and spangles. She glitters from head to foot like a pillar of golden ore, or like a stalactite. The exhibition has been noised through the rooms, and visitors and employées gather at the doorway, and mount on chairs to obtain a better view. Happily, Mary is not timid. She turns, bends, takes a few steps, dragging that rainbow train after her, never smiling, never heeding the spectators, simply fulfilling a mission. A noble duchess is to wear the costume at an Italian fancy ball. The corsage is made with basques, cut according to the fashion of the Middle Ages; it is covered with golden scales, and seems to explode under the converging lights. On the chest there is a rainbow garland; the skirt is in tulle, very long, with iris colors on the flounces. The head-dress is high, with a firmament of stars set on a field of the same prismatic hues. The fan and shoes are to match, even the gloves, even the comb. The allegory is conscientiously studied in all its details. Monsieur remains cool in the midst of wild enthusiasm. His is the composed demeanor of a successful author. He has retired behind the counter, and salutes, without bending, the company at the door. Miss Mary stoops slightly. Four little girls advance bearing a pile of lilac satin. The rainbow disappears, falls suddenly; and on the simple black costume left apparent, in a moment, as though by enchantment or Porte St. Martin machinery, the dress of an Incroyable is elaborated. An Incroyable à la Watteau, with a species of coat in lilac satin, with long tails and enormous breast-flaps in pink satin. The skirt is in lilac tulle, studded with small bouquets. A tall hat in grey felt, garnished with a big posy of roses and feathers, towers on the head. A long iron-grey veil, delicate pistache, green gloves, and lilac satin slippers with pink bows, complete the costume. And Miss Mary takes a tall goldheaded cane from the hand of an attendant, and poses before us a perfect Thermidorienne. We are enthusiastic; the ladies emit little shrill shrieks; but the Maestro remains iced, and receives compliments with an indifference replete with a deep eternal melancholy.

This is what I beheld under the guidance of Mesdames O Tempora and O Mores. I dare not express my personal opinion after that experience. I respect Monsieur. His tender melancholy impresses me. But is he an eminently

moral and useful institution?

"JOSH BILLINGS" IN ENGLISH.

EDUCATED Americans often express some astonishment at the liking displayed by the British public for the American "humorists,' - men in whom, they say, they find little except some common-place extravagance and much bad spelling. With the exception of the "Heathen Chinee," which made an immense hit, and exercised a permanent influence on public opinion, they do not, we are told, genuinely admire any of the comic productions Englishmen find so racy. They prefer Mr. Lowell's serious poems, which, sweet as they are, will scarcely live, to the "Biglow Papers," which will last as long as their dialect remains intelligible; scarcely estimate Leland at English valuation, wonder at the fuss made about Mark Twain, and hold Artemus Ward to have been a low comedian.

As the Americans are, in their way, more humorous than the English, and as they produce these professional humorists, this want of appreciation of them would be hard to understand, or even to admit, were it not visible also among the Scotch, half of whom are full of a racy humor which the other half seem unable to comprehend. We never met a Scotchman yet - and we have tried the experiment several times who fully enjoyed Artemus Ward, or understood why the absurd incongruity of his sayings with the shrewdness embodied in his thought, made Englishmen shake with laughter such as no English humor seemed in any equal degree to provoke. There must be two publics in America, just as there are in Scotland, and one of them despises the laughter which the other enjoys. One cause of the contempt is, we suspect,

the artificiality into which all humorists who trade on their humor are apt to fall; another, the weariness of American of the shrewd sayings in which much of their humor is en bodied; and a third, the preposterous use some of the comic aphorists make of bad spelling.

