RETIREMENT. FROM THE RAMBLER." OWLEY informs us of a scheme of happiness to which the imagination of a girl, upon the loss of her first lover, could scarcely have given way, but which he seems to have indulged till he had totally forgotten its absurdity, and would have, probably put in execution had he been hindered only by his reason. My desire," says he, " has been for some years past-though the execution has been accidentally diverted-and does still vehemently continue, to retire myself to some of our American plantations, not to seek for gold or enrich myself with the traffic of those parts, which is the end of most men that travel thither, but to forsake this world for ever, with the vanities and vexations of it, and to bury myself there in some obscure retreat, but not without the consolation of letters and philosophy." Such was the chimerical provision which Cowley had made in his own mind for the quiet of his remaining life, and which he seems to recommend to posterity, since there is no other reason for his disclosing it. Surely, no stronger instance can be given of a persuasion that content was the inhabitant of particular regions, and that a man might set sail with a fair wind and leave behind him all his cares, encumbrances and calamities. If he travelled so far with no other purpose than to bury himself in some obscure retreat, he might have found in his own country innumerable coverts sufficiently obscure to have concealed the genius of Cowley; for, whatever might be his own opinion. of the importunity with which he should be summoned back into public life, a short experience would have convinced him that privation is much easier than acquisition, and that it would require very little continence to free himself from the intrusion of the world. There is pride enough in the human heart to prevent much desire of acquaintance with a man by whom we are sure to be treated with neglect, however his reputation for science or virtue may excite our curiosity or esteem; so that the lover of retirement need not be much afraid lest the respect of strangers should overwhelm him with visits: even those to whom he has formerly been known will very patiently support his absence when they have tried to live without him and found new diversions for those moments which his company contributed to exhilarate or relax. When he was interrupted by company or fatigued with business, he so strongly imaged to himself the happiness of leisure and retreat that he determined to enjoy them for the future without interruption, and to exclude for ever all that could deprive him of his darling satisfactions. He forgot, in the vehemence of his desire, that solitude and quiet owe their pleasures to those miseries 288 REKINDLING THE SACRED FIRE IN MEXICO. which he was so studious to obviate; for such | REKINDLING THE SACRED FIRE IN are the vicissitudes of the world through all its parts that day and night, labor and rest, converse and retirement, endear each other; such are the changes that keep the mind in action we desire, we pursue, we obtain, we are satiated; we desire something else, and begin a new pursuit. MEXICO. AT the end of the Aztec or Toltec cycle of fifty-two years for it is not accurately ascertained to which of the tribes the astronomical science of Tenochtitlan is to be attributed-these primitive children of the New World believed that the world was in danger of instant destruction. Accordingly, its termination became one of their most serious and awful epochs, and they anxiously awaited the moment when the sun would be blotted out from the heavens and the globe itself resolved once more into chaos. As the cycle ended in the winter, the season of the year, with its drearier sky and colder air, in the lofty regions of the valley, added to the gloom that fell upon the hearts of the people. On the last day of the fifty-two years all the fires in temples and dwellings were extinguished, and the natives devoted themselves to fasting and prayer. They destroyed alike their valuable and worthless wares, rent their gar If he had proceeded in his project and fixed his habitation in the most delightful part of the New World, it may be much doubted whether his distance from the vanities of life would have enabled him to have kept away from the vexations. It is common for a man who feels pain to fancy that he could bear it better in any other part. Cowley, having known the troubles and perplexities of a particular condition, readily persuaded himself that nothing worse was to be found, and that every alteration would bring some improvement. He never suspected that the cause of his unhappiness was within, that his own passions were not sufficiently regulated, and that he was har-ments, put out their lights and hid themassed by his own impatience, which, as it selves for a while in solitude. could never be without something to awaken it, would torment him in any country, accompany him over the sea and find its way to his American elysium. He would upon the trial have been soon convinced that the fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and that he who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own dispositions will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the griefs which he purposes to 66 At