-

mutter about metalliques, and quote sophisms about Hungary's opportunity and Venetia's hatred. If we are in presence of war the Kaiser will issue an order which will be obeyed by six hundred thousand trained soldiers, whom he has the means to move and to feed, if the rest of his subjects starve; and the movement of six hundred thousand men to actual conflict is a calamity which it is not in the power of human language to exaggerate.

path by which they are honourably to avoid things mean war, and we confess, always the now threatening contest. The stake with the proviso that the lying is not unadmitted to be at issue is great, greater usually portentous, -we see no escape than Englishmen perceive, and the quarrel from the belief that sooner than suffer is very far advanced. The King and Prussian dictation in Holstein, sooner inMinister of Prussia have both pledged deed than see Northern Germany absorbed themselves very deeply to their people that in Prussia, the Hapsburgs will fight, will they will keep the Duchies. Both are men fight now, and will fight hard. If they are who, except under overpowering necessity, compelled to fight, we are in presence of will be apt to keep their word, the Premier another European war of which no man now because he is deliberately offering aggran- living can predict the end or the duration dizement as the preferable alternative of -a war which will probably engage freedom, the King because he has with the Italians and Danes, Frenchmen and Turks, capacity of a sergeant-major also his con- which will make widows in Sicily as well science, the conscience which repudiates as Zeeland, and leave as many children falsehood except when it serves a visible fatherless in France as in Hungary or Branmilitary end. They will retain the Duchies denburg. It is useless to talk of Austrian unless expelled by force, and if they re- weakness, and chatter about tariffs, and tain them will retain also the potential sovereignty of Northern Germany. Mecklenburg and the Hesses do not intend to fight. Hanover is saturated with Prussian feeling. The Free Towns, and the Saxons, and the Wurtembergers are powerless in the face of the Prussian army encamped among them, and if the Duchies are successfully annexed Germany north of the Maine is lost to the Kaiser for ever. That is a heavy stake, and that is not all. The Emperor of Austria loses not only that But will the Kaiser be compelled to fight? visionary throne for which his race have There is one, and but one, pacific circumfor five centuries sacrificed all, their souls stance in the whole situation, and upon that included, but will have shaken his hold we try to base what is really only an inover his patrimonial domain, will have stinctive hope. Prussia must begin the shown to Hungary that resistance wins the contest, must actually strike a blow before concessions never granted to reason, and anything overt happens. The Kaiser need will have warned Italy that every hour now do nothing. He is not the offender; he lost is an hour of opportunity. He will not simply says the administration of Holstein risk so fearful a shock to the prestige of belongs by public law and solemn agreecenturies, will rather encounter the war ment to him, and as his troops are in which ever since 1815 his family have ex- Holstein and his Commissioner rules the pected. Unlesss the Continental press is in Duchy, decrees and despatches to the con-' a conspiracy of lying, he has accepted the trary are singularly unimportant. To comalternative, and is arming fast. A great mence the war the King of Prussia must army has been collected on the Northern do something very violent, say arrest Dr. frontier, with Marshal Benedek, a fighting May, editorial person in Holstein, who upsoldier, in command. An Archduke has holds the Duke of Augustenburg contrary been despatched to protect the Southern to Prussian decree, and the question is frontier. Croatia, Transylvania, and other provinces of the same kind, in which the garrison is usually heavy, but which can be left without soldiers, have been denuded of troops, all on their march towards the northern counties. The treasury is poor, but the needful commissariat has been provided. All Southern Austria has been informed that a requisition for horses is within the bounds of possibility. All furloughs have been recalled, and all editors warned that the movements of troops are now among the closest secrets of State. These

whether he will do this. We feel that he will not, will rather enunciate some magnanimous platitude as a reason for not doing so, but we think he will. All Germany will understand if he does not that Prussian threats have one limit, and that is Austrian resistance; the Prussian people will understand that they have not sacrificed their liberty to secure the future of Germany, but to be ruled by a person who dreads action; and the Prussian Army will understand that its new organization and the victory of Duppel have not made it the

