tries of this day. A ball is still a pretty sight if it take place in a great house, and not too many have been invited. A garden-party has a certain grace and charm; but garden-parties, like all other modern spectacles are spoilt by the attire of the men, the most frightful, grotesque, and disgraceful male costume which the world has ever seen. When the archæologists of the future dig up one of our bronze statues in trousers they will need no further evidence of the ineptitude and idiotcy of of the age. A man who cannot clothe his own person reasonably, is surely not capable of legislating for himself or his kind. But this test, if acted on, would disfranchise Europe and the United States.

To a society with any true perception of beauty, grace, or elegance, the masher would be impossible; the shoulder-handshake, the tall hat, the eternal cigarette, the stiff collar, the dead birds on ball-dresses and bonnets, the perspiring struggles of the sexes on the tennis-ground, would not be for a moment endured. The vulgarity of funeral flowers, made up into all sorts and shapes of incongruous ugliness, would be crushed out.

To go down in the dusk of dawn into the wet green ways of gardens, silent save for the calls of waking birds, and gather some bud or leaf which was dear to our lost love, and bear it within to lie with him where we can never console or caress' him in the eternal solitude; this may be an impulse tender and natural even in those first hours of bereavement. But to arise from our woe to order a florist to make a harp of lilies with strings of gold or silver wire; to stay our tears to break the seals of boxes come by mail and express and district messsenger-this indeed is to fall into bathos beside which the rudest funeral customs of the savage look respectable and dignified.

IT

JAPAN REVISITED.*

THE HOMES OF THE PEOPLE.
SIR EDWIN ARNOLD, C.S.I., K.C.I.E.
Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper (9 pp.) in

Cosmopolitan, New York, January.

T is to be wondered at that nobody has imitated the Japanese house when building a rural residence in America or England. The longer I live in these exquisitely neat and clean dwellings, the more I find to admire and to praise in them. They are so decidedly healthy, so extremely inexpensive, so absurdly easy to furnish, and so entirely refined and artistic as abodes for people of taste and nice habits. The house in which I passed my days of repose in Atami could have been purchased, I believe, for 800 or 900 yen, or, say, $600; and yet it was good enough for anybody of simple habits to live in. A Prince of the Imperial House had occupied it for the winter weeks, and I suppose he paid no more than I did-about forty yen per month.

All Japanese residences being constructed on much the same lines and of the same materials, the differences are found in perfection of finish, delicate carpentry, and spotless cleanliness of mats, wood-work, and accessories. The rooms are measured by the number of mats they contain, for the mat (tatami) of Japan is of an absolutely fixed standard, and does not vary a hair's breadth, Thus every abode-from the Emperor's palace to the lowest little shed or wayside tea-house-is built with reference to the mat; each apartment is called by the number of jo, or mats it will contain. Thus ju jo jiki no heya, a room of ten mats, like that in which I am writing, will be fifteen feet by twelve, each mat measuring six feet in length by three in breadth. These spotless and sacred mats make the character of the Japanese house, and render propriety and perfect personal cleanliness natural and necessary. In America or England we make streets of our abodes; we pass over our own thresholds or those of our friends, carrying upon our * The value of this article is enhanced by beautiful illustrations of Japanese life.

boot and shoe soles the nameless contaminations of the public ways. The heart of a well-to-do matron is ofttimes heavy to see the mud lie in cakes upon her Kidderminster or Brussels, and she seeks to defend it with a "drugget." The mistress of a poor household must submit to see the miry clogs and hobnailed boots of husbands and children tramp her floors into foulness. There is no mistress of a house, large or small, in all Japan who has to endure such desecration of the domestic purity.

There is nobody anywhere, high or low, rich or poor, who would dream of crossing the shikimi of a Japanese dweiling with foot-gear unremoved, or if he or she had been walking bare-footed, with unwashed feet. In a humble way there is ever present in their minds the spirit of these words, "Put off thy shoes from thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." And so it is "holy," for it is "home"-and I am obliged to say that a Japanese home is always a very great deal more sacred and sweet, with the pleasant sanctity of perfect cleanliness, than any proud and prodigal abode in Saratoga or Belgravia.

Another subject of admiration in Japanese houses is their divine simplicity of furniture.

