would be exceedingly difficult for any amount of wisdom and statesmanship to replace. In England at least, habit, and that dumb affection which springs out of habit, put forth, as it were, the mortar which holds the stones of the political edifice together, and if we were once to break up the tradition, it would be very long before reason could furnish us with a cement nearly as strong.

But the more clearly we recognize this, the more clearly are we bound to protest against the exaggeration of sentiment which reflects a certain amount of ridicule on the real feeling of the nation, and promotes strong reaction at the next available opportunity. The writers who have been exaggerating so extravagantly the intensity of the popular feeling, and writing as if business were almost neglected, work laid aside, politics forgotten, science and art empted of their interest, and the English world exclusively employed in buying evening papers and running after bulletins, have contributed only to falsify a sincere interest, and create a feeling of disgust at the travesty of a valuable as well as honourable anxiety.

66

Canning's "Needy Knifegrinder" we can hardly recall a song, or a story, or a bon mot which has exercised an important influence on politics. The art of political squibbing seems itself to have disappeared for we do not allow that the "Battle of Dorking" comes within that designation. It is different, however, in America, where humour has very often of late years had high political or social effect, has brought certain truths home to the popular mind as nothing else could. By far the most formidable enemy encountered by President Jackson in his war on the National Banks was the man whom it is said he refused on his death-bed to forgive, Seba Smith, who published as Major Jack Downing" a series of letters full of true Yankee humour - Yankee as distinguished from Western-humour spiced and flavoured with keen intellectual insight. The " Bigelow Papers," with their humourous scorn of slavery and of wars for its extension, were a most important contribu tion to the Abolitionist cause, as was the song about John Brown's soul, to which the North marched to the conquest of the South. There is no humour in the meaning of that song, but there is in its form, and in the tune which accompanies it, and it kept the link between abolition and victory incessantly before the minds both of soldiery and people. Lincoln's humourous sayings, more particularly his remark about "swapping horses while crossing AMERICANS have at least one genial streams," and his rebuke to the perfervid quality. They do appreciate Humour. Of abolitionists who were pressing him to go all the differences between society there too far ahead of the national sentiment, and society here, we do not know one "I don't know, gentlemen, that I ever remore striking than the political power ceived a deputation straight from God which, across the Atlantic, humour ap- Almighty before," had all the influence of pears to exercise over the masses of the great speeches, as had before his time the people. We have nothing of the kind left really wonderful burst of glowing fun in in England. A stroke of pictorial humour which Senator Hale, sitting in his place is, indeed, occasionally appreciated, and because he was too fat to stand, repudiated individual statesmen have sometimes bene- the annexation of Cuba. That was a fited or suffered from caricature, but the speech, no doubt, but it was the humour English require to see fun in order to be in it, and not the eloquence, which_desimpressed by it. The judgment of Eng-troyed the formidable order of the Lone lishmen on O'Connell was distinctly affect- Star. Bret Harte's "Heathen Chinee' ed by "H. B.'s" drawing of him as the has distinctly modified the popular appre"Big Beggarman"; Sir J. Graham never ciation of the Chinamen, and helped to quite got over the "Little Dirty Boy"; beat down the previously threatening disand Lord John Russell's influence waned like felt to them in Massachusetts, where from the day Punch sketched him as the they are competing with the powerful small lad who chalked up "No Popery!" "Order of St. Crispin," the great political and then ran away in a fright. The ideal Union of Shoemakers, which returns oneof him in the British mind as the man of third of the State House of Representaundaunted pluck, who would cut for the tives. The New York papers declare that stone or take command of the Channel much of the recent victory of decent citiFleet, suffered from the drawing. But zens over the Tammany Ring is due to since the days of the Anti-Jacobin and some pictorial jokes issued, by an artist

From The Spectator.

