grows out of its predecessors as inevitably as real events grow, and brings about its natural results, in the fulness of time, such as we anticipate will be brought about. But we will quote one of its most salient and beautiful passages to show that the genius which created Mary Barton and Ruth, Margaret Hale and Mr. Thornton, Cousin Phillis and Sylvia Robson, had lost none of its fire, none of its force when its work was suddenly arrested by death.

Roger Hamley is going away to Africa on a scientific mission, and coming to bid the doctor's family good-bye, he cannot resist the temptation to tell Cynthia he loves her, and the following scene ensues between the fortunate coquette and poor Mol

"Molly saw him turn round and shade his eyes from the level rays of the westering sun, and rake the house with his glances in hopes, she knew, of catching one more glimpse of Cynthia. But apparently he saw no one, not even Molly at the attic casement; for she had drawn shadow; for she had no right to put herself forback when he had turned, and kept herself in ward as the one to watch and yearn for farewell signs. None came- another moment - he was out of sight for years.

There are characters in this book as dif-1 days and weeks and months and years as ficult to portray as ever novelist attempted, our lives progress; it is not rounded into and Mrs. Gaskell's success in portraying any completeness of plot, though each event them is as great as ever novelist achieved. We have no wish either to add or to diminish they are perfect in their strength and in their weakness-people whom we know and think of as if they were our personal acquaintances. We love Molly, and are satisfied that she and Roger Hamley were born for each other; we have not the heart to be angry with Cynthia-nay, we sympathize in her prejudice against a husband who would keep her always on moral tiptoes, straining to be more purely good than complex nature meant her to be. Mrs. Gibson is odious in her selfishness and double-facedness, but the character rings true to life from first to last. Indeed, all the women are natural, from the rigid old countess, her sensible daughter Lady Cux-ly as soon as he has left the house. haven and her brusque daughter Lady Harriet, to poor, suffering Mrs. Hamley, and the group of village gossips, Mrs. Goodenough, Mrs. Daws, the Misses Browning, and their neighbours. And if the women are excellent, the men are no less admirable. We do not know that it has ever been charged on Mrs. Gaskell that she drew her characters from the life, but they are all so distinctly individualized that a real model might have sat for each portrait. And there is a complete gallery of them to study. Mr Gibson, the country doctor, shrewd, sarcastic, disappointed in his frivolous wife, is good, but better are Squire Hamley, the Tory of old lineage, and his despised neighbour, the Whig Earl of Cumnor, whose family dates no higher in county annals than Queen Anne's days; and best of all are the brothers Osborne and Roger Ham- Certainly," said Molly, longing to say ley, so dissimilar yet so clearly akin; the "No" all the time. Molly did not turn to elder, like his mother, beautiful, poetical, meet her, so Cynthia came up behind her, and with a strain of his father's wilfulness; the putting her two hands round Molly's waist, younger, strong-featured and rugged like the peeped over her shoulder, pouting out her lips Squire, laborious, most generous and tender, to be kissed. Molly could not resist the action fulfilling all the hopes that Osborne had dis- moment before she had caught the reflection of - the mute entreaty for a caress. But in the appointed, bearing his own grievances like a the two faces in the glass; her own, red-eyed, man. Mr. Preston is well painted too, inso- pale, with lips dyed with blackberry juice, her lent, handsome, boastful, redeemed by a vein curls tangled, her bonnet pulled awry, her gown of honest passion; and for 'lad-love' red-torn- and contrasted it with Cynthia's brightheaded Mr. Coxe, who begins with a desperate caprice for Molly, and after two years of absence and fidelity, forgets her in a week under the fire of Cynthia's charms,

is without a rival.

'She shut the window softly, and shivered all over. She left the attic and went to her own room; but she did not begin to take off her outof-door things till she heard Cynthia's foot on the stairs. Then she hastily went to the toiletbut they were in a knot, and took time to undo. table and began to untie her bonnet-strings; Cynthia's step stopped at Molly's door, she opened it a little and said, May I come in, Molly?"