I will faithfully recount to you what " furnishes the Japanese taku of seven commodious apartments. There is a handsome fire-box in every room, and five or six silken sittingcushions are scattered in each. In the toko-no-ma, or corner of honor of the chief apartment, hangs a kakemono, a picture of a white eagle perched upon a cedar-tree. Over the sliding shutters dividing the upper rooms are let in panels of curiously worm-eaten wood, sawn from some old pile, riddled by the sea-worms into a strange embroidery. There is a little law table or two, at which you can conveniently write, kneeling on the floor; the meals being served on small zen, or stands. There is, by way of adornment, a tablet inscribed with Chinese characters, “jinsei anraku," meaning "May your life be happy"; and this, framed in black and gold silk brocade, is, with the grotesque wood panels, the white eagle, and the flower-vases, our sole embellishment. There are some cooking-pots and pans, downstars in the cupboards of the daido-koro; and in those upstairs are daily hidden away with wearing apparel the futon, or sleeping-rugs, and the coverlids of padded silken and colored cotton which make the beds. A clever little hanging cabinet, with sliding doors-on which are painted slightwashed sketches of Fuji-yama and of a pine-branch-holds just a few books and valuables; but this is part of the structure, and not furniture. That enumerated is positively all; and the comfort of such simplicity is as great as its economy and its elegance.

IN.

PROLETARIAN PARIS.*

THEODORE CHILD.

Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper (13 pp.) in
Harper's Magazine, New York, January.

'N the elegant quarters of Paris where more or less refined materialism reigns triumphant, we have a tendency to forget the serious aspect of Paris. We are struck by the superficial and agreeable phases of the life of the capital, which constitutes such an amusing show, and forget that from year's end to year's end a million and a half of people work in Paris eight or ten hours a day.

The wealth of Paris is so boundless that the rubbish and refuse of the city is worth millions. There are more than fifty thousand persons who make a living by picking up what others throw away. Twenty thousand women and children exist by sifting and sorting the gatherings of the pickers, who collect every day in the year about twelve hundred tons of merchandise, which they sell to the wholesale rag-dealers for some *The original article is enlivened with some admirable characterillustrations by P. Renouard.

seventy thousand francs. At night you see men with baskets strapped on their backs, a lantern in one hand, and in the other a stick with an iron hook. They walk along rapidly, their eyes fixed on the ground over which the lantern sheds a sheet of light, and whatever they find in the way of paper, rags, bones, grease, metal, etc., they stow away in their baskets. In the morning, in front of each house, you see men, women, and children sifting the dust-bins before they are emptied into the scavengers' carts. At various hours of the day you may remark isolated rag-pickers who seem to work with less method than the others, and with a more independent air. The night pickers are generally novices; men who, having been thrown out of work, are obliged to hunt for their living like the wild beasts. The morning pickers are regular workers, who pay for the privilege of sifting the dust-bins of a certain number of houses. The rest, the majority, are the coureurs, the runners, who exercise their profession freely, and without control; working when they please, and loafing when they please. They are the philosophers and adventurers of the profession, and their chief object is to enjoy life and meditate upon its problems.

Such men are Bijou and the Père la Gloire. The latter works with considerable regularity, his specialty is paper and rags, and he lives in the Quartier Mouffetard with a vast colony of rag-pickers, who are, for the most part, the employés as well as the tenants of a master rag-picker. Bijou, on the other hand, considers paper and rags too cumbersome, and prefers to collect cigar stumps and fragments of cigarettes, for which there is a regular market in the poor quarters of the capital. He sorts this harvest of mégots at his leisure in some quiet spot and prepares his wares for sale to the special dealers. His pockets are full of tobacco, and his clothes emit a smell of stale smoke, mingled with various perfumes of unwashedness and misery. Nevertheless, his manners are those of a free and independent citizen; he stops to talk politics with the Père la Gloire; his dominant idea is liberty. Indeed, Bijou esteems his own liberty so dearly that he has never consented to compromise it so far as to have a domicile of any kind. In summer he sleeps on the benches of the promenades or under the bridges of the Seine. In winter he makes the round of the night refuges. Both Bijou and the Père la Gloire drink the most deleterious and scarifying alcohol that was ever distilled; they live in filth, and often in the deepest misery; but they enjoy the priceless privilege of liberty, and altogether their existence is not without a certain prestige and without glimpses into the higher circles of Parisian existence, for Bijou picks up cigar stumps under the tables of the Café de la Paix, and the Père la Gloire sifts the dust-bin of the Baron de Rothschild.

