tion to execute a brilliant epigram, nor swept on by a flood of mysticism or transcendentalism; when he spends his rich spiritual resources, he does it in a wise and beautiful elevation of mind and feeling. His fame, then, let us acknowledge, rests not on any tumultous sweep, or impetuous manifestation, but on the wise withholding, the inexorable training, the nice modulation which makes every phrase and thought, every fancy, every dream, every passionate impulsation, harmoniously related to the meaning, motive, and mood of the poem. It is in part by virtue of this assimilation that he is the thoroughbred master which we know him to be; and because of it that his work represents the highest order, all things considered, of lyric, epic, and idyllic creation in this century. We are always curious to trace the line where the more purely intellectual faculty, as such, meets and joins in the poetic nature. Tennyson's greatness is almost universally accepted; it is so high, so luminous, yet so unheralded, that we do not mistake its quality; we do not class it as on the intellectual side primarily. Singleness of devotion to poetry on the part of Tennyson signalized his career, from the first; and to this may be added an ideally ethical quality of thought and spirit; we count him noble for this latter quality—a nobility which is preeminently English. The moral beauty in art attracted him equally with the æsthetic. He was not a pronounced or published moralist in poetry; but he was loyal to the best tenets of his race, and to its firm moral stratum. His record, so spotless in this sense, is a precedent in principle that should not be broken in the line of English Laureates. His Greek sense of taste, beauty, and proportion is as delicately articulated as his loyalty to moral grandeur. Yet in these, as in other conditions, he has proven himself a cosmopolitan poet. He was not beholden to any single source, he drank from all springs of song,-studied a multitude of schools and no schools; extracted the essence and spirit of poetic power and splendor from the lore of the ages; he transplanted, transformed, and embalmed bare legends, giving to them an enhanced elevation and reality; even in fabulous classic tales, such as he has appropriated in "Tithonus," there is a depth and philosophic apprehension which indicates his method of interpreting through the light of modern feeling and insight. The erudition of so spacious a poet as Tennyson ranged with ease over the field of known facts, laws, relations, and traditions, but his penetrating imagination did not pause at these limitations. Venturesome he was not, in the sense of rudely transgressing the radius of given light, but no poet ever entered the speculative arena through the portal of poetic invention more wisely or deftly than he. Such creations and such a career as Tennyson's for amplitude and loyalty of standard, and for profound and pure efficacy of character, are a greater element in human letters, in the security and enhancement of a real elevation, and in the development, maintenance, and embalmment of high spiritual, poetical, ethical, and æsthetic models, than human literature furnishes from any other single source in our time. PERSIAN LITERATURE. AHMED-BEY. Translated and Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper (19 pp.) in Nouvelle Revue, Paris, November 15. THE HE present condition of Persian literature is so sad, it evokes so many despairing thoughts, that nothing induces me to write about it save its exceptional influence over the moral education of nearly all the peoples of Western Asia. In the Orient, the Persian language and literature have played, and still play, a part analogous to that played in Eorope by the French language and literature. In Turkey, the study of the language and literature of Persia is obligatory in all primary and secondary schools. In the Caucasus, in Afghanistan, and English India, the mass of the Mussulman people have knowledge of no other sources of instruction. Such an inflence could not be acquired save by the superiority of the race and the universality of its mental action, capable of satisfying the tastes and needs of the different nationalities. In fact Persia has never lacked writers and literary productions, which place her much above the surrounding nations. There are legends that when Alexander the Great invaded Persia, it was rich in literary manuscripts, of which he burned large quantities and sent still more to Greece. So also it is declared that the Mohammedan conqueror of Persia destroyed the literary monuments then in existence. Certain it is that for two centuries subsequent to the Arab invasion, Persia gave no sign of literary life. When, however, in the tenth century, the national dynasty of the Bouides, began with Brahman Gour, sprung from the people, he did what in him lay to revive the literary prestige of Persia. Soon a group of poets and distinguished writers surrounded the court. After a century of glorious reigns the Bouides were thrust out by the Khaznamides, who, although of Turkish origin, were none the less national kings in their spirit and tendency. They continued the traditions of their predecessors and encouraged Persian letters. From the Khaznamide epoch, date immortal poets like Firdousi, learned historians like Albirouni, astronomers and physicians like Abou Reyhan and Avicenna, who, from the twelfth to the seventeenth century, was the guide of medical study in European universities and called the "Prince of Physicians." Towards