that in all probability he has seen a frag-tain little city. That church was built, cenment or follower of a comet which has turies ago, as an ancient document bears, divided into two if not three distinct in media civitate: and from its tower you comets, and has followed up that process of dissipation by dissolving altogether away.

It is not easy to form an opinion as to the actual probability that a fine display of meteors will be seen. This particular meteor system has, however, been known to produce somewhat remarkable showers. Thus Brandes, who first recognized the existence of the system, counted no less than four hundred meteors in a few hours, while travelling in a covered carriage on the night of December 7, 1798.

may see the whole city very distinctly. Very picturesque is the view. You look down on red roofs, and ivied ruins: green gardens are interspersed : and on two sides the buildings cut against the blue sea. A stranger, looking at the prospect for the first time, exclaimed, "How charming!" And no one can feel the special charm of it more than the writer does. But I thought, looking round, that I knew better than the stranger: at least, I knew more. For I know every house on which you look down: every household: and the curious relations between many of them, friendly and other. I know the poverty and privation: the anxiety and care: which abide under many of those roofs. It is not all improvement, to know any place so well, which is inhabited by human beings. Few haman beings look the better, for being looked into too constantly and too long. And coming down the cork-screw stair, whose steps are worn by some centuries of infrequent use, I thought of certain disadvantages which come of living in a small community.

In conclusion, we may draw, I think, from the history of the missing comet the inference that our earth and her fellowplanets have little to fear from collision with comets. The earth passes each year through more than a hundred meteor systems and yet suffers no injury, whereas Biela's comet would seem to have been destroyed during only a few encounters with meteoric groups. It appears evident, then, that it would be the comet, not our earth, which would suffer in any encounter of the sort. Indeed, comets, which once occasioned such dread, seem to be but frail creatures. To quote the words of poor Blanqui, the republican,- who wrote, in prison, about comets, as if he sympathized with them in their trials,-"if comets escape Saturn, it is to fall under the stroke of Jupiter, the policeman of the solar system. On duty in the dark, he And let it be understood that I admit scents (sic) these hairy nothings (nihilités the advantages of a small community. chevelues), before a ray makes them visible, There is something homely and kindly in and urges them distracted towards living where you know everybody and perilous passes. There, seized by heat everybody knows you. There is a desolaand swollen to monstrosity, they lose their tion in the heart of the denizen of such a shape, lengthen, disaggregate, and break society, when he walks the London streets, confusedly through the terrible straits, abandoning the stragglers everywhere, and only managing to regain, with great difficulty, under the protection of cold, their unknown solitudes."

From Fraser's Magazine. CONCERNING THE DISADVANTAGES OF LIVING IN A SMALL COMMUNITY.

THIS afternoon, a sunshiny winter afternoon, the sky bright blue and the air cold and clear, I climbed the winding turretstair which leads to the top of a certain tower. The tower, which carries a low spire, is that of the parish church of a cer

Let it be explained what I mean by a small community. I mean a little place with a considerable number of families of nearly equal social position. A country parish is not, in the sense intended, a small community. But a Cathedral Close is: or a little town.

and gazes into the shop windows. "No one knows me here," he thinks, with a certain icy shiver. I do not now see how anyone can feel at home in that awful place, though I once lived there for years. I cannot now understand how I did it. In the little town, when you go into a shop, no one watches to see if you intend to steal something. No policeman has an eye of suspicion on you, as you leisurely pass along the street. Your vocation and place are known accurately; and your income with sufficient approximation. You are not tempted to incur expense you cannot afford. You know that the only reflection which will follow your doing so will be that of the Roman citizen returning home after seeing Curtius jump into the gulf in the Forum: to wit, "What a fool!"

But there are things on the other side of the balance. Let us try to state them, look at them, weigh them.

of a really worthy man is obtruding itself on you so painfully as to make you forgetful of his real worth, you can see less of him for a few weeks till you get over the painful impression. But there are places so small, that you must see your friend every day: even when it would be far better for both of you that you did not see much of one another for a time.

One is sometimes strongly felt, though it may seem fanciful. It is the general vague sense that you have not room to stretch yourself. "The bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it; and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it." I do not mean to say Then, in a small community, people that this feeling is constant. Sometimes, come to stand in such relations to one one is quite content. But again, the wish another that they may be said to be real arises for space in which to expand and enemies: in so far as that can be in the expatiate. There comes a weariness of decorous restraint of word and deed which always seeing the same faces, and going goes with our civilization. I used once to the same round. I fancy that a mill-horse, think that decent folks would have no enever turning round in the same narrow emies. When I was a little fellow, I used track, would sometimes wish for any- continually to hear public worship conthing for a change. I do not, however, ducted by one of the best men, and that say more on this point: because I know in a country where there is no liturgy. various eminently sensible persons, who An ever-recurring petition was, "If we have in my hearing stated that Goethe have enemies forgive them." It seemed to was a fool, and who would declare that me, as a boy, that the petition was needwhat has already been said is fanciful, and less. Who could be his enemy? But, even morbid. So let us advance to what growing up, one thought differently. is beyond all question real.

