treated, but nevertheless declares that they meditate no resistance to the United States Government, and intend to conduct themselves as peaceful, law-abiding citizens; to treat the reconstruction measures as "finalities," and "obey them in letter and in spirit"; that they look "to time and peaceful measures and the quiet influence of an enlightened public opinion" to solve the difficulties of Southern politics, and they deprecate local disturbances," and appeal to the people to respect the laws, and look to them and them only for the redress of their grievances; and they supported this by other resolutions, providing for enquiry into the existence of violence and outrage, and the best means of repressing them. The committee charged with this enquiry reported that "violence prevailed to a greater or less extent in several counties of the State, but that in by far the larger number of counties no case of violence had been brought to their attention." These deeds of violence, they say, were "first simple larcencies and incendiarism, practised by ignorant, deluded, and bad men"; then came "instances of corporeal punishments and homicides, perpetrated by unknown persons on citizens, and even upon a few officials of the Government," all of which the committee pronounce "lamentable truths, which they feel called upon unequivocally to deplore and condemn." Their remedy for all these evils is one with which we in this part of the country are very familiar, but which has hardly as practical a ring as one would wish, namely, "the removal of all dishonest, incompetent, and bad men from office." The determination which they elsewhere express to push vigorously for minority representation, and not to give up the game or sit silent while Northern knaves help ignorant negroes to plunder the State, but to keep agitating, denouncing, and exposing, until they bring reform about, has a more hopeful sound; and in all this, as long as they show a sincere determination to accept the fact that the people of South Carolina now means the whole population of it, they will have the hearty sympathy of the best Northerners. THE COLLEGES. Ir is a strict rule of the newspaper profession that the most prominent incident of the day must always be noticed editorially at the time when it is occupying, or likely to occupy, the public attention, and nothing except the exceeding shortness of the public memory prevents the performance of the duty with regard to yearly recurring events being positively agonizing to sensitive men, owing to the striking resemblance which the "remarks" of each year must necessarily bear to those of the preceding year. For instance, there are few editors so hardened as to be able to gaze without wincing on a collection of the "reflections" suggested to them during say ten years by Thanksgiving-day, or Easter, or Christmas, or the Fourth of July. The man who would make such a collection from the columns of any of our papers would be worse than a heathen, and would richly deserve, and probably would be overtaken by, the total exclusion of his name from mention for many a long day afterwards. Bad as he would be, however, we think we should rate him more highly as a philanthropist than one who should gather together the ten years' comments of any of our contemporaries on "Summer Resorts" or on "College Commencements." Fruitful as these themes seem on the outside to the professional eye, there are few topics more barren and uninviting as the sands of Sahara. Some variety was, however, introduced into the treatment of college commencements a few years ago by the rapid rise and strong influence upon the editorial mind of what may be called the Herald school of journalism. It was the great founder of that school who first propounded the theory that the editor of the most widely circulated daily paper was ex-officio the wisest man in the community, and that, in fact, a man's wisdom was in the direct ratio of the number of people he got to listen to his sayings. He also invented in support of this doctrine the light and flippant way of dealing with dignitaries, and gave to the assertion that a man was "behind the age" the terrible sting which it now possesses in nearly all the papers in the Union. The steady preaching of this theory, combined with the really steady growth of the influence of the newspaper press on the public mind, daily advanced the editor more and more in his own estimation, as well as in that of the multitude, and finally converted the term "sanctum," which was at first used as a jocose appellation of his private room, into a synonym for a storehouse, not of all knowledge, but of all things worth knowing. Whatever branches of information or modes of investigation or ways of looking at things were not in use in newspaper offices, or found necessary in the composition of editorial articles, began to be pronounced at first" antiquated" and then useless, and finally "absurd." The world, as seen from the "sanctum" under this new light, naturally enough, looked somewhat faulty in its arrangements. Perhaps the most offensive feature in them was the prominence given to colleges, and the importance attached to college education, and colleges soon became to the new school objects of the fiercest contempt. Several of the most successful editors had had no college education; few "prominent financiers" had had any; what, then, was the use of it, and were not the pretensions of graduates very ridiculous? Under the influence of this feeling, the commencement for a time furnished considerable food for editorial ridicule. The ambitious efforts of the graduating orators and essayists were sometimes severely, sometimes jocosely, reproved, and this snubbing was not uncommonly followed by appropriate reflections on the awful waste of opportunities involved in going through a college course. After a while, the editors were reinforced by the Humanitarians, who placed all virtue in the absence of all kinds of restraint or