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MISCELLANY.

MUSIC AS MEDICINE. -The Lancet gives a very cautious reply to a suggestion as to the use of music as a medical treatment. "Five years ago," says the Lancet's correspondent, "I had an opportunity of trying the effect of dreamy music upon a lady of great intellectual power, who retained, too, her faculties at the ripe age of eighty-six. About seven minutes were occupied by the music, and before its last notes were heard my revered friend, the Viscountess Combermere, had closed her eyes and was napping." This story reminds us (says the Hospital) of another told by the late Dean Ramsey in his "Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character." A certain country laird was taken ill with some affection which produced marked sleeplessness. All sorts of remedies for the insomnia were tried, but tried in vain. The laird had a son who was what is called in Scotland "daft," that is, he was somewhat weak in the upper story. When the other members of the laird's family were in a state bordering on distraction, the lad, whom nobody thought of taking into consultation, suddenly burst out with, "Feyther aye sleeps i' the kirk." The suggestion of getting a minister to preach to the sleepless man was acted upon immediately, and with the best results. Hardly had the reverend divine got well into the second head of his discourse, before the patient was sound asleep and snoring like the drone of a bag pipe. The peculiar monotony of the preacher's voice had acted as an irresistible soporific. It is a common experience that the monotonous reading of a book, or the measured cadences of quiet sing. ing, is often of great value in the soothing of the nervous system. It might be well if nurses were taught to chant a little, and were to learn suitable music for the bedside. Young ladies, too, and even matrons, would be all the better if, in the course of their ordinary education, they had a little instruction in music of a sleep-inducing kind. There is manifestly a field for the musical composer also, as well as for the nurse and the young lady.

THE STORM-WAVE OF 1876.-The natives usnally go to rest at sunset, in the little huts under bamboos, of which there are long clumps stretching everywhere; and, happily, it is the custom in these districts to plant dense groves of trees, but more especially of cocoanut and palm, round the villages; and almost all who survived saved themselves by climbing into the branches, when the strange

screaming sound-the din of the cyclone, amid the dead silence that always reigns at night in Bengal-was heard, coming from the southwest. It is not, says a print of the month, the continuous whistle of a Western tempest, but a fierce overwhelming uproar, like the thundering of surf upon leagues of stony beach; and in an instant, the isles of the Megna and its broad channel became the very centre of that terrific circular storm of wind and water combined. The latter, piled up, "turned almost like a wheel over Lakhipar, and, whirling downward again, drove with its western segment the heaped-up waves of the two great rivers in a wall of death thrice as high as the 'bore,' washing clean over the rich and populous islands. They stand some twenty feet above mid-tide, yet this dreadful wave of the cyclone rose, at least, another twenty feet, high over the dry land, submerging every hamlet and cattle shed; drowning men, women, and children in their sleep; bursting over tank, and garden, and templein a few minutes slaying nearly a quarter of a million of human creatures. Imagine the horror of that scene-of that death so abrupt, pitiless, and inevitable. From the moment when the first howl of the cyclone was heard, tearing upward from the ocean, to the awful return stroke of the tempest, herding before it the dark waves of water, scarcely thirty minutes elapsed. Tens of thousands of human beings were by that time caught up and washed like drift-wood into the boiling bay; tens of thousands more were choked in their beds by whelming waves and ruined buildings; and all the work of their hands, all their possessions, and all their cattle were similarly seized in the black flood and destroyed."- Cassell's Illustrated History of India.

THE O'GORMAN MAHON.-An interesting article on the late The O'Gorman Mahon appeared in the New York Sun. Here is an extract:

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He first went to Paris, and appeared at the Court of Louis Philippe. His handsome face and form and his readiness to fight, and his formidableness when once in a duel, soon won him fame and favor at Court. He be came the friend of the King and intimate with Talleyrand. All the brilliant society of the capital of fashion was open to him. Women loved him, men sought and envied him, his enemies feared him, and his fortune rose high, With Paris as a centre of operations, he travelled over all Europe during the next few years. All sorts of wars, great and small, were

