the publisher, for the royalty to authors has not been reduced.

The increased number of readers has not at all increased the sale of the "average book." The vast number of "average writers," the cheap magazines, and the great Sunday newspapers have all tended to check such in

crease.

Mr. Putnam thinks that in a case when the publisher is willing to assume the risk and expense the most equitable arrangement is to pay the author a royalty under which "the returns to him are in direct proportion to the extent of the sales "

He believes that there should be a lengthening of the term of copyright. This with international copyright will greatly benefit the author.

MUCH NEEDED WORDS FROM THE GERMAN.

The writer of an interesting little article on "Cousins German," in Cornhill for September, maintains that however much inferior the German language is to the English in many points of view, it contains three words which are much needed. The first is "backfisch," to describe a girl from fifteen to eighteen years of age who keeps a diary, climbs trees secretly, blushes easily, and has no conversation. The second word, which is even more needed than "backfisch," is "bummeln." One who bummelns is an aggravated edition of our lounger. The most indispensable word of all, however, is "schwärmen," of which the writer

says'-

"The best definition of this word seems to be the falling in leve in a purely impersonal manner with the artistic or intellectual gifts of any more or less distinguished man or woman. It is possible, for example, to 'schwärmen ' for actors, singers, authors, doctors, military commanders, preachers, and painters. A German girl can schwärmen for any or all of these, whether they be male or female, and openly avow the same without even her mother taking alarm. A man can schwärmen, too, but the objects of his schwärmerei very seldom happens to be of his own sex. Now, English people are no whit behind their German cousins in the practice of schwärming,' but they have no term wherewith to express their enthusiasm which shall never be liable to misinterpretation. Therefore, it is much to be wished that the words backfisch, bummelu, and schwärmen may be introduced into the next English dictionary."

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

By Mr. Bret Harte.

Mr. Bret Harte contributes to the New Review a criticism on Mr. Russell Lowell's place in literature which has only one fault; it is too short. As befits an American, Mr. Bret Harte is proud of Lowell, but proud of him with limitations. Bret Harte, being a Californian, cannot help feeling that Lowell was too much of a New Englander. Still, this is forgiven him in death, although possibly if he had been alive Bret Harte would have put it more strongly. Mr. Lowell's chief achievement in literature, he declares, was the discovery of the real Yankee.

"It remained for Mr. Lowell alone to discover and portray the real Yankee-that wonderful evolution of the English Puritan, who had shaken off the forms and super stitions, the bigotry and intolerance, of religion, but never the deep consciousness of God. It was true that it was not only an all-wise God, but a God singularly perspicacious of wily humanity; a God that you had to get up early' to 'take in'; a God who encouraged familiarity, who did not reveal Himself in vague thunders, nor answer

ont of a whirlwind of abstraction; who did not hold a whole race responsible-but 'sent the bill' directly to the individual debtor."

Mr. Bret Harte also points out the extraordinary completeness of Mr. Russell Lowell's career:

"A strong satirical singer, who at once won the applause of a people inclined to prefer sentiment and pathos in verse; an essayist who held his own beside such men as Emerson, Thoreau, and Holmes; an ironical biographer in the land of the historian of the Knickerbockers; and an unselfish, uncalculating patriot selected to represent a country where partisan politics and party service were too often the only test of fitness-this was his triumphant record. His death seems to have left no trust or belief of his admirers betrayed or disappointed. The critic has not yet risen to lament a wasted opportunity, to point out a misdirected talent, or to tell us that he expected more or less than Mr. Lowell gave. Wonderful and rounded finish of an intellectual career."

A Personal Friend's Estimation.

An anonymous writer in Blackwood's Magazine for September, who was apparently a personal friend of Lowell, says:—

"He was a remarkably accomplished linguist. He could read and converse fluently in several languages; and in the course of his miscellaneous studies he had attained to an exceptional knowledge of the old Provençal language and literature."

