cabinet of curiosities and antiquities, in which the furious rivalry of purchasers has made folly-prices more surprising than those of the Dutch portraits. Lord Dudley, for example, bought an incomplete set of Sèvres porcelain, each piece containing a bird in medallion, upon a Turkish-blue ground, for 355,000 francs-a little more than four hundred dollars in gold for each piece-although the painting is said to be in rather bad taste, and is certainly not of the best age, having been made in Louis XV.'s time. A pair of secretaries in elaborate buhl-work, in an intricate and inelegant style, brought 111,000 francs, and smaller articles prices proportionately high.

Two new volumes of poetry have appeared in London within a fortnight, to which the critics pay more than common respect "Poems, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti" (F. S. Ellis), and "Poems, by Charles Kent" (Tucker). Most of Mr. Kent's volume had been published before, but all, or nearly all, of Mr. Rossetti's is new. We have not yet seen either; but the extracts in critical journals show merit in both. These poets may be regarded as belonging to the reaction against the longdominant influence of Tennyson-the reaction which Swinburne and Morris have already carried so far; their effect is always to say, with simplicity and directness, what they mean to express; while Tennyson is forever suggesting many things which he does not say. It is this endless suggestiveness which makes the Laureate's verses infinitely dear to minds which, by habit and temper, brood and linger upon them; and repulsive to so many, who feel that the true way of poetry is the direct and narrow way to the heart, on which all that is artificial is out of place. It is a sign of the times in literature that the reaction grows sharper every day, and that Mr. Tennyson's influence, for the time, is on the wane, though his name is still the first among living British writers, and its immortality assured.

Mdlle. Valentine de Cessiat, a niece of Lamartine, has undertaken to collect and edit his letters and unpub

lished manuscripts. She requests all persons who have any of them, to lend them to her for this purpose. Like Cicero, of whom he was in so many respects a copy in little, Lamartine was too vain and too vacillating for lasting success in public affairs; but like him, too, he had brilliant talents, high culture, and most amiable traits in social life, all of which appeared to the greatest advantage in his private correspondence. The publication of parts of this will contribute more to his fame than all that he has himself given to the world since the "History of the Girondists."

On December 17, 1770, Beethoven was born at Bonn, and the whole German nation looks forward eagerly to the celebration of his centennial festival, at the close of this year, when every production he has left will be heard again from Strasburg to Warsaw. Hermann Schmid's drama, "Beethoven," which was presented in Vienna last winter, is going the rounds of the German theatres with general enthusiasm, and new interest is felt in every reminiscence of the great meister's life that books can furnish. The festival in December will be observed in every town in Germany.

The four hundredth birthday of Albert Dürer will be celebrated on May 21, 1871. It is proposed to bring together in Nuremberg every known work of his at that time, as far as possible, and the kind consent and aid of those who own his productions is expected; but where they cannot be moved, it is proposed to collect copies, and especially photographs of them, so that the festival shall offer as complete a representation as can ever be seen of Dürer's productive powers. The rugged old Socrates of art is the fashion now, and the two rival lives of him published last year have greatly stimulated curiosity to understand his great genius; so that Nuremberg will doubtless be a centre of attraction for travelling Americans next Spring.

The profound interest felt by the people of Germany in the scientific inquiries of the day, is best shown by the great success of the series published

by Luderitz, Berlin, entitled "Collection of Scientific Lectures" ("Sammlung Wissenschaftlicher Vorträge "), which has now reached its ninety-sixth number; a discussion by the great physician and anthropologist, Rudolf Virchow, of "Skulls of Men and Apes." This series far exceeds, in scientific value, any thing ever attempted before, for popular reading, in any language. It has included contributions from many of the foremost scientific men of Europe, and upon almost every subject in the whole range of the sciences, capable of being made intelligible to the general reader. For instance, "The City Government of London," "The Speed of Feeling and Will," "Alcohol," ""The Historical Growth of Free Trade," "The Origin and Genealogy of the Human Race," and "The Value of Machinery in Agriculture," are some of the subjects treated in the numbers which happen to lie before us now, and all of them are handled with full knowledge and marked ability-many of them in a lively and telling style. Another, on the "Glacial Epoch of the Earth," by Alexander Braun, has just appeared, and has been welcomed very widely as the most complete and intelligible summary yet made of the proofs that there was such an epoch, and an interesting sketch of the formation and nature of glaciers. Of course, the author does not enter on the vague theories now so much discussed, as to the astronomical or geographical causes of the earth's great winter, but confines himself to accepted facts. There are indications that the scientific passion which has already seized the people of Germany, and which is now breaking out in France, as the wonderful sale of the "WonderBooks" the three last years shows, will soon extend to England and America.