the beginning of the sixth century of the Hegira, the Khaznamides were overthrown by the Seljuks, a Tartar tribe from the other side of the Oxus. This was the final ruin of Persia. A sort of feudalism was substituted for the former government unity. Persia was parceled out among a crowd of petty tyrants, and cut up into small kingdoms almost independent of each other. This feudalism, however, had nothing in common with that which formerly existed in Europe. The desolation of the country was extreme, when there came another still more terrible invasion by the Moguls under Tamerlane. Strange to say, this was the epoch of the greatest poets and writers Persia has ever produced. Their influence was immense over contemporaneous generations, and is still very great to-day. That influence, however, has been pernicious in the highest degree. It is this pernicious literature which still exists in our time, though deformed and abused. The predominant characteristic of this literature is mysticism; or pantheism, two systems touching and differing from each other at an infinite number of points. Their greatest apostles are Khayam, Bon Caid, Roumi, Hafir, and Caadi. In turn pantheists, mystics, and theosophists, these writers, by their ideas, remind one of pantheists like Spinoza, of mystics like Fénelon or Madame Guyon. The Persian authors reach the same conclusion as the European and are in agreement with them on nearly all points. The road by which the Persians reach their conclusion, however, is altogether different from that followed by European mystics or pantheists. The principle which guides the latter is the constancy of harmony in nature and the goodness of the universal laws which govern it. Our souphis (such is the title of those who inculcate the philosophy which I am describing) see in nature, on the contrary, but one principle or rather several powerful, but capricious, principles, eternal, causing disorder, which take pleasure in playing with mankind as a dramatic author plays with the personages whom he puts on the stage. "The universe is naught but a chess-board, the figures on which take their places according to the caprice of the players," says Hafiz. "If I do foolish things, if I drink wine, if I blaspheme God and the mosque, I do it all involuntarily, pushed on by forces to me unknown. Let the mollahs cease to disturb us with their prayers and sermons!" said Khayam, in one of his celebrated quatrains. The souphis arrive at the conclusion that there are few people in the world capable of reaching divinity, and these ought to despise the crowd, the vulgar, as a vile instrument of pleasure in the hands of supreme beings; the sage ought to shun.contact with the mass by retiring to a corner of a tavern (maykané), the symbol of final destruction (kherabat), or of the general fusion of the universe, and contemplate in a state of drunkenness, symbol of the highest human perfection, in which all exterior action is neutralized, a cup of red wine, the incarnation of nature transported with joy." In general, literary works in Persia, both prose and poetry, show not the slightest originality; and our century, from this point of view, has been more pitiful than any which have preceded it. There are a very few poets or writers, like Saba, Kaani, or Sirouch, who rise above a crowd of others that copy faithfully, like obedient pupils, the great souphis. Some borrowed forms of expression, some pretty words gleaned here and there, some affected sentiments, a cascade of adjectives, a shower of monstrous symbols, this is the form and the base of contemporaneous Persian literature. It can be defined in two words; no ideas or sentiments, or rather the same commonplace ideas and dissolute sentiments expressed thousands of times, though with a dazzling wealth of colors and tints. THE AFFIANCED. MARCUS LANDAU. Translated and Condensed for THE LITErary Digest from a Paper (17 pp.) in Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Litteratur-Geschichte, FOR Berlin, November. ORTUNATE recovery of the lost after long search, happy reunion with a loved one after long separation and estrangement, are among the happiest occurrences in human life, and hence appear early in poetry. One of the oldest and most beautiful poems of this class, so beautiful and so touching, indeed, that one is unwilling to regard it as a mere poetic creation, deeming it rather an allegory of highest religious significance, is the old fable of "Amor and Psyche," the oldest form of which in European literature is contained in the Metamorphoses, or Romance of the Golden Ass of Apuleius." Sometimes it is the man who seeks his lost wife or bride, at others it is the wife who, like Psyche, seeks her husband and finds him after long separation and severe trials. In all these legends the separation is due to the fault of one of the pair, even although the higher powers, as Venus in "Amor and Psyche," may coöperate both in bringing about the separation and in imposing the resulting dangers and trials. There is also a later legendary circle in which it is not the one who waits patiently or commits suicide, but in which both lovers, separated by fate or earthly force, and usually without their own fault, remain true amid the most varied adventures and trials until they are at last happily restored to each other. This is the type of most of the late Grecian and Byzantine romances, and of many of the stories of the Middle Ages; it was most impudently quizzed by Boccacio, and reached its highest perfection in "I Promessi