66 Ivan appeared to submit to his fate, and as he soon proved that he understood his business, he quickly won the favor of his master, the more so because in general he was quiet and civil in his behavior, while the horses entrusted to him were so well cared for that everybody declared it was a treat to look at them. His master evidently preferred driving out with Ivan to going with any of the other coachmen. Sometimes he would laugh, and say: Well, Ivan, do you recollect how badly we got on at our first meeting? but I fancy we have driven out the devil after all." To these words Ivan never made any answer. But one day, just about Epiphany time, his master drove to town with Ivan as coachman, the bells jingling merrily from the necks of the three bay horses. They were just beginning to mount a rather steep hill at footpace, when Ivan slid off the box and went behind the sledge, as if to pick up something he had let fall. It was a sharp frost, and his master sat huddled up in a thick fur, with a warm cap drawn close over his ears. Then Ivan took from under his long coat a hatchet which he carried in his belt, came close up behind his master, knocked off his cap, and with the words, "I warned you once, Peter Petrovitch, so you have only yourself to thank," at one blow cut his head open. He then stopped the horses, replaced the cap carefully on the head of the dead man, and taking his place again on the box drove into town straight up to the police station. "I have brought you General Suchinski's dead body, it is I myself who killed him. I told him I would, and I have done it. So, take me." He was arrested, brought to trial, and sentenced to the knout, and then sent for life to the mines in Siberia. And thus, Ivan, the gay, light-hearted dancer, disappeared forever from the world of light. Yes, involuntarily, but in a different sense, we exclaim with Alexis Sergeivitch: "The old times were good, but they are gone and peace be with them!" C. E. TURNER. From The Pall Mall Gazette. NEW ASPECTS OF GERMAN LIFE. EISENACH, August 4. THE glow of enthusiasm with which the English traveller revisits in middle life the Germany of his youth is apt to fade after some months' experience. From the mere tourist's point of view I find extraordinary improvements, hotels being far in advance of those familiar to me twenty and even ten years ago, and much more comfort being attainable with only moderate increase in charges; from an æsthetic point of view the change is no less great and commendable. Twenty years ago Germany was perhaps the worst-dressed nation in Europe, the long coats, mufflers, and long hair of the men, the dowdiness of the women, being proverbial. All this is of the past. Very great attention is now paid by both sexes and all ranks to personal appearance, whilst a general increase of well-being, better food, and better hygienic arrangements is telling upon the good looks as well as physique of the rising generation. An infiltration of French manners as well as of French taste is to be detected everywhere, while not a few wholesome practical notions have been gathered from ourselves. This is as it should be, and if we for our part would learn a lesson or two from our Teutonic neighbors in matters of thrift, contentedness, and also ethics it would do us good. Here people are not materialized by great wealth, and although in our eyes German respect of titles and military rank may seem overweening, the general contempt of money, merely as money, has something fine about it. The golden calf is not worshipped on German soil. Learning, official, military, and professional position are paid supreme court to. Small means and a modest style of living are not held in degradation. People who live sparingly, or, as we should say, stingily, are not ashamed of the fact and are not socially inconvenienced by it, as among ourselves. In Germany it is the man, the Mensch, the Wesen, that is held in honor, not the fine things of this world which lend him a fictitious splendor. In what other country of the world is the professor, the teacher, and the savant held in such esteem? German teachers have a recognized position in society, and that respect is paid to the instructed which is their due. Again, take the uncompromising self-denial exercised by German men and women in daily life. French people are as rigidly economical, but while laying by for their children or | jects that are most interesting to a forfor old age always contrive to enjoy the eigner, and, as a rule, he must judge for present. What French people, even in himself, instead of trusting to information the humbler ranks of life, spend on eating gained from others. Perhaps, seeing how and drinking is enormous. Doubtless many disagreeable books have been writsuch good fare and good wine have much ten by English writers about Germany, to do with their amiability and high such reticence towards ourselves need not spirits; but the Germans cannot afford to surprise us. In France the tongue is unhave a single extravagance, and only in- locked as freely as if national prejudice dulge in intellectual pleasures. The did not exist. At least, such is the difnational love of