when I was a boy, that diabolized my imagination,-I mean, that gave me a distinct apprehension of a formidable bodily shape which prowled round the neighbourhood where I was born and bred. The first was a series of marks called the Devil's footsteps." These were patches of sand in the pastures, where no grass grew, where even the low-bush blackberry, the "dewberry," as our Southern neighbours call it, in prettier and more Shakspearian language, did not spread its clinging creepers, -where even the pale, dry, sadly-sweet "everlasting" could not grow, but all was bare and blasted. The second was a mark in one of the public buildings near my home,-the college dormitory named after a Colonial Governor. I do not think many persons are aware of the existence of this mark,-little having been said about the story in print, as it was considered very desirable, for the sake of the Institution, to hush it up. In the north-west corner, and on the level of the third or fourth storey, there are signs of a breach in the walls, mended pretty well, but not to be mistaken. A considerable portion of that corner must have been carried away, from within outward. It was an unpleasant affair; and I do not care to repeat the particulars; but some young men had been using sacred things in a profane and unlawful way, when the occurrence, which was variously explained, took place. The story of the Appearance in the chamber was, I suppose, invented afterwards; but of the injury to the building there could be no question; and the zigzag line, where the mortar is a little thicker than before, is still distinctly visible. The queer burnt spots, called the "Devil's footsteps," had never attracted attention before this time, though there is no evidence that they had not existed previously, except that of the late Miss M., a "Goody," so called, or sweeper, who was positive on the subject, but had a strange horror of referring to an affair of which she was thought to know something.-I tell you it was not so pleasant for a little boy of impressible nature to go up to bed in an old gambrelroofed house, with untenanted locked upper-chambers, and a most ghostly garret,—with the "Devil's footsteps" in the fields behind the house, and in front of it the patched dormitory, where the unexplained occurrence had taken place which startled those godless youths at their mock devotions, so that one of them was epileptic from that day forward, and another, after a dreadful season of mental conflict, took to religion and became renowned for his ascetic sanctity.'

It is a pity that Dr. Holmes does not give the whole story, instead of hinting at it, for a similar tale is told at Brazenose College, and elsewhere. Now take, along with Dr. Holmes's confession to a grain of superstition, this remark on, and explanation of, the curious coincidences which thrust themselves on the notice of most people.

'Excuse me,-I return to my story of the Commons-table. Young fellows being always hungry, and tea and dry toast being the meagre fare of the evening meal, it was a trick of some of the boys to impale a slice of meat upon a fork, at dinner-time, and stick the fork, holding it, beneath the table, so that they could get it at tea-time. The dragons that guarded this table of the Hesperides found out the trick at last, and kept a sharp look-out for missing forks ;-they knew where to find one, if it was not in its place. Now the odd thing was, that, after waiting so many years to hear of this College trick, I should hear it mentioned a second time within the same twenty-four hours by a College youth of the present generation. Strange, but true. And so it has happened to me and to every person, often and often, to be hit in rapid succession by these twinned facts or thoughts, as if they were linked like chain-shot.

'I was going to leave the simple reader to wonder over this, taking it as an unexplained marvel. I think, however, I will turn over a furrow of subsoil in it. The explanation is, of course, that in a great many thoughts there must be a few coincidences, and these instantly arrest our attention. Now we shall probably never have the least idea of the enormous number of impressions which pass through our consciousness, until in some future life we see the photographic record of our thoughts and the stereoscopic picture of our actions.

Now, my dear friends, who are putting your hands to your foreheads, and saying to yourselves that you feel a little confused, as if you had been waltzing until things began to whirl slightly round you, is it possible that you do not clearly apprehend the exact connection of all I have been saying, and its bearing on what is now to come? Listen, then. The number of these living elements in our bodies illustrates the incalculable multitude of our thoughts; the number of our thoughts accounts for those frequent coincidences spoken of; these coincidences in the world of thought illustrate those which we constantly observe in the world of outward events.'

Now for the anecdote.*

Two or three years ago, Mark Twain published in Harper's Magazine an article on 'Mental Telegraphy.' He illustrated his meaning by a story of how he once wrote a long letter on a complicated subject, which had popped into his head between asleep and awake, to a friend on the other side of America. He did not send the letter, but, by return of post, received one from his friend. 'Now, I'll tell you what he is going to say,' said Mark, read his own unsent epistle aloud, and then, opening his friend's despatch, proved that they were essentially identical. This is what he calls 'Mental Telegraphy;' others call it 'Telepathy,' and it does not interest Professor Huxley.

Now, on his own showing, in our second extract, Dr. Holmes should have explained coincidences like this as purely the work of chance, and I rather incline to think that he would have been right. But Mark Twain, in his article on 'Mental Telegraphy,' cites Dr. Holmes for a story of how he once, after dinner, as his letters came in, felt constrained to tell, à propos des bottes, the story of the last challenge to judicial combat in England (1817). He then opened a newspaper directed to him from England, the Sporting Times, and therein his eyes lighted on an account of this very affair-Abraham Thornton's challenge to battle when he was accused of murder, in 1817. According to Mark Twain, Dr. Holmes was rather disposed to accept 'mental telegraphy than mere chance as the cause of this coincidence. Yet the anecdote of the challenge seems to have been a favourite of his. It occurs in 'The Professor,' in the fifth section. Perhaps he told it pretty frequently; still, he was a little staggered by the coincidence. There was enough of Cotton Mather in the man of science to give him pause.

