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rection upon human effort;-in a word, to close that gulf which is called Progress.

Such was the vast, enormous, European plan, which no one conceived, for none of those men of the Old World had the genius for that, but which all pursued. As to the plan in itself, as to that gigantic idea of universal oppression, whence came it? Who can tell? Men saw it in the air. It appeared on the side of the past. It enlightened certain minds. It pointed out certain modes of action. It was a kind of glimmer issuing from the tomb of Machiavelli.

At certain moments in human history, at some things that are plotted, at some things that are done, it seems as if all the old demons of humanity-Louis XI., Philip II., Catherine de' Medici, the Duke of Alba, Torquemada-were gathered apart in a corner, seated around a table, and holding council. We look, we regard them, and instead of these colossals, we find only abortions. We expected the Duke of Alba, we find Schwartzenberg; we looked for Torquemada, and behold Veuillot. The old European despotism continues its march, under the lead of these little men, and goes always on. It is like the Czar Peter in his travels. "We made relays of whatever we found," writes he; "when we could get no more Tartar horses, we took up with asses." To attain that end, the subjection of all men and all things, it was necessary to enter upon a path, obscure, tortuous, steep, difficult; they did enter it. Some of those who entered it knew what they were doing.

Parties live upon words; those men whom 1848 had frightened and rallied together have found their catchwords,-religion, family, property. They attacked, with that vulgar address which suffices when men speak to fear, certain obscure quarters of what is called socialism. The struggle was to save religion, property, and family. "Follow your banners!" cried they. The herd of frightened interests rushed after them.

They coalesced, they made front, they gathered a party. They had a crowd around them. That crowd was composed of divers elements. The landholder joined it because his rents had come down; the peasant, because he had paid the forty-five centimes : the man who did not believe in God thought it was necessary to save religion, because he had been forced to sell his horses. They separated from this crowd the force which it contained, and availed themselves of it. They enforced the system of oppression by every means, by the law, by the vote, by the legislature, by the tribune, by the jury, by the magistracy, by the police; in Lom

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| bardy, by the sabre; in Naples, by the galleys; in Hungary, by the gibbet. To restrain intelligence,-to put the chain upon intellects, their fugitive slaves,-to prevent the past from disappearing, to prevent the future from being born,-to continue themselves kings, princes, nobles, privileged classes,-everything became good, everything just; all was legitimate. They organized for the necessities of the struggle, and spread abroad in the world, a kind of moral ambuscade against freedom, which Ferdinand put in action at Palermo, Antonelli at Rome, Schwartzenberg at Milan and at Pesth, and still later, the men of December, those wolves of the state, at Paris.

****Formerly the world was a place where men walked with slow steps, with backs bent, faces lowered; where the Count de Gouvion was waited upon at table by JeanJacques (Rousseau); where the Chevalier de Rohan beat Voltaire with blows of a cudgel; where they set Daniel De Foe in the pillory; where a city like Dijon was separated from a city like Paris by a will to be made, by robbers at all the corners of the woods, and by ten days of coach: where a book was a kind of infamy and rubbish which the executioner burned on the steps of the Hall of Justice; where superstition and ferocity joined hand in hand; where the pope said to the emperor: Jungamus dexteras, gladium gladio copulemus; where one encountered at every step crosses on which were hung amulets, and gibbets on which were hung men; where there were heretics, Jews, lepers; where the houses had battlements and loopholes; where they shut up the streets with a chain, the rivers with a chain, the cities with walls, the kingdoms with prohibitions and penalties; where, except authority and force, which were closely banded, all was penned up, doled out, cut up, divided, parcelled, hated and hating, scattered and dead; men but dust-power, the king Log.

