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first and best of them is perhaps the only its this distinction none will question, alone in which the supreme faculty comes though it may not rank with the noblest into play, the only one that awakens creations of literature; for the story is strong emotion in the reader and carries not, like Shakspeare's Tempest, a splendid him, despite the homely, colloquial style effort of the imagination, but is rather the of narrative, into a region of high ro- fruit of a life's experience, and of accumumance. "Crusoe's lonely isle has a lated stores of knowledge. We cannot more familiar hold upon our boys than accept Mr. Henry Kingsley's theory, that any historic site with which they are ac- "this wondrous romance of Robinson Cruquainted. Few spots distinguished in ge- soe is no romance at all, but a merely alography have a greater interest than this. | legorical account of Defoe's own life for It is something to discover an island, but twenty-eight years;" and when he says it is better to create one, and Defoe's free- there is no doubt at all that by the cannihold is more precious, and bids fair to be bal Caribbees, Defoe meant the Tories, more permanent than any possessed by and that the name of the first savage he duke or marquis. "This man could have killed with his gun was called Sacheverell, founded a colony as well as governed it," we can but smile at the ingenious discovsaid a statesman after reading Defoe's ery. It is evident, no doubt, that in this great novel. Dr. Johnson, it will be re-his wisest and most beautiful work, the membered, said that Robinson Crusoe was author records much that he himself had one of the few books a reader would wish longer. Marmontel observed that it was the first book he ever read with exquisite pleasure; and Rousseau wrote: "Since we must have books, this is one which in my opinion is a most excellent treatise on natural education. This is the first my Emilius shall read; his whole library shall long consist of this work." Similar quotations might of course be multiplied by scores, but a tale that has been accepted by the world needs not the commendation of men of letters. Yet those of us who still rejoice in this book of our boyhood, must have heard or read with no common pleasure, the remarks made some time ago at the banquet of the Royal Geographical Society by one of the most illustrious of our scientific men. Professor Owen, in alluding to "the most popular of all records of geographical discovery and adventure" made by "the adventurous mariner, Robinson Crusoe," said :

learnt and suffered during a troubled life. In all his fictions, indeed, he identifies himself with his characters; and even his villains women as well as men - bear a family likeness to their literary father. It seems hard to say this of such characters as Moll Flanders, Roxana, and Colonel Jack; but while committing hateful sins and crimes, and relating what they have done, they moralize upon their evil deeds with the seriousness and sobriety of a sedate old gentleman whose one object in life is the benefit of his fellow creatures. Yet the descent from the light and purity of the great romance to the oppressive and noxious atmospere of the minor novels is great indeed. Robinson Crusoe stands out from its companions like a noble mountain amidst a range of stunted hillocks; it is a book so manly in tone, so feminine in sweetness, so Christian in feeling, that it deserves a place on the same shelf with the Faery Queene and the Pilgrim's Progress. It is unfortunate that lack of instruments for But on what shelf, and with what comlunar observations prevented the determination panions, shall we place Roxana and Moll of the precise locality of the most celebrated of Flanders, Colonel Jack and Captain Singlethe islands which he discovered. But when we ton? Not certainly with books in which reflect on the influence of the literary results of splendid powers are perverted to evil, his expeditions in stimulating the youth of all and vice is tricked out to wear the semnations to geographical exploration and adven-blance of virtue; but among books that ture, we may hope in that noble hall, which the prophetic vision of our president doubtless sees rising in the future, that a statue of Crusoe may be raised from the sole remaining authentic portrait which adorns the frontispiece of the first edition of his famous geographical work.

display, with the fidelity of a photograph, human nature at its worst, vice in all its grossness, and the low aims of low people in all their vulgarity. Love, in the highest meaning of the word, was unknown to Defoe, and is not, therefore, porOne more remark suggested by Robin- trayed in his novels. He wrote only of son Crusoe will not be inappropriate. what he knew, and of this he knew nothWhen a man produces an incomparable ing. His women are without grace, withwork, we are content to solve all difficul-out purity, without dignity, they are even ties regarding it, by saying that it is a without passion: and when led astray, are work of genius. That Defoe's novel mer- 'not influenced by their affections, but by a

love of greed. Their aims are mercenary, their manners loose, their language commonplace; they are wholly destitute of sentiment and of the charm of poetry. But they act and speak like living beings, instead of moving like puppets. The truth of the likenesses reconciles us to their coarseness. They interest us, because of the one touch of nature, and as specimens of our common humanity.

