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. Of life should shut, and thou return no The breast-knots were broken; the roses more? Good Words. CARYL BATTERSBY. IRISH SONG. (Air: "What shall I do with this silly old man?” WHEN Carroll asked Kate for her heart and a hand That controwled just a hundred good acres of land, Her lovely brown eyes Went wide wid surprise, And her lips they shot scorn at his saucy demand: "Young Carroll Maginn, Put the beard to your chin together Floated forth on the wings of the wind and the weather, And they drifted afar down the streams of the sea. And the sea was as red as when sunset uncloses, But my raiment is sweet from the scent of the roses, Thou shalt know, love, how fragrant a memory can be. ANDREW Lang. DEAR child, thou knowest, I blame not thee; Thou too, I know, hast shared my smart. And the change in your purse, if a wife Neither did wrong; 'twas only she, you would win." Then Carroll made Kate his most illigant bow, And off to the Diggins lampooned from the plough; Till, the beard finely grown, Says he, "Maybe Kate might be kind to me now !" So home my lad came, To try a fresh fling at his cruel ould flame. Nature, that moulded us apart. But not to have sinned, in Nature's eyes, She placed our souls, like Heaven's lone spheres, In separate paths, no power can move; LAURENCE BINYON. From Blackwood's Magazine. LORD WOLSELEY'S MARLBOROUGH.1 BY GEN. SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON, G.C.B. IT has for long been known that Lord Wolseley has been engaged upon a life of Marlborough, and that he has had access to all papers and private documents connected with the career of that great man. The appearance of the work has, therefore, been looked for with much interest; and the two first volumes of it- which are now before the public - although they relate to the first half only, and that the darkest one, of that varied story, will fully bear out the high expectations formed in regard to it. There is no life of Marlborough approaching it in dramatic interest, minuteness of detail, and excellence of literary execution. Much as we had always admired Lord Wolseley's great talents, we had no conception before of his power as a writer. There is so much of novelty, so much of interest, in the work, that it is a very difficult one to review; and we can only pretend, by a few extracts, to give a general idea of the great value of its contents. There is a wide gulf between our standard of female virtue and that of the Restoration epoch. This is brought home to us by the fact that an upright, God-fearing gentleman like Sir Winston Churchill should have wished to see his only daughter established as a maid of honor at a court where Charles II. was king. But in those days it was no slur upon a lady to become the mistress of a prince; nor did her family suffer in reputation. Lord Arlington, in a letter of advice to the beautiful Miss Stewart, refers to the position, which he thought she had accepted, of mistress to Charles II., as one to which "it had pleased God and her virtue to raise her." It is said that the parents of Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth, sent her originally to Versailles, in the hope that Louis XIV. would thus favor her. Sir E. Warcup records with pride, in one of his letters, that his daughter, a maid of honor to Queen Katherine, was one night and t'other with the The mistress to a royal prince was courted king, and very graciously received by him. by all who had access to her. Other To women envied her good fortune, and her family looked upon her as a medium through which court favors, power, and lucrative employment were to be obtained. In allusion to the statement that Marl In the early part of the first volume there are many interesting anecdotes illustrative of the state of society, and especially of female society, in the middle of the seventeenth century. these we will presently allude. Speaking of the old home of Ash, Lord Wolseley says: knew thoroughly the French and English courts, writes, "Cela était dans l'ordre." In common with others of his time, he assumed that the favorite of the king's mistress, and brother of the duke's mistress, was in a fair way to preferment, and could not fail to make his fortune (i. 35, 36). Standing on these garden steps, the borough owed much of his success in early threshold of Marlborough's forgotten birth-life to his sister Arabella, Hamilton, who place, what heart-stirring memories of English glory crowd upon the brain! Surely the imagination is more fired and national sentiment more roused by a visit to the spot where one of our greatest countrymen was born and passed his childhood, than by any written record of his deeds. This untidy farmhouse, with its neglected gardens and weed-choked fish-ponds, round which the poor, badly clothed boy sported during his early years, seems to recall his 1 The Life of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, to the Accession of Queen Anne. By General Viscount Wolseley, K.P. 2 vols. London Bentley & Son. No one will understand this period who does not realize this remarkable, but true, picture of female virtue in the upper classes then. As Lord Wolseley says further on : Modesty, the old outward sign of feminine virtue, was |