“Ah, yes, I have heard. He is a man of immense genius."

He is a man I envy with all my heart," said Orsino.

"You envy Gouache? I should not have thought".

"No? Ah, madame, to me a man who has a career, a profession, an interest, is a god."

I like that," answered Madame d'Aragona. "But it seems to me you have your choice. You have the world before you. Write your name upon it. You do not lack enthusiasm. Is it the inspiration that you need?"

"Perhaps," remarked Orsino, glancing meaningly at her as she looked at him.

"That is not new," thought she, "but he is charming, all the same." Then she added aloud, "They say that genius finds inspiration everywhere."

“Alas, I am not a genius. What I ask is an occupation and permanent interest. The thing is impossible, but I am not resigned."

She

"Before thirty everything is possible," said Madame d'Aragona. knew that the mere mention of so mature an age would be flattering to such a boy.

"The objections are insurmountable," replied Orsino.

"What objections? Remember that I do not know Rome nor the Romans." "We are petrified in traditions. Spicca said, the other day, that there was but one hope for us. The Americans may yet discover Italy, as we once discovered America."

Madame d'Aragona smiled.

"Who is Spicca?" she inquired, with a lazy glance at her companion's face. "Spicca? Surely you have heard of him. He used to be a famous duelist. He is our great wit. My father likes him very much. He is an odd character."

"There will be all the more credit in

"You do not know what that means." Orsino shook his head incredulously. "You have never tried it."

"No. How could a woman be placed in such a position?"

"That is just it. You cannot understand me."

"That does not follow. Women often understand men men they love or detest better than men themselves."

"Do you love me, madame?" asked Orsino, with a smile.

"I have just made your acquaintance," laughed Madame d'Aragona. “It is a little too soon."

"But then, according to you, if you understand me, you detest me.” "Well? If I do?" She was still laughing.

"Then I ought to disappear, I suppose."

"You do not understand women. Anything is better than indifference. When you see that you are disliked, then refuse to go away. It is the very moment to remain. Do not submit to dislike. Revenge yourself."

"I will try," said Orsino, considerably amused.

"Upon me?"

"Since you advise it "

"Have I said that I detest you?"
"More or less."

"It was only by way of illustration to my argument. I was not serious.” "You have not a serious character, I fancy," remarked Orsino.

"Do you dare to pass judgment on me after an hour's acquaintance?"

"Since you have judged me! You have said five times that I am enthusiastic."

"That is an exaggeration. Besides, one cannot say a true thing too many times."

"And you -to tell me to my face that I am not serious! It is unheard of.

Is that the way you talk to your compatriots?"

"It would not be true. But they would contradict me, as you do. They wish to be thought gay."

"Nothing is easier. Will you allow me the honor of undertaking the matter?"

"I dare say we shall meet somewhere," answered Madame d'Aragona,

F. Marion Crawford.

THE old physiologists said, "There is in the air a hidden food of life; and they watched the effect of different climates. They believed the air of mountains and the seashore a potent predisposer to rebellion. The air was a good republican, and it was remarked that insulary people are versatile and addicted to change, both in religious and secular affairs.

The air that we breathe is an exhalation of all the solid material globe. An aerial fluid streams all day, all night, from every flower and leaf, from every water and soil, from every rock-ledge; and from every stratum a different aroma and air according to its quality. According to quality and according to temperature, it must have effect on manners.

There is the climate of the Sahara : a climate where the sunbeams are vertical; where is day after day, sunstroke after sunstroke, with a frosty shadow between. "There are countries," said Howell, "where the heaven is a fiery furnace, or a blowing bellows, or a dropping sponge, most parts of the year." Such is the assimilating force of the Indian climate that, Sir Erskine Perry says, "the us age and opinion of the Hindoos so in

vades men of all castes and colors who deal with them that all take a Hindoo tint. Parsee, Mongol, Afghan, Israelite, Christian, have all passed under this influence, and exchanged a good part of their patrimony of ideas for the notions, manner of seeing, and habitual tone of Indian society." He compares it to the geologic phenomenon which the black soil of the Dhakkan offers, the property, namely, of assimilating to itself every foreign substance introduced into its bosom.

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How can we not believe in influences of climate and air, when, as true philosophers, we must believe that chemical atoms also have their spiritual cause why they are thus and not other; that carbon, oxygen, alum, and iron each has its origin in spiritual nature?