direction, and taught that the way to reach perfection was to be yourself just as nature made you; that all you needed to know you could pick up while doing odd jobs, and the rule of right you could evolve from your own breast. Colleges under this new light gradually grew into crampers of the mind and chillers of enthusiasm. The newspaper mode of treating colleges was, however, something more than a mere outburst of editorial flippancy and conceit. It was also in some degree the expression of the very popular belief which grew up with and was fostered by the democratic movement in politics, that inasmuch as the natural man knew as well as anybody what was good for the state, it was something very like presumption for a parcel of professors to suppose that they could better him by anything they could teach him. The "honest man," from being the peer of kings and princes, came gradually to be the peer of sages and philosophers, and somehow or other a far finer thing than if he were run through the mould of the schools. Out of the widespread praise of and confidence in popular intuitions there grew up a belief in an inner light which, in the breast of unlettered folk, not only furnished a substitute for the lore of the learned, but in dealing with the most perplexing problems of life was a far safer guide; and this belief was strengthened by the fact that, when the reformatory spirit began really to take possession of the world with heat and vigor in the second decade of this century, the persons whom it seized most easily were naturally poor and uninstructed, and it met from the literati and from colleges a good deal of the snubbing which is, do what we will, one of the unfailing concomitants of experience. Then, too, the colleges were as they have always been, and must always be, the strongholds of whatever ideas or forms of culture have fairly secured supremacy. They are not and will never be, and ought not to be, the first to open their gates to innovations, and they fulfil one of their highest functions in standing firmly in whatever position they have taken up until it has been ascertained whether the new positions to which they are invited are really academical groves, in which young minds may find philosophy, or mere beer-gardens to which radicals make excursions on fine days in barges, to dance and drink and swing. The universities are now in every country deriving the benefit of the reaction in favor of training which was sure, of course, to come in the long run, and which has come at last. The "natural man," it must be confessed, has not distinguished himself. He has tried his hand at all sorts of things, and none of them have succeeded. He has set up governments, and they have been failures; he has raised troops, and they have been destroyed; he has procured arms of precision, and they have not saved him from slaughter. Altogether, the world is rather sick of him, and, what is better, he is sick of himself. Moreover, it has come about at last that liberalism in politics and religion have found some of their warmest and ablest champions among the friends and preachers of "culture." There are various kinds of culture in the field claiming popular confidence-Professor Huxley's, and Matthew Arnold's, and the religious culture, and there is a mixture of all three, and the multitude is somewhat perplexed as to which is the genuine article; but it now begins to be generally admitted that culture is a good thing, and, indeed, a necessary thing, for the right government of life; and that culture means, in the educational sense, training; and that training is an elaborate process, requiring special machinery, and cannot be left to chance. Consequently, the colleges, as the only institutions which make any pretence of furnishing this training, are rapidly rising in popular favor and confidence. They, too, have done much to secure this favor and confidence by a frank recognition, not so much of the superiority of any particular kind of training as the only real culture, as of the right of each student to decide for himself what means of culture he will adopt, and of the duty of the colleges to undertake within certain limits to enable him to act on his selection. It is in this recognition of the individual right of choice that the changes which have of late years being going on in American and English colleges have mainly consisted, and these changes have chimed in well with the growing faith of the people in the uses of high training and growing distrust of the rule of thumb. The tendencies of contemporary politics, too, have all helped to strengthen this faith and deepen this distrust. The Franco-German war may be said to have afforded the most striking lesson that could be given, not simply of the dangers of gross ignorance, but of the value of the higher education. Probably no event of history ever brought into sharper contrast, taking the lowest view of the matter, the physical strength of education and the physical weakness of ignorance, and the contrast has received a sharper point than ever from the enormous difficulty in recovering from her prostration which France plainly shows. PRESIDENT WOOLSEY. By the retirement of Dr. Woolsey from the office of President of Yale ⚫ College, which he has filled with unsurpassed ability and success for a quarter of a century, that institution loses from its corps of instructors the most eminent scholar that has ever served it in this capacity, and, we venture to add, with full confidence that the general verdict of competent judges would accord with our own, the foremost scholar on the long roll of its graduates. This event involves a public loss; for the influence which President Woolsey has wielded, as the head of one of our largest colleges, is of just that character which the country can ill afford to spare. His whole career, in a sense that is true of comparatively few Americans, has been that of a scholar. In his youth, he studied theology, but was not ordained