tleman" had dazzled Sarah, and been too much | brother watched and longed for daylight; imfor her peace of mind; perhaps it was only patient for the morrow which must bring forth her character, as the poor girl said. But as something new. The moonlight streamed full often as the curate started from his uneasy into the empty room, and made mysterious and broken snatches of sleep, he heard the combinations of the furniture, and chased the murmur of crying and consoling up-stairs. darkness into corners which held their secret. Outside the night was spreading forth those This was how Mrs. Hadwin's strange lodger, sweetest unseen glories of the starlight and whom nobody could ever make out, disapthe moonlight, and the silence which Nat-peared as suddenly as he had come, without ure reserves for her own enjoyment, when the weary human creatures are out of the way and at rest;-and Jack Wentworth slept the sleep of the righteous, uttering delicate little indications of the depth of his slumber, which it would have been profane to call by any vulgar name. He slept sweetly while his

any explanations; and only a very few people could ever come to understand what he had to do with the after-events which struck Grange Lane dumb, and turned into utter confusion all the ideas and conclusions of society in Carlingford.

MORGANATIC MARRIAGES-It may not be un- | sons, among whom, according to custom, the very interesting, on this occasion, to say a few words moderate-sized duchy was to be divided. But the concerning "morganatic" marriages, a matter sons, as usual, quarrelled in the division, and, about which a good deal of misapprehension pre- after some preliminary fighting, ended with an vails. Morganatic marriages are of very old agreement that one of the seven should be the origin, so old, in fact, that the very meaning of heir of all the territory, and perpetuate the family, the word has been lost. The term is commonly and the rest should take refuge in morganatic alexplained as deriving from the German word liances. Chance was to decide the question of sucMorgengabe, a morning gift, the elucidation be- cession, and the seven sons of Duke William drew ing, that the husband gave to his morganatic lots accordingly. The great prize fell to the sixth bride a present the day after the nuptials, in- son, Prince George, who at once took possession stead of making her the partner of his whole for- of the duchy, and married an illustrious princess tune on the marriage itself. But this explanation of the house of Saxony. The eldest of the seven is evidently somewhat far-fetched, besides being brothers remained a bachelor all his life, and the quite devoid of historical proof. Certain it is, others went into the wars, with the exception of that the word is of Lombard growth; for the ex- the fourth, Prince Frederick, who wooed and won pression matrimonia ad legem morganaticam the daughter of his private secretary-"a pearl contracta is frequently to be met with in docu- of sweet blessed beauty," say the quaint old hisments of North Italian families, long before it came torians-and outlived all his brothers in fourscore into use in Germany. The thing itself is clearly years of happy existence. The descendants of the of Roman origin, being nothing else than a re-morganatic alliance of Prince Frederick flourish vival of the coemtio, in fashion among the con- to this day in Germany as Barons von Luneburg. querors of the world. It is well known that the Spectator. ancient Romans had three forms of marriagethe confarreatio, the coemtio, and the usus. first, a civil as well as religious contract, was concluded before a priest and ten witnesses, and conferred on the offspring the rights and honors of nairimi et matrimi; while the second was a mere civil engagement, with far lesser privileges to the children; and the third constituted but a civil partnership, sanctified by nothing else but the legal proof of twelve months' uninterrupted cohabitation. The absence of a law of primogeniture in nearly all the fiefs of the Holy Roman Empire, made it necessary that some means should be devised to check the too great division of territories, and there seemed nothing readier than the matrimonia ad legem morganaticam contracta. An instance of the application of this remedy exists in the case of the descendants of Duke William of Brunswick-Luneburg, one of the ancestors of Queen Victoria, who died in 1490. He left seven

The

PRESERVATION OF CORN.-An experiment was lately made in Paris for the preservation of corn from fermentation and the attack of insects by enclosing it in a metal vessel and exhausting the air. The experiment was made in the presence of numerous persons, and is said to have succeeded perfectly. Ten hectolitres of wheat were placed in a metal vessel, and the air was exhausted. The vessel was opened after fifteen days, and the weevils, which were quite lively when the wheat was placed in the vessel, had quitted their cells and were dead. They were warmed, but did not stir. Being placed on white paper, they were crushed and reduced to powder, without leaving any stain on the paper. From various experiments made on wheat under glass, it was found that the weevil retains life longer than any other insect when deprived of air.

From The Reader.
ILLUSTRATED LITERATURE.

inate the text. Principles will have to be laid down in this department of publishing activity-not because they will be immediately attended to so as to arrest the rush of what is bad, but because, if notions of what is legitimate and what is illegitimate in this departmont are at once diffused, they will be useful in the long run. And this is the more neoessary, because the movement is of decidedly healthy origin. There is no object in common use on which all the resources of Art may be more properly expended than on a classic book. A superbly bound, superbly printed, and superbly illustrated copy of Chaucer, or Spenser, or Shakspeare, or of any other great writer of England or the world, or of any one work of such a writer, is as fit

as an ornament on one's own table, or to be made a gift to a friend. But the question is, what are the limits of just illustration in literature?