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waging, and The O'Gorman Mahon was in them all, now a captain, now a colonel, now a general. He fought under nearly every flag, and distinguished himself among the brave men around each European monarch. went over into Africa, he fought under the banners of Oriental princes. At the end of ten years of this exciting life, for which he never lost the keen edge of appetite, he returned to the county Clare, and sat in Parliament for five years. At the end of that time he was beaten by five votes. He left his native coun. try and did not return to it or to England for twenty years. He threw himself into a career of adventure with renewed energy. He was now in the full strength of his manhood. Hardship, restless activity had not impaired his health or strength in the least. He could still drink, ride, shoot, and fence with the best and bravest. Women still found him first in attractiveness, with his bold, almost beautiful face, and his record of reckless dar ing, and his low, sweet voice that could say compliments or deadliest words of anger with equal grace and force.

"After remaining in France awhile he went into Russia and joined the hunting party of the Czarewitch to shoot bears and wolves in Finland. The Czar made him a lieutenant in the international bodyguard, which gave him rank above most of the generals. He fought against the Tartars, visited China, India, and Farther India, camped with Arabs, fought under the Turkish flag, then took service with Austria, then drifted back to France and joined an expedition to South America. He first fought in the armies of Uruguay and then enlisted under the Chilian Government. There he changed from a soldier to a sailor, and rose to the rank of admiral. The wars in Chili being over, he travelled across the mountains to Brazil and became a colonel in the army of the Emperor of Brazil. When Brazil was quiet, and not a speck of war cloud was in the horizon of South America, he crossed to France. There were rumors of war in Europe. He found his old friend, Philippe Egalité, departed, and Louis Napoleon governing in his stead. But the change of government had no effect upon the fortunes of the knight errant. Napoleon gave him a colonelcy in a regiment of chasseurs and made him a lion at Paris again. But he remained only a short time, and went to visit the German Empire.

"His fame had gone before him, and he was received with marks of high favor. Count

Bismarck and he became bosom friends, and their friendship lasted to the end of his life. He also became a favorite companion of the Crown Prince. For no one could equal The O'Gorman in his graces of conversation. To his natural talents were added the thousand thrilling, strange, unusual experiences of his long, restless life. But age at length began to tell upon him. The customs of the times had changed. Duelling was no longer the fashion, and personal daring was no longer the feature of war. So he returned to Ireland and re-entered politics. He became an intimate friend of Gladstone, and it was to an inquiry from that gentleman that he replied: 'I have fought twenty-two serious duels. And in all my life I have never been challenged. I was always the aggressor.'

SEA TRIPS AS A CHANGE.-When exhaustion has gone so far as to produce a condition of positive breakdown without any special organic lesion, a sea trip is in most cases to be preferred to any alternative. The patient has the advantages of perpetual carriage exercise without the irksomeness of restrained posture, and without its limitation to a few hours of sunshine. The chilling effects of night air and alternations of dryness and dampness of atmosphere are almost unknown at sea; and a recovery may in such cases usually be predicted as following almost certainly a few weeks on ship-board. But it is to the middle. aged man more than all others that a holiday at sea is to be recommended. In the great majority of cases a man who leads an active business or professional life selects his form of holiday as much for what he gets away from as for what he gets to. The desire to get out of harness and to escape from the weary treadmill of the recurring cares from which few active men are free is never better met than by a voyage. To such men exercise is a secondary consideration. Fresh air and the incidents that vary the monotony of sea-life are sufficient to give all the benefits that any change can give, while the gentle exercise of walking the deck is sufficient to stimulate the appetite and promote digestion. The impossibility of doing anything more energetic than walking the deck is a safeguard to persons of this class; for, after the first flush of youth is over, the sudden transition from a sedentary life to severe exertion is more apt to be attended with risk than with benefit.-London Medical Recorder.

