as black as a coalporter. In an election | aration from his wife, the matter was a for the borough of Tallagh, outside Dub- subject of much after-dinner comment. lin, Egan was an unsuccessful candidate. Curran's opinion was once appealed to. He appealed, and the matter came before "I protest," said he, "I do not undera committee of the House of Commons. stand this kind of whimpering. Here is a It was in the heat of a summer afternoon man who first weeps over his wife, and that Egan was seen struggling through the then wipes his eyes with the public." crowd in a profuse perspiration, and mop- Walking with a friend one day he met an ping his face in a huge red handkerchief. Irish gentleman who had preserved his "I am sorry for you," said Curran, "very native brogue in a manner creditable to sorry indeed." "Sorry! Why so, Jack, his patriotism after many years' sojourn in why so? I am perfectly at my ease." England. He had acquired a singular "Alas, Egan, it is evident to every one habit of lolling out his tongue as he walked that looks at you that you are losing tal along. "What does he mean by it?" low (Tallagh) fast." said the friend. "Why, clearly," said Curran, "the man is trying to catch the English accent." When informed that a dirty and stingy barrister of his acquaintance went on a journey with a shirt and a guinea, the comment was, "He will not change either till he comes back."

The friendship that existed between the two for many years was interrupted by a quarrel so bitter that a duel was the consequence. They met on the Fifteen Acres, and on the ground Egan complained that the disparity in size gave his adversary an unfair advantage.

"I might as well shoot at a midge as at him," said Egan, "and he may hit me as easily as a turf stack." "I tell you what, Mr. Egan," said Curran, pistol in hand; "I wish to take no advantage of you whatsoever. Let my size be chalked out upon your side, and every shot which goes outside of that mark may count for nothing." The contest after that was not a deadly one, and though they fired, neither was hit and a reconciliation followed.

After Curran's elevation to the bench as master of the rolls, a gloom seems to have fallen upon his spirits. He disliked his position, for which he felt himself unqualified. As he said, "When the party with which I had acted so fairly had after long proscription come at last to their natural place, I did not expect to have been stuck into a window, a spectator of the procession." He was bitterly opposed to the Union, though after it had taken place he would not take part in an agita. tion for its repeal. He was one day, after the final debate, setting his watch at the post-office, then opposite the Parliament House, when a noble member who voted in the majority said to him, with ill-timed jocularity, "Curran, what do they mean to do with that useless building? For my part, I am sure I hate even the sight of it." "I don't wonder at it, my lord," was the reply, I never yet heard of a murderer that was not afraid of a ghost."

Sir Thomas Thurton, who was a fair speaker, on one occasion discussing the subject of eloquence with Curran, assumed an equality which Curran was not willing to concede. He happened to mention a peculiarity of Curran's, that he was not able to speak without requiring some. thing to moisten his lips, stating that he had the advantage of Curran in that respect. "I spoke," said he, "the other night in the House of Commons for five hours, on the nabob of Oude, and never felt in the least thirsty." "Very remark. able," replied Curran, "for every one agrees that that was the driest speech of the session."

Curran's wit was essentially Irish. He left no successor, and has no modern representative. Irish wit has departed. No one can accuse Mr. Parnell or his followers of ever having made any man laugh, though they have caused many to weep. If we want the genuine wit, racy of the Irish sod, we must look to the past.

One more anecdote and we conclude. Lord Erskine and Curran met at dinner at Carlton House. The royal host di rected the conversation to the profession of the guests. Lord Erskine took the lead. "No man in the land," said he "need be ashamed of belonging to the legal profession. For my part, of a noble family myself, I feel no degradation in practising it it has added not only to my wealth but to my dignity." Curran was silent, which the host observing called for He held the post of master of the rolls his opinion. "Lord Erskine," said he, for about six years, and after his retire. "has so eloquently described all the adment passed a good deal of his time in vantages to be derived from his profesEngland. When Lord Byron published sion, that I hardly thought my opinion his sentimental "Farewell" after his sep-worth adding. But perhaps it was — per.

haps I am a better practical instance of its advantages than his lordship. He was ennobled by birth before he came to it, but it has," bowing to the host, "in my person raised the son of a peasant to the table of his prince."

