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operatic costume was intended to enforce. Then there were "hygienic" boots, and socks for walking, and I hardly know how many other exhibits. There is now, however, hope for physiology, as against fashionable follies. What is wanted is the education of "our girls" in physiology. Let them be taught the ways and laws of health at school, and they will not depart from them by constricting their waists when they grow old. It is, of course, a question for discussion how far the male sex is responsible for female vagaries in the way of dress. If "Monsieur Pavon" in the bird world struts about in all the glory of his "Argus-eyed" tail, and elicits the admiration of the dowdy females, no less true is it that the reverse holds good in human society when the "wives, sisters, cousins, and aunts" exhibit the latest thing from "Worth's" or the "love of a bonnet" from "Louise," to the admiring eyes of the men. Social admiration must influence fashions, whether these be injurious to health or the reverse. But, as I have maintained, the whole solution of the matter rests with the ladies themselves. Reform begins at the right end, when it enlists the wearers of corsets and impossible boots on the side of common sense.

W

A PLEA FOR A NEW CANAL.

WHEN I read that the French are entertaining a scheme for connecting, by means of a canal, the Rhone at a point. beneath Lyons with the Loire, I marvel at the indifference to water carriage which is manifested in England. Up the right bank of the Rhone extends the long chain of mountains of the Cevennes and of Auvergne, and no canal is possible which does not at some point cross this. A canal connecting the Dee at Aberdeen with the Mersey at Liverpool would involve, I suppose, engineering difficulties less tremendous than those to be faced in the proposed undertaking. So unfavourable is the country, that a portion of the canai will have to be turned into a species of railway, along which the barges are to be conveyed in huge floating docks, so as not to disturb the load. A large canal from Liverpool to London could be made for a third of the expense the French seem disposed to undertake. The effect of this, in reducing the price of American cereals and other forms of produce cannot easily be calculated. No engineering difficulties worth speaking of attend the scheme, and the profit and advantage that would attend it would be, I venture to predict,

enormous.

F

FREE EXHIBITION OF PICTURes.

REE loan exhibitions of pictures such as that opened by private enterprise in Whitechapel cannot be too much praised. While England possesses a large number of the finest pictures in Europe, the opportunities of seeing them afforded any but a privileged class are few. Those who live in the East of London are not to be tempted to the National Gallery, and from other collections they are still more remote. Everything that can be done to foster the worst taste is meanwhile done in those so-called picture galleries which exist in connection with places of amusement at which a charge is made. If only as a corrective against the influences of such galleries (!) as I have lately visited, I should like to see free exhibitions of good paintings in all our great centres of social existence.

IF

THE THAMES EMBANKMENT.

F ever the Thames Embankment is to answer the purpose for which it is intended, some important change will have to be made. So gregarious are men, and so fond of contemplating the drama of real life constantly unfolding itself before them, that they will never walk down a thoroughfare to which fashion is not attracted by bright shops. In Paris, even, for one person who wanders by the quays on either bank of the Seine, there are a score who lounge down the boulevards. I should like, then, to see from Westminster to Blackfriars a range of handsome shops, cafés, and the like, all onestory high with gardens above. This scheme of hanging gardens. is perfectly feasible, and I am the more ready to ventilate it in these pages since it has, when mentioned by me, won the approval of some of the most distinguished of modern artists. I have other alterations. in regard to the Embankment to suggest, but the innovation I propose is sufficiently important to merit a place to itself.

I

ENGLISH CHAP-BOOKS.

AM glad that some one has appeared to do for our English chapbooks what M. Nisard in his "Histoire des Livres Populaires ou de la Littérature du Colportage," has done for those of France. In his "Chap-Books of the Eighteenth Century," Mr. Ashton occupies what, so far as England is concerned, is practically new ground. I am aware that in the different collections known as John Cheap the Chatto & Windus.

Chapman's Library, a large number of Scotch chap-books have been preserved, and I know also what Mr. Hindley has done for the Catnach publications. For the first time, however, we are now supplied with a full account of the various forms of chap-booksscriptural, poetical, romantic, humorous, and the like, which, to a not inconsiderable portion of the English public, constituted during the eighteenth century the only available or attainable form of literary pabulum. It may sound absurd, but I am prepared to maintain that the present volume, besides constituting, as I know, very delightful if not very arduous reading, might easily prove of genuine utility. In the amusingly condensed versions of various legends it supplies just the amount of information concerning popular stories that a man whose studies lie in a different direction may like to have. "The Life and Death of Long Meg of Westminster," for instance, or The Wise Men of Gotham," supplies the particulars one may well seek to possess, which are not very easy to find in other quarters. Very amusing and quaint are the reproductions of the original illustrations. These are as a rule far ruder as art than those in French works of the same class. To find anything equally primitive I have to go back to the illustrations to the famous edition of the Roman de la Rose of 1493, with which, allowing for difference of costume, those now reproduced have much in common. The new volume is a handsome and desirable possession, the large-paper copies especially constituting veritable livres de luxe.