music, literature, and the ference I have found, while being cordially drama is the bright side of life.. And received in both countries. I have come there is yet one more lesson we may to the conclusion that the foreigner on learn from our German neighbors German soil has much the best of it, and namely, discipline, the inculcation of duty, that, in spite of the great artistic and inthe almighty Pflicht, before which every tellectual resources here, there are checks German child is taught to bow. Pflicht and vexations which would render Geris taught in schools as regularly as ABC, man life unendurable to outsiders. Prince and it is taught after sternest fashion in Bismarck, like an over-strict and overlife. Not only the young recruit learns it vigilant schoolmaster, has overshot the during his three years' enforced military mark and makes hypocrites of his scholservice, but the man of pleasure, the inof-ars. At least so I must believe, and, fensive citizen, the head of a family in notwithstanding outward expressions of every phase of his existence. Were an Englishman subjected to all the police regulations and State interference hemming round a German, he would find life intolerable. This discipline, therefore, however much we may admire it from one point of view, and however valuable we have seen it to be as an element of a nation's success, has a dark side, and leads us to consider the drawbacks of German social life generally. There can be no doubt whatever that the German individually is disciplined and taxed to death, and that Socialism so-called is but another name for a widespread and deeprooted discontent. The limitations put upon speech and the expression of opinion must be felt as a real grievance, whilst the result is a caution, we might almost call it a timidity, that particularly strikes an English mind. Nobody ever seems to dream of ventilating a public nuisance in a newspaper, and, alike in the case of social and political oppressions, there is no safety-valve of unlimited protest and discussion. All this seems to us strange in a country possessing a constitutional government and nominally a free press. Frenchmen wear their hearts on their sleeve, but caution, not unmixed with mistrust, is a leading characteristic of the German. It is very difficult to get a fair question fairly answered that has reference to any important social or political matter. No one talks readily on the sub loyalty, and an optimism commonly indulged in, there is no country in Europe where great changes are more fervently hoped for and relied upon. There is one point more I would mention, and that is the unanimously expressed kindliness and admiration of the people, considered individually, towards the French nation. I have heard thoughtful, highly educated Germans, men of the world too, express as deep a regret for the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine as the most ardent French patriot could do, and the general feeling seems to be a desire for conciliation and friendly intercourse. The fact is, the Germans, no more than ourselves, can afford to miss French esprit, French vivacity, and the innumerable graces and charms of French character, so strikingly contrasted to their own more solid yet none the less admirable qualities. It is pleasant to find that the social relations of the two nations are being renewed by travel and other means of intercourse, and that nothing stands in the way of a true understanding between French or Germans regarded as individuals but in. creased knowledge of one another. At least so I judge, having had no mean opportunity of forming an opinion. In fact, unpleasant as is the admission, there can be little doubt that the French are much better liked than ourselves, and not only here and there, but throughout the length and breadth of the Vaterland. E 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 cents, OUT WEST. UNDER the forest, of its snows unladen, And kissing back the nervous kiss of spring, I sit and dream of courtly knight and maiden, And old-world pomp encompassing a king. Out of her wintry sleep the earth is waking, And birds and flowers carol her réveillé; O'er East and West the common promise breaking, Breathes the first whisper of their holiday. Without, the mighty forms of things primeval Stand all untenanted of Custom's robes; Within, my mind shapes pictures medieval, With pencil fashioned forth in other globes. The rugged miners share my board and pillow, And by the camp-fire sing their lawless song; But at a bound my thought o'errides the bil-. low,. And breasts the strong surf by a flight as] strong. What do I here, among the waving grasses, Which never learned to trim their graces wild? Laughed and the echo of that hollow laughter Rings in my heart with one eternal knell ; And the slow years which rolled their burden after, With all the burden cannot crush the spell. Pines of the Sierras, spread your mantles round me, Oh! that the free lands and free souls which And hide me from the past, untrodden West! bound me, Could break the fetters of my prisoned breast! In vain, in vain! Not the dividing ocean, With all its storms one memory can drown; While