changed on the dial. Nor do I believe it does on his. Three hundred thousand volumes in sight at once never bewilder his eyes. No sea-captain ever walked a steamer's bridge with more composure, as he looked out upon the waste of waters, or knew better what to do, than does the German author as he sits and writes amid the world of books in the libraries of Munich, Berlin, or St. Petersburg. He is content to upturn many a haystack for a single needle. Neander's spending an entire day on top of his bookcase, feasting on the "Church Fathers," but in delightful ignorance of any post-patristic age, and setting his sister Hannah more thau half crazy as to his whereabouts, is a type of the very habit of those of his fellow-countrymen who ply the pen. They spend more time over the matter that falls into a single foot-note for the darling book than an Englishman would be content to occupy in a whole chapter.

The more one becomes acquainted with the habits of German authors the more decided becomes the conviction of his real and imperturbable honesty. He knows his public, and that it will put up with no nonsense from him; and, what is better, he knows himself, and that he would not be able, for a disturbed conscience, to calmly pull up his smoke through his cherry-stem or face his publisher any day, if he had failed to put into his manuscript the best stuff that his brain and all the respectable libraries could furnish. No slovenliness here. Where have I not met the German author, pencil in hand, trying to get the whole truth into his pages? Delving day after day in the oldest and richest libraries of Germany; sitting on broken columns in the Palace of the Caesars, in Rome, trying to decipher the inscriptions of the time of Horace; working at the Cufic letters on the Tayloon Mosque, in Cairo; luxuriating at Karnak and Phila, in his study of the plans of the marvellous temples; counting the steps of Mars Hill, cut out of solid rock, up which the Areopagites and their greatest teacher, Paul, ascended; jumping from one house-top to another of Damascus, to note in his own book the celebrated inscription to the triumph of Christianity which even Moslem hate has not dared to erase or deface; sitting beside Virgil's grave, at Naples, testing the verdict of the sweet tradition-and all to tell dear Germany something it never knew or never knew so well.

But what I admire most in German authors is their uncompromising pluck. Talk of Metz, Strasbourg, and Sedan! Never did Uhlan brave more than these quiet workers with the quill-I mean the real goose quill; for you may as well try to make the German book-writer think that smoking is an impediment to authorship as that any respectable book can be or ought to be written with pen of steel or gold. Of course, there are those who have adopted these innovations; but they are mostly of the younger

class, mere parvenus as yet in the charmed circle. If I should be allowed to wake up from my resting-place five hundred years from this wet November morning, and look over the shoulder of one of the ten Herren professors of history in Berlin University, as he prepares his manuscript on the German Conquest of France, away back in 1870 and 1871, and writes a letter to his Leipzig publisher, why should I not find him writing with his ink-speckled quill, and, instead of using note-paper and envelope for his letter, employing a great sheet of blue paper, one leaf of which, after the manner of his ancestors, serves the purpose of an envelope, which must be sealed with the bothersome red wax and stamped with the old family seal?

But back to the pluck. Your German author is never intimidated by the magnitude of his object. He has his idea, and you may as well tell him that Father Rhine ought to belong to the French as to say anything that could tend to diminish his confidence in his project. He knows what his thought is; and he thinks it is nobody's business but his and his family's. Don't make any reflection on his topic, if you wish to continue on friendly terms. I read a series of brilliant articles, over a year ago, in the Augsburg Gazette, on "The Man in the Moon," and I have no doubt they are already matured into a duodecimo. I should not be startled to hear of some one writing on the "Woman in the Moon." But such odd and plucky subjects stare you in the face in any German bookstore. The German will venture on any theme. No Monte Rosa or Matterhorn dispirits him. He goes diligently to working up a volume on any science, art, people— dead, living, to be, or not to be-arming himself with a very arsenal of authorities, sparing neither sweat nor scanty purse, plodding on with the grand certainty of fate toward the elaboration of such a thought as would take two generations of authors with us to summon confidence enough to venture a volume upon. He knows he has to face a world of critics, men of every type of savage nature, who furnish the horns, hoofs, and teeth for the scores of critical serials, and hold themselves ready to masticate any new comer into the domain of authorship. But do not waste your sympathy on him; for not a whit does he care-no more than old Sam Johnson for the carpers at his dictionary. He does not take the time to read the critiques on him. All he knows is what the Frau or his friends have a mind to reveal. He is too busy thinking about his next volume. This sublime indifference to the oracular critics is worthy anybody's admiration. If it depended on him, the whole set would be hanged as high as Haman-that is, if he could appropriate to those gentry time enough to decide on their destiny.

The German author ventures out early, and the deeper his soundings the better. Tholuck's maiden effort was in Latin, and on Sufism—or, as it read in the biographies, "Sufisums sive Theosophia Persarum pantheistica quam e MSS. bibliotheca Regia Berolinensis Persicis, Arabicis, Turcicis, eruit et illustravit." And all this from a consumptive stripling of twenty-two! The fates be praised, the work never passed into a second edition. Since then Tholuck has grown into modester and simpler titles and a preference for his own tongue. When I see the early attempts at authorship in Germany, I am reminded of the efforts of a child to walk. He tumbles down now and then; gets bruises numberless; but is promptly on his feet again, and in due time can walk and run with others. The German author tries his legs betimes, for he knows that he must fall about so often anyhow, whether he begin soon or late. By-and-by he wrings his recognition from the critics, and during the most of his life occupies a position of honour in the guild. He is reckoned a worthy member, and is pushing out with confidence his portly octavo every two years, with brochures and duodecimos to give variety to the interval, before his Anglo-Saxon brother has blocked out his first undertaking. Luther, three hundred years ago, published at the rate of a book a fortnight.

