This is especially the case

Law Department. This director, how- [ are exceptional cases; the majority of ever, is only a constitutional ruler; the inmates seem to be as happy as his authority, though considerable, is they can be whose lives lie behind strictly limited. Once a month, in them, not before. There is not a each home, the officials, the clergyman, touch of that dull listlessness about the doctors, and a representative of them, of that just-waiting-for-death, the Poor Law Department, sit in con- which is so marked a characteristic of ference, and the inmates are invited the old people in our workhouses. On to appear before them and make known the contrary, they are quite alert, and their wishes and their grievances. A take a lively interest not only in what full report of the proceedings upon is going on around them, but in things these occasions must be submitted to in general. the head of the department. Not very in Prague. An English visitor, who long ago there was an odd little scene chanced to be there a few months ago, in one of the homes. Some dozen old was quite overwhelmed with questions women were interviewing the director as to how affairs are managed in this for the purpose of inducing him to let country. Some of the old folk were them stay where they were, whereas very curious to know how the poor are he had received orders to send them to treated here; and they were not a a home further from Vienna. One little scandalized when they heard of might have thought, from the tone one of our social arrangements. some of them assumed, that he was an think of sending worn-out workers to unreasonable landlord, and they ten- live in the same house as rogues and ants whom, in defiance of the law, he vagabonds!" they exclaimed, in eviwas seeking to evict. The director's dent amazement at such barbarous manner, meanwhile, was deprecative ways. One old man inquired anxiously in the extreme. He spent a good half how the word "Gladstone" ought to be hour soothing the old dames, and striv- pronounced. ing to convince them that, even down in the country, life might be well worth living.

To

It is noteworthy that the very ar rangements which contribute most to the comfort of these old Austrians inIt would be difficult to find a more volve no outlay whatever. The little contented set of old people than those dinners over which the inmates of the who live in these Austrian homes. Old-Age Homes linger with such keen There are grumblers among them, of enjoyment do not cost more than the course. One of them complained bit- midday meals supplied in our workterly to me that, although twenty-six houses. Workmen's ordinary clothes kreuzers a day might be enough for are not one whit more expensive than bare necessities, they left nothing uniform; nor does the fact of paupers whatever for luxuries. Another it being allowed to see their friends every was in Prague-replied to a chance day entail any sacrifice on ratepayers. remark that he seemed fairly comfort- In the Vienna Old-Age Homes the able, by a very emphatic shake of the average cost per head is fifty-seven head. He was well cared for, he al- kreuzers (about 11d.) a day; in the lowed, and the food was good; but London workhouses, it is some 1s. 44d. Still, it is not without reason, it must be admitted, that rigid economists look somewhat askance on these homes; for the respectable poor, when their working days are over, go there gladly. Old men and women have been known to die of slow starvation rather than enter a workhouse.

He gave a significant glance at a little group of old men who were laughing and talking in the corridor. They are all Czechs, you know," he whispered, in the tone in which a Southern State planter might in other days have spoken of negroes. "And for a German to have Czechs around him is really very trying." These, however, |

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From The Quarterly Review.
LATTER-DAY PAGANS.1

Te, Dea, te fugiunt ventei; te nubila cœli,
Adventumque tuum; tibi suaveis dædala
tellus

Submittit flores: tibi rident æquora ponti,
Placatumque nitet, diffuso lumine, cœ-

lum.

EURIPIDES has left no more touching story than " Hippolytus the Crownbearing," a play in which, as by some inspiration from another world, the poet canonizes purity, adorns self- She is queen of Epicureans, Cyrenaics, denial with a martyr's death, and, dilettanti,of all who choose to be while his choir of singing women chant" exquisite humanists" rather than the praises of Aphrodite, opens to our humane, who prefer sensations to view a holier faith. If Aphrodite principles, caprice to law, and intoxicaseems victorious, yet she holds but the tion to duty. The pose which these second place; it is her rival, the wood- men assume is more affected than Byland Artemis, chaste and fair, who ron's, and their pleasures are, by defirises in so bright an effulgence above nition, sad ones. These serious triflers these colored mists, stainless as marble marvel exceedingly that so many can from Pentelicus, severe yet by no waste the time which they might have means inhuman, and full of compassion spent in pursuing savors, scents, and for the dying hero. Save him she can- rhythms, upon the "flaccid interests"> not; lift him to the sphere of the im- of law, business, politics, or philan-mortals she can and will. Unlike her thropy. When a sharp touch sums up dreadful namesake of the Chersonese, their conversation as "art and self-inArtemis here shadows forth the better dulgence," they gently applaud. AnPaganism which, scorning Ionian festi- other stroke might annihilate the art,. vals, fled to solitude, in the hope of leaving only the indulgence; and this, communion with what was divine. perhaps, would be a return to that Her votaries laid upon themselves a "unity with one's self" which, we are rule and a yoke; their spirit of renun- told, is "the eternal problem of culciation made them not unworthy to be ture," -a problem solved during one disciples, by and by, of a name which brief moment in Hellas when morals had the power not only to cleanse, but held "the clue of unerring instinct," to consecrate. Hippolytus foretells the and the worship of "beautiful aspects?? philosophic Marcus,-a Pagan saint, was religion. and a king after Plato's own heart. This way, if it continues to ascend, will take no small multitude along with it, to the threshold on which they may kneel in adoration, and see the Christian mysteries unveiled.