Sposi," a modern romance portraying so many charming individual characteristics, and so much knowledge of the human heart, that one would scarcely realize that any relation subsists between it and the versions of the Middle Ages. In the story of the Syrian lovers (No. 490 in Habichts, No. 501 in Jonathan Scott's translation), the lovers elope from Damascus because the wealthy father of the maiden forbids the union. On the coast they find a sailing vessel ready to leave port, and take passage in her. The maiden goes aboard while her lover delays to execute some little commission. The captain, enamoured of the maiden's beauty, at once set sail, turning a deaf ear to all the maiden's entreaties. The fair Syrian, however, being a woman of resources, and having an eye only to a reunion with her lover, listened favorably to the captain's suit, and promised to marry him on arrival in port. No sooner had they cast anchor than the captain hurried ashore to make preparations for the wedding, and the fair Syrian took advantage of his absence to repay him in kind. She won over the crew by entreaties and promises, to return with her to the port of embarkation. A storm compelled them to seek the shelter of a port belonging to a powerful Sultan, who, enamoured of the fair Syrian's beauty, asked her hand in marriage and obtained her promise. Then he sent the daughter of his Vizier with a retinue of thirty-eight maidens to bring her ashore with high distinction. The Syrian seated her guests at a sumptuous repast, and while they were enjoying the delicacies of the table, the sailors, under instructions from their mistress, quietly hove anchor and sailed away. She succeeded in reconceiling the girls to the adventure, and in winning their friendship; and all would have gone well if they had not been compelled to put into another port for water and provisions. Here the whole party went ashore where they were set upon and taken captive by forty robbers. The fair Syrian accepted the situation cheerfully, and, at a banquet which the robbers provided, she put a sleeping draft in each of their cups. As soon as they were powerless she and her maidens killed all but the leader. Him they bound, and having cut off his hair they left him lying on the shore. Then gathering up all the treasure and provisions which the robbers had hoarded, they once more went aboard and set sail. Some weeks later, they arrived at another fine port, and again went ashore, but this time, prudently in handsome male attire. Here the Sultan had just died, and the people, reading the oracle by the flight of birds, elected the fair Syrian as his successor. It was necessary, however, that she should marry the daughter of the Vizier, which was very perplexing. However, she made her confession to her bride, and secured her friendship and silence, promising that when her first love was found, he should marry them both. To facilitate the search, she had a grand caravanserai erected and placed her portrait over the door. She then left instructions with the watchmen to observe all strangers closely on arrival, and if they manifested any excitement at sight of the picture, to bring them to the palace. By this means she, in due course, recovered her father, her lover, the ship-captain who had abducted her, the Sultan whose court-ladies she had abducted, and the robber-captain. When she had got them all together the fair Syrian, divesting herself of her royal robes, made herself known, and administered poetic justice all round as far as possible. The lover was rewarded by getting two wives in place of one, the father sought one child and found two, the captain got his ship again, and the robber chief, who sought revenge, got hanged. The Sultan, however, lost his thirty-nine maidens, who all secured husbands in the Syrian kingdom. MUSICAL COMPOSITION. FR. PAULHAN. Translated and Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper (13 pp.) in Revue Philosophique, Paris, December. MUSI USIC appears to me to offer a singular manifestation and a very curious verification of two great psychological laws: systematic association and systematic inhibition. It is in the mind like a sort of little world which, up to a certain point, is sufficient for itself. A musical phrase is a species of organized element. A symphony or any musical piece whatever is, or ought to be, analogous to an organism, to a spirit composed of parts associated for a common end. The principal characteristic of our music is its tonality, of which, while the influence is perhaps becoming enfeebled, it is still preponderating. The tonality of a musical piece is determined by a certain relation of tones heard simultaneously, in such a manner that one of them, the tonic, predominates. The different tones which compose a melody, the harmony which forms an accompaniment to it, must terminate on a certain tone, after being separated from it more or less. The passing dissonances render this tone more agreeable and excite a desire for it. Modulations, by retarding the tonal concord, prolong its interest. It is not extravagant to compare a piece of music to a comedy or a drama which ends happily after departures more or less numerous, and more or less distressing. Our musical sense is as exacting as our dramatic sense. For a long time lovers of music were content with nothing but a perfect major chord, the perfect minor chord being considered a slightly dissonant and passing chord, rather than a fundamental chord. "Up to the time of Sebastian Bach," say Blaserna and Helmholtz, in