dearing names, allowed it to twine itself most gracefully round about them. This boa constrictor, as thick round as a small tree, twined playfully round the lady's waist and neck, forming a kind of turban round her head, and expecting to be petted and made much of like a kitten. The children over and over again took its head in their hands, and kissed its mouth, pushing aside its forked tongue in doing so. "Every one to his taste," as the old man said when he kissed his cow. The animal seemed much pleased, and kept continually turning its head towards the interviewer, until he allowed it for a moment to nestle its head up his sleeve. This splendid serpent coiled all round Mrs. M. while she moved about the room and when she stood up to pour out coffee. He seemed to adjust his weight so nicely, and every coil with its beautiful markings was relieved by the lady's black velvet dress. About a year ago Mr. and Mrs. M. were away for six weeks, and left the boa in charge of a keeper at the Zoo. The poor reptile moped, slept, and refused to be comforted; but when his master and mistress appeared, he sprang upon them with delight, coiling himself round them, and showing every symptom of intense delight. The children are devoted to their "darling Cleo," as they call the snake, and smiled when interviewer asked if they were ever frightened of it. Interviewer's conclusion. It is mere prejudice, when snakes are not venomous, to abhor them as we do. They are intelligent and harmless, perfectly clean, with no sort of smell, make no kind of noise, and move about far more gracefully than lap dogs or other pets. These seemed very obedient, and remained in their cupboard when told to do so.-From All the Year Round.

AMERICAN SILENCE.-The Americans struck me generally as a silent people; though the very contrary idea is prevalent in England, I know not on what grounds. But they certainly seemed to me more taciturn and reserved than ourselves, and I think most travellers will confirm the remark. In the dining-rooms of the large hotels, in the railway cars and elsewhere, they made less noise than half the number of English would have done; there was but little conversation even amongst those acquainted with each other, and those who were unacquainted never spoke at all. In the whole course of my travels, I don't think I was ever addressed in the first instance; I always received perfectly civil replies to my questions, and had many pleasant conversations with strangers on the steamboats, railways, and other public places, but there was always a certain amount of ice to be broken through first. No one can deny them the faculty of wit, or at least an extravagant humor which is characteristically American, yet you rarely hear jokes or a hearty laugh amongst them; there seems a total absence of jollity or joviality in all classes, a ten

dency rather to gravity or even melancholy, and an American owned to me, half seriously, that he thought there was something of the Red Indian reticence and gravity appearing in the national character. I am inclined to think that this tristesse, as the French would call it, arises from the general absorption of all classes in business and moneymaking; no one is idle, no one "loafs,” and nobody seems to have time for enjoyment or pleasure. It is the same charge that other nations make against the English, and with a certain amount of truth, that we take our pleasures sadly, which means, partly that we work hard at our pleasures, carrying the same seriousness into them as into our business, but which also, I think, arises from the greater manliness of the English character, that prevents our finding pleasure or relaxation in the same childish amusements as the French or Italians. In America, this national trait has been reproduced, and is intensified by the simple fact that there is no idle class there; no class, as with us (though of course there are individuals), which is exempt from the necessity of working for a living. I never fully appreciated the value of this class at home before; now that I have been to America (and I make the remark in all sincerity), I recognise it fully. Such a class, removed from the anxieties inseparable from the conduct of business or the practice of a profession, has leisure not only for the cultivation of the taste, the pursuit of art, science, and literature, and for studying the amenities of social intercourse, but also for the not less valuable art of pleasure-seeking generally, and of carrying manliness and refinement into our sports and amusements.-From "An Autumn Tour in the United States and Canada," by J. G. Medley.

WAR THE NORMAL CONDITION IN THE WORLD.-A fancy has come over us during the last blessed forty years of unexampled peace from which our ancestors of the sixteenth century were kept, by stern and yet most wholesome lessons; the fancy that peace, and not war, is the normal condition of the world. The fancy is so fair that we blame none who cherish it; after all, they do good by cherishing it; they point us to an ideal which we should otherwise forget, as Babylon, Rome, France in the seventeenth century, forgot utterly.! Only they are in hasteand pardonable haste, too-to realise that ideal, forgetting that to do so would be really to stop short of it, and to rest contented in some form of human society far lower than that which God has actually prepared for those who love Him. Better to believe that all our conceptions of the height to which the human race might attain, are poor and paltry compared with that toward which God is guiding it, and for which he is disciplining it by awful lessons; and to fight on, if need be, ruthless, and yet full of pity—and many a noble soul has learnt within the last two years [1855-6] how easy it is to reconcile in practice that seeming para

