those blended hues, making them here | hither and thither upon paths laborious and there more flaky and distinct in and peril-fraught? Seek what ye are vivid patches of azure or of crimson. seeking; but it is not there where ye Not very far away, waiting for a breeze are seeking it. Ye are seeking a life of to carry them toward Torcello, lay half-blessedness in the realm of death. It a-dozen fishing-boats with sails like is not there." butterflies atremble on an open flower; red, orange, lemon, set by some ineffable tact of nature just in the right place to heighten and accentuate her symphony of tender tints. Stirred to the depths by these miracles, my soul seemed to know what she was wanting, and at the same time knew that even to desire it was vanity; to possess it would be dust and ashes. The sun was nowhere visible. No The pains of thought, the sickness of last rays flamed from the horizon, illu- the soul, the thirst for things impossiminating, as they sometimes do, that ble, are soothed by communion with fretwork of suspended vapors with a nature. What can be more tranquillizsudden glory of mingled blood and fire. ing than this breadth of sea and sky, We knew that he had set, for a cindery | the cool, caressing lisp of those inflowpallor overspread the world; and we ing waters, the simplicity of yonder turned homeward, splashing the silent overarching cloud-pavilion? The day waters with the cadence of our oars. is dying imperceptibly. There is no But soon, as though some celestial question of a melodramatic display of quarrel between planetary or sidereal color. The vapors of the plain already powers had ended, and heaven were hide the sun's disc. washed with tears of reconciliation and repentance, the roof of clouds dissolved into immeasurable air. Luna, just risen, full and radiant, sailed in a sky of brilliant blue. The color was intense and omnipresent; so blue, so blue; bathing thin mists which lay along the face of the lagoon; tinging pearly mackerel clouds lazily afloat above. White-sailed ships, like sheeted phantoms, swam past us through the twilight. The churches of Venice, S. Giorgio, Redentore, Salute, loomed, large and dusky silhouettes, emergent from the clinging vapors. Wherever the moistened lead upon their roofs and cupolas caught moonlight, it shone with silver. The concave of the sky mirrored in the concave of the water formed one sphere of azure mystery, moving through which was like being in the heart of some pale, milky sapphire. Only at intervals, along the quays, lamps dilated into globes, with golden reflections sagging down along the bluish water, broke and gave value to the dominant chord. Deep-tongued bells from far and near thrilled the whole scene, translating its motif of color into congenial qualities of sound. November 5. "Why do ye toil I gaze forward into the profound blues of the eastern heavens. And then, without turning my head westward, I become aware that some change is taking place above the fields of Lombardy. For that vast gulf of blue, which erewhile was opaque and dull like indigo, is gradually growing transparent, warming into amethyst, assuming hues of iris, violet, and hyacinth. Flame seems filtering down into it from the zenith. The willows and acaciatrees upon the shore of S. Erasmo are passing from the dull green of distant foliage into the brilliancy of chrysoberyl, the fervor of chrysoprase, the pellucidity of jade. It is not easy to detach one's gaze from this spectacle; yet turn I must and peer into the west. Between Fusina and Malghera the cloud-canopy has lifted, leaving a blank space of sky above the buried sun. This is luminous with crimson, orange, citron, flecked with stationary lakes of molten gold; a great white planet swims suspended in their midst. The refraction of that light upon the eastern horizon cause the blues to blush. So, having fed my eyes with red and yellow and fire, I turn again, and now the purples of the east, by contrast with those other hues, appear intolerable in their ardor | history of our race, ascertained by doc- Ah, what is man, and why does he disquietude his soul and think so much about his destiny ? "Creatures of a day! What is a man and what is a man not?" November 6. There has been a total Dreaming so, I sweep along the jetty eclipse of the moon. We were return- of S. Niccolo di Lido through the suning after sunset from our accustomed set, with Angelo in front and Vittorio. post. The sun, this time, sauk like a upon the poop. We pass a laden boat. round vermilion ball into the plain of On the boat, erect, sturdily rowing, is a Padua. The sky was hard and clear. young man, whose face, fronting the Like a flawless topaz the west shone, mellow spaces of the west, seems in its with all the buildings of the city cut perfect and peculiar beauty to be "the out in solid shapes of purple darkness programme of all good." A whole life against that background. There was of exquisite emotion and superb energy no mystery, no illusion, except in the expressed there. A God-created, inimdaffodils