Artemus Ward made his bad spelling funny, the abs lute difference between the method of conjugating on expected, and the method he tried, exciting of itself the sense of incongruity, which is the first cause of laughter but his imitators have lost his art, such as it was, almost o quite completely. The person who calls himself "Josh Billings" has entirely. Chancing to take up the book a railway-station, the writer decided during a ten minute run that " Josh Billings's" wit and humor was on the whole the most contemptibly vulgar trash he had ever had in hi hand, worse by many degrees than the worst failure of the old London Comic School, quite as bad, in fact, a its cover, which represented a paunchy fool tumbling o his hands, and lifting with his feet a white hat with mourning crape all round it. Having, however, to travel farther, and no other book being at hand, he tried to read it steadily, and discovered, in a painful half-hour, this curious fact. "Josh Billings" is the nickname of some unknown person, apparently well educated, with the mind if one could imagine such a mind, of a Dissenting Sidney Smith. He has not, of course, the full power of the witty divine; he has injured such power as he has by using up, apparently, as we guess from his dedication, to earn his bread, and his topics are usually inferior; but he has in a high degree the power Sidney Smith possessed of saying odd things which, like common proverbs, embody in a line the experience of ages or the reasoning of a life. He can do nothing else. He cannot tell a story, or write a parody, or teach a lesson in politics, and the one faculty he possesses is overlaid, by his own or his original pub lisher's folly, till it is almost invisible. Half of the book is rubbish, the mere dregs of his better work, cooked up, we suppose, for a market which had enjoyed some of his racier oddities, and has kept on hoping for some more, long after the supply was exhausted. About a tenth is made up of weak platitudes, and about a twentieth of Christian maxims of the most savagely orthodox type, which seem usually, with an exception or two, wretchedly out of place, though we must add, strange as it may be, they appear to have come from the inmost convictions of the writer, who has covered all alike— pious advice, common-place rubbish, keen epigrams, and "pawky" proverbs—in an impenetrable veil of bad spelling.

What the object of this spelling can be, we are utterly unable to discover. It is not comic, as Artemus Ward's often was. It is not intended to express any dia lect, as Leland's was, or if it is, it does not succeed. It is not phonetic, it is not ingenious, it is, in fact, a motiveless absurdity, all the more to be condemned because such wit as " Josh Billings" possesses is entirely of the sub-allusive kind, which is so seldom liked except among the educated. The real man is not "Josh Billings," but to compare smail things with great, an American Montaigne. This sentence, for instance," We have made justice a luxury of civiliza tion," is essentially of the Sidney Smith type, and is not made more subtle, but only unintelligible, by ridiculous spelling. It would be hardly possible to express the truth that civilization has secured justice, but has not secured it to the poor, in a terser or more biting form, but its pithiness is just of the kind which a reader capable of spelling "is" as "iz" would never comprehend, any more than he would this curious and quite true observation in natural history, "Monkeys never grow any older in expression. A young monkey looks exactly like his grandpapa melted up and born again; " or this, "No man can be a healthy jester unless he has been nursed at the breast of wisdom," a sentence which contains the whole difference between the humor of a man like Sidney Smith or Charles Lamb and the humor of Mr. Lear. Where, again, is the sense, not to say the taste or the propriety, of misspelling a fine "Humor must fall out of a man's mouth like music out of a bobolink," which is intelligible

sentence like this?

one fatal obstacle. His "larynx" is sadly affected by the weather. Why, you are tempted in your bitterness to exclaim, did the cruel east wind, which has smitten his larynx, leave his oesophagus in so fine a state of preservation? Remembering what justice he has done to the good things of your table, you are painfully struck by the unequal robustness of two such nearly allied organs. Distracted, you go in pursuit of your melodious baritone. Him you find in a corner discussing the price of stocks with a City magnate. Will he gratify your guests with the "Stirrup-cup," or the "Vagabond," in which he is so much admired? Alas, alas! here, too, you have been forestalled by the east wind. Here, too, you find a second "larynx" in a bad way. In a state now bordering on despair, you cross the room and sidle up to your effective bass. Either the larynx of a bass is made of tougher fibre, or the east wind disdains a comparatively obscure victim. Anyhow, you find the larynx of your effective bass suffering indeed, but not positively incapable of emitting a note. You had intended to reserve him for concerted music, his Oroveso-Sarastro repertory being decidedly depressing. But there is no help for it. Either he must sing something, or your "little music" will have dwindled into something like an angry Quakers' Meeting. So he speeds the parting guests to the sepulchral echoes of "In diesen heil'gen Hallen." When at a late hour your comic songster puts in an appearance, the fortune of the evening is past recovery. In vain he treats a few lingering dowagers to his clever version of "Mrs. Roseleaf's Evening Party." It awakens no responsive mirth in their stony faces. It is a relief to find yourself alone with your wax-candles, and to register an oath that never, never, while the human larynx remains so delicate and irritable an organ, and subject to such sudden prostration, will you attempt "a little music" again.

