"What is it, you little plague?" asked Orelia. (They were walking to Josiah's parsonage, a day or two after the incidents just narrated, and were now near the lodge-gate on their way thither.) 66 ." I sol "I solemnly vow," said Orelia, stopping short, and bringing her parasol with such violence against the path, that it penetrated an inch and more into the gravel emnly vow that if you don't say what you have to say at once, without any more nonsense, I won't walk another step with you; I'll go straight back to the house." 66 No, you won't, though no, you won't," said Rosa, slyly. "You won't go back to the house just yet, I'm sure," and she pointed down the road. Just emerged from the lodge, and coming towards them, was a figure, the appearance of which made Orelia start as her eyes followed the direction of Rosa's finger. The dragoon Onslow, in plain clothes, his face thin from recent illness, but with a deep flush on his cheeks, was rapidly approaching. Orelia gave a little start, and then, half involuntarily, drew aside from the path a step or two to where a huge beech trunk interrupted the view from the lodge. As he came close, he took off his hat and bowed without speaking. Orelia, stilling by an effort the momentary agitation that had fluttered her plumes, " hoped he had quite recovered from his sad accident;" while Rosa, fancying, perhaps, that her own part in the interview might not be either interesting or important, went onward to the parsonage. Why, you see, Reley, you are so occupied with your own—a— tender passion," said Rosa, glancing cunningly up at Orelia's face, and then shrieking aloud, for Orelia pinched her arm in return for her impertinence. "I declare, Reley, if I were a man, I'd as soon make love to a she-panther as to you," said "I had intended to depart without again Rosa, getting away to the further side of the venturing into your presence," said Onslow. path, and rubbing the injured arm with her" Had I still worn a military dress, I should, other hand. "You will certainly scratch at all events, have stolen quietly away. your lover's eyes out in some of your fits of seeing you so near, I could not forbear making affection." a last appearance in my own character." "Come here, you plaguy little creature," quoth Orelia, "and go on with what you were going to tell me." "But if you pinch me again I'll not tell you," retorted Rosa. "What I was going to say is, that you are so occupied with your own-affairs, only affairs," cried Rosa, darting out of reach," that you can't see anything else going on under your very eyes.' "Why can't you speak out without all this mystery? If there's a thing in the world I detest, 't is mystery," said Orelia, masking her curiosity under this rebuke. "Haven't you noticed," said Rosa, confidentially," that Hester seems to think a great deal of a certain person? I have." "A certain person! what person?" inquired Orelia. "You know I never could guess a riddle in my life. But your delight is to tease one. "To be sure, I did n't suppose she'd ever allow herself to be fond of anybody," continued Rosa. "But she is 0, certainly, she is and, do you know, I'm rather glad of it. Yes, I give the matter my entire appro bation." But Orelia glanced at his dress, which was plain, but in excellent taste. She had thought him handsome in uniform, but his present costume was a better test of his pretensions to breeding; and she inwardly decided that his air would fully have maintained them had he been a Chesterfield (I mean of the last, not of the present century). "And why do you not still wear a military dress, Mr. Onslow?" "Because," said Onslow, "I am no longer a soldier. Lately-only very lately-the sense of degradation attached to my position became greater than I could bear, and, rather than prolong it, I have preferred to cast myself on the world again.' "And-and are you going to quit this neighborhood, Mr. Onslow?" "I am now quitting it, probably forever. In doing so, I have but one regret; and I take with me but one cheering thought and pleasant remembrance." If Orelia had, as is the duty of young ladies in like cases, affected ignorance of his meaning, she might have asked him, in an innocent, inquiring way, what this regret and this Finishing the profile, and putting an elaborate beard to it, she asked him, would he show her how?" 66 66 By saying," he replied, that, in any struggles any misfortune or any gleam of success that may fall to my lot, I may be assured of your sympathy.' "Yes," she said, " yes of her warmest sympathy; but," she added, "the aid she alluded to was of a more real and practical kind." remembrance might be. She might have ure of knowing she could be of any possible suggested various causes of sorrow such as, service to him in his future career.' quitting an agreeable neighborhood fine "She might indeed, she might!" Onsscenery-losing, perhaps, pleasant acquaint- low warmly assured her. ances in the town-all with an indifferent, lightsome air, like that with which many an object of adoration loves to survey her parting worshipper as he wallows in the mud of his own embarrassment; rather poking him deeper in, than stretching a helping hand, while all the time she is, perhaps, longing to see the struggling mortal extricate himself and come floundering to her feet. But Orelia's nature being too ingenuous for that sort of dissembling, she made no inquiry on the subject, but merely hoped, in a low voice, "that his regret was not caused by his future appearing less hopeful than his past had been;" and, considering