Of misery in Paris there is no lack, but it is not obtrusive as in other cities-London, for instance. In some of the districts on the left bank of the Seine the struggle is hard indeed, and the material conditions in which the working people live are very wretched. In this part of the city we find great colonies of Bohemians, déclassés people who have missed fortune's crash and are tired of life. Here, too, live many rag-pickers, swarms of Italians who make plaster casts or serve as models for artists, a certain number of Nihilists, a certain number of poor Russian and Wallachian students. The aspect of humble Paris on the left bank of the Seine is strangely disheartened, unstrung, full of silence, and despair. This is in strong contrast to the right bank where the citadel of labor and poverty seems full of life and energy.

In the morning and in the evening the animation in the great Faubourgs of Paris and in the streets that descend from the height toward the city, is most curious. In the morning the populace, men and women, girls and boys, swarms down to conquer Paris and to earn its bread; in the evening it turns its back upon Paris to regain the heights. In a street like the Rue Ober Kampf, for instance, one may see the swarm of human bees in all the intensity and fullness of its life and

variety. The street is a résumé of popular Paris, with its houses like pigeon-cotes, each family narrowly lodged in an exiguous box, its shops where everything is neatly displayed according to the traditions, the shelled peas on a black cloth which sets off the freshness of that green color, and everything, even to the cheap newspapers displayed for effect.

How nicely everything is ticketed and arranged. In art, in literature, in life and its organization, the French have a remarkable daintiness and completeness. Each man to his trade, and each thing in its place, seems to be their motto. The French talk about freedom, but there is no country in the world where there are more rules and regulations than in France; and what is more, the French like to be regulated. The people are not the slaves of fashion like the upper and middle classes. Every occupation has its suitable or special dress, or some detail of dress that makes its members immediately recognizable.

A marriage is always a great event in popular Paris, and in connection with it, tradition has made the formalities absolutely indispensable-going to the town hall for the civil marriage, going to church for the religious marriage, and going to the Bois. Then follows more driving in the Avenues and Boulevards, and finally the resort of the party. to some one of the restaurants which make a specialty of wedding-feasts. Here all is joyous and noisy until order is called for the speeches, and songs, and recitations. In fact a weddingdinner is often a mere pretext for the eloquence and amateur histrionic display in which the Gallic people have always delighted.

M

For

Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper (13 pp.) in Political Science Quarterly, New York, December to March EN see clearly what is called into being by a tax, but they are apt to overlook what is crushed out of being. Too often a tax is devised to meet exactly the needs of Government, on the assumption that the basis of taxation, as measured by statistical investigation or estimates, will not sink or settle. Yet somehow or other the impost never yields what was expected, and the revenue falls short of public needs. Now, this gap that opens between expectation and outcome is due to ignoring the prohibitive workings of a tax. legislators everywhere rest under the delusion that all the proceeds of a tax can be secured for the public treasury. The pavement of Saint Mark's cathedral in Venice is all broken into hollows and ridges, the result of the uneven sinking of the foundation-piles. Once, doubtless, the pavement was even, but the architect had not allowed for the settling of the piles. So it is in finance. Often the nicest adjustment of receipts to expenditures fails to bring a balanced budget because the financier has overlooked the " "give" or subsidence of the order of phenomena selected as a basis for compulsory contributions. He has assumed that the only effects of a tax are productive effects. He has ignored the tendency of every tax to eat away the foundation on which it rests.

Taine compares the French fiscal system of the old régime to a clumsy machine which, while shearing, also flays the victims.

The prohibitive tax has a place of its own in the regulative system of society. It is a light and humane means of suppressing certain orders of phenomena which are not criminal in themselves, but which are contrary to public policy. Such socio-political taxes are the taxes on State-bank issues, on oleomargarine, on the liquor-traffic, on foreign importations, and the proposed taxes on lotteries, option-sales, and immigrants.

