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God hath sure forsook me quite,
And forgot my evil plight:
Nay, He chose thee, and thou art
Safely borne within His heart."

Would that we could generally intro-
duce some of these hymns and their
beautiful melodies usually sung to them
into the service of our English congre-
gations.
We feel confident that the
young people of our Sunday-schools
could readily learn to sing them, and
by a familiar use our people would be
able to appreciate their grand devo-
tional unction. We know not whether
it is owing to certain peculiarities of the
language, music or poetry, but certain
we are that no English hymn-singing
can so move and inspire the soul as can
the singing of some of these German
hymns, even in their translations.

The author of the above hymn never enjoyed one whole day of health during the sixty-two years of his life. The last

nine years were spent in great suffering,
whilst his second wife did her utmost to
relieve and soothe him by faithful nurs-
ing. His brief intervals of relief were
spent in writing devotional hymns, which
proved a pleasant and edifying pastime
to him. The wily Jesuits came near
perverting his only son, which for a
season embittered the cup of his sorrow.
The son soon thereafter died in peace.
Oa his own death-bed, Heerman wrote,
in great pain:

"Jesus, who didst stoop to prove
Many a thousand pains for me,
When that heart so rich in love,
Bare our sins upon the tree,
Ah! by all those woes of Thine,
Soothe, oh soothe these woes of mine."

chantment. "Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularities of facts." "Temporary inconvenience serves only sional misadventures magnify continuing to enhance multiplied comforts. Occapleasures." Fully subscribing to this truth, we venture to relate two incidents which may prove interesting as illustratire of European red-tape.

It is twenty minutes past six in the morning. We are in the waiting-rcom of the station at Geneva. We have made all our arrangements to say goodby to the quiet old city, to lovely Lake Leman and the arrowy Rhone. Nor shall we soon forget Mdlle. T——, our French landlady's charming daughter. Geneva has been a most delightful resting-place, but we have no time

"In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined

On the hills like gods together, careless of mankind."

Before night's shadows fall we hope to linger with Alfieri in the Corso at Turin. Indeed, we have already taken seats in our narrow coupé, and in a few minutes our train will be rolling southward. Suddenly, we make a discovery. Hitherto, we have had no luggage save a satchel apiece, but in Geneva we had each purchased a trunk, and having carefully attended to these new incumbrances, we forgot our old friends. There is no need for both of us to go in quest of the neglected property. Whilst our companion retains our seat we hurry back to the waiting-room, only a few steps distant. A moment later we return in triumph-but no! The heavy doors leading out to the platform have been closed, and though the train still stands in sight we cannot persuade the attendant to allow us to pass. Such is the stern regulation of the railway authorities. All who have not yet taken passage must now wait until the next train. The idea seems a good one, calculated as it is to prevent hurry and confusion. But it is very annoying, and for us means the loss of half a day. Nor is this all. For the first time since leaving home we are separated from our companion de stant enjoyment, a chapter in life's his voyage. Simultaneously with the closing tory to which, as the years roll on, me- of the waiting-room doors, the different mory will often revert with ever-increas- compartments of the trains were all ing delight. Distance lends wierd en-locked. Those who are within canno

Over Land and Sea.

BY EDWIN A. GERNANT

XVI-A Short Chapter on Red-tape. Ordinarily, the European tourist experiences but little annoyance. Unless of that grumbling, never-satisfied class to whom nothing seems good, because, forsooth, it might have been better. A summer's excursion is a round of con

now get out, just as we who are without cannot get in. We must needs make the best of it. All's well that ends well. Returning to our pension, we wait for something to turn up. Three hours later Mdlle. T——— hands us a telegram from Dr. D, sent from Bellegrade, the first station from Geneva: "I will return with the next train." Good! About noon there is a grand reunion, and a mutual rejoicing over a packet of letters from loved ones in Americaletters which but for this enforced detention in Geneva, would not have been received until eight days later.

About the middle of the afternoon we make another attempt, and this time successfully. Our misadventure, however, occasioned a pecuniary loss. Notwithstanding the winsome representations of our landlady's daughter, who, accompanying us to the station, explained the affair to the French-speaking official, we are obliged to pay extra as far as Culosse.