dox of words-smiting down stoutly evil wheresoever we shall find it, and saying, "What ought to be, we know not; God alone can know: but that this ought not to be, we do know, and here, in God's name, it shall not stay." We repeat it : war, in some shape or other, is the normal condition of the world. It is a fearful fact; but we shall not abolish it by ignoring it, and ignoring by the same method the teaching of our Bibles. Not in mere metaphor does the gospel of love describe the life of the individual good man as a perpetual warfare. Not in mere metaphor does the apostle of love see in his visions of the world's future no Arcadian shepherd paradises, not even a perfect civilisation, but an eternal war in heaven, wrath and woe, plague and earthquake; and amid the everlasting storm, the voices of the saints beneath the altar, crying, "Lord how long?" Shall we pretend to have more tender hearts than the old man of Ephesus, whose dying sermon, so old legends say, was nought but "Little children, love one another"; and who yet could denounce the liar and the hater and the covetous man, and proclaim the vengeance of God against all evil-doers, with all the fierceness of an Isaiah ?-From "Plays and Puritans," by the Rev. C. Kingsley.

This one truth have I learned: That death alone was certain in my life.

"BROTHERLY" RELATIONS.-In the dedication to Washington there is a passage that might be addressed to President Grant:-"Your importance, your influence, and, I believe, your wishes, rest entirely on the comforts and happiness of your people. A declaration of hostilities against Great Britain would much and grievously diminish them, however popular it might be in the commencement, however glorious it might be in the result. My apprehension lest this popularity should in any degree sway your mind is the sole cause by which I am determined in submitting to you these considerations. Popularity in a free state like yours, where places are not exposed to traffic, nor dignities to accident, is a legitimate and noble desire; and the prospects of territory are to nations growing rich and powerful what the hopes of progeny are to individuals of rank and station. A war between America and England would at all times be a civil war. Our origin, our language, our interests are the same. Would it not be deplorable-would it not be intolerable to reason and humanity-that the language of a Locke and a Milton should con

vey and retort the sentiments of a Bonaparte and a Robespierre ?" So say we to-day; though the thought has sometimes come across public men whether our relations with the United States would not be more stable and more happy if we did not speak the same language, if we did not understand and attend to everything disagreeable and untoward that is said or written on either side, if we had not all the accompaniments and conditions of family ties, in the sense in which Mr. Rogers answered some one who spoke of a distinguished literary fraternity as being "like brothers," "I had heard they were not well together, but did not know it was so bad as that."

-From " Monographs," by Lord Houghton.

VEILED.

Ar old Egyptian festals, we are told,
Was aye a guest

Who through the feast sat rigid, silent, cold;
Whom no one prest

To share the banquet, yet who still remained
Till the last song was sung, the last cup drained.
The cup, the song, the jest, and laugh went round,
No cheek turned pale,

No guest amazed did query e'er propound,
Or lift the veil

To learn the wherefore one alone sat mute.
With whom nor host, nor friend, exchanged salute.
Usance and rose-crowned drapery did all;
That thing of bone,

That hideous skeleton in festive hall,
Evoked no groan ;

No thrill of horror checked the flow of mirth,
Unseen, unfelt that grisly type of earth.
But did the host return when all were gone,
The lights put out,

The unseen presence of that nameless one
Might put to rout

All the gay fancies born of wine and song,
And speechless dread the fleeting night prolong.
At every hearth, in every human heart
There sits such guest,

We may not, cannot bid it thence depart.
E'en at the best,

We can but crown with roses, veil and drape;
The thing exists, though we conceal its shape.
We shroud our skeletons from public gaze,
And from our own;

Ignore their presence with life's lamps ablaze,
Till left alone

With festal fragments, wine-stains, lights gone dim,
We feel them with us, icy, bloodless, grim.
Our nerves would quiver to unveil the bones
Of the dead past;

We lock them in our hearts, with sighs and moans,
To keep them fast;

'Tis but in solitude we turn the key, And dare to look upon them as they be.