my uncle, you have done me a great deal of honor by asking me to take a seat." These extremely courteous expressions always appear ridiculous to her pupil, whose laughter constantly elicits from the teacher the question "Plait-il ?" Indeed, she says "Plaitil?" to everything, until this peculiar interrogatory becomes a by-word in the house, and we not only say plait-il on all occasions, but substitute the phrase for the name of Marie. The one thing that Marie could do was to buy things. Though she spoke no English, she always managed to make the store-people and market-people understand what she wanted, and seldom made a mistake in the change. She had an intuitive knowledge of the best cuts of meat, and would walk a halfmile to save a cent on a pound of sugar. "Shall I bargain, madam?" she would ask when sent on any purchasing expedition, and when she bought beefsteaks or mutton-chops always assured the butchers that "they must be of the best, because they were for a house of distinction and a lady bien comme il faut." This remarkable style of making purchases finally became a real annoyance to the master of the house, who, when he himself went to market, was occasionally questioned regarding "the house of distinction." When Marie answered the front-door bell she always reported progress. Either it was une dame comme il faut, or un brave homme, or a schnappin,the schnappin being usually a beggar, whose card she would demand in the most peremptory manner. Indeed, she generally lectured the beggars on the impropriety of asking for alms out of hours, and it was subsequently elicited from her that the hour which she considered regular for begging was between eight and nine in the morning. This she said had been established by the Princess Dagmar, and introduced into the family of the Russian princess, where Marie served, by the governess of the Princess Dagmar, who visited her former employer. Marie had seen better days, and her surprise at the conditions of domestic service in America was great, but she had considerable philosophy, and used to sigh and say, "One has plenty of good food, and a good bed to sleep in: what more does one want?" She had a little narrative about the captain of the ship in which she crossed the ocean. He used to walk on the quarter-deck with her because she spoke four languages and could interpret for the passengers. Every day he used to say to her,— "But, madam, why do you go to America?" "I go," she replied, "to better my fortunes." "How will you do that?" he asked. "I cannot tell until I see for myself," she answered. The captain had a tender sentiment for her, she thought. She was really a bright and intelligent woman, but quite incapable of hard work. Had she reared a child from the cradle, doubtless it would have appreciated her ceaseless animation and endless efforts for its amusement; but she had no appreciation of the underlying thoughtfulness of the American child that urges it to work out its plays for itself. Our boys are not willing to be taught to play, neither will they accept any regular system of amusement. What they want is a simple suggestion, and often not even that, as to originate is their greatest delight. No doubt one reason why French nurses are at a discount is because they have been trained to teach plays as well as lessons, and in attempting to repress the inspirations of the young they antagonize the children. The older inmates of the nursery are seldom very partial to the French nurse. She has a thorough distrust of the moral qualities of a child. She seems to be impressed with the idea that unless constantly watched it will do dreadful things. Indeed, this appears to be her view of the world at large. Marie was continually afraid that the other servants would steal her clothing or money, and once alarmed the household because the cook had left a dollar lying on the bureau in her own room. "Some one will steal it," she said, "and they will blame pose than the archaic method of opening windows! They dismissed the architect, and the result was the final discarding of the grand new scheme. The subject of ventilation presented itself forcibly the other evening at a little rural theatre holding about five hundred people. A couple of "baseburners" burned up every particle of the fresh air that squeezed in from time to time as the door opened to admit a fresh victim. The air became suffocating.