be very disagreeable to us to see Europe going to war just now. We can stave off this war by taking new, vague, indefinitely large obligations for the future, which we hope we may be never called upon, and in our hearts we have never seriously resolved, to fulfil. We ourselves should object serious ly even to repeating again the words of obligation, which have now lost so much force through the violations of their pledges by all the parties to the treaties of 1814 and 1815; to renew, formally, those obligations would be in itself a fresh obligation. But not only to renew but to add to them obligations of a very formidable nature, seems to us a poley of the most alarming kind. And the Minister who takes these obligations in our name is the Minister on whom we have all so long depended for refusing the sanction of England to the policy of vague, and dangerous because vague, interventions. From All The Year Round. GENUINE LETTER OF THANKS. THE following epistle, for the genuineness of which we have authority to vouch, bears no date, but is known to have been written about the year 1770. me under an obligation to write rather I thank you, dear sir, for the handsome and very valuable black coat, I thank you for the genteel blue coat, I thank you for the neat cloth breeches, I thank you for the pieces you have sent to repair them with, I thank you for the beautiful wig, I thank you for paying the carriage of the whole; I It is an interesting, because authentic, shall further add that, by the present you evidence of the social position of the "Par- have animated and heightened my affecson" in a bygone day; who was hat in tions, which your former hospitable behavhand to his patron; who thought it in no iour had before enkindled. Shall I tell you wise derogatory to his cloth to dine in the Iconstantly and fervently pray for you, and servants hall, to pay court to the house- am daily forming a thousand wishes for keeper, and make love to my lady's "wo-your present and future welfare? Dear sir, man," or even to marry her, with my lady's I need only say you have won my heart by countenance and approval. A social position admirably described by MACAULAY. As concerns the letter itself, the mingled simplicity and servility of the good man, its author, his gratitude for favours conferred, and his keen eye towards benefits to come, his presentation of his family after the fashion of modern mendicants of a lower class, his prolixity and tautology (frightfully suggestive of the sermons under which such of his parishioners as understood English-they were, probably, few, for he was a Welsh parson groaned on Sundays), these points, and other humourons touches of character self-disclosed, make the letter very curious and droll. Reverend and Worthy, Indulgent and Compassionate, Bounteous and very Valuable Sir. The present you have sent me has laid yonr favours; I bless God for what you have done for me, and am surely to conclude from this instance of your bounty that you will be a great friend to me and my family. Dear sir, I thank you, and again I thank you. On Saturday last I received your parcel. Immediately I had my hair cut off, that I might have the honour on the Sabbath to appear in your wig; and being desirous to wear the black coat once, for your sake, went to the meeting in it. My body was never so genteelly arrayed since it came out of the hands of its Creator; the clothes fitted me well, and looked gracefully upon me. Dear sir, I thank you, and again I thank you. Was proud to tell Mr. Ashworth what a present you had sent me; Mr. Ashworth seemed quite pleased. Indeed, if anybody who had seen me in my ragged and dirty apparel two years ago, had seen me last Sabbath so decently clothed in your things, [proached artificial or dead hair in its qualities, would have been apt to think me the reality was then polished with a little oil, and the proof one of Ovid's Metamorphoses, there being cess was complete. But chemistry has now so striking a difference between my past and enabled the artisans of hair to move a stage my present appearance. Dear sir, I thank onwards; to add a dye in the place of the ab stracted natural colour, and to convert the I thank you. To conclude, head into a kind of coloured mop. It comes you, and again dear sir, you say in your last letter, "I have to pass thus: the head is washed with an alkasent you some clothes, if you will not refuse line solution, and dried near the fire; this part them." Dear sir, what do you mean? I am of the process occupies an hour. The manipsurprised at your expression. If you had ulator then brushes through the hair the dye, sent me an old pair of shoes or stockings, I an acid solution of varying strength, and the should have been obliged and very thankful exhausted and dry hair is made to absorb this for them, much more so for a present so fluid by the aid of hot tongs and hot plates of large and rich as yours, the value of which metal, This latter part of the process demands I so well know, and I am persuaded they for our informant, the lady operated upon, recare and skill, and time also it would appear; were never yours for ten pounds. Dear sir, ports that the whole proceeding occupied seven if at any time you have an old garment to hours and a half. But at last came the result, spare, hat or anything else, I shall receive it not the end, but the beginning of the end. with thanks, and my family enjoy the bene- When the lady rose from the operating chair, fit of it. What follows I am ashamed to she was charmed by the vision of a pale gold write, yet must own that your present would chevelure, her natural colour being a dark have been more complete if you had obliged brown; and she went to her home in perfect me with a waistcoat along with it, having began to change, first to a bright orange-yeldelight. But in a very few hours the vision not one proper to wear with the coats you have sent me, they being so valuable, and low, and then to a deep yolk of egg yellow that was perfectly hideous. To correct this evil, fit me so well, it would be a pity to break another operation was to be gone through, them for that. I have nothing to add but another seven hours and a half of tedious and an expression of the sincerest and most pre-painful manipulation; and this time, like the vailing concern for your real happiness, last, with a similar result, first the golden and am, dear Sir, what I shall always be sheen of the rising sun; but, as evening adproud to call myself, and my wife and boys vanced, a deep saffron and red tint like the with me, your highly benefited and greatly setting sun portending a coming storm; or, rather, like the elfin locks of the demons of a obliged and humble Servants, vexation may be more easily imagined than pantomime. The lady's disappointment and described; she was advised that nothing more could be done; that, if she disapproved of her present appearance, her head must be shaved; and she submitted to the necessity and to the consequent annoyance of wearing