. 1,200,000. This enormous increase is ow- -the law of demand and supply that goving partly to the number of planters who erns labor. The rich fertility and produchave emigrated to that state to begin life tiveness of the bottom lands of the Gulf anew, in a smaller way and on smaller farms, states invite labor from the over-worked and but mainly to the thousands of negroes sent wornout northern soil, and this invitation is from other states during the war for the se- supplemented by the promise of the best curity the vast area of Texas afforded pay for labor. against the advances of the Union armies. Now large numbers of these negroes are returning to their old homes on the Mississippi. Flake's Galveston Bulletin stated not long ago, that from Christmas to mid-February at least sixteen thousand freedmen had gone from the northern counties in Texas to Louisiana, "because the Louisiana laws are more just and equitable for the freedmen than those of Texas." The journals which complain of the exodus of negroes from Virginia, Kentucky, the Carolinas and Georgia, admit that the freedmen migrate under the incentive of higher wages. The Gulf states, from their natural advantages, can afford to pay better laborprices, and such is the demand for labor, and so great the competition to secure the services of the in-flocking immigrants, that larger rates of pay are offered this season It may be mentioned, incidentally, that than last year or the year before. Generalthere is also a comparatively slight move- lv, too, the pay is now offered in moneyment of negroes to the western states. The so much by the day, or month, or season; Augusta (Georgia) Chronicle says that ne- and the plan of offering shares in the crop, groes are daily passing through that city which was sometimes unfavourable to the for the West; "most of them young, employer, and oftener unjust to the lahealthy and hearty, in fact, the best class borers, has given place to the better methof field hands," and that "they are princi- od of paying for the work the wages it is pally from Virginia and the Carolinas, worth. though many have gone from Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas." The great tide of this travel, however, is towards the South. This general migration is a marked incident in the southern situation, and is a noteworthy phase of the new labor system. It is by no means owing to a restless disposition on the part of the freedmen, or to a mere desire to use or abuse their new-found freedom. It may be due, in a degree, to the isothermal theory of the natural tendency of the negro race towards the tropics. But there is a simpler solution than all this Those who deny to the freedman sufficient sagacity to rightly estimate the value of the elective franchise, will at least admit that he has intelligence enough to know what his labor is worth, and energy enough to go where his labor will bring the largest remuneration. The southern employers are likely to learn this lesson from the negroes; and when they do, there will be no more complaint of the scarcity of field-bands, for there will be a large and fixed population of freedmen in every place where labor brings its proper price. No. 1196. Fourth Series, No. 57. 4 May, 1867. SHORT ARTICLES: The Jew in Literature, 297. A Clergyman's Letter, 297.. Cardinal Cullen on Novel Reading, 311. A Long River in Russian America, 311. Lessing, 311. The Old English Chroniclers, 320. The next number will be greatly enlarged, to enable us to publish a complete translation of Count Montalembert's Victory of the North, which has been so greatly admired. It will also contain the beginning of a new tale, by Norman Macleod, D.D., Editor of Good Words, called THE STARLING. We are preparing for separate publication 25 cents. THE STARLING. By Norman Macleod, D.D. THE TENANTS OF MALLERY. By J. S. Le Faun. GUILD COURT -a London Story. By George MacDonald. THE VICTORY OF THE NORTH will be immediately published separately. Price, 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 " The Complete work 20 32 88 66 50 Any Volume Bound, 3 dollars; Unbound, 2 dollars. The sets, or volumes, will be sent at the expense of the publishers. From Blackwood's Magazine. THESE two names thus linked together suggest, in the first place, one of the sweetest idyllic pictures of those matchless pastorals which cluster round the origin of our religion. But it is not the Elizabeth and Mary of Galilee, of many a painter's imagination, and of many a reverential and tender thought, whom we are about to discuss. The Elizabeth and Mary of British history are as different as can be conceived from those two Hebrew women, whose encounter at the supreme moment of their lives is so well known and dearly interesting to us all. Yet they were women standing in a similar connection, each other's nearest relatives, the most prominent figures in the story of their time women with the same blood in their veins, with similar energies and ambition, who might have been dear friends, and who were deadly enemies, each other's rivals, opponents, most dangerous foes. It is impossible so much as to think of the story of one without finding involved in it fatal tangles of the life of the other. The story of their period has, doubtless, many details of solid interest unassociated with them. It was a great, probably the greatest, crisis of national life in both the southern and northern countries. Great national forces, vast buman interests, but dimly comprehended even by those who were helping to bring them into being, were rising on every side around them; but yet amid all those heavings and convulsions of humanity, it is upon the figures of these two women that every eye is fixed. Their personal conflicts and individual passions stand out prominent above the profounder stream of story in which the interest of millions is involved. Two more solemn