There are actual cases in which a person has only to know that you wish for such a thing to be done, to resolve to oppose that thing. Because A would fain have things go one way, B will push for the opposite way. Now, that is being an enemy, as permitted in this age. And much more in a little place than in a big will such ene mies be found. The scope is too large, the people are too many, in the big place, for the peculiar feeling which creates them. I could give curious examples; but that is exactly what I am not going to do. And the further ebullition of enmity which makes one man exult in the little annoyances which befall another, will hardly be found in its full maturity amid a large population and a wide acquaintance.

Living in a small community, you come to discern people's faults with painful clearness. When you see your friends every day, you see through them. No human character can bear being looked at so constantly and so closely. Under the microscope we all look rough, and discoloured, and warped. And with those one is always seeing, one does not take the pains to conceal weaknesses which one does with a stranger. Unless a man is a very great fool, he knows quite well when he is saying or doing something foolish: and he keeps it back when with those with whom he stands on ceremony. But it all comes out in the familiarity of constant intercourse. Our own family, and our near kin, are part of ourselves: and we And, though you do not like a man, and excuse their errors and follies as we do find that in him which rubs you the wrong our own even when we see their faults way, you can not draw wholly off from plainly, we like them hardly the less. But him, as you would in a large city. In the beyond that intimate circle, there arises little town you must be constantly meetthe peculiar feeling which Scotch folks ing: you can not choose your own circle call a scunner towards a friend who fre- of associates. You are of necessity quently annoys us by outbursts of vanity, thrown into frequent contact with persons or wrong-headedness, or spitefulness, or whom you would not select for your littleness, or envy. Familiarity, as the friends. In a large place, if you discover proverbial saying has it, breeds contempt. in any man indications of a character And unless with very rare specimens of which makes it impossible that you should humanity, there is very much that is little respect or trust him, you can without awkand contemptible in human nature. The wardness drop his acquaintance wholly. greatest fool every man has known, is him- But it is awkward and inconvenient not to self: and this because (in spite of the old be at least on terms of civility with a Greek counsel) he knows himself better human being whom you must frequently than he knows any other. Now in a large pass in the street, and with whom you place, when you feel that some little frailty must sometimes transact business. You

can not indulge in the luxury of cutting has made a fool of himself (however cerdead even the person you know to have tain the fact may be), unless you design been telling malignant falsehoods about that henceforth there shall be an undefined you, in print or otherwise. Then a cer- something between you, a little rift, which tain sense of insincerity arises in your may spread till you are divided far. The heart when you treat with outward courte- recollection will be unpleasant of that sy, however reserved, one whom you know over-frank judgment, even in an unmorbid to be a cowardly enemy. Further, if you mind. And I have remarked that in a dislike a person's character and ways at small community many minds are morbidly all, you will dislike that person very much, sensitive and touchy. One never goes if he is constantly obtruded on you. He wrong in practising towards all around a will become to you what the grinding of a studied courteousness of demeanour. And hand-organ was to Mr. Babbage: what one has remarked how a man, little used the creaking of wood rubbing on wood is to be treated so, and known for a hasty to some people: the object of a vehement temper and a rough tongue, is gentled and antipathy, which by continuance grows humanized into a corresponding courtesy altogether unbearable. When I enter a and amiability towards another who scrubeautiful cathedral close, it appears to me pulously and unaffectedly renders him his as the home of sacred quiet and kindli- social due. ness: surely the souls that inhabit here must be calm, beautiful, and holy as their outward surroundings: what but peace and love can dwell in this abode of unworldly repose and brotherly devotion? Nor do I mean to say that this is wholly a pleasant illusion. But in some cases the fact is far from the ideal. Envyings and strifes, social bumptiousness and social indignation, worldliness of spirit and foolish extravagance, have entered even here. And if unfriendly relations exist at all, how embittered they must be by the constant presence of the disagreeable object! To constantly hear the Litany sung by a man whom you esteem to be a humbug, must be a great provocation. There are those towards whom you can maintain a tolerably forgiving spirit only by keeping them out of your sight and hearing.

