was rubbing his claws and sharpening his bill, preparatory to another attack. After a vain search of some twenty minutes, during which we looked into every nook and corner without finding hide or hair of our tormentor, and nearly broke our neck in exploring the ceiling from a chair and table, we gave up the attempt as hopeless, and again sought our couch with the fond conceit that he had bid us "good-night," or, at least, that we might from long sleeplessness fall into a slumber so profound that we should not be awakened even by his perforations.

Vain hope! Hark! A gentle and barely audible murmur in a distant corner of the room, becoming by degrees a little louder and louder, and waxing eventually into the old, familiar, long-drawn hum! It came upon our ear like a knell! Escape was impossible; our doom was sealed. A moment of agonizing suspense followed, and again we felt the pest promenading on our face, leaving an intolerable itching wherever he trod; and again he thrust the murderous tube deep into our cheek, inflicting the keenest stinging pain. Flesh and blood could stand it no longer. Jumping out of bed into the middle of the room, we chased the imp about the premises for half an hour in a perfect frenzy of rage, which nothing but his heart's blood could have appeased; when suddenly we lost sight of him, and sinking upon a lounge from sheer exhaustion, fell into a profound sleep, from which we awoke at daylight to recollect that a mosquito is invincible!

Mystery in

IN re-reading that remarkable book, which Religion. so many persons have found full of original, suggestive, and stimulating thought, "Amiel's Journal," I was struck with the following observations.

Consider

ing that their author was a pre-eminently "liberal" thinker, to whom no suspicion attaches of the slightest "orthodox prejudice," in fact, a sceptic, the sentiments. must be deemed full of weight and significance.

"The efficacy of religion," says Amiel, "lies precisely in that which is not rational, philosophic, nor eternal. The philosopher aspires to explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light. It is mystery, on the other hand, which the religious instinct demands and pursues; it is mystery which constitutes the essence of worship, the power of proselytism. When the cross became the 'foolishness' of the cross, it took possession of the masses. And in our own day, those who wish to get rid of the supernatural, to enlighten religion, to economize faith, find themselves deserted, like poets who should declaim against poetry, or women who should decry love. . . . It is the forgetfulness of this physiological law which stultifies the so-called liberal Christianity."

The First

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WHICH was the first novel in our language? Novel. If "Robinson Crusoe" may be regarded as a novel, it was the first, having been published in 1719. But this charming tale hardly exemplifies, perhaps, what we mean by the term; and if so, Richardson may therefore be considered as the true discoverer of this boundless realm of literature, which has since been so widely explored.

"Pamela," Richardson's first work, appeared in 1741; and if, as the poet Gray believed, the most paradisaical of earthly pleasures is to lounge upon a sofa and "read eternal new romances of Marivaux and Crebillon," what a dreary world, comparatively speaking, must ours have been before that epoch! Sir Charles Grandison had not then

bowed over the hand of Harriet Byron. Tom Jones had not exposed the foibles of Philosopher Square, nor Parson Adams prided himself on his sermon against vanity. Uncle Toby had not yet let the "poor devil" of a fly out of the window, or arranged his batteries of miniature cannon at Shandy Hall. The Vicar of Wakefield had not found a convert to his views on monogamy in Ephraim Jenkinson, nor Moses been overreached in trade by the same sharper. Dominie Sampson had not uttered his memorable exclamation, "Prodigious!" or indulged in the sole laugh of his life, so fatal to his landlady. Samuel Weller had not been shut up four and twenty hours in a public conweyance" with a "vidder," nor had the world. heard of that "poor, lone, lorn creature," Mrs. Gummidge, with whom "everything goes contrairy." What did men do before Richardson's time to amuse themselves on rainy days, or how did the ladies console themselves for the lack or loss of a lover?

A Fallacy A WRITER in that able Chicago journal, Pricked. "The Open Court," combats with great vigor the popular cry that the poor in this century are continually growing poorer in the essentials of happiness, that industrial progress increases and intensifies poverty, and that hence our modern civilization is a failure. He shows that in England the proportion of pauperism to population was nearly twice as great in 1846 as in 1876, and more than four times as great in 1803 as in 1888. Though the population of England has doubled in the last sixty years, the number of vagrants arrested annually in London has not increased. Again, trustworthy official statistics show that the consumption of tea, sugar, cheese, butter, bread, ham,

eggs, and other common articles of food has increased enormously out of proportion to the increase in population

a fact due to the great increase of consumption by the poor, to whom what once were almost unattainable luxuries have now become daily necessaries of life. Then, again, the great improvements which have been made in draining, paving, lighting, and cleaning the streets of modern towns have inured chiefly to the benefit of the poor; and it is they, too, who have been chiefly benefited by the multiplication of asylums and hospitals. Nearly all the great inventions and discoveries of the age have contributed more to the happiness of the poor than to that of the rich.

During the French revolution of 1848, M. Garnier Pages, the French statesman, was addressing a large and stormy meeting of workmen in Lyons, when he was interrupted by an ouvrier, who exclaimed that "the time had come for cutting off the coat-tails of the manufacturers." M. Pages quietly responded: "No, it is a question not of shortening the coat of the capitalist, but of lengthening the blouse of the workingman." He might have added, that, metaphorically speaking, the blouse had already been not only lengthened again and again, but also improved in material and texture.

The Abuse of THE late A. W. Kinglake, the brilliant Newspapers. author of "Eothen," made a characteristic remark one day on newspaper reading. A gentleman said to him:

"I suppose, Mr. Kinglake, you knew Mr. you were in the House of Commons?"

"Yes, yes, I knew him, a clever man till he destroyed

his intellect."

"Destroyed his intellect," continued Kinglake, "by reading the newspapers."

This cynical saying points to a real and serious evil of our times. Of course, no intelligent man can afford to dispense with the newspapers. Our daily and weekly journals are contemporary history, not accurate by any means, but still history. They are mirrors of the age; they are telescopes, which bring the most distant things near; they are trumpets, which collect and bring within hearing all that is said throughout the globe; they are libraries, containing the quintessence of thousands of books, magazines, and reviews. Often a newspaper article, contributed by some leading scientist or scholar, contains the condensed results of years of patient and systematic observation, reading, and thinking. R. W. Emerson once said to me that he hesitated to destroy the smallest piece of a newspaper, before looking at both sides of it, lest it should contain some thought or fact or verse worthy of preservation. To students in every department of knowledge the newspaper is indispensable. As Mr. Hamerton has said, the mind is like a merchant's ledger, it requires to be continually posted up to the latest date. Even the last telegram may have upset some venerable theory that has been received as infallible for ages. On the other hand, there is no doubt that the blessing of which we have spoken is egregiously abused, that thousands

swamp their brains in a sea of newspaper reading.

Instead of thinking for themselves, on the great political, social, economic, and religious questions of the day, the great majority of men let the daily or weekly journal do their thinking for them. In half an hour, while sipping