There are few things more pathetic in the annals of our literature than the story of this solitary, unfortunate, yet bravehearted man, who with "three great giants against him, as he recorded in his journal, "disease, despair, and poverty," could yet nourish to the last an indomitable confidence in the happiness of future generations. But with the ideal ist's failure he had also the idealist's success, in the assurance that thought is in itself reality that to have felt these hopes is in the truest sense to have realized them. In his own words: "To be beautiful and to be calm, without mental fear, is the ideal of nature. If I cannot achieve it, at least I can think it." H. S. SALT. From Longman's Magazine. warded to the editor. They are but scraps, or in hedgerows, or a mere speck up in a fir-tree. So soon as I had seen one I saw plenty. AN EXTINCT RACE. - the THERE is something very mournful in a deserted house, and the feeling is still further intensified if it happens to have once been a school, where a minor world played out its little drama, and left its history written on the walls. For a great boys' school is like a kingdom with its monarchs, its ministers, and executioners, and even its changes of dynasty. Such a house stood no long while since on the northern borderland of Wilts and Berks, a mansion in its origin back in the days of Charles II., and not utterly unconnected with the great events of those times, but which, for hard on a hundred years - from the middle of the eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century- was used as a superior grammar school, or college as it would now be called. Gradually falling THE following paragraphs will seem rivals for fifteen or twenty years, the huge, in reputation, and supplanted by modern strangely familiar to readers of this maga- hollow halls and endless dormitories were zine, to which Richard Jefferies was so silent, and the storms that sway with sav constant a contributor. They were accidentally found by Mrs. Jefferies and for-age force down from the hills wreaked ting roof. their will upon the windows and the rotInside the refectory windows being blown in-and over the antique-carved mantelpiece, two swallows' nests had been built to the ceiling or cornice. The whitewashed walls were yellow THIS lovely little bird is so small and and green with damp, and covered with light that it can cling suspended on the patches of saltpetre efflorescence. But end of a single narrow leaf, or needle of they still bore, legible and plain, the hasty pine, and it does not depress the least inscriptions scrawled on them, years and branch on which it may alight. The gold years before, by hands then young, but by crest frequents the loneliest heath, the now returned to dust. The history of this deepest pine wood, and the immediate little kingdom, the hopes and joys, the neighborhood of dwellings indifferently. fears and hatreds of the subjects, still reA Scotch fir or pine grew so near a house mained, and might be gathered from these in which I once lived that the boughs al- writings on the walls, just as are the hismost brushed my window, and when con- tory of Egypt and of Assyria now decifined to my room by illness, it gave me phered from the palaces and tombs. Here much pleasure to watch a pair of these were the names of the kings-the beadwrens who frequently visited the tree. masters - generally with some rough dog. They are also fond of thick thorn hedges, grel verse, not often very flattering, and and, like all birds, have their favorite lo- illustrated with outline portraits. Here calities, so that if you see them once or were caricatures of the ushers and tutors, twice in one place you should mark the hidden in some corner of the dormitories tree or bush, for there they are almost cer- once, no doubt, concealed by the furniture, tain to return. It would be quite possible coupled with the very freest personalities, for a person to pass several years in the mostly in pencil, but often done with a country and never see one of these birds. burnt stick. Dates were scattered everyThere is a trick in finding birds' nests, where not often the year, but the day and a trick in seeing birds. The first I of the month, doubtless memorable from noticed was in an orchard; soon after I some expedition, or lark played off half a found a second in a yew-tree (close to a century since. Now and then there was window), and after that constantly came a quotation from the classics - one deupon them as they crept through brambles | scribing the groaning and shouting of the THE GOLDEN-CRESTED WREN. dying Hercules, till the rocks and the sad hills resounded, which irresistibly sug. gested the idea of a thorough caning. Other inscriptions were a mixture of Latin and any English words that happened to rhyme, together producing the most extraordinary jumble. Where now are the merry hearts that traced these lines upon the plaster in an idle mood? Attached to the mansion was a great garden, or rather wilderness, with yew hedges ten feet high and almost as thick, a splendid filbert walk, an orchard, with a sun-dial. It is all mansion and garden, noble yew-tree and filbert walk, sun-dial and all-swept away now. The very plaster upon which generation after generation of boys recorded their history has been torn down, and has crumbled into dust. Greater kingdoms than this have disappeared since the world began, leaving not a sign even of their former existence. ORCHIS MASCULA. were silent on these THE Orchis mascula grew in the brook corner and in early spring sent up a tall spike of purple flowers. This plant stood alone in an angle of the brook and a hedge, within sound of water ceaselessly falling over a dam. In those days it had an aspect of enchantment to me; not only on account of its singular appearance so different from other flowers, but because in old folios I had read that it could call up the passion of love. There was something in the root beneath the sward which could make a heart beat faster. The common, modern books- I call them common of malice prepense things. Their dry and formal knowledge was without interest, mere lists of petals and pistils, a dried herbarium of plants that fell to pieces at the touch of the fingers. Only by chipping away at hard old Latin, contracted and dogged in more senses than one, and by gathering together scattered passages in classic authors, could anything be learned. Then there arose another difficulty, how to identify the magic plants? The same description will very nearly fit several flowers, especially when not actually in flower; how determine which really was the true root? The uncertainty and speculation kept up the pleasure, till at last I should not have cared to have had the original question answered. With my gun under my arm I used to look at the orchis from time to time so long as the spotted leaves were visible till the grass grew too long. THE most virtuous and learned of the evening papers has lately discovered a " be new plagiarist. The sinner is a young lady