ly absent. The pottery resembles that of Mykenae, but the presence of obsidian and the scarcity of metal imply that Tiryns was the older city of the two. As has already been observed in the Academy, the scale and arrangement of the newly found palace, with the two temples within it, are almost identical with those of the palace and two temples discovered in the second prehistoric city of Hissarlik."

THE Committee of Management of the Incorporated Society of Authors has presented its first report. The committee consists of Mr. Walter Besant, Mr. J. Comyns Carr, Mr. A. Egmont Hake, Mr. H. C. Merivale, Mr. S. G. C. Middlemore, the Rev. C. H. Middleton-Wake, Mr. Walter Herries Pollock, and Mr. E. M. Underdown (hon. counsel). Mr. Besant was appointed chairman. A sub-committee has been appointed on dramatic copyright, another on international copyright, and a third on the registration of titles. Lord Tennyson has honored the Society by becoming its first president. The committee is now inviting the most eminent writers in all branches of literature in foreign countries to become honorary Fellows. The whole number of members is now 186, consisting of the president, sixty-nine vice-presidents, and 116. Fellows and Associates. The list of vice-presidents is not yet complete, but, so far as it goes, it will be found to include a tolerably representative body of English writers in most departments. The committee has resolved to accept as Associates not only those who have adopted literature as a profession, but all those who desire to support and advance the cause of letters; and it has been decided that a certain proportion of the subscriptions shall every year be set aside for management, while the rest shall be allowed to become the nucleus of a fund to be invested for the general purposes of the Society.

KING TAWHAIO and his chiefs before leaving England compiled a narrative of the leading incidents of their visit, and had it set up in the Maori language. The pamphlet included a report in Maori of the interview of the chiefs with Lord Derby. The king took Iwith him to New Zealand a large number of copies of the pamphlet, for distribution among the tribes which were represented in the deputation.

THE death of Nicolaï Vassilyevich Berg at Warsaw on the 28th of last month leaves a vacancy in the ranks of Russian men of letters and students of Slavonic literature. Berg was

born in 1821, and received his earlier 'education at the Moscow Gymnasium; thence he passed to the university of the same capital, which, however, he quitted, without completing the curriculum, for service in the Imperial Russian Bank in 1848, where he remained till the outbreak of the Crimean War, to the scene of which he betook himself in the capacity of a newspaper correspondent, being in Sebastopol during the whole time of the siege. Up

Minor.

on the conclusion of hostilities his restless nature led him to the Caucasus, where he was present at the capture of Schamyl. He subsequently travelled in Central Asia and Asia Returning to Europe in 1860, he joined Garibaldi's troops, then engaged in the struggle with the Neapolitan monarchy. Thence, upon the news of the Polish insurrection, he repaired to Warsaw, where the governor-general took him into his service. In 1868 he was offered the Professorship of the Russian Language and Literature in the High School at Warsaw, a post which he retained upon the conversion of the school into the Warsaw University. M. Berg is the author of a large number of, historical works; of these his memoirs of the siege of Sebastopol and of the Polish insurrection have a considerable reputation. He was also the author of many other works of a purely literary character, as well as of numerous articles and translations. and was for some time editor of the Varshavsky Dnevnik.

THE Turks succeeded in getting up a new style of exhibition during the last Ramazan in the courtyard of the mosque of Sultan Bayazid at Constantinople. This was an exhibition of handwriting. Choice specimens of printing were also admitted. Calligraphy is still an art there, and the late Sultan chose this for his trade. Examples of his work could be freely bought.

MISCELLANY.