"Lowell was one of the very few Americans whom England could ill afford to spare; and in some sense his death is an international loss. An American and an enlightened patriot of the sound old Puritan stock, he was a good deal of a cosmopolitan and entirely an Englishman."

"Although he always seemed to take life tolerably easily few inen have studied more regularly. He generally devoted several hours each day to what may be called serious reading, and the more ephemeral literature that took his fancy was the favorite recreation of his leisure moments. His wonderful memory served him well, and a marvellous amount of miscellaneous knowledge had been carefully pigeonholed in it. When writing in vein-and he seldom could write against his grain-he always knew where to look for the facts or the quotations which he had seldom occasion to verify. His essays are full of unfamiliar information, and moreover, he had the knack of bringing new and original treatment to brighten subjects that might seem to have been worn threadbare."

An English View.

Mr. Sydney Low contributes to the Fortnightly for September an intelligent and appreciative criticism of James Russell Lowell. He recognizes the fact, ignored by so many of Lowell's superfine critics, that Mr. Lowell was at bottom a prophet and an apostle.

"He was in no sense a mere scholarly dilettante, as some have chosen, with surely very little warrant, to consider him. His taste for experiment and imitation did not for a moment lead him to intellectual servility. If he some times played on other men's instruments he played his own tune. It was the tune which he had heard in the Atlantic breezes as they swept through the trees round the old home at Elmwood. That the spirit of the Lord moves upon the face of the waters and over the dry land, that the mills of God grind exceeding small that man is born to fulfil his destiny, and that it is his destiny to be free' above all, that justice, and law, and righteousness are things for which any man with an immortal soul in him would willingly die-these formed the

stock of axioms with which the son of the Massachusetts minister started in life. At the root of him there lay the earnestness, the gospelling fervor, of the New England Calvinist."

Mr. Low seems to prefer the later Lowell of cosmopolitan culture to the earlier Lowell of the anti-slavery struggle. Speaking of his earlier poems, Mr. Low says: "The critic may point out that there is no great distinction in these poems, that the sentiment is hollow, and the style frequently thin and prosaic. It may be so; but nevertheless there is something in this kind of verse which appeals to many thousands of men for whom the voice of the best poetry is mute-something that comes home to them striking upon the heart,' to use a beautiful phrase of Hazlitt's, amidst unquiet thoughts and the tumult of the world, like the music of one's native tongue heard in some far-off country.' There is a good deal of Lowell's minor poetry, like a good deal of Longfellow's, which does convey that impression to many readers, however little it may satisfy the higher critical canons."

Those who prefer substance to semblance, and are more in sympathy with the vigorous soul of an earnest man than the fastidiously polished verse of a singer who has nothing particular to say, will naturally prefer the earlier Lowell to the later.

The Andover Review's Estimate.

In a spirit of manly restraint the editor of the Andover Review forms a judicious estimate of Lowell. As professor, editor, and diplomat, he thinks that Lowell will leave no lasting mark, and even more important than the question as to whether or not his fame as a poet and man of letters will be perennial is the question of his influence upon the times in which he lived. That this was very great, there can be no doubt, and his hold upon the public is all the more remarkable in consideration of the manner of the man, for he was in no sense a popular man; his speeches were not of the kind to tickle the fancy of the populace, but were always the chastened utterances of the scholar. Yet his heart was so in sympathy with humanity and his insight into human nature so deep that by force of these things he became a prophet to whom all men listened.

"The permanent interest in his work will lie chiefly in the fact that the sources of his inspiration sprung from the deep ethical and spiritual nature of the man. Behind the critic in him lay the poet; behind the poet was the humanitarian, the patriot, the instructor and interpreter of the public conscience; and within and blending with them all was the pure strain of a noble, fearless, selfrespecting Christian manhood. In a word, Lowell's greatness came from his source of character."

AN ITALIAN VIEW OF TOLSTOI.