Now, there is a world in which all is alive, united, combined, related, mingled together; a world where reign thought, commerce, and industry; where politics, continually more settled, tends to associate itself with science; a world where the last scaffolds and the last cannon are hastening to cut off their last heads, and to vomit their last shells; a world where the day grows with each minute; a world in which distance has disappeared, where Constantinople is nearer to Paris than Lyons was a century ago, where America and Europe throb with the same pulsation of the heart; a world all circulation and all affection, whose brain is France, whose arteries are railways, and whose fibres are the electric

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of air still lighter; it has already found the bubble of air, it holds it imprisoned; it has yet only to find the impulsive force, only to create the vacuum before the balloon, for example, only to heat the air before the aeronaut, as the rocket does before it; it has only to solve in some manner this problemand it will be solved. And do you know what will happen then? On the very instant, frontiers will disappear, barriers will vanish away. All that is thrown like a Chinese wall around thought, around commerce, around inwill crumble; in spite of censorships, in spite of the index expurgatorius, it will rain books and journals everywhere; Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau will fall in showers on Rome, on Naples, on Vienna, on St. Petersburg; the human Word becomes manna, and the serf gathers it in the furrow; fanaticisms die; oppression becomes impossible; man no longer crawls upon the earth, he escapes from it; civilization takes to itself the wings of birds, and flies and whirls and alights joyously on all parts of the globe at once: hold! see there-it passes; point your cannon, ye old despotisms, it disdains you; you are but the cannon ball, it is the flash of lightning: no more hatreds, no more interests devouring one another, no more wars; a kind of new life, made up of concord and of light, surrounds and soothes the world; the brotherhood of nations crosses the bounds of space and mingles in the eternal blue; men fraternize in the heavens.

Let us proclaim it firmly, proclaim it even in fall and in defeat, this age is the grandest of all ages; and do you know wherefore? Because it is the most benignant. This age, the imme-dustry, around nationality, around progress, diate issue of the French Revolution, and its first-born, enfranchises the slave in America, uplifts the pariah in Asia, destroys the suttee in India, and extinguishes in Europe the last brands of the stake, civilizes Turkey, penetrates the Koran with the Gospel, dignifies woman, subordinates the right of the strongest to the right of the most just, suppresses pirates, ameliorates penal laws, purifies the galleys, throws the bloody sword in the gutter, condemns the death penalty, takes the chain and ball from the foot of the convict, abolishes torture, degrades and stigmatizes war, weakens the dukes of Alba and the Charles Ninths, plucks out the fangs from tyrants.

This age proclaims the sovereignty of the citizen, and the inviolability of life; it crowns the people and consecrates man.

In art, it possesses every kind of genius: writers, orators, poets, historians, publicists, philosophers, painters, sculptors, musicians; majesty, grace, power, figure, splendor, depth, color, form, style; it reinforces itself at once in the real and in the ideal, and carries in its hand those two thunderbolts, the true and the beautiful. In science it works all miracles; it makes saltpetre out of cotton, a horse out of steam, a laborer out of the voltaic pile, a courier out of the electric fluid, and a painter of the sun; it bathes itself in the subterranean waters, while it is warmed with the central fires; it opens upon the two infinites those two windows, the telescope on the infinitely great, the microscope on the infinitely little, and it finds in the first abyss the stars of heaven, and in the second abyss the insects which prove the existence of a God. It annihilates time, it annihilates distance, it annihilates suffering; it writes a letter from Paris to London, and has the answer back in ten minutes; it cuts off the leg of a manthe man sings and smiles.

It has only to realize-and it already touches it a progress which is nothing by the side of the other miracles which it has already achieved: it has only to find the means of directing in a body of air a bubble

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No! stand to your glasses steady;

The thoughtless are here the wise, A cup to the dead already

Hurrah for the next that dies!

There's many a hand that's shaking,

There's many a cheek that's sunk; But soon, though our hearts are breaking, They'll burn with the wine we have drunk. So stand to your glasses steady

"Tis here the revival lies; A cup to the dead already

And hurrah for the next that dies!

Who dreads to the dust returning?
Who shrinks from the sable shore,
Where the high and haughty yearning
Of the soul shall sting no more?
Ho! stand to your glasses steady-
This world is a world of lies;
A cup for the dead already—
Hurrah for the next that dies!

Cut off from the land that bore us,

Betrayed by the land we find,
Where the brightest have gone before us,
And the dullest remain behind-

Stand, stand to your glasses steady,
'Tis all we have left to prize,

A cup to the dead already

And hurrah for the next that dies!
CAPTAIN DOWLING.