AN ABORIGINAL DWELLING.-A short time ago there was discovered in a marsh at Schussenried, in Wurtemburg, a well-preserved hut of the age of stone. The floc ring and a part of the walls were intact, and, as appeared from a careful admeasurement, had formed, when complete, a rectangle, 10 metres long and 7 metres wide. The hut was divided into two compartments, communicating with each other by a foot-bridge made of three girders. The single door, looking toward the south,

was a metre wide, and opened into a room 6.50 metres long and 4 metres wide. In one corner lay a heap of stones which had apparently formed the fireplace. This room was the kitchen, “the living room," and probably a night refuge for the cattle in cold weather. The second room, which had no opening outside, measured 6.50 metres long and 5 metres wide, and was no doubt used as the family bedchamber. The floors of both rooms were formed of round logs and the walls of the split logs. This, be it remembered, was a hut of the Stone Age. It may be safely presumed that the lake dwellings of the Bronze Age were larger in size and less primitive in their arrangements. At both periods the platform supporting the houses communicated with the shore by means of a bridge (probably removable at pleasure) and with the water by ladders. These ladders, as appears from an example found at Chavannes, were made of a single stang with holes for the staves, which protruded on either side.-Contemporary Review.

ASPASIA AND THE DUTIES OF WOMEN.---It was a fortunate time when Aspasia arrived at the city of the violet crown. Pericles had just stepped upon the stage, and his genius, his principles, and his ambition promised an era of unparalleled glory to the city that had risen from ashes under Themistocles. The old age was dead, and a new one was being inaugurated. Grace and beauty and polished empressment were succeeding the ruder virtues of the age of Aristides. The brilliancy of Sophocles had taken the place of the grandeur of Eschylus. The type of the age was the graceful Parthenon that towered peerless under the Attic sun on the heights of the Acropolis. Into this world the gifted Milesian flashed with all the splendor of a meteor, and held her power with the permanence of a fixed star. lofty and richly endowed nature, her diverse accomplishments, her beauty and blandishments, made her at once a marvel in the Athenian capital. She was mistress of every art, and could converse with equal ease and with irresistible grace upon poetry, politics, and philosophy. For the first time the treasures of Hellenic culture were found in the possession of a woman who also possessed all the graces of womanhood-a phenomenon which all men looked upon with eyes of wonder. Such a woman could not long remain without influence in a city like Athens. But her aims were lofty, and to no second place would she stoop. She had but one equal in Athens, and

Her

that man was Pericles. Besides being the representative of the Alcæmonidæ and the successful rival of Cymon, Pericles was dowered with the greatest beauty and the most august abilities. By all odds he was the grandest man of his brilliant age, and surpassed every other man in particular qualities. His silvery and polished eloquence surpassed the fire and action of Demosthenes. His statesmanship went farther than Themistocles. His bravery rivalled that of Alcibiades. He was a pattern in temperance and sobriety, and his chastity shamed even Socrates. His diligence was proverbial. He never assisted at a festive banquet in his life, and no Athenian ever saw him with his friends over the wine-cup. Grave, serious, dignified at all times, his whole energy and thought were devoted to the service of the State. This was the man who was captivated by the charms and accomplishments of Aspasia. Aspasia not only occupied a prominent position, but she played a leading part in the affairs of her time. She seemed to be the director of all that was progressive in Athens, and to have stamped her influence upon all minds. Such a salon as she had! Around no other

person in the whole history of the world was there gathered so illustrious a coterie. Phidias, the greatest sculptor; Sophocles and Euripides, the dramatic masters; Anaxogoras and Socrates, the philosophers; Xenophon, Plato, and Alcibiades, were all her friends, her associates, and her disciples. Socrates called her his teacher, and it is said that she gave Pericles lessons in rhetoric. Half of her usefulness was probably never known. She may have made noble fights in behalf of her sex. One thing we do know, that she inculcated broader culture for women, and urged them to become more influential agents in society. No, Aspasia did not forget her own sex. She loved to discuss art with Phidias, drama with Sophocles, philosophy with Anaxagoras, politics with Pericles, but she loved, too, to talk with women upon domestic and social affairs. At her symposiums Athenian wives were present, and her influence must have been salutary in many instances. She had an exalted idea of the duties of womanhood, and her goodness, her noble aims, her intellectual abilities placed her in a position where she could do much for the improvement of her sex. did she shirk her opportunities.-Phrenological Journal.

