not but they were good for the people them- articles which recently appeared in your selves, but is evidently glad when "the columns on the subject of the naturalization great unwieldy catafalque" is hidden from of the European sparrow. It is gratifying the light of the sun, and she can record the to know that, in addition to enjoyment deeffect of the brilliant mass of light thrown rived from his cheerful twitter and confidupon it from the tapers, as it was borne ing boldness, the value of this bird, as the through the profound darkness of the aisles, best of all vermifuges, bas been fairly estabas beautiful in the extreme, though even lished among us. May we not feel encourthen she has some slight misgiving as to the aged to essay something for the introducpropriety of " a Blessed Virgin decked out tion of one of his brethren whose merits, in all the paraphernalia of a fine lady of though perhaps of a less strictly utilitarian the nineteenth century." We must com- character, are so elevating, so inspiring, so bine this with sentences like the following: entrancing even to the rudest mind, as to "By his energy and perseverance this warrant at least an effort for his acquisimonthly periodical [The Crux] has been tion? I refer to one of the sweetest and started in Seville, which is an event in this certainly one of the most, if not the most, non-literary country;" or, "Ah, the misery poetical of song-birds- the European skyof those wayside stations in Spain! one lark. Inferior only to the far-famed nightlong, low room, filled with smokers and pas- ingale in the melody of his note, he altosengers of every class, struggling for choco-gether surpasses him in many other gifts. late served in dirty cups by uncivil waiters." We have but one American bird-the bob"The dirty, lumbering diligences," the o-link-which in any respect resembles mules everywhere flogged unmercifully, him. the perpetual, though most unintentional "Can the skylark be domesticated among admission that for all the intolerable bad us? Most decidedly. That has already management of Spanish officials" there is no been done, though, I believe, to a very limredress in Spain;" the exorbitant prices ited extent. He is known to have been paid for "rancid oil, stale eggs and birds bred here. The climate is well adapted to that seemed to have died a natural death; "him in every respect. In the eastern hemthe bull-fights, which even this most lenient isphere he ranges throughout almost its of eye-witnesses is compelled to admit to be, whole extent. Here his only danger would as at present conducted, simply horrible be that of lawless massacre by cockney hands. and inexcusably cruel and revolting." In this particular, however, there has been Through chinks like these we get glimpses a welcome improvement during the last few of the actual state of civilization in Spain years, and at present the laws, in this State more clearly than from the testimony of at least, if only tolerably enforced, are suftwenty enemies. The beauty of the sepul- ficiently stringent to give him a fair chance chre, even seen through the eyes of a de- for life. votee, does not wholly conceal the rottenness within. We are grateful to Lady Herbert for the unconscious service she has rendered Sto the cause of progress. πε این MORE ABOUT THE BIRDS. The writer of the following communication authorizes us to say that he will subscribe fifty dollars to the proposed fund for the domestication of the European skylark in the United States. "To the Editors of the Evening Post: "I am sure that there are few of your readers who have not felt an interest in the "It is now the proper season to import foreign birds. By the middle of April we could have a supply of skylarks, should orders be given within a week or two. I have learned from one of our principal birddealers, that they can be delivered here at two dollars each, in lots of not less than a hundred. Surely there is enough of superfluous wealth among us to warrant, at least, a moderate outlay for an effort, which if successful, as it must be, would in a few years make our whole land vocal with a new and exquisite harmony. There is no time to be lost, if the effort is to be made this year, and it would be useless to make it on a small scale. I give to you with my address, the amount which I would feel able to contribute to such a fund. "P. R. 8." From the New York Evening Post, 5 March. THE RECONSTRUCTION ACT. IT is not necessary for us to discuss a document like the President's veto message, which was so ably refuted by the democratic Senator from Maryland, and which has so little force that in spite of it the work of reorganization under the act is already beginning in the southern States. We trust the people of all the southern States will act like men of sense, and accept what is inevitable. They now have the matter in their own hands; if what the President says in his veto about the monstrous effects of the military part of the Reconstruction act were correct, they would still have it in their power to relieve themselves, in a very brief period, of every evil, and that by mere act of justice. The act requires them to do nothing wrong; it does not curtail liberty, but, on the contrary, it extends it; it does not seek to diminish the popular liberties, but increases only the number of those who shall exercise