China during the whole of the present dynasty. Our poet, therefore, was less complimentary to Europe than he probably intended to be when he said that fifty years of Europe were only equal to sixty years of China. Perhaps he was not so far wrong after all."

As a result of the International Literary Congress at Berne last September, the President of the Swiss Confederation, M. Ruchonnet, has issued a circular inviting the European Governments to send representatives to a conference at which the establishment of an international code of literary copyright will be discussed. Our own Government has agreed to take part in this conference, and Lord Granville has informed Mr. Blanchard Jerrold, the Chairman of the English Committee of the International Literary Association, that Mr. Adams, her Majesty's Minister at Berne, is instructed to attend as British delegate, but that he is to be present in "a purely consultative capacity, and with no power to vote or to bind her Majesty's Government to accept any views on the copyright question which may be adopted by the conference."

MK. LABOUCHERE'S Truth gives these interesting figures, showing the earnings of a number of well-known writers. Disraeli, it is stated made by his pen £30,000; Byron, £23,000; Lord Macaulay received £20,000 on account of three fourths net profits for his history. Thiers and Lamartine received nearly £20,000 each for their respective histories. Thackeray is said not to have received £5000 for any of his novels. Sir Walter Scott was paid £110,ooo for eleven novels of three volumes each and nine volumes of "Tales of my Landlord." For one novel he received £10,000 and between November, 1825, and June, 1827, he received £26,000 for literary work. Bulwer, Lord Lytton, is said to have made £80,000 by his novels; Dickens, it has been computed ought to have been making £10,000 a year for the three years prior to the publication of "Nicholas Nickleby;" and Trollope in twenty years made £70,000. The following sums are said to have been paid for single works; Romola," George Eliot, £10,000; Waverley," Scott, £7000; Woodstock," Scott, £8000; "Life of Napoleon," Scott, £18,000; "Armadale," Wilkie Collins, £5000; "Lallah Rookh," Thomas Moore, £3000; "History of Rome," Goldsmith, £300; "History of Greece," Gold. smith £250; History of England," Goldsmith, £600; "Vicar of Wakefield," Goldsmith, £60; "Decline and Fall," Gibbor, £10,000;

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"Lives of the Poets," Johnson, £300; "Rasselas," Johnson, £100.

THE sketch of the life and times of Sydney Smith which Mr. Stuart J. Reid is engaged upon should prove an unusually interesting book. Mr. Reid has had some valuable papers intrusted to him by members of the family of the great wit; and the Marquis of Lansdowne, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, M.P., Mr. R. A. Kingiake, and others, have placed unpublished letters at his disposal, while several old friends of Sydney Smith's have enriched the volume with personal reminiscences. The book will also contain a portrait, from a miniature never before engraved, belonging to Miss Holland; a view of Combe Florey Rectory, with Sydney Smith in the foreground, drawn by his friend Mrs. Grote, during a visit in 1840; and other illustrations specially executed for the work. The book will be dedicated, by permission, to Mr. Ruskin. Why, we do not know. One can scarcely imagine two men who had less in common than the genial wit and the “cantankerous" critic.

It is said that Professor Kuenen's revision of his introduction to the Old Testament is to be translated from the Dutch by a well-known English clergyman. The chapter relating to the Pentateuch and Joshua were translated by the late Dr. Colenso.

MR. FROUDE is writing the preface to a new work on the massacre of Protestants in Ireland in 1641.

ture.

An interesting account appears in the London World of the respective conversational powers of some of the lights of French literaAlexandre Dumas "has a tendency to stand in corners, with arms folded and nursing his chin between the thumb and the index of his right hand, while he relates some anecdote of himself or of his father, in a roughish, hoarse voice, and with a certain brusqueness of language." Augier is a nervous and incisive talker, "joyous, gaulois at times, and gifted with a communicative laugh." Renan is "urbane, unctuous, priestly, and unaffirmative." Alphonse Daudet retains the awkwardness of Bohemian antecedents; Sardou "will talk your head off a single word is sufficient to start him." Edmond de Goncourt talks "well and elegantly, and with great originality of language. Victor Hugo "used to be reputed an excellent talker." Barbey d'Aurevilly who is one of the lions of the Baronne de Poilly's salon, is a master in the art of causerie, both

of

as a narrator and in repartee. About course, is a capital talker." Zola is a "boor in all respects; he never appears in a salon, and when by chance he visits one of his colleagues in naturalism he invariably talks about the circulation of his books and the scurvy thievery of those American publishers who translate his novels and never pay him a cent.' MR. CHARLES LEWES, it is said, writes that it is untrue that George Eliot left many note. books behind her dealing with numerous subjects. When the biography upon which her husband, Mr. Cross, is now engaged, and the forthcoming volume of essays, are published, there will remain almost nothing unprinted.