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Now that the first series of papers on Russian Characteristics which have appeared during the past two years in the pages of this Review have come to a close, I have been asked to remove one or two misconceptions that have arisen in some quarters respecting them, by offering a few remarks as to their scope and object. They were written without a trace of bitterness against the governing classes or the governed masses of Russian society, in the hope that they might prove a trustworthy contribution to Englishmen's knowledge of a truly remarkable people, who, in the opinion alike of sober friends and impartial enemies, seem destined at no very distant date to play a leading part in the politics of Europe, and it may be-I say it with all due respect for the authoritative and optimistic views of General Robertsin that part of Asia with the prosperity of which the interests of this country are so NEW SERIES.-VOL. LIV., No. 6.

closely bound up. They aimed, therefore, at giving expression to ethnographical truths rather than political opinions. He would, indeed, be engaged on a wild goose chase, who should hopefully strive at the present moment to awaken an enlightened and fruitful interest in foreign politics, bristling with outlandish names of persons and places, among a peaceful domestic people like our own. Even our chosen representatives in the House of Commons, although possessed, no doubt, of an intimate knowledge of physical and political geography, modestly imitate the Bourgeois Gentilhomme, and would fain be treated by the leaders on both sides as if they were unaware that Bucharest is not in Asia Minor, or Salonica on the coast, of Chili. The best service that could be rendered to such a people under such circumstances, by their best friend, seemed that of introducing them in an easy, informal

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way to their future neighbors and probable heirs. This I have honestly endeavored to do.

My aim, as affecting the Russian people, was twofold; on the one hand to direct the attention of the Government to the miserable lot of the peasantry in the hope of obtaining for them some moderate measure of relief, and on the other, to show that the people, improvident, shiftless, superstitious, aud immoral though they appear from our lofty English point of view, are yet not undeserving of a certain subdued admiration for having steered clear of still greater abysses into which almost every other people in like circumstances would probably have fallen. And in neither of these respects, I am pleased to think, have my efforts been wholly thrown away. The articles, which to my own knowledge were carefully read by the highest dignitaries of the empire, were in due time followed by a few slight improvements; the paper on Finances, by a decree abolishing the premium on Russian sugar exported to Persia; that on Finland by a Ukase giving the assurance, which I had authority to state would satisfy the legitimate aspirations of the Finnish people (a solemn promise that the legislative independence of the Principality would be rigorously respected); the paper on Prisons, by the creation of a secret cominission to report specially on the subject; that on the Racking of the Peasantry to a project of law which will probably receive the imperial signature in the autumn, the object of which is to abolish inhuman usury of the kind described in that paper, and by another proposal now under the consideration of the ministry to lessen the burden of local, as distinct from Imperial, taxation.

If I have aroused less admiration for the endurance, or less pity for the sufferings, of the masses than seemed reasonable to hope, the explanation, I fancy, is to be found in the intellectual sluggishness of those readers who refuse to come down from their own lofty ethical plane to analyze the enormous forces which for centuries have been crushing out every moral sentiment and aspiration, every nascent germ of manhood that manifests itself in the Russian people, and to compare them with the marvellous resistance offered and the upshot of the unequal struggle. It is a terrible tale to which

only a Goethe, a Dante, or a Shakespeare could hope to do justice.

There was a time when the Russian people were as completely equipped for their part in the struggle for national existence as were most of those who are become the successful nations of to-day. It was when, split up into a number of petty principalities and republics, they were honest, believing Pagans. Centralization gave them Muscovy, which began by absorbing all the Russias, and may end by sucking in Sclavonic Austria and the Balkan Peninsula. Byzantine Christianity, which is a foul libel on Christ's teachings, a blasphemous mockery of His actions, sowed the seeds of irreligion, superstition, fatalism, and Nihilism, of which we have, as yet, only seen the flowers, the fruit being still immature. The result of these combined forces-Autocracy and Orthodoxy-is the Russian people of to-day.