The form of Dr. Holmes's best known books, the set concerned with the breakfast-table and 'Over the Tea-cups,' is not very fortunate. Much conversation at breakfast is a weariness of the flesh. We want to eat what is necessary, and then to go about our work or play. If American citizens in a boarding-house could endure these long palavers, they must have been very unlike the hasty feeders caricatured in 'Martin Chuzzlewit.' Macaulay may have monologuised thus at his

* I leave this as I wrote it, to illustrate the game of Russian scandal. Dr. Holmes's own version will be found in his 'Over the Tea-cups.' Dr. Holmes makes one of the speakers in his dialogue start a theory of ‘cerebricity' or 'telepathy.'

1

breakfast-parties in the Albany; but breakfast-parties are obsolete an unregretted parcel of things lost. The monologues, or dialogues, were published serially in the Atlantic Monthly, but they have had a vitality and a vogue far beyond those of the magazine causerie. Some of their popularity they may owe to the description of the other boarders, and to the kind of novel which connects the fortunes of these personages. But it is impossible for an Englishman to know whether these American types are exactly drawn or not. Their fortunes do not strongly interest one, though the 'Sculpin,'-the patriotic, deformed Bostonian, with his great-great-grandmother's ring (she was hanged for a witch)-is a very original and singular creation. The real interest lies in the wit, wisdom, and learning. The wit, now and then, seems to-day rather in the nature of a 'goak.' One might give examples, but to do so seems ill-natured and ungrateful.

There are some very perishable puns. The learning is not so recherché as it appeared when we knew nothing of Cotton Mather and Robert Calef, the author of a book against the persecution of witches. Calef, of course, was in the right, but I cannot forgive him for refusing to see a lady, known to Mr. Wodrow, who floated about in the air. That she did so was no good reason for hanging or burning a number of parishioners ; but, did she float, and, if so, how? Mr. Calef said it would be a miracle, and so he declined to view the performance. His logic was thin, though of a familiar description. Of all old things, at all events, Dr. Holmes was fond. He found America scarcely aired, new and raw, devoid of history and of associations. 'The Tiber has a voice for me, as it whispers to the piers of the Pons Ælius, even more full of meaning than my well-beloved Charles, eddying round the piles of West Boston bridge.' No doubt this is a common sentiment among Americans. Occasionally, like Hawthorne, they sigh for an historical atmosphere, and then, when they come to Europe and get it, they do not like it, and think Schenectady, New York, 'a better place.' It is not easy to understand what ailed Hawthorne with Europe; he was extremely caustic in his writings about that continent, and discontented. Our matrons were so stout and placid that they irritated him. Indeed, they are a little heavy in hand, still there are examples of agreeable slimness, even in this poor old country. Fond as he was of the historical past, Mr. Holmes remained loyal to the historical present. He was not one of

those Americans who are always censuring England, and always hankering after her. He had none of that irritable feeling, which made a great contemporary of his angrily declare that he could endure to hear Ye Mariners of England sung, because of his own country's maritime successes, some time ago. They were gallant and conspicuous victories of the American frigates; we do not grudge them. A fair fight should leave no rancour, above all in the victors, and Dr. Holmes's withers would have been unwrung by Campbell's ditty.

4

He visited England in youth, and fifty years later. On the anniversary of the American defeat at Bunker's Hill (June 17), Dr. Holmes got his degree in the old Cambridge. He received degrees at Edinburgh and at Oxford; in his 'Hundred Days in Europe' he says very little about these historic cities. The men at Oxford asked, 'Did he come in the One Hoss Shay?' the name of his most familiar poem in the lighter vein. The whole visit to England pleased and wearied him. He likened it to the shass caffy of Mr. Henry Foker -the fillip at the end of the long banquet of life. He went to see the Derby, for he was fond of horses, of racing, and, in a sportsmanlike way, of boxing. He had the great boldness once, audax juventa, to write a song in praise of that comfortable creature-wine. The prudery of many Americans about the juice of the grape, is a thing very astonishing to a temperate Briton. An admirable author, who wrote an account of the old convivial days of an American city, found that reputable magazines could not accept such a degrading historical record. There was no nonsense about Dr. Holmes. His poems were mainly occasional,' verses for friendly meetings; or humorous, like the celebrated One Horse Shay. Of his serious verses, the Nautilus is probably too familiar to need quotation; a noble fancy is nobly and tunefully 'moralised.' Pleasing, cultivated, and so forth, are adjectives not dear to poets. To say 'sublime,' or 'magical,' or 'strenuous,' of Dr. Holmes's muse, would be to exaggerate. How far he maintained his scholarship, I am not certain; but it is odd that, in his preface to 'The Guardian Angel,' he should quote from 'Jonathan Edwards the younger,' a story for which he might have cited Aristotle.

Were I to choose one character out of Dr. Holmes's creations as my favourite, it would be 'a frequent correspondent of his,' and of mine—the immortal Gifted Hopkins. Never was minor poet more kindly and genially portrayed. And if one had