as a preacher until his accession to the presidency. Having held the post of tutor at New Haven for two years, and pursued linguistic studies, mainly, for three years in Europe, he was made Professor of Greek in 1831. While holding this professorship, he prepared the editions of the Greek tragedians and of the Gorgias of Plato which, it is not too much to say, marked an epoch in the progress of classical study among us. In the point of accurate philology, they did not fall behind the best standards of European scholarship. At the same time, they embodied in the unobtrusive form of brief annotations a rich fund of ethical and literary criticism. In these, as in all the other writings of President Woolsey, there are found that severe simplicity of style and that economy of words which might be expected from a sworn foe of diffuse and ostentatious rhetoric. An Italian satirist said of Guicciardini's History, that a Spartan who had been condemned to read it as a punishment for having used three words where only two were necessary, fainted in the first sentence. Such a consequence not even a Laconian would have the least occasion to fear from any of the compositions of the retiring President. On the resignation of Dr. Day, in 1846, Dr. Woolsey reluctantly accepted the appointment to be his successor. He now assumed the work of giving instruction in modern history and political science, branches of study for which his profound acquaintance with antiquity and his familiarity with the principal modern languages, as well as the acuteness and breadth of his mind and his love of justice, specially qualified him. His extensive collection of Greek literature, with his wonted liberality, was given to the College library, and the ancient authors whom it had been his business to expound to his classes he has since taken up chiefly as a recreation. Among the fruits of his studies in the historical department are the excellent treatise on "International Law," the Essays on the Laws and Principles of Divorce, and not a few review articles, such as the series on the Revival of Letters which appeared a few years ago in the New Englander. These productions, however, furnish no adequate measure of the extent and variety of the learned researches which President Woolsey has found time to prosecute in the midst of the numerous employments and interruptions which pertain to his office. Besides performing the full work of a professor and officiating as chaplain at daily prayers, he has not unfre quently preached on Sunday in the College Chapel; and the volume of sermons which, in compliance with solicitations from different quarters, he has recently given to the public, show in their depth of thought, impressive earnestness, and catholic spirit the satisfactory manner in which he has fulfilled this very useful, though self-imposed, portion of his labors. The wide range of the author's learning is unconsciously revealed to discerning readers of these admirable discourses, just as his taste and love of beauty occasionally break forth in unsought felicities of thought and illustration. The wonder is that President Woolsey has been able to do with exemplary thoroughness so great an amount of literary work, without neglecting in the least the multiplied and sometimes perplexing duties belonging to the presidential function. Nothing save a disciplined intellect, uncommonly rapid in its natural movement, coupled with the advantage derived from solid attainments, made in years of comparative leisure, suffices to account for it. As an educator, President Woolsey brought to his station an innate, intense hatred of all false shows. It was inevitable that the college should feel at once and continually the inspiring influence of so ripe and conscientious a scholar. The atmosphere of his presence was a place where superficial acquisitions, conceit of knowledge, and the mere ability to use the tongue glibly where there is nothing valuable to communicate, couid not flourish. The national idea, that it is the chief end of education, if not the chief end of man, to make a speech, has obtained no countenance under his administration. To say that punctuality in the performance of official duty, unwearied diligence, and a generous spirit of self-sacrifice, have characterized the retiring President, is simply to declare what has been obvious, not only to all of his colleagues, but also to every one of the pupils who, in successive classes, have gone forth from the institution. But his agency in elevating the tone of scholarship in the college is equally well known to such as are intimately conversant with it. Among the particular steps of progress which are due to him are the conversion of the senior year from a period of comparative exemption from hard work into one of the most laborious years of the course-a year filled up with very stimulating and fruitful studies in history, philosophy, and-poli. tics; and the establishment of the biennial (now annual) examinations. But these, and many other particular changes that might be mentioned, which have been effected under his auspices, would convey a very insuffi. cient idea of the intellectual influence of President Woolsey within the walls of Yale College. The best part of his influence has probably been the practical example which he has himself daily presented to professors and students, of unselfish devotion to all good learning, of an equal modesty and thoroughness in the pursuit as well as the inculcation of knowledge, and of a cordial disgust for all sorts of affectation and shallowness. Plato's inscription over the vestibule of the house where he received his select pupils, forbidding all who were unacquainted with geometry to enter there, probably grew out of the philosopher's belief that mathematical truth is intermediate between the realm of phenomenal existence and that of ideas, between transient, apparent forms of being and the abiding, eternal realities, to the knowledge of which he would