Doubtless, most travellers have certain strange emotions in common when about.

to pass into Italy for the first time. Indeed, that man were much to be pitied who could thus go down into the land of the historic past without some such poetic, and therefore most decidedly rel, experience. We shall have more to say on this point in a future article. For the present we will not anticipate that ideal enjoyment which a day or two later served to make every meal an Arcadian feast.

Of our necessarily brief Italian tour we had hardly hoped to write. But for that passing kindly interest which the gentle reader instinctively feels in his author's individual and original impressions, we would not now venture to speak of this, in many respects, the crowning feature of our trip. Such an excursion, however limited, is a journey through every period of history. Of Italy it has been said:"The longer she lives the more she recollects." Her great monuments speak to us of a well-nigh forgotten past. Her voice is the voice of an eternal sadness, but none can rob her of her God-given immortality. "One must see and feel and admire," says Castelar, "and then be silent. Her ruins are the skeletons of the ages."

'Land of departed fame! whose classic plains Have proudly echoed to immortal strains; Whose hallowed soil hath given the great and brave, Day-stars of life, a birthplace and a grave; Home of the arts! where glory's faded smile Sheds lingering light o'er many a mouldering Proud wreck of vanished power, of splendor fled, pile; Majestic temple of the mighty dead!"

During the first three hours after leaying Geneva, the heat was so oppressive as to render anything like proper enjoyment of the ride almost impossible. But each hour brought us nearer the great Mount Cenis tunnel, and about midnight we entered the Savoy mouth of the celebrated bore. To say that it is nearly eight miles long, and that we were thirty-five minutes going through, will give some faint idea of the greatness of the enterprise. And when we consider that no less than fourteen years were required for the completion of the work, and that upwards of fifteen million dollars were expended upon the same, the magnitude of the undertaking becomes in large measure apparent. It is pertherefore be permitted to refer to ithaps not generally known-and we may that the name of the tunnel is a misnomer Mount Cenis is really twenty miles distant. The mountain through which the engineering skill of man has thus forced its way is Le Grand Vallon. But, inasmuch as the original plan involved the tunneling of Mount Cenis, this name has been retained. We left Geneva with a crowded train. As the night advanced passengers began to drop off, and towards morning we found ourselves in the possession of an entire compartment. At a quarter past four o'clock we reached our journey's end, tired and sleepy. The air was heavy and heated, promising anything but refreshing repose. Moreover, our luckless trunks were not to be found. Evidently somewhere and somehow they had been detained. Altogether, our Italian tour made its beginning under rather unfavorable circumstances. Disgusted and perplexed, we were driven to the Grand Hotel Trombetta. Horses, driver, landlord and porter-all seemed half-asleep. Small wonder that in half-an-hour later we had succumbed to the powerful influence of this general example. Eight o'clock found us in a much better frame

of mind, notwithstanding the missing various phases of Italian life, row for luggage. But now began the work of the first time presented to our view. discovery and reclaiming.

Historically, the city is not much beOur landlord seemed to grasp the hind some of its more celebrated sisters situation at once, and secured for us the in point of interest. The Augusta Tauservices of a courier or first-class guide, rinorum of ancient Rome was founded who spoke English, German, French by the Taurini, a Ligurian tribe, and and Spanish with truly remarkable pro- enjoys the proud distinction of having ficiency. Although somewhat self-con- been destroyed by Hannibal, two hunsequential, we soon learned to value his dred and eighteen years before the assistance. After a short stroll through Christian era. During the middle ages the busy arcades and across the Piazza it was the chief city of the country of Castello, we proceeded to the custom- Piedmont, and subsequently the resihouse. As our guide had rightly sur- dence of the Dukes of Savoy. In the mised, our difficulty was owing to the numerous struggles of the Italians for fact that we had not presented our national unity, Turin was always the trunks for inspection at the Linus fron- rallying city, and from 1859 to 1865 it tier. To us this had seemed unneces- was the capital of the kingdom. Altosary; inasmuch as we were through gether, the attractions of this old town passengers, this persecution could be could easily detain the pleasure-seeking endured upon reaching Turin. Thus tourist. But we must needs adhere we had reasoned, but not so the Italian strictly to our programme. Next mornauthorities. Accordingly, our luggage ing, the thirtieth of August, we started became objects of suspicion. Our trunks for Milan, crossing the monotonous valhad indeed been sent to Turin, but not ley of the Po, sprinkled with fields of as subject to our control. Carefully rice, and studded with villages half-orimarked, they had been consigned to the ental in appearance and wholly Italian revenue and customs officials. It was in peaceful squalor.