THE POLITICAL INFLUENCE OF HUMOUR

IN AMERICA.

named Nast, in Harper's Weekly, a publi- intellectual effort so swift and so keen? cation of vast circulation and clean of Is it that to their habitual reserve or pecuniary corruption. We have not seen these drawings, but the consensus of New York opinion about them is complete. It is, we suppose, in this, the power of bringing a subject home to the millions that the efficacy of humour in America lies. These masses do not read the long speeches, and are not very attentive to well-reasoned argument, getting weary of its length; but they all enjoy and remember a rhymed joke, or a rough epigram, or a short story, which tickles their somewhat peculiar fancy, and reveals clearly to themselves their half-thought-out convictions. That we can understand, but what still perplexes us is the universality of this faculty of appreciation. IIumour could hardly be subtler than it is in the "Heathen Chinee," yet the "point" was taken at once throughout the States by labourers as fully as by graduates, and with exactly the same effect. The wild men of the West enjoyed Artemas Ward's lectures far more than the English did the epithet of "much-married" which he affixed to Brigham Young did him as much harm as the Seventh Commandment- and the descriptions of Saint Abe and his Seven Wives will be relished by roughs in California as much as by the self-indulgent philosophers of Boston. What is there in this grave and rather sad people which makes their appreciation of this form of

THE FEVER TREE. The cultivation of the Eucalyptus globulus is making great progress in the South of France, Spain, Algiers and Corsica; nor is this to be wondered at, remarks the Medical Times and Gazette, if an account lately given of its virtues by Professor Gubler, in the Bulletin de Thérapeutique, is even partially true. It is a native of Tasmania, where it was of old known to the natives and settlers as a remedy for fever. It prefers a marshy soil, in which it grows to a gigantic height with great rapidity. It dries the soil by the evaporation from its leaves, and shelters it from the sun, thus preventing the generation of marsh miasm. Its wood is hard as teak. Every part of it is impregnated with a balsamic, oil-of-camphor-like odour; and, besides a notable quantity of astringent matter, it contains a peculiar extractive, which is supposed to contain an alkaloid allied to quinine. At any rate, its efficacy in intermittent and marsh fevers has gained for it in Spain the name of the "fever tree." It is a powerful tonic and diffusible stimulant, does wonders in chronic catarrh and dyspepsia, is an excellent antiseptic application to wounds, and tans the skins of dead animals, giving the fra

gloom humour brings more pleasure than
it brings to other men, giving in addition
to enjoyment a sense of mental relief, or
is it that Americans are essentially hu-
morous, though only a few can express
the hunour latent in them? We suspect
the former is the case, for the only people
as sad and reserved as the Americans,
the Bengalees, have precisely the same
faculty of appreciating rhymed jests.
though they like them a little more bit-
ter than the Americans do. Or is the
explanation, after all, the much simpler
one that the Anglo-Saxon people every-
where loves rhymed humour, as it loves
rhymed sentiment, but that this love is
only developed when the race has received
a little education? The Lowland Scotch
are in some respects very like the Amer-
icans. With them also education is uni-
versal, and wanting in humour as some of
them are, there is not a nuance in Burns'
humour which they are unable to appre-
ciate. If this suggestion is true
- and we
make it with fear and trembling - Eng-
land will get something more from educa-
tion than she expects, an antidote against
misery more efficacious than anything ex-
cept the religious sense. The apprecia-
tion of the tragic does not increase with
cultivation, rather perhaps diminishes, but
culture develops the perception of every
kind of humour.

grance of Russia leather. We can vouch from personal observation for the flourishing condition of the Hyères and Nice, where trees from seeds sown in 1859 are said to be now sixty metres high. We hope that experience will confirm Professor Gubler's anticipations of the remedial virtues of the Eucalyptus.

CHINA. The Mittheilungen contains a résume of the scientific journeys of Freiherr von Richthofen in Central China. This gentleman, who, as geologist, accompanied the Prussian expedition to Eastern Asia, afterwards independently spent several years in travelling in Further India and California. His explorations in China began in 1868, and terminated in the middle of 1870; and in making known the extraordinary richness of the country in coal and iron, the mainstays of commerce and industry, mark an important epoch in our knowledge of the land. Her von Richthofen's latest route lay in a direct line across the country from Canton to Pekin. His reports on the provinces of Hunan, Hupeh, Honan, and Shansi, have been published, in English, at Shanghai.