MONTE CARLO AND

Nor

CONSUMPTION.-It is probable that the gambling den at Monte Carlo

will shortly be reckoned among the sores of humanity which have been healed. Many reasons render its closure desirable; not one, we believe, could be urged in favor of its maintenance. The card-player who is not also a gambler will continue to enjoy his favorite pursuit, as an exercise of skill, regardless of the fate of a gaming saloon. The nameless and numberless adventurers and cheats who fatten on the leisure and simplicity of wealthy seaside visitors will find their income straitened. Integrity will have one temptation less, and civilization will have lost a scandal. Health will benefit, moreover. To tax one's own failures of skill with large sums of money, or to commit such sums to the mere chance of play or to the marketable probity of casual friends, must and does lead to much avoidable anxiety and passionate excitement. The wear and tear of such a life is itself a cause of disease. It is also a certain source of injury to some of our own countrymen, who seek the Mediterranean coast on account of phthisis already active. The spes phthisica leads all such to take an active part in the lighter amusements of the healthy. A place at the card-table requires no great physical effort, and accordingly one finds them there. The fever of play adds its irritation to that of their malady, and the seats at which, perhaps, disease is languishing are stirred into morbid life again. What wonder that such invalids return home complaining of the climate of the Riviera! Monte Carlo and its neighborhood are well suited for the treatment of their disease, but the atmosphere of gambling saloons is not wholesome even for the sound in body.--Lancet.

TOBACCO AND EYESIGHT.-For many years it has been known to ophthalmic surgeons that abuse of tobacco may lead to failure of sight. This fact has been made use of by the antitobacconists, who are mostly well-meaning but meddlesome persons, allied more or less to other agitators in the cause of various reactionary.measures for the impediment of scientific research, and the obstruction of sanitary legislation. In the report of forty cases of tobacco amblyopia, by Mr. Shears, of Liverpool, which we have recently published, it appeared that atrophy of the optic nerves is very rarely met with as the result of excessive smoking, although tobacco is the essential agent in producing failure of sight. Great moderation in smoking, and especially the employment of mild forms of tobacco, is all that is necessary to insure recovery. Mr. Hutchin

son has found that a very small proportion of smokers suffer from amblyopia, and that among those who do become subject to impaired vision are many who show an hereditary tendency to that infirmity; many of their relatives, who do not smoke, being similarly afflicted. Workmen in tobacco-factories do not appear to be subject to deterioration of eyesight; in one large manufactory, where twelve thousand men and women are employed, Mr. Shears has found that not one single person on the premises suffered from failure of eyesight, although many of the hands had been working there for ten years.-British Medical Journal.

MEDICAL HERBS.-The indigenous plants of Great Britain are too much neglected in the present age, for persons are apt to run after all that is rare or novel in the form of medicine in preference to cultivating our native herbs, so many of which are rich in curative properties. The Balm and the Dandelion, for instance, are little valued, yet the first is an admirable tonic, and the other a first-rate liver medicine. The Balm is, strictly speaking, a native of the south of Europe, but it has been grown in our gardens from time immemorial, and the first record I can discover of its being used medicinally rests with the Arabs, who are said to have taken it to strengthen the nerves; but I can remember the time when "balm tea" was drunk by the laboring classes in South Wales almost as freely as tea is now taken by English cottagers, and most certainly hysteria was at that period a disease unknown among the working classes. Not so now, alas! Dandelion is admitted into our British Pharmacopoeia under the name of Taraxacum, and regularly prescribed in diseases of the liver and spleen; but the poor people were at one time accustomed to make a decoction with the roots, which answered nearly as well as the chemically prepared extract, and the leaves when blanched are taken by the French in salads. It is likewise a valuable anti-scorbutic. People put great faith in the doctrine of signatures during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but it is now nearly exploded. It was based upon the following hypothesis, that every natural production indicates by some obvious external mark the diseases in which it is efficacious; and for my own part I really believe that there is a great deal of truth in the idea that not only the colors of a flower, but various other marks on leaves, stems, or roots are typical of their medicinal

properties; for example, the spotted Lungwort possesses healing powers in consumption, the scarlet poppy has been used with good effect in erysipelas, and the Asarabacca, provincially called the Foal's foot, or wild ginger, with its curious ear-shaped leaf, was formerly an unfailing remedy for all the pains that affect that organ.-Science Monthly.