their work on Sound and Music," "that is, up to the middle of the last century, composers hesitated to end a piece with a minor chord, even when the character of the composition demanded it. Until the time of Mozart this form was employed but rarely, and they willingly suppressed the minor third, which did not appear to sound well." The minor chord is the saddest ending that musical speech can offer us. The importance of tonality, that is, of a systematic association of sounds, does not seem to admit of any doubt; the ear is pleased by seizing and preserving it. When the tonality is once fixed, the mind uses it to interpret the sounds that it hears. It is a phenomenon analogous to all the possible interpretations due to the influence of a dominant state, which associates itself with the new psychic facts, while modifying them, arising in unconscious reasonings when awake or in a dream. For example, if we have already the impression of the tone ut major, the succession of notes, sol, la, si will produce quite a different effect than if we began with an impression of the tone sol major or mi minor. What I have said about a succession of tones applies equally to tones heard simultaneously. From the point of view from which I am here regarding the matter, melody is nowise opposed to harmony; both concur in producing tonality. Then, when a phrase can be interpreted in different manners, the impression it will make will be determined by the tone of the phrase of which it is a part. Dissonance has for its end and object to create a desire for a perfect chord. The property inherent in every dissonant chord is to provoke, as the result of a sort of attraction, some other chord with which it is linked. A succession of dissonant chords cannot give a satisfactory harmonic conclusion save by terminating finally in a perfect chord. It is very evident that the charactor of a piece will be quite different, according as the dissonances be numerous and hard or it be written almost entirely in consonant chords. When we wish to change the tone by a modulation, a certain collection of tones, or certain successions which previously are avoided, furnish a means of passing from one tone to another. Modulation is analogous to the switch of a railway which makes a train pass over one track or another, by a slight change which operates at the point where the two tracks come together and are united to a third track which is a prolongation of both the others. We find the application of psychological laws in the influences which permit this or that an impression to be born and be developed. In order that modulation be possible it is necessary that the recollection of the primal tone grow weaker. In order to really change from one tone to another it is necessary for the mind to have a clear and strong impression of a different tonality. The new tone must be affirmed with force and by prolonged chords. Music thus appears to be a sort of organism, like a living soul, a soul composed of phenomena having no resemblance to the exterior world, since music creates its subject-matter for itself and does not imitate, or imitates very little, and then not without relation to its phenomena. It is a sort of ideal mind which we substitute for our own mind when hearing a symphony, a mind which, if it has not the same resources and the same variety as our own, is no longer subject to the same shackles, and which, freer, more purified, more supple, has developed by its own motion what no exterior resistance can impede. In the musical drama, an attempt is made to cause music to participate with precision in the concrete character of scenes of real life transformed and idealized, while the representation of sentiments and thoughts profits by the purity, the expressive power, the force, and the penetration of ideal combinations of the music. This junction of music and the drama has been decried. All the same, it is legitimate, and owes its discredit to the bad use which has been made of it; to the fashion, often grotesque, in which that junction has been treated, by subordinating the musical and dramatic effect to the display of skill by a singer, to the distraction of a ballet, perhaps, to the development illy understood of the melody. I MR. IRVING AND THE ENGLISH DRAMA. Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper (11 pp.) in HAVE ventured to controvert the popular idea that Mr. Irving's "Shakesperean revival" has done wonders for art. but I did not attempt to assign him any definite place among English actors. Let me now say at once that it seems to me almost certain that his true talent lies in the direction of melodramatic acting, and not in that of Shakesperean acting at all. To interpret Shakespeare upon the stage, you must know something of poetry, you must understand and love your author. But would even the most ardent admirer of Mr. Irving venture to assert that that worthy actor has any real knowledge of poetry as such? If he has, why is he so hard-hearted as to continue, year after year, delivering the finest lines of Shakespeare, not as if they were verse at all, but as if they were detestably bad prose? For the blank verse of Shakespeare, recited in our modern English manner, is something inconceivably distressing to hear; it is, when so recited, neither verse nor prose, but a horrible mixture of both. It would be wiser, far wiser, if Shakespeare is to be acted in modern times, to do away, once and for all, with the pretense that we are reciting poetry, it would be better to reduce