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No baboo ever turned out a more deli- | numerous family consisting of the aforecious mixture of queer English and Orien- said five female women, and three males, tal imagery than this: "Respectfully the last of whom are still milking the Sheweth. That your honor's servant is parental mother. That your generous poor man in agricultural behavior, and honor's lordship's servant was entreating much depends on season for the staff of to the Magistrate for employment in Mu life, therefore he prays that you will favor nicipality to remove filth, etc., but was not upon him, and take him into your saintly granted the petitioner. Therefore your service, that he may have some perma- generous lordship will give to me some nently labor for the support of his soul easy work, in the Department, or and his family; wherefore he falls upon something of this sort. For which act of his family's bended knees, and implores kindness your noble lordship's poor serto you of this merciful consideration to a vant will, as in duty bound, pray for your damnable miserable, like your honor's longevity. I have the honor to be, sir, unfortunate petitioner. That your lord- your most obedient servant, Candiship's honor's servant was too much poorly date." during the last rains and was resuscitated by much medicines which made magnificent excavations in the coffers of your honorable servant, whose means are circumcized by his large family, consisting of five female women, and three masculine, the last of which are still taking milk from mother's chest, and are damnably noiseful through pulmonary catastrophe in their interior abdomen. Besides the above named, an additional birth is, through grace of God, very shortly occurring to my beloved wife of bosom. That your honor's damnable servant was officiating in several capacities during past generations, but has become too much old for espousing hard labor in this time of his bodily life; but was not drunkard, nor thief, nor swindler, nor any of these kind, but was always pious, affectionate to his

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There is such an amusing assumption of self-satisfaction in the following that it also deserves to be quoted: "Most Respectfully Showeth,- That your petitioner being given to understand that your honor is in want of hands to do the duties of signaller and porters begs to offer himself as a candidate for one of these: that your petitioner can read and write him his own Vernacular and that he has a special gift of Almighty, viz., he is a very tall young man beyond the ordinary hight of human population in this country where the inhabitants are mostly short, and that on this ground he will make himself more useful for the office of flag holder should your honor be pleased to confer me a situation I shall pray God for your long life and prosperity."

A FEW FACTS ABOUT THE GREAT SIBERIAN RAILWAY.-The great Siberian Railway, which will more closely connect Europe with the teeming millions of China, Japan, and eastern Asia, will be commenced this spring. The total length of the line will be four thousand eight hundred and ten miles, and the cost about thirty-two millions sterling.

In case permanent bridges are built over the immense rivers Obi, Yenesei, Lena, etc., the outlay will be still greater. The commercial and political importance of this undertaking is greater than most people suppose. It will not only help to open out the immense resources of southern Siberia, but will enable Russia to compete more successfully for the Japanese and Chinese carrying and import trade. Goods that are now sent by sea to Europe will ten years hence be carried overland into Europe, and a good deal of the Chinese carrying trade will go into the hands of Russia. A large portion of the railway will run through millions of acres of the finest virgin soil, over immense rivers, pri

meval forests which have never been cut, and through countries abounding in mineral and vegetable wealth. When the line is ready it will be possible to work the rich gold, silver, iron, copper, and plumbago mines of eastern Siberia, which have hardly yet been touched in consequence of the scarcity of labor and the absence of machinery. The rich and fertile regions of the Amoor and Usuri, which boast of a climate as fine as that of France, will then be open to colonists, and also millions of acres of land which are at the present moment almost unpopulated. By means of this railway Russia will be able to convert Vladivostock into a great naval and military station like Sevastopol, and, if necessary, pour several hundred thousand troops on the Chinese frontier in less than three weeks' time. And last, and not least, among the benefits which will accrue to mankind through this undertaking, will be the possibility of visiting China or Japan in about a fortnight from central Europe, with all that comfort that is attached to railway travelling in Russia.

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Fore

Fifth Series,
Volume LXXIV.

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No. 2444.-May 2, 1891.

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From Beginning,
Vol. OLXXXIX.

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THE FORGE BY THE FOREST,

POETRY.

"I KNOW WHAT BEAUTY IS, FOR THOU.", 258" GOD SENT A POET TO REFORM HIS

A PORTRAIT,

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PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY

LITTELL & CO., BOSTON.

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TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION.

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 ccnts.

THE FORGE BY THE FOREST.

IT stands half hidden in the greenwood's edge, Its music greets the dawn that glimmers white,

Before the sunbeams chase away the night, Or the first warbler twitters in the sedge; All day the anvil rings beneath the sledge, The forge-fires roar, and gleam with ruddy light

Till crimson sunset crowns the distant height,

And all its fringes fade along the ledge.

Then, though the whispering leaves above it bend,

And night-birds call, and moonbeams round it play,

The voices of the smithy die away; When in the dusk the evening dews descend In silent slumber all its labors end

Its music mute, its ashes cold and grey. Chambers' Journal. J. G. F. NICHOLSON.