the vexed phantom of a lost devotion, Still in the tortured bosom dies not down. Up, and to work!. The Western spring invites me, And freedom calls me forth among the free; But no! Nor work nor freedom here delights me, The Eastern bondage falls again on me. BY THE SEA. TIRED with the struggle, . With the.ceaseless needs of life; Tired of the petty jar, Of the toil and strife; Of the doubt and of the fear, Broad and vast before her, Bright and wide the pathway showed To the golden glory Came a little bark, Shone in it for a moment, Then glided into dark. So in a dull life's hours and days A child's fresh laugh, a word of praise, A flower, a smile, a gentle duty, Or a thought of peace and beauty, O'er the arid waste may fling A light all pure and glistening, Where a sad heart may rest and win New strength new conflicts to begin. Tinsley's Magazine. S. K. PHILLIPS. From The Fortnightly Review. PART I. IN the lull which we hope is soon to break the storm of party strife in England, it may not perhaps be impossible to direct public attention to the rapid growth of questions which for the last few years have been agitating the religious mind of Asia, and which are certain before long to present themselves as a very serious perplexity to British statesmen; questions, moreover, which if not dealt with by them betimes, it will later be found out of their power to deal with at all, though a vigorous policy at the present moment might yet solve them to this country's very great advantage. tain even for a few years her position as the guide and arbiter of Asiatic progress. It was not altogether without the design of gaining more accurate knowledge than I could find elsewhere on the subject of this Mohammedan revival that I visited Jeddah in the early part of the past winter, and that I subsequently spent some months in Egypt and Syria in the almost exclusive society of Mussulmans. Jeddah, I argued, the seaport of Mecca and only forty miles distant from that famous centre of the Moslem universe, would be the most convenient spot from which I could obtain such a bird's-eye view of Islam as I was in search of; and I imagined rightly that I should there find myself in an atmo sphere less provincial than that of Cairo, The revival which is taking place in the or Bagdad, or Constantinople. Jeddah is Mohammedan world is indeed worthy of indeed in the pilgrim season the suburb every Englishman's attention, and it is of a great metropolis, and even a Eurodifficult to believe that it has not received pean stranger there feels that he is no anxious consideration at the hands of longer in a world of little thoughts and those whose official responsibility lies local aspirations. On every side the chiefly in the direction of Asia; but I am politics he hears discussed are those of not aware that it has hitherto been placed the great world, and the religion proin its true light before the English public, fessed is that of a wider Islam than he or that a quite definite policy regarding it has been accustomed to in Turkey or in may be counted on as existing in the coun- India. There every race and language sels of the present Cabinet. Indeed, as are represented, and every sect. Indians, regards the Cabinet, the reverse may very Persians, Moors, are there, negroes well be the case. We know how suspi- from the Niger, Malays from Java, Tarcious English politicians are of policies tars from the Khanates, Arabs from the which may be denounced by their enemies French Sahara, from Oman and Zanzibar, as speculative; and it is quite possible even, in Chinese dress and undistinguishathat the very magnitude of the problem to ble from other natives of the Celestial be solved in considering the future of Empire, Mussulmans from the interior of Islam may have caused it to be put aside China. As one meets these walking in there as one 66 outside the sphere of prac- the streets, one's view of Islam becomes tical politics." The phrase is a conven- suddenly enlarged, and one is forced to ient one, and is much used by those in exclaim with Sir Thomas Browne, "Truly power amongst us who would evade the the (Mussulman) world is greater than labor or the responsibility of great deci- that part of it geographers have desions. Yet that such a problem exists scribed." The permanent population, in a new and very serious form I do not too, of Jeddah is a microcosm of Islam. hesitate to affirm, nor will my proposition, It is made up of individuals from every naas I think, be doubted by any who have tion under heaven. Besides the indigemingled much in the last few years with nous Arab, who has given his language the Mussulman populations of western and his tone of thought to the rest, there Asia. There it is easily discernible that is a mixed resident multitude descended great changes are impending, changes from the countless pilgrims who have reperhaps analogous to those which Chris-mained to live and die in the holy cities. tendom underwent four hundred years These preserve, to a certain extent, their ago, and that a new departure is urgently individuality, at least for a generation or demanded of England if she would main-two, and maintain a connection with the |