"But what would you say if I should manage to make half a million of dullars out of my soapboiling? That is, as you know, by no means an unheard-of thing in New York.' 'We should say that is the rich soapboiler.' The man was really kindly disposed towards me, but it was not possible for him to place himself in the mental state which I had brought with me from Europe. His mode of judging might be in some measure individual, but it certainly belonged to the aristocracy of culture and occupation existing in America, and the door of entrance to which was about to be opened to me, whilst I, possessed by my hobby, chose rather to enter a dirty and ill-smelling workshop-a choice which was naturally supposed to be a mark of very bad taste on my part. In general, however, I believe that the prevalent feeling in the United States is against every one who does not endeavour to reach the highest point attainable to him. Winning horses are everywhere the favourites, and there is little sympathy for those who remain behind; but to allow yourself to be left behind voluntarily, is here regarded as wilful contempt for what public opinion has declared to be desirable; it is an offence against society-a kind of immoral proceeding."

Although, however, getting on and rising in the world is regarded by the Americans in the light of a duty, it would be, Mr. Fröbel asserts, an error to imagine that getting on means nothing more than the accumulation of money, or that public opinion is indifferent to the way in which money is obtained; they respect wealth as evidence of successful effort and of talent; and they do certainly regard success as the test of merit: but if talent, courage, or any mental power can show a great result obtained, this is far more respected than the accumulations of a mere money-getter, or the prizes bestowed by blind fortune.

The author rightly declines to enter into any minute detail concerning his private affairs, but intimates that the metamorphosis of a German man of letters into an American soapboiler was not altogether such as to justify such a leap in the dark. This we might indeed infer from the fact that in the course of another year we find him on the road to Washington, in the pursuit of different objects; and subsequently undertaking extensive journeys through Central America, and in the little explored country between the Mississippi and the north of Mexico.

One of the most peculiar characteristics of American society is the astounding facility with which the wildest crotchets of the brain are seen, almost as soon as they are conceived, to start into portentous life, and acquire a "local habitation and a name." One of the newest of the phantoms thus endowed with corporeal existence is that known at present as the Sovereignty of the Individual.

The total failure of the New Harmony scheme of society has, it seems, suggested to some ingenious disciples of Mr. Robert Owen the idea of trying one diametrically opposite; and whereas, according to the former plan, the one thing needful was to merge all individual existence in that of the community, the other is to break up society into separate and independent atoms, with no more principle of aggregation than the grains of sand on the sea-shore.

The "absolute isolation of the individual' is considered the indispensable preliminary of all improvement in human society.

The most conspicuous preacher of this new gospel is a certain Mr. Josiah Warren, stated by Mr. Fröbel to be a man of independent character and original intellect. Besides devoting himself for a considerable period to theoretical and practical studies on subjects relating to commerce and education, he established in the city of Cincinnati a "Time Shop," so called because the value of the goods sold was calculated according to the time employed upon them; whether any other element of value was taken into consideration does not appear.

In 1847, when he regarded his preparatory course of study as complete, he set about the establishment on the Ohio, forty miles above Cincinnati, of a settlement to carry out his system, to which he gave the name of Utopia. What amount of success attended the experiment is not stated; but since then another of these communities, or rather aggregations, of "Sovereign Individuals," has started into being on Long Island.

The most astounding result of the new principles is, however, seen in their application to education. Mr. Josiah Warren himself gave Mr. Fröbel the following account of his mode of operation :

:

"My little daughter," he said, "was between seven and eight years of age when I determined to make a beginning. I said to her, 'You are not yet old enough to understand perfectly what I am going to say to you-but perhaps as much as is necessary. You desire to eat and drink, to wear clothes, to live in a house, to warm yourself at a fire, to possess books and toys; you expect when you are ill to be taken care of; and you can procure for yourself neither food, nor house, nor clothes, nor fuel, nor books, nor toys. How do you expect to get all these things?

"I get them from you and mamma.'—' 'Very well; but how do we get them?-we do not make them ourselves.'