The study of "the Gospel according to Tolstoi" has spread into Italy; and the well-known critic, G. Boglietti, discusses the subject with considerable ability in the pages of the Nuora Antologia, under the somewhat forcible heading, "The Damnation of Tolstoi." He describes the doctrines of the greatest of living Russians, as they appear in "My Religion," "My Confession," and the more recent of his novels, as being "a form of evangelical humanitarianism which is the natural reaction against the depressing conclusions of modern science on the value of personal existence and man's destiny on earth. It is a desperate effort to reconstruct on a basis of faith the harmony of the world, giving to life a meaning which it had lost through the influence of pessimistic philosophy." In order to understand rightly the developments of his later teaching, it must be remembered that Tolstoi was a pessimist,

not only in his youth, but up to his fiftieth year. "Occupying a prominent social position, and gifted with unusual physical and intellectual qualities, he drank deeply at the fountain of life. He possessed love, riches, glory, and a refined appreciation of the arts, but everything was flavored with the bitter sap of skepticism. It was not long before he realized the emptiness of such a life. Life, as he understood it, and as the majority of men understood it, appeared to him to be devoid of sense. . . . . . In the end he concluded with Schopenhauer that life was an unmixed evil."

Every reader of that most enthralling of novels, " Anna Karenina," will remember the mental tortures undergone by Levin in his struggles from skepticism to faith. The picture is in reality drawn from life, and represents the author's own experiences as he emerged from darkness into light. After describing Tolstoi's conception of faith, his Italian critic points out how of necessity the Russian peasant is the man predestined to incarnate his idea of a religious renovation.

"The Moujik has all the qualities requisite for the task: Faith, ignorance, simple habits, resignation, suffering. How curious is the fate of the Russian Moujik! Fifty years ago Alexander Herzen, and with him all the Russian Hegelians, presented the Moujik to the world as the fortunate being who was to represent in himself the new era of the revolution heralded by Hegel. And here is Tolstoi holding up this same Moajik as the instrument of a religious revolution! I do not myself believe that the Moujik will be any more fortunate in this new mission assigned to him than he was half a century ago.

"But how do Tolstoi's doctrines of universal love and non-resistance to the evil lead him to the grewsome teachings of the 'Kreutzer Sonata'?

“After having attacked all the other individual impulses of mankind as causes of pain and misery, he could not make an exception for love, the most egotistical of all the passions. He was obliged at all cost to destroy love in order to create that mystical unity of the human race of which he dreamt. From sexual love there sprung up the family, a group of families, the city, the state, all of which imply personal and particular interests and tendencies, all the thousand things which exist to-day before our eyes, and which Tolstoi wishes to destroy. Sexual love must therefore be placed under the ban. This Tolstoi does by taking his stand once again on the Gospel, and armed with a verse from St. Matthew, declares matrimony to be mere adultery. . . . The Kreutzer Sonata' is in fact a violent and bitter tirade against continuous adultery under the name of matrimony. The profound knowledge of the human heart which Tolstoi displays in his most successful books, and his marvellous literary skill, serve him admirably in his present taste of throwing discredit, shame and abuse on matrimonial unions. These are represented in the Sonata' as a succession of miseries, torments, profound dissimulations, and ferocious and implacable hatreds, the whole crowned, be it understood, with deception and a second adultery. It is by voluntary

chastity that we shall prepare for the end of the world, an end which has been foretold by science as well as by Scripture."

There is much more of his early pessimism in his latest utterances than Tolstoi himself supposes. But the world is not likely to adopt his views; for, says Signor Boglietti, we are all more or less of the opinion of Madame Caroline in Zola's "Argent," who, putting aside all wearisome speculation as to primary causes, gave herself up gayly to the "joi de vivre," to the intense, unique happiness of health and sunshine.

THE SEAMY SIDE OF AUSTRALIA.