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ness and bloom, and the trim elegance of her dress. "Oh' it is no wonder!" thought poor Molly, as she turned round, and put out her instant on her shoulder- the weary aching arms round Cynthia, and laid her head for an We shall not endeavour to give any out-preme moment! The next she had raised herhead that sought a loving pillow in that suline of this every-day story, for the merit of self, and had taken Cynthia's two hands, and it is that it carries out its name - it is a story was holding her off a little the better to read her of such simple loves and doings and sacri- face. fices as we see around us; it progresses by

"Cynthia, you do love him dearly, don't you?"

'Cynthia winced a little aside from the pene- | ant it would have been. I remember at Boutrating steadiness of those eyes.

"You speak with all the solemnity of an adjuration, Molly," said she laughing a little at first to cover her nervousness, and then looking up at Molly. "Don't you think I've given a proof of it? But you know I've often told you I've not the gift of loving; I said pretty much the same thing to him. I can respect, and I can admire, and I can like, but I never feel carried off my feet by love for any one, not even for you, little Molly, and I am sure I love you

more than

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No, don't!" said Molly, putting her hand before Cynthia's mouth, in almost a passion of impatience. "Don't, don't I won't hear you -I ought not to have asked you — it makes you tell lies

Why Molly!" said Cynthia, in her turn seeking to read Molly s face, "what s the matter with you? One might think you cared for him yourself."

"I?" said Molly, all the blood rushing to her heart suddenly; then it returned and she had courage to speak, and she spoke the truth as she believed it, though not the real actual truth. "I do care for him; I think you have won the love of a prince amongst men. Why, I am proud to remember that he has been to me as a brother, and I love him as a sister, and I love you doubly because he has honoured you with his love."

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"" said

logne" (another blackberry) "how I used to envy the English who were going to Paris; it seemed to me then, as if nobody stopped at Boulogne but dull, stupid school-girls.'

"When will he be there?" asked Molly. "On Wednesday, he said. I am to write to him there; at any rate he is going to write to me." 'Molly went about the adjustment of her dress in a quiet, business-like manner, not speaking much; Cynthia, although sitting still, seemed very restless. Oh! how much Molly wished she would go.

Perhaps, after all," said Cynthia, after a pause of apparent meditation, "we shall never be married."

Why do you say that?" said Molly, almost bitterly. "You have nothing to make you think so. I wonder how you can bear to think you won't, even for a moment."

Oh!" said Cynthia, "you must not go and take me au grand serieux. I dare say I don't mean what I say, but you see everything seems a dream at present. Still, I think the chances are equal-the chances for and against our marriage, I mean. Two years! it's a long time; he may change his mind, or I may; or some one else may turn up and I may get engaged to him; what should you think of that, Molly? I'm putting such a gloomy thing as death quite on one side, you see; yet in two years how much may happen?"

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Come, thats not complimentary! "Don't talk so, Čynthia; pleased on't," said Cynthia, laughing, but not ill-pleased to hear Molly, piteously. One would think you did her lover s praises, and even willing to depre- not care for him, and he cares so much for you." ciate him a little in order to hear more. "He s Why, did I say I did not care for him? I well enough, I dare say, and a great deal too was only calculating chances. I am sure I learned and clever for a stupid girl like me; hope nothing will happen to prevent the marbut even you must acknowledge he is very plain riage. Only, you know it may, and I thought and awkward; and I like pretty things and I was taking a step in wisdom, in looking forpretty people,' ward to all the evils that might befall. I am sure all the wise people I have ever known thought it a virtue to have gloomy prognostics of the future. But you're not in a mood for wisdom or virtue, I see; so I'll go and get ready for dinner, and leave you to your vanities of dress."

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Cynthia, I won't talk to you about him. You know you don't mean what you are saying, and you only say it out of contradiction, because I praise him. He shan't be run down by you, even in joke.

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Well, then, we won't talk of him at all. I was so surprised when he began to speak so ;" and Cynthia looked very lovely, blushing and dimpling up as she remembered his words and looks. Suddenly she recalled herself to the present time, and her eye caught on the leaf full of blackberries- the broad green leaf so fresh and crisp when Molly had gathered it an hour or so ago, but now soft and flabby and dying. Molly saw it too, and felt a strange kind of sympathetic pity for the poor inanimate leaf.

