choir members who, over-tired by exertions at a dance on the Saturday night, fell in the seclusion of their gallery into deep slumber during the sermon, and, when suddenly roused and called to action, plunged into the rattling tune

interminable country dance, with many | essential of church worship. But even violent bumps and jumps in it, till the in the time of Mr. Hardy's Wessex, "very fiddlers as well as the dancers choirs were in their decline. Their get red in the face." But in this be- position had been injured by such mismused and bemortalized Arcady danc-haps as at Christmas-tide befell those ing is found to be tiring, as well as "enlivening," when the limbs are less young than once they were, and the dancer has experienced that "loss of animal heat" which Mr. Stevenson finds a sufficient explanation of all the cooling emotions of middle age. "You of "The Devil among the Tailors." be bound,' says Fairway, to dance at Christmas because 'tis the time o' year; you must dance at weddings because 'tis the time o' life. At christenings folks even smuggle in a reel or two, if 'tis no farther than the first or second chiel. And this is not naming the songs you've got to sing. . . For my part, I like a good, hearty funeral as well as anything. You've as splendid victuals and drink as at other parties, and even better. And it don't wear the legs to stumps in talking over a poor fellow's ways as it do to stand up in hornpipes.'

999

A similar mischance befell Father
Mathew, who had hired a barrel-organ
which, instead of the desired Adeste
fideles, produced the strains of "Moll
in the Wad." But even barrel-organs
assisted to displace the Wessex choirs ;
and, most of all, the errors of the
choristers themselves in introducing
clarionets.
"Time was long and

merry ago now! when not one of the
varmits was to be heard of; but it
served some of the choirs right. They
should have stuck to strings and
keep out clar'nets, and done away with
serpents. If you'd thrive in musical
religion, stick to strings, says I.'

"Strings are well enough, as far as that goes,' said Mr. Spinks.

"There's worse things than serpents,' said Mr. Penny. 'Old things pass away, 'tis true; but a serpent was a good old note; a deep rich note was the serpent.'

"Clarinets, however, be bad at all

But it must not be supposed that death begets no more serious thoughts in the laborer. Indeed, the inevitableness of death is far more impressed on his mind than on theirs who in the towns lead a more crowded and ample life. Its tragedy is felt, though unspoken; for the peasant is not apt, as Gabriel Oak said, in making a map of his mind upon his tongue. The pitiful-times."" ness of some minor incidents of death The choir practices and carol singing rings in Mother Cuxsom's lament over gave to Wessex villages an unwontedly the dead Mrs. Henchard. "Well, idyllic air. Yet the fever and the fret poor soul, she's helpless to hinder that of all this unintelligible world vexed or anything now. And all her shining even these serene moments. Number keys will be took from her, and her seventy-eight, a good tune," was cupboards opened; and things a' didn't" always a teaser; "but there was alwish seen anybody may see; and her ways "Old Wiltshire," "the psalm little wishes and ways will all be as tune," said Henchard, "that would nothing !'" make my blood ebb and flow like the Occasions such as weddings or fune- sea when I was a steady chap." And rals, however, were rare in Wessex. beside these joint achievements there The one constant and universal pleas- were individual triumphs that dwelt ure was music-principally in the form sweetly in the memory of the musiof choir performances; the choir, that cians. Such was the performance of is, of stringed instruments, general ere" neighbor Yeobright," remembered the organ had attained its present long after his death:

equality with the prayer-book as an "No sooner was Andry asleep and

The

the first whiff of neighbor Yeobright's | Cantle (late of the Bang-up Locals), wind had got inside Andry's clarinet, boasted an extreme excellence of unthan every one in the church feeled in derstanding. Only two in all the a moment there was a great soul among gallery of Arcadian portraits are of 'em. All heads would turn and they'd professed idiots; but these are of a say, "Ah, I thought 'twas he !" One Shakespearean quality. Of Leaf it Sunday I can well mind—a bass viol might be said, as Hazlit said of Slenday that time, and Yeobright had der, that he is "a very potent piece brought his own. 'Twas the Hundred of imbecility;" of Joseph Poorgrass, and thirty-third to "Lydia," and when as of Joseph Rugby, that "his worst they'd come to "Ran down his beard fault is that he is given to prayer, and o'er his robes its costly moisture but nobody but has his fault." shed," neighbor Yeobright, who had faults of the others are less easy to just warmed to his work, drove his bow find. Their hard work is stoically into them strings that glorious grand | done. Hezzy declared that he had that he e'en a'most sawed the bass viol"defied the figure of starvation nineinto two pieces. Every winder in the and-twenty years on nine shillings a church rattled as if 'twere a thunder- week." "I've tended horses fifty storm. Old Passon Gibbons lifted his hands in his great holy surplice, as if he'd been in human clothes, and seemed to say to hisself, ""Oh for such a man in our parish ! " " "