THE season for Illustrated Books has again come round, and already scores of such are out in anticipation of Christmas. "Although the Christmas Books of this season," says the current number of the Publishers' Circular, "do not possess much novelty, they have the merit of great variety. The Sacred Writings, History, Architecture, Poetry, Books of Travels, and Works of Fiction are all pressed into the service, and appear in best holiday attire. Nearly every class of Art is represented, including the masterpieces of the fifteenth century and the photography of the present day." Our contemporary then proceeds to give, in about four pages of close letter-press, a descriptive list of the chief of these Christmas a production of Art as one can fancy to lie Books of the season, either expressly set forth as such, or fitted to be such by their costliness or their artistic character; and, to aid this descriptive list, there appear among the advertisements, swelling the present number One class of illustrated books is beyond of the Circular to twice its usual size, fifty- the question-those in which the illustrations two pages of toned paper, giving specimen themselves are all in all, and the text is nothillustrations, lent by the publishers, from a ing, or avowedly subordinate. Here you are large number of the books mentioned. Alto- buying designs, or copies of masterpieces of gether there will be no lack this winter of pictorial art, for their own sake, pleased to gift-books to suit all purses and all tastes. have them accessible in a book-form. The Some there are that, either for their splendor painter, or designer, is the author you want; and elaborateness or the peculiarity of artistic the author, usually so-called, is merely the aim and genius displayed in them, stand out commentator or explainer. The multiplicafrom the rest; and others there are that be- tion of this class of illustrated books, putting long to the riff-raff made to catch the eyes of the public in possession, at an easier rate and the groundlings, whom any picture, in a shop-in larger abundance than before, of copies of window or on a railway-bookstall, of a noble- acknowledged masterpieces say Raphael's haired young man with his arm round a coy cartoons or Hogarth's plates-deserves nothbeauty's waist, or of a Sir Roger de Coverley ing but encouragement. dance in a hall under the mistletoe, drives into such rapture that a shilling or half-crown is of no consequence. Nothing quite of this latter kind appears in the advertising pages of our contemporary; but, in turning over the literature already provided for the coming Christmas, we have come upon such heartwarming illustrations for themselves.

There is a legitimate kind of illustration of books which is symbolical or otherwise purely decorative-that is to say, in which the artist, receiving the book from the author's hands, views it as an object on which he may confer additional beauty by an exercise of his art independently of any strict or exact relation to the contents of the book, This whole matter of illustrated books is though with regard to a certain general harreally becoming of some importance. It will mony with its nature and purport. Arahave to be overhauled. Of Sensation Liter-besques, designed borders of pages, and the ature we hear talk enough; but we are begin-like are illustrations of this kind. They are ning to be overwhelmed also with what may decorative; if they are good they add beauty be called a Sensuous Literature,-a literature where we are pleased to see it added. And in which the eye is appealed to at every step some such decorations may be symbolical— in aid of the intelligence or the fancy, in that is, they may stand so far in intellectual which wood-cut and engraving assist or dom-relation to the contents of the book they illus

trate that the reader, passing, let us say, ple Bar with the heads on it when Johnson from the poem or chapter to the wood-cut at- and Bozzy approached it from the Strand, tached, shall feel that somehow, though and the like. But for the expense, we beexact mutual interpretation is not intended, lieve this plan of illustration of historical the one suits and is in key with the other. works might, with advantage, be carried After a melancholy poem there may be, much farther than it is; and, if any one by way of tail-piece, some bit of a moor wants a hobby, he cannot do better than seat sunset, or other dreary. and desolate lect some rich historical work and devote his scene, although in the poem there may have leisure hours to the collection and arrangebeen nothing implying the vision of a moor ment of authentic portraits and engravings or other such imagery. The artist has put to illustrate it. But it is not only to historihimself in the same mood as the author; but cal works that the method of historical illusthat is all. He has let the mood invent its tration is applicable. The sort of illusown expression in the language of his partic-trated Shakspeare we should probably preular art, and he simply adds beauty to the fer to all others would be one illustrated on book by attaching this expression, which is this principle-in which every illustration wholly his own, to the poet's text. Some of introduced should be for the elucidation of the finest and most effective illustrations we some matter of fact of the text, some usage have seen in books have been of this kind-or antiquity or other particular capable of little added scenes of wood-cuts not profess- being imaged with tolerable exactness to the ing in the least to be ocular renderings of reader's eye. As there would be scope for anything in the text, and yet very impressive landscape illustration even here, there would by their harmony with the whole meaning. be no lack of artistic beauty in the book. In the symbolical vignettes sometimes pre- The large one-volume copy of Scott's Poetifixed to books as indications of their nature, cal Works with Turner's illustrations is a there may be even more of studied intellectual well-known instance of such an illustrated relation between the illustration and the book. You have not the fight between book. The scope or purpose of the book Fitzjames and Roderick Dhu and suchlike then becomes the artist's subject, and he has imagined incidents of the poems represented to invent something pictorial that shall fitly to you; but you have the Scottish scenes and beautifully define the book. amid which Scott's stories were cast. The illustrations are truly poetical; but they are, in the deepest sense, historical.