Oh! what blackberries! you've gathered them for me, I know," said Cynthia, sitting down and beginning to feed herself daintily, touching them lightly with the tips of her fingers, and dropping each ripe berry into her

open mouth. When she had eaten above half

she stopped suddenly short.

"How I should like to have gone as far as Paris with him," she exclaimed. "I suppose it would not have been proper; but how pleas

'She took Molly's face in both her hands, before Molly was aware of her intention, and kissed it playfully. Then she left Molly to herself.'

trasted the characters of the two heroines This scene, in which are so finely conof the story, must serve as an ensample for the whole, which is, indeed, too fresh in popular remembrance and favour to need a lengthened commendation. It makes us keenly regret that the world will have no more amusement, no more wise instruction from the same masterly pen. Mrs. Gaskell leaves a place vacant in the literary world, as Thackeray left a place vacant the year before her - as all men and women of genius and power like theirs, do leave vacant places which never seem to find quite adequate successors.

From the Spect tor, 30 March.
THE EUROPEAN POSITION.

strengthened by Sadowa, had been weakened by that great victory; that seventy millions had shrunk to thirty; that the Confederation, formally one, had been divided into three branches-Austria, the Southern States, and Germany North of the Main. Either fearful of the effect of these statements in Germany, which is sensitive on the subject of dismemberment, or enraged at M. Rouher's assumption that a word from France had checked the Prussian career, or embarrassed by the disposition exhibited in the North German Parliament to mould public policy in order to attract into Germany States already secured, M. Bismarck immediately on M. Rouher's speech caused the treaties to be published in the Gazette, informed France and the world, as it were officially, that despite all external opposition the unity of the Fatherland had been already secured. Bavaria existed and Baden, the King of Wurtemburg was no tributary and the Grand Duke of Hesse no dependent, but the Hohenzollern was nevertheless master for war of the whole German race. The treaties create an alliance at once offensive and defensive, but even if they did not the result would still be the same. While Prussia marches to battle, the Southern Army, 150,000 strong, will remain in garrison, and Germany is as unsafe to attack as if her entire population obeyed a single ruler and were represented in a single parliament.

EVERY grown man in Germany outside Austria competent to bear arms is to become a drilled soldier. The King of Prussia is ex officio Commander-in-chief of all such soldiers. That is the substance of the Treaties between Prussia, Bavaria, Wurtemburg, and Baden which have this week created such excitement in Paris and throughout France. It appears that immediately after the agreement of Nikolsburg which followed the battle of Sadowa, the Southern States began to tremble for their existence. Deserted by Austria and menaced by France, with Prussia threatening their capitals and their own subjects half inclined to summon the friendly invader, unwilling to be excluded from Germany and apprehensive for their dynastic position, the petty Kings turned to an alliance with Prussia as their only hope, and in the last weeks of August signed secret treaties with their great opponent placing their armies in time of war at his absolute disposal. It was understood also, though not provided by treaty, that these armies should be organized for the future upon the Prussian system, and a Bill with that end has, we believe, been introduced into the Bavarian Parliament. In return the King of Prussia guaranteed their possessions from every enemy except himself, a guarantee invalu- The blow is a most serious one, alike for able to Bavaria, whose Palatinate lies France and for M. Rouher. The latter inacross the Rhine and within the grip of deed is unmistakably checkmated. If he France; but not so valuable to Wurtem- had heard of the Treaties, which is most burg, whose dominions are absolutely encir- probable, he based his whole argument upcled by German populations. To avoid on an assumption which he knew to be unexciting still further the susceptibilities of founded, and may be taunted at any moFrance these treaties were kept quiet, so ment with a rhetorical victory won at the quiet that Count von Bismarck actually expense of concealing a truth essential to allowed all Germany to lament its division the debate. If he was not aware of the by the Main without hinting that he had treaties, he must admit that in diplomacy, already secured a union indefinitely stronger as in war, his master is no fitting match for than that of the old Confederation. Ger- the audacious Prussian squire who has dared many outside Austria had become for mili- on French frontiers to make a nation withtary purposes one great State, under an out the permission of France. Frenchmen organization which sends every able-bodied of course, are not responsible either for Naman when needful into the field. These poleon's diplomatic defeats or M. Rouher's treaties were known to the Austrian Gov- parliamentary apologies, but they will feel ernment immediately after their completion, most bitterly the changed position of and it is difficult to believe that they were France. The unity of Germany does more not also known to the Emperor Napoleon, than threaten her military ascendancy in to whom it was Austria's clear interest that they should be at once revealed. Whether they were or were not, the Emperor permitted M. Rouher in the debate on the interpellation put forward by M. Theirs to assert that Germany, so far from being