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in

MY ARABS.- My Arab, though in a very prosaic way an object of interest, is by no means a morally grand or physically picturesque personage. A child, not of the everlasting desert, but of the ebbing and flowing gutter, and literally, as well as figuratively, a child. He speaks of himself as going on ten," and, as a guess, that is probably tolerably near the mark, though his mother professes to be uncertain whether it is ten or eleven years of age that he will be next hopping." The hopping is her chief chronological landmark. She generally speaks of things as having occurred during or so long before or after the hopping, though occasionally she will fix a date by reference to the year which "we" that is to say, her husband, self, and child, "wintered in the house;" the house in this case meaning the workhouse. The boy is popularly known as "Slinger," a cognomen about the origin of which, as about his age, there is a degree of uncertainty. Some say it was bestowed upon him in consequence of his skill with the simple and easily-made sling which serves boys of his class instead of the more elaborate and costly catapult with which better-off boys do their window-breaking and attempt bird-slaughter. Others assert that the sobriquet is a tribute to his skill and dexterity in "slinging his hook," a phrase which, being interpreted, means getting out of the way if he individually, or the body of “small gangers" of which he is a leading spirit, have "been up to games." And certain it is that Slinger displays a marked aptitude for "getting round the corner" or doubling about the network of slums in which his home (?) is situated, if he has been “up” to anything which makes it desirable that he should keep himself dark. His features are pinched, but tolerably regular; his expression of countenance "oldfashioned" and cunning; his complexion is naturally sallow, though in any case it would appear so, owing to the fact that it is habitually 'grimed" with dirt. His hair is dark and curly, and worn uncombed and matted, and he has a pair of bright, black, beady eyes which are constantly on the move." He is small and

66

thin, but wiry, and active and hardy, and would probably look a fairly well-made boy could his figure be made out. With him, however, all outline of form is "lost" from his always being clad in cast-off garments a world too wide," and as regards trouser-leg and coat-sleeve a world too long, though the latter inconvenience is easily remedied by the rolling-up process. Winter and summer alike he goes barefoot, and to a certain extent from choice. He could no doubt muster up old boots as he musters up other old clothing. As a matter of fact, he does occasionally get hold of a pair that have still some wear in them, and as far as appearance goes would be rather a credit than otherwise to the rest of his costume, but instead of wearing them he disposes of them in the way of sale or barter.-Cornhill Magazine.

THE WEAR OF ENGLISH COINS.-More than eleven thousand pounds sterling worth of silver is wasted every year in the course of the circulation of crowns, half-crowns, florins, shillings, and sixpences. One hundred sovereigns of the date of 1820, which were weighed in 1859 by Mr. Miller, showed a loss in weight through the wear of circulation which was estimated at 1 6s. 7d. There is, therefore, more waste produced in the circulation of gold and silver coins than is generally thought of. A coin, when turned out of the Mint brand-new, has a number of vicissitudes to pass through before it is again called in. It is constantly being abraded, even by handling. An ordinary chemical balance, which will turn with the thousandth part of a grain, will not show that a shilling has lost in weight when the thumb has been rubbed over it; but one of the feats performed by the induction balance -an electrical instrument, widely different from the chemical balance-has been to show that a coin undergoes loss even when a finger is rubbed over it. It will readily be understood, therefore, that in the numberless handlings a coin has to submit to in the course of years, the loss arising therefrom becomes at last sensible to the ordinary balance. Coins likewise suffer much loss in weight by abrad ing each other's surfaces when jingling in the pocket, and they are damaged each time a shopman rings them on his table to see whether they are genuine or not. Every minute particle of matter removed in these or other ways lessens the weight of the coins, and makes them look old; and in the lesser coins, which are much used, this proceeds to such an

extent that every one knows the difficulty experienced in telling a threepenny from a fourpenny-bit. Mr. Miller some years ago made a number of precise experiments, from which it was ascertained that £100 worth of sovereigns lost £3 9s. 8.4d. of their value in a hundred years; similarly £100 worth of half-crowns lost 13 11s. 8.8d.; £100 worth of shillings, £36 14s. 3.1d.; and £100 worth of sixpences lost £50 18s. 9.8d. in value, or more than one half in the hundred years. It will be noted here with regard to the silver coins, that the less the value the greater the amount of wear. These lesser coins are, of course, most used; and so in case of a sixpence a century's wear reduces it to less than half its original volume. - World of Wonders.