lead up the minds of his pupils. In another and broader sense, President Woolsey has fastened the attention of his pupils on that which is true and real, and has moved them to purge from their ideals of culture and character whatever is false, meretricious, and unsubstantial. He has administered his office in the spirit which Melancthon, the "Preceptor of Germany," nobly declared to be the proper temper of all instructors of youth. "The same tempers of feeling," says Melancthon," which we bring with us into the temple, it behooves us to carry into the school "-" quos in templa animos "If one comes into the school afferimus, eosdem decet in scholas afferre." in order to bear away some portion of learning wherewith to get gain for himself or to use as an instrument of idle vanity, let him understand that he desecrates the most holy temple of science"-" Is sciat, se polluere sanctissima templa doctrinæ." Among the topics which President Woolsey has been called upon to discuss, from year to year, in his class-room, are the true foundations 'of political society, the proper functions of government, and the law of nations. It is impossible to estimate too highly the value of the instruction which he has given on these subjects to that numerous body of young men who have had the opportunity to receive it. Apart from the sound political and ethical doctrine which he has imparted, the deep abhorrence of injustice, of venality, and popularity-hunting, which could hardly fail to communicate itself, in some measure, from teacher to pupil, has not been the least of the benefits resulting from his instructions. The essential wrong and impolicy of slavery and of governmental interference with the natural laws of trade and industry, are lessons which there are few of his students who have not fully learned. One of the best services that President Woolsey has rendered to the college over which he has presided and to the country, is in the proof which he has given of the value of exhaustive researches, such as are characteristic of the German scholars, in connection with the subjects which he has undertaken to elucidate. It is only by this method that knowledge is capable of a steady progress, for only thus can the present build upon the past. The historical, conservative, reverent feeling which makes one a patient explorer, as well as a thinker, is peculiarly needed in this country, where there is so much mental activity and so little, proportionally, of exact and extensive knowledge even in those who assume to be public teachers. It is a vulgar error that learning of necessity cramps the thinking power or interferes with vigor and independence of judgment. President Woolsey is a signal example of the possibility of uniting the utmost force and freedom of mental action with most painstaking investigations. Indeed, in the case of this distinguished teacher, it is difficult to say which is most conspicuous, the reach of his acquisitions, the intellectual force that judges and subordinates all, or the singular purity and elevation of his character. It is gratifying to know that the resignation of President Woolsey does not spring from physical infirmity or a reduction of mental power; and it is hardly to be doubted that a portion of his well-earned leisure will be devoted to labors profitable to the public. It is already announced that he will give some lectures in the Divinity School on heathenism and the heathen religions, a subject to which he has given much attention. But this will consume but a fraction of his time. We do not presume to offer counsel; but we feel sure that historical students would be gratified if he should feel inclined to publish some of the results of his studies upon the feudal system and other characteristic institutions of the Middle Ages. In this difficult field, he is eminently capable of serving as a guide. Presi dent Woolsey is versed in the original Scriptures, and at home in the broad field of Biblical criticism. His keen perceptions, independence, and religious earnestness, in connection with the whole course of his studies in the past, peculiarly qualify him, also, for the work of an interpreter or commentator on the books of the Bible. A volume of this character, we have been told, relating to the Acts of the Apostles, he had at one time projected, and had already gathered the materials for it, when the appearance of Professor Hackett's excellent book prevented him from prosecuting his design. However he may choose to employ the time which will be afforded by his release from academic duty, he will carry into his retirement the heartfelt respect of all who know how to honor solid worth, and to appreciate the value of unselfish, laborious, long-continued services in behalf of education and religion. VICTOR CHERBULIEZ: WE have for a long time been struck with the little justice that has been done to this writer, of whom we wish to say a few words to-day. Not that he has been treated with injustice, he has escaped all unfavorable criticism; but that he has been spoken of so little, while his merits are so considerable, is indeed surprising. He is scarcely mentioned by any French critic, never by Sainte-Beuve, and only once, and that but slightly, by Scherer. Julian Schmidt, who lets nothing escape him, devotes to him a few pages, and very good ones, in the last volume of his essays ("Bilder aus dem geistigen Leben unserer Zeit, neue Folge"); but with those exceptions, he has been unnoticed by those critics with whom American readers are familiar. His audience in Europe has been a large one, since he has for six or seven years been a contributor to the Revue des Deux Mondes, in which his novels have been appearing, and hence many of our readers will be already familiar with him. His novels are, "Le Comte Kostia," "Le Roman d'une Honnête Femme," " Paule Méré," "L'Aventure de Ladislas Bolski," "Prosper Randoce," besides some other works, "Le Prince Vitale," "Le Grand Œuvre," and "Le Cheval de