whole surrounding country seems shrouded by an atmosphere which has been whipped into the consistency of pea-soup. One side of the street is sometimes as completely hidden from the other side as by a November fog in London. Woe to the unlucky housemaid who has inadvertently left open a single window! Repentance in sackcloth and dust is her condign punishment. And thus the enemy speeds up and down the day through. The heat is stifling, but people all seek to close every avenue of approach. Batten down and stew is the order of the day. Of two evils it is by far the least; indeed, the only defence, and every port is closed as on board ship in bad weather. Should the demon succeed in effecting an entrance, he sweeps through the hall, rushes up-stairs, and bangs every door like a maniac. The hotel kitchen is a subject of special anxiety to the functionaries concerned, and certain vendors of perishable commodities close their shops altogether. Some years ago, in one of the chief cities, the brilliant idea was conceived of an al fresco banquet, which, it was argued, in a warm, sunny climate, under the cloudless blue skies of another Athens in the south, should be "after the high Roman fashion." Nothing was spared that could contribute to the successful reproduction of a classic repast in ancient Greece or Rome. The Falernian wine was absent certainly, but then, was there not an abundance of the finest products of Australian vintage? All went well until the supreme hour, when, tradition relates, swift as the wind from the land of souls came down the shadow feared by colonial hosts, bearing on its sulphureous wings grand dull Odyssean ghosts Athirst to drink the cool blue wine. There is no resisting such a despoiler, and in a brief space all was universal rout and disorderly flight. People you meet appear strangely affected by the wind-despot. That staid Evangelical curate wears a face flushed like a peony, strangely resembling the peculiar bloom produced by indulgence in alcoholic nips; that middle-aged lady district-visitor, with the severe cast of countenance, looks red and excited, and as self-consciously flurried as though she had just been the recipient of "an offer." The heated air finds its way into the law courts, the leading counsel mops his face incessantly, and glares round with the ferocity of a wild animal. The judge fidgets, lifts his horsehair wig, and pretends to make notes, but it is a pretence and nothing more. The day wears on, night comes, and you see those nocturnal birds the pressmen adding the torments of countless gas-jets to the suffocating temperature, until the compositors' room becomes another inferno, and the printer's imps run to and fro incessantly with cans which may or may not contain water. And the editorials! Well, they are doubtless affected likewise. Heated blood, simulated wrath, are in harmony with any sensational matter on hand- "Was there any baseness like unto this baseness?" and so on da capo and da capo! Nearly all "the airs that blow" have in their turn been the theme of some sweet singer. Even the much-execrated east wind found its laureate in Kingsley, the verse of Bryant is cloyed by "the kisses of the soft south-west," and Shelley's deathless ode, O wild West Wind, Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is, rises to the thought like a clarion-call. But who will hymn the Austral "brickfielder"? Long-inured colonists contend that these hot winds kill the germs of fever that abound. But typhoid does not diminish. Has the notion ever got beyond the region of hypothesis? At what degree of temperature are germs asphyxiated? Who knows that germs cannot exist at a temperature which, though decidedly unpleas ant, is by no means fatal to other forms of life? Just as in old Flemish cities every housewife possesses a long black cloth cloak for a stock article of ordinary use, so in Australia every one man, woman, or child. has a dust cloak, or coat, always at hand. These winds sometimes last two or three days, or even longer. Their cessation is sudden and decisive. And then the gentle rain comes down, and converts the dust into mud, and the sun shines out once more; not with the weak, watery smile of northern climes, but broadly and blandly as the childlike radiation from the countenance of Ah Sing in the Chinese quarter of the town, and under the reviv ing influence of the cool ocean-breeze you unsay all the evil things you may have said beneath the spell of the hot wind and the dust-fiend. Alas! the enemy has not gone forever. It may be to-morrow, or it may not be for many days, but some day return he will. STEPHEN THOMPSON. Fifth Series, } No. 2265.