now for us to prove property and submit to the regular examination. If we had been vised at Modane, the frontier station, a moment's detention would have sufficed. But here in Turin we were treated to a complication of redtape methods, surpassing anything we had yet experienced. The signatures of thirteen different officials, in as many different offices, had first to be obtained. Not until three hours had been thus patiently devoted to "the law's delay," were we permitted to unlock our contraband property. As though to intensify the farce, the last of these officials, whose duty it was to see that our trunks contained nothing under the bau, scarce ly glanced at the contents. Still the dignity of the state had been preserved, the authority of the kingdom had been vindicated; the American barbarians might now go on their way rejoicing.

We had not counted upon halting in Turin longer than one night. But the annoyance just described necessitated our waiting here another day before setting out for Milan. Meanwhile, we wandered aimlessly through some of its wide streets and open squares, and from the windows of our hotel watched the

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So much has been said by the press in reference to George Eliot, that at least a passing notice dare not be denied her in these pages. It is not our purpose to discuss her ability as a writer, nor her character as a woman. Everybody has heard as much on that subject as it is desirable to hear. We intend simply to state a few facts connected with her life, and make a few quotations from her works, and thus pay a debt which perhaps is due one of the most. famous writers of the century.

From the days of Sappho to the pres ent, no female literary genius can be

reverent adoration for an all but universal genius is discoverable. I will not presume to say that the reverent adoration is offered to an unworthy idol. I am only presenting a humble excuse for the meagreness of the tribute I can myself pay to her, and the account I am able to give of one who passed with such a multitude of capable judges for a phenomenon alike in literature and philosophy. In the pressure of many occupations and interests I never found time enough for study of George Eliot; and I am not sure I ever overcame one or two early prejudices, or rather repugnances, which unhappily seized upon me in the reading of Adam Bede. Hence it was that I never sought admittance to the famous Sunday afternoons at North Bank."

The following statement expressing his opinion of George Eliot's indebtedness to Mr. Lewes strikes us as exceedingly judicious:

named who has had so many distinguished and extravagant admirers as this lady. She was the object of attention on the part of members of the royal families of Russia and Prussia. Not long before her death she received a visit from Prince Leopold, of England, who informed her that he had read her "Middlemarch" some half-dozen times. Dickens lavished praises upon her early productions; and Thackeray, in his own journal, announced, upon the appearance of Scenes in Clerical Life, that a literary genius of the first magnitude had dawned upon the world. Some years ago Mr. E. P. Whipple, one of the ablest of American critics, in an article in the North American Review declared George Eliot to be intellectually inferior to none of the great thinkers of the age, not excepting such men as Huxley, Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mills. One of the editors of the Philadelphia Times is scarcely less enthusiastic: "As a woman she was intellectually the greatest of her sex. As a philosopher she will take rank with the foremost thinkers of her time. * * * There are few men or women whose passing away would have left a greater blank in the world, and especially in England, than has been created by her death. Disraeli would be forAs a consequence there is so much gotten in thirty days; Gladstone would her later writings that they can hardly "heavy reading" and didactic matter in. hardly be remembered beyond the customary period of official mourning. like Goethe's Wilhelm Meister and Mabe classed among artistic literature; but John Bright, great. and good, and strong, dame De Stael's Corinne, must be charand pure as he is would not last more acterized as scientific or philosophical. than a week, except in the memory of his beloved Manchester; the recol-mirers of the distinguished dead, there From the pens of certain female adlections of England's Queen-Empress has proceeded an immense amount of would die out with the close of the what The Times calls eulogistic "gush." stately ceremonial of the imperial funeral, and the verse of the poet laureate. George Eliot ruled a realm greater, broader, and deeper, than any one of

them. She was one of those rulers from

whom a message in the form of a book, an essay, or a poem, was far more important than the speeches of statesmen, or the utterances of kings."

Mr. Smalley, the well-known London correspondent of the New York Tribune, who was personally acquainted with George Eliot, makes some sensible observations in reference to her, a few of which deserve to be quoted:

"In the newspaper eulogies which have appeared since her death, the same tone of

"He never had a misconception of his own place in the world so astounding as when he thought himself appointed by Providence to form the mind of George Eliot. What he really did was to lay upon her a burden greater than any mind could bear; he cramped the natural play of her genius, he overloaded her wit with his library learning; of which she had, indeed, without hint or help from him, quite as much as she had need for or means of

using; whether for fiction or for the profounder study she proposed to herself."