Phidias," which are rather theses in the form of fiction than regular novels, and which even his admirers regard as failures, although they are willing enough to acknowledge their excellence in many respects. His novels, however, have shown that the possibilities of his work are so excellent that one is impatient with what would be a success for any one else, but which is a shortcoming for him. Perhaps some of the silence of the French critics is due to their jealousy at seeing this young Genevese who outdoes the French novelists with their best weapons. The plots of his stories are always interesting, without being a perpetual chant of the joys and sorrows of breaking the seventh commandment. His healthy mind seems too robust to be fascinated unnaturally by the charm of that subject. The very fact that he is a foreigner, that his cultivation is wider than that of most Parisians, has been of service to him here. In France, certain questions had been discussed from every possible point of view by the novelists, until it seemed as if the country had fully ripened for the terrible fall this last year has shown us. The contagion had spread, too, to other countries. But meanwhile Cherbuliez was writing his novels, which might have shown that there are other objects of human interest than our neighbor's wife. Besides his superiority in the construction of his plots, his treatment of his characters is most able, and his style of the greatest brilliancy. It is never a distracting wit that dazzles one to the harm of the story, but always seems like the flow of the best of spirits, tempered by a generous cultivation. For instance, on opening "Le Roman d'une Honnête Femme" at random, the first sentence our eye meets is this:-"Il est des situations auxquelles il vaut mieux n'avoir pas eu le temps de se préparer. Notre imagination est un artiste; quand elle prévoit, elle met de l'ordre et de l'unité dans ses tableaux, et elle se trompe toujours, parce qu'elle simplifie tout et que rien n'est moins simple que la vie." Every reader of Cherbuliez will cry out at the ill success of our selection, nor will those who do not know him be at once converted by this extract; but it may serve as no extraordinary specimen of a much richer ore. Indeed, that a Genevese should have rivalled a Parisian in wit must have seemed incomprehensible, at least to Parisians. Perhaps the greatest merit of his stories is his power of healthy treatment of all his subjects. His joyousness is never the unreflecting merriment of what we might almost call animal good-nature. It is not that he has not thought of all that pessimists tell us with such grim joy, but that he has survived it, he sees beyond it. Take "Prosper Randoce," for instance. No one who has drawn Didier can be said to be ignorant of the less buoyant way of regarding the world; yet there is not a sentence which shows a lack of sympathy for this character, any more than there is one that magnifies its importance. The whole book is written with the utmost objectivity. We see these two brothers, Didier and Prosper, who are so utterly distinct, as if they were the heroes of a play, walking about the stage before us, and at the end we put down the book perfectly contented with the story, yet without feeling that we have been tricked into our content, like children who close their ears to avoid hearing the end of a tragic tale. Perhaps this is the best of his novels. It is one that will bear re-reading; it is so rich in incident, so keen in the delineation of character. Prosper is always a puzzle, but never, in spite of all his faults, an offensive one. Didier, too, is such an excellent specimen of the analyz ing, critical man of to-day that the book is perpetually charming. Of such characters as Didier, Cherbuliez is always fond, and he always draws them with the qualities of action that they possess in spite of themselves, rather than with merely the amiable impotence which they imagine to be their only trait. He is fond, too, of representing the struggle between a man's better and worse natures; and yet he does it without coarseness on the one hand, and without sentimentality upon the other; as for instance, in that charming chapter in Le Grand Euvre" in which is given the dialogue between the young man of that time and himself a few years before. "Ladislas Bolski," the latest of his novels, is extremely entertaining. It appeared only two years ago. The worst that can be said of it is that it is the best of sensational stories; and he who can follow the hero in his struggles against his nature, his love, and his ambition, without being moved, need not try to amuse himself with works of fiction. Novels were not written for him. From what we have said, it will be clear what we mean in adding that his excellence is one that is not obtained by the harrowing of the feelings. The pleasure is more an intellectual than a sentimental one. We are continually treated to an interesting analysis, made by a cool demonstrator, who shows us the different moods of passion, but with the calmness of a writer who owns his creations rather than with the heat of one who is possessed, by his sympathy for mankind, by a deep pity for his fellow-men. If we compare him with Turgeneff, we find him lacking in that inimitable pathos that lies so much deeper in man than any intellectual pleasure, however intense. He never approaches that bitterness of tragic interest of which Turgeneff is such a master. Not that his view of life is flippant or trivial, but it is a different one-cooler, calmer, rather studied, rather observed than felt. In comparing him with the contemporary French novelists, one can see at a glance the points of his superiority. He is entertaining without being low, witty but not cynical, careful but not mechanical. He never falls into the more obvious faults of his brotherwriters, with their aristocratic mummery and chilly hardness. From this writer we are authorized to expect a great deal yet. He