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eminent Englishman; and, pitying him that his wife had gone to England for the education of their children, said: "You must be very lonely. But of course you have a number two." "I tried to explain to him," said the Englishman, "that that was quite out of the question. My wife would be in a great rage if I took a second wife, and my government would punish me severely." The Chinese diplomatist was astonished; but after a pause he said, "You Europeans have so much more intercourse with China now, that we may hope you will soon become sufficiently civilized to act as we do." In this spirit the Chinese diplomatist started for Europe, and in this spirit he will probably return. Yesterday we went to the doors of the Temple of Heaven, which were quickly closed as we approached. It is too holy for foreign foot to enter; but all round about it the filth, the indecencies, the open sewers or drains, through which our mercifully sure-footed donkeys guided their steps, were such as no town in Italy or France could equal in its most neglected districts; and here they extended right up to the sacred portals.

The Summer Palace is not to be seen just now, not even its ruins; indeed, none of the sights of Peking are on view at present. But the road to Peking is; the roads of Peking are. There is a raised roadway in the middle; a sort of ditch on either side into which the middle part may drain; in either ditch rows of booths. Then at either side there is a sort of footway; but donkeys go upon it, and I think carts. Camels do not. The roads are so wide that a hundred camels can lie down in circles of a dozen or so round their baggage without blocking the traffic. China and curios are laid flat on the dust of the road; carts stick in the ruts. I saw three at once under a single city gateway yesterday. The little ponies and mules were so tired with struggling to get them out, that they were all resting as I came

winds, and the journey took three days and a half. Then came thirteen miles by road, to be accomplished by cart. Those thirteen miles took six hours. I held on with both hands and so escaped actual concussion of the brain, though three times my head was dashed against the side. In the end I got out and walked. For the road was made by the Ming dynasty, before the Mantchus conquered the long-suffering Chinese. It was laid down with huge blocks of stone, some of which are worn away, others altogether gone. The road has never been repaired since the Mantchus got the management of things. And along this stony road tenderly walk long strings of camels carrying brick tea to Mongolia. The quantity of hard physical labor that has gone to the conveying of that tea, even before it reaches Tungchow and is committed to the camels, is stupendous.

From The English Illustrated Magazine. PHILOLOGISTS VERSUS CRITICS.

As it does not seem advisable to me to thrust a walking-stick into a hornet's nest as a way of diversifying a country stroll, I would rather not say much in these peaceful pages about a subject which has some interest for me - I mean the academical controversy concerning the teaching of English literature. The pot of dispute, I see, is bubbling away as merrily as ever at Oxford, and occasionally, in moments of peculiar ebullience, spurting a jet into the newspapers and reviews. Some Swift ought to write a new battle, not of the books, but of the bookmen. The quarrel so innocently stirred up by Sir William Temple was not more remarkable for violent prejudice on both sides. The philologists can see nothing in the bellelettrists but a coterie of fribbles, and the belle-lettrists refuse to see anything in

up. People say the poor do not suffer the philologists but a congregation of -that they are light-hearted. So were dry-as-dusts. To the "literary" disputant the negro slaves. I asked the Sisters of it seems impossible to admit that his St. Vincent if the poverty and suffering learned adversary can possess the slighthere were greater than they had seen in est taste or feeling for the æsthetic side France. They answered, so incompara- of language; while the man of linguistic Mansel imitated so happily in his "Phron- | Our pupils his genius through each of its

bly greater that there could be no comparison. And how can it be otherwise when Peking produces nothing, and everything has to come by cart from Tientsin, or in the somewhat easier way we came - by boat from Tientsin up the Peiho to Tung chow, towed by men, or poled, or some times sailing? We had very favorable

erudition finds it inconceivable that the "æsthetic criticism" of literature should be anything but a convenient excuse for the encouragement of a frivolous preciosity. The situation is full of comedy, and only wants its Aristophanes. Even the conflict between just and unjust discourse in the "Clouds," which the late Dean tisterion," is hardly more full of dramatic contrast than is the opposition of these two schools. Imagine each of them represented by a chorus in the style of the Athenian old comedy, and advocating their respective claims before their common academical mother. The Chorus of Critics might begin somewhat in this style :

Mother of Students! "Alma" hight,

Thou stately presence and benign, Who, ever watchful for the light,

Makest the cause of Culchaw thine!