object of fiction is amusement; and this, in the novels we are speaking of, can only be gathered from the vicious or criminal adventures of his characters described. Books such as these are not taken up for the sake of instruction. It is impossible. therefore, to accept Defoe's asseverations that his sole object in writing his fictions was didactic, and we agree with Mr. Wilson and Mr. Lee, that they cannot be recommended for indiscriminate perusal.

Of Defoe the man- apart from Defoe the politician, the polemist, the social reformer, and the novelist - there is so little to be said that the biographer who attempts a portrait on a large scale is almost forced to write a history of his times and of his works. The times are interesting, the works manifold, and what with chronicle and criticism, abundant extracts and minute historical details, such a memoir easily swells out into goodly proportions. Still it may be questioned whether the little we know accurately of Defoe is not to some extent obscured by these extraneous details. From the midst of them, however, it is certainly possible to form a portrait which, at least in its broader features, will be tolerably well defined.

Defoe professes to write always with a moral, and even with a religious purpose. He was an honest and severe Presbyterian, who regarded actors as the "sons of hell," and was so thorough a Sabbatarian that he considered the licensing of a certain number of hackney-coaches to ply on Sundays as the worst blemish of King William's reign, and we suppose, therefore, a greater slur upon his memory than the massacre of Glencoe. He had from his youth belonged to a strait sect, and had shown himself willing to suffer persecution for his creed. When his minor fictions were published Defoe was more than sixty years of age, and had produced one of the wholesomest and most beautiful tales we possess in the language. Is it possible that these far inferior books were written years before, when he was immured in How clear-sighted this man was, what Newgate, and when, doubtless, he acquired abundant energy he possessed, how willmuch of the special knowledge they ex-ingly he sacrificed private emolument for hibit, and that the extraordinary popularity of Robinson Crusoe, which gained its high position at a bound, induced him to give them also to the world? It would be a satisfaction to think that such novels as Moll Flanders and Roxana were not among the last works of an old man. His aim, it may be admitted, was to portray the ugliness of vice and the divine beauty of virtue, and certainly he displays vice after a very undraped fashion. If people don't dislike it, he says it is their own fault; and their fault, too, if they do not gain instruction from the inevitable moral which follows the representation. But the first of a life.

the public good, with what cheerfulness he turned the most adverse circumstances to practical account, how strong he was in the invincible ardour of an heroic soulall this is duly set forth in Mr. Lee's biography. Forget the six fatal letters, and you will acknowlege that a braver and nobler specimen of English manhood never walked the island; remembering them sorrowfully, as you needs must, and while perplexed at the unrighteous conduct of a righteous man, you are content to confess you do not understand the inconsistency, and to accept, as compensation, the virtues

THE SIEGE OF BREDA: TOBACCO. The siege | eight; a hog, for one hundred and fifteen; and of Breda was one of the most celebrated sieges tobacco for one hundred florins the pound." of the seventeenth century, and is frequently This was after they had consumed most of the mentioned by the old English dra.natists. Spi-horses. A few days after, the narrator adds nola sat down before Breda on August 26, 1624, and the town did not surrender until July 1 in the following year. The besieged suffered incredible hardships. 66 Butter," says the historian Herman Hugo," was sold for six florins a ponnd; a calf of seventeen days old for forty

that" as much tobacco as in other places might
have been had for ten florins was sold in Breda
for twelve hundred." It appears that this to-
bacco was used as "physic, it being the only
remedy they had against scurvy.”
Notes and Queries.

ML.

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No such man of mark, and meet
With his betters to oompete!

But a simple Breton sailor pressed by
Tourvile for the fleet,

A poor coasting-pilot he, Hervé Riel the Croisickese.

6.

And "What mockery or malice have we here?" cries Hervé Riel:

"Are you mad, you Malouins? Are you cowards, fools, or rogues?

Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who took the soundings, tell

On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every swell

"Twixt the offing here and Grève where the river disembogues?

Are you bought by English gold? Is it love the lying's for?

Morn and eve, night and day,
Have I piloted your bay,

Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of
Solidor.

Burn the fleet and ruin France? That were worse than fifty Hogues!

Sirs, they know I speak the truth! Sirs, believe me there's a way!

Only let me lead the line,

Have the biggest ship to steer, Get this Formidable clear, Make the others follow mine, And I lead them, most and least, by a passage know well,

Right to Solidor past Grève,

And there lay them safe and sound; And if one ship misbehave,

I

- Keel so much as grate the ground, Why, I've nothing but my life, here's my head!" cries Hervé Riel.

7.

Not a minute more to wait.

"Steer us in, then, small and great!

Take the helm, lead the line, save the squadron!" cried its chief.

Captains, give the sailor place!

He is Admiral, in brief.

See the noble fellow's face

Still the north-wind, by God's grace.

As the big ship, with a bound,
Clears the entry like a hound,

Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide sea's profound!

See, safe thro' shoal and rock,

How they follow in a flock.

Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the ground,

Not a spar that comes to grief!

The peril, see, is past,

All are harboured to the last,

And just as Hervé Riel hollas "Anchor!"

sure as fate,

Up the English come, too late.

8.

So, the storm subsides to calm; They see the green trees wave

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Then said Damfreville, "My friend,
"I must speak out at the end,

Though I find the speaking hard:
Praise is deeper than the lips:
You have saved the King his ships,

You must name your own reward.
'Faith, our sun was near eclipse!
Demand whate'er you will,
France remains your debtor still.

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In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it be-
fell;

Not a head in white and black
On a single fishing-smack,

In memory of the man but for whom had gone
to wrack

All that France saved from the fight whence
England bore the bell.

Go to Paris: rank on rank

Search the heroes flung pell-mell

On the Louvre, face and flank;

You shall look long enough ere you come to
Hervé Riel.

So, for better and for worse,

Ask to heart's content and have! or my name's Hervé Riel, accept my verse!

not Damfreville."

10.

Then a beam of fun outbroke

On the bearded mouth that spoke,

In

my verse, Hervé Riel, do thou once more Save the squadron, honour France, love thy wife the Belle Aurore!

Croisic, Sept. 30, 1867.

ROBERT BROWNING.

A RECENT discovery of coins at Priene is of | estal were found five silver tetradrachm coins, peculiar archæological importance. The site of bearing the stamp and effigy of Orophernes, the temple of Athene Polias in that city yielded and on the reverse a Victory. This can be no to the explorations of the Dilettanti Society two other than Orophernes II. (Nitrephoros), the years ago many valuable fragments, which are supposititious son of Antiochus, and elder now in the British Museum. Among these is a brother of Ariarethes, who with the help of valuable collection of inscriptions, one of which | Demetrius supplanted the latter as king of Capproves the temple to have been originally dedi-padocia, B.c. 157, and who is recorded to have cated by Alexander the Great; and some frag- deposited with the citizens of Priene a sum of ments of architecture and sculpture, the style of which, following closely that of the mausoleum sculptures, appears to tally well with the date thus indicated. The pedestal of the colossal statue of the goddess had also been found intact, with a fragment of a hand, and two feet of smaller scale and peculiarly exquisite workmanship, showing that the temple had contained two colossi, one of about twenty-four and the other of about twelve feet high, either of which might have been that for which the pedestal was designed. In the course of last spring the exposed pavement and pedestal were broken to pieces; and under the lowest course of the ped

four hundred talents. It would seem that the coins found under the pedestal must have been placed there when it was constructed, and thus point to a date, for it and its statue, some hundred and seventy years later than that of the first dedication of the temple. One of these coins was presented to the British Museum, and another to the Dilettanti Society, by their discoverer, Mr Clark, a gentleman who resides in Asia Minor, near Priene. Academy.

It is worthy of note that the name of this king, as it appears on these coins, is Orophernes, not Olo

phernes, as it is written in the received texts of ancient authors.

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