From The Pall Mall Gazette.
THIBET AND ITS TRADE.

A WELL-INFORMED correspondent sends us the following account of one of the new markets in the East:

Mr. Colman Macaulay, an Indian official of much experience on the northern frontier, has recently been despatched by the viceroy to Pekin to endeavor to obtain the permission of the Chinese government to open trade between India and Thibet. Last year Mr. Macaulay travelled to the Thibetan frontier, and there held communication with the lama, or ruler of the country. The letters written by the latter were satisfactory so far as they went. Their substance was that the Thibetans were willing and anxious to trade directly with the Indian merchants, and to permit the latter to reside in the country for that purpose; but they were, the lama said, subject to China, and could take no step of this importance without the consent of their suzerain. There is the best reason for believing that Mr. Macaulay's mission to obtain the consent of the Chinese will be attended with complete success, owing to many circumstances to which it is needless to refer at present, beyond observing that the principal one is the belief of the Chinese that England has no political aims in seeking this trade, and that, politically, it would be a wise step for the Chinese themselves.

attempts to open trade with Thibet the most interesting was the first, undertaken by Bogle, an official in the service of the East India Company, in 1774, by orders of Warren Hastings. No one who reads Mr. Markham's book on the journeys of Bogle and Manning can doubt for a moment that had Hastings remained in India, and not been compelled to come home to meet Burke's charges against him, he would have succeeded in establishing trade across the frontiers on a firm and enduring basis more than a hundred years ago; and when we read the instructions which he gave to Bogle, the minutes and memoranda which he drew up with his own hand for his emissary's guidance, we cannot sufficiently admire the breadth of view, the mastery of details, the care with which every contingency is provided for, and the wide reading on the unknown and mysterious Thibet, displayed by the great governor-general. But, very briefly, the circumstances were these. The ruler of Bhutan, a state lying between Thibet and India, had been punished by Hastings for his incursions on the Company's territory. After the expedition in 1774, Hastings, at Calcutta, received a letter from the Teshu lama, interceding for the delinquent, which is as dignified and at the same time pathetic a document as it is possible to conceive. The lama freely acknowledged that the rajah of Bhutan richly deserved punishment for the ravages and plunder which he had committed in Bengal and Behar, because he was rude, ignorant, and avaricious. But Bhutan was dependent on Thibet, and if further hostilities were carried on the Thibetans would feel annoyed. Moreover, as the punishment had already been ample the lama requested Hastings now to leave the Bhutanese alone, for they could not offend again. Thibet has long been the region of mys. "As to my part," continued the lama, "I tery and romance. Only one English trav- am but a fakir, and it is the custom of eller, Manning in 1811, has ever reached my sect, with the rosary in our hands, to Lhasa, the capital. For twenty-five years pray for the welfare of mankind, and for past English travellers have endeavored the peace and happiness of the inhabitants to reach the country from China, but they of this country; and I do now, with my were stopped sooner or later by the Chi- head uncovered, entreat that you may nese. Captain Blakiston commenced in cease all hostilities against the Deb in 1860, but was forced to retreat just as he future." He acknowledged that if the was about to leave the Yangtsze at Ping- English did not like to grant his request shan; Cooper, in 1869, made his wonder- he could not compel them, for he had no ful journey "in pigtail and petticoats," troops, being only a poor priest. Hast and actually reached Bathang and Atenze, ings was not the man to miss an oppor in eastern Thibet, but, after enduring tunity like this, and he immediately degreat hardships, he too was forced to re-spatched Bogle to acquaint the lama that turn, and a few years later Captain Gill hostilities against Bhutan had ceased, and failed in the attempt described in his at the same time to ask for a treaty "River of the Golden Sand." But of all friendship and peace.