Herr Max Wirth, Director of the Swiss Statistical Bureau in Berne, has set an example to similar officers in all nations, by compiling, with the assistance of leading statesmen and economists throughout the republic, a general statistical and descriptive account of Switzerland. It is thoroughly

classified, and as complete in all departments-political, industrial, geographical, and economical-as it could be made within a reasonable bulk; and was so eagerly welcomed at home, that the whole edition printed was taken up there immediately, before any copies could be exported. It will, of course, be confirmed hereafter, and will be a standard work of its kind and date.

The Belgian Government has just published a census of the population, showing that, in Belgium, 2,041,781 people speak only French, 2,406,491 speak only Flemish, while 308,561 speak both. It seems strange that so few should learn two languages, both in constant use about them; but the partisans of each tongue are accused, by the friends of the other, of denying all knowledge of the latter out of pride. Of course, both languages/are badly corrupted. The Flemish Volksblad of Brussels gives the following as a sample of the French spoken by some of the people of that city: "C'est moi parlez franzé et me promenez a la verte allez. Le flamand et troz bas." This is encouraging to those who want to make French not only fashionable, but universal.

The vexed question, whether crime ought ever to be punished with death by law, has never been discussed with a more conscientious effort to get at the bottom of it than of late in the North German Parliament. After any number of speeches and pamphlets, it was decided, in May, that the deathpenalty should be retained for deliberate murder only. The delegates, and others, are now collecting and publishing what they have found to say on the subject; but the arguments are very similar to those already familiar to our debating societies here.

Count Bismarck seems likely to be the subject of as many books as Napoleon III. himself; although the Prussian statesman has only become a prominent historical probleın since 1866, when the literature of the coup d'état already formed a library. The two men are often compated; but his bitterest

enemies do not express the same personal hatred and contempt for him which the reds of Paris feel towards Napoleon. This may be due, in part, to German phlegm, which disapproves systems, where the passion of a Frenchman detests their author. The last work on Bismarck, however, is by a Frenchman, M. J. Vilbort, and the German critics generally declare that he shows an intimate acquaintance with their national life and politics which would be creditable in a native, and is unprecedented in a foreigner.

- A farmer in Savoy the other day plowed up a bronze statue, which was sent to Geneva. It proved to be a Bacchus, of the best period of classic art. The figure is nine inches high, and is considered equal to the Faun and the Narcissus of Pompeii.

Anton Vollert has completed, in six volumes, the collection of the most interesting criminal histories of all countries ("Criminalgeschichten," Leipzig, Brockhaus), which he began three years ago. The cases rendered have been selected with great care, and all the information that could be obtained upon each of them has been condensed with great industry, and with some spirit and taste. All the world finds a certain fascination in such tales, and it is certainly more wholesome to read true ones, than the utterly false inventions of most of the novelists who deal largely in crime. Vollert's book will well bear studying by fiction-writers, and much of it is as strange as their wildest fancies.

The German theatre is active and productive this year. A new tragedy, by Finkenstein, "The Last of the Tarquins," has had a great success in Breslau. Arthur Müller has been employed to translate the "Electra" of Sophocles and the "Cid" of Corneille, and to adapt them for the Court Theatre in Munich. Spielhagen, whose novels have lately sprung into fame in America as well as in Germany, has just finished a new drama, "Hans und Grete," or "Jack and Peg," made out of his novel of the same name, which has been re

presented with great success in Hamburg. Mendelssohn's "St. Paul" has been turned into an opera at Düsseldorf. But the great musical question of the day is, whether Wagner's “Meistersinger" is or is not a great success. It has been heard in Vienna and several smaller cities, and, more recently, with great scenic splendor, at Berlin. Opinions are violently at issue. Some of the classicists actually hiss it as worthless; and General Count von Moltke, when the second act closed, was heard to remark, "It is sometimes as bad as this in the Chamber of Deputies; but then, we can demand the close of the debate there!" On the other side are the musical pre-Raphaelites, who hail it as one of the first fruits of the greatest revival of the art the world has yet seen. It is rumored that Wagner is to be invited to Berlin, as Court Musical Director. In Paris, the stage is mainly given up to the ballet, of which even Don Quixote is made the burden, the rueful knight fighting his windmills and tossing in his blanket, to music by Dugrato, and to flimsy operas, one of them founded on, or at least named for, Clarissa Harlowe. But at the Gymnase, Victorien Sardou's new drama, "Fernande," has succeeded brilliantly-far beyond any of his former works; though rather because of its loose moral tone, apparently, than of its artistic meritsand has called up reminiscences of a few years ago, when Sardou was a poor adventurer in a bare garret, who needed a vivid imagination to describe a good dinner. He is now rich and popular, and is this year the fashion. A favorite way of working with him has been to "get up" stirring and even tragic scenes in real life, especially with his mistresses, of whom he has had a long series, in order to dramatize them for the public; and these "original ideas," he confesses, have sometimes practically cost him dear. At the "Nouveautes," a comedy by the Countess de Chabrillon, called "l'Américaines," and representing the crooked course of love between a Yankee beauty and a French marquis, attracts some attention.