I KNOW what beauty is, for Thou
Hast set the world within my heart;
Of me Thou madest it a part;
I never loved it more than now.

I know the Sabbath afternoons;
The light asleep upon the graves;
Against the sky the poplar waves;
The river murmurs organ tunes.

I know the spring with bud and bell;
The hush in summer woods at night;
Autumn, when leaves let in more light;
Fantastic winter's lovely spell.

I know the rapture music gives,
The power that dwells in ordered tones;
Dream-muffled voice, it loves and moans,
And half alive, comes in and lives.
The charm of verse, where love-allied,
Music and thought, in concord high,
Show many a glory sailing by,
Borne on the Godhead's living tide;
And beauty's regnant all I know;
The imperial head, the starry eye;
The fettered fount of harmony,
That makes the woman radiant go.
But I leave all, thou man of woe!
Put off my shoes and come to thee,
Most beautiful of all I see,
Most wonderful of all I know.

As child forsakes his favorite toy,
His sister's sport, his wild bird's nest;
And, climbing to his mother's breast,
Enjoys yet more his former joy-

I lose to find. On white-robed bride
Fair jewels fairest light afford;
So, gathered round thy glory, Lord,
All glory else is glorified.

GEORGE MACDONALD.

A PORTRAIT.

THE clock strikes one, and he is here; See, as he comes he wears a smile; He takes his own accustomed chair, And nods gay greetings all the while. I know his friends: they are not fast, But neither are they old nor portly, Although the youth of each is past,

And some must take to glasses shortly. They shout his name, and bid him sitUnnoticed leave the knife and fork: They like their luncheon served with wit; They know that humor haunts his talk. He chaffs a friend who is no dunce Good-natured always is his banter; He caps each argument at once,

And, with a laugh, wins in a canter. While many fly to work anew,

A few will stay and have their smoke. A tale is told; he tells one too,

Which, like his others, has its joke. The day glides on, he comes again; Two hours his hat and coat he'll doff: He plays for fun, but likes to gain.

He has his whist, and then goes off.

A lumb'ring cab, a sorry steed,

His umbrella found, "Good-night," He cries, though 'tis to one, indeed, Whose name he never fixes quite. He has his foibles- quite a scoreFirst, fashion cannot change his dress; He can't forgive a chronic bore,

;

Nor the American Free Press.
His scorn is great for foreign lands
He thinks bed is the proper place
(At ten) for weary head and hands

In fact, for all the human race.
He thinks one woman's like the rest;
To be convinced he is unwilling;
His heart with pity is impressed
His hand is ready with a shilling.
Gentleman's Magazine.

GOD sent a poet to reform his earth,
But when he came and found it cold and poor,
Harsh and unlovely, where each prosperous
boor

Held poets light for all their heavenly birth, He thought: Myself can make one better worth

The living in than this-full of old lore, Music and light and love, where saints adore And angels, all within mine own soul's girth.

But when at last he came to die, his soul
Saw earth (flying past to heaven) with new
love,

And all the unused passion in him cried:
O God, your heaven I know and weary of;
Give me this world to work in and make whole.
God spoke: Therein, fool, thou hast lived and
died.

A. MARY F. ROBINSON.

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From The Contemporary Review.
THE INFLUENCE OF DEMOCRACY ON

LITERATURE.

but they mean nothing. Those of the optimist do not mean much either. A little more effort is required to produce It is not desirable to bring the element his rose-colored picture, but we are not of party politics into the world of books. really persuaded that because the brown But it is difficult to discuss the influence marries the blonde all is for the best in of democracy on literature without bor- the best of all possible worlds. Nor is rowing from the Radicals one of the wis- much gained by prophecy. We have been est and truest of their watchwords. It is listening to a gentleman, himself a biogof no use, as they remind us, to be afraid rapher and an historian, who predicts, of the people. We have this huge mass with babe-like naïveté, that all literary perof individuals around us, each item in the sons will presently be sent by the democcoagulation struggling to retain and to ex-racy to split wood and draw water, except, ercise its liberty; and, while we are per- perhaps, "the historian or biographer." fectly free to like or dislike the condition In this universal splitting of wood, some of things which has produced this phe- heads, which now think themselves mighty nomenon, to be alarmed, to utter shrieks clever, may come to be rather disastrously of fright at it, is to resign all pretension cracked. It was not Camille Desmoulins to be heard. We may believe that the whom Fate selected to enter into his whole concern is going to the dogs, or we own promised land of emancipated literamay be amusing ourselves by printing ture. Cook's tickets for a monster excursion to Boothia Felix or other provinces of Utopia; to be frightened at it, or to think that we can do any good by scolding it or binding it with chains of tow, is simply silly. It moves, and it carries the superior person with it and in it, like a mote of dust.