of

ure than we read the speech, publishers | done, and more shame is felt at not work. being still able to remember, what news- ing; but the extent of unoccupied time for paper proprietors are forced to forget, that all but the overworked has not seriously clear type and good paper help readers to diminished. Indeed, it has slightly inenjoy. The material badness of English creased, for it is the fashion of our day newspapers and the material goodness of for workers to work hard and intently, to English books are becoming phenomenal put their hearts into it, and to compel simultaneously, and we expect before long themselves to do in limited slices of each to see nothing but editions of books on day all that they formerly did through hand-made paper, and editions of journals their much longer days. The lawyer of in smudged type on half-bleached mixtures to-day works from ten, perhaps, till four; of rag and straw. But in reading Lord but he does in those six hours of strenuIddesleigh's speech again, though the ap- ous attention all that the lawyer of seventy preciative laughter came as often as ever, years ago, who worked at home, and never we grew conscious of an omission that left wholly off, did in sixteen hours of his had escaped us when it appeared origi- easy-going, interrupted, talk-broken toil. nally as a report in the Times. Lord Formerly, it was the estate-owners and Iddesleigh is no pedant; rather he is a the retired merchants who possessed and thoughtful humorist of a past-away type, grew weary of unfilled leisure; but now who could, if time and inclination were the workers have it also, and grow wearier granted, give the world another" Anatomy still, because of the contrast between the of Melancholy," or rival at no far distance vigorous life of their occupied hours, deMontaigne's essays; but he has for once, veloped as that life is into a passion of we suspect, succumbed to what ought to hurry, and the comparative lethargy of the be known as "the idol of the class-room." hours left upon their hands. There are He has feared to injure the tender minds whole classes now, not only of the leisured, of the young. Speaking to undergradu- but of those who work for their incomes, ates, he has feared, even though they were who have hours in the week to spare, and Scotchmen certain not to yield to the fas- who, if sedentary men, and ungifted with cination of idleness, to tell them what he that singular capacity for dawdling which must have felt, or we misunderstand his protects some able workers, find in their inner drift, that one grand charm of "spare time " to some men such a luxdesultory reading is that it is a delectable, a beneficial, even, if such a thing can exist under the modern conception of the laws of the universe, a virtuous waste of time. Reading without a purpose except read ing, without a hope of learning much or benefiting much in any way, kills hours which otherwise would hang heavy on hand, and which in their heaviness would produce, or at least develop, both the disposition and the opportunities for mischief. It is idleness which injures; and to prevent idleness, many men, mostly industrious men, must nowadays kill time.

We dare say that opinion, stated so barely, will produce an outcry among the best of our readers, or even a charge that we are teaching men to idle; but let us look, as the world round us is just now only too ferociously active, and Prince Bismarck, and Mr. Parnell, and express trains, and the devil are all in full movement, for one moment into the facts. Is it true that the old disease, the heaviness of time of which our grandfathers used to complain so bitterly, and on which littérateurs expended so much melodious melancholy, has entirely disappeared? We question it greatly. There are more opportunities of doing work, and more work is

ury! - an unconquerable source of disgust, and of that melancholy which, with all our new activities, does not disappear or decrease. If such a worker is not sedentary, of course, cadit quæstio. Nature, for man at least, is limitless; and to him who finds ever fresh enjoyment in riding, or walking, or sport, or any outdoor pursuit whatever, from geology down to amateur gardening, there are few heavy hours. Happy he, even if he does not get on, to whom the open air is always de lightful, and who can turn from a desk to a green field with a sense that his grand, instinctive appetite has been but whetted by all the hours of denial. Happy, too, the man with an outdoor hobby, if it is only growing pansies. The dawdler, too, is not unhappy or altogether so ignoble as it is the custom in copy-books to assume. We knew a barrister once, a man of quite singular intellect and capacity, who passed a third of his time in unusually severe work - it included, of necessity, much close and continuous reading - slept through another third, and deliberately, of set purpose, dawdled away the remainder, as the only method of recuperation that with him succeeded. That is to say, he wilfully performed the ordinary operations

line from his appetizing lecture, and have admitted formally that idleness is often recuperative, and that to the sedentary no idleness is so recuperative as desultory reading.