The protective tax being of the nature of a fine, its immediate consequences must be negative. It prevents the appearance of some phenomena that would otherwise occur. On the

principle of multiplication of effects, however, it often happens that the suppression of one order of phenomena causes certain other phenomena to arise. The Free Trader calls attention to the restriction of our foreign commerce, and the falling off in the consumption of foreign goods; the Protectionist calls attention to the growth of internal commerce, and the increased use of domestic manufactures. The Moralist shows how a high-license tax thins out the saloons; the cynic points to the increase of home-drinking and club-tippling. philosophy of social taxes is greatly misunderstood. Legislators do not see that to close up a certain route to the satisfaction of a desire does not remove the desire. The demand persists and opens up new routes to its satisfaction. Hence social taxes should aim to destroy the demand itself.

The

SOCIALISTIC PERIL AND NATIONAL DISARMAMENT. Deutsche Revue, Breslau, December.

A

COLLECTION of letters from distinguished statesmen concerning the best means of combating the socialistic peril, and the possibility or impossibility of lightening the military burdens and of disarmament, will be interesting to our readers, and perhaps not without due influence on popular opinion.

We begin with the publication of a letter from M. Jules Simon.

PARIS, November 9, 1892. Sir: I thank you for the communication you have been pleased to make me.

The policy followed here in respect to workmen is not the policy that I would advise. It has all the inconvenience attending weakness. It irritates without governing. I do not old it responsible for the catastrophe of yesterday. These assassinations are due to more remote causes. It is not the weakness of the political government which has produced. hem; it is the absence of moral government. It may be said to-day in respect to all peoples: the Gods are going away. They leave behind them naught but unbridled covetousness. It makes me sad to behold the condition in which I shall leave the world.

I agree with you as to the necessity of a disarmament, but I do not think that a proposition to disarm can be made by those who were vanquished in the last war. I am persuaded that if the proposition were made by some great State, France would second it eagerly. We do not need an armament like the one we have to protect ourselves against the Commune; for that purpose our old army would suffice. Moreover, the Commune is dreaming of coming into power by the ballot-box. It is taking, however, the wrong road to reach such a position. The attacks, of which we are the witnesses, far from facilitating the accession of the Commune, will produce very probably in the electoral body a movement of return to what is called a strong government.

I beg you to accept, sir, the assurance of my distinguished consideration. JULES SIMON.

USE OF WINE ON NEW YEAR'S DAY.-It seems to me that in the present state of the world, and in the present state of life, it must be a matter of utter thoughtlessness on the part of persons that would offer, on such a day as New Years, to the young the means of intoxication, knowing, as they do, that there will be many coming to their houses who are not able to resist temptation; knowing that many who, coming to their houses, and to scores of other places, and being tempted to drink, will turn that day into a disgrace to themselves and to their friends; knowing the unutterable mischiefs that spring from intemperance; knowing what torments and evil experiences are going on about them. I cannot conceive how any should spread upon their table the means of destruction for the young. I would not, for the price of my life, turn out in my parlor a whole box of adders, saying: 'If men will keep their eyes open, and be

moderately careful where they step, they will not be bitten." And yet I could as easily justify myself for doing that as for putting wine on my table, and offering it to the young.

'At last it biteth like a serpent," is written of strong drink, but that is not the whole of the truth; it does not always wait to the last. It often bites at first, and all the way through to the end.

If you say that the reason is thoughtlessness, I reply that that is not the general reason, nor is it a worthy one. I do not think you put wine on your table for a real hospitality. I fear that most persons put wine on their table from quite different motives. For the most part, we are not a wine-raising nor wine-drinking people. It is a matter of fashion and infinitesimal vanity. Ordinarily men put wine on their table for the sake of show, by way of fashionable compliance. There is but little difference between these reasons. They are a great vulgar mass. None of them will bear investigation.-From Mr. Beecher's Unprinted Words, Ladies' Home Fournai, January.

The Church is in favor of popular education; and she is not adverse to private or public schools, so long as they are conducted with due regard to the interests of the souls, as well as the temporal welfare of the young, and she will not object to a system of public education that is free from serious danger to faith and morals. Where the system does not sever secular from religious education and training the Church approves such public schools.

The Catholic Church," says Monsignor Satolli, "and especially the Holy See, neither condemns nor ignores public schools as such, but rather desires that, by the coöperation of civil and ecclesiastical authorities, there should be in every State public schools suitable to the condition of the people, the promotion of useful arts, and of the sciences."