Then he keeps at his oar with astonishing pertinacity. Goethe working with his pen up into the eighties, and Humboldt until squarely up to ninety, indicate the rule. Von Raumer and Boeckle and Ranke are striking proofs of the freshness, vigour, and confidence of German authors to the very last. They don't consider their day past, let happen what will. A more beautiful specimen of literary life cannot be found than any resident in a university town may see in the readiness and spirit with which aged professors, too infirm in body to walk briskly, pass from a finished work to a new one; and, like Sir William Hamilton, who died with a dozen untouched volumes in his head, tell you what book they are next going to begin, what old one they are pledged to enlarge into a new edition, what literary journey they are projecting for the inspection of libraries or the examination of localities. Like Schleiermacher, they declare eternal hostility to old age. And when they die, it is in just the right place, amid plans, some nearly completed, some perhaps just begun. They never commit the mistake of many a sane and capable man with us, no matter about his years, of waiting for death to come. They work, and suffer Death to take his own time. And who would question their wisdom?

48

IRISH CHARACTERISTICS.

MUCH has been written and much has been read of the power held by the Roman Catholic priesthood in Ireland over their flocks; but only those who have lived in Ireland, and lived long there, mixing freely with the peasantry, and gradually seeing the system for themselves, can fully understand its extent. Visitors cannot see it, for it does not appear on the surface; nor would it occur to the people to mention it to strangers; it is so much a part of their lives, without which existence would be incomprehensible. Roman Catholicism as it is in England, and as it is in Ireland, are two totally different religions. In the practical working of the system there is as wide a difference as there is between the moderate and cultivated tone of the Tablet newspaper, and the bigoted ravings of the Fenian press in the Irish metropolis. The English pervert yields himself voluntarily, consequently gracefully, to the laws of his Church; the Irish Roman Catholic must not be trusted to have an opinion in the matter. Submission, and such ignorance as will preserve this submission unbroken, is absolutely necessary. The mental state in which the peasant is born must be still his state, and such education as he may receive must come to him carefully filtered through ecclesiastical channels. The idea of freeing himself from such bondage never enters the mind of the lower class of Irishman. He was born in it, and in a measure he likes it. What would be thought in England of the priest of the parish if he were to walk into a shop or counting-house and demand to see the balance sheet for the previous year, to assess the amount of tax to be contributed to the funds of the Church? It may be that there is a chapel to be built in the neighbourhood, or a convent, or a monastery, so that all the faithful must be taxed-in fact, a poll tax levied. The man who earns a shilling a day must spare a penny a week for every member of his family, great and small, and so on in proportion to the amount of the earnings. Refusal is vain, for the priest is all powerful and must be obeyed; from the votes for an election of a Member of Parliament to the selection of the shop where these meagre earnings are to be spent-nothing is too high or too low for the priest to take cognisance of. And then, what a satisfaction it is to think that by obedience to such an authority a man is "making his sowl!" But the mistake which many people, who suggest remedies for Irish ills, make is in supposing that Ireland is exclusively a Roman Catholic country. It is true that numbers may tell on the side of Roman Catholicism; but intelligence, industry, and good behaviour are in far greater pro

portions on the Protestant side. Every fresh concession made to the clamours of Cardinal Cullen, and the faction which he represents, is only another stumbling block in the path of the intelligent members of the community who are fighting the battle of education and enlightenment. Respectable, well-disposed, hard-working people are not clamorous, so the history of their struggles never reaches England. They are willing to help themselves, satisfied with English rule, and only anxious for the prevalence of law and order; while, on the other hand, the bigoted, discontented faction led by Cardinal Cullen are never satisfied;-like the horse-leech, "give! give!" is their constant cry. To talk of education in Ireland, at least such education as our nineteenth century demands, is useless if it be given over into the hands of the priesthood. As a case exemplifying this, and not by any means a solitary one either— for every county in the south and west has the same story to tell— may be taken something which occurred in the town of Galway a few years ago.

This town had long been proverbial for its squalor and misery, the idle and lawless population who hung about its streets, living, as it is phrased there, "from hand to mouth," ignorant and lazy, trusting, perhaps, to an occasional successful draught of fish, or some happy accident, to keep the wolf from the door. The number of idle boys who frequented the quays, or the market place, graduating in preparation for a life of crime, or at least, worthlessness, moved the spirit of the Warden of Galway to try to bring about a better state of things. Though a poor man himself -only a Protestant clergyman-he was yet one of the 'ould stock" '-a man of such ancient descent and most undoubted Celtic origin, as satisfied even these fastidious worshippers of "Milesian princes." He had sufficient influence to induce the people to fall in with his plan of establishing an industrial training school, where these wild Galway arabs should be rescued from street life, and taught useful trades. A house was taken, and tailors, carpenters, shoemakers, &c., were engaged to instruct the boys. A few weeks saw forty-five boys diligently at work, and order gradually taking the place of the confusion which at first attended the efforts to civilise these young savages. As the school prospered, the warden deemed it advisable to introduce a schoolmaster, and add some tuition of the head to the instruction of the hands. But he reckoned without his host. The priest of the parish at once served him with a notice to the effect that all mental education must pass through his hands, and that, though trades might be taught, reading and writing were forbidden. The warden persisted, but not for very long. The parents, warned by the priest, withdrew the children, and in a