"That I don't know,' was the answer. 'Well, then, I will tell you. I do some work: I keep a shop, and the people who do make those things, require my work, and I sell it to them. We exchange the things we produce by our work; and this we call trade. Now you know that at present you are always obliged to obey us; you must do what I or your mother desire you to do, and you know that sometimes you would much rather play; but a certain quantity of work must be done, in order that food, clothes, and the other things I mentioned may be had, for they can only be got by work. Now, since you get them from your mother and me, the question is, how much work you ought to do for us to make us amends? Have we a right to your whole time, day and night, or would this be too much or not enough? Could you think of a plan by which you could do your duty towards us and keep the rest of your time to do what you liked, and be sure that we should not disturb you?'

"No,' she said; but I should like to have it so.'

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Well, then, I will tell you what I think of the matter. It is quite the same thing to me whether I spend an hour in selling goods in my shop or the same time in washing up crockery in the kitchen; if therefore you would wash as much crockery as would take your mother or me an hour, you would have given us compensation for an hour of our time. Of course that would take you more than an hour, but no matter.

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Every member of our family consumes daily, in ordinary circumstances, the value of three hours' labour of a grown-up person. Now I consider that six

hours of your work at present would be no more than equal to three of ours. Does that seem fair? Yes,' she said. From time to time,' I added, we will alter the proportion-that you have a right to ask. But understand me, I make no claim to your work or your time, except because I require compensation for my work, for we must all work if we wish to live: and consider that if you do not perform your share of work we could not give you the things you require ; not out of anger, or for the sake of punishment, but because nobody ought to live upon other people's work.' Even at this early age," continued Mr. Warren, "the child felt the justice of this, and so we came to an agreement that she should work for us every day from 7 to 9, from 12 to 2, and from 5 to 7 o'clock. The rest of her time was to be solely at her own disposal."

Mr. Fröbel cautiously refrains from offering any opinion of this notable scheme; nor do we learn whether Mr. Warren considered himself entitled to compensation for the expenditure of labour during the previous seven years of life of the juvenile "sovereign individual;" nor whether mamma had any special claim for loss of time during her accouchement, to say nothing of trouble; but, as we are promised in Mr. Fröbel's second volume a visit to the "Settlement of Modern Times," we may perhaps obtain information on these points.

6.-Les Salons de Paris. By Madame Ancelot. Paris, 1858.

THE recalling scenes of pleasures long past is in most cases anything but an exhilarating process, suggesting thoughts of faded artificial flowers, or of illumination lamps the morning after a gala, rather than of anything that "smells sweet and blossoms in the dust;" and the general impression of these reminiscences of some of the most brilliant writers of what is, or rather was, considered the most brilliant city in the world, is a somewhat saddening one. Madame Ancelot herself is no undistinguished member of the circles whose memory she recalls, and her earliest recollections date from the salons of the Restoration, of which the glimpses she affords are pleasanter and more genial than those of a later date. Still it is at best but a mocking, shadowy repast to which we are invited; and, if we accept Madame Ancelot's definition of a Salon, we shall be inclined to think that few of those here described are properly entitled to the appellation.

"A salon," she tells us, "is not a crowded assembly of people coming together to dance, to hear music, or to display toilettes; but a meeting of those long known to each other, or who have some special reason for desiring to be so known; whose habits and tastes are congenial; who regard the hostess as forming such a bond of union among all her guests, that they converse freely with one another without waiting for an introduction, since it would be impossible to suppose that any unworthy person could be admitted."

Madame Ancelot admits, however, that the company meeting at the Vicomte d'Arlincourt's was too numerous and showy, and too little known to each other, to be truly entitled to the appellation

of a "salon." Besides literary notabilities, there were Bourbon princes and princesses, Infants and grandees of Spain, princes of Russia, Italy, and Poland, English noblemen with historical names, and ladies magnificently adorned with those hereditary diamonds "which increase with every generation, and are only seen among the old aristocracy." The corps diplomatique too appeared "en force," and rivalled the ladies in their resplendent display of jewellery; the Vicomte himself blazing all over, and appearing on grand occasions with no less than seventeen decorations.

These assemblies Madame Ancelot would classify as "Soirées de Vanité," and under the same category must be placed those of Madame Recamier, who at this latter period of her life figures as a most determined lion-hunter.