The Church, however, shrinks from such features of public schools as are adverse to the truth of the Christian religion, and to morality."

With regard to neutral schools, which exclude religion from their course of instruction, the Church, while willing to tolerate them when they are a necessity, characterizes them as dangerous to faith and morals.

The only school for youth that is worthy to receive the approbation of the Catholic Church, or of any member thereof, is the Catholic school; the school that recognizes the authority of the Catholic Church as far as faith and morals are concerned. The tone of such a school will be in accord with the truths of the Catholic religion, and a direct aid in the salvation of souls.

Most men are agreed that there cannot be an efficient code of morals that does not draw its sanction from religion, and that, therefore, education to be moral should be religious. Guizot declared that the State could not do its proper work without the aid of religion; and even Cousin asserts that the "religion as well as the civil authority ought to be represented in the education of the young.”

As man has eternal as well as temporal interests, and as

both are affected by education, the Church is impeded in her work if excluded from the school. In the execution of her divine mission it is necessary that she should make her influence felt at every stage of man's growth, and preside over the processes by which the moral character is developed, habits of thought and action formed, and faith in religious truth implanted. The formative time is the school-age, and the school has as much to do with the quality of the results as the family.

There are strong grounds for anxiety and solicitude, whereever children are submitted to the influence of a system which, faulty in theory, is manipulated by men who, for the most part, are either indifferent to religious truths or positively hostile to the Catholic Church.

In too many places a system professedly neutral as regards religious differences is converted into something positively harmful to Catholics by being administered in the interests of the evangelical sects. In too many cases, the spirit that gives vitality, energy, and longevity to the public-school system is not so much patriotism or zeal for education as the lurking hope that thereby the youth of Catholic parentage may be detached from the faith of their fathers and withdrawn from the influence and guidance of the Catholic Church.

Ours is an unsectarian system, we are told; and teachers are under orders not to wound the religious susceptibilities of any scholar. But many of the pupils come from Protestant homes steeped in anti-Catholic bigotry and saturated with detestation of the Pope of Rome; is it any wonder that their language and conduct towards Catholic children should be found in practice what in theory we can fancy it to be—intensely anti-Catholic?

Our system of public-schools being so defective and the dangers inherent in it so manifest, the question arises: Can we use it at all, even in the absence of a better?

If the danger of damage to faith or morals is proximate, and cannot ordinarily be made remote, the schools are to be avoided at all hazard and at whatever cost.

When the schools are not positively harmful, and the danger is remote, we are not obliged, under grave inconvenience or to our serious loss, to avoid them, although we are bound to take prudent precautions to guard against the danger.

This is a conditional decision; and is of no practical value till the doubt as to the matter of fact is cleared up. Rome has given no decision as to the amount of danger incurred by frequenting our public-schools. Beyond the general statement that the system is defective, and the public-schools, for the most part, dangerous, no decision has been given by a plenary Council in this country.

CAN RELIGION BE TAUGHT IN THE SCHOOLS?
CHARLES LEWIS SLATTERY.

Condensed for the THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper (6 pp.) in
New England Magazine, Boston, December.

MAN

【ANY good people regret that our American school-system gives no place to religious teaching. It is quite true that in public-schools the differences of our so-called creed are a bar to the setting forth of particular dogmas; but just as in the great science of Astronomy, you must first get your pupil's mind into a proper attitude, that he may conceive tremendous distances and proper methodical notions, so in the greater science of Religion you must prepare your pupil to understand the infinite power of hidden influences and the reality of things not seen. We must develop that part of the child's nature which alone comprehends religious truth. How this can be done, I wish here to illustrate.

In our own country, the emphasis is laid on descriptive knowledge. The tendency of the day seems to be scientific. All this is good as far as it goes. No one would have people less interested in this world, teeming as it is with wonderful

manifestations of power. Only we must wish that people would look behind those outer laws. They are not ultimate; most people who think at all, know that. Nor is the ultimate truth unknowable, often as it seems unknown. As self-con scious beings we must ask the true meaning of this world wherein we live, of this history which we help to make, of this self-conscious humanity of which we are fragments. When we begin to ask such questions we show that we are not content with merely the few things that we can describe and define. We begin to see that consciousness is boundless in a way so indescribable that the problem of infinite space is as nothing before it. Once started on this restless search for the meaning of the world-for our foundation of describable knowledge— and we must come sooner or later to the belief in the Infinite Consciousness; and if we are true men, we must believe that we have some relation to the Infinite Consciousness. This Consciousness we call God. Once, then, realize the inadequacy of describable knowledge, and you must be led to believe the reality of appreciable knowledge, and so you will come at last to the belief in some sort of God.