Even at this day men are to be found superstitious enough to believe that to certain spots on the surface of the planet special powers attach, and an exalted influence on the genius of man. And it appears as if some localities of the earth, through wholesome springs, or as the habitat of rare plants and minerals, or through ravishing beauties of Nature, were preferred before others. There is

great testimony of discriminating persons to the effect that Rome is endowed with the enchanting property of inspiring a longing in men there to live and there to die.

Who lives one year in Boston ranges through all the climates of the globe. And if the character of the people has a larger range and greater versatility, causing them to exhibit equal dexterity in what are elsewhere reckoned incompatible works, perhaps they may thank their climate of extremes, which at one season gives them the splendor of the equator and a touch of Syria, and then runs down to a cold which approaches the temperature of the celestial spaces.

It is not a country of luxury or of pictures; of snows rather, of east winds and changing skies; visited by icebergs, which, floating by, nip with their cool breath our blossoms. Not a luxurious climate, but wisdom is not found with those who dwell at their ease. Give me a climate where people think well and construct well: I will spend six months there, and you may have all the rest of my years.

What Vasari said, three hundred years ago, of the republican city of Florence might be said of Boston: "that the desire for glory and honor is powerfully generated by the air of that place in the men of every profession; whereby all who possess talent are impelled to struggle that they may not remain in the same grade with those whom they perceive to be only men like themselves, even though they may acknowledge such indeed to be masters; but all labor by every means to be foremost."

We find no less stimulus in our native air; no less ambition in our blood, which Puritanism has not sufficiently chastised; and at least an equal freedom in our laws and customs, with as many and as tempting rewards to toil, with so many philanthropies, humanities, charities, soliciting us to be great and good.

New England is a sort of Scotland. 'T is hard to say why. Climate is much; then, old accumulation of the means, books, schools, colleges, literary society; as New Bedford is not nearer to the whales than New London or Portland, yet it has all the equipments for a whaler ready, and it hugs an oil-cask like a brother.

I do not know that Charles River or Merrimac water is more clarifying to the brain than that of the Savannah or Alabama River, yet the men that drink it get up earlier, and some of the morning light lasts through the day. I notice that they who drink for some little time of the Potomac water lose their relish for the water of the Charles River, of the Merrimac and the Connecticut, — even of the Hudson. I think the Potomac water is a little acrid, and should be corrected by copious infusions of these provincial

streams.

Of great cities you cannot compute the influences. In New York, in Montreal, in New Orleans and the farthest colonies, in Guiana, in Guadeloupe, a middle-aged gentleman is just embarking with all his property to fulfill the dream of his life and spend his old age in Paris; so that a fortune falls into the massive wealth of that city every day in the year. Astronomers come because there they can find apparatus and companions; chemist, geologist, artist, musician, dancer, because there only are grandees and their patronage, appreciators and patrons. Demand and supply run into every invisible and unnamed province of whim and passion.

Each great city gathers these values and delights for mankind, and comes to be the brag of its age and population. The Greeks thought him unhappy who died without seeing the statue of Jove at Olympia. With still more reason, they praised Athens, the "Violet City." It was said of Rome in its proudest days, looking at the vast radiation of the privilege of Roman citizenship through the

then known world, "The extent of the city and of the world is the same" (Spatium et urbis et orbis idem). London now for a thousand years has been in an affirmative or energizing mood; has not stopped growing. Linnæus, like a naturalist, esteeming the globe a big egg, called London the punctum saliens in the yolk of the world.

This town of Boston has a history. It is not an accident, not a windmill, or a railroad station, or cross-roads tavern, or an army-barracks, grown up by time and luck to a place of wealth, but a seat of humanity, of men of principle, obeying a sentiment and marching loyally whither that should lead them; so that its annals are great historical lines, inextricably national, part of the history of political liberty. I do not speak with any fondness, but the language of coldest history, when I say that Boston commands attention as the town which was appointed in the destiny of nations to lead the civilization of North America.

A capital fact distinguishing this colony from all other colonies was that the persons composing it consented to come on the one condition that the charter should be transferred from the company in England to themselves; and so they brought the government with them.