-November 26, 1887. { From Beginning, CONTENTS. I. MEMOIRS OF PRINCE ADAM CZARTORYSKI, Edinburgh Review, II. RICHARD CABLE, THE LIGHTSHIPMAN. 451 Chambers' Journal, • 465 472 480 Contemporary Review, Good Words, 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. Why thou art here, or whence thy piteous lot; Just knowing grief, thy world a ring of gloom, Thy naked feet thrust from the unchosen womb To touch the cold of this hard planet's stone! My God, forgive me that I do not understand, But, tear-blind, walk in faith of thy great love Which gave thy Son to sorrow for our sake! Help me, so feeble, to be as the hand By which the orphan-souled thou dost up take, And lift to light, where we shall know, above! THE CHILD's Angel. THEIR angels always do behold God's face: And, hand to sword, Avenger, by lit eye, Asks that, as lightning flash, he fierce may fly And smite the ostrich-hearts that on the stone Have left this little one, despairing, lone, Praying in sobs to heaven. Then pitying Death, Angel of soft black wing, low-whispering saith, "Let my arms comfort her with their embrace!" But thus the Father unto them replies"Her angel walks the earth with seeking eyes, Mercy his name, ever in steps of Christ Treading bare-foot, with sorrow to keep tryst!" As Spring the deep-sunk roots by its warm breath, Love finds the wretched out in hidden place. Sunday Magazine. CUPID'S DECADENCE. IN ancient days, when all was young, And lived a country life. He rose betimes at break of day, And round the country harried: He stayed there-more's the pity. They draped his pretty nakedness And set him up in busing Where love was bought and sold. And thus he led a city life, Forgetting his nativity; Since then he's gone from bad to worse, From Cupid to cupidity. Academy. ELLIOT STOCK. MEMOIRS OF PRINCE ADAM CZAR TORYSKI.* WHEN Prince Adam Czartoryski died in Paris, in July, 1861, he was more than a nonagenarian, having been born in Warsaw in 1770, two years before the second partition of Poland. In his family longevity is hereditary, and sorrow and exile and disappointment do not always kill From The Edinburgh Review. | justificatives, of the drafts of state papers, their victims. At the time of his death the whole Polish party, at home and share of personal trials, but there existed In It referred to the allowed to appear. The narrative, had it run on, must have stirred bitter memories, and perhaps for this reason the prince never elaborated his notes about the years of Poland's greatest anguish. Birds sing only in the spring; and if men after the loss of all their illusions lapse into silence, it is because, like Wordsworth's heroine, they lay. have no more to say then under the tutelage of his grand- of that perpetual weight which on their spirit mother the empress Catherine, and Prince Adam Czartoryski, then a subaltern in the Imperial Guard. Among the papers col. It is none the less tantalizing to have this lected by Prince Ladislaus Czartoryski autobiography close at Austerlitz. We was this famous extract, intended to remind the world of 1862 that the Polish question had once been leniently viewed even by a Muscovite czar, and to show that Poland had once had advocates more worthy than the socialists, doctrinaires, and adventurers who had just hurried her into another unequal struggle. This book, arranged as it was by M. Charles de Mazade, did attract some attention, but since then another quarter of a century has elapsed, another generation has grown to manhood, and it is to us that M. Charles de Mazade now presents the early portrait of Prince Adam Czartoryski, as drawn by should have wished to follow Adam Czartoryski beyond the end of the Coalition, called in Russia the War of the Forty Nations, and to have had his sketches of Tilsit and of the campaign in Russia, still spoken of as its Holy War. These themes have just inspired Count Lyof Tolstoï's "Peace and War," a book so varied and so complicated in its interest that it is rather a Summa or a Commedia than a mere historical novel. How far more delightful would it have been had Prince Adam sketched those eventful years! He could have given pictures even more faithful. He might even have rivalled the Souvenirs of the young Lithu himself. The book is in two volumes. The sec-anian maid of honor, Mademoiselle de ond is entirely composed of the pièces * Mémoires du Prince Adam Czartoryski et Correspondance avec l'Empereur Alexandre I. Avec Préface par M. CH. DE MAZADE, de l'Académie Française. 