This belief in the reality of appreciable knowledge, and its vital connection with truth, cannot be taught any one in a day. The task seems particularly difficult now, when the distractions of a commercial world are so great that men thrust aside the deeper and more difficult questions which come to them, that they may solve the many interesting problems of the outer world which seem to offer immediate and profitable solution. The lesson must be taught the boy in some way, that when he is a man he may not have to revolutionize his thought in order to see the true world. The task is subtle. Dogmatic assertions will not convince a boy. Clearly we must demand some delightful approach to this aspect of truth, and I believe that English literature presents the possibility of an introduction to it, at once the surest and the most attractive. #

Yet how, one asks, can this help Religion? It helps Religion because it turns the child's mind to recognize the reality of the appreciable. He may not be convinced of his relationship to God just because he has seen the genuine power of the appreciable; but he certainly has gained the most important approach to that conviction. This reading, perhaps, opens to the boy for the first time the certainty of power aside from mechanical laws. He sees ideals, he sees these ideals becoming the purposes of men; he sees a world opening before him that he will call mysterious; yet its mystery lies not in the fact that he does not know it, for he becomes sure that it is the most knowable of all realities. Only he cannot describe it; he can merely appreciate it. Again, English literature may teach a boy that the world is what men interpret it to be; and, further, it encourages the expression of a child's innate belief in the appreciable. Above all, English literature may aid religion by encouraging right action. If you fill a boy's mind with noble ideals, he cannot help being brave, honest, and unselfish. So, through stimulus to right action, English Literature may lead a boy at last to the best question man can ask,-"What is my relation to God?"

our language is understood, the work to which one must always go to get a living portrait of the greatest king of France.

From whatever point of view you regard it-philology, literature, history of manners—the volume is most precious. It is one of the oldest historical texts written in French, and, better than any other, it enables us to conceive what was the moral ideal of a man of the Middle Ages. Joinville lived at the culmination of that great epoch, of which he is, perhaps by a better title than Saint Louis, the most complete personification. A just judgment of the History of Joinville must be sought in the biography of the author. Holding the hereditary post of Seneschal at the court of Champagne he became, in matters of etiquette, an authority. He was endowed with an affectionate disposition, a sensitive conscience, and a certain good sense, which Saint Louis was quick to recognize. A very lively sense of duty supplemented some defects in his character. Although without military instincts, and, on some occasions, a poltroon, as he does not hesitate to inform us, he showed in battle, generally, a valor and firmness worthy of the most fiery knights. He was still quite young when, during the stay at Acre he formed a close intimacy with Saint Louis, which was strengthened while Joinville was with the king in Egypt and Palestine. Altogether he passed six years in the Orient. He was but thirty years old when he returned to France from the crusade led by the French King. In taking part in this crusade Joinville had followed the example of his ancestors, for his family had been persistent crusaders for several generations. Much as he loved Saint Louis, he declined to follow his royal master on his unlucky second crusade. Joinville does not attempt to hide his motives for staying at home, not concealing his conviction that it was better to be in mortal sin than to have the leprosy. He survived his friend and master nearly half a century. His fief in the course of time became part of the vast estates of the Orleans family, and thus caused Louis Philippe to bestow on his third son the title of Prince de Joinville.

The author of "The History of Saint Louis" had hardly closed his eyes when the work fell into a forgetfulness from which it did not emerge for two centuries. By the end of the sixteenth century it had appeared in four editions, and, in 1527, was translated into Castilian. It appeared, however, somewhat imperfect in form, until M. Natalis de Wailly undertook to settle the exact text. He studied the French language and grammar of the fourteenth century with patience and sagacity, and now we have the History under a form as correct, if not more correct, than that of the primitive text. Buchon's and Michaud's editions have translations into modern French, which, however, are hardly necessary, for Joinville's language is very easy.

