shrinks back in terror from looking upon the old ventional than fair,then the purest jackass in man he had just murdered in his bed. The safety Cloisterham is Mr. Thomas Sapsea, Auctioneer. of both, however, requires that the daggers be replaced; and, notwithstanding the violence she "Half a dozen years ago, or so, so," Mr. Sapsea must do to her nature by imbruing her hands in proceeds, "when I had enlarged my mind up blood-as her subsequent dreams bear witness-to-I will not say to what it now is, for that she undertakes and accomplishes the shocking might seem to aim at too much, but up to the task. But this imperturbability does not arise from pitch of wanting another mind to be absorbed in cruelty of heart, nor even from constitutional it-I cast my eye about me for a nuptial partner. courage; it proceeds from an effort of imagination Because, as I say, it is not good for man to be by which she shuts out of her mind the moral asalone." pect of the act, and regards it simply as a matter of the sense, devoid of all associations, either of morality or sentiment. By wilfully imagining the murdered king a mere tableau, made up of so much light and shade and coloring, she divests the object before her of all its relations, and cuts off the murder from its consequences. This she does to sustain herself, and to reassure her husband by making light of that which so unmans him:— -"The sleeping and the dead Are but as pictures: 'tis the eye of childhood And this too comes from a woman, from whose "Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had done 't." Mr. Jasper appears to commit this original idea to memory. "Miss Brobity at that time kept, I will not call it the rival establishment to the establishment at the Nuns' House opposite, but I will call it the other parallel establishment down town. The world did have it that she showed a passion for attending my sales, when they took place on halfholidays, or in vacation time. The world did put it about that she admired my style. The world did notice that, as time flowed by, my style became traceable in the dictation-exercises of Miss Brobity's pupils. Young man, a whisper even sprang up in obscure malignity, that one ignorant and besotted Churl (a parent) so committed himself as to object to it by name. But I do not believe this. For is it likely that any human -Shakespeare as an Artist, by H. J. Ruggles creature in his right senses would so lay himself (Hurd & Houghton). AKIRS.-The "Law of Manu" contains F rules for nearly all the monkish observances; such as the tonsure, fasting, celibacy, mendicancy, novitiate, etc. We are told that Hindoo devotees "swing on hooks in honor of Siva; hang themselves by the feet, head downwards, over a fire; roll on a bed of prickly thorns; jump on a couch filled with sharp knives; bore holes in their tongues, and stick their bodies full of pins and needles." Some of the 'Fakirs" (Arabic, fakhar, poor) hold their arms so long in one position that they become permanently stiffened, and those who stretch their hands up over their heads loose the power to lower them. Others bend their bodies until they crook at a right angle; and there are those who keep the hands clasped together so long that the nails grow into the flesh and come out on the other side. Some of them never sit or lie down, but are supported by a rope placed for the purpose; others lay fire upon their heads, and others burn the scalp to the bone. Hassan al Bassri says a fakir resembles a dog in nine things: He is always hungry; he has no sure abiding place; he watches by night; he never abandons his master, even when maltreated; he is satisfied with the lowest place; he yields his place to whoever wishes it; he loves whoever beats him; he keeps quiet while others eat; he accompanies his master without ever thinking of returning to the place which he has left. . . . There are, at least, 1,000,000 Moham medan and Hindoo fakirs in India alone, besides many other religious ascetics.-Johnson's The Monks before Christ (A. Williams & Co.). R. Sapsea, and THE LATE MRS. SAPSEA. open to be pointed at, by what I call the finger of scorn?" Mr. Jasper shakes his head. Not in the least likely. Mr. Sapsea, in a grandiloquent state of absence of mind, seems to refill his visitor's glass, which is full already, and does really refill his own, which is empty. "Miss Brobity's Being, young man, was deeply She revered Mind, imbued with homage to Mind. when launched, or, as I say, precipitated, on an When I made extensive knowledge of the world. my proposals, she did me the honor to be so overshadowed with a species of Awe, as to be able to articulate only the two words, 'O Thou !'-meaning myself. Her limpid blue eyes were fixed upon me, her semi-transparent hands were clasped together, pallor overspread her aquiline features, and, though encouraged to proceed, she never did proceed a word further. I disposed of the parallel establishment, by private contract, and we be came as nearly one as could be expected under the circumstances. But she never could, and she never did, find a phrase satisfactory to her perhapstoo-favorable estimate of my intellect. To the very last (feeble action of liver), she addressed me in the same unfinished terms." Mr. Jasper has closed his eyes as the auctioneer has deepened his voice. He now abruptly opens them, and says, in unison with the deepened voice, "Ah!"