supreme army upon the Continent. Finally, another, and indeed in everything conthe Duchies will understand that in plead- nected with death, so that if an Englishman ing for their autonomy they have armed is by any misfortune charged with conductAustria at their back, and not merely an ing the last rites for a friend or a relation inactive, though friendly, public opinion. who has chanced to die in France, he will The King can scarcely desire to let in so find it about the most annoying piece of much light upon the subject, more especial- business he has ever had anything to do ly as by the latest accounts he is secure of with. It is nothing of this kind, however, the neutrality of the minor States, and if against which Dr. Cornol has petitioned, he gives himself the rein the war is as in- for in all probability a Frenchman accusevitable as it may be disastrous. Still tomed to paternal government may not feel there is the instinct by which we, as well as its solicitudes in season and out of season to the next green-grocer who reads these be so much a gene as a less profusely govlines, decide that this war can never be. erned man does. The law requires that Fortunately, there is one point upon which twenty-four hours shall elapse between death instinct and reason cannot in this matter be and burial, and the minimum thus fixed Dr. at variance, and that is the action of our Cornol declares to be not nearly sufficient, own country. We have nothing whatever a declaration which he supports by numerto do with the quarrel. We opposed the ous instances of suspended animation, original robbery, and if the burglars choose showing that he has good ground for his to quarrel over the plate, so much the opinion that a large number of persons are better for the somewhat cowardly police. annually buried alive in France. No subIf peace comes a great calamity will be ject would provide a more ghastly theme for averted from the world. If war comes, the pen than this, and there is a fascination Italy, for which Englishmen care as they about it against which men like Edgar Poe will not care for Germany till Germany is have not been proof. free, will see that the hour has struck, and we trust realize the proverb about the luck that comes to honest men when thieves fall out. If in the great contest Austria, losing Venetia, wins the general game, North Germany will be free of Brummagem Cæsarism, and ready to commence a new career; and if, on the other hand, Prussia wins, Napoleon and the Czar will be face to face on the Continent with a new, and impregnable, and a conservative power. In any case the interest of this country is not to waste strength in a useless mediation, but to watch keenly, and so legislaté at home that when the hour of our action strikes, we may not find that emigration to lands happier for the poor has too greatly reduced our fighting strength.

From The London Review.
BURIED ALIVE.

THERE is something dreadfully uncomfortable in the feeling with which one reads the debate in the French Senate last week on the report of the committee on a petition by Dr. Cornol, for an extension of the Code Civile in the matter of ante-burial ceremonies. The French law is exceedingly tiresome in all that relates to the conveyance of corpses from one place to

The whole question is in itself sufficiently striking, but a dramatic effect was produced in the Senate when the matter was brought before that body, such as very few assemblies in the world have had an opportunity of witnessing an effect which might have appeared in one of the elder Dumas's more dashing and improbable novels, but would certainly up to this time have been held to be scarcely legitimate in ordinary works of fiction. M. de la Gueronnière, in presenting the report, argued against the petition, and proposed to shelve it by the technical motion to proceed with the order of the day. Thereupon his Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop of Bordeaux rose and expressed his dissent from the Viscomte's conclusion. In the first place, he declared that the precautionary regulations of the law were very frequently evaded in practice, but the strength of his argument was that even if strictly carried out they were wholly insufficient. He had himself, while yet a cure, saved several lives about to be sacrificed to the indecent haste of survivors. He had seen a man taken from his coffin and restored to perfect health. Another man, of advanced years, had been already put in the coffin, and yet lived for twelve hours after. Moreover, he had performed in his own person a miracle such as would have given him a good chance of becoming a canonized saint had he lived in the Middle Ages, when people believed in the

speaker's manner which led them to sup-
pose that it was no ordinary tale that was
being told in their presence, and they hung
upon his further words:-
"That young
priest, gentlemen, is the same who is now
speaking before you, and who, more than
forty years after that event, implores those
in authority not merely to watch vigilantly
over the careful execution of the legal pre-
scriptions with regard to interments, but to
enact fresh ones in order to prevent the re-
currence of irreparable misfortunes."

