work for the day, so that unless the flowers are gathered and kept until the following night nothing can be discovered. Even if this be done, however, disappointment often follows, as many flowers only develop their perfume for an hour or so, and never repeat the operation. Thus it may happen that if we are walking at a particular time a striking perfume may be perceived, and perhaps never again, as time and circumstances may never again combine to bring it to our notice.

- and two hours after nothing but a wreck.

Experience shows that insects do come forward when needed, which brings us to the question whether the flowers have chosen their own time, or whether, as it were, knowing that a particular bee will be on the wing at a certain hour, they accommodate themselves to it. Whatever may be the answer, it can only be gained by a careful study and tabulation of results. Here is grand work for a naturalist in To an ordinary observer it may per- the tropics. Hitherto, hardly any one haps appear as if this opening of the has done more than pay flying visits to flower and distilling of its perfume is South America, and although much has erratic, but such is not the case. The been gleaned from these, it cannot be operations are generally as regular as expected that the close observation the sun, being only interfered with a necessary for establishing the conneclittle by heavy showers. A convolvu- tion between plants and insects could lus will open at dawn, ten in the morning, or four in the afternoon, according to the species, under almost any circumstances; but its closing will generally be delayed a little by cloudy or rainy weather. The marvel-of-Peru is called "four o'clock" by the negroes in British Guiana, from its opening so near that time, while one kind of convolvulus has been named the "Civil Service flower," from its opening from ten till three.

No doubt if careful observations were made it would be found that under favorable circumstances - that is, where there is nothing out of the common every flower has its own time to open and close. In some cases, where the texture is thick, the corollas wither or fall off, and these of course cannot be so easily tabulated; but the time when their work is over can still be estimated without much difficulty. What makes this the more wonderful is the fact that a flower which opens and closes at regular times must receive the visits of the insects necessary for its fertilization within that time, otherwise the object of its very existence would be frustrated. Some flowers are enabled to keep open for several days until fertilization has taken place, but a very large number of tropical species close exactly to time. As you wake the climber is brilliant with flowers a glorious sight

be made. In temperate climates the weather makes great differences in the times of opening and closing of flowers, and, correspondingly, of the excursions of insects. Here, on the contrary, the changes are slight, and consequently there is greater regularity.

This is only one of the problems which await solution. There are many others, some of which are quite as interesting; the most important of all being the question whether plants have a germ of consciousness. Everywhere in the tropical garden are signs of something beyond what is called vegetating. There is the struggle for life, the fight, where the weakest goes to the wall-the taking advantage of others to gain their own ends, and the various contrivances by which insects are attracted and utilized. Selfishness is everywhere so obvious, that it is hardly possible to conceive that these things can be done without a faculty similar to instinct, or even intelligence. Even if in some there is nothing more than a blind impulse towards light and moisture, in others, especially in regard to their fertilization and everything connected with the dispersion of the seed, we can come to hardly any other conclusion than that certain contrivances have been developed to a particular end.

JAMES RODWAY.

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 copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

HER ATTRACTIONS. SHE has no dazzling charms, no classic grace,

Nothing, you think, to win men's hearts
about her;

Yet, looking at her sweet and gentle face,
I wonder what our lives would be without
her!

She has no wish in the great world to shine;
For work outside a woman's sphere, no
yearning;

But on the altar of home's sacred shrine She keeps the fire of pure affection burning.

We tell our griefs into her patient ear;

She whispers "Hope!" when ways are dark and dreary;

The little children like to have her near,

And run into her open arms when weary.

Her step falls lightly by the sufferer's bed;
Where poverty and care abound, she
lingers;

And many a weary heart and aching head
Find gifts of healing in her tender fingers.
She holds a helping hand to those who fall,
Which gently guides them back to paths

of duty;

Her kindly eyes, with kindly looks for all, See in uncomeliest souls some hidden beauty.

Her charity would every need embrace;

The shy and timid fear not to address

her;

With loving tact she rightly fills her place,
While all who know her pray that Heaven
may bless her!
Chambers' Journal.

E. MATHESON.

"THE HARVEST NOW IS GATHERED IN."

