and civilization. Is it justice which refuses the district attorney acted under instruceven to inquire whether Ireland is or is not tions from Washington. The inevitable consuffering under a vast calamity, or mercy clusion is, that it is the desire of the execuwhich points to a loss of one-third her whole tive not to further the ends of justice, but produce as a mere statistical fact, or Chris- that this ship, whatever may have been her tianity which bids us welcome our neighbors' destination, whatever the purposes of her banishment, or civilization which is estab-owners, should not be confiscated as a lawful lished when, at the end of a century of effort, we hail a desert as a relief? Our duty is to reconcile Ireland, to make it a part of the empire as much as Scotland, and it is not to the credit of the Liberal party that they refuse to inquire into the facts because those facts are exaggerated, or to remove great grievances because presented in an excited irrational way.

upon as a dangerous assumption of power; and the decision of the judge, and the action of the district attorney, at the instance of the Government, is universally regarded as a deep national humiliation. And inasmuch as Earl Russell, in his letter to the owners of the Peterhoff, had justified, in a certain contingency-which the case, as her letters would doubtless have shown, covered-the arrest of that vessel, the popular feeling is that we have humiliated ourselves, as a nation, when there was no necessity for it, and when we had nothing to gain by it. Not only a political crime has been committed, but that worse thing in a statesman, a political blunder.

have been hailed as a good omen of the determination of England to act fairly and justly by us as a neutral power, had we not, at the same time, received the intelligence of the escape of the Japan. Men do not fail to note the fact that the first is a small and comparatively harmless vessel, while the other is a second Alabama. Could not the Japan also have been stopped had there been any sincere wish to do so? The assertion that the authorities were not informed in season of her character is simply not believed here. The popular belief jumps with the fact. Information was given in ample time to arrest the departure of the ship. I speak what I know; and in due time, doubtWhat is the result? Simply a new com- less, the evidence will be forthcoming. Does plication. Accepting this act as disgraceful England mean thus systematically to keep to us, we only look as its natural sequences the promise to the ear and break it to the for the loss of your respect. Our Govern- hope? Nor do we fail to observe that ment may deserve this; the people do not. while the tardy and useless efforts to prevent If, presuming thereon, her majesty's Govern- the Alabama from putting to sea are an acment shall conclude that we have not the knowledgment that her departure should manliness to maintain our rights, and that never have been permitted; and are at the our patience and forbearance are unlimited, same time an assurance, as far as words can under whatever provocation, they will com- go, that should she put into any port, in the mit a fatal error. The very fact that we islands of Great Britain or Ireland, she would have been subjected to unnecessary humilia- not be allowed again to leave it; neverthetion by the act of our own executive only less, she goes with impunity into British Colserves to nerve the spirit of resistance in the onial ports there to refit, re-coal, and repeople, and renders them the more ready to provision, in order that she may again sweep hasten and abide by the issue. This popular the seas of American commerce. Are your feeling is the natural and inevitable reaction laws powerless in your Colonies, and do your against the attitude in which the Government national duties depend upon degrees of latihas placed the country. tude and longitude? I beg you not to believe that our eyes are closed or our judgment darkened to those things.

At the moment when the public mind is thus agitated comes the news of the seizure of the Alexandria at Liverpool. It would

AN AMERICAN.

A RESOLUTION was offered to the Convocation of the University of London on 12 May requesting the Senate to inquire what steps they could take to elevate the standard of female education in this country by drawing up a curriculum for the examination and certification of their attainments. It was rejected by a very large majority, composed, however, of very different elements. Not a few of the speakers all but distinctly contended that women should be refined intellectual toys, with which fathers, husbands, and brothers may amuse their hardly earned leisure, and were taxed, not unjustly, with holding much more Mahometan than Christian views, and, in effect, denying women an independent soul. Others, disclaiming this view, pointed out, justly enough we think, that to admit women to men's academical degrees would be holding up a false and futile standard of female education, of which at best only a few in a century would avail themselves, while to form a new curriculum for women

would be a work of time and difficulty, for which the Senate of the University of London have no qualifications. Finally, many were contented with the legal opinion which has been delivered, that the University has no power under its present charter to confer such diplomas, or hold such examinations at all. For ourselves, we feel no doubt that a Woman's University is much wanted, and might exercise a very large and beneficial influence on the general course of female education, but that its work would certainly be very inefficiently done by the lawyers and medical men who constitute the majority of the London University Senate.-Spectator.