of some eight summers, who recently made the innocent remark on being reminded of another lady by a pig. Mr. Du Maurier illustrated the harmless nursery legend in Punch, and the evening paper immediately announced that a similar unconscious jest had been made by a clown in a poem of Oliver Goldsmith. Some thing not very unlike it also appears in a speech in L'Ecole des Femmes; yond this I cannot follow it, but Molière was a noted thief as the critics of his age took care to inform the public. Still, in the case of the little girl, the remark was original, for it is unlikely that she had ever even heard of Goldsmith or Molière. Her tender age and unsullied conscience have probably prevented her from defending her originality in the press, but as she is perhaps the youngest person ever charged with trusting to her memory for her jokes, I venture to offer this defence of her conduct. THE Scottish angler has begun to find out that there is something in the low English cunning of the dry fly. Lately, on the Tummell, I and a northern angler saw some fish rising to a fly not unlike a "Greenwell's Glory." At the usual Scotch three wet flies on one cast they never glanced. The present writer, therefore, by precept much more than example, taught his Caledonian friend the trick, and he promptly cleared that pool of rising trout. They scarcely reached an average of three-quarters of a pound, but they looked much bigger when rising "heads and tails" at the fly. This April has been a very late season in the North. Snow shone low down on all the hills; if ever there was any wind it was an inconstant and freezing puff from the north-east. The big trout in Loch Tummell lay low, and no five-pounders, nor even three. Pounders, perhaps, would look at the fly. When the loch was absolutely still, when the sun shone, and the fly came out, the monsters began to move, showing their broad backs and greedy snouts. Perhaps it is possible to take Loch Tummell trout with the dry fly, but it is, of course, infinitely more difficult than in a river, owing to the absence of current. Any master who can do this trick would have rare sport on Loch Tummell. The loch is proverbially "dour ; " you whip, and whip, and, in a frozen April, never see a fin. In fact, you might as well be salmon-fishing. The prizes are great, but they seldom come to hand. 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. MY LADY'S SONG. SING again, oh, lady mine, Blowing willows bend and sigh, Through the pines sweep sea-tones soft, Ah! repeat the music's tale, Breathe in thought immortal breath; In the generous creeds of youth, And a dream of splendor bring- Macmillan's Magazine. JOSEPH TRUMAN. And the gate of Eden is shut; and I stand And see the angel with flaming sword Life's pitiless Lord And I know I never may pass Alas! alas! Oh Rose! my rose! I never may reach the place where she grows. E. NESBIT. Fron Macmillan's Magazine. THE RISE OF BRITISH DOMINION IN INDIA.* BY SIR ALFRED LYALL. IN undertaking to address you on the rise of the British dominion in India, I assume that the principal incidents and transactions of Anglo-Indian history are fairly well known. I shall endeavor to set before you broadly, and as briefly as possible, the general causes, the principal lines and conjunctures of events, which have combined to bring about such a remarkable climax as the establishment of a first-class European power in southern Asia, and the union of two hundred and seventy millions of Asiatics in fellow citizenship with ourselves under the sovereignty of the English crown. ing down the barriers which have hitherto divided the East from the West, as to found a colossal dominion in the heart of both continents. But with the Roman, Russian, and all other historical empires the mass of their territory has been annexed by advancing step after step along the land from the central starting point, making one foothold sure before another was taken, firmly placing one arch of the viaduct before another was thrown out, allowing no interruption of territorial coherence from the centre to the circumference. This was not so in the case of the Indian Empire. During the time when the English were establishing their predominance in India, and long afterwards, England was separated from India by thousands of miles of sea- the Atlantic and Indian Oceans lay between. The government of the English in India presents, I believe, a unique instance of the dominion over an immense alien people in a distant country having been acquired entirely by gradual expansion from a base on the sea. I venture to affirm at the beginning that the relations between India and England constitute a political situation unprecedented in the world's history. The two countries are far distant from each other, in different continents; they present the strongest contrasts of race and religion. I know no previous example of the ac- The predisposing conditions, the curquisition and successful government of rents prevailing in the political latitudes such a dependency, so immense in extent of Europe and Asia, that first opened to and population, at such a distance from England the way to India and set us on to the central power. A State that is dis- this great enterprise, may be traced down tinctly superior to its neighbors in the arts to the sixteenth century. That century is of war and government has often expanded taken by Erskine, in his "History of Ininto a great empire. In Europe the Ro- dia under the two first Mogul Emperors," mans once united under an extensive as the period during which the kingdoms dominion and still wider ascendency a of Europe settled down into their national number of subject provinces, client king-form, and he says that something of the doms, protected allies, races, and tribes, by a system of conquest and an administrative organization that anticipated in many salient features our methods of governing India. But the Roman dominions were compact and well knit together by communications. The Romans were masters of the whole Mediterranean littoral, and their capital, whether at Rome or Constantinople, held a central and commanding position. Then at the present time we see Russia holding down northern Europe with one foot, and central Asia with the other. She is the first power that has succeeded so completely in throw-idated under Shah Ismael, and the perma A lecture delivered at Oxford. same kind took place about the same time in Asia. This generalization can only be accepted, for either continent, in very rough and loose outline. It may be admitted, however, that in Asia the great internal commotions, the swarmings of tribes under such leaders as Jenghis Khan or Tamerlane, the overthrowing of dynasties, and the vast territorial conquests, ceased in the early part of the seventeenth century. For it was then that the Mogul Empire was established in India by the brilliant expedition of the Emperor Båber, that the kingdom of Persia was consol nent boundaries of the Ottoman dominions in Asia fixed to some extent by the taking |