It is when we come, however, to what may be called Interpretative Illustration that the difficulties arise. By this we mean illustration in which the artist waits upon the imagination of the writer, and seeks, more or less dutifully, to give visible interpretations of his conceptions-whether they be ideal scenes, ideal physiognomies and characters, or ideal incidents. What splendid performances of art there have been of this order it is needless to say. It has always been the delight of artists to take for their subjects the conceptions of great poets; there are scenes and situations of our great poems and great works of prose-fiction which have become stock-sub

Again, all that kind of Illustration of Books which may be called Historical Illustration is undoubtedly legitimate and of high value. Where it is possible, by an illustration, to give the real image of anything spoken about in a book, it is a boon to the reader to give it. If a battle-field is spoken of, or some natural object, or some house or street, or the scene round some old abbey, it gives a world of help and of pleasure to the reader to attach to the verbal description or allusion some clear actual drawing or sketch of the scene or object. Hence the use, in historical and biographical works, of, portraits, wood-cuts of buildings and landscapes, representations of old armor and costume, fac-similes of handwriting, etc., etc. We venture to say, for example, that the most jects for our artists; and in every exhibition a desirable copy of such a book as Boswell's Johnson would be one which, however shabby it might be in other respects, should have the text illustrated with passable portraits of the persons that figure in the book, and with bits of engraving representing Tem

large number of the pictures are new attempts of this kind. But established as the practice is, and signally as all very successful efforts of the kind justify themselves, and overbear, as works of genius must, the objections that might be offered beforehand, we are not sure

but it is in this very department of interpre- ture come before the lieges in clean, clear
tative illustration that limits to the existing
practice are most desirable. It is, perhaps, a
pity that artists do not make themselves more
independent of authors, do not more habitu-
ally find or invent their own subjects out of the
facts and suggestions of contemporary nature
and society, or out of that history of the past,
so full of exploits and picturesque moments,
which is as open to them as to others. If ei-
ther of the two should wait upon the other,
it is perhaps rather the writer that should
wait upon the artist than the artist upon the
writer.

print, and on good white or toned paper, so that the text, unrestricted by accompanying illustrations, save of the symbolic and purely decorative, or of the historical kind, may set agoing in a thousand spontaneous directions the thought and the fancy of those who read, and exercise their faculties to the utmost. That highest literature of the past, indeed, which belongs to all the world, does furnish, as well as the history of the world, situations and moments so imperiously fascinating to the universal imagination that the highest Art may claim them, and go on rendering them forever. Such, to name only one class of examples, are those Biblical Scenes and Parables which have been illustrated by the great masters.

From The Times.

WHY IT WISHES OUR DESTRUCTION.

The

The literary interpretation of a picture into story is likely to be more accurate to the meaning of the artist than can be any pictorial interpretation of a written fantasy to the intention of the writer. Exceptions may be found. When a novelist is his own illustrator, as Mr. Thackeray has frequently been, there is a security for a certain identity be- WHEN Mr. M. Gibson gives his unreserved tween the illustration and the writer's con- and unqualified homage to the Federal cause, ception of the thing or incident to be il- he knows not how much of a sort is his wislustrated, which makes the conjunction of dom and that of the "model Republic," as sketches for the eye with the text, whatever it used to be called the other day. may be the artistic merit of the sketches, un- United States were a system complete in itusually satisfactory. When, too, as in Mr. self; a new world disclaiming all affinity and Dickens's case, the illustrations and the ficti- sympathy with the old; a new bond of tious incidents they illustrate meet the public union that was to destroy all other unions, eye together, so that the artist's Pickwick and absorb their materials. The new voldictates from the first the reader's notion of cano was to eat out the heart of the ancient the Pickwick of the text, then-whatever mountain, and rear its uniform geometrical adjustment of differences may have to be cone to the skies. Wherever, by inevitable made between the author and the artist-the chance, the new creation came in contact public is not likely, if the illustrations are with the old, with old feelings, old rights, meritorious in themselves, to feel any neces-old habits, old opinions, there was no comsity for complaint. But, when poems and works of fiction have passed into the imagination of the public when every reader, on the mere free instruction of the text, has found his own ideal portraits and pictures to correspond with what he has read with delight-justice are the common ground and mean be then only in very rare instances will an tween all nations, but not between the United artist's rendering of the same come before States and the rest of the world. In all difhim without disturbance and discomfort. ferences the only measure of their demands There may be much in the artist's interpre- was, what they were likely to get by playing tation more exquisite and minuto than was on the fears, or the scruples of other States. previously thought of, and, if the illustra- Their territorial maxims had no other reason tion had come before the reader as an inde- than the will of the tyrant. Their future pendent work, it might have been to him a was terrible, gigantic, universal, crushing study no less worthy than that thought of the and overwhelming, till the vision itself bepoet to which, in the actual circumstances, came an incubus, and thoughtful men beit seems untrue or inadequate. On the whole, gan to see that if this was the American fuwe would have our finer imaginative literature, then America had no future. Such was