RAB AND HIS FRIENDS.

Four-and-thirty years ago, Bob Ainslie and I were coming up Infirmary Street from the Edinburgh High School, our heads together, and our arms intertwisted, as only lovers and boys know how, or why.

When we got to the top of the street, and turned north, we espied a crowd at the Tron Church. "A dog-fight!" shouted Bob, and was off; and so was I, both of us all but praying that it might not be over before we got up! And is not this boy-nature? and human nature too? and don't we all wish a house on fire not to be out before we see it? Dogs like fighting; old Isaac says they "delight" in it, and for the best of all reasons; and boys are not cruel because they like to see the fight. They see three of the great cardinal virtues of dog or man-courage, endurance, and skill-in intense action. This is very different from a love of making dogs fight, and enjoying, and aggravating, and making gain by their pluck. A boy, be he ever so fond himself of fighting, if he be a good boy, hates and despises all this, but he would have run off with Bob and me fast

enough it is a natural, and a not wicked interest, that all boys and men have in witnessing intense energy in action.

Does any curious and finely ignorant woman wish to know how Bob's eye at a glance announced a dog-fight to his brain? He did not, he could not see the dogs fighting; it was a flash of an inference, a rapid induction. The crowd round a couple of dogs fighting is a crowd masculine mainly, with an occasional active, compassionate woman, fluttering wildly round the outside, and using her tongue and her hands freely upon the men, as so many "brutes;" it is a crowd annular, compact, and mobile; a crowd centripetal, having its eyes and its heads all bent downwards and inwards, to one common focus.

Well, Bob and I are up, and find it is not over: a small, thoroughbred, white bullterrier is busy throttling a large shepherd's dog, unaccustomed to war, but not to be trifled with. They are hard at it; the scientific little fellow doing his work in great style, his pastoral enemy fighting wildly, but with the sharpest of teeth and a great courage. Science and breeding, however, soon had their own; the Game Chicken, as the premature Bob called him, working his way up, took his final grip of poor Yarrow's throat,and he lay gasping and done for. His master, a brown, handsome, big young shepherd from Tweedsmuir, would have liked to have knocked down any man, would "drink up Esil, or eat a crocodile," for that part, if he had a chance: it was no use kicking the little dog; that would only make him hold the closer. Many were the means shouted out in mouthfuls, of the best possible ways of ending it. "Water!" but there was none near, and many cried for it who might have got it from the well at Blackfriars Wynd. "Bite the tail!" and a large, vague, benevolent, middleaged man, more desirous than wise, with some struggle got the bushy end of Yarrow's tail into his ample mouth, and bit it with all his might. This was more than enough for the much-enduring, much-perspiring shepherd, who, with a gleam of joy over his broad visage, delivered a terrific facer upon our large, vague, benevolent, middle-aged friend,-who went down like a shot.

Still the Chicken holds; death not far off. "Snuff! a pinch of snuff!" observed a calm, highly dressed young buck, with an eye-glass in his eye. "Snuff, indeed!" growled the angry crowd, affronted and glaring. "Snuff! a pinch of snuff!" again observes the buck, but with more urgency; whereon were produced several open boxes, and from a mull which may have been at Culloden, he took a pinch, knelt down, and presented it to the

nose of the Chicken. The laws of physiology | after the mastiff. He made up the Cowgate and of snuff take their course; the Chicken sneezes, and Yarrow is free!

The young pastoral giant stalks off with Yarrow in his arms,-comforting him.

But the Bull Terrier's blood is up, and his soul unsatisfied; he grips the first dog he meets, and discovering she is not a dog, in Homeric phrase, he makes a brief sort of amende, and is off. The boys, with Bob and me at their head, are after him: down Niddry Street he goes bent on mischief; up the Cowgate like an arrow,-Bob and I, and our small men, panting behind.

There, under the single arch of the South Bridge, is a huge mastiff, sauntering down the middle of the causeway, as if with his hands in his pockets: he is old, gray, brindled, as big as a little Highland bull, and has the Shakespearian dewlaps shaking as he goes.