The first question suggested by the History is: Is the book original? As to this, it is certain that the work is wholly one of personal recollections. The author had a remarkable memory for details of events. For example, in a tumult during which he was taken prisoner on the Nile, while he felt the daggers of the miscreants at his throat, he preserved sufficient coolness to observe that the Saracen who had him in his grip wore a pair of unbleached drawers. These details give wonderful precision and vivacity to his pictures. An instance of this is the obstinate defense of Joinville and his companions at Mansourah, when Louis IX. appeared on the field of battle with a 'gilt helmet on his head, and a German sword in his hand." He excels in painting certain scenes with few persons present, like the charming page in which he relates how he was surprised by Saint Louis putting his hands on Joinville's shoulders after the Council at Acre.

In these bits Joinville does not give proof of what may be properly called literary qualities. He has none such, and the charm of his writing is due to the absence of all art. The work is rather the record of gossiping talk than a book regularly com

posed. It is the conversation of an honest man who, without talking for effect, without sacrificing anything to form, by his own good sense and a certain natural humor hits on the right word and expressions. By the candor with which he displays his emotions, and the simplicity with which he expresses them, he makes his readers sharers of his feeling, and keeps them always wide awake. The whole spirit of the narrative is thoroughly French in its irresistible good sense, and the gaiety which breaks out under the most depressing circumstances.

FIRST EDITIONS OF TENNYSON.
Bookworm, London, December.

HE first sale by public auction of the earliest editions of
the poetes

recently at Messrs. Puttich & Simpson's rooms, in Leicester Square. The sums realized in each case indicate a decided upward tendency, whilst the competition for the possession of two or three of his earliest works is as keen as the demand for the later issues is flaccid. The explanation is obviously found in the fact that of recent years-indeed for more than a quarter of a century—each of the familiar volumes has been issued in extremely large numbers, and that in every instance within the period indicated the market is stocked with sufficient first editions to satisfy collectors for many generations to come. With "Poems by Two Brothers" and a few others it was very different, and whatever changes may occur in the fashion of book-collecting, they are not likely to affect the commercial value of the first fruits of the dead Laureate. In regard to the now historic little volume which first saw the light at Louth in 1827-" Poems by Two Brothers "-the copy which came under the hammer the other day was bought by Mr. Bumpus for £30, and this figure represents up to the present the high-water mark of its value, being £2 in excess of the highest figure paid hitherto.

The copy of the "Poems, Chiefly Lyrical” (1830), which was the immediate work of Alfred Tennyson, was an exceptionally pretty one, being bound in green morocco extra, double, with water-silk linings, and having gilt edges. This went for £5 10S. The next edition of this book, which was published in 1833, contained three sonnets and two other pieces which were afterwards suppressed, a fact which alone gives it an extraneous value, and a copy of this was knocked down for £7. The first collective edition of Tennyson's "Poems" (1842), in two volumes, in cloth and uncut, with the author's autograph attached, sold for £10 5s; whilst a first edition, in similar condition, of "In Memoriam," went for £5.

ART AND UTILITY.-The theory of art for art's sake alone has had its day. The artist who condescends to vivify with his talent a piece of furniture or a jewel, is no longer exposed to the contempt of his fellow artists. Did the most skillful painters or the first sculptors, I will not say of the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, but of the seventeenth or eighteenth century, ever hesitate to lend their aid to architects? The illustrious Le Brun, who proved himself capable of finishing in four years the paintings of the great gallery of Versailles, did not consider it the slightest descent to draw a design for a fountain, a lock, a table, or an iron railing. Did not Antoine Coyzevox take a leading part in the designing of the children and the execution of those marvelous trophies of gilt, bronze, which are objects of endless admiration in the same gallery at Versailles? Who scupltured the charming mythologies which disport themselves so graciously on the arches of the ceiling or on the medallions of the panels in the old Soubise Palace, if not some of the most celebrated sculptors of the beginning of the reign of Louis XV., the Lemoines, the Adams, the Le Lorraines? The deplorable, unhappy separation of the two old allies is, then, a modern innovation, contrary to all French traditions.-J. J. Guiffrey, in the December Gazette des Beaux Arts, Paris.