Mr. Christie Murray, in the Contemporary for September, concludes his interesting papers on the Antipodeans. He is sympathetic, but faithful, and some of his facts are startling indeed. The Australians, he says, are among the best educated people in the world, but they are also the least commercially sound, the rowdiest, and the most drunken. In Victoria and New South Wales

"We find an insolvency to every 1700 of the population, as against every 6000 in the United Kingdom; twentynine convictions, as against seven in the United Kingdom; and seven deaths from alcoholism, as against three in the United Kingdom.

"The figures for insanity, alcoholism, suicide, and crimes of violence are sadly large. In Victoria one person in every 105 of the population was in prison during some part of the year 1888. In the United Kingdom for that year the average of convictions in proportion to population was 3.64 per 10,000. In New South Wales it was 8.59, and in the whole of Australasia it amounted to 6.15, although South Australia, New Zealand, and Tasmania showed a joint average of only 3.81. In the United Kingdom the average of suicide is 5.5 to every 100,000. In Victoria it is 11.6, in New South Wales 9.5, and in Queensland 13.7. In the United Kingdom the average of deaths from excessive drinking is 54 in 1,000,000. In Victoria it is 113.50more than double. In New South Wales crimes of violence are almost four times as numerous as in New Zealand, where everything is tolerably normal from the British standpoint."

Western Australia consumes more alcohol than any other colony, and Queensland drinks three times as much per head as is drunk in England.

"Parental control, as we know it in England, has faded out entirely. There is no reverence in the rising generation, and the ties of home are slight. Age and experience count for little. The whole country is filled with a feverish, restless, and reckless energy. Everybody is in a hurry to be rich."

Mr. Christie Murray laments that the slang of Australia is not good; it is ugly, and good for nothing but to be forgotten. The people confound courtesy with servility, and there is more swearing to the square mile than suffices for the crowded millions of Great Britain. The new racial type which is being produced in the country is less healthy and hardy than the English, but taller, slimmer, more alert, and the best horsemen in the world.

Another Observer.

As a kind of supplement to Mr. Christie Murray's article in the Contemporary, we have Mr. Francis Adams's paper on "The Social Life in Australia" in the Fortnightly for September. Mr. Adams is a good writer, and his picture of Australia is vivid, although he exaggerates somewhat the genius and influence of the Sydney Bulletin. He says what he has to say clearly, and writes what he believes,— qualifications not always combined. Speaking of the moral side of the Australians, Mr. Adams says that they have the taint of cruelty, and that they have a suppressed viciousness which is twice as dangerous as the outspoken wrath of the Anglo-Saxon.

"Educated in a secular manner, even in the denominational grammar schools, our new-world youth is a pure Positivist and Materialist. Religion seems to him, at best, a social affair, to whose inner appeal he is profoundly inslifferent. History is nothing to him, and all he knows or cares for England lies in his resentment and curiosity concerning London, with the tales of whose size and wonders the crowd of travelling 'new chums' forever troubles him."

Melbourne, he says, is in reality pagan, with a raw Presbyterianism which closes its museums on Sundays. Sydney is equally pagan, minus Presbyterianism.

“Sunday is rapidly becoming Continental. Public galleries are open; endless trips and picnics about the harbor and to pleasure resorts; boating and sailing in all sorts of yachts-more and more the characteristics of a careless, pleasure-loving race are developed as secularly educated Young Australia, the true religious Gallio, gets his own way. The art sense, too, begins to show itself, and is happily ignorant of the didactic."

Mr. Adams is a fearful pessimist concerning the greater ideals of our race:

"History is identified with religion, and as such excluded from the "curriculum "; so that the sense of the poetry of the past and the solidarity of the race is rapidly being lost to the young Australian. To the next generation, England will be a geographical expression, and our Empire a myth in imminent danger of becoming a bogey."