and saffrons of the heaving itable thing. A masterpiece of nature, water-floor. Behind S. Pietro di Cas-to frame which all the rest seems made. tello peered up a little jagged notch of I am a soul, he is a soul; we shall never white light, like an abnormal planet splintered out of shape. This was the eclipsed moon rising. But the earth's shadow gradually passed away, and the azure splendors of that previous evening were renewed, pitched in a key of higher clarity. - meet; each of us has some incalculable November 7. - This summer of S. Martin is overpoweringly beautiful; a gradual dying of the year in tranquil pomps and glowing pageants. Every evening on the lagoon brings a new November 7. - All these beautiful spectacle of ethereal and subtly colored pomps and pageants have been again: loveliness. So musical, so melancholy, engulfed in sea-fog, and I listen this. so far diviner than the blare and glory night to the complaining fret of boats. of the springtime. It is infinitely moored close beneath my windows, the sweet and sad, this whisper of the dreary hootings of sea-going vessels,. fading autumn bestowing all its stored- the shrill, thin eldritch scream of sirens.. up passion and fruitage in dim twilight Moments come in the hyper-sensitive hours. Immeasurable breadth, unfath-life of artistic natures, come unbidden omable mystery, illimitable repose of and uncaused, when we are assailed by coming slumber. desolate intimations of the inutility of I read in a book to-day that it must all things, the vanity of our existence,. have taken one hundred millions of the visionary fabric of the universe, years to form the earth's crust, and the crust has only an average of twenty miles in depth. Inside, all is still molten rock and raging gases in combustion. One hundred millions of years to form a thin surface of elastic stuff for plants, beasts, and men, and cities to exist on. And of all that time the the incomprehensibility of self, the inscrutability. At these times, like | in the bond of our own nature, which Pascal, we fain would set a screen up to veil the ever-present gulf that yawns before our physical and mental organs of perception. Alas for those who, feeling the realities of beauty and emotion so acutely, having such power at times to render them by words or forms for others, must also feel with poignant intensity the grim vacuousness of the world, the irrationality of human life, the illusory and transitory nature of the ground on which we tread, of the flesh that clothes us round, of the desires that fret our brains, the duties we perform, the thoughts that keep our will upon the stretch through months of unremunerative labor. It is easy to stigmatize these moods as morbid. It is clear that yielding to them would entail paralysis of energy, decrepitude, disease. It is not certain that recording them serves any useful purpose. Yet they are real, a serious factor in the experience of sentient and reflective personalities. Duly counterpoised by strenuous activity and steady self-effectuation, they constitute for the artist and the thinker what might be compared to a retreat for the religious. They force a man to recognize his own incalculable littleness in the vast sum of things. They teach him to set slight store on his particular achievement. They make him understand that seeming bitter sentence of the Gospel, "Say, we are unprofitable servants, we have done that which was our duty to do." saves us from being stolen away by kinsmen, friends, great men of parts, by avarice, ambition, and those other faults and vices which filch one from himself, keep him distraught and dispersed, without permitting him to retire into himself and to reunite his scattered parts." Such then are the uses of what the world calls melancholy, "sweet, dainty melancholy." Thanksgivings to the places where moods like these are nobly, beautifully nurtured, and where their very presence in the soul is the purgation of its baser passions. From The British Medical Journal. THE RECORD OF POISONING. THE publication of the annual report of the registrar-general for England and Wales furnishes opportunity for a minute consideration of the subject of poisoning, which has a special interest at this moment. The information it contains as to the particular kinds of poison which have been the cause of death is so complete that very useful conclusions may be drawn from the recorded facts. In several respects those facts will be found to give strong support to the opinion which has been frequently expressed in the British Medical Journal, as to the necessity for more careful observance of the salutary provisions of the Pharmacy Act and for more stringently enforcing the penalties incurred by neglecting them. It appears that the total number of deaths caused by poison in 1891 was eight hundred and seventy-six, or no fewer than two hundred and forty-two more than in 1889. Of that number five hundred and forty-four were accidental, three hundred and twenty-seven were cases of suicide, and five were cases