— or rather the absence of air. In desperation some one lowered a sash. It was a great relief; but soon we were conscious of something cold and heavy settling down about our heads, like a pall wrung out of ice-water. That would not do. Everybody was glad to see the sash raised, and for the rest of the evening we suffered and made no sign. We went there for amusement! In houses heated by hot-air furnaces in the cellar the ventilation might always be good all over the house if only the cold air could be brought in from outside before being heated and sent up through the registers; yet generally the air is taken from the cellar, though there is never any provision for a fresh supply in the cellar. People seem to doubt that we live by breathing air. They go to work and build their houses as nearly air-tight as possible, exclude every breath, and make no provision for any new supply. WHEN the new English House of Parliament was built, it had a wonderful system of heating and ventilation, costing something like a half-million of pounds. Much had been expected by way of perfect ventilation from machinery so new and expensive. From the very first it was evident that there was a great deal of ventilation throughout the halls; no air, indeed, it was said, was ever allowed to remain fixed for one moment even in the most retired nook. Pretty soon the members talked of draughts, and it was observed that they all had colds or influenza. Something had to be done when an access of cold weather rendered the distribution of hot air over the building much greater, and with the hot air came more ventilation. Arctic blasts and Syrian simooms chased each other through all the halls of the immense building, and deadly contests between them might take place at any moment behind the chair of an honorable member. At last they sent for the architect, and questioned him exhaust-tunately, it seems practically impossible ively upon his wonderful system of ven- to make any house quite as air-tight as tilation. They supposed he was pre- a corked bottle. If any one should dispared to defend it vigorously; but he cover a way to do it, there is no doubt was so silent upon its merits that the but he would calmly lie down to sleep case went by default. Of course he in it with all his family and friends. must have known that his plan did not work. They questioned him about other means of renewing the air of rooms. He suggested the opening of windows or doors as an effective method! This was astounding. The man who could squander a quarter of a million of the money of the people in elaborating complicated machinery for ventilating the House of Parliament could not really, when put to the test, suggest anything better for effecting that pur For In school-rooms our children are everywhere being poisoned by the dreadful air they have to breathe. They come home looking bloodless and complaining of headaches. The next day they are sent back, to be tortured again for hours in the same lifeless, exhausted atmosphere. When they become quite ill, we take them from school, and then complain of the long hours, the hard studies, the overtaxed brain. The truth is, it is very difficult to hurt any child's brain with study if we only see to it that he has a vigorous appetite and plenty of air and exercise. There is one building in the world said to be perfectly ventilated, though its regular inhabitants number between twelve hundred and sixteen hundred souls. It is built in three great quadrangles, each embracing vast central courts roofed with glass and iron. When it was being built, visitors said, "Why, people cannot live under this glass the air in summer will be just like that of a hot-house.' Experience, however, has proved that the air keeps nearly the same temperature season after season. The ventilation is effected by subterranean galleries, twelve feet square, opening to the north at some distance from the palace. These run all around the courts, where there are gratings opening into them, and all around the outside of the quadrangles. Flues in the walls and registers convey the pure air into every apartment. Openings in the glass roof cause a very gentle circulation without draughts in any weather. This building is the "Familistère," or home of families, founded by the great capitalist M. Godin. The agitation of the subject of ventilation in hospitals, prisons, etc., abroad has lately called attention to the Familistère just at the time when the French republic has honored her great industrial leader with the Cross of the Legion of Honor in gratitude for his service in showing practically how capital and labor may co-operate with great advantage to both, -an M. an important service, surely, in view of the strikes and other labor-troubles, which appear to be on the increase. Godin, however, would have richly merited the Cross of the Legion of Honor for his excellent system of ventilating great buildings. It remains to be said that the underground galleries are constructed with the view of admitting hot-air furnaces to warm the palace. M. H. LITERATURE "Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle." Prepared for Publication by Thomas Carlyle. Edited by James Anthony Froude. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. ENGLISH literature, in strong contrast with that of France, has no distinguished female letter-writers, the accident of sex having debarred Horace Walpole from a place in this category, to which many of his qualities and traits would otherwise have assigned him. Mrs. Carlyle is perhaps destined to fill the vacant niche. As specimens of familiar correspondence her letters seem to us unequalled by any others in the language, treating, as they for the most part do, ordinary and often trivial matters of domestic life with a flashing vivacity that gives life and interest to every detail, and producing the effect of a series of sketches dashed off with sure, swift strokes under the fresh and spontaneous impulse of the moment. They abound in gleaming little pictures of persons and things, in terse, incisive judgments, in keen satirical touches and warm-hearted outpourings of affection and praise, in sparkles of playful raillery, flashes of indignation or resentment, and pathetic outbursts of anguish, all so vivid and so replete with feminine feeling and a bright intelligence that no sense of monotony or weariness is possible, despite the somewhat narrow range of themes and the frequent recurrence of some that in themselves are anything but attractive. The style has a flavor of its own; the opinions on certain subjects are traceable to Carlyle, but the general way of looking at things is in contrast, rather than identical, with his, and the personality of the writer is as sharply drawn and stands out in almost as bold relief as that with which it must always remain so closely associated. Whatever other sacri fices the wife may have made, however is far too complex for off-hand conclusions, she may have devoted herself to the fur--otherwise we might accept as the sum therance of her husband's work or sub- and substance of it this statement after mitted to the requirements of his temperament, she never merged any portion of her individuality or surrendered her mental independence. Had it been otherwise, she might have suffered and endured much more than she did without even suspecting that she had any grounds of complaint. As it was, not only was she conscious of them, but she made no secret of them to any one but him; and her reticence in this case may not uncharitably be ascribed less to any wish to spare his feelings than to instincts of pride. There were floods of tenderness in her nature which he had never sought to unlock, and which, on this very account, either refused to flow or sought their outlet in other directions,-friendship, charity, grief for her dead parents, fondness for pet animals. That she loved Carlyle cannot be doubted, but it was not with an absorbing love, simply because hers was not a nature to yield itself up fully without complete reciprocity. She was able therefore to preserve a distinct sense of their mutual position, to appreciate herself and to criticise him. Of matrimonial scandals, even to the extent of squabbles, there is no revelation in these volumes; but it is certainly a unique spectacle, that of a wife confiding her domestic grievances to comparative strangers, of a husband consenting that her censures and complaints should be given to the world without any counter-statement or explanatory protest, with only a frequent peccavi and mea culpa by way of commentary,—and of a friendly editor, not under the stress of an imperative injunction, publishing the whole without curtailment. It is the result of what might almost seem a predestined conjunction, for the indiscreet frankness of Mrs. Carlyle and the remorseful selfabasement of her husband are not more remarkable than the bold indifference to obloquy, in regard to both himself and them, of Mr. Froude, who would probably have been prevented from arousing and confronting it if he had not survived his partners in the trust. Yet no absolute suppression of the facts would have been possible; they would ultimately have come before the world distorted and discolored; and for this reason, if for no other, it was right that they should be told without concealment. What remains is for the reader, in examining into the matter, to make use of his intelligence. The case sixteen years of married life: "In great matters he is always kind and considerate; but these little attentions, which we women attach so much importance to, he was never in the habit of rendering to any one; his up-bringing, and the severe turn of mind he has from nature, had alike indisposed him towards them." While it is true that in marrying a poor man she took upon herself a burden which overtaxed her strength and laid the foundations of permanent ill health, it must not be forgotten that, contrasting her lot with what it might otherwise have been, she expresses herself as grateful for having been saved from a life of uselessness and frivolity. At a later period Carlyle's friendship with the Ashburtons and addiction to their society was the cause of a real estrangement on her part, the more profound that it was to a great extent hidden, nourished by solitary broodings, and reflected back upon the past, till her spirit was fatally embittered, every humble task filled her with disgust, every slight offence or cause of irritation was magnified, and her whole existence seemed to have been blasted by a sacrifice which, when it should have brought compensations, remained unrequited and unregarded. Mr. Froude and Miss Jewsbury have sought to make a just apportionment of the blame that should attach to the parties in this imbroglio, if such it can be called. But this is much like endeavoring to get at all the causes, predisposing and immediate, of an attack of illness, and assigning to each its particular effect and relative importance. The same is to be