her somewhat fluttered state at the time, the question was cleverly enough put, for it gave him a good opening to talk about himself, if he were so disposed. He paused, as if considering whether he should his tale unfold; but, looking up, said "For my future, I must trust only to Fortune and myself, for I have no better securities. But I am most unwilling to leave you with the idea that one whom you honored with more notice and kindness than he deserved, was beneath it; and will therefore confide as much to you as Cesario did to the Countess Olivia, saying, that my parentage is above my fortunes-I am a gentleman.' The ex-dragoon smiled. "When I rode that race," he said, "the prize that allured me, and which I should have valued more than ever Olympic victor esteemed his crown, was your glove. I lost the prize then-may I now carry it with me as a solace?" During this speech Orelia had made as many profiles as the space of ground at her feet admitted of- finishing off by the great straggling initials "O. P.," with a flourish beneath them, as was her custom in making her autograph. Then she drew off her glove, and, the act being quite in character with her usual queenly demeanor, she presented it to him, with the native loftiness of her air quite restored to her. He took it—and, with it, he clasped the ends of the fingers that gave it. Lifting them to his lips, he kissed her hand -onceOrelia, if she had followed her impulse, twice thrice; and, before she had quite might have answered in the words of the made up her mind to snatch it away, he was Countess "Fear not, Cesario, take thy for-half-way down the road. Then, with a tunes up;" but pride would not let her give flushed cheek, she turned away from the shade so much encouragement to one who had been of the beech beneath which they had been so little explicit. She only murmured (uncon- standing, and, forgetting Rosa, parsonage, sciously sketching the while a gigantic classi- and all, in the more interesting thoughts that cal profile in the gravel with the point of her had intervened, went slowly back to the Herparasol) that "she wished she had the pleas-onry. the THE WAISTS OF AMERICAN LADIES. - The un- | worthy the contemplation of the ethnologist. natural length and ridiculous smallness of their How comes it to pass that the English typewaists baffle description. A waist that could be which I presume has not, in every case, been so spanned is an English metaphorical expression affected by the admixture of others as to lose its used in a novel, but it is an American fact; and own identity. how comes it to pass, I say, that so alarming does it appear to an Englishman, the English type is so strangely altered in a few that my first sentiment, on viewing the phenom-generations? I have heard various hypotheses; enon, was one of pity for unfortunate beings who amongst others, the habits of the people might possibly break off in the middle, like dry climate. The effect of the latter on a Euroflowers from the stalk, before the evening con-pean constitution would have appeared to me cluded. No less extraordinary is the size of the sufficient to account for the singular conformaladies' arms. I saw many which were scarce thicker than moderate-sized walking-sticks. Yet, strange to say, when these ladies pass the age of forty, they frequently attain an enormous size. The whole economy of their structure is then reversed, their waists and arms becoming the thickest parts of the body. Here is a subject perse tion if I had not been persuaded by natives of From the Examiner. flavor of a delicate fruit. By difficulties of The Poems of Goethe: translated in the Orig-suffered himself to be daunted; and he has this kind Mr. Bowring has nevertheless not inal Metres. With a Sketch of Goethe's Life. BY EDGAR ALFRED BOWRING. Par ker and Son. NONE who are in any degree acquainted with German literature will be prepared to receive otherwise than with very great respect the first effort that has been made to translate Goethe's songs, ballads, and minor poems into English. Mr. Edgar Bowring is distinguished already by the success with which he has rendered the same section of the works of Schiller into an English version both elegant and faithful. He has now attempted to put English draperies upon the lyric muse of Goethe also. Ilitherto, nobody has ever dared so far; and this is a case in which we may pretty safely, we think, answer for the future, and say that nobody able to translate these poems better than Mr. Bowring has translated them is ever likely to devote his time to so laborious a task. The public, therefore, who must read Goethe in English or not at all, owes very hearty thanks to Mr. Bowring for his courage in having undertaken and achieved a work of very difficult accomplishment and at the best of very doubtful issue for the love of literature, if not for the love of fame. poems, For assuredly a work like this, however well it may be done, is one with which every tyro, if it so please him, can find fault. The only men really likely to praise will be those who know Goethe well. But a student who has spent on Goethe's poems all the pains and thought of which this volume contains evidence, must be in fact more thoroughly aware than any other man of the peculiar difficulties of the task he has undertaken. To translate Schiller's lesser poems was a work to be held light by comparison. Schiller appealed commonly to feelings of a broad and universal kind. He was a man appealing to his fellows, heart to heart. To be an artist was the accident