Among those members of the little community who remain fast friends, perils arise which must be guarded against. One is, that there comes the tendency to use the same freedom of speech towards one another which exists in some outspoken and in harmonious families. Disagreeable things are plainly said: faults pointed out with a confounded candour. There is even a disposition to rake up unpleasant subjects without any call. Now it has ever appeared to the writer that an excessive closeness of intercourse is not desirable, unless among those very closely related by blood. The atoms which make up physical Nature are kept a good way apart, even in the substances which to the unscientific eye and touch appear the nost solid and homogeneous. This seems a teaching by parable. Even so, human beings ought to be kept in some measure apart by a certain reserve and a constant courtesy. Do not tell your friend that he

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The public-spirited man who desires in a small community to carry out any public improvement will find by experience what difficulties arise of the situation. is not merely that the small community is apt to be old-fashioned in its likings, and have no mind for innovation: strongly holding that what was good enough for the fathers must be good enough for their children. Not merely that such a community is apt to regard with jealousy the proposals of a new comer from the outer world, esteeming it as an answer to all his arguments, that many of its members knew the place before he was born: the difficulty is a further one. It comes of the singular interlacing of private interests, connections, likes and dislikes, jealousies and enmities. C will not go heartily into any work, which he believes is instigated or supported by his enemy D. E will not support any reform which may affect the custom of the shop of his cousin F. G will solemnly declare that black is white, if the recognition of the fact that black is black would make things go hard with the man whose son is to marry his niece. All this is very irritating to a downright person, eager that some good work be done, or at least that the work be estimated on its proper merits. It shakes your faith in the honesty and rightheartedness of human nature. It painful ly convinces you what inferior motives. practically impel the doings of many men. And if you manage your fellow-creatures into the doing of what is good and right by driving them according to their natures; by suggesting to the cantankerous. man reasons fitted to sway the cantankerous, and to the foolish man considerations which might have weight only with a fool; you may carry your point, and that a good.

point: but not without some sense of self- for three weeks each spring. Just to walk degradation. It is by imperceptible de- about the streets, and behold one's ungrees that the tact and skill of an Arch- known fellow-creatures, and see how big bishop of Canterbury shade into the cun- the place is, is to many an over-driven ning trickery of the Artful Dodger. And and over-sensitive mortal the most prenear the line which parts the permissible cious of medicinal gum. from the mean, an honest man will begin to feel very unhappy.

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I have been setting forth moral rather than material considerations. But one cannot help thinking how in a little place one misses the material advantages (not without their moral consequences) which come in a large community of the clubbing together of the limited means of a great number of comparatively poor people. In a large city, there is everywhere a solidity, an appearance of wealth. As in a club, a congeries of men of very moderate resources are able to afford a palace, with the arrangements, the books, and the periodicals, which only a millionaire could provide for himself, so is it in a great town. The very pavement of the streets is different. The water-supply is better and more abundant. The shops are incomparably handsomer and better provided. You have the great luxury of a first-rate bookseller, on whose tables you can see all the new books: buying a few, and seeing as much as you desire of many more. In the little place you may be thankful to have a railway at all: so thankful that you do not grumble at the wretched rickety wooden shed which serves for a station, the rattling carriages, the ill-laid rails which would make express speed destruction. You cannot expect to step into the luxurious and fluent carriage, which in nine hours and a half bears you four hundred miles; conveying you from Athens to Babylon. Neither can you, when you feel dreary and stupid, wander away and lose yourself in mazes of smoky streets in some noisy and squalid quarter, whence you return with a penitent sense that you have little right to be discontented. Most middle-aged men remember to have got good in that way. I remember talking with a very intelligent working man who abode in a little city, but had at one period in his life lived for some years in London. "What I liked about London," said he, was this: "that if a body was ill

I do not linger on that which in a little place is sometimes felt as provocation: the tendency on the part of some of your neighbours to investigate all your proceedings, and make them the subject of much conversation and discussion. Gossip, if not false or ill-natured, is a needful and justifiable part of real life: it merely means that human beings are interested in the persons and events which are nearest to them. Yet there come seasons in which you are more sensitive to the littleness of humanity than at other times: in which it makes you angry, while it ought simply to amuse you, to find anxious enquiries made as to who diued with you on such a day, and even what you had for dinner likewise why you did not invite A and B, each of whom is as good as you. But if you have so much good sense as to decline to listen to such petty talk, you will not be annoyed by it: and it comes to very little after all. Passing from this, let me sum up by saying generally, that if you live in a small community, it is expedient that from time to time you should go for a little while away from it: if possible, to a considerable distance from it. Thus only you will keep your mind in a healthy state. Thus you will see things in true perspective, and looking their true size. Thus only will you keep it present to you, how modest your own dimensions are, and how small your weight. I have known a really clever man, after living for some months together in the unhealthy moral atmosphere of a small place, burst out into exhibitions of arrogance and conceit so deplorable, as to be barely consisteut with sanity. It is needful that you go where you may sit down and take in that the sphere wherein you live is not all the world; and that its affairs are in fact not much thought or talked of by the majority of the human race. And discern-off, you had only to go out for a walk and ing this, you go home again quite resolved not to be drawn into small strifes, ambitions, and diplomacies, which are thoroughly bad for soul and mind. To educated and sensitive men, dwelling in little towns, London is a great and wholesome alterative. If I were a rich man, I would provide an endowment which might send every country parson in Britain to London