He concludes his paper by telling us that the culture of the Antipodes is in as bad a way as its society.

the private gardens. They are called the Swiss Cottage from the fact that in the middle of this miniature paradise for flowers a chalet stands surrounded by huge pines and other trees such as one sees growing luxuriantly in Switzerland. To these gardens, morning and evening in summer, the queen proceeds in her small pony phaeton, Princess Beatrice walking by her side, and the faithful henchman in attendance.

Armed with special permission, Mr. Wheeler had no difficulty in entering the gardens and enlisting the services of the head gardener, who had previously been in service with the late Lord Beaconsfield, at Hughenden, and Dean Stanley, and Lady Augusta; and many were the affectionate reminiscences the gardener had to tell of both his previous employers. Every portion of the ground, some three acres in extent, under his charge was a blaze of color.

THE PRINCE OF WALES AS A CARPENTER.

On the right of the entrance gate stands the children's tool-house, built (as a slip of wood in the queen's handwriting reports) by the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh, in 1857. It is still in splendid preservation, for the late Prince Consort always taught his children to do things well. Judging from the large tool-house, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh were no mean adepts at carpentering, the boarding of the sides being substantially put together and the gables of the roof mortised in true form; frequently, when the Prince of Wales visits the gardens, he looks critically round this shed to see that the joinings are secure. It is kept exactly as it was when the princes and princesses were young, the barrows and garden tools being in an excellent state of preservation. Each child had a perfect set of tools with a barrow and wagon, and the queen had a special wagon for herself, in which the children often drew her about. The initials of each of the royal children are painted on the back of the implements, with the exception of those of Princess Beatrice and the Duke of Albany, who were then very young and had to put up with a toy horse and cart and a very small barrow.

PRINCE ALFRED AND PRINCE ARTHUR AS MASONS.

The Dukes of Edinburgh and Connaught were very fond of building stone and brick work, and their handiwork can be seen in another part of the gardens in the shape of a miniature fortress called "the Albert Barracks," which was finished October 2d, 1860. It was under the eye of the Prince Consort these fortifications were commenced, and splendid sham battles were fought here by the children, the Duke of Connaught and the Duke of Edinburgh defending their works against the combined attack of their brothers and sisters. It is an oft-repeated story that sometimes the attack, led by the Prince of Wales, was too much for Prince Alfred and Prince Arthur, who were driven off the battlements into the underground chamber, which was proof against capture, and in which they had a separate store of arms. The fortress is kept in exactly the same order as it was then, and the Duchess of Albany's and the Princess Beatrice's children often now scamper over the deep ditch in front and play again the games of their uncles and aunts.

THE MARRIAGE A MYRTLE OF THE ROYAL FAMILY. Close to the fortress grows a tree which has one of the most interesting of histories. It is a myrtle some five feet high, growing luxuriantly, although nipped considerably by last winter's harsh winds. This tree, as the inscription tells us, was grown from a sprig of myrtle taken by the queen from the Princess Royal's wedding bouquet on the day of her marriage with the late German emperor.

The inscription under the tree states, "Myrtle grown from a Sprig of the Princess Royal's Marriage Nosegay, January 25, 1858. Planted by Queen Victoria, February 7, 1878, in honor of the marriage of her granddaughter, Princess Charlotte of Prussia." The latter was the eldest daughter of the Empress Frederick. Sprays from this tree have since done duty in the bouquets of other royal brides, and, to judge by its condition, the tree will provide bouquets for many years to come.

TREE PLANTING FOR DEATH AND MARRIAGE,

Every tree planted in these gardens seems to flourish, particularly the many trees planted by the royal family in February, 1862, to perpetuate the memory of their father, the late Prince Consort, who died in December, 1861. These form an avenue in themselves of exceeding beauty.