continuance of miraculous power. He had seen the body of a young lady laid out for dead, the attendants covering the face as he entered, but allowing him to observe so much as convinced him that the maiden was not dead but slept. Thereupon, with a loud voice (how Scripturally it runs), he cried out that he was come to save her. He adjured her to feel convinced that by an effort she could shake of the lethargy which oppressed her, and could return to life. His voice reached her numbed sensations, she made the effort, and has lived It is satisfactory, really, to run such a to be a wife and mother. This very re- story to earth. We have never felt quite markable account throws light upon the clear about the truth of the dreadful stories miracles of early times. Thus when Em- that are told of facts observed, and the horpedocles, the philosopher, got the credit of rible suggestions of unknown terrors to restoring to life a deceased woman (see the which these facts give rise. Every one has story told by Diogenes, Laertius, and others), heard of the lady whose ring tempted a there can be little doubt that the person servant to violate her tomb, and even to whom he saved was suffering under one of endeavour to bite off the finger from which the various forms of coma to which all it refused to be drawn, the shock of which nations have given so many different names, brought back the dead woman to life and conand to which we ourselves in common par-sciousness. And there is that ghastly scene lance, rightly or wongly, do the same. It is as well to add, in passing, that although this remark might apply equally well to the case of the damsel whom the words "Talitha Kumi" brought back to life, that miracle was only one out of a very large number, to the majority of which no such explanation could apply.

But his Eminence had more striking instance to adduce. A young priest fell down dead, as it was supposed, while preaching in a crowded church on a sultry day, about forty years ago. The funeral bell was tolled, the doctor came and examined him in the perfunctory official style, much in the same way as the two inspectors at Hull examined the fatal 600 head of diseased cattle in three hours and a half, and certified that he was dead, all in the dead man's full hearing. Then came the measuring for the coffin, the De Profundis recited by Episcopal lips, accompanied by the intense agony of one who was conscious of the preparations that were being made for his own burial. At length some one present spoke, whose voice the dead man had known and loved from very early years. A chord was touched which galvanized the frame, the corpse rose up, and became once more a living soul. Such stories are to be found in many story-books, and probably few of the Archbishop's audience were not familiar with something of the kind as the result of their reading at an age when the marvellous and the horrible have a peculiar fascination for the mind. But there was something in the

where corpses are laid out in full dress, with wires in their hands connected with bells, so that the smallest motion of the muscles would summon an attendant. And a tale is told of a corpse suddenly rising up from the bed on which it was laid out, terrifying the watcher so that she fled half-fainting, and the reanimated body was left without assistance and once more died, this time completely. The horrors of being buried alive are so manifest and manifold that it is almost unnecessary to point out how such a death has been reserved as a punishment for the direst offences only. Vestal virgins with broken vows and nuns convicted of unchastity are among the most ordinary examples, their offence being held to be the most henious conceivable under the peculiar circumstances of their position. And the ancient Goths, teste Blackstone quoting Fleta, buried or burned alive indiscriminately for a peculiar crime, peccatum illud horribile inter Christianos non nominandum, as the reticence of the English law styled it in indictments. Calmet, in his dictionary, states that so did the Jews, and in the earliest edition of his work is an engraving of the procedure, among those horrible engravings of ten or twelve sorts of punishment inflicted by that nation, of which many remain even in the latter editions, such as putting under harrows of iron, and scraping with claws of iron, and hurling from the tops of towers. Nay, so lately as the year 1460, a very barbarous period, the punishment of burying alive was inflicted in France upon a woman named