dark on the last dread evening-as soon as the sun had set, as they imagined, for ever-a sad and solemn procession of priests and people marched forth from the city to a neighboring hill to rekindle the new fire." This mournful march was called "the procession of the gods," and was supposed to be their final departure from their temples and altars. As soon as the melancholy array reached the summit of the hill it reposed in fearful anxiety until the Pleiades reached the zenith in the sky, whereupon the priests immediately be POWER. Men deride the self-conceit of gan the sacrifice of a human victim, whose power, but cringe to its injustice. breast was covered with a wooden shield, which the chief flamen kindled by friction. | subjects which had taken up its march When the sufferer received the fatal stab from the capital on the preceding night from the sacrificial knife of obsidian, the with solemn steps returned once more to machine was set in motion on his bosom the abandoned capital, and, restoring the until the blaze had kindled. The anxious gods to their altars, abandoned themselves crowd stood round with fear and trembling. to joy and festivity, in token of gratitude Silence reigned over nature and man. Not and relief from impending doom. a word was uttered among the countless multitude that thronged the hillsides and plains whilst the priest performed his direful duty to the gods. At length, as the first sparks gleamed faintly from the whirling instrument, low sobs and ejaculations were whispered among the eager masses. As the sparks kindled into a blaze, and the blaze into a flame, and the flaming shield and victim were cast together on a pile of combustibles, which burst at once into the brightness of a conflagration, the air was rent with the joyous shouts of the relieved and panic-stricken Indians. Far and wide over the dusky crowds beamed the blaze like a star of promise. Myriads of upturned faces greeted it from hills, mountains, temples, terraces, teocallis, housetops and city walls, and the prostrate multitudes hailed the emblem of light, life and fruition as a blessed omen of the restored favor of their gods and the preservation of their race for another cycle. At regular intervals Indian couriers held aloft brands of resinous wood, by which they transmitted the "new fire" from hand to hand, from village to village and town to town, throughout the Aztec empire. Light was radiated from the imperial or ecclesiastical centre of the realm. In every temple and dwelling it was rekindled from the sacred source; and when the sun rose again on the following morning, the solemn procession of priests, princes and BRANTZ MAYER. KIN BEYOND SEA. THE students of the future in the tran quil domain of political philosophy will have much to say in the way of comparison between American and British institutions. The relationship between these two is unique in history. It is always interesting to trace and to compare constitutions as it is to compare languages, especially in such instances as those of the Greek states and the Italian republics, or the diversified forms of the feudal system in the different countries of Europe. But there is no parallel in all the records of the world to the case of that prolific British mother who has sent forth her innumerable children over all the earth to be the founders of half a dozen empires. She, with her progeny, may almost claim to constitute a kind of universal Church in politics. But among these children there is one whose place in the world's eye and in history is superlative: it is the American republic. She is the eldest born. She has, taking the capacity of her land into view as well as its mere measurement, a natural base for the greatest continuous empire ever established by man. And it may be well here to mention what has not always been sufficiently observed-that the distinction between continuous empire and empire severed and dis be wrought out, it is for each nation to consider how far its institutions have reached a state in which they can contribute their maximum to the store of human happiness and excellence. And for the political student all over the world it will be beyond anything curious as well as useful to examine with what diversities as well as what resemblances of apparatus the two greater branches of a race born to command have been minded or induced or constrained to work out in their sea-severed seats their political destinies according to the respective laws appointed for them. persed over sea is vital. The development | their being. Ascending, then, from the which the republic has effected has been un- ground-floor of material industry toward exampled in its rapidity and force. While the regions in which these purposes are to other countries have doubled, or at most trebled, their population, she has risen during one single century of freedom, in round numbers, from two millions to forty-five. The census in the year 1880 exhibits her to the world as certainly the wealthiest of all the nations. The huge figure of a thousand million sterling, which may be taken roundly as the annual income of the United Kingdom, has been reached at a surprising rate-a rate which may perhaps be best expressed by saying that if we could have started forty or fifty