of his humanity. Most of his therefore, have stuff in them that would come home to us even in a prose translation. But Goethe was an artist above all things; his manhood (we do not say it as a censure) was with him the secondary matter; and he could write better songs than Schiller. With a wonderful skill he could arrange words dexterously into music, and suggest through them as a musician would express through notes more than they literally say. A very large proportion of his songs, taken prosaically and in English, according to the exact sense of their sentences, would be found to contain very nearly nothing; whereas, taken in their own words, metrically, they raise emotions of pleasure as distinct as those awakened by the scent of the violet or the thus he has placed within the reach of Engdone well, in spite of them, to persevere, for lish readers what is perhaps in its kind the utmost that will ever be provided. We opened the translation before us quite prepared to make extremely large allowance for the difficulties of the enterprise, and we have been surprised and gratified to find how very small was the demand really made on our patience and good-humor. The skill and taste with which the poems have been rendered, without change of metre - the graces of Mr. Bowring's verse- - and the readable form into which even the most untranslatable of Goethe's lyrics (as the "Heath-Rose," "the "Swiss-Song," and others) have been put cannot be praised too heartily. We add a few brief specimens. Each of the two succeeding stanzas is in itself a complete poem : THE BLISS OF SORROW. Never dry, never dry, Tears that eternal love sheddeth ! How dreary, how dead must the world still appear, When only half-dried on the eye is the tear! Never dry, never dry, Tears that unhappy love sheddeth ! Then I looked upon the beauteous quiet Held the strong desire I felt to wake her "O, thou love," methought, "I see that Slumber that betrayeth each false feature, Now thy beauteous eyes are firmly closed, Then I on the little table near her 1795. We close our extracts with a single sonnet: THE EPOCHS. On Petrarch's heart, all other days before, Her whom I early cherished in my breast, The love of Petrarch, that all-glorious love, The whole of Goethe's minor poems could not have been published in a single volume within reasonable limits, but Mr. Bowring has been careful to omit only those which it was most advisable to exclude from the collection. The collection, as it stands, is large; embracing not only the songs and ballads as they are commonly arranged, but many of the poems contained in plays and prose works, and a few specimens of the Proverbs and Zahme Kenien which latter, by the bye, were tame indeed, for the great German poets lagged far behind the English standard of terseness and point as wits. Mr. Bowring translation of no less than sixty of the poems has also liberally presented to his readers a that make up the beautiful West-Oestlicher Divan. He goes even so far in his enthusiası as to lament that he could not add to his volume Hermann und Dorothea and Reineke Fuchs, a pair that would fill certainly a volume by themselves. Enthusiasm is a good fault, however, in a case like this, and it is the only fault we are disposed to find with any part of the contents of Mr. Bowring's work. Nor does our objection extend further than to the preliminary sketch of Goethe's life, of which we cannot refrain from observing that it is a panegyric rather than a biography. The wisest man may be allowed to be enthusiastic in discussion of a philosopher and poet so large-minded and many-sided as Goethe; but whether we look at his life or at his works, we surely err when we can see, in either, greatness only. There were, in our humble judgment, some capital defects on the side of vanity in GoeHe was a Jupiter Olympus the's character. to himself, as well as to his worshippers; and the very preponderance of his artistic qualities caused great occasional disfigurement in many of his writings. Following some æsthetic purpose, he often (more especially in his novels) outran the ever necessary and welcome commonplaces of good, wholesome, every-day humanity. Wilhelm Meister was indeed a truly great work; but the Sorrows of Werter, though intensely clever, were intensely false in tone; and Werter again was really sensible and healthy, in comparison to that remarkably æsthetic affair of "the mysterious analogy between the laws of attraction, in the case of the natural substances and in that of the human affections"- the (with all its cleverness we must say) abominable Wahlverwandschaften. Of this romance Mr. Bowring says that "many people consider it as only inferior to Faust." Yet we would not recom One long Good-Friday 'twas, one heart-mend him to translate it, and obtain the ache drear; But may my mistress' Advent ever prove, year. 1807. verdict of the real "many" thereupon, if he truly desires to set up Goethe's altar in this country. But we need not tread upon disputed ground. That Goethe's minor poems are ENGLISH LAW ON RAILWAY DEATHS.- -A DOG OUT OF PLACE. 