2 vols. Paris: 1887. Tiesenhäusen (Comtesse de ChoiseulGouffier), in her pictures of life at Wilna, when Napoleon was not only at its gates, but had stirred the hopes of the Lithuanian gentry, whom not all Alexander's blandishments could win from seeking to reconstitute their country through the help of French victories. Prince Adam has sketched the statesmen of the Coalition. We wish that he had gone on to portray Paulucci and Rostopchine, whose strategy, along with the snows of a most rigorous winter, have left to Alexander the prestige of being not only the most amiable of European sovereigns, but the only adversary before whom Napoleon succumbed. these proud and insubordinate families the Czartoryskis were second to none in pretensions, in lineage, and in wealth. Descendants of the Jagellons, they bad for three hundred years borne the style and title of prince, and this Adam Casimir, covetous of a closed crown, actually offered himself for election to the throne of Poland when the other competitor in the field was his relative Stanislaus Poniatowski. Surnamed the Mæcenas of Poland, he was not unfit to fill the public eye. He was accomplished and generous, received foreigners with a stately courtesy, and gave to his children an education adapted to their great station and to their greater hopes. Of course he had seen some military service, but it had been under the Austrian flag, and in his political leanings he was intensely anti-Muscovite. He led a large party. His brother Michael was chancellor of Lithuania; his sister was married to Prince Lubomirski; while of his daughters, one was given in marriage to Count Stanislaus Zamoyski, and the other to Prince Louis of Würtemberg, brother of the empress Maria of Russia. While regretting its briefness, let us examine the fragment we have got. We shall assuredly not be disappointed. The style is delightful, and the high breeding and sweet temper of the writer give a charm to every page. Associated with the statesmen and generals of this epoch of really titanic strife, we see two human creatures of the most singular qualities, and of still more singular positions. Of this pair of friends one is the heir to the crown of all the Russias; the other is the heir of Polish palatines and the kinsman of Polish kings. One is heir presumptive to an autocratic sovereignty; the other is a hostage, put into the Guard, as an Israelite of old might have been put into Such was the house. Yet on the birth the priest's office, that he "might eat a of its heir fortune could not have been piece of bread," and purchase for his fam- said to smile. Poland was torn by facily some measure of pardon or indemnity. tions; its Diets and Dietines were hotbeds This situation is a moving one, and it of intrigue; the nobles were impracticable, would seize on the imagination even if the feud between them and the peasantry there were not already, in the person, had become envenomed. Adam Casimir lineage, character, and accomplishments Czartoryski saw only one thing plainlyof the young Pole, many of the elements the ambition of Catherine and its consewhich a novelist would select for his ro- quent danger to Poland. He sided ac mance. Novels are after all only the his-cordingly with Stanislaus Leczinski, that tories of what might have taken place; and history is not a mere collection of facts, multiplied and multiplying themselves as materials accumulate, but owes its most undying charm to its human interest. In these memoirs the human interest reaches a high degree of pathos. king of Poland who owed his election to the invasion of Charles XII. (1704), and his re-election to the fact that his daughter Marie was the wife of Louis XV. and queen of France. Russia, on the contrary, was ever inimical to him, and, Russian influence prevailing, he was sent to end his days in Lorraine, where Nancy owes to him, even to this day, the many orna Born in Warsaw in 1770, Adam was the eldest son of Prince Adam Casimir Czartoryski, starost-general of Podolia. War-ments of her stately streets and squares. saw and Cracow were then rivals for the dignity of being capitals of Poland, and Warsaw was full of the palaces of the Poniatowski, Radzivill, Brühl, and Zamoyski families. Yet, assuredly, among Poland now stood on the brink of the precipice over which she was soon to be hurled, and the election of Augustus III. was so much the work of a party that for some years he was not universally ac |
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