HEY, for the wealth of the harvest weather,
When all shall be faithfully garnered in!
For that we have sown we shall surely
gather-

The gold for the goodly, the ruth for sin.
Every season its birthright knoweth-

The seedling planted in vernal spring Through the summer in silence groweth, While callow nestlings find voice and sing.

On we go, by the wayside sowing,

Broadcast sowing with open hand; Ever behind us, springing and growing, "A cloud of witnesses" hide the land.

Ay, but heed we the seed in planting?

Sow we in patience, and till the ground? Ask we, when grown will the seed be wanting

In fulness and soundness, or worthy
found?

Swift in our hearts is the harvest springing,
Side by side grow the wheat and tares,
And ever there cometh an autumn, bring-
ing

Tears and laughter, and joys and cares.

Sow, O friend, as the years speed o'er you,
Sow good seed with an open hand;
Sow; the promise lies clear before you;
You'll reap the fruit in God's Harvest
Land!

Argosy. HELEN MARION BURNSIDE.

LOOKING BEFORE AND AFTER.

ALL is not lost, though much is changed and dimmed,

Though tamed the eager torrent of de

And sobered, dashed, or dead the hopes that rimmed

The morning hills of time with magic fire.

The loyal love that wears not custom's rust,
The faith still firmest found when hard-

The calm, the charity, the judgment just,
That fail not as the years that sadden

The afterglow of youth's pure faded dream,
The holy hush of memory, - these we

keep; Sunset benignly lingers, and life's stream Is rosy as it wanders to the deep. Sweet still earth's air to taste, heaven's light to see,

Still smiles o'er-tost, o'er tranquil main, the moon,

As glad it is in Spring to breathe, to be,

As kind the comfort of the river's tune.

Still gentle robin sings a soft "Goodnight"

From a mimosa-branch above the lawn, Untired the blackbird shouts an anthem bright

Through his lone kingdom of the twilight
dawn.
Spectator.

From Temple Bar.
THE CAMPAIGN OF WATERLOO.

BY W. O'CONNOR MORRIS.

I.

mere shadow of his former self, unable to execute what he had designed, and throws on him the whole blame of the issue. So, too, on the English side, it

It is not surprising that the campaign was long the fashion to assert that not of Waterloo has been the theme of a single mistake can be found in the dozens of volumes, and has given birth combinations of Wellington, and that to the fiercest controversy. Indepen- his superiority as a strategist over his dently of its historical importance, in great adversary does not admit of doubt; finally overthrowing the first French and equally, on the Prussian, it has Empire, and securing to Europe a long been alleged that the chief merit is due peace, this brief, terrible, and decisive to Blücher, and that Waterloo was contest saw the two commanders who, really a Prussian victory. · by general consent, surpassed all others In considering, too, this mighty conin that age of war, matched against flict, there has been a tendency, not each other for the first time; and the unnatural, perhaps, to estimate the utter ruin which overtook Napoleon not conduct of the actors by events, to asonly forms one of the most startling sume that the leaders ought to have episodes in the drama of the revolu- possessed more prescience and insight tionary struggle, but has apparently than belongs to man, and not to make justified those who think that, as a sufficient allowance for the accidents leader of armies, he was below Wel- that interfere with military calculalington. We cannot wonder, therefore, tions; and this false method has been that the incidents of the campaign the cause of numerous fallacies and have been examined with the most misunderstandings. We cannot ex

anxious care, and discussed in the keen-pect, in an attempt to sketch the maių est and fullest manner; and it might events of this momentous campaign, to be supposed that, in our day, a per- be altogether free from these confusing fectly clear and correct judgment might influences, and yet we believe that its be passed on any part of the subject. great features, apart from one or two' Yet, notwithstanding all that has been disputed points, can be ascertained done by enquirers seeking the truth with sufficient accuracy, We are not only, some passages in this remarkable among those who think that Napoleon strife are still confessedly rather ob- was wanting to himself on this occascure, and it requires a very just and sion; on the contrary, his general disdiscerning mind to comprehend Water-positions and views were as admirable loo fairly as a whole. The principal as they ever were, and his execution of reason of this perplexity is that national the plans he laid down was, in some and political passion has disfigured, particulars, grand and masterly. One with more than its wonted license, the history of the four days, which ended on the 18th of June, 1815, and has so shaped and perverted facts that it is difficult to arrive at sound conclusions; and something also must be ascribed to the injudicious comments of many writers who have made the problem more dark and intricate by flippant, shallow, or over-exacting criticism. event. As for the Allied commanders, One class of censors represents Napo- their general arrangements were very leon as absolutely infallible throughout inferior to those of their foe, and their the campaign, and attributes his defeat conduct at the beginning showed the to chance alone, or to the shortcomings want of unity of a coalition, and placed of incapable lieutenants; another de- them for a time in real danger; but scribes him as a worn-out chief, the their subsequent operations, though