-rather as if stopping himself on the extreme verge of adding-"men!" "I have been since," says Mr. Sapsea, with his legs stretched out, and solemnly enjoying himself me; I have been since a solitary mourner; I have with the wine and the fire, "what you behold been since, as I say, wasting my evening conversation on the desert air. I will not say that I have the jackass as reproached myself, but self-sufficient stupidity and conceit, -a custom, perhaps, like some few other customs, more con when I have asked myself the question, What if her husband had been nearer on a level with her? If she had not had to look up quite so high, what might the stimulating action have been upon the liver?" Mr. Jasper says, with an appearance of having fallen into dreadfully low spirits, that he "supposes it was to be." "We can only suppose so, sir," Mr. Sapsea coincides. "As I say, Man proposes, Heaven disposes. It may or may not be putting the same thought in another form; but' that is the way I put it." Mr. Jasper murmurs assent. "And now, Mr. Jasper," resumes the auctioneer, producing his scrap of manuscript. “Mrs. Sapsea's monument having had full time to settle and dry, let me take your opinion as a man of taste, on the inscription I have (as I before remarked, not without some little fever of the brow) drawn out for it. Take it in your own hand. The setting out of the lines requires to be followed with the eye, as well as the contents with the mind." Mr. Jasper complying, sees and reads as follows: ETHELINDA, Reverential Wife of MR. THOMAS SAPSEA, AUCTIONEER, VALUER, ESTATE AGENT, &C., OF THIS CITY. Whose Knowledge of the World, LOOKING UP TO HIM. STRANGER, PAUSE And ask thyself the Question, If Not, WITH A BLUSH RETIRE. successful growth and development; and we have seen but a short time since a steamer lying in the harbor of New York (The Great Eastern) of sufficient size and capacity to carry an army of ten thousand men with their equipage, having the same paddle-wheels, the same multi-tubular boilers, and the same type of machinery throughout (save the screw propellers attached as a collateral force) that were invented and combined in the model boat and model engine of Read more than seventy years ago. Moreover, the present locomotives, in the wonderful exhibition of their power and utility throughout every civilized land, are driven by this multi-tubular boiler and high-pressure engine, which alone give to them their life, availability, and marvellous power under their present improved state; and although those improvements have been gradually progressing, yet the main features and principles of the machinery remain unchanged Nathan Read and the Steam-Engine (Hurd & Houghton). OMPEII. What Pompeii especially reveals is the inside of the pagan home, domestic life. Nothing less resembles a family hearth than these charming abodes, with their porticoes, peristyles, gardens surrounded with columns, their triclinium surcharged with ornaments. Every thing is for show, elegant idleness, sumptuous repasts, and pompous, though never numerous, receptions. The dwelling-rooms are little, voluptuously decorated boudoirs, arranged in two rows, and forming two parallel passages around the atrium and the garden; they are solely intended for sleep, and are only looked upon as accessories. Domestic life did not exist. The frescos that adorn the walls acquaint us with the life led there. We witness the toilet of the great Roman lady surrounded by her slaves; we can count the vases of perfumery which she used. We behold family repasts in their scarcely chaste freedom. The "Admirable !" quoth Mr. Jasper, hand-dancing women who figure in ceremonial feasts ing back the paper. "You approve, sir?" 'Impossible not to approve. Striking, characteristic, and complete."-Dickens' Mystery of Edwin Drood. N ATHAN READ AND THE STEAM-ENGINE. -Prof. Renwick states, and so do Woodcroft, Stuart, and Tredgold, that Fulton was not the original inventor of the steamboat, or of the machinery he employed in the construction of his boats, but they allow him great and deserved credit for successfully applying the machinery invented by others. Indeed, every person who has written on the subject of steam navigation, who aims to give an impartial view of it, as well as those who were interested for and against the claims of Fulton, allow the same thing. That Fulton, therefore, was not the inventor of the steamboat, nor of the machinery he used, nor indeed of any part it, may be regarded as a wellsettled fact. If Judge Read did not succeed in securing the opportunity of applying his inventions to practice, it is believed, nevertheless, that no one did more than he towards the invention of the successful steamboat and locomotive. As we look back upon the little boat he experimented with at Danvers, -just large enough to carry a man-we see