promise, no joining of the broken bones, no healing of the sore, but simply life, health, and universal extension to the new, and defiance, destruction, confusion, abolition, extermination, death to the old. Truth and

ened. We feel for men, not for giants, for monsters, for madmen, for those altogether out of our rank and species. But grant that the commercial injury is great, and that the general derangement of trade threatens to inflict even more serious injuries, yet it is impossible to prevent political considerations from intruding themselves, and even making a set-off the other way.

the Republic in its unbroken "integrity," us, while it stretched its limbs and raised its as Mr. M. Gibson calls it. This was the tones to the scale of a giant, it was impossidream which began to frighten the Old ble but that our sympathy should be weakWorld, and which Mr. M. Gibson thinks it most unreasonable that the Southern States should contemplate with dismay. It was the dream of an Alnaschar, which he himself dispelled with a kick. The Southerners were daily told of a universal organization in which the sovereign will of a majority should override all constitutions, all international law, all institutions, every right and interest that stood in its way. They dreaded, and Mr. M. Gibson cannot, surely, demand it must be said they might justly dread, the from us that we should absolutely wish the full brunt of that tyranny which they had United States to retain their "integrity," or long known and, which, no doubt, they had now recover it, so as to make a vast political helped to create, but which now they saw unity of the kind Mr. Bright describes? about to be turned upon themselves. Can That would be to wish our own abasement we, who know the utter unscrupulousness and our own destruction. Does he think that, and the boundless aggressiveness of American politics, wonder at the apprehensions of those who found they were speedily to be done by as they had done, and that when the balance of power passed from the South to the North, the South would find it was to be trodden under foot?

merely in the interest of philanthropy and commercial prosperity, we wish all the continent of Europe to become united under one government, and be administered by one majority, or one man? Where should we be in that case? Where would Europe itself be? Yet few can doubt that Europe would use its aggregate power more justly and more generously than a vast American federation. England does not wish the disunion of its neighbors, so long as they are indeed its neighbors; but it cannot possibly help wishing the disunion of those who are uniting with a view to universal dominion or ascendency.

But this is the far horizon which Mr. M.

Mr. M. Gibson clings to this compact and uniform scheme of universal federation, a tyrant majority, and general assimilation of habits and opinions. He hopes it may still be realized, or, if not quite in our time, yet put again in the way to be realized. The calamities of the States are a loss to us, he says, and if we don't fret ourselves about them it is from apathy towards the suffer- Gibson scarcely allows to appear in his very ings of our own people. The Confederates, pretty picture of the world as it should be. too, he says, have betrayed the blackness of Glibly and dapperly he gathers us into a cirtheir policy, and made a glory of their shame. cle, and joins us hand in hand, telling us we They have avowed that they intended, and have nothing to do but to buy and sell, let still intend, to establish a mighty slave re- every one do as he pleases, and make one anpublic which shall restore slavery and perpet- other happy. We are only to dance round uate it to all time. For this matter, the Con- him, keeping our hands still joined, and dofederates have had no choice but to set up a ing what everybody else wants us to do. Why positive policy, for it would have been im- should not so pleasant an occupation last forpossible otherwise to conduct the war and ever, and who so wicked as to be glad when it stops? But, unfortunately, the game which maintain a standing-ground in the opinion of Mr. M. Gibson laments to see so rudely intermankind. As to the feelings of this country, rupted was one in which not only the Southit is true, we are not justified in regarding ern States of America, but England, and with exultation or satisfaction so terrible a eventually all nations, were to act a part concalamity as that which has befallen so many trary to their nature and principles. They were to be crushed, absorbed, and reduced to millions of our own race. Nobody of coma moral submission worse than slavery itself. mon feeling does hear of the mutual slaughter Even if the Southerners and the British puband other sufferings entailed by the war lic are mistaken in this view of the case, this, without commiseration. But while the re- and not mere envy and jealousy, makes them public was overtopping and overshadowing acquiesce in American disunion.