region of the lowest savagery. Learning with us is a pursuit instead of a pastime; the men of the last century were nearer the facts (for the ancient English customs are now fallen into disuse, and shun our eyes), but we are much nearer the theories, and so the student will fancy that he now attends only to what the old scholars observed, and may skip what they thought. There is truly a mine of observations in these books with regard to country manners that were then to be seen as periodically as the seasons themselves. Many of the contributors would seem to have lived

in the country, - clergymen, one thinks, for the most part; and they had an eye for the old and the picturesque in the people's life, and were as much interested in such finds as some of us are in unearthing Indian relics. No inconsiderable part of the charm of these pages lies in their passing but vivid disclosure of some old English sight. One passage, in particular, is so fine a bit in the old manner, is given in such bright words and in the familiar yet well-bred style of the letters of that period, that we cannot forbear quoting it at length. Tempus, Anno Domini 1793.

:

"Passing along that delightful range of valleys between Bradford in Yorkshire to Kendal, we saw a number of country people rush out of a church founded upon a pleasant hill, and immediately the bells chimed most merrily. We desired the coachman to stop in the village underneath, till the group approached, following a new-married couple the whole bedizened with ribbous, the bride most glaringly so, large true-blue bows were across the full of her breast, lessening till they reached the waist; white, red, and every other color were conspicuous about her gown and hat, except forsaken green, which I was glad to perceive was not worn by one of the throng. It would have gladdened any heart to have seen them striking down the hill, such kiss

ing, and such romping, and such laughing, I never heard or saw before. Rustic happiness was afloat; the girls' faces were tinged beyond their native bloom, and the maidens' blush enlivened the lilies around them. The men's legs and arms were as busy as if they had hung on wires. In an instant half a dozen youths pulled off their shoes and stockings, when I noticed their legs had been previously girt with party-colored ribbons. On being started by the bride, they spanked off as hard as they could, amidst the whoops of the young and old. This I understand is a race of kisses and he who first reaches the bride's house is rewarded with a kiss and a ribbon. If they were to have been rewarded by a bag of gold, they could not have looked more eager; they took different roads (without heeding the rough stones they had to encounter), and which we were told were previously agreed upon, in proportion to the known swiftness of the candidates.

We re

gretted that we could not stay to see the result of this Hymenean race; and left them in the midst of their mirth, after a donation which would not take from it, but which was only received, on condition of mutually drinking healths, and our accepting a ribbon apiece. I got upon the top of the coach to look at them as long as I could. Marrowbones and cleavers could not express half the hilarity which we witnessed; and when the coach set off they gave us breastsfull of huzzas. We answered them with such sincerity, I shall have a twist in my hat as long as it lasts; and for some time after we left them, we heard bursts of noise. A RAMBLER." Dick Steele would have welcomed such a correspondent, and given the scene the immortality of a page of the Tatler, at least, and that was the most he could confer.

This spirit of geniality, together with the landscape that makes so fit a background for the antiquarian lore, gives

one constantly the sense of being in pleasant company, with a touch of oddity in the people. One would like to meet a man who found an absorbing interest in the history of sign-boards, and took pains to catalogue all that were in his neighborhood or had been swinging there within the memory of men; and even a modern Shakespearean scholar, although he stands aghast at the etymologies of his fathers, must experience some fellow-feeling with the correspondent who tried to crack that nut of "leading apes in hell" with which Beatrice still puzzles the commentators. The frequency of references to Shakespeare, too, by these Englishmen before Schlegel is very gratifying, with its ample proof of the enormity of that pretentious falsehood which declares that the Germans discovered Shakespeare for us. Our ancestors knew a good play as well as good ale, and that they were seldom deceived is tolerably clear to those of us who have worried through the reprints of the comedies and tragedies they damned. Shakespeare had a place in their minds with Lucan and Virgil, because they were educated to seek for worth, and what they gathered passed into their lives and became related to things about them; now, knowledge is the cry, and a large part of what is recovered seems meant only to pass into libraries, and be stood up there as the Egyptians embalmed the dead. Thus, considered generally, these volumes bring home to the mind very sharply the change in the temper of our scholarly class. A literary instead of a scientific spirit informs them; cultivation as contradistinguished from exact knowledge is the trait that especially belongs to the writers in them; in other words, they are a fine illustration of the culture of the old school.