THE FINEST CITY IN THE WORLD.-It is natural and reasonable enough, of course, that the large section of the tourist world that inscribes London as its headquarters in the visitors' book should fly as far as possible from the tedious street, the well-known haunt. It is perhaps excusable that the denizens of Leeds and Liverpool should look upon London only as another place of business, only a repetition on a larger scale of what he sees every day at home. It is excusable, but only on account of ignorance. For it is quite certain that London is no more a repetition of Leeds and Liverpool than Venice is a repetition of Verona, or Westminster Abbey of Manchester Cathedral. The things are totally unlike. Even the Pool and the Docks of London are no more a repetition of the estuary of the Mersey than St. Paul's is a repetition of a stucco garden temple. In fact, even in its particular business aspect, the City is wholly different from the business quarters of other towns. As in Virgil's day, the Mantuan swain went up to Rome expecting to find it a larger edition but still like his little country town, "for so he knew puppies like dogs, and kids to resemble their mothers," but found that there was no more comparison between them in reality than there was between a cypress and an osier twig; so the Lancashire or Yorkshire man who expects in London merely a larger series of factories or a dustier line of warehouses, will find that his method of comparing great things to small is as inapplicable as that of his Italian counterpart. The mere volume of London business, the mere rush and roar of the London streets, are wholly incomparable with even the busiest of busy towns elsewhere. Liverpool may challenge the Pool, the Manchester warehouses may

affect to rival Cannon Street and Paul's Wharf, Birmingham may claim as great a show of shops as Queen Victoria Street or Cheapside, Worcester may sneer at the potteries of Lambeth; but it is the conglomeration of all these together, and each element in larger proportions than any other city of the Old World can show, that makes London so unlike, so much greater than any other city in England. Then, again, the mere business quarter, or rather quarters, of London are but a part of the whole. Besides the Pool there are the Parks, besides the Bank and the Exchange there are the Public Offices and the Houses of Parliament, besides the Guildhall and the Mansion House there are the National Gallery and the British Museum. In fact, because London is the capital, and the natural capital, because it is London, it must needs be infinitely vaster and more complex in life and development than other cities. It is not merely a province of houses-other towns are smaller provinces of houses-but it is a nation of houses. It is the visible embodiment in stone and brick of the country as a whole.-Spectator.

Not a

LEPROSY.-I should not, I think, lay myself open to contradiction were I to say that English people for the most part view the question of leprosy, together with the laws and regulations and treatment appertaining to it, as a matter of purely antiquarian interest. few, indeed, look upon it as a sort of Jewish or Scriptural, if I may so say, disease than vanished at the dawn of Christianity-that fell with the fall of the Old Law and the rise of the New. And so closely and absolutely is it associated with and limited to the Old World impressions of their early Bible lessons, that the allusions made to it in such popular books of travel as Miss Bird's "Six Months in the Sandwich Islands," and Lady Brassey's " Voy. age in the Sunbeam," pass almost unnoticed. In fact, it is not so very long ago that I heard of an educated, cultivated man, who, preaching on the Gospel commonly read on the third Sunday after the Epiphany-a gospel full of deep meaning in that one apparently simple expression, "and Jesus stretched forth his hand and touched the leper"-rejoiced that the dire evil no longer darkened the face of the earth. There is no occasion to linger in the Old World, at Jerusalem, at Beyrout, at Damascus or Aleppo, to know that mankind is still subject to the hideous disease of leprosy. In our own Dominion of Canada, the scourge of leprosy is upon the people, and in New