From St. James's Gazette.

of life-dressing, eating, strolling, and recreation is about as good as another, chatting so slowly, that they covered or and the only objection to desultory readconsumed the whole of his unoccupied ing is its unsociability. It is a little too fastime. Yet there was no harder worker, cinating for the comfort of wife, or friend, for eight hours, in the country, and no one or child who wants to talk; but then there less likely to mistake the best method of is compensation even for that. Nobody keeping his powers — reduced, we should talks of so many things with such interest add, by pain-at their fullest capacity. and such a fund of stimulating, if slightly But if a man, as is the most frequent case inaccurate and ill-digested knowledge, as with intellectual industrials, is brisk yet the desultory reader, more especially if sedentary by habit and inclination, and there is any dominant thread in his mind can neither dawdle through time nor fill it upon which he can string his acquisitions with open-air enjoyments, what is so good as they come in. Nine-tenths of the a resource as desultory reading? Chat women who read at all are desultory readrequires conditions not always obtainable, ers; and who, in a wearisome world, can more especially a pleasant chattee. Day talk like the woman who habitually reads, dreaming is to many minds distinctly or who suffers less from that most deadly unwholesome, and to all slightly bewil. foe of happiness, the tired out mind? dering, the imagination once released Lord Iddesleigh, away from his underfrom conditions accepting conditions again graduates, should have struck out one but slowly; while "thinking" is either mental exertion indistinguishable in its effect from work, or a duller kind of day. dreaming Lord Iddesleigh, talking to undergraduates, would probably say that reading, to be a time-killer, need not be desultory; but to middle-aged men he would probably admit that systematic reading is work, and very often the hardest work of all. He would even possibly admit that he himself had not become such a "full" man on a mental diet of A RUSSIAN mining engineer, Mr. F. blue-books. To involve little work and Vasilieff, has recently drawn up a detailed yet be pleasant, reading must be desul- account of the oil-wells of Baku. The tory; and it is for pleasure, and pleasure account, however, is available to but few simply, that so many hard workers take English readers. The Institution of Civil to it, till with a few of them it becomes, Engineers, therefore, has made an abno doubt, a stimulant hardly to be fore-stract in English of this important docugone. They read as drinkers swallow. We do not see, under such circumstances, where the objection to such reading comes in. The books need not be all of fiction, of course we know at least one desul-attracted attention on the score of its tory reader who never opens a novel the single condition being that they should relieve and excite, instead of wearing and depressing the mind. Many minds de light in almost constant reperusal of poetry, many more in sippings of classical | literature, a few in historic research, and thousands in that odd medley of all things embodied in the reviews, magazines, and newspapers of to-day. They do not gain much from any of them, though it is very difficult to read any printed matter what ever, not positively bad, without some gain of some kind; but they obtain recre. ation in a way as unobjectionable and non injurious as any other. A man ought to work at something to the extent of his powers; but that done, one wholesome

ment.

OIL-WELLS OF THE CAUCASUS.

From the most remote antiquity, Mr. Vasilieff says, the peninsula of Absheron, jutting out into the Caspian Sea, has

extraordinary mineral wealth. From the ground in many places, and even from beneath the waters of the Caspian, issue spouts and streams of inflammable gas, rising from subterranean stores of petroleum. Although the vapor is not (like the phosphureted hydrogen of the will-o'-thewisp) spontaneously inflammable, it readily inflames on coming in contact with a light; and dancing islands of fire amid the waves of the Caspian are sometimes seen. A Persian inscription fixes the date of one of the wells sunk for procuring naphtha at the year 1594 A.D.

When the country was taken into the Russian Empire the oil-wells became crown property, and grants of large districts were made from time to time to