a wig. The proceeding we are now discussing is called the 'instantaneous' process, and we have styled it an operation, having in our mind a surgical undertaking; the suffering was so severe, says our informant, that she was obliged to scream with pain, the burning was so intense that she walked about the room in a frantic state; and sal volatile was administered to keep up her strength. More than a week after this grave GOLDEN HAIR. Mr. Erasmus Wilson, in operation she came to us to be relieved of inhis new Journal of Cutaneous Medicines and Dis- flammation of the scalp, and the effects of a sueases of the Skin, is eloquent on the "Dangers perficial gangrenous burn. She complained of of Dyeing the Hair." Art," he tells us, is a feeling of lethargy, and feared that some progressive; a few years back, when the ma- poisonous matter might have been absorbed nia for altering the shade of colour of the hair through the scalp into the system; and it was first broke out, ladies were content with wash-clear that her nervous system had undergone a ing their heads with an alkaline solution, soda or potash, until a considerable portion of the colouring matter was removed, and with it, of course, much of the freshness and silky beauty . of the hair. This bleached hair, which ap JOHN & MARY, THOMAS & JOHN BUTT. P.S. The hand, spelling, and composing am sensible, is wretched, time being short, matter great, tackle bad and obliged to write in haste. As I have had my hair cut off, and at a loss for a cap, if you have one to dispose of, either silk or velvet, shall be very glad of it. serious shock, and that she had escaped by a No. 1202. Fourth Series, No. 63. 15 June, 1867. POETRY: Into Mary's Bosom, 674. Undiplomatic, 674. The Courtship of Piety, 722. Both Sides of the Shield, 735. THE STARLING will be ready for separate sale in two or three days; price, 38 conts. Early orders from The Trade are solicited. A second Edition of "OUT OF CHARITY" is nearly ready. Preparing for Publication OLD SIR DOUGLAS. By the Hon. Mrs. Norton; and Lately Published NINA BALATKA. The Story of a Maiden of Prague. 38 cents. 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 50 Any Volume Bound, 3 dollars; Unbound, 2 dollars. The sets, or volumes, will be sent at the expense of the publishers. WHEN Mr. Du Chaillu published, in 1861, his Explorations in Equatorial Africa,' the book met, in several quarters, with an unfavourable, not to say hostile reception. Some of his critics went so far as to assert that the work was a fiction, and that the author had not travelled in the interior of Africa at all. It is not necessary to confute insinuations which nobody now pretends to believe; but we do not deny that the vol ume Under such imputations Mr. Du Chaillu was unwilling to rest, and he resolved to confute his opponents by the logic of facts, that is, by undertaking another journey into the interior of Africa and furnishing himself with materials to prove conclusively the substantial truth of his former narrative It is impossible not to admire the courage and enterprise he has shown, and we think also that he deserves the highest credit for the forgiving and generous tone in which he speaks of his assailants. He says in his Preface to the new work which we propose to review, 'Although hurt to the quick by these unfair was open to adverse criticism, and and ungenerous criticisms I cherished no malice that the narrative involved contradictions towards my detractors, for I knew the time which it was difficult to explain. There would come when the truth of all that was eswas a confusion of dates, and also a con- ed would be made clear; I was consoled besential in the statements which had been disputfusion of journeys, which made it difficult sides by the support of many eminent men, to explain some points of the narrative, and who refused to believe that my narrative and certainly the most was made of these dis-observations were deliberate falsehoods. Makcrepancies and mistakes. We who had ex- ing no pretensions to infallibility, any more amined Mr. Du Chaillu's original journals than other travellers, I was ready to acknowlnever doubted for a moment the main truth edge any mistake that I might have fallen into, of his narrative, although we saw that, owin the course of compiling my book from my The only revenge I cherished ing to the manipulation of a literary hand rough notes. in preparing his book in America, his pub- journey into the same region, providing myself was that of better preparing myself for another lished work mixed together separate jour-with instruments and apparatus which I did not neys, and betrayed a strangely involved possess on my first exploration, and thus being chronology. It was on these grounds that enabled to vindicate my former account by facts the maps drawn up by Dr. Barth and Dr. not to be controverted.' Petermann in 1862 moved all the positions of the places he had visited much nearer the coast than he had fixed them, so as to reduce greatly the length of his routes. We all know how the accounts of the gorilla were discredited by those who had never an opportunity of witnessing the animal's habits, as only one or two stuffed specimens had reached the museums of Europe. Some writers asserted that Mr. Du Chaillu had never seen the animal alive, and that the specimens he brought or sent to England bad been purchased by him from natives on the coast. Several naturalists declared that the habits he ascribed to the strange brute -such as that of beating its breast violently when enraged were contrary to all experience of the ape tribe, and incredible. Mr. Du Chaillu was the first to make known to geographers the existence of the Fans, a cannibal tribe, who in recent times, have rapidly made their way from the interior, urged by the thirst for trade and European commodities, and have now actually reached the coast. But their very existence was denied; and the statement that some of the native African harps had strings made of vegetable fibre was declared to be false. The result, as regards the establishment of Mr. Du Chaillu's character for veracity, has been most satisfactory; and we set so high a value on the character of every man who labours to enlighten the world, as to deem this one gain not dearly purchased by the heavy losses and bitter disappointments in which Mr. Du Chaillu's second expedition has ended. Meanwhile Dr. Petermann had made the amende honorable with regard to the position of the places which Mr. Du Chaillu had formerly visited; for, in 1862, a French Government expedition, under Messrs. Serval and Griffon Du Bellay, explored the Ogobai River, and not only proved the truth of the traveller's general account of it, but showed that the Ashira Country was not far from the longitude which he had assigned to it. * Dr. Petermann, on receiving the French map, reconstructed his own as Mr. Du Chaillu had originally laid In an article on Le Gabon in Le Tour du Monde' (1865), p. 278, Dr. Griffon Du Bellay says of |