or Bradford manufacture. ing, with all the fervor of Falstaff himself, how "the misbegotten knaves in Kendal Green let drive at him," he would have wondered whether the green was fast-colored dye. Transport him to the plains of Marathon, and he would see in them only dirt and turf and stones. A jar of water from Jordan or from Helicon is to him not materially different from the water in his own well. He cannot understand how, touched by the imagination, such earth is to other men magic earth, and such water enchanted water. A rose from the rose-bush which we once saw at Hildesheim, Germany, planted behind the cathedral (as there is. documentary evidence to show) nearly nine hundred years ago, is but a rose, of myriads on the earth. If he had heard Hackett tell "A primrose by the river's brim It A jest which sets other men in a roar is to such a man incomprehensible; or if it be not absolutely incomprehensible, it hangs fire in the icy receptacle of his brain till it has been explained and all its aroma has evaporated. was such a man a country rector in Yorkshire by the name of Buckle-who sat silent at a meeting of the clergy, and when Sydney Smith gave his health, saying that he was 66 a Buckle without a tongue," sat grim over the jest, trying for fifteen minutes to extract its meaning, then nudging the wit, exclaimed, "I see now what you mean, Mr. Smith: you meant a joke," and nearly choked with laughter! It was another such a man who, when his pastor, Dr. Samuel Hopkins, finding him sick and unable to attend church, proposed to bring one of his sermons and read it to him, replied, "Do so, for I have had no sleep since the attack began." England, the home of utilitarianism, abounds in such men, who, as Burke said a century or more ago, value only what they can measure with a two-foot rule, or count on their ten fingers. Henry Russell, the celebrated vocalist, gives many striking illustrations of this literal phase of the British intellect. At one time he gave, at Hanley, an entertainment for the benefit of the Staffordshire potters, who were in great distress. After he had sung, "There's a good time coming, boys, wait a little longer," etc., a man in the crowd rose, greatly excited, and shouted, "Muster Russell, can ye fix the toime?" At another time, as Mr. Russell was singing, "Woodman, spare that tree," an old gentleman cried out, "Mr. Russell, was the tree spared?" "It was, sir." "Thank God for that!" he responded, with a sigh of relief. The Secret of IN Blackwood's Magazine for February, 1892, there is a paper on the late Mr. Kinglake which contains some observations upon the preparation of his first book, "Eothen," that merit the thoughtful consideration of all young writers. They reveal the secret of the immediate, brilliant, and exceptional success of that book, and of the strong hold which, in spite of many powerful rivals, it retains on public attention. It appears that the first casting into shape of Mr. Kinglake's notes of Eastern travel was very far from that which was finally given to the world. It was kept in his desk almost as long as Wordsworth kept "The White Doe of Rylstone," and kept, like that, to be taken out for revision, condensation, and correction almost every day. For many years the most fastidious and exacting taste was constantly at work upon it, blotting, expanding, and polishing with ceaseless care. After an interval which in most minds would have dimmed into vagueness the reminiscences of the trip to the East, his record of it came forth so rich in color, so incisive in form, so finished in literary grace, that it almost instantly made its author famous. "Probably no book of travel," says Blackwood," which does not depend for its interest on exciting adventure or absolute novelty of subject, ever gained more celebrity for its writer. . . . The book sparkles with fine points, like a brooch set with brilliants." The patient, unwearying toil which Mr. Kinglake bestowed upon his epoch-making book (for such, as a book of travels, it was), reminds us of the prodigious painstaking of another literary worker a century and a half ago. Alexander Pope did some of his work rapidly, to gain a foothold in literature, an independence. When translating Homer, he turned out fifty or sixty lines a day with not less regularity, and sometimes with not much more inspiration, than an artisan does his work in a factory, or than Babbage's calculating machine turned out its solutions of mathematical problems. Many pages of his translation read like "tours de force," or as if the poet had timed himself, as one times a race-horse, with a stop-watch. But when the little diminutive bard wrote, as in his Satires, from a real afflatus, and to please himself, above all, when he wrote to "feed fat an ancient grudge,” - what a transformation his verse underwent! Then he composed with care, and corrected with never-tiring patience; he polished and repolished; he grudged no pains to give a keener edge to some cutting epigram, or to improve the flow of his rhythm. It was not till after innumerable condensations, blots, and erasures, and till it had been kept in his portfolio for many years, that he gave a satire to the printer. That masterpiece of wit and sarcasm, sparkling with keen epigram, and containing the immortal lines on Atticus, the "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot," is, as a critic has justly said, the quintessence of thoughts which have been refined in the crucible; clear, bright crystals, which have been slowly precipitated from the turbid torrent of confused meditations, and fused together with the care of a skilled jeweller setting his most precious gems to the best advantage. A Goodly Is there a country on the globe the young Heritage. men of which have greater reason to be proud of their inheritance from the past than have those of America? What people has ever before advanced with such giant strides in the path of prosperity? Marvellous indeed has been the growth of England, which from one little central point a rock, as it were, in the midst of the Ocean - has spread herself over the entire world; but the same inherent energy which has enabled her with her morning drum-beat to "follow the sun, and keep company with the hours," till she has encircled "the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England," the same energy which drove the iron-armed Roman to conquest, bringing the whole known earth under his dominion, is urging on our people, not to military, but to peaceful, conquests, the effects of which are seen in far-stretching networks of railway, electric telegraphs and telephones, fields rich with grain and fruits, gardens filling the air with perfume, schoolhouses, colleges, churches, - and happy homes. The creation of a State or a kingdom in the Old World is a great affair, which generally takes place amid convulsions and war; but here a new State, with organization all complete, and working with the regularity of clock-work, is turned out as readily as a railway shop turns out a new locomotive. A country that has no castes, no primogeniture laws; that requires no one to give the flower of his youth to service in its army; that exacts no tithes for a state church, and requires no property qualification of the voter; where every man has the opportunity to make the most of himself, and is eligible to every political office; where $156,000,000 is spent annually for schools, which are open without charge to the poorest youth; of whose population eighty-seven per cent over ten years old can read and write, is surely a good country to live in. But when we consider that, besides all these blessings, our country is rich in gold, silver, iron, copper, coal, and other minerals, and abounds in the finest fruits; that it is a country whose wealth, now increasing seven millions a day, has quintupled in seventy years; that it possesses as much mechanical energy as Great Britain, France, and Germany united; above all, that it is a country which has no grudges against other nations to feed, no "earth-hunger" to satisfy; whose people, instead of living, as so many other peoples do, on the "ragged edge" of revolution, enjoy a stable and orderly government, which is "of the people, by the people, and for the people," what youth could covet a more goodly heritage? Add to all these distinctions an ever-varying scenery, vying with that of Switzerland in grandeur, and that of Italy in beauty; and climates like those of Florida and southern California, enabling the |