The peculiar propriety of the old word for the branches of a liberal education, "the humanities," is thus one of the striking impressions made by the perusal

of most of the work. The interest of the author in his subject is generally not due to any cultivation of the historical sense, which makes time long past an object of curiosity as ardent as is felt in contemporary affairs; some fact of experience instead of one of book-learning is the source of his little essay, or note, or query, as the case may be, and his limited stock of information is drawn upon only to illustrate and elucidate the matter in hand. Possibly one is now and then reminded of our old and delightful friend the Antiquary himself, and how he found the lines of the Roman castra and quoted his polysyllabic authorities apropos thereof, when the beggarly Ochiltree could have told him in good broad Scotch the facts about his mare's nest, and so spared him his Latin; but the exhibit of learning is occasioned in the same way by something seen or heard, and comes as naturally in place as genealogies to the lips of country gossips when an old man dies. These parish clergymen, who read with interest the forms and ceremonies of the Biddings to Welsh marriages, might have felt a less lively curiosity about the kingdom. of the Hittites that Professor Sayce has rescued from the maw of oblivion; and they, we dare say, would try much harder to interpret that curious letter in the Shetland dialect, or to get the exact sense of the Exmoor Courtship, than to translate cuneiform inscriptions or enjoy the love-songs of the Egyptians before Moses, as we have them now in that very valuable collection of the leaflets of antiquity published as Records of the Past. Not that there was no true learning in those easy-going days, nor any lack of an enlightened interest in it; but men who were merely culti vated had a narrower range, and did not trouble themselves much with what did not in some way come with warmth to their hearts and have a personal value to them; and even the men of widest acquisitions wore their learning, as Mil

ton did, like a panoply in which to endue themselves when the controversial giant should appear on the other side. Now we go light-armed, and if any fray arises, take an index and write our rejoinder by its aid. Beside those great battles that used to be waged, our modern contests seem mere fencing-bouts. We do not carry what we know about with us any more, whether it be much or little, but put it into a dictionary for reference. In other words, knowledge has been becoming more and more impersonal, just as scholarship has gradually taken on a professional character. One smiles at the very suggestion of an Englishman of the old school taking a "disinterested" view in any matter; and disinterestedness, as we are told, is the essence of the modern scholarly ideal. A student nowadays is much like a lawyer or doctor: he makes an investigation and writes a book as they examine and conduct a case, and when he is through with his task the volume is put on the shelves, and he goes on to a new work as they to a fresh client or patient. Nor does the frame of mind in which he goes through the routine of research differ much from that of his brethren in the bar; for his pursuit is to him a business, and is as disconnected with his own individual affairs as is the case with the others. Scholarship is in fact already one of the professions, and its votaries, who were once nearer the literary, are now nearer the scientific class. As a consequence, learning, which was once truly, like poetry, a part of culture, is passing over to that division where it becomes, like the study of the law or of medicine, merely an item of civilization; it ceases to be a thing that can be incorporated into the body and substance of our lives, and now constitutes a part of those possessions of society in common with which the individual is concerned not continuously nor for his own sake alone, but incidentally and as a social being. An obscure perception

of this change underlies the opposition to classical studies, which in becoming largely the apparatus of a profession have lost their character of being modes of culture. Even the undergraduate does not need a very thorough acquaintance with the books and conversations of the gentlemen of the old school in order to conclude quite certainly that if he knows more Latin they knew vastly more Horace. In our academies and colleges the language is taught as never before, but the old boys of Eton and Harvard learned what the language was used for, and that was their great gain. The whole literature of the eighteenth century proves how truly the classics were appropriated then by those who read them; and when an elegant writer of compliments now and then pleasantly mentions "our own Waller," the accent of the phrase discloses a state of education, of literary standards and modes of comparison, very different from any that now obtain either here or in England. It is not that the humanities have lost their humanizing power, but that they are inculcated as sciences. Culture must always be literary, but the classics, in consequence of the change in the ideal of scholarship, have become philology, antiquities, and cognate branches of research. This subject, however, is too broad and too old a one, and is in a fair way to be settled, willy-nilly, by the logic of social needs. It is glanced at here, because the older contributors to the Gentleman's Magazine, and by inference the far larger number of its readers, exhibit admirably the strength and weakness of that old culture, so living, personal, familiar, so uninterruptedly entering into daily interests, so at ease with itself, and, with all the limitations that made it parish-like, so essentially humane. What is to be in the place of it, what a gentleman may be assumed to know and how he bears his knowledge, belongs to the future, since at present the intellectual furni

ture of a well-bred man, beyond a conversational acquaintance with the talk of the hour, is a matter almost of haphazard, an unlimited curiosity being perhaps his most useful trait; but let the education of the next age be what it will, it can hardly make men more agreeable, refined, and truly enlightened than were the gentlemen bred under the old régime, nor leave a pleasanter tradition behind it than flavors the pages of their monthly.