great, yet by no means strange error, may, nevertheless, be traced in his movements, and this, aggravated by certain errors of detail, was a principal cause of his discomfiture, though one of his lieutenants was extremely to blame, and though the quality of the army he led, and of more than one of its subordinate chiefs, contributed also to the

not free from hazard, displayed energy | potic instinct, to have recourse to the and constancy of the highest order; levies en masse, and the revolutionary and this combination, completely baf- expedients of 1793; but the enthusiasm fling their antagonist, at last secured of that time had passed, and France them victory. Yet though as soldiers was too exhausted to rise at his voice; Wellington and Blücher perhaps sur- and there is no reason to doubt that, passed Napoleon in 1815, they fell far making allowance for the difference of short of the French emperor in great the situation, his measures of defence manœuvres on the theatre of war; and were more really effective and fruitful if Napoleon succumbed at Waterloo, of results then the noisier efforts of his strategy, apart from a single mis- the regicide Convention. What he take, nevertheless gives proof of his achieved in fact, in a few weeks, seems extraordinary-powers. to us in the highest degree surprising. When he resumed power the whole regular army, numbered only one hundred and ninety thousand men on paper; it was pitiably weak in horses and guns, and had not even the smallest reserve, and thirty thousand men could not have taken the field; while the frontier fortresses were in a state that made them generally all but useless. Before two months and a half had elapsed, this condition of impotence had been wholly changed; and through the exertions of her mighty chief, France again possessed large resources for war, which, in existing circumstances, were not less than wonderful. By the first of June, 1815, the regular army had been reorganized, and increased by more than one hundred thousand men ; and it had been so well furnished with the material of war, and was supported with such powerful reserves, that the emperor calculated he could be able to attack the Allies with one hundred and fifty thousand troops, and to leave a number of detached corps sufficient to defend the frontiers for a time.

On the first of March, 1815, the little flotilla which had borne Napoleon from Elba landed on the shores of Provence. It is not our purpose to trace the progress of the returning exile to the French capital; but those who insist that, in the events which followed, the emperor was sluggish, weak, and irresolute, must find it difficult to explain the energy of the rapid march from Cannes to Grenoble, and the admirable skill with which the first movements of the audacious enterprise was planned and directed. Napoleon reached the Tuileries on the 20th of March; and within a few days the feeble risings of the followers of the Bourbons had been put down, and the emperor was seated once more on the throne, though the revolution had been wholly the work of the soldiery irritated by bad treatment, and the nation only gave a languid assent. The reappearance, however, on the scene of the conqueror who had subdued the Continent, became the signal of a universal call to arms; the great powers of Europe merged their dissensions, and agreed to destroy the daring usurper; and if Napoleon for a moment, perhaps, entertained a hope that peace would continue, he was undeceived by the vast preparations which were being made to invade France from the Meuse, the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees.

He addressed himself,. with characteristic decision, to devise means to resist his foes; and he accomplished all that could have been expected from a capacity for organization of the highest kind, and military genius improved by experience. He refused, indeed, with des

The capital and Lyons had been in part fortified; and arrangements were being matured, which before autumn would have made the forces in Napoleon's hands not less than seven hundred thousand men. In a word, the military power of France had been quadrupled in ten or eleven weeks, and would become as formidable in a short time as it had ever been since 1812; and this, too, after twenty years of wars of the most destructive character.

Such were the results of Napoleon's efforts, and, in our judgment, they confute the notion that he had become an