that it contained the elements of a are represented to us in their light and provoking grace. Still farther, we are introduced behind the scenes of a theatre, where they are getting up the spectacle; and into the house of the tragic poet, at the moment when he is about to recite his new productions. Excellent art, though at Pompeii it seems to have been a good copyist, adorned these pleasure houses of a middle class, whose fortunes must have been moderate. For them were wrought those fauns, dancing, sleeping, or plunged in intoxication, whose attitude is rendered with such astonishing subtleness in that little Narcissus with his delicate grace of self-intoxication, and especially that tired mercury, who has all the somewhat painful carelessness of lassitude; for these abodes were painted the ravishing frescos of Ulysses disclosing himself to Penelope, the sacrifice of Iphigenia, whose pathos is so affecting, and those three Graces whose serene beauty not the pencil of Raphael has surpassed. It is at Pompeii, too, that we read a frightful commentary on the picture which Saint Paul has traced of the infamies of the Roman decline, of that foadled and insatiable voluptuousness which, seeking the infinite in sensual life, found only the monstrous. Art extended its domain on all sides. It could give an elegant for.n to the utensils of ordinary life. Lamps, pottery, and jewels received its seal. The pagan of that period would have all his senses flattered at once. It is but too easy to find the explanation of this wholly brilliant and infamous life in the papyri discovered in the ashes of the destroyed city, and which are unrolled to be deciphered by the most ingenious processes. They are all treatises on Epicurean philosophy. This philosophy, more surely than the flames and ashes of Vesuvius, was to destroy the society that had surrendered itself to it, crying, "Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die!" It is after such spectacles that we admire the moral power which made the cross triumph not only over the Cæsar of Rome, but the Venus of Naples; which purified the pagan abode, and created the Christian home; which finally made the lily of purity grow up amid such slime. To conquer brutal force was much, but it was more difficult still to subdue the syren of this gulf, and the enchantments of a refined voluptuousness, which was the conclusion and the prestige of Greco-Roman Paganism.- Pressense's Rome and Naples (Carlton & Lanahan). LOVE. NIGHT love turneth into day; Toil it turneth into rest; Love thou well and I hear say Love is thought with great desire That may not slake by any art. Love is light and burneth fain; Love doth glad both young and old; But all our fleshly love shall fare But Jesu! Son of God Thou art, Hymns to Jesus, from The Early English (E. P. JOHN OF TOURS. (OLD FRENCH.) OHN of Tours is back with peace, "Good-morrow, mother." "Good-morrow, son; Your wife has borne you a little one." "Go now, mother, go before, Make me a bed upon the floor; "Very low your foot must fall, As it neared the midnight toll, "Tell me now, my mother my dear, "Daughter, the children are awake, Crying with their teeth that, ache." "Tell me though, my mother my dear, What's the knocking that I hear?" "Daughter, it's the carpenter Mending planks upon the stair." "Tell me too, my mother my dear, What's the singing that I hear?" "Daughter, it's the priests in rows Going round about our house." "Tell me then, my mother my dear, What's the dress that I should wear!" "Daughter, any reds or blues, But the black is most in use."" "Nay, but say, my mother my dear, Why do you fall weeping here?" "Oh! the truth must be said,It's that John of Tours is dead." "Mother, let the sexton know That the grave must be for two; "Ay, and still have room to spare, For you must shut the baby there." TH D. G. Rosetti's New Poems (Roberts Bros.). RENOVATION. HERE are sounds across the prairie, With the fresh'ning of the clover, There are buds of promise starting, Warm and joyous, is returning, In my heart the spring is coming, All the days of mirth and laughter, Early rain. Warp and Woof, by S. W. Duffield (Randolph & Co.). MAY GROWN A-COLD. CERTAINLY, nohy, sweet birds of happy song, no month this is but May! Do make thee happy now, and thou art strong, Go cry aloud the hope the Heavens do say! Nay, what is this? and wherefore lingerest thou? Wm. Morris, in the Atlantic Monthly. New Serial Volumes: Dr. Wm. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, Part XXVI., pap. 75 c. (Hurd & Houghton);-Grote's Greece, Vol. VI. clo. $2.00; and, Centenary Edition of Waverley Novels, Vol. V., cont. Old Mortality, clo. $1.75 (Little, Brown & Co.) ;-Library edition of Carlyle, Vol. XIV., cont. Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, Vol. I., clo., $4.50 (Scribner ;-Tho. mas' Universal Dictionary of Biography and Mythology, Part 7, pap. 50 5. (Lippincott) ;-Zell's Popular Encyclopædia, No. 26-30, pap. each 50 c. (Zell). C OMMENTARIES.