drinking and gambling than of small wages. To the mind of the ordinary workmen the chief aim of trade-unionism is to increase wages and, at least, to maintain concessions that have been fought for and won, the idea being, the higher the wages the greater the comfort. But it too often happens that there is wretchedness and poverty in the homes of men whose rate of remuneration reaches the highest standard, while, on the other hand, well-oonducted, thrifty folks have cosy homes, in spite of small incomes.

"It is time to recognize the fact that the salvation of the workers will never be accomplished merely by the raising of wages and the shortening of hours. The lives of men who have to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow are often blighted by other things than the rapacity of capitalists. Let trade-unionism be made the bond of character, and it will become a greater power than it can ever be by simply waging war against employers. Its fighting strength would not, however, be diminished; for its moral force would be increased."

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THE great question, apropos of 1896, is: Who will the bicyclists run for President?-Independent, Chippewa.

Is Governor Altgeld going to permit the Bemis-Harper mill to go on in Illinois, after the noble record made by Governors Culberson and Clarke ? --The Capitol, Topeka.

MCKINLEY: "I hear that Harrison's law practise is worth $85,000 a year." Reed, "I saw the statement, too."

Allison-"That's $35,000 a year more than the Presidential salary." McKinley: "I move as the sense of this meeting that Harrison's law practise should be allowed to go on without further interruption." Reed and Allison: "Second the motion."-The Post-Express, Rochester,

THE Sultan of Turkey may feel a little like calling for international interference with the Tennessee outrages.-The Eagle, Wichita.

MASSACHUSETTS women are imploring their husbands and fathers not to clothe them with suffrage. They regard silks and sealskins as plenty good enough. The Journal, Kansas City.

"I reckon," said Mrs. Corntossel, "that these politicians says a good many things they're sorry fur." "Yes," replied her husband, "an' a good many more thet they orter be."-The Star, Washington.

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LETTERS AND ART.

PROFESSOR BOYESEN'S LAST SHOT AT ROMANTICISM.

ONE

NE of Professor Boyesen's last contributions to magazine literature is a defense of that "school" of fiction to whose principles he had become a convert. The October Cosmopolitan contains an essay by him on "Novels of Romance and Stories of Real Life," in which he sets out by objecting to "the suspension of the laws of the universe, the violation of all the premises of rational existence, and the ignoring of the profound and complex logic of reality," which he says the romanticists are perpetually doing. Robert Louis Stevenson declared the art of the romancer to be a kind of magic which enabled him to impose upon his readers, compelling them to accept the wildest impossibilities; and in praise of Dumas's "Monte Cristo" Mr. Stevenson remarked: "Here are stories which powerfully affect the reader, which can be reperused at any age, and where the characters are no more than puppets. The bony fist of the showman visibly propels them, their springs are an open secret, their faces are of wood, their bellies are filled with bran; and yet we thrillingly partake. of their adventures." Professor Boyesen says that he tried the experiment which Stevenson thus asserts can be safely made, but failed to verify it. At sixteen he read "Monte Cristo" with flying pulse and bated breath; at thirty the book left him cold, and at forty he found it amusing only as a piece of ingenious absurdity, but he was unable to finish it. He had a similar experience with "Ivanhoe,' Kenilworth," and many more of the favorites of his boyhood. He thinks it possible that the great majority of mankind never intellectually outgrow their boyhood, and therefore continue to the end of their days to delight in sensational chronicles of impossible deeds. It is these, he says, who constitute the public of the romantic authors, and "because they are in the majority they also delude themselves with the idea that they must be in the right." Exclaiming, “As if a question of art, involving discrimination of esthetic values and principles, could be decided by a count of noses!" he continues:

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"In a certain sense, there is no absolute right or absolute wrong in questions of art. My only contention is that the romantic novel represents a juvenile and, intellectually considered, lower stage of development than the realistic novel. It may be worth observing, too, that by realism I do not mean Zolaism (which dwells almost exclusively upon the seamy side of existence), but a comprehensive fidelity to the laws of reality, in so far as we know them, and strict adherence to and preference for normal rather than exceptional characters and incidents-in a word, the spirit in which George Eliot, Thackeray, Tourguéneff, Tolstoi, Dostoyefsky, Lermontof, Gogol, Balzac, Guy de Maupassant, and many others I could mention, have practised the art of novel-writing. Who would dare mention such names as Haggard, Doyle, Weyman, Crockett, or any of the evanescent favorites of the hour in such a company? Who is absurd enough to believe that even Stevenson, man of genius tho he was, is likely, fifty years hence, to be named among the masters of English fiction. No; survival depends upon other qualities than the mere ability cleverly to entertain one's contemporaries. Generally speaking, I should say, that those are the likeliest to be remembered whose thought and work contributed to or were in the trend of the world's evolution. All the realistic authors to whom I have referred chronicled important phases of contemporary life-which is a vastly more difficult thing to do than to spin entertaining yarns about pirates and wreckers, or the unraveling of gratuitous mysteries. The importance of George Eliot, Tolstoi, and Tourguéneff is furthermore enhanced by the fact that they were themselves typical figures of their age, and embodied in their persons, as in their writings, typical phases of the intellectual life and aspirations of their century. Among living English novelists I know only one, or possibly two, who have, tho as yet in a lesser degree, the same kind of significance, Mrs. Humphry Ward and Thomas Hardy." Professor Boyesen incidentally pays his respects to "a medieval

a literary

gentleman named Andrew Lang," and remarks that “ critic of forty odd years who can go into ecstasies over Rider Haggard's 'She,' and who apparently lacks all comprehension of the scientific spirit of the age, could never be taken seriously anywhere but in England." He suggests that a critic who, according to his own statement, seeks in literature "forgetfulness of trouble and the anodyne of dreams” is “ill-equipped to do justice to the realistic movement which regards the novel, primarily, as a reflection of life-an illuminative commentary on existence." He proceeds:

"In order to set myself right with my readers, if not with my critics, I should like to add a few general reflections. It is scarcely the prime object of art to reflect nature, but the art which does not reflect nature is, nevertheless, worthless. The object of an astronomical calculation is not to demonstrate the correctness of the multiplication table, but for all that an astronomical calculation which emancipated itself from the multiplication table would be devoid of value. So also the novel which, by presup-. posing the impossible, emancipates itself from life. Just as much as the laws of light, and shade, and perspective, must guide the painter, and the painter who violates them is held to be a bungler; so the delicate and intricate organism of the body social as well as of the individual heart must be familiar to the novelist, and the value of his work suffers if, from ignorance or What I seek with deliberate intent, he leaves it out of account.

in the novel is not excitement or even entertainment for an idle hour, but the delight of contact with a fresh and vigorous mind. It is the man behind the book-or the book as the expression of That I am a finely organized mind-that arouses my interest. entertained goes without saying, tho the object of the author Books which are may not primarily have been to entertain me. written with the sole object to entertain are, in my opinion, rarely entertaining.

"It may be heresy, from the point of view of extreme realism, but for all that I can not disguise my conviction that the aim and There burns a object of art is self-expression, self-realization. great creative need in the artistic soul, and the world, in the degree that it is intimately felt and realized, furnishes it with the material for its expression. Many a shallow mind which has nothing valuable to express, but hankers after the rewards of this high and honorable calling, may fancy that the process is capable A mere of being reversed. But this is a grievous delusion. photographic portrayal of human figures and social conditions, even tho it were possible, would not be literature, but journalism. A trivial mind, even if possessed of much linguistic dexterity, can not, therefore, produce literature. The most precious thing in a work of art, be it novel, or statue, or painting, is not the power of irresponsible invention it betrays, but its human quality. The more profoundly human it is, the more moving it is—and the more noble and enduring."

In conclusion, after having named certain "popular" romances of the day-books to be found everywhere-Professor Boyesen says:

"It is not so much the conquest of our continent by the British novelist I am lamenting-for if we can not hold our own we deserve to be beaten-but it is our conquest by the second- and third-rate British novelist. If it were Mrs. Humphry Ward, Rudyard Kipling, or Thomas Hardy who had attained this phenomenal popularity among us, I should perhaps yet feel a little patriotic twinge; but I should cordially recognize the fairness of the victory. To be vanquished by Hector is unpleasant, but not ignominious. To be vanquished by Ægisthus involves the pain of tragedy without its dignity. The latter fate seems, for the moment, to be overtaking the American novelist."