125 among the most charming - very many of them absolutely the most charming-in the German language, and that Mr. Edgar Bowring has in this book translated them into English faithfully and delicately, are matters which we think beyond dispute, and those only which are under judgment here. Bowring's volume should promptly find its way into a second and third edition if it obtains the success which it well merits. Mr. ENGLISH LAW ON RAILWAY DEATHS. called in by the defendants to attend him after the accident, he was not examined; but Dr. Elliotson, whom the deceased had consulted, deposed that in his opinion he might have lived for many years, and read a report to that effect, which he had written to Dr. Engledue after the Mr. Tuke, a sur deceased had consulted him. geon at Arundel, and Mr. Garrington, a surgeon found him after the accident. The latter, who at Portsea, deposed to the state in which they made a post-mortem examination, stated that he found the lungs congested from recent inflammation, inflammation in the pleura, apoplectic cyst in the brain, an enlarged heart with a thickened ventricle, a little water in the abdomen, the ankles slightly swelled and dropsical, and the kidneys small and affected with cystic disease. This gentleman also deposed that he thought inAND OTHERS (EXECUTORS) v. THE LONDON, flammation and congestion were the causes of the BRIGHTON, AND SOUTH-COAST RAILWAY COMPANY. death, and that most probably they resulted from THIS was an action, under Lord Campbell's the accident. Mr. Adams, surgeon to the LonAct, by the plaintiffs, as executors of Mr. Josiah don Hospital, and Dr. Billing, author of a treatise Groves, a tailor, at Portsea, against the defend-on diseases of the heart, deposed that, in their ants, to recover for Mr. Groves' family compensation in damages for his death, which was occasioned by an accident on the defendants' railway, through the negligence of the defendants' ser KEETS vants. Mr. Sergeant Byles and Mr. Lush were counsel for the plaintiffs; and the Attorney-General and Mr. Bovill for the defendants. It appeared that in November, 1851, Mr. Groves, who was a widower with a family of four children, came to London on business, and at the same time visited a Miss Richards, to whom he was about to be married, and also Dr. Elliotson, whom he consulted for a complaint attended by spitting of blood, under which he was suffering. On the evening of the 25th November he left London for Portsea by the defendants' railway, and proceeded safely as far as Arundel, when, on passing over a bridge near that town, where there only one line of rails, in consequence of the driver's neglecting a signal, the train ran into a luggage train, and the carriage in which Mr. Groves was, was overturned and thrown down a bank. The consequence was that Mr. Groves, who was asleep in the carriage at the time the accident happened, was severely injured on the right temple and on the right side, and, having previously lost his eye-sight, died in great suffering at the end of a fortnight. To prove the previous state of his health, Miss Richards, to whom he was about to be married, was called, and she deposed that he was a fine-looking man, thirty-seven years of age; that he had been a widower for two years, and had four children, whose ages were respectively eleven, eight, five, and three years. She also produced his portrait in confirmation of her statement as to his healthy looks, and, after some opposition from the defendants' counsel, it was handed to the jury for inspection. On cross-examination, however, she stated that he had suffered from spitting of blood in the month of June previous to his death, and another illness after a subsequent visit to the Great Exhibition, and that in the following month of October he had an attack of apoplexy. His regular medical attendant was Dr. Engledue, of Portsmouth, but as this gentleman had been opinion, the enlargement of the heart and other ailments of the deceased neither caused his death nor were inconsistent with a long life, though they were of such a nature as an invalid insurance office would have required a higher premium for than usual. It was further deposed that the profits of his business were worth 8001. ; but it appeared that the deceased's late foreman had succeeded him upon paying 8001. for the stock, and without giving anything for the good-will of the business. The Lord Chief Justice told the jury they must confine their verdict to such damages as would compensate the children of the deceased for the pecuniary loss they had sustained by the death of their father, and that they must further apportion that loss between the children. The jury retired, and then returned with a verdict for the plaintiffs for 2,000l., which the counsel on each side agreed should be equally divided between the children. A DOG OUT OF PLACE. - On the evening of a recent Sunday, as the inhabitants of Ystradganlais, South Wales, were crowding to the chapel to hear a somewhat famous itinerant preacher, a huge dog made his way into the building, bolted up the pulpit stairs, and took possession of the place assigned to the pastor. The unsuspecting itinerant walked up to the pulpit in a short time, but, assailed with fierce growls and a row of teeth like an alligator's, he was glad to get to the bottom of the steps. A second ventured, but only elicited some additional growls. A third sage, thinking discretion the better part of valor, next ascended to make an amicable settlement with Tyke. He did not dispute the dog's right of possession, but endeavored to charm him from his elevated position with a piece of candle. At this Tyke waxed more furious than ever, deeming the candle an insult; and at length the pastor took his place in the small reading-desk, in which he preached, Tyke all the while remaining perched aloft listening to the discourse with a gravity and decorum worthy of a class-leader. The scene may be "more easily imagined than described." Liverpool Standard. |