But the lower Paganism looks up to Venus Victrix, whom Lucretius celebrates:

11. John Addington Symonds: a Biography compiled from his Papers and Correspondence. By Horatio F. Brown. London, 1895.

2. The Renaissance in Italy. By J. A. Symonds.

London, 1875-86.

3. Essays, Speculative and Suggestive. By the Same. London, 1890.

4. Animi Figura. By the Same. London, 1882. And other Works.

5. The Renaissance, Studies in Art and Poetry. By Walter Pater, M.A., Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford. Seventh Thousand. London, 1893,

6. Marius the Epicurean. By the Same. Sixth

Thousand. London, 1892.

7. Greek Studies. By the Same. London, 1895. And other Works.

Two biographies lately publishedthe one real, the other imaginary yet in some seuse no fiction — enable us to survey in detail that aesthetic movement which has been with us these thirty years, and the principles of which run up into Paganism, Cyrenaic, or Stoic, but avowedly pre-Christian. Nor shall we be doing it an injustice whether we assume that the late Mr. Symonds entered deeply into the meaning of a philosophy which, as time went on, he exchanged for another, or that Marius, the Epicurean of Pater's shadowy romance, had many qualities in common with his creator. low their windings will not, perhaps, be easy; yet the changes through which they pass, and their final verdict on a movement the effects of which are visible in the fine arts, in literature, and in social intercourse, will have for us

To fol

something in the nature of an experi- | known his poverty with a frankness ment carried out on our behalf. which cuts to the heart, as him.

we read

The experiment, to one of those concerned, was tragic enough. In his own So little from SO much? Unlike pages, where the lights are as intense many children of genius, he was the as the shadows are gloomy, Symonds heir of a noble estate in intellect, with writes himself down a failure. He de- circumstances of gentle nurture, dospairs from the beginning; and after mestic happiness, friends of name, and many years, although friends have the doors into public life open. Sir come to him, aud fame, and a wide generations of Puritans - whose letters spiritual influence, he despairs still. he should one day burn - had be He moves round the circle from Leo- queathed to him a tradition of strenu pardi to Goethe, and thence to Walt ous piety, transfigured or filed dowu in Whitman, whose optimism would have his father a successful and art-loving struck Leibnitz dumb. What is the physician, Liberal and Broad Church Fast word? Still Leopardi, "E nau- -to moralities and modern progress. fragar m' è dolce in questo mare." In their fine old pedigree might be But you are an optimist, his corre- reckoned a Knight Templar, a Crusadspondent cries. "Yes," he answers, ing captain, a founder of the Garter, "an optimist prepared to return to colonists to Ireland and New England, Nirvana, thankful that no proof is a regicide, Cavaliers and non-juring forthcoming to demonstrate immortal- clergymen, all coming down from ity. This hope is sweet in my bosom." Adam FitzSimon, who held lands in He can lie on the knees of Doom, look Hertford, Essex, and Norfolk under down the years past and see that he Bishop Odo. The Roundheads, howhas been what he was to be, "a liter- ever, prevailed in shaping Symonds's ary viveur," and at length disdain the childhood, despite his free-thinking Pagan myths which held his fancy or parent. He is full of indignation at inspired his pen, as "a spectral corps the hard noviciate that he endured in de ballet on the empty stage of Na- their Bethesdas and blind asylums, ture." He, if any one, has dedicated thanks to his grandmother Sykes, the his life to learning and its aesthetic Plymouth sister, and hermotley uses; but now, with an energy almost crew of preachers and missionaries, equal to Swift's, he declares that genius, trades-people and cripples." That weighed in the scale against character, lady held all things pleasant to be of is light; culture not to be compared the Evil One. Her ailing grandson with action, - that "passion, nerve was haunted by a morbid sense of sin; and sinew, eating and drinking, even and when the cholera broke out, money-getting, the coarsest forms of prayed feverishly that he might not activity," come before it. "Life, not catch it. Religious to this extent he literature," he exclaims. It is clear was, no more. Of the Gospel, in that when Paganism takes a certain these pools where pietism lay stagnant, large sweep, art, which was once its he heard nothing. Mrs. Sykes - her finest flower, may wither on its stem. only human trait seems to have been a But life, unless it falls to drift and love of flowers - took immense delight dross, will demand a standard. We in "the minatory chapters of the look for it eagerly in this immense cor- Prophets," and the Apocalypse. We respondence, in the essays, poems, his- cannot be surprised if a child brought tories, flung out to us by the unwearied up in this atmosphere suffered terrors invalid. There is none. Talk we find unimaginable, or was persuaded that of human service; abstract worship"the devil lived near the doormat "in of Law; hymns reconimending the a dark corner by his father's bedroom. cosmic enthusiasm." But a rule of But never any one saw into the solitary conduct, or grounds of hope these mind, which through the brooding Symonds cannot give; and he makes fancy lived a life of its own.