IN a brief notice of "Last Poems," by James Russell Lowell (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), The Nation says: "We have the few final oozings from a rich and varied vintage; and it is a deeply interesting thing to compare them with those first warm, sweet drops that flowed in 'A Year's Life,' a book which, more than half a century ago, touched the heart of youth and taught contemporaries that a new poet had come. Margaret Fuller was in those days thought unjust to Lowell, and yet she perhaps said the acutest thing about that early volume when she wrote that its best critic would be some young person to whom it had acted as a stimulus. And so, at the other end of life, the best appreciation of this closing volume will come from those no longer young who will pardon the loss of something of that early and gushing enthusiasm, in view of the ripened product, the surer touch, the genial wisdom yielded by years."

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VERDI'S WORLD-WIDE MUSICAL TRIUMPH.

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MUSICAL composer who in 1845 had yet to be heard in England, and who at the present time commands the lyric stage of every country of Europe as no other composer does, necessarily becomes an important subject for critical study. Verdi is the one Italian master who has put a girdle of melody literally around the world. From first to last, from "Oberto" to "Falstaff," his operatic creations have been almost one long series of successes a gradual ripening of style and development toward a perfection unparalleled in the case of any other composer for the lyric stage. In an essay on Verdi, in the October Blackwood's, Mr. Frederick J. Crowest, whose expressions we reflect above, says:

"He stands the most successful musician of the nineteenth century; and of all the famous exponents of dramatic-musical art which Italy has given to the world, he is indisputably the greatest. The land of song has produced many notable musicians, many wondrous melodists; but not one of them-not even Rossini-has made such an impress upon the national art as has Verdi. This will be found to be fully the case when the Italians write their national musical history. When a man's name travels and re-travels to the furthermost corners of the earth as no other contemporary name has done-and this by virtue of remarkable work-there must be an extraordinarily exceptional initial power behind all this. Fame is an exacting, if fair messenger. What she has said of Verdi she has published universally and loudly a proclamation the more noteworthy when we remember the restricted aspect of Verdi's work, and have in mind the fact that he contented himself practically with one only of the several branches of musical composition-viz., opera. To win his reputation, therefore, even if we discover it to be ephemeral, is, indeed, a vast achievement. Other preeminent musicians have labored in every branch of their art-sacred and secular, vocal and instrumental, oratorio and opera, symphony and quartet, song and dance; with all this they have hardly come to be known outside the walls of their own countries during their lifetimes. There seems to be a profound art-problem here, but the solution is really close to hand. The greatest of the great composers were each and all before their time. Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and Schumann came at times that were all unprepared for them. Verdi, on the other hand, whose phenomenal success is unlike theirs, was born to the moment. The musical world was waiting with open arms for a composer who could rouse it from its lethargy, for it had been satiated with opera music of a meretricious order, tho it emanated from Verdi's own countrymen-from which any deliverer, and any deliverance, could not fail to prove welcome. Not to the accomplished musician, the cultured amateur, the plodding student, and happy musical circle of the home only is Verdi known; but to take England alone, by name and tune he is familiar to thousands of the poorest and lowest, whose only music is the street-organ, and whose main musical literature is the opera-house announcements on the theater doors and public hoardings. Men and women who can not pronounce the name of Mendelssohn articulate Verdi; and outcasts and arabs, whose opera-house is the wide-wide metropolis, whose only orchestra is the piano-organ on wheels or crutch, have the Italian maestro in name and tune on their tongue-tips. This may not be Art, but it is magnificent.'

Mr. Crowest rehearses a dramatic sketch of the infancy of Verdi, as follows:

"Verdi was born on the roth October, 1813, at Roncole, an unpretentious settlement with three hundred inhabitants, hard by Busseto, which in its turn is at the foot of the Apennine range, and some seventeen miles northwest of Parma in Italy. A Latin document which has been discovered informs us that he was christened Fortuninus Joseph Franciscus, altho the world at large knows him only by the name of Giuseppe. Verdi's parents kept the village inn or osteria, and if poor, were hard-working and respectable people. Padre Carlo Verdi was illiterate; but he had a brave little wife, who saved the life of the world's future melodist ere he was many months old. In 1814 Italy had not emancipated herself, and in that year the village of Roncole was sacked by the invading Allies. Then the frightened women took refuge in the church-safe, as they thought, under the image of

the Virgin; but the soldiers forced the door, and slew women and children until the floor ran with blood. One mother, with a infant at her breast, flew to the belfry and hid there, so saving herself and her child. This child was the infant Verdi!"