chapters were never written in the great and various tragedy of life. History, indeed, has so linked them together that we might say it was but one chapter which bears this fatal conjunction of names. Had they been men, it is probable that their inevitable struggle would have been attended with those commoner elements of tumult and bloodshed which cease to be exciting by long repetition, and that their strength would have been matched in a ruder way, and come to a more ordinary and practical result. Being women, these two queens, without sacrificing in the smallest degree their importance in history, enter into a more delicate sphere .They are rivals, not only in politics, but in person, in mind, and in fortune. It is a subtle drama of individual existence woven into perfect use of its favorite medium of impersonation than Nature and Providence have done in this wonderful crisis, making the old world of romance and marvel, of brilliant selfindulgence and adventure, of love and crime and picturesque effect, fall with Mary; and the new world, with its harder every-day elements, its thrift, its industry, its aspirations, its sense of duty, its harshness and self-seeking, come in with Elizabeth. At such supreme moments Providence would seem to avail itself in the grandest way of a certain mighty adaptation of pictorial art, illustrating its meaning by such types and combinations as even the most ignorant must somehow understand. The early history of these two queens is as subtly contrasted as the course of their after life. Mary grew up in her beauty in the refined if polluted atmosphere of the French Court, a princess not only in rank, but by nature endowed with every gift that makes a woman a queen-lovely, brilliant, accomplished, trained not only in every pleasant art, but in all the deepest wiles of statemanship, fully aware of the importance of her own position, and carefully educated to fill it. Morality was not much the fashion in that brilliant world, yet even in the most depraved society a girl in her teens can scarcely be much corrupted. Her powers of fascination were such that men yielded to her as if by magic, not in consequence of the craft in which the Guises had trained their niece, so much as from that sweet craft of youth and delightful sense of power, which made the fair young creature put forth her natural wiles, with that pretty mingling of a desire to please and a desire to rule which makes a beautiful young woman, when she knows what she is about, and has a proportionate purpose, one of the strongest and most dangerous of powers. Notwithstanding her turbulent kingdom and orphan state, and all the unknown forces rising up against her, the youth of Mary Stuart was that of a favourite of fortune. Queen by birth of one nation-queen by marriage of another. presumptive heir, both by natural right and the preference of a great mass of the people, of a third, -no woman ever held a more magnificent position. It is true that her own native people were a difficult handful for the most wise sovereign, and that Elizabeth was but little older than herself, and at that time likely enough to have heirs of her own person; but at the same time Elizabeth was in the belief of most devout Catholics illegitimate; and, with the readiness common even to the wisest of believing in every thing that favours their own views, the disposition of the English towards Mary and their indifference to her rival seem to have been held as proved in France. Mary herself, always and at all stages of her career a good Catholic, no doubt believed unfeignedly that she herself was rightful Queen of England, and with the confidence of her age was ready to confront Elizabeth, to make a triumphant progress through her rival's kingdom, and steal from her the hearts of her subjects. Nor was there anything wonderful in this confidence. She was not Queen of Scots alone, but queen of hearts; she was used to see everybody within the range of her influence yield to its wonderful fascination. Her cars were more familiar with honeyed adorations than with discussion or criticism. Even the misfortune which changed her position in France and drove her back to her own distracted kingdom, gave a more tender interest to her person, and. awoke anew all those not unpleas ing uncertainties which surround a beautiful unwedded girl. There is no particular evidence that the death of Francis moved her very profoundly; and pretty and pathetic as is the tale of her tender farewell to the charmant pays de France, yet Mary was too much a Stuart, and took too naturally to adventure and novelty, to be without comfort in her entrance to so new and strange and exciting a life as that which awaited her at Holyrood. The fair, fearless, bewitching creature came back to her poor kingdom with such a confidence in her own powers as is in itself a fortune. If she wept when the Scots Reformer remained impervious to her magic, the tears were tears of girlish petulance and vexation rather than of real suffering. Up to the moment when fatal passion and self-will involved her in the earliest meshes of that tragic web from which she never escaped, it is impossible to think of Mary Stuart otherwise than as prosperous and fortunate. Her career looked bright before her, full of bracing and exciting difficulties, full of a thousand opportunities for proving her courage, her skill, all the powers of which she was conscious. The finest succession in Europe, and probably the most magnificent match in Europe, were open to her. She was not afraid of the grim lords who had as yet no deadly quarrel with her. She felt herself a match, even perhaps more than a match, for Elizabeth; and there was every prospect that she might achieve great things for the cause, which, if she cared at all for any abstract cause, was that which lay nearest her heart. And she retained her light 1 に こ A 2 t |