them. It does not change the form of their governments, but only places them where all popular government ought to and must reside-in the whole body of the people. It excludes from political office and power a very few men in the southern States. those men whose faithlessness to their oaths and their duty involved the whole southern country in rebellion. Surely a milder punishment for so monstrous a crime was never before declared. We rejoice at the signs which come from different southern states of a disposition, on the part of the leading men and of the people, to accept the act, and proceed at once to reorganize under it. From Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, South Carolina and Arkansas, we hear either publicly or privately of the promise of speedy action for reconstruction. The letter of General Chalmers, of Mississippi, to Senator Johnson which we print elsewhere, shows that there is hope of sensible action in his State also. In short, we may entertain the hope that by next December the new Congress will have representatives and senators from all the States. We are sorry that the President has let pass the great opportunity he had, by approving and signing the act, to make it more speedily effective. We have no doubt he has acted honestly, but he has made a very grave blunder; he has shown himself blindly obstinate, incapable of appreciating the situation in which the country has been placed in great part by his own previous acts; we trust that he will partially and as far as is now possible retrieve his error, by faithfully and zealously enforcing the provisions of the act so far as they call for enforcement at his hands. All opposition on his part must cease with the veto. From the New York Evening Post, 5th March. THE THIRTY-NINTH CONGRESS. THIS Congress had some singular traits, which, now that it has expired, may be usefully recounted. It was very determined upon generals, but greatly divided upon details. It was timid, yet as tenacious as though all its members had possessed the courage of Stevens. It had the reputation of extreme radicalism, but was in fact a singularly conservative body. It was charged by its enemies with bitter personal hostility to the President, but its action towards him has been in the main kind and considerate, and it is a curious example of its lack of personal bitterness that the White House has, under its rule, and by its appropriations, been, for the first time in many years, very elegantly refurnished and refitted, for the residence of a President who most bitterly denounced the majority. The Republicans were commonly sup posed to be under the absolute rule of Messrs. Stevens and Sumner, but the fact is that those gentlemen had comparatively little power, and were perhaps oftener and more severely disappointed in getting their measures through, than any other members of the House and Senate. Mr. Stevens was called the leader of the House, but he led an army which refused to follow, except when it suited itself, and he had not unfrequently to depend upon the democrats to help him check or disable his own side. Upon questions of finance and revenue it is certain that the Thirty-ninth Congress was, as a body, ill-informed. The mass of its members had very indefinite notions on those subjects, which must hereafter be the most important which will engage the attention of our legislators. Yet with a wise instinct which guided it in this as in most other subjects, it rejected the more flagrant projects of finance and revenue brought before it; and if it made no great or wise progress, yet it may claim the important negative credit of having prevented in a degree the imposition of new and injurious burdens upon the country. manner in which the President administered them, but, seeing them ineffective, proceeded to pass other laws, which, on the same principle, must prove just as ineffective. We trust the new Congress will not make this mistake; and we do not believe it will. On the question of reconstruction it was careful and hesitating; yet determined to come to some conclusion. The mass of its members sought to follow the country rather than lead it; they came to Washington A very few ignorant and unscrupulous favoring the President's policy, but quickly extremists, and men carried away by perdiscovered, what the country did not so sonal feeling and interest, helped to give soon know, that the conditions under which the Congress a bad name by introducing that policy would be safe and just could not wild and extreme measures, and by the use be attained, but were forbidden by the of violent and indecorous language. But it manner in which the President was deter- was in the Congress as it is amongst the mined to administer it. It is now plain people at large, where many foolish things that Mr. Johnson determined to abandon, are said and proposed and strenuously urged not only the party which had elected him for a time by individuals, but in the end to office, but also the principles which it dropped by the calm good sense of the was supposed he had adopted when he per- mass. Thus it was that after endless dismitted the Republican party to take him cussions about the tariff, and after thorough for its candidate. The Republicans in amendments of this outrageous swindle, so Congress resented his desertion of the party as