the world. It reduces her to the English position to a positive inability to move on the Continent until she has first secured an ally. Whatever the question at issue, in the East or in the West, at Constantinople or at the Hague, the opposition of Prus

sia will suffice to reduce her to one of two | fears- a Government Bill, for instance, alternatives a galling quiescence, or a which sends every able-bodied Frenchman war in which defeat might involve an al- into the ranks, a studious abstinence of the teration of frontier. France, no doubt, is Moniteur from any allusion to the treaties a great nation, and the French are a milita- with the South. If Napoleon be not alarmed, ry people; the fortune of war is uncertain, why does he risk his popularity with peasand a great General is worth, as Wellington ants? If he is not indignant, why does he said of Napoleon, an extra fifty thousand silence the Moniteur, usually so careful to men. But judging on the rules by which reprint all official news? soldiers and statesmen usually judge, it is The higher the popular estimate of the by no means clear that France must win in Emperor's sagacity, the deeper will be the a conflict with Germany, by no means cer- apprehensions of all who believe in him, till tain that she might not sustain a defeat they feel at last as if they, Frenchmen, the which would compel her to surrender Al- race of all others proudest of its military sace or Lorraine, a defeat which, even if fame, were refusing a challenge, are half inshe surrendered nothing, would unseat the clined, like the peasants of Turuy, to prodynasty. A war with a power organized pose a levee en masse to defend the soil. for battle as Germany now is with an army That is not a healthy condition of mind for of at least three-quarters of a million, and a great military people, and least of all for an armed population behind her of forty a great military people ruled by a dynasty millions, is an enterprise which no people to which success is as the breath of life. It not alarmed for its existence or wounded in will make war easy on the first occasion, its honour would be willing to undertake. and there are occasions in plenty. WithFrenchmen must surrender all hope of their out believing all the rumours which now "natural boundary," the frontier of the load the air of every Continental capital, it Rhine, all expectation of obtaining Belgium may, we think, be taken for granted that except with Prussian consent, all claim to Napoleon and Bismarck are at this moment decide alone on the future distribution of engaged in a diplomatic war for the possesthe Sultan's dominions. Those hopes and sion of Luxemburg. The King of Holland, expectations and claims may all be unrea- to whom the Duchy belongs, is willing, it is sonable, or absurd, or selfish, but they are said, to sell his rights, and the Dutch, who entertained by Frenchmen, were avowed dread entanglements with Germany, are by a man so moderate as De Tocqueville, willing that it should be sold. The only are cherished by the rank and file of France difficulty in the way is Prussia, which garrias Americans cherish their hope of ruling sons the fortress, which regards it as an outAmerica from the Isthmus to the Pole. work of Germany, which dare not surrenThere are signs abroad that Frenchmen der one inch of strictly German soil, and are beginning to hate Prussia as they once which hopes, and from the necessity of its hated England, and their hatred is by no geographical position will always continue means wholly devoid of fear. Strange as to hope, that Holland may one day be it seems to Englishmen, Frenchmen attracted within the Germanic circle. To have never forgotten 1815, never quite rid seat a united Germany upon the Atlantic themselves of the belief that an invasion is a dream no German will willingly resign, from the North, a successful invasion, is not and the Prussian King, though of course beyond the limits of possibility. They lis- officially most desirous of peace, may object tened to rumours about the absorption of very strenuously to surrender Luxemburg. Holland, the annexation of German Swit- Napoleon cannot bear to be always baffled; zerland, an offensive and defensive alliance the American complication is over; the between Berlin and St. Petersburg, an French are in the dangerous mood which agreement between Von Bismarck and the idea that their influence is waning Ricasoli, till they begin to feel as men felt always inspires; England is paralyzed by when the First Bonaparte was on the internal dissensions, and indisposed in any throne, as if nothing were too horrible to be beyond their enemy's dreams. Accounts of plans drawn up by Baron von Moltke for the invasion of France are greedily received, and photographs of M. Thiers, who denounces Germany as a danger, are demanded in such numbers that even Parisian photographers are overworked. They see, too, some substantial evidence for their

event to interfere with France; Germany is exalted till it will bear no menace; the East is stirring and heaving with excitement; all things point to that greatest of earthly calamities- a general European war. We have still three months, for Napoleon must give the signal, and the Exhibition does not close till August; but if he lives, and "the unforeseen does not arrive,"