OF

WAIMATA led the way far up the hillside to a grassy hollow, surrounded on three sides by luxuriant dilo and tutui trees. A little stream of water ran down brightly from the hillside at the edge of the wood; before us and far below, through the opening in the forest, appeared the clear and tender blue of the ocean. The storm had now quite passed over, and the far-extending serene was undisturbed; but a multitude of soft cloud-shadows followed each other over its surface, casting into a momentary shade the white lateen sails of canoes that were now putting to sea again, or allowing them to shine with momentary splendor in the unsteady sunlight. We had reached a great elevation above the sea; and the horizon seemed to stand up at our own level, a barrier of blue ocean that reached to the sky, and seemed to blend with the atmosphere itself. Fleecy cumulus clouds appeared as if resting upon the remoter ocean; and the nearer islands, with their central lagoons of mirror-like water, their plumed belts of palm and cocoanut trees, and their white fringe of beating surf, seemed to float not less

lightly upon the quiet sea; while the faint outlines of the most distant land were spread like films of delicate tint upon the airy distance. How can I express the beauty of that placid realm of blue! We paused long, gazing, hand in hand-gazing into that refulgent domain of color and mysterious distance.

Waimata was the first to speak.

"How I wish we were there!" said she, pointing to one of the remotest of the islands.

"Would you leave Fiji?" I asked. ì "Not for any one but you." "Dearest, I would gladly take you thither; but how shall we escape?” returned I.

"Ah, yes; how shall we escape? My father would kill us if we should be captured in our flight. Perhaps we can go to that near island," said she, pointing to a beautiful atoll that lay about fifteen miles to the leeward.

"It is impossible," I answered. "The matani (trade-wind) would soon bring the war-canoes of the king after us."

Waimata mused a moment. At last she said:

VOL. VI.-9

"I can tell you where we can go safely."

"Where is it, mata-manu (bird-eyed one) ? "

"To the Enchanted Island."

"But where does the Enchanted Island lie?"

"We can hardly see it," returned she, indicating the remotest land in the southern horizon. "It is far from here. But it is where lovers go."

"Tell me about it," said I. "I have long wanted to know where the Lover's Land could be found."

Then Waimata sang to me, without other answer, the following verseswhich I have divested as far as possible, in translating, of the Fijian idiom, though I have accurately preserved their rhythm:

WAIMATA'S SONG.

DEEP in the bosom of the western ocean,
Parted by long leagues of sweeping billows,
Far from any sight or dream of mainland,
Lies my dear island, my Enchanted Island.
Thither, when sweet hours like this unloosed,
Restless flies my fancy, like the lenggi;*
Land of palm and coral, land of summer,
Lover's land, and not a land of sorrow.

There the surf on hollow reefs glows fire-like,
Renewing aye its brilliance and white splendor,
Bursting with the impatience of the ocean,
Yet never bearing any man to danger.

I hear its mighty breakers thunder shoreward,
Sounding the restless tale of trampling surges;
I see the rushing, splendid, sunlit billows,
Followed and wreathed with prism-tinted vapors;
Gemmed from base to crest with shining bubbles,
Alive and radiant, restless, glorious, mighty,
How they storm the slant beach, burst in frenzy,
And dash upon the green grass of the margin!
Those bright waves bring never aught but pleas-
ure;

By that sweet and azure sea no sorrow,
Pain, or death, is wrought on loyal lovers;
Haste we hence to that Enchanted Island!

She ceased her sweet improvisation; her eyes were full of tears. She drew my head upon her bosom, and caressed it.

"My white rose," said she, "they will kill you if you do not follow their cus.toms. It is not safe for you to live here after to-day."

"Dear Waimata," answered I, "do

Man-of-war hawk.

nothing else but love."

"Then we should starve," returned I. "It is better to stay here and be well fed,"-rather petulantly; for sometimes it makes men peevish to have love made to them; and I was a lad of that perverse sort. Yet I did not speak in mere moodiness. The events of the morning had wrought so powerfully upon me, that my very nature seemed to have suffered under their dark influence. I even felt a desire to leave this sweet scene and company, and to return to the revelling below.

Waimata instantly perceived the change in my tone. She cried out with terror,

"Ah! do not say so. If you stay on this island, you will become like the nganga maoli (native men), and do like them. But they will take me away from you, and make me marry Pohaku (the absent chieftain) when he returns from his voyage."

Even while she spoke I was startled by a sound that seemed premonitory of all that she feared. The long blast of a conch-shell rang out faintly from the valley below. We listened, motionless. It was repeated; but we made no answer, hoping that we might escape discovery. But our track had been traced