Awake! arise! Set to thine hand!
And, ere it utterly departs,
Oh, rescue from a dullard band
The ancient glory of thine Arts!

phases

Shall trace by our guidance, and roam Through delectable mazes of exquisite phrases, Until it is time to go home.

Now would be the turn of the C. of P. And they might set forth their rival claims after this wise:

We are the thinkers of accurate thought,
And presume that no others exist:

No one else has been taught how to think as

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To which, no doubt, the Chorus of Philol- Nor can language be ever known thoroughly ogists would reply :

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while

'Tis believed to bear blossom and fruits, And we hear with a smile about flowers of style,

For we recognize nothing but roots.

Well-armed with these missiles we think we can scatter

That coterie vanity-born,

Whose frivolous chatter on flimsiest matter Will bring English letters to scorn.

Whereupon probably the amœbæan contest would assume an even more closely hand-to-hand form:

C. of C. Detestable pedants!

C. of P.

What sounds of strife are these? Methinks Both. Ye

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Contemptible fribbles!

gods! shall the care of our litera-
ture go

C. of C. To the grubber who plods?
C. of P.

To the smatterer who scribles ? Both. No! no! We repeat it with emphasis,

No!

And then, of course, the two contending choruses should fall, more Aristophanico, to fisticuffs:

C. of P.

C. of C.

Like jewels on rings or like pearls on their C. of P.

Out! ye chatterers about Shelley,
We will beat you to a jelly.
Get you to your Anglo-Saxon,
Lest we lay our sticks your backs on.
Punch 'em, pound 'em, and up double

We are the sayers of beautiful things

In a lingo more beautiful yet;

strings

'em,

Are the words that we polish and set!

Take that for the "Harriet problem"!

With beauties, our own, we can so interlard
Any poet whose charms we disclose,
That it mostly goes hard but we beggar the
bard

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With our richly exuberant prose.

So give us our heads! for 'twas ever our dream

To discourse of poetical truths, Or to skim off the cream of some poet supreme Aristophanic imitator may incline to.

For a band of ingenuous youths.

and so forth, and so forth, Alma Mater of course intervening just at the turningpoint of the fray, and deciding for - well, whichever party the taste and fancy of the

H. D. TRAILL.

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For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co.

Singie Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

ADVICE TO the girl of THE PERIOD. | Seeking for peace in toil, which only brought You will have to know Latin and Logic and

Greek,

You will have to be able correctly to speak Of Atoms and Molecules, Acids and Bases, Of the Earth in Aphelion, of the Moon and its Phases,

Of the three laws of Newton, of gases expanding,

Dull discontent and weariness of brain. "Where art thou, Peace?" I cried: "Oh, soothe this pain

Of tearful longing and of throbbing thought!" A sweet voice answered. Laughter glad and

clear

Set the birds singing. Beautiful bright eyes Made a new dawn. A sweet voice an

Of how to preserve equilibrium when standing,

swered: "Cease

Of what is the green coloring matter in plants, Of the structure of elephants, beetles, and

ants;

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You should also be able to fluently chatter On the prevalent opinions of Mind and of Matter.

II.

Peace, with her chatter and infectious glee; Peace, swinging madcap on a springy bough,

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With bright hair blown and tumbled anyhow;

Peace, paddling in a shoal of summer sea; Peace, at high revel up an apple-tree; Peace, reading with a bent and dreamy brow;

Peace, on a footstool - very peaceful now Listening with hands clasped fondly on my knee!