IF you except Il Penseroso,

The rest of Milton is but so-so.

WHEN Dido mourned, Enas would not come,
She wept in silence and was Di-do-dumb.

From The Spectator.
WANDERINGS OF A BEAUTY.

rary eclipse, we heard that the newly wedded pair had chosen New York for their abode; and we indulged the hope that in a new and better sphere, where writs ran no longer, and bailiffs ceased from troubling, the ex-member and patriot might win the position to which his talents entitled him.

Somehow or other Mr. James is not fated to lead a life of uneventful tranquility. His arrival in the empire city was signalized by the loss of his matrimonial jewels; and then ugly paragraphs began to appear with respect to the domestic bliss of Edwin and his bride. Mrs. James grew jealous, and it was whispered, not without reason; there was a scandal in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and a scene in the ladies' reception-room of that gorgeous edifice. Then it was reported that the irate spouse took to attending the trials on which her lord and master was engaged, and suggesting to the opposing counsel allusions as to incidents in her husband's career which, if suddenly introduced, might upset his almost invincible self-possession. After this we were not surprised to learn that, to adopt the language of the regions of high life, a divorce was on the tapis, and that the accom

Ar Wiesbaden and the other resorts of "Roulettania," the observant traveller will see displayed in the shelves of the book-stalls which surround the Kursaal, pamphlets explaining the mysteries of hazard and developing the secret working of the laws of chance. These pamphlets are wrapped up in sealed covers, with an ominous notification printed on the wrapper to the effect that, after the seal is broken, no money will be returned. If the traveller be ignorant of the ways of this wicked world, and eager to penetrate into the secret which opens the door to wealth, he will expend his thalers or guldens, as the case may be, on the purchase of this book of promise, and when he has acquired the right of perusing it, he will find himself in possession of the important, but not novel information, that the chances are even whether red or black turn up at any given moment. Now, we confess, to our shame, that we have experienced a very similar deception in perusing the "Wanderings of a Beauty." We had our doubts whether we were doing quite right in reading a relation of private scandal, we may have suspected that the entertain-modating Legislature of the State of Indiana ment we were about to receive would not be of the most intellectual character; but still we did fancy that we were going to be amused. Without endorsing to its full extent the well-known cynicism of Rochefoucauld, we may safely admit that there is something interesting in the scrapes of our acquaintances. And how few there are amongst men in any way connected with literature to whom Mr. Edwin James was utterly unknown? The fall of the great Causidicus," as Mr. Thackeray baptized him, was familiar to us all. Breach-of-promise James has been a household word to us for years. His debts, his duns, his difficulties, the fees which he received, and the wealth which he squandered, had furnished matter for many a night of club-room gossip. The defender of Bernard, the elect of Marylebone, the friend of Garibaldi, had occupied no small share in the public eye; and even when, in the expressive American phrase, he "went under," he still contrived to keep alive our interest in his fate. In the moment of his lowest fortunes news came to us from Paris that the great Edwin had won the heart and hand of a wealthy Angelina. Then, after a tempo

was likely to be resorted to in order to dissolve the nuptial tie. We took it, as a matter of course, that Mrs. James would write a book. "Les femmes incomprises," in the New World, as well as in the Old, always do try to make themselves, their sorrows, and their wrongs, intelligible to the public; they ap peal from the villany of the individual to the great heart of humanity.