What might almost be called a sacred grove of trees is in another part of the gardens, close to the museum, stocked with curiosities collected by the royal family in all parts of the globe: a crocodile from the Nile, shot by the Duke of Connaught; a huge eagle shot by the Prince of Wales in the East; huge tusks of ivory, nearly eight feet long; a mummy in its case, and various shells, butterflies and pebbles. In front of this is the glade of trees which commemorates the marriage of each one of the queen's children. First come two splendid firs in memory of the Prince of Wales's wedding, planted there by the Prince and Princess after their honeymoon; then two planted by the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh; and near at hand the budding trees of the Duke and Duchess of Connaught, Prince Henry of Battenberg, and Princess Beatrice and the Duke and Duchess of Albany. The queen frequently takes her afternoon tea on the lawn amidst these emblems of the happy union of her children.

THE GARDENS OF THE ROYAL CHILDREN.

There is only one bed of flowers in this beautiful grass plot which is in summer fragrant with the scent of pinks and carnations, and this is always watched by the Princess Beatrice, who tends and cares for the flowers for the queen's delight. The queen loves gardening, and all her children were taught to dig and plant flowers, fruit, and vegetables in season. Each child had a separate garden, and each had exactly the same kinds of vegetables and flowers. These gardens are still kept up exactly as the Princes and Princesses cultivated them years ago. There are fourteen beds in each garden, consisting of two flower beds, two strawberries, two gooseberries, two currants, two raspberries, and one row each of beet, turnips, potatoes, onions, carrots, asparagus, peas, beans, parsnips, and artichokes.

Princess Beatrice is still very fond of her gardens and may often be seen with her children weeding and hoeing them. She has, however, another care in a field quite close that takes more attention, and this is a huge pack of rabbits of the long-wooled or Angola species. Their wool is used by the Princess for spinning, and with it she weaves most beautiful articles, which she contributes to charity bazaars.

GOLDEN PRAGUE AND ITS JUBILEE EXHIBITION.

"Golden Prague!" That is how the Bohemian speaks of his capital, and indeed Prague not only has a glorious past to boast of, but it is one of the architecturally inter. esting cities of the world. It is now the scene of an in dustrial exhibition, which came into existence as a fitting commemoration of a similar exhibition at Prague a hundred years ago. As Bohemia has a reputation for its

glass industry, specimens of its manufactures in glass are accorded a place of honor. Quite a number of pavilions have been built by the aristocrats of the country, and are called after them. They contain specimens of the products of their great estates. Prague is a city of churches and bridges. It has forty-seven Catholic churches, besides twenty-three chapels, three evangelical churches, ten synagogues, a Russian Orthodox church, and twentytwo convents and monasteries. In Ueber Land und Meer, Heft 2, Dr. Adolph Kohut describes Prague at length, while the Kritische Revue aus Oesterreisch contends that the exhibition is a political affair.

THE WELL-BRED WOMEN OF JAPAN.

The general impression with regard to the well-bred Japanese woman is that she does not exist. The European traveller's ideal has been formed in the tea-house and other places of public resort, and the impression has been more sympathetic than respectful. M. Tinseau, writing in the Nouvelle Revue, introduces his readers, with some unnecessary apology, into the more sacred precincts of the Tokian home.

EARLY EDUCATION.

The age at which the little Japanese girl's education begins is about the same as elsewhere. At about six or seven years of age she passes from the hands of servants to the care of a governess, who does not herself teach much, but whose business it is to conduct her charge to classes where she must, if possible, be made to learn. The schools are usually under the superintendence of the government, and education is conducted on a strictly scientific graduated principle. Quite young children are taught a good deal in the open air, and their course of instruction resembles that of the Kindergarten of the Western countries. They learn to sing childish songs, to use their fingers in making little objects of folded paper, and from the beginning to appreciate flowers and plants. They also learn by degrees to read and write and to recite fables. To this extent the course of public instruction is the same for rich and poor. At home the governess never leaves her pupil's side. The little girl's food, dress, health, and deportment are all the objects of her care. She also watches over the preparation of lessons, and is appreciated by the parents of her charge in proportion to the place taken by the child in public classes. The amount of private cramming to which the system must give rise is painful to reflect upon, for as the young lady advances in age and leaves the elementary school she enters upon a course which is by no means child's-play. It includes history, geography, mathematics, physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, modern languages-of which French and English are the ones most usually taken up-music, painting, embroidery, "all feminine occupations," national literature, and in addition to all this the essential accomplishment of writing in prose and verse. Caligraphy, which is carried to a high degree of perfection, is taught in the most advanced classes. The schools in which this course of study may be pursued are very various. The most aristocratic is that known as the School of Nobility, at Tokio. This is patronized by the Emperor and regularly visited by the Empress, but establishments of a less exclusive description are not wauting, and it is estimated that altogether there are about 850,000 girls undergoing instruction in Japan.