Much more thorny is the task of organizing an amateur concert on a more ambitious scale. There are rival sopranos to be propitiated, a Protean tenor to be kept in order, a mutinous orchestra to be secured, a chorus to be kept from foundering in the Slough of Despond towards which a body of amateur vocalists usually tends; all the vanities and susceptibilities of a paid company, with none of its esprit de corps or obedience to the bâton. A musical society soon splits into factions, which group themselves round the leading ladies. Like the operatic world of our great grandfathers, it develops a Faustina and a Cuzzoni. Faustina is all for high art and Handel; Cuzzoni is all nature and Claribel. Faustina thrills you with the breath and largeness of her style; Cuzzoni charms you with a simple ballad. Faustina revolves in the stately orbit of song traced by the great masters; Cuzzoni twinkles in the firmament of Arne and Balfe. The difficulty of inducing two such bright particular stars to illuminate the same horizon is enormous; for neither will Faustina listen to Cuzzoni, nor will Cuzzoni recognize the presence of Faustina. The only way is for the conductor to exhibit the tuneful pair in a kind of musical tandem, and to contrive that the first part of the . concert shall be a triumph for Faustina, and the second an ovation for Cuzzoni. The rest of the performers group themselves around the chief ladies in the attitude either of satellites or of victims. It is a day for rehearsal. Enter Faustina in a respirator. She is in a hurry, and hurry makes her a trifle imperious. She can only wait ten minutes. She has pressing engagements at the other end of the town. She must sing her song," As when the Dove," instantly, or not at all. So the band is stopped abruptly - much to the discomfiture of Mrs. Quaver, a veteran "utility" of the society, who, under cover of strong orchestral support, had just mounted to D in alt, where she remains poised in the midst of a mocking silence like a lark at heaven's gate nervously chirping. Having effected a descent into the medium notes of her register, she angrily demands the reason of her cruel desertion. There is not much time for apology, for Faustina is impatient to commence her dove-like cooings. Having warbled her song, exit that lady, leaving every one rather hot and excited. Scarcely is she off the scene, when enter Cuzzoni in an

other respirator. Cuzzoni is nervous lest the wind is struments should be over-loud, and drown her delicate talent. Everything must be pianissimo, or she cannot heard to advantage in "Robin Adair." Upon this band shows signs of huffiness, and so much time is lost i calming the lady's apprehensions, and subduing the accom paniment to the requisite point of softness, that short wor has to be made with the rest of the programme. Mis Dulcimer, another of the "utilities," is down for a sce out of "Oberon." There is nothing for it but to reques her to omit the air, and content herself with a tailless re citative. It is hard on poor Dulcimer to have to execute an act of Happy Despatch on her one opportunity for dis play; but in the conflict of vanities the weakest goes to the wall.