The Chicken makes straight at him, and fastens on his throat. To our astonishment, the great creature does nothing but stand still, hold himself up, and roar,-yes, roar; a long, serious, remonstrative roar. How is this? Bob and I are up to them. He is muzzled! The bailies had proclaimed a general muzzling, and his master, studying strength and economy mainly, had encompassed his huge jaws in a home-made apparatus, constructed out of the leather of some ancient breechin. His mouth was open as far as it could be; his lips curled up in rage,—a sort of terrible grin; his teeth gleaming, ready, from out the darkness; the strap across his mouth tense as a bowstring; his whole frame stiff with indignation and surprise; his roar asking us all round, "Did you ever see the like of this?" He looked a statue of anger and astonishment, done in Aberdeen granite.

at a rapid swing; he had forgotten some engagement. He turned up the Candlemaker Row, and stopped at the Harrow Inn.

There was a carrier's cart ready to start, and a keen, thin, impatient, black-a-vised little man, his hand at his gray horse's head, looking about angrily for something.

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'Rab, ye thief!" said he, aiming a kick at my great friend, who drew cringing up, and avoiding the heavy shoe with more agility than dignity, and watching his master's eye, slunk dismayed under the cart, his ears down, and as much as he had of tail down too.

What a man this must be,-thought I,-to whom my tremendous hero turns tail! The carrier saw the muzzle hanging, cut and useless, from his neck, and I eagerly told him the story, which Bob and I always thought, and still think, Homer, or King David, or Sir Walter alone were worthy to rehearse. The severe little man was mitigated, and condescended to say, " Rab, my man, puir Rabbie,"

whereupon the stump of a tail rose up, the ears were cocked, the eyes filled, and were comforted; the two friends were reconciled. Hupp!" and a stroke of the whip were given to Jess; and off went the three.

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Bob and I buried the Game Chicken that night (we had not much of a tea) in the backgreen of his house in Melville Street, No. 17, with considerable gravity and silence; and being at the time in the Iliad, and, like all boys, Trojans, we called him Hector, of course.

Six years have passed,-a long time for a boy and a dog: Bob Ainslie is off to the wars; I am a medical student, and clerk at Minto House Hospital.

Rab I saw almost every week, on the WedWe soon had a crowd: the Chicken heldnesday; and we had much pleasant intimacy. on. "A knife!" cried Bob; and a cobbler I found the way to his heart by frequent gave him his knife; you know the kind of scratching of his huge head, and an occasionknife, worn away obliquely to a point, and al bone. When I did not notice him he would always keen. I put its edge to the tense plant himself straight before me, and stand leather; it ran before it; and then!-one wagging that bud of a tail, and looking up, sudden jerk of that enormous head, a sort of with his head a little to the one side. His dirty mist about his mouth, no noise,-and master I occasionally saw; he used to call me the bright and fierce little fellow is dropped, "Maister John," but was laconic as any limp and dead. A solemn pause; this was Spartan. more than any of us had bargained for. I turned the little fellow over, and saw he was quite dead; the mastiff had taken him by the small of the back like a rat, and broken it.

He looked down at his victim appeased, ashamed, and amazed; snuffed him all over, stared at him, and taking a sudden thought, turned round and trotted off. Bob took the dead dog up, and said, "John, we'll bury him after tea." "Yes," said I, and was off

One fine October afternoon, I was leaving the hospital, when I saw the large gate open, and in walked Rab, with that great and easy saunter of his. He looked as if taking general possession of the place; like the Duke of Wellington entering a subdued city, satiated with victory and peace. After him came Jess, now white with age, with her cart; and in it a woman, carefully wrapped up,-the carrier leading the horse anxiously, and looking

back. When he saw me, James (for his name was James Noble) made a curt and grotesque "boo," and said, "Maister John, this is the mistress; she's got trouble in her breest,-some kind o' an income we're thinkin'."

By this time I saw the woman's face; she was sitting on a sack filled with straw, her husband's plaid round her, and his big-coat, with its large white metal buttons, over her feet.