We are told that the quiet demeanor which marked Verdi as a child has clung to him through life, and that as the man he is the very antithesis to Verdi the great musician; that he wears his greatness both humbly and unconcernedly. Saying that politics has rarely, if ever, been more identified with a composer's career than with Verdi's, Mr. Crowest gives the following interesting facts:

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'He sounded a first note, and immediately became an idol in the eyes of those supporting the fortunes of the House of Savoy. The Austrians were masters of Venice, and Verdi's downtrodden countrymen detected in his melodies the patriot and deliverer. In the chorus ‘O mia patria, si bello e perduto,' chanted by Hebrew slaves in 'I Lombardi,' the Italians saw a reflection of their own wretchedness. VERDI spelt the name of the composer. The capitals stood, too, for the initials of Victor Emmanuel, Re d'Italia.' How the impatient Lombardians seized hold of what seemed to them to be an inspired coincidence! Under cover of the name Verdi-avowedly their musical godthey could shout for Italian liberty and independence right into the ears of the Austrian spies and police."

Unlike most men who have become famous, Verdi finds his native place big enough to hold him in his prosperity. He lives at Sant' Agata, a villa close to Busseto, the town so intimately associated with his early years and fortune, whither we are conducted by the writer:

be.

"The house is far off the high-road, concealed from view by trees and shrubs. Adjoining is a large and beautiful flowergarden, and a farm with all the appurtenances of a country gentleman's estate. Verdi's daily life is as simple as it well could He rises at five o'clock and sips a cup of black coffee, then he makes his way into the garden to look to his flowers-his own special hobby and work, in which, after music, he takes most interest. The next scene is the farm. Verdi is strong on farming, and superintends that department with as much zest as if he were forced to work it at a profit. His implements and tools are of the best make, nearly all of them coming from England. He is passionately fond of horses, and a Newmarket trainer could not be more particular respecting the class and condition of his equine possessions, or the state of their stables and surroundings. His study is known as the Razza Verdi, and its owner visits it almost daily. At eight o'clock the composer partakes of a light breakfast of coffee and milk, and at half-past ten déjeuner. Then he reverts to his gardening occupation, and becomes so intent upon his work that he dislikes the prospect of being disturbed by even that generally welcome guest the postman. Verdi hates a heavy correspondence, and altho he submits to the inevitable demands of his position, he does all he can to discourage letter-writing. Withal, the two o'clock messenger invariably brings the maestro a heavy budget of correspondence. He dines at five o'clock in summer, and at six in the winter, generally taking a drive either before or after this meal. Then Verdi likes a game at cards or billiards before he retires for the night, which is invariably at ten o'clock."

Nowadays the public seem to care little or nothing for the Opera, compared with the old-time feelings. Mr. Crowest closs by saying:

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A

BOOKS WE HAVE "STUCK IN."

Young man- to you who never aspired
To soar no higher than where you are;
As no ambition burns within you,
Try not to extinguish another's star.

LADY recently suggested to Andrew Lang the topic, "Books we have Stuck in," she herself frankly admitting that the "Pilgrim's Progress" is one of these books. She never emerged from the Slough of Despond-never saw the land of Beulah, nor had a view of the Delectable Mountains. Mr. Lang says (Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly, November) that while he could not forgive her, her remarks pricked his own literary conscience, and he fell to thinking of the books that he had stuck in. He does not speak of mere modern books, in which we all stick blamelessly and "swatter out" (Kailyard style) on the home side of the bog. He acknowledges having stuck in many of these. He was even bogged in "Dombey and Son," in "Little Dorrit,”. in "Our Mutual Friend," in "The Light That Failed," in "Count He Robert of Paris," in "The Professor," and many others. does not see why one should be either proud or particularly ashamed of such misadventures. Not everybody, he reasons, can read the same modern novels; and we should remember that when we have said "It may be excellent, only I can't read it," we have not criticized nor crushed the work in question; we have only illustrated our own limitations. To quote :