We gain little by a comparison of our modern situation with that of the ancient commonwealths. The parallel between the state of literature in our world and that in Athens or Florence is purely academic. Whatever the form of government, literature has always been aristocratic, or at least oligarchic. It has been encouraged or else tolerated; even when it has been independent, its self-congratulations on its independence have shown how temporary that liberty was, and how imminent the relapse into bondage. The peculiar protection given to the arts by enlightened commonwealths surrounded by barbaric tyrannies was often of a most valuable character, but it resembled nothing which can recur in the modern world. The stimulus it gave to the creative temperament was due in great measure to its exclusiveness, to the fact that the world was shut out, and the appeal for sympathy made to a restricted circle. The republic was a family of highly trained intelligences, barred and bolted against the vast and stupid world outside. This condition can never be re-established. The essence of democracy is that it knows no narrower bonds than those of the globe, and its success is marked by the destruction of those very ramparts which protected and inspirited the old intellectual free States.

In considering, therefore, the influence of democracy on literature, it seems worse than useless to exhort or persuade. All that can in any degree be interesting must be to study, without prejudice, the signs of the times, to compare notes about the weather, and tap the intellectual barometer cheerfully. This form of inquiry is rarely attempted in a perfectly open spirit, partly, no doubt, because it is unquestionably one which it is difficult to carry through. It is wonderfully easy to proclaim the advent of a literary Ragnarok, to say that poetry is dead, the novel sunken into its dotage, all good writing obsolete, and the reign of darkness begun. There are writers who do this, and who round off their periods by attributing the whole condition to the democratic spirit, like the sailor in that delightful old piece played at the Strand Theatre, who used to sum up the misfortunes of a lifetime with the recurrent refrain, "It's all on account of Eliza." The" uncreating words "of these pessimists are dispiriting for the moment,

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The purest and most elevated form of

literature, the rarest and, at its best, the | influence of literature on democracy, but

most valuable, is poetry. If it could be shown that the influence of the popular advance in power has been favorable to the growth of great verse, then all the rest might be taken for granted. Unfortunately, there are many circumstances which interfere with our vision, and make it exceedingly difficult to give an opinion on this point. Victor Hugo never questioned that the poetical element was needed, but he had occasional qualms about its being properly demanded.

Peuples! écoutez le poète,

Ecoutez le rêveur sacré !
Dans votre nuit, sans lui complète,

Lui seul a le front éclairé!

he shouted, but the very energy of the exclamation suggests a doubt in his own mind as to its complete acceptability. In this country, the democracy has certainly crowded around one poet. It has always appeared to me to be one of the most singular, as it is one of the most encouraging features of our recent literary history, that Tennyson should have held the extraordinary place in the affections of our people which has now been his for nearly half a century. That it should be so delicate and so Æolian a music, so little affected by contemporary passion, so disdainful of adventitious aids to popularity, which above all others has attracted the universal ear, and held it without producing weariness or satiety; this, I confess, appears to me very marvellous. Some of the laureate's best-loved lyrics have been before the public for more than sixty years. Cowley is one of the few English poets who have been, during their lifetime, praised as much as Tennyson has been, but where in 1720 was the fame of Cowley? Where in the France of to-day are the "Méditations" and the "Harmonies" of Lamartine?

If, then, we might take Tennyson as an example of the result of the action of democracy upon literature, we might indeed congratulate ourselves. But a moment's reflection shows that to do so is to put the cart before the horse. The wide appreciation of such delicate and penetrat ing poetry is, indeed, an example of the

hardly of democracy on literature. We may examine the series of Lord Tennyson's volumes with care, and scarcely discover a copy of verses in which he can be detected as directly urged to expression by the popular taste. This prime favorite of the educated masses has never courted the public, nor striven to serve it. He has written to please himself, to win the applause of the “ little clan," and each round of salvos from the world outside has seemed to startle him in his obstinate retirement. If it has grown easier and easier for him to consent to please the masses, it is because he has familiarized them more and more with his peculiar accent. He has led literary taste, he has not dreamed of following it.

What is true of Tennyson is true of most of our recent poets. There is one exception, however, and that a very curi ous one. The single English poet of high rank whose works seem to me to be distinctly affected by the democratic spirit, nay, to be the direct outcome of the influ ence of democracy, is Robert Browning. It has scarcely been sufficiently noted by those who criticise the style of that great writer that the entire tone of his writings introduces something hitherto unobserved in British poetry. That something is the repudiation of the recognized oligarchic attitude of the poet in his address to the public. It is not that he writes or does not write of the poor. It is a curious mistake to expect the democratic spirit to be always on its knees adoring the proletariat. To the true democracy all are veritably of equal interest, and even a belted earl may be a man and a brother. In his poems Robert Browning spoke as though he felt himself to be walking through a world of equals, all interesting to him, all worthy of study. This is the secret of his abrupt familiar appeal, bis "Dare I trust the same to you?" "Look out, see the gipsy!" "You would fain be kinglier, say, than I am?" the incessant confidential aside to a cloud of unnamed witnesses, the conversational tone, things all of which were before his time unknown in serious verse. Browning is hail-fellow-well-met with all the world,

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