Shakespeare's plays to absolute prose. What Mr. Irving has really shown in these twenty years during which he has been prominently before the public, is this-first and foremost, an immense, probably an unrivaled, capacity for theatrical management; secondly, a very large melodramatic gift. If he had confined himself to melodramatic acting-possibly diversifying this occasionally with comic acting-his reputation as an actor would, I believe, have stood higher with the best living judges than it does to-day. The highest point, his genius-I will use the word genius in regard to his melodramatic acting, though, in regard to his rendering of poetry nothing shall induce me to use (and profane) the word, the highest point his genius has yet touched was reached when he acted Mathias in The Bells. He has done nothing better since. And he has done many things not half so well. The greatest display of histrionic power he has ever given us was, in fact, given about twenty years ago, when, for a limited period, The Bells and Pickwick were acted at the Lyceum on the same evening, and Mr. Irving appeared in rapid succession in the parts of Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Jingle. As Joseph Lesurques in the Lyons Mail, Mr. Irving was also very fine, and in such plays as Philip, and the Corsican Brothers he is at his best. His genius is of a gloomy and sinister order, and needs gloomy and sinister surroundings. He is most in his element when the action of the piece is very vigorous— when he can fight a duel, or commit a murder, or rifle a coach. Also he needs great scope for his individuality-in fact he is not, properly speaking, a character-actor at all-he never merges his own individuality in that of the character he is playing. This is at once his strength and his weakness. It utterly unfits him for Shakespearean parts when character-playing is everything. It enables him to triumph in parts where he can give free play to himself, to his strong yearning for violent emotion and swift eager movements; and it may be observed, in reference to this, that one of the best things he ever did in Shakespeare was the last despairing stand of Macbeth, and he did this well, just because, for the moment he passed into that -condition of excitement and turmoil of spirit which carries him successfully through such parts as Mathias and Lesurques. But Mr. Irving, actor or no actor, has rightly appraised the present condition of British taste. His greatness lies in this-not that he understands Shakespeare, but that he thoroughly understand the present mental condition of Shakespeare's country THE Morality of Vivisection” THE well-written article on the " contributed by Dr. Ruffer to the November number of the Nineteenth Century is probably as good an exposition of the -subject from the physiologist's point of view as we are likely ever to get. Dr. Ruffer admits that animals are capable of suffering intense pain; that vivisection is not always done under anæsthetics, and, finally, that "if experiments were absolutely useless they would certainly be immoral." Perhaps Dr. Ruffer has never paused to consider why that should be the case. The experiments, we may assume would not be immoral because they were useless, and the only other grounds on which they could be pronounced so are either (a) because they demoralize the practiser, or (b) because they give pain to unoffending animals. Though Dr. Ruffer might admit the former alternative if we were treating of other cruelties, he strenuously denies it with regard to vivisection; and we are consequently driven to the latter-viz., that they are immoral because they give pain to unoffending animals. This is practically an admission that animals have some sort of rights. The exact limit may not be fixed, but it is certain that they cannot depend on the question whether the animal is on one side of the wall of a laboratory or the other, or whether or not the man who is accused of infringing those rights is certified as competent to do so by others engaged in the same pursuits. The present law, being founded on no definite moral principle, is unsatisfactory. The anti-vivisectionists are not so unreasonable as their opponents would have people believe. They do not wish to stand in the way of the advance of science by scientific means, or to frustrate legitimate experiment, but they do claim that vivisection as a legalized practice should be totally abolished; first, because it is impossible to provide against its abuse, and, secondly, because any arguments which may be urged in defense of it apply equally well to experimentation on the inferior members of the human race, and there is not wanting evidence that hospital patients have been injustifiably used for experiment. Vivisection is the only form of cruelty which is protected by law, and we claim that like theft or any other crime it shall be made a special offense. *See THE LITERARY DIGEST, Vol. VI., No. 4., p. 94 for digest of the articles here replied to. The paper by Professor Horsley is of different calibre. It hardly touches the question under discussion, and is indeed, to use his coadjutor's words, an essay on the "Immorality of Vivisectionists." There are, however, two points of interest in it, one medical and one otherwise. In speaking of rabies the writer says, "M. Pasteur discovered the means of saving fourteen out of fifteen persons doomed to die of the direase." This statement is on a par with that extraordinary one of Sir Joseph Lister that Pasteur has saved 12,000 lives. Professor