The wo

be led carefully to study both (not without | theless believed in duty as a grand princia consciousness that the task is somewhat ple, leading along a straight road to a desiirksome), from a desire fully to follow out rable though unknown goal. And the the trains of thought they suggest. Here, school was not a despicable one. in these pages, the author of the Physical men at least learned much a later generaTheory of Another Life, and the inventor of tion seems in some danger of forgetting, the more than one skilful mechanical device, children nursed in it have some of them with his sister, the well known Jane Tay- outlived it, but we should like to be sure the lor, live before us. Seldom long separated present age will produce equally fine specifrom each other, all their earlier lives spent mens of character,- men who, when their in the most intimate interchange of thought, English is rusty, will have their honour one has scarcely passed from amongst us, bright, women who, when their hair is whilst the voice of the other has been silent white, will still find men the better for their for more than forty years; and as we look presence. We have learned to despise a from the one to the other, and read these story with a moral, to believe that, fragments from a pen that from one generation to another in this family seems to have been never idle, we see that in the interval of that short forty years a silent revolution, mightier than the one which marked their earlier years, has taken place among us. The Essays in Rhyme may rest on shelves beside Cowper or Young, Display beside Decision, but we look at them as at some quaint Dutch pictures, which have a certain realism of their own, and yet touch no chord to which our own lives respond. Was it a healthy life, this religious life of seventy years ago? A strange, silent beauty rests on it now, like the calm on a dead man's face. The quiet home in Lavenham, where " a handsome dwelling, with spacious garden well stocked with fruit," were to be had for 61. a year; where the mother read aloud at meals, and no moment in the day was suffered to be lost; where the winter months pass in unbroken quiet; yet the days in their well filled order did not seem monotonous; where the mornings were spent by the girls in what would now be called household drudgery, but which with them seems only to have left them fresher for the evening's work, the writing of those verses which have been the delight of more than one generation of children since, and are likely to last when the essays of maturer years have been long forgotten. That Jane Taylor's stories and essays found so wide and eager a reception proved she was the exponent of the thoughts of many at that time. There had already begun the reaction from the fierce infidelity and careless libertinism of the eighteenth century, a strong desire, not after a higher life exactly - that was to follow but after a sense of completeness, satisfaction, roundness, as it were, in the daily routine, and men, but more especially women, who never dreamed of eternal life as a thing already begun, who had not the faintest perception that Christ revealed more than divines taught, never

We have done with "Mirrors" and Looking-Glasses," are tired, in short, of looking at our own small selves, begin to think we are, after all, but atoms in a universe, the resources of which are daily opening more widely to our view. It is a higher, at least, a wider life, but we return to look again at the pioneers who cut the way to it for us, through many a huge impediment. These Taylors were amongst them, not in the van, but steadily doing the work. One of the earliest amongst them who took" the family pen " into his hand. Charles Taylor, the well read editor of Calmet, uncle to Isaac Taylor, of Stanford Rivers, is well sketched in these volumes. The artistscholar," to whom work was play, and rest work, " teeming with repressed energy," so repressed, he seems to have turned some key upon his deeper intellectual nature when he left his study, and never at the family table discoursed of the matters wherewith his brain was teeming. His table talk, says his biographer, "was an instance in illustration of Talleyrand's reply to an impertinent physician, who had tried to lead him into State affairs, Sir, I never talk of things that I understand.'" To the last he loved his work, but shrank from the fame which attended it. We gather from this sketch that Mr. C. Taylor, engraver, was to be found at home, but the editor of Calmet nowhere.

The chief interest of the book, however, centres around Jane Taylor, and it is almost as the antiquarian looks at some ancientseeming coin, whose modern date he more than half suspects, that we look at these letters of not yet fifty years ago. The names are the familiar names of places and people yet

From the Spectator.