years ago from zero, at the rate of our recent annual increment we should now have reached our present position. But, while we have been advancing with this portentous rapidity, America is passing us by as if in a canter. Yet even now the work of searching the soil and the bowels of the territory and opening out her enterprise throughout its vast expanse is in its infancy. The England and the America of the present are probably the two strongest nations of the world, but there can hardly be a doubt, as between the America and the England of the future, that the daughter at some no very distant time will, whether fairer or less fair, be unquestionably yet stronger than the mother. But all this pompous detail of material triumphs, whether for the one or for the other, is worse than idle unless the men of the two countries shall remain, or shall become, greater than the mere things that they produce, and shall know how to regard those things simply as tools and material for the attainment of the highest purposes of THO W. E. GLADSTONE. CANUTE THE DANE. HOUGH Canute had been baptized in his infancy, he knew little of the doctrines of Christianity; but after he was seated on the English throne the ferocity of his disposition was softened by the precepts of religion, and the sanguinary sea-king was insensibly moulded into a just and beneficent monarch. He often lamented the bloodshed and misery which his own rapacity and that of his father had inflicted on the natives, and acknowledged it his duty to compensate their sufferings by a peaceful and equitable reign. He always treated them with marked attention, protected them from the insolence of his Danish favorites, placed the two nations on a footing of equality, and admitted them alike to offices of trust and emolument. He erected a magnificent church at Assington, the scene of his last victory, and repaired the or trees. At the same time, he denounced punishment against those who pretended to deal in witchcraft and the "workers of death," whether it were by lots or by flame, or by any other charms. The existing system of jurisprudence, which he confirmed, was divided into three branches, the law of the West Saxons, the law of the Mercians and the law of the Danes. The two former had been preserved from the time of the Heptarchy and prevailed in their respective districts; the latter had been introduced into East Anglia and Northumbria by the Danes, who had settled in those countries since the beginning of the ninth century. Of all three the substance was the same; they differed only in the amount of the pecuniary mulets which were imposed on various transgressions. The ruins of the religious edifices which had suffered during the invasion. By his donations the abbey of St. Edmund's, the memorial of the cruelty of his father, was rendered for centuries the most opulent of the monastic establishments in the kingdom. In a witenagemot at Oxford he confirmed the laws of Edgar, and persuaded the English and Danish thanes to forgive each other every foriner cause of of fence, and to promise mutual friendship for the future. In another, at Winchester, a code of laws was compiled from the enact ments of former kings, with such additions as were required by the existing state of society. From it some interesting particulars may be selected. The king exhorted all those who were entrusted with the administration of justice to be vigilant in the punishment of crimes, but sparing of human life; to treat the penitent with less, the im-king undertook to ease his people of part of penitent culprit with greater, severity; and to consider the weak and indigent as worthy of pity, the wealthy and powerful as deserving the full rigor of the law, because the former were often driven to the commission of guilt by two causes which seldom affected the latter-oppression and want. He severely reprobated and prohibited the custom of sending Christians for sale into foreign countries. But the reason which he assigned was not that there is anything immoral in the institution of slavery, but that such Christians were in danger of falling into the hands of infidel masters and of being seduced from their religion. By the incorporation of the Danes with the natives the rites of paganism had again made their appearance in the island. Canute forbade the worship of the heathen gods, of the sun or moon, of fire or water, of stones or fountains, and of forests the burdens arising from the feudal services, which in England, as well as the other European nations, had long been on the increase. He totally abolished the custom of purveyance, forbidding his officers to extort provisions for his use and commanding his bailiffs to supply his table from the produce of his own farms. He fixed at a moderate value the heriots which were paid at the demise of tenants and apportioned them to the rank of the deceased, whether they died intestate or not. With respect to heiresses, whose helpless condition frequently exposed them to the tyranny of their lords, he enacted that neither maid nor widow should be compelled to marry against her will. In conclusion, he commanded these laws to be observed by both the Danes and the English, under the penalty of a single were for the first offence, of a double were for the |