THE

MURAL TABLETS.

HE placing of a tablet on the walls of the house in Mercedes Street which was occupied by Sir Walter Scott during his stay in Rome is a graceful action on the part of Italy. Seldom, indeed, do nations go out of their way thus to celebrate the great men of other countries. More often a monument erected by patriotic zeal or Chauvinism to a fellow-citizen involves a direct wrong to men of other nations. Such is the monument which at Haarlem credits Coster with the invention of printing, and such, I am inclined to believe, is the last monument I saw uncovered-the statue at Boulogne which claims for an inhabitant of that agreeable seaport the discovery of the ship-screw. So slow are we in England to recognise any greatness in Englishmen that is not military or legislative, that there is no reason for the complaint that no smallest evidence remains to show where men like Voltaire, Weber, and a score others have dwelt when in our midst. A mural tablet, however, recording

the fact that a house was occupied by some stranger of highest eminence would be an inexpensive way of complimenting other nations, and adding to the interest of our own streets. Still, when no sign that men of our own kin, like Shakespeare or Milton, or children of adoption, like Handel or Vandyck, resided in London, appears in our streets, it is perhaps futile to wish that we should chronicle the passing visits of strangers.

IT

CORRUPTING INFLUENCE OF ENGLISH VICES.

T has been a matter of boasting with the French that their destiny is to shape the civilisation by which other nations are influenced, and it has even been sought to impose by force upon neighbouring countries the views upon social and political questions prevalent in France at a given epoch. At the present time, however, the French are showing, with regard to the vices of their neighbours, a power of assimilation that must in the end sap their individuality. It is long since we first gave them what is known as le sport. Since that time they have commenced to gather whatever is most cruel in our own practices and those of other countries. Bull-fights have been imported from Spain, and those on the northern side of the Pyrenees are now scarcely to be distinguished as regards ferocity from those on the southern. From ourselves, meanwhile, they have taken pigeon-shooting first, and now boxing. An exhibition of "la boxe" between two Englishmen constituted the chief feature in a recent assault-at-arms in Paris. Veritable children are Frenchmen. In nothing is this fact shown more conclusively than in their tendency to imitation. Many a father has seen that while his virtues were powerless to influence his children, his faults were immediately copied and accentuated, and has found in this fact a motive to struggle after improvement. A similar motive might perhaps induce us as a nation to rid ourselves of those vices which, caricatured by our neighbours, are likely to exercise upon people of temperament less lethargic than our own a pernicious and wholly degrading influence.

SYLVANUS URBAN.

THE

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE

JUNE 1882.

DUST: A NOVEL.

BY JULIAN HAWTHORNE

Only the actions of the Just

Smell sweet and blossom in the Dust.

CHAPTER XV.

R. GRANT, like other men in whom a quiet demeanour is the

MR. result rather of experience than of temperament, was very

observant; and he had observed several things during and after the day at Richmond. It may be assumed that he had not planned that expedition without some anticipation that it might have results particularly affecting Philip and Marion; and up to the moment when the party were overtaken, on their way home, by the Marquise Desmoines, he had reason to think that his anticipations had not been deceived. Since that moment, however, a change had taken place. Philip had worn an aspect of gloomy dejection at variance with his customary bearing and Marion's mood had been exaggerated and unequal; sometimes manifesting an over-accented gaiety, at other times relapsing abruptly and without apparent cause into depths of wayward perversity. This state of things continued without much modification for several days; it being further noticeable that the young people avoided private interviews, or at any rate did not have any: for, if Philip desired them, Marion had the means of balking his desire. In the presence of other persons, however, she seemed not averse from holding converse with him; but her speech on such occasions had a mocking and unconciliating ring about it; and Philip's replies were brief and unenterprising. Evidently, There had the pegs that made their music had been set down awry. been some sweet melody for a while. Who was their Iago? "What a very charming lady is the Marquise Desmoines," reVOL. CCLII. NO. 1818.

T T

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