years," said the hostler in the Hand of Ethelberta, "that other folk might straddle 'em." Yet of discontent there is nothing; the picture left upon the mind is of a people cheerful, kindly, and amusing.

Providence, which denied all sense of music to Dean Stanley, and allowed But, for their author, there runs so little to Macaulay that he is only through the pleasant land of his invenonce recorded to have distinguished any tion a stream of sadness. "The view one tune from any other, granted to of life as a thing to be put up with, these peasants a fine sensitiveness of replacing the zest for existence which ear and voice—and even of jaw. For was so intense in early civilizations,' "Once,' said Michael Mail, I was which, Mr. Hardy thinks, "must ultisitting in the little kitchen of the Three mately enter thoroughly into the conChoughs at Casterbridge having a bit stitution of the advanced races, "has of dinner, and a brass band struck up already entered his own soul. The vilin the street. Sich a beautiful band lagers are content to realize "the wellas that were! I was sitting eating fried judged plan of things;" Mr. Hardy liver and lights, I well can mindah, laments its "ill-judged execution. I was and to save my life I couldn't He finds the face of Egdon Heath help chawing to the tune. Band played" perfectly accordant with man's nasix-eight time; six-eight chaws I willy- ture neither ghastly, hateful, nor nilly. Band plays common; common ugly, neither commonplace, unmeantime went my teeth among the fried ing, nor tame, but, like man, slighted liver and lights, true as a hair. Beau- and enduring." Yet it was on Egdon tiful 'twere! Ah, I shall never forget Heath Granfer Cantle chirruped out his that there band!"" eighty years, while for Eustacia love and ambition warred to the death. Wessex love is of its life a thing apart.

are

So they passed their lives, biding in their cheerful old inn, free from the cares and questionings of the new "Heroines," says Mr. Barrie, 66 spirit. The "horse sense," which is strange, especially in Wessex.” Their the chief lesson of the school of life, fate does not affect the serenity of its sustained them, and the calm conceit people. Mr. Hardy, in spite of his which grows in the quiet places of the heroines and his own philosophy, has world. Some of them, like Granfer | added to the gaiety of nations.

EDMUND B. V. CHRISTIAN.

From Chambers' Journal.

SOME SINGULAR SIGNS.

Lancashire announces the following miscellaneous articles for sale: "Bibles, Blackballs, and Butter. Testaments, Tar, and Treacle, Godly Books, and Gimblets, Sold here."

TRAVELLERS in China often derive amusement from the peculiarities. of shop-signs there, many of which are couched in the most eloquent and poetA shop-sign in London reads: "Plots ical terms. In America, too, may be for novels or short stories. Prices reaseen sign-plates of such curious occu-sonable." The occupant of the shop pations as hose-restorers, artificial-ear is said to have a rare talent for devismakers, child-adopters, salad-mixers, ing plots, but no great powers of narraand so forth. But it is not necessary tion, so he is supposed to make his to leave the British Islands in order to living by selling skeleton plots for find business announcements quite as stories in cheap papers. curious in their way as those in other Another singular business announcelands. In the Isle of Man, over the ment over a certain photograph gallery shop of a barber who supplies custom- is, "Misfit photographs for sale." ers with all kinds of fishing-tackle, the This, we are told, brings many customwriter was amused to read the follow-ers. Mothers, for instance, who have ing: "Piscatorial Repository, Tonso- little children, often buy pictures of rial Artist, Physiognomical Hairdresser, children with long hair when the hair Cranium Manipulator and Capillary of their loved ones hasn't grown, and Abridger, Shaving and Hair-cutting send them round to friends at a diswith Ambidextrous Facility, Shampoo- tance. Brides' photographs are also ing on Physiological Principles." On said to sell very well. a signboard in the town where the writer lives may be read this phonetic announcement, "Shews Maid and Men dead Hear;" and when we add that it is over a cobbler's shop, the reader may discover its meaning.