Then there is the great "tenor" difficulty to be grappled with. Nothing is more remarkable about the amateur tend than his good-natured readiness to do anything for or with you but sing. He will be charmed to join you for a few days' fishing in Wales. If you are thinking of a riding tour through Surrey, he's your man. He is quite willing to g out for a month's drill with the militia, or a week under can vas in a volunteer camp. If you ask him to join your athleti games, or to ransack folios with you in the British Museum he consents with a cheerful alacrity. But drop but a hint that you want him to sing, and he becomes an altered being. He is coy, moody, mysterious. There are all sorts of obstacles to the fulfilment of your wish, of which you little dream, and to which he only darkly alludes. It is as though the poor fellow saw what your grosser vision fails to discern, an angel with a flaming sword waving him from your concert door. He is deeply impressed with the precariousness of all human arrangements. At a moment's notice he may be summoned to smooth the pillow of a relative in the North, or smitten with a chronic affection of the bronchial tubes. In vain you argue that there is a strong antecedent probability that he will be alive and in full possession of his powers on the appointed day. His melancholy forebodings are not to be dissipated by your rosy philosophy. When at last you extort a provisional consent, his misgivings take a new turn. What is he to sing, and will all the tenor music in the proposed cantata be allotted to him? He has none of that sublime repression of himself of which the Laureate twaddles. He is too unalterably convinced of the perfection of his own voice and style to indulge in any such weakness or to brook a rival near his throne. No sooner is he satisfied as to the degree of prominence to be assigned to him than straightway, in his zeal for art, he is tormented with a fresh scruple. With whom is he expected to sing? because, as to his practised ear every one sings more or less out of tune and produces his voice by a radically vicious method, the number of persons with whom he can give tongue with any degree of comfort is naturally very small. Miss X. is a bearable, Miss Y. a doubtful, while Miss Z.'s position at the bottom of the list in a scale of faulty intonation makes her an impossible associate in song. The Handelian tenor disdains the Claribelian lady; the light operatic tenor, on the con trary, regards her as his liege lady, and would deem it an act of musical apostasy to sing with any one else. Tweedledum never sings with Tweedle-dee; Tra-la-la is mute in the presence of Fal-lal. Even when each successive obstacle in turn has been smoothed away, you must not be too sanguine as to the result. In all dealings with the amateur tenor it is the unforeseen which arrives. As no one, according to the old poet, can be pronounced happy before his death, so no amateur tenor can be said to have sung until the concert is over. At the eleventh hour he may slip through your fingers, and, with the impulsive temperament of genius, take the train to Edinburgh or the boat to Calais. True, you have his formal promise to cooperate; but he holds in petto a whole budget of smouldering hesitancies and reserves, which may explode without a moment's warning. His potentiality for sulks is enormous. Your enterprise may be wrecked in port by a tiff. It is a wise precaution therefore to instruct some modest tenorling - if indeed modesty is compatible with a voice of this

of operation: In the first place he cut off the back of the book so as to leave nothing but the mass of leaves which the fire had caused to adhere to each other; he then steeped the book in water, and afterwards exposed it, all wet as it was, to the heat at the mouth of a calorifère; the water, as it evaporated, raised the leaves one by one, and they could be separated, but with extraordinary precautions. Each sheet was then deciphered and transcribed, and the copy certified by a legal officer. In this way the records of nearly 70,000 official acts have been saved. The appearance of the pages was very curious; the writing appeared of a dull black, while the paper was of a lustrous black, something like velvet decorations on a black satin ground, so that the entries were not difficult to read.

A very ingenious and useful branch of manufacture has come to an unfortunate end in Paris. A. M. Olivier has for some time past conducted what was professedly an agency for privately procuring foreign decorations, but in reality simply a means of supplying dupes with spurious ribbons and crosses. It is said that his books when seized showed entries of over two thousand sales of these sham orders, purporting to be chiefly Spanish, Brazilian, Turkish, and Tunisian. The system of M. Olivier, who always made his clients wait a proper time for the supposed communication from abroad, was only discovered by accident. A certain gentleman with a strong desire for a decoration had commissioned the agency to endeavor to procure him the Spanish order of Charles III. But, lest the influence of M. Olivier should not be sufficient, he made independent application through a well-known journalist of Paris who is understood to have influence at Madrid. The latter, after some time obtaining the decoration, took it to the applicant, and was astounded to find that he had already received a similar one from the agency. Immediate inquiries were made through the Spanish Minister, and the result was, of course, the discovery of the forgery and the explosion of the thriving scheme of M. Olivier and his associates, of whom four were arrested with him.

WE find this in the London Academy: At the adjudication of prizes at University College, London, last Wednesday (June 24), the first prize in Jurisprudence was awarded to a young lady who two years ago, at the same college, achieved a like success in Political Economy. The second place in the same class was attained by another lady. Another obtained honors in Political Economy; and prizes were gained by three, and certificates by several, in the Fine Arts classes. That women should prove themselves quite equal to men in drawing and painting is, perhaps, less remarkable than their success in sterner studies; but it is noteworthy in these days, when fresh consideration is being given to the question of female education. The experiment of mixed classes has as yet been only very partially tried at University College, and its extension through the whole of the Arts school would involve none of the peculiar difficulties that have been incident to the attempt to teach medicine to ladies in Edinburgh. The Senate of the University of London is soon to consider the recent vote of Convocation in favor of admitting women, on the same conditions as men, to its degree examinations. If a woman, competing at college with men, can take prizes in Political Economy and Jurisprudence, it is hard that she should not be allowed the chance of obtaining a degree in Arts or Laws."