Horsley was himself Secretary of the Local Government Board Committee appointed to inquire into Pasteur's treatment. This Committee took up for investigation ninety cases selected as being within reach of Paris. Of these, from one cause or another, they threw out sixty-six, leaving twentyfour in which they say the dogs were "undoubtedly rabid." Of these twenty-four cases the Committe "believed" that not less than eight would have died if they had not been inoculated. The grounds for this belief are not given, and thirty-three per cent. is a large proportion. Indeed the Committee remark that in some cases the estimates have been as low as five per cent. Moreover two deaths did actually occur in Paris during the period covered by the investigation, and it is very remarkable that the Committee passed over them in silence. The other point of interest is Mr. Horsley's manner of meeting our not unreasonable demand for some definite instance of benefit derived by medicine from vivisection. We are told that "the miserable spirit of cui bono finds its highest development within our shores." Dr. Ruffer says that vivisection would certainly be immoral if it were useless, and when we ask for credence of its utility Professor Horsley replies that we are "an evil and adulterous generation that seeketh after a sign." Will no sign, then, ever be given? There has, apparently, been none vouchsafed as yet. TELEPATHY. RICHARD HODGSON, LL.D., SECRETARY A. B. S. P. R. Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper (5 pp.) in THE Chautauquan, Meadville, January. HE subject of this article is the ability of one mind to impress or be impressed by another mind otherwise than through the recognized channels of sense. It is to the fact of such impression that the term telepathy has been applied, the word being derived from the Greek tele, at a distance, and pathos, feeling. Exhibitions have been given of what has been called thoughtor mind-reading, which should by no means be classed under the head of telepathy. We turn, therefore, to a class of cases where the percipient has no contact with the agent, and where all communication with any of the recognized channels of sense is apparently excluded. Accounts of the most important of these have been published in our Proceedings, to which I refer the reader for details of the precautions taken in the experiments. Some of the most interesting experiments were made with two young ladies, about twenty years of age, employed by Malcolm Guthrie, a partner in a large drapery-establishment in Liverpool. Various persons were found to be successful as agents with these subjects, and the hypothesis of fraud on the part of the agent becomes absolutely excluded. At first, contact was used, but later, the most striking successes were obtained without any contact whatever. The percipient is blindfolded and seated, while the agent, in another room, draws some figure and incloses it in a folio. He returns, opens the folio on a small stand placed between himself and the percipient, and concentrates his attention upon the drawing with a view to impressing it on the mind of the percipient. The percipient announces when she is ready to draw, and the agent then closes the folio. The percipient frees her eyes and proceeds to reproduce the figure drawn by the agent. Out of a total of a series of 118 experiments with diagrams, without contact, there were 66 estimated as complete successes, 23 as partial successes, 23 as misdescriptions, while in 6 cases nothing was perceived. Various other records have been received by the Society of Psychical Research from persons of integrity, experimenting for their own satisfaction, and these confirm the conclusion that thought-transference is a reality. These definite experiments were the first step. The second step resulted from the detailed consideration of the narratives of remarkable experiences which were received by the Literary Committee of the S. P. R. The first which I quote is from Mr. J. L. Keulemans: One morning recently, while at work, I saw in my mind's eye a little wicker basket containing five eggs, two very clean, of a more than usually elongated oval and of a yellowish hue, one very round, plain white but smudged all over with dirt; the remaining two bore no peculiar marks. I never think of similar objects, but that basket remained fixed in my mind, and occupied it for some moments. About two hours later I went into another room for lunch, and was at once struck with the remarkable similarity between the eggs standing in the egg-cups and those two long ones I had seen in my imagination. It caused my wife great astonishment to learn from me how many eggs had been sent by her mother half an hour before. She then brought up the remaining three; there was the one with the dirt on it, and the basket, the same I had seen. I found that the eggs had been kept together by my mother-in-law, that she had placed them in the basket and thonght of sending them to me; and to use her own words, "I did, of course, think of you at that moment." She did this at ten in the morning, which (as I knew from my regular habits) must have been just the time of the impression. The Rev. R. B. F. Elrington, Vicar of Brixam, a friend of one of us, vouches for the following, described hours before the arrival of news confirming the fears which it occasioned, and he certifies to the good character of the witnesses: At Mrs. Barnes, of Brixam, Devonshire, whose husband was at sea, dreamt that his fishing-vessel was ruu into by a