Mrs. James, we regret to say, has fulfilled our expectations in the letter, but not in the spirit. The title of her revelations is all that we can desire. "The Wanderings of a Beauty" is suggestive of a tale of thrilling interest. The portrait of the decidedly decolletée lady, which graces the cover, is exactly that of a heroine of the Yelverton class—of one of that typical order of womanhood who possess a fatal talent for perpetually getting into trouble without the slightest fault of their own. The fact, too, that the memoir is dedicated to Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, "in token of profound admiration of his genius, and sympathy with his opinions,” is in itself full of promise. But when we have paid our money, and become the happy possessor of the" Wanderings," portrait and all, we

find that we are not much the wiseer than we | a shadow of justice; and Colonel Melville were before. Since the days when we spent leaves her in a huff. Too late Evelyn repents, five shillings to hear poor Lola Montes' lec- and recalls him to her side; but the colonel ture on "Love and Courtship," and were has sailed for India, and is killed at the siege treated to a moral discourse, which might of Lucknow. have been extracted from the Family Herald, The lovely widow still remains heart whole, we have never been so disappointed as on the and enslaves by her charms an Italian noble present occasion. We wanted to know some--the Duke of Balsano, who possesses every thing about Edwin the unfortunate, and we merit except the slight defect of being rather are bored with a disquisition on spiritualism. dull. His capricious mistress plays fast and Only a few pages of these "Memoires pour loose with the unhappy Italian at her pleasservir a l'histoire de Monsieur mon Mari," ure, engages herself to him, then adjourns throw any light on the career of the unwor- the marriage indefinitely, finally goes to Paris thy husband of the lovely Angelina. How- without him to make up her mind what she ever, in default of a loaf we must content ought to do, and meanwhile leaves his letters ourselves with the crumbs. With true be- unanswered. There she falls in, at last, with nevolence, we will try to preserve our readers from a like fate with our own, by telling them beforehand what they will learn in the memoirs of Mrs. Edwin James.

the ideal man whom she has always longed for a brilliant American, Philip d'Arcy, a devoted believer in spiritualism. During a long illness she nurses him, at the risk of her Evelyn Travers, the heroine of this novel, reputation, and saves his life. D'Arcy is whose story is narrated by a shadowy confi- equally in love with her, but, by some incomdant and humble admirer, is, when the nar- prehensible complication, each of them-in rative begins, young, exquisitely beautiful, spite of the spirits-misunderstands the other, rich, friendless, and alone. To escape the and Philip engages himself to Evelyn's daughdomestic dullness of her stepfather's house- ter Ella. In despair Mrs. Travers resolves hold she is over-persuaded into marrying her to conceal her grief, and not to allow herself, cousin, Captain Travers; and, by some in- even in her secret heart, to be her daughter's iquitous, though incomprehensible intrigue rival. So, in the coolest way, after months of her heartless mother, is jockeyed into giv- of silence, she writes to Balsano to fix a day ing up half her property. Her husband turns for their marriage. The duke unfortunately out to be a brute and a drunken reprobate, had got wedded to another lady in the aband, as he has the cruelty to shave off his sence of any news from his betrothed, and moustache after his marriage, he loses the thus the luckless Evelyn is still left a widow. one charm which had endeared him to Evelyn. At this crisis of her fate Sir Percy MontgomHowever, he is kind enough to die of delirium ery appears upon the scene. This gentleman tremens, leaving his widow richer and love- bears an unmistakeable resemblance to a barlier than ever, with one only daughter, Ella. rister whose name was not equally romantic. Previous to her husband's death, Mrs. Trav- He, too, had lately resigned his seat in Parers had formed a warm but purely Platonic liament; he, too, was deeply in debt, and liaison with a Colonel Melville, a type of professed to be the victim of unmerited permanly worth and beauty; and this connec- secution that "had put a stop to a career tion is carried on with renewed ardor after which would otherwise have shortly ended in the obstacle to its prosecution is removed. the cabinet." He was, we are told, “in The blooming young widow, however, is in appearance, a perfect John Bull,' that is to no hurry to reassume the fetters of wedlock, say, he possessed a countenance rubicund and goes abroad to Italy with the colonel as and somewhat flat, with no very marked a sort of lover on good behavior. At Flor- features; figure stout, burly, broad-shoulence she is much admired by the Prince of dered, thick-set, you perceived at a glance Syracuse, greatly to the disgust of her de- that the animal nature preponderated in the voted swain, as Evelyn is perfectly aware of man; nevertheless, the square and rather the notorious character of his royal highness. massive forehead displayed intellect; and the In consequence of her imprudence her name fine teeth, seen to advantage in a pleasant becomes damaged, though, of course, without jovial smile of not frequent occurrence, ren