The Academy of June 6th says Dr. F. Gregorovius has made another important addition to historico-biographical literature in his recently published work, “Lucrezia Borgia, nach Urkunden und Correspondenzen ihrer eigenen Zeit (Stuttgart, 1874). Exhaustive in the use of his materials, and unbiassed in his judgment, Dr. Gregorovius has, as usual with him, given his readers both new facts and new views in this history of one whom modern writers have taken special delight in representing as at once a monster of moral iniquity, and a woman of matchless grace and feminine softness a remorseless Mænad at Rome, a tender wife and benevolent ruler at Ferrara. It is especially in gard to this latter and less generally well-known phase

of her life after her marriage with Prince Alfonso Ferrara, that the author has brought forward the most teresting original facts, while the second and last volam has special value from the number of important archi of which it gives extracts, with fac-similes of numerous ters of Alexander VI., Cæsar Borgia, and Lucrezia self. The question of her innocence of the general charg brought against her by the enemies of her evil father an yet worse brother, is certainly not conclusively proved but, as Dr. Gregorovius reminds his readers, it should remembered that while the evil repute of Alexander his son is a matter of history, that of Lucrezia has neve been confirmed, and rests only on legendary hearsay.

THERE seems good reason for believing that an antid for hydrophobia has been, or rather will be, soon discovere for the remedy has not yet been sufficiently tried to able the medical profession to form a decided opinion ast its efficacy. The plan is, for any person who has bee bitten by a mad dog to get himself or herself immediately bitten by a viper, the antagonism between the virus of animal and the reptile securing the patient from the effects of either bite. This discovery was, it seems, mad by Dr. Jitzki, who according to the Lancet communicat in January last to the Imperial Society of Wilna (Russia) the following interesting fact: A very savage dog, and it may be added, a dog of very eccentric tastes, was in the habit, pour passer le temps, of killing vipers. This reckless animal, whose mouth and neck were covered with vipe wounds, was bitten by a mad dog which had already bitter several horned cattle and another dog, all of whom per ished in a rabid state. The owner of the viper-killing dog not willing to destroy him, deferred the act of destruction until the first symptoms of rabies should make their ap pearance. These symptoms, however, never appeared; the dog remained in perfect good health, and probably t the present moment continues to enjoy his favorite amuse ment with an unimpaired constitution. This case struck Dr. Jitzki, more especially as he learned that a woman in the same district had been bitten by a viper, and, fortu nately for herself, afterwards by a mad dog, without suffer ing any inconvenience. The Lancet suggests that if this suspicion of Dr. Jitzki's is correct as to the antagonism between the virus of hydrophobia and the virus of vipers, young dogs might perhaps be inoculated with the latter virus, and their freedom from rabies be thus secured.

IT would be both impertinent and dangerous, says the Pall Mall Gazette, for man to suggest to woman any alter ation of her head-dress, but there can be no harm in calling her attention to an interesting fact mentioned by Canon Cooper at a sitting of the International Congress for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. It seems that the practice common among ladies of wearing the feathers of the grebe upon their hats and bonnets, although becom ing in the highest degree, is productive of some little inconvenience to the bird thus honored by their attention, inasmuch as it has to be skinned alive in order to make its feathers fit for the ornamental purpose to which they are devoted. This is decidedly hard on the grebe, which has peculiar claims on the sympathy of woman, not only be cause it adds to the adornment of her head, but also because, owing to its peculiar formation, it suffers when it attempts to walk on land much of the same kind of misery that woman suffers when walking in her high-heeled boots. The grebe, in fact, is utterly incapable of walking with any comfort or grace, and shuffles along with an awkward motion, only preserving its balance by assuming position like that of a penguin, quite foreign to its nature or habits. Indeed, some grebes give up attempting to walk as a bad job, and crawl about in the same manner as seals, when inclination or business leads them to leave their native element for an inland stroll. Woman, therefore, should show a little consideration for grebes, and not allow them to be skinned alive for hat trimmings; but, unfortunately, woman entirely ignores agony in the matter of dress, and considering her endurance under the torture she inflicts on herself in this respect, it is perhaps hardly to be expected that she will feel for the grebe.

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