steamer. Their boy was with him, and she called out in her dream, "Save the boy!" this moment another son rushed in from his bed in the next room, crying, "Where's father?" He said he had distinctly heard his father come upstairs and kick with his heavy boots against the door, as was his habit when he returned from sea. This and her own dream so alarmed the woman that, early next morning, she told Mrs. Strong and other neighbors of her fears. News afterwards came that her husband's vessel had been run into by a steamer, and that he and the boy were drowned. The theory of telepathy is applied to two classes of cases— experimental and spontaneous. The experiments may be such that the percipient obtains merely a mental image of the object, or they may involve full externalization in space, as in cases like that of Mr. H. S. B. (" Phantasms of the Living," Vol. I., pp. 104-109), who three times caused the apparition of himself to appear to his friends.* In the work just mentioned many cases are cited as instances of telepathy in which the percipient's experience occurred after the actual death of the supposed agent. In such cases, as Mr. Gurney writes: We have to suppose that telepathic transfer took place just before, or exactly at, the moment of death; but the impression remained latent in the percipient's mind, and only after an interval emerged into his consciousness, whether as waking vision or as dream in some other form. Mr. Myers has actually (Proceedings S. P. R., Vol. VI., p. 63) extended the conception of telepathy to communication between the living and the dead. * Some very interesting supporting statements of facts are given in Mr. Hodgson's paper, which we have not space to reproduce.-ED. THE LITERARY Digest. THE TOMB OF AN AFRICAN EXPLORER. Translated and Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper (12 pp.) in EVER VERYTHING that refers to Africa, attracts attention. We are specially interested in accounts of journeys and explorations in that vast and mysterious continent, to one part of which Italy has begun to extend her civilization. Those, however, who take pleasure in reading about the arduous undertakings of modern travelers cannot be indifferent to the knowledge that in the remotest times of the great Egyptian civilization there were explorations in the immense interior regions of Africa, sometimes attended by hardships as severe as those of our day; and that travelers, in the time of the Pharaohs, were honored in sepulchral inscriptions for such undertakings. A few months since, there came to light a text which may be justly called an account of a genuine exploration. The text is from a very ancient tomb in the necropolis which extends near the city of Assouan in Upper Egypt, opposite the island of Elephantine. The tomb, which was covered over with sand for centuries, was excavated at the expense of the Princess Royal of Sweden last winter, and the first one to study and translate the long and difficult inscriptions was our learned Egyptologist, Professor Ernesto Schiaparelli. On his return. to Italy he set to work to study the precious monument, and published an important account of it in the Proceedings of the Accademia dei Lincei; an account especially valuable for the reproduction of the hieroglyphic text and the historical and geographical comments. The tomb so recently discovered belongs to the remotest epoch of the Sixth Pharaonic Dynasty, of which we know some royal names only: Teta, Pepi I., Pepi II., and Nitokris, the legendary queen of the rosy cheeks. As the result of the labors of Schiaparelli, it appears that the name of the personage buried in the excavated tomb was Hirchuf, and that he was a high dignitary at the court of Pepi I. and Pepi II. He was the son of one Ara, who held important offices during the reign of Unas of the Fifth Dynasty. Hirchuf it appears made two journeys by command of the King: one with his father Ara, the other alone. Our explorer, after a journey of eight months, reached a country which is called Amam, which, it is evident from the inscriptions, was far from the valley of the Nile. Amam, it is clear, was on the west of the Nile, and, from certain indications which there is not space to ennumerate here, plainly occupied the position of what is now known as the Egyptian Soudan. It appears thus that even in the time of the ancient empire the Egyptians had frequent relations with the Soudan and that this vast region, after the journeys of Hirchuf, was a sort of dependency of Egypt. . Hirchuf returned safely from his second journey with a rich booty of incense, ebony, leopard-skins, elephants' tusks, the liquor of dates, and beer. Besides all these things, the explorer brought home with him, as the inscription says, a "Donka that danced divinely." Schiaparelli thought, at first, that Donka was the name of some negro tribe dwelling near the Upper Nile, one of those which, at the present day, are called the Denkas or Dinkas. Further examination of the text, however, and of the phonetic signs which accompanied it, showed that Donka signifies a Pigmy. It was one of those little people that Hirchuf brought back to the great delight of his royal master and the court. Yet that was not the first specimen of the Pigmies which had been seen in Egypt. An inscription at Assouan, in the time of King Assa of the Fifth Dynasty, records the presence in Egypt of another of the tiny race. The discovery shows that the Pharaohs of fifty centuries ago had, for their diversion dwarfs in their palaces, just as the princes |