"I think the English character never comes out more strongly than on board a steamboat,"

A WEEK IN A FRENCH COUNTRY HOUSE.* he continued. "The feeling of decency-le convenable-is what English people never lose sight of English women more especially: even the tortures of sea-sickness they manage to control, and retire to some secluded corner with their basin, hoping to shroud from observation an attitude which no amount of will can render graceful or dignified. I saw a vulgar England; he had been making game of a poor Spaniard once, when I was crossing over to Meess, who, with English forethought, had provided herself with a basin before the vessel started. He straddled about on deck with a great chain and a gaudy cane, and said in a swaggering way, Look at all these poor wretches who are determined to be ill! their precautions are exactly what makes them so; they are afraid, and give in, and of course are sick immediately; but if one walks up and down as I do, and smokes as I do and sings as I do, one is never ill.' He began executing

THE great charm of this inimitable little sketch of French country life seems to be in the graceful childlikeness of the manners of the whole social group it describes. In England, grown-up persons of the most pleasant kind are seldom or never childlike. The charm of simplicity may last into maturity, though even that is not very common, but the charm of perfect spontaneity, of childlike self-will, or childlike self-devotion, childlike guilelessness and equally childlike guile, of childlike helplessness and equally childlike dexterity under difficulties, especially of childlike frankness and equally childlike stratagem for purposes of courtesy, is almost unknown in the best English society. The sketches of character in this little book are the merest outlines, sometimes so slight as only-just to give individuality of expression, sometimes vivid enough to impress the memory very powerfully, but never studied in anything like detail. But the effect of the whole upon the reader's imagination is far more vivid than the effect of the parts. There is a wholeness and beauty of expression about the picture of the little society kept together for a single week only within the cognizance of the reader of this story, which is never to be found in any English story. Even such a picture as Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford,- perfect in its way, and executed with far more laborious detail, - gives no such impression of differences of character blended into a single social whole, simply because there is no such thing to be found even in the most perfectly amalgamated of English societies. Englishmen and English women have by their very mature less capacity to blend with each other. Their lives are too much regulated by recognized social customs and etiquettes, too little by the momentary result of spontaneous social feeling. M. Berthier, a French artist, who is one of the best figures in the admirable little group at Marny, gives us a perfect illustration of the element in the English character which prevents the spontaneousness necessary to the charm of all true society. He is describing the different way in which the English and other nations deal with the great evil of sea-sickness:

"Mademoiselle does not look as if she had crossed the sea yesterday: were you ill?" asked Monsieur Berthier, in his slow gentle way.

some roulades as the boat steamed out of har

bour; the sea was terrible, and before ten min-
utes were over, my Spaniard, who had suddenly
lapsed into ominous silence and gradually be
come of a hue the like of which I never beheld
before or since on any human countenance,
uttered a discordant shriek, and made a violent
him; the ship lurched and the basin rolled off,
plunge at a basin he saw upon a bench near
and he rolled after it, and lay wallowing there
on the ground where he fell, an utterly demoral-
ized and disgusting object; but so miserable,
and so regardless of all appearances, that I as
sure you he became almost grand through ex-
cess of suffering, and the entire absence of self-
consciousness. Meess, with her basin in her
corner, and all her British dignity, was little by
the side of that Spaniard in the agony of his
Madame Olympe took the English side of the
utter self-abandonment." We all laughed, but
question, and stood up for it very vigorously.
Monsieur Berthier turned to me. "Confess
that you went downstairs and tried to hide
yourself from everyone; you would not be
English if you had not done thus. I remember
at one time of my life having to pass every day
the English pastrycook's at the corner of the
I used to see the English
Rue de Rivoli.
Misses there eating cakes, and when I looked
in at them (for they were almost always pretty)
they took a crumb at the time, but when I
passed on, and they thought they were not seen
any more, they put enormous pieces into their
mouths, and ate with as much voracity as other
people. I used to amuse myself with pretend-
ing to go by, and then coming back stealthily
to watch them from the corner of the window,
and they always did the same."

