paying attenions to Lady Austen, which | passionate for philosophical speculation. could only have one meaning; that for The best metaphysics roused his anger at fear of offending Mrs Unwin, his oldest the first approach, and he stormed against and kindest friend, he abandoned all de- doctrines he had not the patience to comsign of marriage; and that Lady Austen prehend." This remark applies both to left the field in chagrin: not certainly un- his metaphysical and his theological scepnatural. Southey, on the contrary, ridi- ticism. The same even has been enforced cules this story, and thinks it impossible at greater length by a writer in Fraser's Lady Austen could have wanted to marry Magazine, Oct. 1865, who observes of his a man turned of fifty. But this is rather scepticism, that "it arose not from convica severe view of two score years and ten. tion, but from feeling; not from research, Lady Austen was a widow. We don't but from impatience;" and also points out know when she was born. But we do that even to understand what the scholasknow when she died; and that was in 1802, tic philosophy means requires an early and only eighteen years after she left Olney. accurate training to it, which Bolingbroke Unless therefore she died in middle age, never had, and the want of which can which is not recorded, she could not have never be repaired in middle age. His pobeen so much younger than Cowper as to litical annotations are perhaps Mr. Elwin's have made their ages unsuitable. Say she weakest point. For instance, many readwas five or six and thirty, she would not ers not acquainted with the peculiar state have been the first woman of that age by of politics In 1730 would be considerably hundreds who had married a man of fifty- startled at finding that Swift always called three, and married him from pure affection. himself a Whig. The meaning of this can Be this however as it may, the coincidence only be understood by reference to the remains the curious fact that neither" Dissertation on Parties," in which BoPope, Swift, nor Cowper were exactly on ordinary terms with the other sex; that each formed sentimental attachments which some have called Platonic, and some otherwise; and that each quarrelled with, and is said to have ill-treated, the woman who was fond of him.

Of the care and labour expended on both of these editions it would be difficult to speak too highly. Every source of information has been explored, every commentator has been consulted, and the ultimate conclusions at which Mr. Elwin has arrived attest, generally speaking, the soundness of his judgment as much as the extent of his research.

The last volume published, which contains the correspondence between Pope, Swift, Bolingbroke, and Gay, shows a quick perception of character, and a thorough knowledge of the period. A remark on Lord Bolingbroke at page 328 struck us as particularly good. He was much too

lingbroke makes out that Ministers were violating the Constitution, and that opposition in protesting against corruption was not protesting against arbitrous power in another form; hence it was not unfrequent for the Tory party at the time to hold the same language about themselves as Swift held. Their opposition to "management" was like the Whig opposition to prerogative. A few little omissions of this kind we have detected; but very few. And if we add that we think the general tone of Mr. Elwin's remarks both on poor Pope and his associates might be softened with advantage, we have exhausted hostile criticism. Mr. Thackeray's estimate of the brillant intellectual circle which surrounded Pope, the

"Chief out of war and statesman out of place," is more to our liking than Mr. Elwin's whose revenge seems rather artificial.

ORIGIN OF GRAPHITE.-Prof. Wagner as- specimens of which are now brought from the cribes the deposits of graphite-plumbago, or black-lead, which are found in a great variety of rocks of different geological periods, to the decomposition of cyanogen, which is a combination of carbon and nitrogen, or of the cyanides. In several chemical processes used in the arts, graphite is formed artificially; and it is not impossible that this expensive mineral, the best

island of Ceylon, may be produced artificially in such quantities as to be made available in several branches of manufactures where this mineral is indispensable. Chemists, however, have not yet accepted Prof. Wagner's explanation, or any other, as to the natural production of graphite.

From The Spectator.

M. THIERS AND HIS POLICY.

achievement. A Frenchman with money is not a trustful being, and to get money from him in vast quantities, for payment to an enemy and just after a scarcely suppressed civil war, argues great capacity of some kind. We suppose the truth to be that the French people, taught for three generations to believe that Paris was the danger of France, think that now Paris is subjugated the danger is over, but something must be allowed also to M. Thiers himself. He can strike hard, and that may be sufficient for the peasantry, but he can also speak well, and it is clear that his speech on finance, with its bold optimism, and predictions of returning fortune, and covert promises of revindication, exactly suited the small capitalists. We cannot share his confidence in the future, but it is probably sincere - for is

tainly exercised a most inspiriting influence on the tone of the French mind, which needs in civil, as in military life, the exhilaration of mental champagne.