said of subsequent and minor troubles, in which concurrent circumstances almost innumerable would have to be taken into account, and in regard to which it is safer to let our sympathies have free play than to give emphasis and decision to our judgments. What must be acknowledged is that this woman, of a delicate and highly sensitive organization, with rare intellectual powers, high conceptions of duty, and a spirit capable both of sustaining and sweetening one of greater proportions and intenser strain, had every claim to a degree of watchful tenderness which she did not receive till late, and the lack of which, after all the excuses that might be urged, indicates a flaw in a character otherwise essentially irreproachable. Happily, the picture has its bright as well as its dark side. Her existence was not a desert enlivened by an occasional oasis. Its general tenor was cheerful, varied, abounding in interest; and the last years of it, though saddened by seasons of physical pain the description of which can scarcely be read without a shudder, brought with them the consolations for which she had most yearned, and apparently as much of mental peace and serenity as a nature like hers could possess. "But Yet a Woman." By Arthur Sherburne Hardy. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & So much painstaking study of French life and manners has gone into the making of "But Yet a Woman," it seems safe to conclude that the book, like others of its class by English authors, is the product of a long residence among French people quite beyond the world run over by English and American colonists and tourists. With all the advantages of fresh and forcible impressions which this class of foreign novel presents to the author, he yet cannot overcome certain inevitable restrictions. The assiduous effort to preserve the vraisemblance, the minute carefulness of touch, the necessary restraint, all are of course practised at the sacrifice of depth and spontaneity. We can only know, feel, and believe just as profoundly as we have lived, and it is perhaps because Mr. Hardy is an American that his picture of French life, with all its fidelity of tone, its artistic harmony, and its graceful grouping, does not take a stronger hold upon our imagination. Much tenderness and skill are shown in the presentation of the two female characters. Renée, a girl of twenty, who looks forward to becoming one of the Sisters of St. Luc, and Stéphanie, her half-aunt, a widow of rare beauty and mental gifts, embark in a rather brilliant social and political career. young girl's aspirations, bent upon the realization of the highest and most beautiful ideal of life, waver from their early dream, and lose it in the more en The grossing love she comes to feel for Roger Lande. This faithlessness to the first deep-seated hopes and beliefs brings, like all declensions, its inevitable punishment, but it is Stéphanie who bears it, and the story of her renunciation is full of nobility and pathos. The tragic failure of her life, contrasted with the happy Renée's, makes the spiritual rescue which she seeks in the convent seem a genuine gain, instead of being a mere feverish resource for ardent feeling and unsatisfied yearning. "Fanchette" presents a picture of Washington society, and is written with such airy good humor, such facility of resource, such ease in off-hand dialogue, and at the same time such an absolute disregard of the restrictions and necessities of every-day life, that the critic is almost ready to attribute the incongruities and contrasts to some deficiency in his own powers of fancy, rather than to any fault in the writer. The accounts of the elegant and fictitious existence at the capital, where Russian princes, rajahs, senators, beautiful actresses, and Nihilists mingle freely, do not make either restful or satisfactory reading, but may possess interest for those who long for the startling and effective and care neither for use nor significance in a story. Nor can we render to "Ouida" the praise we withheld from the anonymous author of "Fanchette" for faithful and temperate work; but "Ouida," with all her faulty morals and her exaggerated color, possesses genius, which brings along with it imaginative insight, and strong mental and emotional impulses, which invest the faintest of her creations with actuality. Her works grow artistically from a central developing idea. Plot and action when held up for criticism or analysis may be both bewildering and preposterous, but they move on with a vital force and a largeness of human motive which compels sympathy and interest. None of her books of the few that we have read has pleased us better than "Wanda," which is the story of a nameless, penniless Russian lad, the son of a serf, who, by a singular combination of circumstances, is enabled to merge his identity in that of a young marquis of Sabran who had died in Mexico. The imposture recalls a similar case in Cherbuliez's very clever novel, "Samuel Brohl et Cie;" but this is more successful, and commands, strange to say, the reader's entire sympathy. Sabran, after a brilliant political career in France. |