to satisfy all the "interests" which sought as a piece of political perfidy; but they subsidies from the government, the hateful regarded his abandonment of the party's and injurious measure was at last defeated, principles as a grave danger to the country, to the great rage of the lobbyists. Thus as it undoubtedly became. No man can say that it would be for the good of the country if such men as Saulsbury, Cowan and Davis in the Senate, or as Eldridge, Finck, Le Blond or Chanler in the House, or as the Seymours, Woods, Pendletons, Touceys, Blacks and Tom Florences out of office, should have regained power in the country; and it is the President's own fault if the Republicans who at first supported him were compelled, one after another, to oppose him; as lovers of liberty and progress they could not do less. If both sides ran to extremes, at least one side was love of liberty, on the other only adherence to the stale formulas and obsolete superstitions of slavery. That the Congress did not carry on its long struggle with the President altogether wisely is admitted by very many of its members. It sought in various ways to check and cripple his constitutional power-but it ought, instead of that, to have held him to a rigid accountability for the use he made of it. It passed laws, like the great Civil Rights act, wholesome, necessary, judicious, and then failed to scrutinize the every effort of the inflationists, no matter how persistent or ingenious, resulted after all in their failure. Thus, too, at the close of the session, the petty scheme of impeachment, brought up in the House, came to naught the general sense of both Houses being that if the President is to be impeached it should be on the ground of dereliction in great and important public duties, and not on petty personal matters. The Thirty-ninth Congress was an honest body of men. The number of men ruled by their private interests or subject to corrupt influences was uncommonly small. It was a sober and moral body—there were fewer habitual or occasional drunkards or profligates in it than in any Congress for the last dozen years. That it was, considering the various important questions it had. to discuss and decide upon, an able body, we cannot say; but it had true instincts, and in the prevailing ignorance of sound principles of political economy its mere instincts often guided it rightly and yet oftener led it to refuse action upon questions and bills which would have been injurious to the country. The ice it is splendid, it canna be mendedLike a glass ye may glowr on't and shave aff yer beard: And see hoo they gather, coming ower the The servant and master, the tenant and laird! brown heather, There's brave Jamie Fairlie, he's there late and early, Better curlers than him or Tam Conn canna be, Wi' the lads frae Kilwinning, they'll send the stanes spinnan, Wi' a whirr and a curr till they sit roun' the tee. Then hurrah! &c. It's an uncolike story that baith Whig and Tory Maun aye collyshangy like dogs ower a hane; And a' denominations are wantin' in patience, For nae Kirk will thole to let ithers alane; But in fine frosty weather let a' meet thegither, Wi' a broom in their haun' and a stane by the tee, And then, by my certes, ye'll see hoo a' parties, Like brithers will love, and like brithers agree! Then hurrah! &c. N. M'L. [Curling and golf, we must inform our southern readers who are ignorant of these grand northern sports, are the only public games and perhaps we might add bowlsin which the Scotch clergy of all denominations, and from time immemorial, indulge. Some of the best and keenest curlers are furnished by the Kirk, who join in the sport without any thought or question regarding the creed of their fellow-sportsmen. Even their morals, if so-so during summer, would receive as charitable interpretation as possible, if in winter, and on the ice, they proved themselves to be steady, straightforward, genial, and, above all victori ous curlers. There is a story told of an old minister, who, after service, said to his congregation"My brethren, there's no more harm in saying it than in thinking it if the frost holds, I'll be on the ice to-morrow morning at nine."]-Blackwood's Magazine. 1 No. 1190. Fourth Series, No. 51. 23 March, 1867. POETRY: Lovest thou Me? 706. To H. W. L. on his Birthday, 706. A Persian Fable, 706. The Parting-Point, 768. 1 2 NEW BOOKS. THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. By the Rev. Francis Wharton, D.D., LL.D., Rector of St. Paul's Church, Brookline, Mass. Boston: E. P. Dutton & Co. THE UNION PACIFIC RAILWAY; or, Three Thousand Miles in a Railway Car. By Charles Godfrey Leland. Philadelphia: Únion Pacific Railway Office. Just Published at this Office: NINA BALATKA, A Story of a Maiden of Prague, 38 cts. THE CLAVERINGS. By Anthony Trollope, 75 cents. VILLAGE ON THE CLIFF. By Miss Thackeray, 38 cents. Sent post-paid on receipt of price. Liberal terms to Booksellers. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the Living Age will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year; nor where we have to pay a commission for forwarding the money. Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars. Second 66 0120 Third The Complete work 88 Any Volume Bound, 3 dollars; Unbound, 2 dollars. The sets, or volumes, will be sent at the expense of the publishers. |