A poetical shoemaker hung up the following remarkable effusion on board over his shop:

Blow, oh, blow, ye heavenly breezes,
Underneath these lofty treeses;
Sing, oh, sing, ye heavenly muses,
While I mend my boots and shoeses.

a

"Teeth pulled while you wait" is a still more singular sign, said to have been set up by a dentist in Fleetwood.

This curious specimen of orthography was displayed on a house in a street in Marylebone: "The Mangelling Traid removed hear from the Strete round the Cornir. Threhapense a Duzzen. N.B.-New Milk and Creme Sould Hear. Warentidd Fresh and not Stail evry Mornin'."

A dealer in ice thus attracted public attention to his cold commodity :

Ice! Ice!! Ice !!!
If you want it pure and n
And at a reasonable pr
Follow no new dev

But send to me in a tr
At my off

ice

played on a notice posted up in an Art Exhibition in Japan to which foreigners were welcomed. Here are a few examples of the rules: "Visitors is requested at the entrance to show tickets for inspection. Tickets are charged 10 sens and 2 sens, for the special and common respectively. No visitor who is mad or intoxicated is allowed to enter in, if any person found in shall be claimed to retire. No visitor is allowed to carry in with himself any parcel, umbrella, stick, and the like kind, except his purse, and is strictly forbidden to take in with himself dog, or the same kind of beasts. Visitor is requested to take good care of himself from thievely."

He must have been a facetious hotel proprietor who hung up this sign in his rooms: "Indian clubs and dumb-bells will not be permitted in any of the rooms. Guests in need of exercise" can go down to the kitchen and pound a steak."

An Englishman in Boulogne saw displayed in a shop window this notice : 'Eating and Drinking Sold Here."

Doubtless, as curious as any of the foregoing is the puzzling sign in front A notice displayed in a Norway hotel of a small shoemaker's shop at Cannes. is a curious specimen of "English as It is in English, and is thus worded : she is spoke." It reads as follows: "Repairs hung with stage-coach." The "Bath! first-class bath. Can anybody visitor for whose benefit this inforget. Tushbath. Warm and cold. mation is intended, may, after much Tub-bath and shower-bath. At any cogitation, arrive at the conclusion that time. Except Saturday. By two hours the cobbler only wishes to inform his forbore." This brings to mind another numerous patrons that repairs are exespecimen of foreigners' English, dis-cuted with diligence.

THE EARLY CHRISTIANS AND CLEAN- | borrow but one or two illustrations from LINESS. — In the reaction against the mon- the "History of European Morals," St. strous corruptions and unbridled sensuality Athanasius relates with a thrill of admiraof pagan Rome, Christian enthusiasts tion how St. Anthony had never once been rushed to the opposite extreme. An age guilty of washing his feet. For fifty years of asceticism succeeded to an age of sensu- St. Abraham the hermit washed neither his ality. The human body which imperial face nor his feet. Another saint had never Rome had pampered and indulged was now seen himself naked. Another, a famous to be neglected and humiliated. A "cult virgin, joined herself to a community of of bodily uncleanliness began. A hid- nuns who shuddered with horror at the eous, sordid, and emaciated maniac, passing very mention of a bath. . . . This cult his life in a long routine of useless and atro-threatens to reappear. We note that some cious self-torture, became, as Mr. Lecky curates are abandoning clean collars and has said, "the ideal of the nations which necks, and imitating the priests abroad in had known the writings of Plato and these matters; and where a complaint was Cicero, and the lives of Socrates and Cato. made of this to a bright woman of literary ... The cleanliness of the body was re- tastes, she replied, "But uncleanliness is garded as the pollution of the soul, and the not a crime." It seems as if it threatened saints who were most admired had become to become a merit. one hideous mass of clotted filth." To

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