first enlisted, should be encouraged to look upon the army as one of the most desirable of trades, by ensuring to them periodical increments to their service-pay, instead of holding out inducements to retire as soon as possible, with reserved pay in their pockets? Had this been done, and the proposition accepted, short service might have been easily reconciled with efficiency; because an addition, say, of threepence a-day to their pay at the end of three years, of sixpence after nine, and a shilling after twelve, would keep as many men in the ranks as could be required. Then might have, safely and wisely, been submitted to the élite of our soldiers a choice between a pension for life on the completion of fifteen years' good service, and the right to pass into the reserve for six years, or even more, with retiring fee raised to a shilling. Nor, in this case, could there be the slightest objection to that free trade in the army of which Sir Frederick Roberts speaks. was In every case where his unfitness for military life made manifest, or some weighty reasons adduced for granting the indulgence, a free discharge could be given the soldier without incurring the slightest risk of depleting too much either the home or the foreign army. But why pursue the subject further? The attention of public men is too much engrossed by matters of far inferior importance to leave them leisure to think seriously of the honour, or even of the integrity, of the empire. Some great disaster by sea or land may perhaps convince them that, necessary as it may be for party purposes to draw all political power into the hands of one class and that the lowest, it is still more essential that the armies and navies of a country so rich as this, should be at all times in a state of efficiency. That anything else will have this effect, we cease to hope. Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat. May God avert the omen! M. MAYOR. "Poor Mayor has paid the debt of Nature or rather, of 'le petit vin blanc.'"-Letter to the Author, 3d July 1871. We shot with rifle at "Le Tir"; And, when he missed the mark, he'd say: "Le petit vin doth banish fear: I have not drunk enough to-day: Cela donne courage:-Chopine, garçon ! 5. We floated on Lake Leman's deeps: We trolled beneath old Chillon's walls: We clomb Les Pleiades' airy steeps: We passed by hoar Helvetian halls :- 1 La Campagne de Jolimont, Vevey, Pays de Vaud; of which M. Mayor was for many years the kind-hearted, upright, and very convivial Villicus. 6. "Clarens, sweet Clarens" (magic scene!)— Blushed deep with Hesper's rosy light; Then slowly faded. Stars serene Marshalled the deep-blue dawn of Night. "Le temps fait beau," quoth he, "et, donc, Cet an, le raisin sera bon !" 7. Biordaz' streams beheld us try, He for the cray-fish, we for trout; If cray were scarce, or trout rose shy, His temper never was put out :"Belles truites! Belles écrévisses! Burons, Messieurs! Ce petit vin est bon!" 8. We tracked the chamois on the snow; 9. On Alps, in dells, o'er rocks, by rills, Bloomed fairest flowers that Nature yields: Anemones gemmed lonely hills; Fragrant narcissus flecked far fields: One cultured plant he loved" Voyons La fleur des vignes!-Quel beau bourgeon!" 12. Where lurked the bittern, teal, and crake, The ice like very sapphire shone. 13. He ruled a Seigneur's lordly feast; Kind Seneschal, he crowned the bowls: Drowned the deep thirst of-twenty souls! THE WORLD'S OIL-SUPPLY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. "AND there is nothing new under the sun!" So spake the wisest man of his day, at a time when steam and electricity, and all that of them is, were, as yet, undreamt-of revelations,—at least we of this nineteenth century, craving credit for greater knowledge than the sages of old, are fain to think so. Nevertheless, as children ofttimes mislay their possessions, and after weeks or months find them again, and resume their use with all the zest due to newly acquired treasures, so do the nations of the great family of Mother Earth, from age to age, forget the knowledge painfully acquired by their predecessors, so that it is a commonplace truism to talk of "lost arts." It may be, that if the Sages of prehistoric China, or the Magi of Chaldea and other ancient civilisations, could return to enlighten our ignorance, they might prove to have possessed far more scientific knowledge than we give them credit for, with some points of practical application which we marvel to think could ever have been forgotten. Among many such subjects which from time to time call forth our wonder, one of deep interest at the present moment is that old, old subject of pouring oil on rough waves a subject which (save by a very few practical seamen who happen to have tested the matter for their own preservation) has only within the last three or four years been recognised as a real thing, of most serious importance to all seafaring folk. Hitherto it has been generally deemed merely a poetic metaphor, with no practical foundation. Isolated facts concerning its use were known, as were also allusions to its properties by such sages as Aristotle, Plutarch, Pliny, and in later days, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Linnæus, or Benjamin Franklin. When saintly men such as St Cuthbert or Adamnanus soothed the angry waves by the outpouring of a little oil, this natural result was of course attributed to their own holiness, and the miraculous efficacy of consecrated oil. And even when in A.D. 1776 Lelyveld, a practical Dutchman, published at Amsterdam his "Essay upon the means of diminishing the dangers of the sea by pouring out tar-oil or other floating matter," an essay followed in A.D. 1798 by a more elaborate statement of "Evidence on the Oil question," published by Otto at Weimar, the interest temporarily awakened soon subsided, and generation after generation of seafaring men have continued wholly to neglect the use of this simple precaution; and lamentable indeed is it to peruse the appalling record of each winter's wrecks on our own shores, and to note in how many instances life might probably have been saved, had the strong, brave men, so ready to hazard their lives in order to succour others, bethought them of lightening their task by the use of a few gallons of oil. A very painful case in point is that of the loss of the Juno, a large vessel which, only a few months ago, was lost with all hands at the mouth of the Mersey. The captain, with his wife and child, had been washed overboard, but twenty-five men were clinging to the rigging, when a steam-tug, with two lifeboats, started to their |