—A correspondent inquires, "Be kind enough to inform me what is the best commentary on the Bible, and what is its cost." For general use, beyond all comparison, LANGE'S Commentary, published by SCRIBNER & Co., New York, is best. The only drawback is its size and expensiveness. On the New Testament there are already six large octavo volumes, and three more will be needed to complete it. Two volumes have been issued on the Old Testament, and five or six more must needs be added to that portion of the Bible. The volumes retail at about five dollars a volume. Against this, however, is to be set the fact that this is a complete library of "critical, doctrinal, and homiletical" matter. It is far better for a layman to concentrate his means upon such a cyclopedia as this, which will be an inexhaustible reservoir for generations to come, than to fritter them away upon fragmentary and unsatisfying commentaries on single portions of Scripture. If to this be added HURD & HOUGHTON'S edition of SMITH'S Biblical Dictionary, in four volumes, an ordinary man will need no other human help in the study of the sacred Scriptures. Indeed, for practical purposes, these two books will furnish any pastor with a respectable outfit. The HARPERS are publishing a standard work, Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature-of which three volumes have appeared and some four more are to come, which, added to the two works above mentioned, will completely equip a teacher, a minister, or layman in the definement of sacred literature. -Christian Union. Co OLOR IN DRESS.-The simplest rules to be observed are the following: Ist, When a color is selected which is favorable to the com plexion, it is advisable to associate with it tints which will harmonize by analogy, because the adoption of contrasting colors would diminish its favorable effect. 2d, When a color is employed in dress which is injurious to the complexion, contrasting colors must be associated with it, as they have the power to neutralize its objectionable influence. We will take an example illustrative of the first rule. Green suits the blonde, and, when worn by her, its associated colors should be tones of itself (slightly lighter or darker), which will rather enhance than reduce its effect. As an example of the second rule, we may take violet, which, although unsuitable to brunettes, may be rendered agreeable by having tones of yellow or orange grouped with it. Colors of similar power which contrast with each other mutually intensify each other's brilliancy, as blue and orange, scarlet and green. When dark and very light colors are associated, they do not intensify each other in the same manner; the dark color is made to appear deeper and the light lighter, as dark blue and straw color, or any dark color and the light tints of the complexion. In dress it is objectionable to associate together different hues of one color; for instance, yellow green and blue green, or orange brown and purple brown. Care must therefore be taken in selecting different tones of a color to see that they belong to the same scale. There is another fact we wish to bring before our readers ere we close our remarks on the harmony of color, namely, that tints which accord by daylight may appear unharmonious by artificial light, and vice versa; thus, purple and orange harmonize by day, but are disagreeable by gaslight; and white and yellow, which are unsatisfactory by daylight, are suitable for evening dress. There are many colors which lose much of their brilliancy and hue by gaslight, and are therefore unserviceable for evening costume; of this class we may enumerate all the shades of purple and lilac, and dark blues and greens. Others gain brilliancy in artificial light, as orange, scarlet, crimson, and the light browns and greens. It is advisable that all these circumstances should be considered in the selection of colors for morning and evening costumes. Audsley's Color in Dress (Phila., Geo. Maclean). Ο VERDRESSING.-The same want of adaptation of the dress to the occasion, as exhibited in female church costume, is shown by the habit prevalent among our dames of putting on their showiest garments whenever going out, even should it be for the performance only of the most ordinary duty connected with the household. Whether it is to the shop to buy a dozen kitchen towels, to the grocer's to dabble in butter, or to the butcher's to dribble in the blood of a sirloin, she is, the same finely-dressed personage. She more frequently, however, avoids the inconsistency of performing humble duties in lofty attire by shifting them to the lowlier and more soberly clad This is one, and not shoulders of her husband. the least, of the ill effects of this habit of female overdress. It unfits women for the simple and unostentatious duties of household life. Our unmarried girls are entirely overdressed. They are allowed to wear such suits as are never worn by modest maidens in Europe, and are hardly seen in public by the most matronly persons. The young miss, flauntingly costumed, is sure to attract a notice in the streets which should not be agreeable to, and is hardly safe for, virgin modesty. Our countrywomen, as also our countrymen, are recognized immediately on the highways of