66

Perrete Mauger, who had been convicted | there till he died, although his cries could of many larcenies and was buried alive, by be plainly heard by the attendants. He order of the Maire D'Estouteville, before was found, when they opened the sepulthe gibbet in Paris. So at least the chre, suis ipsius lacertis, et caligis quas gesChronique Scandaleux" says in one of tabat comestis. It is evident, from comits opening paragraphs, though an English paratively ancient and from modern version of that curious piece of history history alike, that the possibility of persons reads burned alive for enfouye toute vive. being buried alive has always been before And at Ensbury, in Dorset, there is a tradi- men's minds, and the French Senate has tion that many years ago a man was put wisely determined to consider the petition quick into the earth as a punishment, buried of Dr. Cornol. up to the neck, a guard preventing any from rescuing or feeding him till death relieved him. The Irish rebel, Shane O'Neil, used to get right after drinking himself drunk with usquebaugh by a like process, being placed upright in a pit and covered with earth to his shoulders, by which means, says Holinshed, his body, being "extremely inflamed and distempered, was recovered to some temperature."

There are several very remarkable instances, or supposed instances, of burial during suspended animation to be met with in history. One of those which attracted great attention long ago was that of Duns Scotus, known as the subtle. Bacon has given the story of his death an existence among us by stating that Scotus was buried while suffering from a fit to which he was subject, in the absence of his servant and of all who knew that such fits were periodical with him. The story, as told by Abrahamus Bzovius, is to the effect that when his servant returned, he at once declared that his master had been buried alive; and on opening the vault, the corpse in gradibus mausolei devoratis manibus repertum fuisse, which it is as well not to construe. The Brother Lucas Waddingus, in the third book of his Annals, argues, much to his own satisfaction, that this could not possibly have been the case, and for the sake of the Subtle Doctor we are fain to agree with him. The same sort of story is told of Boniface VIII., the enemy of Philip of France, though, in the hands of the fiercer Ghibellines, it took the form of determined suicide. The old annals state that being buried alive extrema mauuum devorasse, et caput ad parietem elisisse; but in Tosti's Life it is stated that, at the exhumation of the body, more than 300 years after (Boniface VIII. died in 1303), it was found whole, without any marks of violence. The most dreadful story of all is that of the Emperor Zeno Isaurus, so famous by reason of his Henoticon, who was subject to attacks of coma, and while undergoing one of these attacks was put in the mausoleum by his wife, Ariadne, and kept shut up

From the Spectator.

BREAKFAST.

BREAKFAST has been a good deal neglected in the literature of gastronomy. The little publication just issued by Mr. Bentley, and edited by some dreadful person who actually gives a receipt for dressed crab as a morning dish, is, we think, the first which has appeared in English devoted exclusively to the early meal. The true gourmand indeed we fancy rather despises breakfast as a mere arrangement for taking sustenance, lacking entirely that trace of science, and sub-flavour of art, and delicate aroma of conviviality which, by the consent of civilized mankind in all countries, attach themselves to dinner. The contempt is probably instinctive, for the Australian black in his natural state eats his early handful of gum or fat insects standing, and squats at ease only when the half-raw opossum is ready for the afternoon enjoyment, but it has been deepened by civilization till breakfast has passed out of the hands of the gastronome into those of the doctor: One feeds oneself, and it is not on feeding that literary cooks can be tempted to display the full resources of their art. In France, indeed, where enjoyment is cultivated as a science, and the nasty compromise between breakfast and dinner called lunch, - a meal where one has all the trouble of dining and none of its compensations, where a chop is considered meat, and housewives are not ashamed of hash, and fat porter is substituted for claret, is unusual, breakfast has been the subject of some care. But then wine is taken at breakfast in France, and the faint odour of refined enjoyment which has always lingered around wine attaches itself even to the breakfast with which it is consumed. There is a possibility of art, of an awakening of the mind, even in some rare instances of a tepid, good-fellowship.