I never saw a more unforgetable face, pale, serious, lonely,* delicate, sweet, without being at all what we call fine. She looked sixty, and had on a mutch, white as snow, with its black ribbon; her silvery, smooth hair setting off her dark-gray eyes,-eyes such as one sees only twice or thrice in a lifetime, full of suffering, full also of the overcoming of it: her eyebrows black and delicate, and her mouth firm, patient, and contented, which few mouths ever are.

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As I have said, I never saw a more beautiful countenance, or one more subdued to settled quiet. Ailie," said James, "this is Maister John, the young doctor; Rab's freend, ye ken. We often speak aboot you, doctor." She smiled, and made a movement, but said nothing; and prepared to come down, putting her plaid aside and rising. Had Solomon, in all his glory, been handing down the Queen of Sheba at his palace gate, he could not have done it more daintily, more tenderly, more like a gentleman, than did James the Howgate carrier, when he lifted down Ailie his wife. The contrast of his small, swarthy, weather-beaten, keen, worldly face to herspale, subdued, and beautiful-was something wonderful. Rab looked on concerned and puzzled, but ready for anything that might turn up,—were it to strangle the nurse, the porter, or even me. Ailie and he seemed to be great friends.

"As I was sayin', she's got a kind o' trouble in her breest, doctor; wull ye tak' a look at it ?" We walked into the consulting-room, all four; Rab grim and comic, willing to be happy and confidential if cause could be shown, willing also to be the reverse, on the same terms. Ailie sat down, undid her open gown and her lawn handkerchief round her neck, and without a word showed me her right breast. I looked at and examined it carefully, she and James watching me, and Rab eyeing all three. What could I say? there it was, that had once been so soft, so shapely, so white, so gracious and bountiful, so full of all blessed conditions,"-hard

* It is not easy giving this look by one word; it was expressive of her being so much of her life alone.

as a stone, a centre of horrid pain, making that pale face, with its gray, lucid, reasonable eyes, and its sweet, resolved mouth, express the full measure of suffering overcome. Why was that gentle, modest, sweet woman, clean and lovable, condemned by God to bear such a burden?

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I got her away to bed. May Rab and me bide?" said James. You may; and Rab, if he will behave himself." "I'se warrant he's do that, doctor"; and in slank the faithful beast. I wish you could have seen him. There are no such dogs now. He belonged to a lost tribe. As I have said, he was brindled and gray like Rubislaw granite; his hair short, hard, and close, like a lion's; his body thickset, like a little bull,- -a sort of compressed Hercules of a dog. He must have been ninety pounds' weight, at the least; he had a large blunt head; his muzzle black as night, his mouth blacker than any night, a tooth or two-being all he had-gleaming out of his jaws of darkness. His head was scarred with the records of old wounds, a sort of series of fields of battle all over it; one eye out, one ear cropped as close as was Archbishop Leighton's father's; the remaining eye had the power of two; and above it, and in constant communication with it, was a tattered rag of an ear, which was forever unfurling itself, like an old flag; and then that bud of a tail, about one inch long, if it could in any sense be said to be long, being as broad as long, the mobility, the instantaneousness of that bud were very funny and surprising, and its expressive twinklings and winkings, the intercommunications between the eye, the ear, and it, were of the oddest and swift

est.

Rab had the dignity and simplicity of great size; and having fought his way all along the road to absolute supremacy, he was as mighty in his own line as Julius Cæsar or the Duke of Wellington, and had the gravity* of all great fighters.

You must have often observed the likeness of certain men to certain animals, and of certain dogs to men. Now, I never looked at Rab without thinking of the great Baptist preacher, Andrew Fuller. The same large, heavy, menacing, combative, sombre, honest

* A Highland game-keeper, when asked why a certain terrier, of singular pluck, was so much more solemn than the other dogs, said, "O, sir, life's full o' sairiousness to him, he just never can get enuff o' fechtin'."

Fuller was, in early life, when a farmer lad at Soham, famous as a boxer; not quarrelsome, but not without "the stern delight" a man of strength and courage feels in their exercise. Dr. Charles Stewart, of Dunearn, whose rare gifts and graces as a physician, a divine, a

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