is still a young man, and we can earnestly hope to see another of his stories in the Revue. Of those already published, but which we have only mentioned by name, we can recommend "Le Comte Kostia," more especially. "Paule Méré" is not so good. Although it appeared later, it bears marks of being an earlier work. "Le Roman d'une Honnête Femme" is perhaps less interesting than the others we have mentioned, but it need not be omitted on that account. One is lucky who reads no poorer books, and every one of those of Cherbuliez is marked by some of his good qualities. Better and worse are only relative terms. Correspondence. THE CHENEY CONTROVERSY AGAIN. TO THE EDITOR OF THE NATION: DEAR SIR: It is not with any desire of keeping up a controversy that I reply to your review of my statement in your issue of yesterday regarding the position of Mr. Cheney and his friends. I presume your object, as mine, is simply to maintain the “right,” independently of personal issues. If what I shall now say seem to you of sufficient importance, perhaps you will insert it in your columns. If not, although it seems so to me, I am willing to let the article already published stand side by side with your review, for the unbiassed judgment of such readers as are fully informed as to the merits of the question. The fact that my illustration did not contemplate a " voluntary association" by no means implies that I am unwilling to recognize the fact that Mr. Cheney belonged to one. Indeed, I am glad that you have brought this point to notice, since it affords me the opportunity to remind you that I do not advocate resistance to the execution of any laws under which Mr. Cheney voluntarily placed himself, but only against certain intolerant enactments. In vindication of Mr. Cheney and his friends, I am happy to take the illustration which you have provided. A man joins an association for the establishment of a smallpox hospital. He solemnly binds himself, in case he has to resort to it for the treatment either of himself or his relatives, to abide by the rules and regulations of its managers. His wife being attacked with smallpox, is conveyed thither. The house surgeon prescribes; the apothecary prepares the dose. Here, however, something occurs which is not contemplated in your illustration. The man discovers that there is an attempt made to poison his wife. He resists the surgeon in his attempts to administer the potion. He is told that the only alternative is to remove her from the hospital. This he refuses to do, for he knows that such treatment would involve danger to her life. The officers approach him, but he stands firm in his resolution to defend his wife. He would be justified in calling in aid "from the street." (In the ecclesiastical case before us, he does not do this.) But the scuffle is overheard, and from the street assistance flows in to him. This illustration serves to point out as well as mine the principle that there is no rule without an exception—the object I had in view in my last communication. You may differ from Mr. Cheney as to the vitality of the issue; but if the moral results of his severance in this way from our church seem to him sufficiently great, you can scarcely blame him for taking his own part, or his friends who agree with him for "rallying round him." I have no sympathy with "the sentimentalists" on the one hand, nor on the other with the advocates of reason unguided by the Spirit and Word of God. But I do believe that the rights of an enlightened conscience are often superior to human enactments, and that in such cases "we ought to obey God rather than men." As to "revolution." Your definition of it accords with my own view of it. I should be sorry to have you believe that Mr. Cheney "rebels simply with the view of releasing himself from the restraints of authority, or escaping the consequences of a particular sentence or enactment." He is too high-minded a man to be placed for a moment under such an imputation. He is standing for a principle-his friends for the same; and neither he nor they will be satisfied till they either see the church that they love freed from the mediæval spirit, or, when disappointed in this, shall have organized a new church in which the exercise of Christian charity shall be secured to all. I am, dear sir, with much respect, yours very truly, B. O. D. [We have only to remark on this, that the question whether the dose was really poisonous was in Mr. Cheney's case submitted to a jury of experts in the manner prescribed by the articles of association, and by them decided in the negative; but Mr. Cheney still refuses either to leave the hospital or to allow the officers to perform their duties.-ED. NATION.] Notes. IN the various comments which have appeared in the Nation on the famous passage in "Romeo and Juliet," no distinct allusion has been made to what may have struck the common reader as an obvious explanation. Juliet says: 46 "Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, Let us recall the fable of Phaeton to which Shakespeare evidently alludes. In order that his paternity might be signalized, after much solicitation he obtained from Jupiter the privilege of driving for a day the chariot of the Sun. The fiery-footed steeds" finding themselves guided by mortal hands took advantage of the driver and ran away. As they conveyed the Sun, this "personage " became a runaway, and the great dramatist, in keeping with the classical idea with which he makes Juliet commence her monologue, makes her continue it, and playfully call the Sun" runaway," and she prays night to spread her close curtain, that his eyes may wink and not betray the meeting of Romeo and herself. This interpretation requires no strain upon words, but is easy and natural and consistent with the highly poetical and figurative character of the whole monologue, indeed, with the whole play, so full of sentiment and poetry. -We cited lately from a Lynchburg paper an instance of political fairness and good sense under the temptation to be partisan and petty. We now have the satisfaction of presenting a still more remarkable proof of the emancipation of the Southern mind, inasmuch as in the subjoined extract from the Richmond Enquirer of June 16, the rhetoric for which the South generally has been long distinguished, and for which even Richmond itself used to show some predilection, is punctured with as little feeling as if the critic had been born in the temperate shadow of Bunker Hill: With his body bent slightly forward, his eye blazing, his hand raised aloft, grasping a copy of Magna Charta, he exclaimed: "When you can tear the live thunder from its home in the burning ether, and bind it at the footstool of tyranny, then, and not till then, will I accept the situation."