“When it suited her projects to attract to her circle some distinguished man, she would make acquaintance with his wife, his children, his friends, with the full intention of course of dismissing them when her object was attained. No trouble was thought too great; there were dinner visits, journeys, the most minute persevering attentions, even to the extremity of taking a house next door to her intended victim, courting his sister-in-law, cajoling his little daughters, and feeding her pet pug on gingerbread nuts-the object of all these insidious approaches being to obtain a minister to occupy a fauteuil at her fireside, opposite to that of Châteaubriand, at the parties of the Abbaye aux Bois.”

It was in 1840 that, in consequence of her success as a dramatic writer, the authoress became acquainted with Madame Recamier, who was at that time turned of sixty years of age, and retaining little traces of the dazzling beauty so renowned at the period of the Directory, except unluckily the keen recollection of it.

"She received company every day from four to six, in apartments so darkened by double curtains, that on their first entrance the guests could scarcely see their way, and it was the custom to speak in the lowest tones, as if in the chamber of a sick person. If any one chanced to raise his voice above this pitch, there was a movement of surprise that seemed to say, Who is this illbred person, ignorant of the manners of our superior society, and unworthy to form a part of it?-and woe to him who did not take the hint!

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Everything in these meetings was calculated and pre-arranged, even to the presence of an ugly little cat that was always sleeping on a chair by the side of the great man. If he began to feel bored by his company, he stroked the cat; and if his ennui rose to a still higher degree, he played with the tassel of the bell-rope."

The following anecdote, however, displays the great man under a more pleasing aspect than that of the pose magnifique in which he inhaled incense from the worshippers at the Abbaye aux Bois. It was his custom to retire to bed at nine o'clock, and he would make no exception to this rule even on the evening when his tragedy of Moise was to be brought out.

"I would change nothing in my usual habit," he said, "in order that no one might think I was anxious about the result of my piecc; so I went to bed at the customary hour, though, to say the truth, I could not sleep, and waited with impatience the arrival of my valet, whom I had sent to the theatre with orders to bring me an exact account of what took place. I had to wait for a long time, and from this I inferred that at all events the piece had been heard to the

end. At last he entered, very hastily, and apologised for being so late, but said nothing of what had occurred. I was obliged to question him.

"Well, I said, with as indifferent a tone as I could assume, 'how has it gone?'

"Oh, perfectly well, Monsieur, though there was a little noise.'

"During the tragedy?' I exclaimed.

"Yes, Monsieur le Vicomte, during the tragedy, but it did not last longthey were soon as merry as ever.'

"Merry!' I repeated.

"Oh yes, Sir, I am sure they were pleased, for they did nothing but laugh; so that at last I began to laugh too.'"

Yet, after all, this apparently naïve confession was probably only another mode of challenging admiration.

Another remarkable figure is that of the gay Duchess d'Abrantes, rejoicing as she sate cosily gossiping to a late hour, that at this time of night" she need not fear the intrusion either of bores or creditors,” and thus affording to the astonished hostess a glimpse of the petty and degrading miseries that were eating away the life so dazzling to the mere looker-on.

"When I first became acquainted with Madame d'Abrantes," says the authoress, "she occupied a suite of apartments on the ground floor, at the top of the Rue de Richelieu. They opened into a garden, and there in the summer you might find scattered about the lawn persons of all political opinions, the most eccentric and striking of every colour, all the most distinguished military men, artists, men of letters, as well as gay young men chiefly famous for their dancing, and the young Duke her eldest son, who following in the footsteps of his parent, said, showing a threepenny stamp, 'You see this piece of paper; it is worth 25 centimes now; but when I shall have put my signature to it, it will be worth nothing.'

One evening when the company was especially merry, and the duchess herself the gayest of the gay, keeping everybody laughing at her inexhaustibly droll stories, it was noticed that the tea had not been served, though it was nearly two hours beyond the customary time. The cause of the delay was afterwards discovered. In the morning some desperate want of money had occasioned the whole plate being swept off to the pawnbroker's, and it had been found necessary to send round and borrow some tea-spoons.

On another occasion, when Madame d'Ancelot had left a party at an unusually early hour, and taken a hired carriage, she found, thrown carelessly on the seat, an open letter, containing the bitterest reproaches addressed by a creditor to an evidently dishonest debtor -and that debtor was the brilliant Duchess d'Abrantes-the closing scene of whose life was a miserable garret, and whose coffin was furnished by charity.

We have other foreign books before us, but, not wishing to fill our pages with a mere list of names, we must for the present defer mention of them.