WE must not allow our dislike for M. Thiers' pseudo-Republic, a Republic maintained by the bayonet and subjected to a dictatorship, to blind us to the ability of many sorts which he is unquestionably displaying. There is power in M. Thiers of a kind, the power of a man who though old is very full of life, devoid of small scruples, not to say big ones, experienced in affairs, and certain that when he is first, everybody else is in his place. Supposing his object to be the establishment of his own power for the present as the best obtainable interregnum, he certainly succeeds in the teeth of the most serious obstacles. Paris was nearly as strong as France, and he nas conquered Paris. He has, though a civilian, contrived to obtain such a hold over the Army that he can not M. Thiers ruling?-and it has cerventure to review it in large masses. He has, though a renegade from monarchy, induced a Monarchical Assembly to prefer him, for the present at all events, to a throne, and this even though his dicta- Nor are we quite so certain as some of torship is avowedly intended to increase our contemporaries about the effect, and the chances of the detested Republic. especially the political effect, of all M. He has, though an enemy of the Reds, in- Thiers' new revenue proposals. One of duced M. Gambetta, the one Red chief them at least we suspect to be sound. It who is competent to govern, to adhere is easy to say that increased duties on to the system of which he is the head. liquors will induce a decrease of consumpHe has obtained such a hold on opinion in tion, and so they will, if pushed too far; France, that it is believed of 120 new but it is not so easy to draw the line, to members 90 will have for creed the name say at what point selfish enjoyment will of M. Thiers, and has so restored public begin to be restrained. French Governconfidence that the largest single loan of ments, it must be remembered, are not this century of loans has been raised in hampered by some English difficulties. France in a single day. After making all Owing to the want of coherence among deductions, the raising of this loan has the people — who indulge in secret denunbeen a very noteworthy operation. The ciations to a frightful extent - to the terms, it is true, are very high, nearly 7 number and organization of the police, per cent.; but high terms were needed, and to the practice of domiciliary visits, and the conditions have been so arranged illicit distillation of spirits is very difficult that, supposing France one day to be in France, while the illicit manufacture of trusted, as India for example is trusted, wine is next to an impossibility. You the weight of the burden may be diminished cannot make wine in a tea-kettle. The one-third. Then it is true that we proba- only obstacles the Government has to fear bly know very little of the resources of in taxing liquors are the poverty of the very great States, that we under-estimate people or their resolution not to drink, excessively the profits annually made by and neither may be sufficient to overcome six or seven millions of households, all the attraction of their favourite means of working hard with a view to profit, and excitement, means, we fear, becoming only are ignorant of the true proportion be- more and more popular as the hysteric tween any loan and the annual savings of tendency in French society develops itself the people who subscribe it; but still, to under the pressure of endless revolutions. raise £80,000,000 at once was a bold ex- Certainly the increase in the octrois under periment, and it has succeeded. That the Empire has not checked the consumpmay not be a proof of M. Thiers' wisdom, tion of liquor. Nearly the same argument but it is certainly a proof of the confidence applies to the increased duty on entertained in his rule, and to have inspired while, as to the new tax on transfers, the that confidence is a very remarkable total, cruelly heavy as it is, is probably

sugar,

--

not more than equivalent to lawyers' | pears to Englishmen, has some justificacharges in England for the transfer of tions. The clear duty of Frenchmen, is to small parcels of land. The State in France release the countrymen torn away from has, by scientific arrangements, dispensed them without their own consent, or at with conveyancers' fees, and may safely least to obtain such a position that their take we do not say wisely take some consent must be asked,- that is a duty at portion of the waste it has prevented. It least as clear as that of Italy to release is a blundering and unjust mode of taxing, Venetia if she could, a duty all England but neither a ruinous nor an impossible admitted. And apart altogether from one. For the buyer it is self-adjusted, as that, there is undoubted need for a strong he buys at his own discretion; and for the army in France. Order is for the hour seller it is covered over and over again by her necessity, and though we hold it dethe rise in the value of land of late years. testable that the policy of repression, not The protective duties are utterly bad unnatural in a monarchy, should be kept economically, but politically M. Thiers had up under the fiction of a Republic, we do to consider that the alternative, an income-not deny that a policy of repression is for tax, could not be applied to personality some time inevitable. The cities and the alone without breach of faith with the provinces will be at each other's throats fundholder, and that if extended to land else. What we desire to know now is not it would have to be applied to five mil- whether M. Thiers is keeping an army, for lions of peasants, who can destroy any he cannot help himself, but whether he is Government, and whose whole scheme trying to make that army a good one, or of life and idea of success rest upon the careful concealment of their income. Before everything they want to save silently, publicity meaning with them more taxes, more family claims, and more chances of being robbed. Granting conditions which he doubtless deemed inexorable, the necessity of raising 20 per cent. more revenue without throwing the peasantry into the arms of the Bonapartes, M. Thier's proposals are entitled at least to the merit of cleverness. His idea clearly is to meet the emergency without thinking too much of the future; and he has met it, that is to say, he will pay out the Germans within three years or two years, will compensate French sufferers, and will rebuild Paris, at the cost of a great reduction in the commercial prosperity of France, the causes of which will scarcely be visible to her people, and the extent of which will be less than the addition to her prosperity made under the Empire. There is no wisdom in that, it may be; but there is cleverness, for France, be it remembered, has not to contend with our first economic difficulty. Her population does not increase.

Again, the refusal to reduce the military or naval expenditure, unwise as it ap

only trying to make it devoted to his régime by compliances inconsistent with its own good or that of the country. The accounts upon that point, though meagre, are not very reassuring. It is said that discipline is somewhat better since the capture of Paris; it is certain that the supply departments are better organized; and it is probable that the Generals do not control M. Thiers as much as they did Napoleon. But, on the other hand, M. Thiers avoids, and it is believed dislikes anything like radical reorganization; he flatters the troops excessively, and he passed over some incidents before the walls of Paris which indicated that the men were not thoroughly in hand. His cleverness, which in civil affairs is producing good, if temporary results, appears as regards military affairs to be directed mainly towards appearances; and if this is the case, it is at this point that danger will arise to his scheme. Speeches will raise loans, but they will not mak an Army; and the optimism which anilarates a people like the French, makes an imperfect Army consider itself a match both for the world and the peof

THE DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND has been | Second Tale of "Beryn," from which Urry good enough to bring to town his MS. of Chaucer's" Canterbury Tales," for examination by Mr. Furnivall and other Chaucer students. The MS. proves, as it was hoped it would prove, to be Mrs. Thynne's, containing the Merchant's

printed this tale at the end of his edition of Chaucer's works. We hope soon t give a de scription of the contents of the MS which is s vellum folio of about the middle of the fifteenth century.

Athenæum

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