-Mr. Robert Toombs, as described by an Augusta paper. We beg leave to remark that we do not know by what authority Mr. Toombs calls the thunder "live." Secondly. How does he know that it resides in "the burning ether"? Thirdly. Thunder is nothing but noise, and we cannot with propriety speak of "tearing a noise." Fourthly. We do not see the connection between binding this noise to "the footstool of tyranny" and the time when Mr. Toombs might feel himself at liberty to accept the situation." That is all. - Fresh light is thrown on the naval operations of the late war in Europe by a pamphlet just published in Berlin: "Unsere Flotte im deutsch-französischen Kriege," by Capt. O. Livonius. The author was in command of the turret-ship Arminius, which he carried safely through the French fleet from the Baltic to the Jahde in the latter part of July, and remained at this station till the close of hostilities. He had the additional advantage of being in the confidence of his admiral, and for particulars as to the German defence his narrative is more satisfactory than the "Campaign of 1870" which we recently noticed. The iron-clads König Wilhelm, Friedrich Karl, and Prinz Adalbert had been sent out on an experimental cruise in the Atlantic just before the outbreak of the war, and had already experienced those defects of their machinery which subsequently incapacitated them from taking the offensive. The squadron was intend ing to sail to Fayal, but being warned in season made a timely return to Wilhelmshaven by the 16th of July, the French admiral being so much in ignorance of the fact that on the 25th and the succeeding days he was cherishing the illusion that he should still succeed in intercepting these the flower of the German navy. Though the disposition of the German squadron defending the Jahde might alone have deterred the French from attempting an attack, they stood much more in dread of the enemy's torpedoes, and fancied them to be where not only they were not laid, but could not be made to stay. Their fears, after all, were much exaggerated, as the force of the currents made it exceedingly difficult for the Germans to keep the torpedoes in place; and, in fact, what with their drifting with the changes of the tide and endangering the German ships themselves, and what with their extreme touchiness while being handled, they cost more German lives than French, if, indeed, they took any of the latter. The German experience thus corresponded pretty nearly with that of the Confederates during the rebellion, and the lesson of each is that this branch of defensive warfare is as yet only in its infancy. The WeserZeitung, in reviewing Captain Livonius's work, observes that it fails to explain why the wooden fleet, which had no machinery to be deranged, and was not dependent on depth of water and had not the excuse of being poor sailers, so little distinguished itself, but permitted the French without molestation to ship arms and munitions from America. Perhaps this question will be answered by some future pamphleteer. -It is going on five years since the establishment of what we may venture to call the very best of all the English societies which, from time to time, have set themselves to reprinting some of the works, inaccessible but for them, which lie at the foundation of our literature. But the Early English Text Society, useful as it has been, is not yet prosperous, if, indeed, it is self-supporting. Very much it owes to the self-sacrificing enthusiasm of its Secretary, Mr. F. J. Furnivall, and probably it might, but for him, have found its difficulties insuperable. Just at present it is waiting to see if it can get money enough to publish its next year's instalment of texts, of which it has several all prepared for the press. During this year just past, it has given, in return for the oneguinea subscription which it asks, no less than five books, containing matter, most of which is valuable, and all of which is curious and interesting; and it proposes to give as many next year. Its final issue of texts for last year was made last month, and contained the Minor Poems of Sir David Lyndsay, with a critical essay on Lyndsay, by Professor Nichol, of Oxford and Glasgow; "The Time's Whistle," a collection of satires of the time of James I.: and a curious collection of "Legends of the Holy Rood," or early English and Saxon poems concerning the cross. This is illustrated with copies of manuscript illuminations of the nails, hammer, scourge, crown of thorns, and other instruments of Christ's torture. Now that our booksellers and importers have begun to reckon the shilling sterling at about as many cents as it used to pass for in old times, before the war had carried it up to half a dollar, there is rather more reason, perhaps, and, at all events, there seems to be more than there was at the time of the Society's establishment, why American readers should become subscribers. The subscription need not be for more than a year. Indeed, we believe that the Society has on hand copies of most of its publications, and will even allow the subscriber to antedate his subscription, and take the books of that year which pleases him best. Of course there is