There are characters in this fascinating little sketch, or tale, or whatever it may be called, of all kinds, self-willed and yielding, selfish and unselfish, timorous and bold, help* A Week in a French Country House. By Ade-less and helpful, but all (except the English

laide Sartoris. London: Smith, Elder, and Co.

nay,

Lady Blankeney and her daughter) have rare even in France-would be quite imthis. most fascinating social quality of possible in England:childlike spontaneity, that is, express themselves with so much less relation to abWe had nearly finished dessert, when Ursula stract rules and general conventions than suddenly exclaimed, "What in the world are the English, and therefore with so much you doing, Jacques ?"-He was carefully strokmore ease. Madame Olympe, the mistress ing down both sides of his nose with the first finger and presiding genius of the household, with of each hand, and then rubbing the points of her imperious self-will and infinite depth of the finger together at the end of his nose, as if tenderness and compassion, is as childlike to rub off some adhesive substance. I had as her own little daughter Jeanne, seen him steadily doing this during the last ten minutes. more so, as childlike in her own way as M. "That is the way the flies do," he "Hast Dessaïx, the naif old violinist who imitates thou never seen how they clean their bodies, said, looking up at her meditatively. the manners of flies and elephants at dinner first with their legs going carefully under their time, and picks peaches with an elephantine wings, and then how they clean their legs by sweep of his arm off his young friend's scraping them against each other?" and he Ursula Hamilton's plate. Take the follow-did it again. "Ceci c'est l'éléphant," he coning little trait of Madame Olympe's self-will, tinued mournfully, and stretching his arm out and notice how much less social restraint with a sudden impetuous sort of circular sweep childlike self-will of this kind causes, than far less obstinate and far more reasonable self-will of another and more regulated

kind:

across to Ursula's plate, he picked up from off it a peach which she was just going to eat, and dropped it with a curve from above into his own mouth. The dexterity and the likeness to the creature he was imitating were perfectly marvellous, and perfectly irresistible - even Maria blinked her short-sighted eyes and chuckled faintly. Monsieur René alone maintained a well-bred gravity, and gave the signal for leaving the table by rising at once.

And again :

"I will write a new oratorio of Samson," said Monsieur Jacques. "And Samson shall be a contralto, and thou shalt sing it-thou "" "But how wilt thou write who art strong." "thou who art not strong? it?" said Ursula

After we had gone steadily along for about ten minutes, one of the horses shied at a piece of paper that was lying in the road. Madame Olympe gave a scream: "It's the white horse!" cried she.- "It's the bay one," said Monsieur René, looking out. The coachman whipped and whipped in vain; the animal jumped and fidgeted, but would not go by the place. Madame Olympe was beginning to be a good deal frightened. It's the white horse!" she exclaimed again. Monsieur Charles now looked out in his turn. "No. Olympe," said he, "it is the bay horse.". "It's the white horse!" she vociferated, eyeing him despotically, be-One does but what one is. Thou dear old tween two screams. The beast now began to inny," she went on caressingly, "thou hast a kick and plunge, and Madame Olympe got into little soul: how wilt thou do great things with a state of the most imperious terror. "There it? But thou hast a tender soul, and a fanciis no white horse at all in the carriage," said ful brain, and of grace, tenderness, and fancy Monsieur Charles. "But when I tell you that thou wilt always be master. Thou canst but what thou art. Write me a cantata of David cried she, in her highest key, and with her eye-flower of his shepherd days, and I will sing that before he went up to slay the Philistine, in the brows running straight up her forehead into her hair. It was too funny, and we all went into fits of laughter, in which she could not help joining very heartily herself, in spite of her alarm.

I choose that it should be a white horse!"

for thee."

