then at his olive face, and half inclined to take to my heels and run. 66 66 " said he, no sorrowful books, See," only Aristophanes and Lucian, Rabelais, We came at length to the ridge where Molière, Voltaire's novels, Gil Blas,' the road dives suddenly into Tregarrick.Don Quixote,' Fielding, a play or two of The town lies along a narrow vale, and looking down we saw flags waving along the street and much smoke curling from the chimneys, and heard the church bells, the big drum, and the confused mutterings and hubbub of the fair. The sun for the morning was still fresh - did not yet pierce to the bottom of the valley, but fell on the hillside opposite, where cottage gardens in parallel strips climbed up from the town to the moorland. "What is that?" asked the goose-driver, touching my arm and pointing to a dazzling spot on the slope opposite. "That's the sun on the windows of Gardener Tonken's glass-house." "Eh?-does he live there? "He's dead, and the garden's 'to let;' you can just see the board from here. But he didn't live there, of course. People don't live in glass-houses, only plants." "That's a pity, little boy, for their souls' sakes. It reminds me of a story-by the way, do you know Latin? No? Well, listen to this: if I can sell my geese to-day, perhaps I will hire that glass-house, and you shall come there on half-holidays, and learn Latin. Now run ahead and spend your money. I was glad to escape, and in the bustle of the fair quickly forgot my friend. But late in the afternoon, as I had my eyes glued to a peepshow, I heard a voice behind me cry, "Little boy!" and turning, saw him again. He was without his "On Saturday. "Very well. I am going away to buy books; but I shall be back by Saturday, and then you are to come and learn Latin." It may have been fear or curiosity, certainly it was no desire for learning, that took me to Gardener Tonken's glass-house next Saturday afternoon. The goosedriver was there to welcome me. "Ah, little wide-mouth," he cried; "I knew you would be here. Come and see my library." He showed me a pile of dusty, tattered volumes, arranged on an old flower-stand. Shakespeare, a volume or so of Swift, a After this I came on every half-holiday for nearly a year. Of course the tenant of the glass-house was a nine days' wonder in the town. A crowd of boys and even many grown men and women would assemble and stare into the glass-house while we worked; but Fortunio (he gave no other name) seemed rather to like it. than not. Only when certain wiseacres approached my parents with hints that my studies with a ragged man who lived on snails and garden-stuff were uncommonly like traffic with the devil, Fortunio, hearing the matter, walked over one morning to our home and had an interview with my mother. I don't know what was said; but I know that afterwards no resistance was made to my visits to the glass-house. They came to an end in the saddest and most natural way. One September after. noon I sat construing to Fortunio out of the first book of Virgil's "Eneid". far was I advanced; and coming to the passage But I ran for a doctor. Fortunio lived on for a week after this, and at length consented to see a clergyman. I brought the vicar, and was told to leave them alone together and come back in an hour's time. When I returned, Fortunio was stretched quietly on the rough bed we had found for him, and the vicar, who knelt beside it, was speaking softly in his ear. As I entered on tiptoe, I heard: "... in that kingdom shall be no weeping "Oh, parson," interrupted Fortunio, "that's bad. I'm so bored with laughing, you see, that the good God might surely allow a few tears." The parish buried him, and his books went to pay for the funeral. But I kept the Virgil; and this, with the few memories that I impart to you, is all that remains to me of Fortunio. 2. A CORRESPONDENT sends to the Nonconformist the following letter, written by Robert Browning in 1876 to a lady, who, believing herself to be dying, wrote to thank him for the help she had derived from his poems, mentioning particularly "Rabbi Ben Ezra " and "Abt Vogler," and giving expression to the deep satisfaction of her mind that one so highly gifted with genius should hold, as he held, to the great truths of our religion, and to a belief in the glorious unfolding and crowning of life in the world beyond the grave. "19 Warwick-crescent, W., May 11, '76. "Dear Friend, - It would ill become me to waste a word on my own feelings except inasmuch as they can be common to us both in such a situation as you describe yours to be and which, by sympathy, I can make mine by the anticipation of a few years at most. It is a great thing- the greatest-that a human being should have passed the probation of life, and sum up its experience in a witness to the power and love of God. I dare congratulate you. All the help I can offer, in my poor degree, is the assurance that I see ever more reason to hold by the same hope-and that by no means in ignorance of what has been advanced to the contrary; and for your sake I would wish it to be true that I had so much of 'genius' as to permit the testimony of an especially privileged insight to come in aid of no the ordinary argument. For I know I myself have been aware of the communication of something more subtle than a ratiocinative process, when the convictions of 'genius have thrilled my soul to its depths, as when Napoleon, shutting up the New Testament, said of Christ: Do you know that I am an understander of men? Well, he was man!' ('Savez-vous que je me connais en hommes? Eh bien, celui-là ne fut pas un homme.') Or as when Charles Lamb, in a gay fancy with some friends as to how he and they would feel if the greatest of the dead were to appear suddenly in flesh and blood once more-on the final suggestion, And if Christ entered this room?' changed his manner at once, and stuttered out-as his manner was when moved, 'You see, if Shakespeare entered, we should all rise; if he appeared, we must kneel.' Or, not to multiply instances as when Dante wrote what I will transcribe wherein I refrom my wife's Testament'Thus I becorded it fourteen years ago: lieve, thus I affirm, thus I am certain it is, that from this life I shall pass to another better, there, where that lady lives, o: whom my Dear friend, I may soul was enamored.' have wearied you in spite of your good-will. God bless you, sustain, and receive you! Reciprocate this blessing with yours affectionately, ROBERT BROWNING." Leisure Hour. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING Age, 18 cents. Sweep, glorious wings, adown the wind; fly, swallow, to the west; Before thee, life and liberty; behind, a ruined nest. Blow, freshening breeze, sweep, rapid wing, for all the winds are thine, The nest is only clay. The rapid wings were stretched in flight, the swallow sped away, And left its nest beneath the eaves, the much-loved bit of clay, Turned with the sun, to go where'er the happy sun might shine, And passed into the day. EDWARD THRING. A WINTER SONG. THERE is a break in the winter, dearest, Peace in the blue air's untarnished realm, Snowdrops are out, and an early throstle Warbles ere dawn on our tallest elm. Let us go up to the hill pines yonder, Tidings to catch, if we can, of spring, Larks will be loud o'er the bleak fields, dearest, Maybe the robin at Shirley sing. Look, to the heart of the dark plantation Soft gleams of tenderness steal and stay, Or is there a Murmurs, above us, around us, dearest, Almost the hum of a summer's day. Is rest a dreamy delusion shaped by a restless mind? Winter of sorrow has wounded, dearest, Track of our footsteps has been by graves A rainbow arching our sky, looked on but Springtime is near, and comfort and beauty, Love that transfigures, and lifts, and saves. From The Nineteenth Century. BY ARMINIUS VAMBERY. and in the Iberian peninsula. The rays of the light of Islam that streamed towards the north-east lit up only the outer surface of the life of the Turko-Tartar population, and consequently could contribute little to the refinement of manners, the elevation of the mind, and the happiness of that portion of mankind. The Mohammedan civilization of central Asia, such as I saw it, may have been that which prevailed in the remotest corners of the caliph's empire when the Abbasides were at the height of their power. The constantly recurring inroads of hordes of warlike nomads and the isolation produced by the sandy deserts of the steppes caused the first influence of the culture of Arabia and Persia to become soon stereotyped in the oasis-lands of central Asia, and to remain completely free from the influences which affected Islam in those lands in which it came in contact with the classicism of the Greeks. A CONFUSED picture of moral degradation shot across with single rays of strange virtues belonging to a patriarchal state of things; an appalling pool of religious bigotry crossed by dark shadows of blind superstition and crass ignorance; a wild fury of unbridled tyranny and arbitrary power, hand in hand with local and temporary anarchy; in one spot the choicest favors of nature, in another the most utter desolation; nowhere the slightest trace of self-reliance; everywhere the greatest helplessness before the rage of the elements such were the principal features of central Asiatic life when I traversed that region twenty-five years ago. As I gradually in the course of years made my way from eastern Europe into the interior of the Asiatic world, my mind's eye, so to say, accustomed itself to the gradual disappearance of European enlightenment The arrested development and, so to and the thickening darkness of Asiatic say, petrifaction of the first germs of civbarbarism. European Turkey, Asia Mi-ilization which had been imported from the nor, and Persia seemed to me so many separate steps by which I descended into the deep dark vault of the old Asiatic views of life and the world. As I moved in the uncanny darkness of this unfamiliar world, I soon became aware that I had gone back several centuries in the history of the world. Among the Turkomans and the Kirghizes on the right bank of the Oxus I found myself in such a state of things as may have existed in Europe before the appearance of the Romans. The life in tents, the primitive organization of society in which custom took the place of law; men destitute of all the comforts of life, where it was still necessary on occasions to obtain fire by the friction of two pieces of dry wood, naturally excited my youthful curiosity to the highest degree. In the cultivated oases of the three khanates the civilization of Islam had of course to some extent modified that archaic state of things. Still the culture which the monotheism of Arabia had brought into the high plateau of Turan was fundamentally different from the brilliant results which it achieved in western Asia, on the banks of the Nile, south is to be observed in all departments of life and in every nook and corner of the vast territory stretching from the ThienShan to the Caspian Sea, from the Kirghiz Steppe to the Oxus. Religion, the life and soul of everything there, the sheet-anchor of the political and civil organization, could display its power only in uncouth externals, without a trace of any inward spirituality, rooted in a real religious sentiment. People went to mosque partly out of habit, partly from fear of the four-thonged whip wielded by the reis (chief of the police), who scoured the streets and bazaars. People gave alms, went on the pilgrimage to Mecca, performed the ceremonial ablutions, ate, drank, and dressed according to the strict letter of the law, not out of feelings of piety, but out of fear of denunciation and the severe punishments attached to the breach of the code of Islam. In political affairs the abuses of the Asiatic form of government made their appearance in most frightful forms. After the pattern of Mohammedan government had changed from the simple character of the emirate to the autocratic despotism of the sultan |