choice, some of the works republished being for the student of English; some, like the five-volume "Percy Ballads Manuscript," being for "every gentleman's library;" and many others being well suited to such general readers as have anything bookish in their tastes. -The book published by the Early Text Society next before the publication of the texts above-mentioned is, for instance, a very good example of the sort of reading which would interest and please very many readers who could not be called students or antiquarians, and it stands by no means alone in this category among the Society's publications. Its title is: "The Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, made by Andrew Boorde, of Physycke Doctor, edited, with life of Andrew Boorde, and large Extracts from his Breuyary,' by F. J. Furnival." Boorde was the original "merry Andrew," for though he began life as a Carthusian monk, and, when "dyspensed withe relygyon" by the Pope, took up the grave profession of medicine, he was, nevertheless, a humorist and jester by nature and habit, and if what is told of him is true, he used to frequent fairs and markets, and, setting himself in the midst of them, drew the people together by jocose speeches and stories, after which he would prescribe for them. "A rambling head and inconstant mind" is Antony a Wood's characteristically civil remark by way of accounting for Boorde's manner of practising medicine, and doubtless he had in his composition more or less of the vagabond; but in this reprint of his Breviary and Book of Knowledge he appears as a man of good learning in his profession, and with plenty of sound sense and shrewdness. He was bred a Carthusian monk, but appears to have left the order, under a Papal dispensation, for the purpose of studying medicine. He betook himself to Montpellier, at that time a renowned school of medicine, and on his return went to Scotland, either for the study or the practice of his profession. The Scotch he evidently was not fond of. Shortly to conclude," he says, "trust yow no Skott, for they wyll yowse flattering wordes, and all ys falshoode." He got on with them, however, after a fashion: "Thei takyth me for a Skotysh mane's sone,” he explains, “for I name my selff Karre, and so the Karres callyth me cosyn, thorow the which I am in more fauer." But still, says he, "it is naturally geuen, or els it is of a deuelysshe dysposicion of a Scottysh man not to loue nor fauer an Englishe man." It is improbable that Boorde went to Scotland for the purpose of study, as Edinburgh had not then the repute as a medical school which it has since enjoyed; but he was not yet free from apprehensions of being taken as a runaway monk by the Charter-house people, and may have thought it prudent to remove to some distance. Or it may be that he had then begun doing for Secretary Cromwell what he afterwards did for him on the Continent, where he was employed to travel and report how Henry VIII. was regarded by the French, the Genoese, Dutch, and other foreigners. It was in his journeyings of this kind that Boorde acquired that knowledge of Europe which he has set down in prose and verse in his "Book of the Introduction of Knowledge:" "the whych doth teache a man to speake all maner of languages, and to know the usage and fashion of all maner of countreys." It is a mixture of guide book, philology, satire, manual of useful knowledge, and other matters, and is highly amusing. In making the round of Europe the author begins with his own countryand appears to be most struck with their proneness to change the fashion of their clothes, and with their talent for cursing and swearing. The Englishman is figured in a rude woodcut, holding in one hand a pair of shears, and in the other a roll of cloth, while underneath are these verses "ryme dogrell," as Borde remarks: men, "I am an Englishman, and naked I stand here, As for the swearing, he says: "In all the worlde ther is no regyon nor countree that doth use more swerynge than is used in England, for a chylde that scars can speak, a boy, a gyrle, a wenche nowadays wyl swear as great othes as an old knave and an old drab." English independence, too, as well as the swearing and the mutability of English fashions, Boorde insists upon: "No man shall let me, but I wyl have my mind." The Welsh and Irish fare worse; and the doctor's old friends the Scotch, of course, come in for hard knocks. The device of putting these attacks on national vices into the mouth of the sinner himself, who is made to stand up and affirm himself to be thus and thus, comically enhances their effectiveness. One can imagine the state of mind in which Captain Fluellen would be thrown by these lines, especially if he had ever heard "Taffy was a Welshman": "I am a Welshman, and do dwel in Wales, I haue loned to serche boudgets and looke in males; I loue not to labour nor to delue nor to dyg, The old charges are brought against the Scotch: "I am a Scotyshe man, and trew I am to Fraunce; In euery countrey myselfe I do aduance; 1 wyll boost myselfe, I will crake and face, I lone to be exalted here and in euery place. I am a Scotyehe man, and haue dissembled mouche And in my promise I haue not kept touche. An Englyshe man I cannot naturally loue." So the doctor goes through Europe, making a good many sensible remarks as he goes. In his Breviary, from which Mr. Furnivall makes copious extracts, Boorde treats of dietetics and the care of health, beginning in his treatment of the latter subject as far back as the rules for choosing a good situation for one's house, and throughout showing a freedom from professional prejudice and a practical wisdom that make him nearly as instructive as he is entertaining. -"The Battle of Dorking" is said to have sold five additional editionswhich would be five thousand copies of Blackwood's, and its sale as a pamphlet by itself has also been large. It is still talked about, and various persons are mentioned as possible writers of it; a brother to the |