MISCELLANY.

RINGS IN THE UNITED STATES.-Owing to several circumstances, "rings," as they are called in the United States, or combinations of speculators, are able to effect much more at the other side of the Atlantic than they could in Europe. These rings are a kind of temporary partnership formed for a special purpose, and often only for a brief space of time. They by some means or other get command of large amounts of capital, and they operate upon the Stock Exchange for the purpose of getting control of great industrial undertakings. Their mode of operation is first to spread rumors disadvantageous to the property which they wish to get possession of. They usually fix upon some time when there exists partial or general commercial discredit; when a failure of the harvest, great floods, or excessive speculation have excited apprehensions. They then take advantage of this state of feeling to spread rumors disadvantageous to the property they wish to acquire. When the price of the property is sufficiently lowered, they are able to buy such an amount of shares, as practically enables them to vote themselves into the direction and management of the company. They follow up this step by bringing out glowing reports shortly afterward showing that their management has put an end to the unsatisfactory state of things that previously existed, and that the future of the company promises to be most brilliant. They succeed in this way after a time in running up the price of the shares to an extravagant height, when they take care to sell out and once more resort to the tactics which frighten shareholders and bring down prices. Thus they go on alternately buying and selling, and at each move increas

ing their own wealth. In the management of the property, moreover, they utterly disregard the interests of the shareholders and of the public. They refuse all adequate information ; they publish reports of the most meagre kind and at the longest intervals, and generally they maintain so much secrecy that it is impossible for the outside public to form any true estimate of the real value of the property. At the same time they usually increase their wealth by what is called watering the stock-that is, issuing fresh share capital for which there has been no expenditure of any kind. And they disregard the interests of their customers just as they make light of the interests of their shareholders.-Saturday Review.

ANGLO-FRENCH AND FRANCO-ENGLISH.— There is an ancient and musty merry jest about a City madam who spoke only the French habitually used in young ladies' schools, and who rendered into English the familiar ris de veau à la financière as "" a smile of the little cow in the manner of the female financier." But this is not more startling than many other things to be discovered by those who search the cook-books diligently. We remember a bill of fare in a far Western hotel in the United States in which all the familiar dishes were translated into unfamiliar French, the climax being reached when ginger-snaps, the sole dessert, appeared transmogrified as gateux de gingembre. Perhaps it is in revenge for repeated insults like this that the Parisians now advertise on the windows of the cafés on the boulevards that Boissons Américaines are sold within, the only American drink particularized being a certain " Shery Gobbler," warranted to warm the heart of all vagrant American humorists who may chance to visit Paris while alive, and in the flesh. In essence shery gobbler is but little more comic than rosbif, or than bifteck, which are recognized French forms of the roast beef of old England and of the beefsteak which plays second to it. Both rosbif and bifteck are accepted by Littré, who finds for the latter a sponsor as early and as eminent as Voltaire. And shery gobbler is not as comic as "cutlete" and "tartlete," which we detected day after day on the bill of fare of a Cunard steamer crossing from Liverpool to New York a few months ago. When we drew the attention of a fellow-traveller to the constant recurrence of the superfluouse at the end of cutlet and tartlet, the active and intelligent steward, who anticipated our slightest wants,

leaned forward with a benignant smile, and benevolently explained the mystery. "It's French, sir," he said; "cutlete and tartlete is French, sir!"