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Is it come? They said on the banks of the Nile THIS is the year's despair: some wind, last Who looked for the world's long-promised day,

When Greece to its Freedom's trust was true. On the Church of our Blessed Lady,

From The Fortnightly Review.
CHURCH AND STATE IN ITALY.

given to the people of Italy about that time. On the contrary, the Austrian GovNo one would have ventured to predict ernment of Lombardy and Venetia, the five and twenty years ago that religious rulers also of Tuscany, the Roman States, liberty would within that period be as and Naples, all granted similar liberties fully established in Italy as in England. of a constitutional kind; but each one of Yet this great change in the condition of these governments got rid of those liberthe Italian people is to-day an accomplished ties as soon as they had power to do so. fact. In both countries civil disabilities Nor did they hesitate to enforce the arbion account of religious opinions have been trary rule which they substituted for free swept away; in both this has been ef- institutions, by calling to their aid foreign fected despite the opposition of the ma- bayonets. In Piedmont alone the constitujority of the clergy, who have been forced tion was maintained in all its integrity to yield to the more tolerant and Chris- from the date of its first promulgation. tian views of the nation at large. And if While all other Italian rulers proved false in England and Italy there stills exists a to their people's freedom, King Victor special connection between the State and Emmanuel, the son and successor of one particular Church, so barring the way Charles Albert, remained true to the conto that complete religious equality enjoyed stitution granted by his father and sworn by the people of Ireland, Canada, and the to by himself. In vain were promises and United States, it is nevertheless true that, threats alike employed to turn him from as in Great Britain, so throughout the his plighted word. This fidelity to the Italian peninsula, perfect toleration and liberties of his people won for him the freedom are accorded to all denominations. title of Il Re Galantuomo- the honest king. This happy result forms to-day a bright It was, moreover, the reason which led contrast to the intolerance and persecu- each portion of the Italian people, as options which have left so deep a stain upon portunity offered, to place themselves unthe past history of both countries. Nor der his rule. He had been tried, and found can it be forgotten that in both the chief faithful; the other Italian rulers had been abettors of such wrong-doing have been tried and found faithless. These unfaithful the priests, who, to whatever outward ones and their abettors feared the effect Church they belonged, have habitually which would be produced by the spectacle made use of the temporal power to inflict of an Italian people (the Piedmontese) livdisabilities, and often penalties, upon those ing under a free constitution, and their fear who differed from them in religious opin- was largely mingled with hatred. Nor ion, thereby flying in the face of that plain did this alarm exist without good reason, precept of Christ, "All things whatsoever for the liberty of Piedmont soon became ye would that men should do to you, do the guiding star to whose light all other ye even so to them." Italians turned. As for the hatred, it was but natural, for dishonesty ever hates uprightness, slavery freedom, and darkness light.

It is the object of the present article to show-first, by what means Italy has been transformed from a land of religious intolerance into a land of religious liberty; and, secondly, to give some account of the actual relations of Church and State as established by the law of the Papal Guarantees, passed last May by the legislature of the Italian kingdom.

The first article in the constitution granted to Piedmont in March, 1848, runs thus: "The Catholic Apostolic and Roman religion is the only religion of the State. The other forms of worship now existing are tolerated in conformity with The origin of the liberties actually en- the laws." That there might be no misjoyed by Italy is to be found in the Statu- take as to the interpretation of this article, to, or constitution, granted in March, 1848, it was at once proposed and carried by to the kingdom of Piedmont by her then both houses of the Piedmontese parliareigning sovereign, Charles Albert. It ment that no man's religious belief, whatwas not by any means the only constitution I ever it might be, should prevent his hold