Very striking, too, is the sketch of M. René de Saldes, the ladies' man of the story, with his wonderful influence over everybody, due to a mixture of scornfulness, savoir-faire, and selfishness, and to the "little tired, sad smile," which makes all the women feel him their superior, and leads them to indulge an entirely mistaken fancy that he has some deep sorrow (other than his own pride and selfishness) which they could console. Even he, who has by far the most artificially regulated mind in the story, has a social spontaneity about him which makes him very different from the ladies' hero of an English tale, though it comes out

in reckless sarcasms, directed against any one he cannot sway, and in sad little compliments, spontaneous in form, but intended to gain him influence where he sees that he can establish an influence, which imply anything but disinterested spontaneousness of character. Still, the ease, the absolute adaptation of his language to the exigences of the moment, and without any regard to abstract rules, is as remarkable in M. René de Saldes as in any of the others, and his passionate burst of childlike grief when he cannot persuade Ursula Hamilton to marry him, is conceived entirely in the same social school. Nothing can be better than the child (Jeanne's) description of the nature of M. de Saldes' influence in the château :

Wanderings of a Naturalist in India, the Western Himalayas, and Cashmere. By Andrew Leith Adams, M.D., Surgeon 22nd Regiment. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas.

ARMY surgeons have good opportunities for the practical study of natural history, and Dr. Adams has made good use of those that fell to his lot. He was in India, with plenty of leisure for looking about and plenty of ability to look about intelligently, between 1849 and 1854; and here he gives a rambling history of his observations, with just enough record of his personal adventures and gossip on miscellaneous topics to give coherence to the narrative.

His first halt was at Poonah, and there, on beginning his Indian life, he wisely set himself in opposition to the orthodox ways of European residents, thereby proving his theory that "the most part of the so-called insalubrity of the climate is attributable to the neglect of the simplest of hygienic rules." "By rising early and going soon to bed," he says, "I had always a few hours at my disposal for out-door amusements and recreations, and, when the heat of the day kept me within the shade of my bungalow, I could still find occupation and study among the collection of natural objects I had gathered during my morning and evening rambles." In that way he kept his health and was able to lay up a good store of information for his own and other peo

"René is travelled, and learned, and artistic, and interesting above all, interesting; that is the very word for him. But he never thinks much about anybody, that I can see, except himself; and yet somehow, I don't know why, one can't help having a feeling of immense respect for him; I suppose, because he has always the air of despising one so- -it gives one immediately a morbid desire after his approbation and notice. It is a great thing for us to have him come here in the winters; we should fall back into the benighted state of the Middle Ages, and do nothing but kill our hogs and eat them, if it were not for him! He keeps us all up to the mark. I always read up to him when he is coming, and we never dare shut an eye of an evening; and Maman dresses herself properly, and puts on no more gowns that were made in the year one; and Charles does not make any dirty jokes; and even the cook sends up superhuman dinners when he is at Marny! Do you under-ple's profit. The naturalist in India, howstand him at all from my description?"

All the little side-figures are equally characteristic of a society entirely unknown in England. The little nun and her gossippy self-dedication and devotion to the high est duties of charity is a most amusing and pathetic side-figure; and excellent, though rather faint, is the sketch of M. Charles, the Marquis, who in the absence of Madame Olympe would have been master of the château. Perhaps the poorest sketch in the book is the figure meant to be most striking, Ursula Hamilton, who impresses us as drawn from life only in her exquisitely drawn relation to M. Dessaix. In other aspects of her character she is scarcely well defined. All the studies, however, are mere outlines, and it is somewhat remarkable how much pleasure Madame Sartoris has managed to give us by sketches so very slight and airy as these.

ever, has not to wander far in search of objects. Fleas, mosquitoes, beetles, and scorpions swarm in every house and tent; and snakes, of which plenty can always be found near at hand, often come in-doors for better company. "On one occasion," says Dr. Adams, "I was awoke by my servant pursuing a snake across my bed-room floor. He killed it at my bed-side. One of the first injunctions a native servant gives his newly-arrived master is, always to shake his boots well before putting them on," scorpions being apt to take up their abode in the toe." Dr. Adams tells also how, at the proper time, the pools are almost coated over with the spawn of frogs, and how kites and vultures will dart down and seize the mutton-chops which the servants are bringing to table from the neighbouring cookhouse. My attention was one morning directed to a colony of flying foxes, which had taken up their abode on a banyan tree situate in one of the most central and popu