No abstract noun, no mythic shape divine,
No sweet elusive dream of who knows what,
But just a child, she brings my heart sur-

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For others, the green leaves are dancing light,

And lovers meet where blossom in the lane Flowers, the sky-children of the sun and rain. And somewhere torrents in their youthful

might,

Scorning the smooth path, leap the dizzy height,

And mountain summits glisten pure of stain. Somewhere for poet-brows Fame twines her

wreath;

Somewhere to noble purpose souls are won By holy living or heroic death;

Brave hearts endure, nor quail at Fortune's frown;

And somewhere there is rest for all who

breathe,

Somewhere a land where sorrow is un

known.

Spectator.

H. T. R.

From The Fortnightly Review.

RIGHT AND WRONG.

jurisconsult, Justitia est constans et perpetua voluntas jus suum cuique tribuendi. Wrong has been referred, not to the exterior act but to the interior mental state, Mens rea facit reum. The world on the

whole has not doubted that what is just exists by nature, that universal obligation is a prime note of right, that a violation of right entails, according to the laws of the universe, retributive suffering upon the wrong-doer. I do not, of course, mean that the vast majority of men have ever held these views as philosophers. They made their way into the popular mind through the religious traditions which are the only philosophies available for the multitude. The morality of the old civilization of Egypt, of India, of Judea, was bound up with their religions. The same may be said of the ancient phase of Hellenic and, more strongly still, of Roman civilization. It is the special glory of Buddhism that it established the supremacy of the moral law over gods and men and the whole of sentient existence. To

I SUPPOSE the words right and wrong enter more largely into human life than any other. They are among the first words that are uttered by children at their play: "You have no right to do this!" "That is wrong!" They are most profusely used, or abused, in the commonest affairs of daily existence by the most ignorant and uncultivated, and generally which is noteworthy with an appeal to the universal validity of the conceptions they represent, as though, in the secure judgment of the universe, the gainsayer must be in bad faith. Every one talks of right as if it were the easiest thing in the world to pronounce upon. And yet in practice it is the hardest. Consider how terrible are the problems which may be raised regarding even the simplest and least-questioned rights. Parental right, for example, springing as it does from the most sacred of human relations, how easy to deride and decry it, if we regard merely the blind, irrational impulse to which each individual, the accident of an accident, owes his procreation! Again, think how large a part of human activity is consumed is better to obey than man. But now the

in the endeavor, mostly fruitless, to settle questions of right. The whole machinery of justice, with its legislatures, its courts of various instance, its judges, advocates, and attorneys, attends continually upon this very thing. And yet the glorious uncertainty of the law has become a byword. Fleets and armies are still the last resource of civilization for determining the rights of nations. Now, as in the time of Brennus, the sword is the ultimate makeweight in the scale of justice. It may be said that the history of right throughout the ages is one long martyrdom. It is ever being crucified afresh and put to an open shame. But, speaking generally, we may assert that the idea of right has hitherto been venerated by mankind at large as absolute, supersensuous, divine. The rights, whether of nations or of the individ. uals of whom they are composed, have been held to rest upon ethical obligation, and that upon noumenal truth. Justice has been accounted a matter of the will, according to the dictum of the Roman

Christianity the human race owes the supreme enforcement of the autonomy of conscience as the voice of Him whom it

"No

old ethical conceptions are everywhere
falling into discredit. The very princi.
ples on which the ideas of right and wrong
have hitherto rested are very widely ques-
tioned, nay, more than questioned.
one," observes a recent thoughtful writer,
"can deny either the reality or the inten-
sity of the actual crisis of morality. Nor
is the crisis confined to certain questions
of casuistry. On the contrary, it extends
to the most general rules of conduct, and
through those rules to the very principles
of ethics themselves."* "By-and-by," a
popular professor in the Paris School of
Medicine recently prophesied to his ad-
miring pupils, "by-and-by, when the rest
of the world has risen to the intellectual
level of France, and true views of the

nature of existence are held by the bulk
of mankind, now under clerical direction,
the present crude and vulgar notions re-
garding morality, religion, divine provi-
dence, Deity, the soul, and so forth, will
be swept entirely away, and the dicta of

• Beaussire, Les Principes de la Morale, p. 26.

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