In India, where coolness is the one source | omelettes in the frying pan which marks a of comfort, where sitting in a draught is refined mind, and he has the taste to place Elysium, and iced water raises your spirits, the true omelette before those over improved and coffee really stimulates, and the chance confections in which the first quality of the of cold meat is a separate and infrequent dish, its croquancy, is destroyed by the luxury, and breakfast may be as elaborate intrusion of foreign and comparatively as dinner without costing a farthing or an gritty substances. exertion, social breakfasting is a recognized habit. In England, however, the meal is eminently one of utility alone. In very good houses you eat it in solitude, or with your wife, at the hour which suits yourself -an arrangement specially designed to make good-fellowship intrusive, and among the middle classes business begins too early. Half of us want to be doing something at ten, and a meal at half-past nine, to be eaten while you are still chilled through, cannot therefore receive much attention. A cut of meat and a cup of coffee is considered sufficient, and often too much, for Englishmen rise too late really to enjoy eating before mid-day. Not that we mean to say anything in praise of early rising. The man who asserts in a climate like this that it is a virtue to get up at six, and looks at you suspiciously, as doubting your moral fibre, because you get up at ten, ought to be made to wear a hair shirt, or shave with cold water, or use "mottled" soap, or complete his theory of life by some other needless but self-exalting form of physical selfdenial. But still the early riser, unpleasant person as he usually is, has the compensation of hunger, which his more self-indul

gent friend has not. We have known houses where simplicity was carried much farther than this, where, though dinner was good, breakfast was utterly neglected, the women ate bread and butter, and the men were considered well fed if they got fresh eggs and little scraps of red meat, supposed by courtesy to be bacon. Such contempt for humanity is, however, we are happy to say, becoming rare, and were the question of breakfast only studied with the keenness, ardour, and purity of purpose displayed on the greater question of dinner, would speedily be extinct. Of course any real reform on the point must arise from a development of the inward consciousness, a cultivation of the latent conscience of the stomach, but a good deal of external aid can be gained from Mr. Bentley's little brochure. Its editor has made that one huge mistake about crab as if one should begin breakfast with soup-but we have not discovered a second impiety of the kind, and his views upon omelettes are at once orthodox and expansive. There is a little hint about the impropriety of turning

Before breakfast can assume its proper place among the subjects of art it is necessary to decide what its central idea should be, and not only the central idea, but the central idea applicable to England. Bearing in mind that such of our countrymen as are capable of distinguishing between eating and feeding, who would describe "skilley," for instance, as food, but not as breakfast, are people who will not waste morning time, the idea of breakfast should, we think, be the provision which best fortifies men for the labour of a long day. Women need not be considered, for they get a good mid-day meal, which is to them not unpleasant, for the children are about, and there is an interval between household supervision and visiting, and by a beneficent provision of nature they are exempt from the temptations of gourmandise. Few women worth a straw care a straw what they eat, and as few men do not care. To the last day of their lives the best and cleverest women will eat the horrid imitations of sponge called buns, and for those who can eat buns with a relish gastronomy is an impertinence. The object is to qualify men for work, and breakfast therefore must consist mainly of eatable solids cold. Not to speak of household convenience, hot meats, and in a less degree even hot fish, require wine, or they leave an unpleasant film upon the palate, and early wine is, on the whole, among a race of industrials living in a chilly climate a mistake. If at all strong it slightly diminishes business keenness and activity, and if very weak leaves neither the warmth which comes of fully satisfied appetite, nor the keenness which slight hunger fosters in city-bred men. French feel that, and qualify wine and water by a petit verre of brandy, - the most dangerous habit into which an Englishman can fall. For those who live habitually in the open air beer may possibly be healthy, and it certainly did not hurt our ancestors, but with the majority of their weakly descendants the habit either produces corpulence or a permanent irritability and sense of unrest. The instinct which has led men to milder liquors swallowed hot is, we believe, sound, tea being injurious only to the sedentary, cocoa only to the fat, and coffee in the morning to nobody, while

The