"The fault may be ours, not the book's. 'Don Quixote' is a masterpiece. Granted. But I have often stuck in it, and so did Alexandre Dumas. If any one can read right through the 'Divina Commedia' of Dante, he has something to be proud of; but the surface of that epic is crowded with 'the bodies and the bones of those who strove in other days to pass,' and stuck in it! Sir or madam, have you read all the poems of Dante? Have you ever gone through 'Paradise Lost' 'from kiver to kiver'? I decline to make any confession on this point, but I have many a time stuck in 'The Lord of the Isles;' also in 'Rokeby.' As to 'The Faery. Queene,' I doubt if anybody ever did read all of it in our day, except Mr. Saintsbury. 'Endymion' (Keats's) very few have read through; the task is not impossible, but it is most toilsome and dismal. That most readers stick in 'Don Juan' and 'Childe Harold,' I am tolerably assured; many fail to penetrate 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' and, of course, 'The Anatomy of Melancholy' is not meant to be read in a dull, plodding manner from end to end. There be those who have read all through Tolstoï's and Mr. W. D. Howells's most earnest outpourings, but these men and women must unite a strenuous habit of application with great natural gifts for study. They should devote themselves to nothing more frivolous than pastoral theology, and Mr. Balfour's book about religion and scientific characters must be child's play to them. I admit that I stuck in it, also in the Enneads' of Plotinus, and the complete works of Picus, Earl of Mirandola, and in many novels of M. Emile Zola."

SOME "PURELY ORIGINAL" VERSE.

SUCH

UCH are the "poems" of Mr. J. Gordon Coogler, of Columbia, S. C., whose new book, being his fourth volume, has just reached us. In his "Introduction," Mr. Coogler says: "In issuing this volume I shall repeat the words contained in the introduction in my last volume: My style and my sentiments are MY OWN, purely original." We doubt if any one will question the truth of Mr. Coogler's strongly emphasized assertion. We admit that in the few choice extracts which we here present there is something which calls to mind, in a way, certain of the masters, but there is no sign of imitation. One can not help thinking how Dr. Holmes or Mr. Lowell would have revelled in these rich stanzas, without ever accusing the author of plagiarizing their own or any other poet's lines.

Mr. Coogler will doubtless have his adverse critics, as all poets have. Indeed he has anticipated such in the following lines:

TO THE YOUNG UNJUST CRITIC.
Challenge me to fight on the open field,
And hurl at my head the fiery dart,
Rather than belittle the gentle muse

That ushers from this lonely heart.

Mr. Coogler can not properly be called an optimist, for he has written the saddest kind of verse, yet he occasionally trills a merry lay, such as "On the Cars to Shandon." And by the way he has in this dainty madrigal entered quite a new field of song. It has been prophesied that the poetry of the future would treat of scientific themes. Here we have it:

ON THE CARS TO SHANDON.
After the evening shades have gather'd,
And the heated day its race has run,
There's nothing so pleasant as a quiet ride
On the Electric Cars to Shandon.
Adown the hills and through the valleys,
Fann'd by one perpetual breeze-
There's nothing so sweet as an evening ride
To Shandon, 'neath the stately trees.
There for a time you will forget
Your daily cares in the burning sun-
There's pleasure in the zephyr breeze
On the Electric Cars to Shandon.

It is evident, from the lines which now follow, that Mr. Coogler has one of those sensitive souls easily touched by feminine cruelty, but he knows how to get even with the cruel fair ones:

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Eula and Eunita were two orphans who'" grew up side by side
and
in a cottage by the sea." Both were blessed with wealth,
"they mingled with the throng of the high-toned and the gay."
But-

Time! on whose relentless wings life's joys are often vorne,
Soon bore all their wealth away, save their cottage home;
Here they lived a while, but life became so lone and drear,
They moved away and rented out the home they loved so dear.
Let us hope that it was either Eula or Eunita who was compen-
sated as here described:

"ISN'T THIS BLISS ?"

O'er against the garden wall,
Thrice kiss'd by wayward lips,
She stood, pondering and weeping
O'er that momentary bliss
Known to all fair maidens-
A stolen kiss.

With ruby lips, bright eyes,
Tear-drops falling on her breast,
She stood, delighted, yet mad,
'Till strong arms embraced her,
Then breathing heavily; she sighed,
"Isn't this bliss?"

If we were permitted to express an opinion of our own in these columns we should be tempted to say that Mr. Coogler, as a poet, is a delicious specimen of the fruit of the genus Prunus.

A BRONZE group by Bartholdi, representing Washington and Lafayette, presented by the American residents in Paris to the city, is nearly ready for unveiling in the Place des Etats-Unis.

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