From what has been said it will be thought quite rightly that these are volumes to be read in by a winter fire, and not studied. The seeker after facts will take the books of latest authority, which the editor has been careful to list in his prefaces as furnishing the necessary corrections to the vagaries of the old-fashioned text, and find in them the knowledge he desires; but when study grows wearisome, he can scarcely have better diversion, nor one more consonant with his tastes, than in the rambling and gossipy antiquarianism of the body of the volumes. On the whole, one cannot more easily characterize their contents than as the literature that old men are especially fond of; for the instinct of the antiquary can hardly consist with the sense of utility so engrossing in young minds. In fact, too, one must have some spice of the old culture in order to enjoy the magazine that flourished under its influence; he cannot otherwise be placed en rapport with it. The list of the London pageants, for example, will be dry unless one is already attached to the memory of those parades, and can imagine from a hint the moving tableaux vivants of the trades; and no inconsiderable part of the attraction there is in discussion of proverbial sayings, village

customs, and disused games lies in the familiarity they have acquired by being mentioned in our old dramatic literature, or memoirs, diaries, and letters. The local coloring that was unconsciously put upon their works by the writers of a former day, before it became a recognized element in the novelist's art, is brightened, and the blurred and faded spots are restored by the reminiscences and survivals of ancient customs and the descriptions of forgotten things that are gathered here as in a final repository. Next to the very valuable record of traditional usages in the life of the country people, the dialect pieces seem of most interest and best worth reprinting, from the view of modern scholarship, though they add little to the collections of the Dialect Society. If we were to treat of the several topics separately, however, our notice could be nothing but an inventory, owing to the diversity of the matter. The remaining volumes of the series will add to this difficulty; and though we are not informed as to the topics to be included in them, they cannot fail to be well filled with literary curiosities, and perhaps the later volumes of the Magazine may furnish a larger proportion of the extracts. When it is remembered that Gibbon first proposed the scheme that is now, almost a century since, being carried out, the vitality of the interest the series has seems beyond question; and, after all, he will be a dull reader who does not find in it, however much he may smile at its unscientific character, something more than the most complete and varied expression of the spirit that breathed in the now discredited education that bred Gray and Joseph Spence and John Evelyn.

MR. CABLE's novels differ essentially from his short stories, and disclose in what phase of his work this author takes the liveliest interest. He has a quick apprehension of the physiognomy both of persons and places; he watches eagerly the dramatic exhibition of life; he is concerned with the development of character. All this is discernible in his short stories, but when he is permitted the breadth and freedom of the novel he discloses the fact that over and above all this he is absorbed in the contemplation of the struggle which is going on in the world between the forces of good and evil. In this he shows his kinship with the great moralists who have used the novel as a microcosm which should reflect their conception of the macrocosm. Thus the Grandissimes showed how profoundly Mr. Cable had studied the question of slavery and races, and thus Dr. Sevier1 hints very directly at studies in poverty as a social problem.

In art, however, a humane or religious sentiment must possess a work; it must not interrupt it. The Grandissimes was a strong book in its intention, but the author had not so mastered his great theme that he was able to present it through a culminating process of persons and events, and the consequence is that one enjoys only a series of massive fragments. Dr. Sevier again illustrates the same tendency of this writer to forget the limitations of his mimic art, and to confound his characters with real persons. The attentive reader imagines for the greater part of the book that he is engaged in tracing the fortunes of John Richling and his wife. He is willing, indeed, to concede, in deference to the title of the work, that the main theme is Dr. Sevier's relation to this struggling

1 Dr. Sevier. By GEORGE W. CABLE. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1885.

couple; but he discovers before the book is done that Mr. Cable's own interest is not so much in these people, either as people or as representatives of certain motives, as it is in the working out of certain problems which vex him regarding poverty and labor. It is not wholly clear what he thinks, beyond the general proposition that the question of poverty is, in the last analysis, one of personal relations, and not of merely social organization; but it is evident that his own novel does not absorb his thought, and he has not succeeded in making the persons and the action clearly carry the moral which lay in his own mind. Indeed, he has forced the situation, we think, and produced results in the case of John Richling which the circumstances and the character of Richling lead one to doubt. Is it quite reasonable to suppose that the repeated success which Richling is shown to have attained had no accumulative effect upon his fortunes? In the final success with the German baker, the question of credentials comes up anew to perplex John and the doctor. Mr. Cable seems to forget that he has told us how again and again John had secured a situation, shown himself capable of filling it, and then had lost it through no fault of his own, but by circumstances beyond his control. Now these cases of temporary success certainly should have afforded basis enough for credentials. But no; it was necessary to keep up the fiction in order to remind the reader what he might easily forget, that John's origin is a mystery.

The truth is that Mr. Cable desired a character of essentially noble qualities, who had thrown away, in marrying out of his class and section, the advantages to which he had been born and bred, and was now to fight the battle of life