BEFORE AND AFTER MARRIAGE.

The course which has been described is continued usually into her early teens. On the completion of it there is still a further course, which takes place at home. The

Japanese young lady must now learn fine manners, the etiquette of society, and, above all, the arrangement of flowers. The passion of the Japanese for flowers is well known. The mistress of a house who was unable to arrange them would be regarded as absolutely incompetent to take her place in the world; and not only must she have the artistic sense of color and form, she must be learned in the deeper science of allegoric significance. Flower language is one of the tongues in which she must be able to converse. Her previous education will have, to some extent, prepared her for the acquisition of these graceful accomplishments. One year is devoted to them, and before the question of her matrimonial establishment is opened, one more year must be given to the serious study of housekeeping. Upon this it is felt that her future happiness mainly depends. Throughout the whole there is one supreme maxim upon which the conduct of a wellbred woman is made to turn, and this is "obedience." Life, the Japanese girl is taught, divides itself into three stages of obedience. In youth she is to obey her father, in marriage her husband, in widowhood her eldest son. Hence, preparation for life is always preparation for service. The marriage of the Japanese girl usually takes place when she is about seventeen. It is contrary to all custom that she should have any voice in it. Once married, she passes from her father's household into the household of her husband, and her period of self-abnegation begins. Her own family is to be henceforth as nothing to her. Her duty is to charm the existence of her husband, and to please his relations. Custom demands that she shall always smile upon him, and that she shall carefully hide from him any signs of bad humor, jealousy, or physical pain. His house should also be beautifully kept, and especial care paid to the meals. For it is not only the husband who has to be satisfied. His father, nis mother, his brothers, and his sisters must be considered, and if their tastes are not satisfied, they have not only the right to complain, but even, in the case of the parents, to demand a divorce. It is, in fact, only when the young lady is married that the full necessity for her elaborate education becomes apparent. She may love her husband. M. Tinseau asserts that, such being the natural goodness of the Japanese woman, she invariably does. If so, the parents' power of divorce becomes only the more terrible. A careful perusal of this article may be consciously recommended to all young English wives.

DIAMOND DIGGING IN SOUTH AFRICA. One of the brightest and most interesting papers in the September magazines is Lieut.-Col. Knollys's account of diamond digging in South Africa, which appears in Blackwood's Magazine for September. A more vivid picture of that extraordinary treasure-trove, the possession of which enabled the De Beers Company in 1887 to produce over £4,000,000 sterling worth of diamonds froin four mines of a total area of one hundred and eleven and & half acres, has never been written. Such a crop was never before harvested from so small an area. The whole process of the harvesting is carefully but brilliantly described by Lieut.-Col. Knollys. Fifteen hundred white men at £1 a day, and 12,000 natives at 5 shillings for twelve hours' labor, find constant employment at the diamond mines. They work in the diamondiferous region, which is enclosed and screened by means of high barbed wire-fencing and lofty corrugated-iron hoarding, as skilfully guarded as one of Vauban's fortresses, and is further safe-guarded externally at night by numerous armed patrols, and by powerful electric lights casting a glare on every spot otherwise favorable to intending marauders.