Of the many amusing stories in circulation and turning on an English misuse of French, the most popular is perhaps the anecdote in which one of two gentlemen occupying an apartment in Paris leaves word with the concierge that he does not wish his fire to go out; as he unfortunately expresses this desire in the phrase "ne laissez pas sortir le fou," much inconvenience results to the other gentleman, who is detained in the apartment as a dangerous lunatic. This pleasant tale has in its time been fathered on many famous Englishmen. And like unto it is another which Americans are wont to place to the credit of a cockney, while the English are sure that its true hero was a Yankee-both parties acting on the old principle of "putting the Frenchman up the chimney when they tell the story in England." The story goes that a certain AngloSaxon-for thus we may avoid international complications-entered into a Parisian restaurant with intent to eat, drink, and be merry. Wishing to inform the waiter of his hunger he said, “J'ai une femme !" to which the polite but astonished waiter naturally responded,

J'espère que madame se porte bien ?'' Whereupon the Anglo-Saxon makes a second attempt at the French for hunger, and asserts, "Je suis fameux !'' to which the waiter's obvious reply is, "Je suis bien aise de le savoir, monsieur!" Then the Anglo-Saxon girded up his loins and made a final effort, and declared, "Je suis femme !" to which the waiter could answer only, "Alors madame s'habille d'une façon très étrange." After which the Anglo-Saxon fled, and was seen no more.-Saturday Review.

INDUSTRY AS A MATTER OF RACE.-We suppose there are indolent Chinese, but the immense majority of that vast people have an unequalled power of work; care nothing about hours, and so long as they are paid, will go on with a dogged, steady persistence in toil for sixteen hours a day such as no European can rival.

No English ship-carpenter will work like a Chinese, no laundress will wash as many clothes, and a Chinese compositor would very soon be expelled for over-toil by an English

sustained as they are by artificial irrigation. Of the Brown Races the Arabs generally prefer abstemiousness carried to a starving point to continuous labor; but the most numerous brown people, the Indian, labor unrelaxingly for seventy-seven hours a week. They are often called lazy by unobservant Europeans, because they enjoy the cool of the evening ; but they go to work before four in the morning and work on till three, and only eat once during sunlight, the second meal being taken after dark. They take, too, no weekly holiday. The result, in fact, proves their industry. They keep up a system of agriculture singularly toilsome, because it involves irrigation, raise often three crops and always two in the year, and have covered India with grand cities which they built for themselves. As they feel their climate, though less than Europeans do, their labor is severe, and we should say deliberately, after the observation of years, that their industrial fault was, when laboring for themselves, a disposition to do too much on insufficient food. They wear themselves out too early. They know this themselves, and have a tendency to refuse overtime and reject pay for it which is often most annoying. Of course, the savage brown races will not work continuously, but neither will the savage white ones, e.g., the mean whites of the Southern States; but then both will make incredible exertions by fits and starts, as, for example, in hunting, or rowing very long distances.— Spectator.

PARISIAN PLEASURES.-Leaders of fashion in Paris deserve the rare praise of having discovered-not, indeed, a new pleasure, but a new variety of an old one. This is the very heart of the dancing season, Paris being in all things a month earlier than London; and after Cinderellas, fancy balls, and costume réunions, in which inventive eccentricity was to be confined entirely to (the outsides of) the heads of the guests, it seemed that nothing new in that line could be devised. Something new has been devised, and is now in the full swing of Parisian patronage and popularity. Dances are given in which the hostess assumes a nationality. The Parisienne is content for the night to be a Spaniard, a Pole, a Neapolitan, and as is the hostess so must be her guests. The mise en scène is rigorously correct. In one salon you might fancy yourself in Madrid, especially if you had never been there. You have the sarabande and the bolero, the short petticoats, the gay flounces; and, where nature

(or art) can supply them, the olive complexions, the lustrous locks, and the rather wanton eyes of the country of bull-fights; dark beauties are much admired and Spanish lace is in high request. A few doors off you are in Poland, Chopin's dreamy waltzes giving the music and the slow, swinging step so inexplicable to a Frenchman accustomed to teetotum gyrations. German manners and customs are not yet very popular; but there seems a craze for the Russian mode. . On the whole, the boulevardier boasts with reason that after it has struck twelve he can make a tour of the world in forty minutes.-Pall Mall Gazette.