It is difficult for the most impartial historian to tell the story of a people's life without creating the chief actors in his own image and likeness, attributing to them intentions which they never hatbored, and suggesting motives by which they were never actuated. The Russian governing classes have lost or gained more in this way than any body of men known to history. No Tsar or Minister, from the days of Ivan the Terrible, ever conceived a deliberate plan of centralization, ever meditated diabolical schemes of demoralization, or harbored Machiavellian designs to reduce an entire people to a common denominator of profligate imbecility-before the last quarter of the nineteenth century. And yet if all these immoral projects had been the realities they are supposed to have been, the results would not be appreciably different from what they are. Whether we term it accident or design, it is a fact vouched for by history that two strongly-marked tendencies characterize the policy of the governing classes since the reign of Ivan the Terrible: one, to keep the bulk of the nation as near to the hunger line as seemed consistent with comparative tranquillity, and the other, to drive them as close to the verge of idiocy by means of alcoholism as was compatible with the continuation of agricultural labor. It would be cruel, and perhaps unveracious, to speak of these tendencies as the outcome of a deliberate

system, but it matters very little to the wayfarer shot dead by a highwayman that his murderer intended only to disable in order the better to rob him, and never for a moment conceived the plan of causing death by internal hemorrhage. One need have no hesitation to declare that the Government are at present pursuing a system of which the object is to prop up the autocracy, and the means include every conceivable act-whatever its ethical character which promises to facilitate the attainment of this end. The peasantry, which for generations had been sleeping the natural sleep of ignorance, were beginning to show signs of waking up and growing restive toward the close of the last reign, but the Governmental nurse has dosed it with strong opiates, which may possibly kill, but will infallibly stupefy it. The difference between the condition of the people now and in the days of serfdom is one of degree, the latter state being worse than the former. They still continue to support the upper classes, not in harmless idleness, but in diabolical mischievousness, while they too frequently fail to support themselves. It is with blood withheld from the veins and whipped from the backs of the most miserable of mortals that that militarism is maintained which is a menace to Europe and a curse to mankind.

This being an exceptionally bad year for the peasantry, offers a favorable opportunity for testing the true character of that paternal care which the Government is said to lavish on its subjects. Famine, we are told by official newspapers, threatens to prove as intense as it will be widespread. In numerous districts of the Government of Penza the people cannot even now obtain any food but bread, and even that only every second day; and the bread which they thus wistfully long for is like the Psalmist's, mingled with tears, and with other ingredients incomparably more injurious-tree-bark, grasses, dung, etc. We read of women and children stalking in the highways, crouching in ditches and lanes, with bloodshot eyes, faces pinched and fleshless, the lower parts of the body swollen as with dropsy to monstrous dimensions. The heart of a Gradgrind or a Scrooge, in his unregenerate days, would have melted in pity at the sight of these gasping wretches perishing miserably in the midst of the wealth which they and

their fathers had created. And yet even among these step-children of Providence, before hunger-typhus has had time to rescue them from torture, the Governmental lash and birch are busy-very busy, but unsuccessful.

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Tax-gathering was never better understood or more successfully practised in Russia than at the present day. A comparison between the methods in vogue then and now leaves no doubt on that score. About twenty years ago M. Obydenkoff, the Nikitinsky Elder, was wont to extract the taxes by the simple process of" hanging up an impecunious peasant head downward until he had consented to pay the sum demanded. A fellow who had been thus hung up for a quarter of an hour and then come to himself, preferred a complaint against the officer; but the authorities, for all encouragement, condemned him to be knouted for his restiveness. That was in the old days, when the country was, comparatively speaking, prosperous. Now that hunger is taking more lives than a modern epidemic, "the representatives of the Government," we are credibly informed, never stop to inquire into the causes that have brought about the distress; they simply insist upon immediate payment." The means they employ are drastic, their zeal wholly misplaced, and they end by ruining whole. villages, without satisfying the authorities or even shielding themselves from the charge of neglect of duty. Thus "in the Government of Kherson the police have in many places sold by auction all the movable property of the peasants to pay the taxes. This has been done, for instance, in Petrovka, Verbliushka, Vershinokamenka, Spassovo, Novostarodoob, etc.. agricultural implements and livestock being the chief kinds of property knocked down under the hammer." "The authorities may possibly desire, though they cannot reasonably hope, that these peasants will soon recover from the effects of a blow like this. As well might one deprive a Siberian hunter of his gun and ammunition, and then condemn him to live exclusively on the produce of the chase. And yet this is a favorite method of procedure. For the last twelve months

* Kama and Ural, by M. Nemirovitch-Dants

chenko, St. Petersburg, 1890, in 8vo, p. 279. The Week, 8th February, 1891.

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