travel by the finery of their dress. The glistening black coat and satin waistcoat, and the silk gown and flimsy bonnet of fashion, are discerned at once amidst the dust of the railway and the smoke of the steamer as American national peculiarities. Apart from the obvious advantage on the score of economy of adapting the dress to the occasion, there are certain moral effects of higher importance which might be expected from a national reform in this particular. Overdress leads to false expectations, and confirms a deceitful vanity which prompts to a pretence of wealth, and all the iniquitous means by which it may be supported. It has more to do than any other single cause with the fall of woman, the bankruptcy of husbands, and the ruin of families. Its effect in destroying female reserve, especially that of the young, as it thus takes away one of the best safeguards of virtue, makes it very pernicious. The excess of dress is certainly the cause of much of the characteristic vice of the day; and with the general adoption of a more modest attire there would be less temptation to that part, at least, of the prevailing ill-doing for which women are responsible.-The Bazar Book of Decorum (Harper). "For shame," said Father Paul, "my erring daughter! On my word, This is the most distressing news that I have ever heard. Why, naughty girl, your excellent papa has pledged your hand To a promising young robber, the lieutenant of his band! "This dreadful piece of news will pain your worthy parents so! They are the most remunerative customers I know; "The common country folk in this insipid neighborhood Have nothing to confess, they're so ridiculously good; And, if you marry any one respectable at all, that she was born for the stage; but it is then only that the author's admirable art is apparent, and that we are reconciled to what seemed extravagances and inconsistencies, and are even consoled for the disappointment of our foolish novel-reading desire for the heroine's marriage. Petra does not marry any of the numerous lovers whom she has won in her unconscious effort to surround herself with the semblances that charm her imagination but never touch her heart; she is wedded to dramatic art alone, and the author, with a wisdom and modesty almost rare enough to be called singular, will not let us see whether the union is happy or not, but closes his book as the curtain rises upon Petra's first appearance. In fact, his business with her was there ended, as the romancer's used to be with the nuptials of his young people; what followed could only have been commonplace in contrast with what went before. The story is exquisitely pleasing; the incidents are quickly successive; the facts are in great part cheerful and amusing, and even where they are disastrous there is not a hopeless or unrelieved pathos in them; the situations are vivid and picturesque, and the people most refreshingly original and new, down to the most slightly seen and least important personage. There is also unusual range and variety in the characters; we have no longer to do with the peasants, but behold Norwegian nature as it is affected by life in towns, refined by education and thought, and sophisticated by wealth and unwise experience of the world.-Atlantic Monthly, April. A BULL-which must by no means be passed over in this recapitulation of the family of wit and humor-a bull is exactly the counterpart of a witticism: for as wit discovers real relations that are not apparent, bulls admit apparent relations that are not real. The pleasure arising from bulls proceeds from our surprise at suddenly discovering two things to be dissimilar in which a resemblance might have been suspected. In the late rebellion in Ireland, the rebels, who had conceived a high degree of indignation against some great banker, passed a resolution that they would burn his notes;-which they accordingly did with great assiduity, forgetting that in burnGilbert's "Bab Ballads" (Porter & Coates). ing his notes they were destroying his debts, and Why, you'll reform, and what will then become of FATHER PETR ETRA.-In "The Fisher-Maiden," which is less perfect as a romance than "Arne," Bjornson has given us in Petra his most perfect and surprising creation. The story is not so dreamy, andit has not so much poetic intimacy with external things as "Arne," while it is less naturalistic than "The Happy Boy," and interests us in characters more independently of circumstance. It is, however, very real, and Petra is a study as successful as daring. To work out the character of a man of genius is a task of sufficient delicacy, but the difficulty is indefinitely enhanced where it is a woman of genius whose character is to be painted in the various phases of childhood and girlhood, and this is the labor Björnson undertakes in Petra. She is a girl of the lowest origin, and has had, like Arne, no legal authority for coming into the world; but like him she has a wonderful gift, though it is different from his. Looking back over her career from the close of the book, one sees plainly enough that for every note which went into the flames a |