THE SPECTATOR ON EMERSON.-Emerson is a most stimulating writer-one, however, who, like most stimulating writers, is apt sometimes to make you think that you have got hold of a real truth, only because he has put an old error into a novel and fascinating dress. If you would be stimulated by him to the best advantage, you must be stimulated to challenge his gnomic sayings, and to sift them through and through before you accept them. He has a genuine dignity in him which often gives a false air of authority to his announcements, and so takes in the unwary. It was he, we fancy, who introduced the unfortunate mistake, which has been followed by so many, of using imposing scientific terms, like " polarity" or "polarized," for instance, in a hybrid popular sense, which makes them at once pretentious and misleading. "Let me see every trifle," says Emerson, "bristling with the polarity that ranges it constantly on an eternal law, and the shop, the plough, and the ledger referred to the like cause by which light undulates and poets sing." How the ledger is to be made to bristle with a polarity that ranges it constantly on an eternal law, Emerson, of course, never even suggested; but that grandiose mode of speaking of things takes hold of all his disciples. Mr. Joel Benton, in defending his poems, says, for instance- They are hints rather than finished statements. The words alone startle by their deep suggestion. Their polarized vitality, rich symbolism, and strong percussion, shock the mind, and celestial vistas or unfathomed deeps are opened." There, we venture to say that the metaphorical polarity of Emersona very vague kind of polarity even in him, for it meant only the indication given by some detail of common life that that detail had its explanation in grander life beyond itself has fallen to a yet lower level of metaphorical

.

emptiness. The "polarized vitality" of his poems can hardly be so explained as to give it any very distinct meaning. Polarized light is, we believe, light deprived of one set of its vibrations; and polarized life ought, we suppose by analogy, to mean life that does not show itself equally in all spheres-life thinned off into what is spiritual only. If Mr. Benton means this by the polarized vitality" of Emerson's poems, he certainly is using terms at once pedantic and ineffectual to convey a very simple meaning; and this is just the fault into which Emerson not unfrequently fell him. self, and almost always led his followers. There is a cant of scientific symbolism about their language which makes it at once obscure and affected.

BARREN AND FERTILE SOILS.-It may excite some surprise that the cost of cultivation and manure, and the amount of crop, is the same on what have hitherto been reckoned barren soils as on those which have been esteemed

highly fertile. The statement is nevertheless true, subject to some qualifications. Where sterility has arisen from presence of some noxious ingredient (a rare case) it is of course not removable by additional manure. Where it arises from impermeability of the soil to air and water it may often be modified by drainage, but in many cases it cannot be entirely remedied. Such soils form however no large percentage of the land of the country. Where it is the consequence of high situation or bad exposure, it cannot be removed by art, though drainage often sensibly improves climate. In such situations, unsuited for grain crops, cattle food may generally be profitably grown. Where its cause is over-dryness of soil, it can only be aided by deeper cultivation or by irrigation. Lastly, where it exists on account of the soil being what farmers call "hungry," that is to say not only barren but incapable of retaining manures for any length of time, it can only be overcome at the cost of some additional labor, in giving rather larger doses of manure; but, above all, in dividing them into several applications, so that at each stage of existence the plant finds a fresh supply. From some experience with such soils, I can state that this is very effectual, and at a moderate additional cost, not on the whole exceeding 20s. per acre. But the advantage of this method has not been generally recognized, and for this reason the use of artificial manures on such soils has been supposed to be unprofitable, if not injurious. ---To-Day.

IN the January number of this Review is to be found an article on Religion which has justly awakened a profound and sustained interest. The creed of Agnosticism was there formulated anew by the acknowledged head of the Evolution philosophy, with a definiteness such as perhaps it never wore before. To my mind there is nothing in the whole range of modern religious discussion more cogent and more suggestive than the array of conclusions the final outcome of which is marshalled in those twelve pages. It is the last word of the Agnostic philosophy in its long controversy with Theology. That word is decisive, and it is hard to conceive how Theology can rally for another bout from such a sorites of dilemma as is there presented. My own humble purpose is not to criticise this paper, but to point its practical moral, and, if I may, to add to it a rider of my own. As a summary of philosophical NEW SERIES.-VOL. XXXIX., No. 5

conclusions.on the theological problem, it seems to me frankly unanswerable. Speaking generally, I shall now dispute no part of it but one word, and that is the title. It is entitled "Religion." To me it is rather the Ghost of Religion. Religion as a living force lies in a different sphere.

The essay, which is packed with thought to a degree unusual even with Mr. Herbert Spencer, contains evidently three parts. The first (pp. 1-5) deals with the historical Evolution of Religion, of which Mr. Spencer traces the germs in the primitive belief in ghosts. The second (pp. 6-8) arrays the moral and intellectual dilemmas involved in all anthropomorphic theology into one long catena of difficulty, out of which it is hard to conceive any free mind emerging with success. The third part (pp. 8-12) deals with the evolution of Religion in the future, and formulates, more precise

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