you would see some other body worse-off." The idea was sound, though awkwardly expressed. It was as when the Highlander said, "The potatoes here are very bad; but, God be thanked, they are a great deal worse about Drumnadrochit."

On the whole, the little community is a school wherein, with certain disadvantages and certain advantages too, one may cul

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tivate good temper, sympathy, patience; | pruning and grafting, so things come up
forbearance with the faults of others: and at random. The consequence is, that fruit
the habit of occasionally remembering is generally very scar at Chaumes; but it
one's own.
A. K. H. B. gives satisfaction. This is the kind of
vegetation that grows all the way up to
the borders of the woods which cover the
top of the hill. At eventide the latter
throw their dense shade over orchard,
village, and river. The last of daylight is
always seen in a big white sheet on the
fields, and it becomes fainter and fainter
until it dies away and darkness sets in.

From The St. James Magazine,
THE TWO BROTHERS.

CHAPTER I.

In a peaceful pass of the Vosges, a few leagues beyond Maladrie, as you follow the Saar, you will find the village of Chaumes.

It consists of about a hundred dwellinghouses that stretch along the banks of the river. Some are high, some low, and all are roofed either with old grey slate tiles or wood. Here and there a small bridge spans the water, over which children lean to watch whitebait swarm round a worm, or to look at the long dark wavy green grass they call "cats' tails," or at the ducks swimming up the current with their broad yellow feet paddling out behind them.

Here do the children of the village trifle away their time for hours together; dressed in torn jackets and jagged trousers, with their hair all rough and their book-satchels hanging by a piece of twine to their belts; for though there is a school at Chaumes, the boys are never in a hurry to get there.

A little before this hour the herdsman's horn is heard, and the pigs and goats rush down in search of their sheds in the village. Strange to say, these animals never mistake their homesteads, but stand grunting and bleating at their respective doors until some one comes to let them in. By degrees all the flocks are brought in, and no other sounds break silence but the low croaking of toads and frogs at the waterside. This expires in time likewise, and small lights are seen moving about in huts, for it is supper time, and time to rest too, after a long day's toil.

In two or three places spinning and knitting gatherings are held, the old church bell ringing out the hours spent over gossip, ghost-stories, and tales of witchery. These last until the old women of the party make the first move, when all take up their wheels or work, and part to go home to bed.

This is life at Chaumes.

Two or three hundred steps farther on The next thing to be seen will be a wo-stands the mill of Father Lazarus, with man holding a tubful of clothes on her the water falling off its mossy wheels like bead. It is either Marie-Jeanne or Cath-crystal fringe, making a large pool shake arinette going to the wash-house. After and ripple below. this, the bullocks and goats file off, and old Minique, with his head stooping forward, and an axe over hie shoulder, comes hurrying on to turn the water off on his meadow.

Mr. le Curé next strides on to mass, with his black cassock looped up, and his three-cornered hat in hand: and thus people keep going and coming all day. These scenes can be viewed from some distance off, and best from the spacious green meadow amidst the palings and hedgerows that enclose bits of gardens, and on which linen is hung out to dry.

On the opposite side of the main street rises the hill, covered with patches of barley, oats, rye, potatoes, and knotty weather-beaten apple-trees. I have been schoolmaster at Chaumes for fifty years, and I have never been able to induce owners to train their trees straight. The majority of them will not even hear of

Farther on still are the saw-yards of Frentsell and Gros-Sapin.

When I was appointed schoolmaster at Chaumes, the mayor of the place was old Monsieur Fortin, and his deputy was Monsieur Rigault, keeper of the Ox-foot" inn, but the Rantzau brothers exercised great influence over the municipal council by reason of their wealth. In some measure they ruled it completely. Oli Rantzau, their father, had died a year before; he had been a farmer, a dealer in timber and raw salt. He had gained plenty of money in his day, but, like the rest of us, could take nothing away with him, and left all his property to his three children, one of whom was Madame Catherine, the wife of Louis Picot, a brewer at Lutzelbourg; the two others were Jean and Jacques, who, unfortunately, did not think their share had been rightly divided between them.

This, at least, is what soon became ap