of Michelangelo, than whom none ever homicide. It is chiefly the cases of labored with more single-hearted pur-accidental and suicidal poisoning that pose and with haughtier constancy in are of interest. There were no fewer his appointed field of art, professed a than one hundred and fourteen cases special dedication to the thought of due to narcotic poisoning by "opium, death. "This thought," he said, "is laudanum, morphine, chlorodyne, sooththe only one which makes us know our ing syrup, cordial, paregoric." The proper selves, which holds us together poison that comes next, in regard to Also they have the minor value of dissipating vain glamours of fame or blame, of popular applause or public condemnation, of vulgar display and petty rivalries with others. Emerging from them, the man, made wiser and saner, proceeds to work at that which lieth nearest to his hand to do. not the number of deaths, is chloroform, to | danger. The number of deaths attribwhich sixty-two deaths are attributed; uted to chloroform is a remarkable then carbolic acid, as the cause of death feature of this return, but since the in thirty-one cases. The poisonous circumstances of the cases are alkaloids — aconite, belladonna, cocaine, stated it is impossible here to consider and strychnine-have been the cause them further. The number of deaths of nineteen deaths; the mineral acids caused by articles which are not statuof seventeen, arsenic of eight, chloral tory poisons is considerable; carbolic of seven, and oxalic acid of only two. | acid and the mineral acids are alone Then there were one hundred and responsible for forty-eight deaths by twenty-eight deaths caused by a num- accident. This fact recalls to mind the ber of miscellaneous poisons. In recommendation of the Council of the twenty-four cases the nature of the Pharmaceutical Society some years ago, poison was not ascertained. that these articles should be included The fact that nearly one-fourth of the in the poison schedule, and it serves to number of accidental deaths by poison show that there was good reason for were caused by some form of narcotic the recommendation, though the Privy is most cogent evidence of the mischief Council then declined to approve of it. done by the use of narcotic preparations. It certainly appears that the sale of No stronger argument could possibly be these articles should be subjected to found in support of the action taken greater control than it is at present. by the chairman of the Parliamentary Comparing the number of deaths caused Bills Committee of the British Medical by these articles with the deaths caused Association, with the approval and sup by arsenic and oxalic acid (ten in all), port of the committee for setting the it may be fairly inferred that the use of Treasury in motion to carry out prose- the poison label, requisite in the sale of cutions, and calling upon the Phar the latter, and the restriction of their maceutical Society to carry out its sale to qualified chemists have proved long-neglected statutory duties. These serviceable as a means of preventing figures may be taken as a positive proof | accidental poisoning. A similar con that the sale of such preparations, either clusion may be drawn from the comparas secret remedies or without due pre-atively small number of deaths caused cautions, constitutes a serious public by the vegetable alkaloids. trial activity in extracting and utilizing mineral resources to the services of the Geological Survey through its correspondence, and especially through its widely distributed maps and reports. The cost of mineral production during the past year has been reduced about fifteen per cent., and during the period since the institution of the survey no less than forty per cent., a saving to the consumers of mineral products amounting to millions of dollars annually being thus effected. A considerable part of this saving must be ascribed to the diffusion of exact information concerning mineral localities by the geological surveys of the Federal Government and several of the States. THE U. S. Geological Survey, according ascribe a material part of the present industo the secretary for the interior, has had a very marked effect on the mining industries of the country. The increase in value of mineral products during the past year was seventy-five million dollars, and the increase during the thirteen years since the institution of the survey is three hundred million dollars. While a part of this development represents the normal growth of the population and industries, the increase is much more rapid than that of population, and is, moreover, accompanied by a decided relative decrease in importations of mining products; indeed, the mining products of the country have more than doubled during the past thirteen years, while the population has increased only thirty per cent. The secretary, therefore, thinks it fair to Nature. For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually for- warded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made |