Germany will yet be welded into a harder unity by blows from the outside. Already the mere rumour of menace is doing Count von Bismarck's work, the Federal draft is passing as rapidly as if the North German Parliament were filled with soldiers, and, when it is proclaimed, the King of Prussia is Emperor of Germany, with a military Dictatorship for three years. And we wonder that on all Bourses there are uneasiness and hesitation!

From the N. Y. Evening Post, April 11. THE NOMADIC NEGROES OF THE SOUTH.

and the Auditor, in his report estimates it at full two hundred thousand. The increased mortality, presumed to result from the war, from the neglect of the aged negroes, from insufficiency of food in some sections, and from epidemic diseases, fails to account for so large a diminution in the number of negroes. The nearness to the federal lines during the war opened loop-holes for thousands of them to slip through to Washington and to the North, but the real exodus has taken place since the war closed. With the removal of all restraint the negroes have wandered at will, sometimes towards the cities, but generally southwards. Late statistics show that in some counties in Virginia the number of laborers have been reduced full one-half, and throughout the state the negroes have noticeably thinned out. No figures are given in Kentucky to show the extent of the exodus from that state, but there is a general complaint of the loss of labor, and the local journals say that all the best field-hands are going to the southern cotton grounds.

From states south of Kentucky and Virginia the negro movement is still southward. Within a year the two Carolinas are estimated to have lost from one-fourth to one

IN the very general interest that attaches to the enfranchisement of the freedmen by the Reconstruction act the public, north and south, has almost lost sight of the important fact that thousands of the negroes will be unable, at present, to avail themselves of the advantage offered to vote for delegates to the state conventions to frame the constitutions which are subsequently to be sub-third of their negro population, though the mitted to Congress for approval. The law provides that the delegates shall be elected by the male citizens of the state, twentyone years old and upward, of whatever race, color or previous condition," who have been resident in said state for one year previous to the day of such election." The present remarkable and general migration of freedmen from the border and other states to the extreme south and southwest, and especially of the very class of negroes who would be voters will disqualify these nomads, for want of the requisite residence, from taking part in the formation of the conventions, or in other words, in the primary and important step in the scheme of reconstruction that the law itself evidently intends. We have not seen this really important point made known in any journal, north or south, nor do we propose to press it now; but rather to show the extent of and reasons for this remarkable migration of the freed

men.

The border states, Virginia and Kentucky, were naturally the first to suffer from this southward movement. There has been, of course, no census in Virginia since the last decennial returns in 1860; but the returns from the Commissioners of Revenue to the State Auditor show a remarkable decrease in the colored population within six years,

Charleston News thinks that only twentyfive thousand field-hands have gone from South Carolina, and these went, it says, to Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Texas, and Florida. Still further south, the Macon Telegraph is confident that Georgia has lost one-third of her negroes, and that the loss of North Carolina and South Carolina is still greater. The Augusta Constitutionalist says, "if a correct census should be taken of the negro population of Georgia, a startling exhibit of decrease would be manifest," and that "one of the chief causes of this decrease is migration to the south and southwest." Even in Alabama, which would seem, at least in summer, about as far south as the most aspiring or perspiring colored laborer would desire to go, there is a marked scarcity of labor, which the Selma Times explains by stating that the depletion is due to the agents who are everywhere " offering extraordinary inducements to the negroes to go to Mississippi, Louisiana. and Texas."

Naturally enough this extraordinary tidal flow of freedmen to the far South must ebb somewhere, and there is now a strong setting back from Texas to other states. At the beginning of the war the population of Texas was between 600,000 and 700,000; the best local estimates now make it at least