Miss Fields is ridiculed for having so long a yarn to spin upon the basis of having been graciously favored with an interview or two. But talk about Mariolatry after reading the closing sentence of a panegyric of seven columns in The Independent, by Mary Clemmer, one of that paper's regular contributors:

"Oh! rare great nature, tender as strong, where thou hast come to thy heritage, forget gentle as wise, loving as pure, in the far sphere not those who love thee in the world where so late thou camest to thy crown; nor the souls in the Kingdom of Thought, desolate for their queen."

Mary Clemmer had previously remarked that George Eliot's fine, strong

hand had never struck a blow at religion. people might suppose that her case was The Independent's correspondent may not unlike the woman to whom our Sapossibly regard religion as one thing, and viour said, "Thou hast had seven husChristianity, as another. But never was bands, and he whom thou now hast is not there a more keen-sighted aim, nor a thy husband." They would doubtless be deadlier blow directed against the Chris- outraged at the insinuation that the tian system of faith than when this difference between her case and two "pure spirit" furnished the English others of her sex, perhaps equally famous reading public with a translation of namely George Sand and Sarah BernFeuerbach's Essence of Christianity, hardt, is one only of degree. But cerand Strauss' Life of Jesus. We retain it is that she drew her own line of member hearing the elder Doctor Hodge demarcation between virtue and vice; making a remark of this kind: "Woman and publicly repudiated the one marked is indebted to the Christian religion, out by Him whom Christendom recogmore than to any other power, for her nizes as divine and infallible authority elevation, social and moral. And yet as regards all that it behooves mortals the public is indebted to two of the sex to do, as well as to believe. for English versions of several of the most virulent and effective assaults which the truth of the Gospel has been called upon to sustain." One of these was George Eliot. It is known perhaps to most of our readers that the object of the former work was to prove that the religion of Christ, if at all, is only relatively superior to the religions of Heathenism; whilst the Life of Jesus was written to show that the Gospel history is no history at all, and that the faith of tic talent. She learned Latin and Greek, the Christian rests upon mere mythical tradition.

We cannot get out of the conviction that the same animus which lay back of the translation of these works, prompted most of George Eliot's later productions. In reading Romola, for example, we felt as though we were in an atmosphere pervaded by a death damp. The cloven foot of the Geist der stets verneint confronts us on every hand. On each page we can almost hear the author self-confidently say: "I have risen above the follies of the faith of the Christian Church, and mine is the irresistible ower to raise my reader to the same xalted point of view."

George Eliot's real name was Mary Ann Evans. Her Christian name was afterwards contracted into Marian. The impression prevailed almost up to the time of her death, that her father was a clergyman. But according to the London Times he was a land agent and surveyor in Warwickshire, and was the prototype of a number of the interesting characters in her works. At a very early age she evinced a decided linguis

as well as a number of modern languages. Her extensive acquaintance with German literature and philosophy reveals itself on all sides throughout her writings. It is not improbable that Goethe's Wilhelm Meister and similar works furnished her with the standard of excellence which she sought to attain.

Music was her delight. To this art she devoted herself assiduously previous to her adopting letters as a profession. She did not sing, but played on the piano with much skill. It is especially in Daniel Deronda that her appreciation of the significance of music as an art discloses itself. All who have read it will remember Herr Klessner, the GerJust as her works, taken as a whole, man musician, and the valuable æsthetare a protest against the doctrines of ical hints which are put in his mouth. the Gospel; so was her life a protest Here is one of them: "Do nothing hetagainst its precepts. Every one who ter? (A little fired). No, my dear Miss knows anything about her is aware that Harleth, you could do nothing bettershe kept house with Mr. Lewes, a mar- neither man nor woman could do anyried man, while his undivorced wife thing better (than become an artist) was, at last accounts, still alive. Her I am not decrying the life of the true friends talk about this relationship in a artist. I am exalting it. I say it is way which we cannot designate other out of the reach of any but choice orwise than as mealy-mouthed. They ganizations-natures framed to love perseem all the while to be fearing that fection and to labor for it; ready, like

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