On the 3d of November, 1620, King James incorporated forty of his subjects, Sir F. Gorges and others, the council established at Plymouth, in the county of Devon, for the planting, ruling, ordering, and governing of New England in America. The territory-conferred on the patentees in absolute property, with unlimited jurisdiction, the sole power of legislation, the appointment of all .officers and all forms of government tended from the fortieth to the fortyeighth degree of north latitude, and in length from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

ex

John Smith writes (1624): "Of all the four parts of the world that I have yet seen not inhabited, could I but have

means to transplant a colony, I would rather live here than anywhere: and if it did not maintain itself, were we but once indifferently well fitted, let us starve. Here are many isles planted with corn, groves, mulberries, salvage gardens, and good harbors. The seacoast, as you pass, shows you all along large cornfields and great troops of well-proportioned people." Massachusetts, in particular, he calls "the paradise of these parts; " notices its high mountain and its river, "which doth pierce many days' journey into the entrails of that country." Morton arrived in 1622, in June, beheld the country, and "the more he looked, the more he liked it."

In sixty-eight years after the foundation of Boston Dr. Mather writes of it: "The town hath indeed three elder sisters in this colony, but it hath wonderfully outgrown them all, and her mother, Old Boston in England, also; yea, within a few years after the first settlement it grew to be the metropolis of the whole English America."

How easy it is, after the city is built, to see where it ought to stand! In our beautiful bay, with its broad and deep waters covered with sails from every port; with its islands hospitably shining in the sun; with its waters bounded and marked by lighthouses, buoys, and seamarks, every foot sounded and charted; with its shores trending steadily from the two arms which the capes of Massachusetts stretch out to sea, down to the bottom of the bay where the city domes and spires sparkle through the haze, a good boatman can easily find his way for the first time to the State House, and wonder that Governor Carver had not better eyes than to stop on the Plymouth sands.

But it took ten years to find this out. The colony of 1620 had landed at Plymouth. It was December, and the ground was covered with snow. Snow and moonlight make all places alike; and the weariness of the sea, the shrink

But the next colony planted itself at Salem, and the next at Weymouth, another at Medford, before these men, instead of jumping on to the first land that offered, wisely judged that the best point for a city was at the bottom of a deep and islanded bay, where a copious river entered it, and where a bold shore was bounded by a country of rich undulating woodland.

The planters of Massachusetts do not appear to have been hardy men; rather, comfortable citizens, not at all accustomed to the rough task of discoverers; and they exaggerated their troubles. Bears and wolves were many, but early they believed there were lions; Monadnoc was burned over to kill them. John Smith was stung near to death by the most poisonous tail of a fish called a sting-ray. In the journey of Rev. Peter Bulkley and his company through the forest from Boston to Concord, they fainted from the powerful odor of the sweetfern in the sun, like what befell, still earlier, Biörn and Thorfinn, Northmen, in their expedition to the same coast, who ate so many grapes from the wild vines that they were reeling drunk. The lions have never appeared since — nor before. Their crops suffered from pigeons and mice. Nature has never again indulged in these exasperations. It seems to have been the last outrage ever committed by the sting-rays, or by the sweetfern, or by the fox-grapes; they have been of peaceable behavior ever since.

Any geologist or engineer is accustomed to face more serious dangers than any enumerated, excepting the hostile Indians. But the awe was real and overpowering in the superstition with which every new object was magnified. The superstition which hung over the new ocean had not yet been scattered; the powers of the savage were not

were unexplored; and, in that time, terrors of witchcraft, terrors of evil spirits, and a certain degree of terror still clouded the idea of God in the mind of the purest.

The divine will descends into the barbarous mind in some strange disguise; its pure truth not to be guessed from the rude vizard under which it goes masquerading. The common eye cannot tell what the bird will be from the egg, nor the pure truth from the grotesque tenet which sheathes it. But by some secret tie it holds the poor savage to it, and he goes muttering his rude ritual or mythology, which yet conceals some grand commandment, as courage, veracity, honesty, or chastity and generosity.

So these Englishmen. with the Middle Ages still obscuring their reason, were filled with Christian thought. They had a culture of their own. They read Milton, Thomas à Kempis, Bunyan, and Flavel with religious awe and delight, not for entertainment. They were precisely the idealists of England, the most religious in a religious era. An old lady who remembered these pious people said of them that "they had to hold on hard to the huckleberry bushes to hinder themselves from being translated."

In our own age we are learning to look as on chivalry at the sweetness of that ancient piety which makes the genius of St. Bernard, Latimer, Scougal, Jeremy Taylor, Herbert, and Leighton. Who can read the fiery ejaculations of St. Augustine, a man of as clear a sight as almost any other, of Thomas à Kempis, of Milton, of Bunyan even, without feeling how rich and expansive a culture - not so much a culture as a higher life they owed to the promptings of this sentiment; without contrasting their immortal heat with the cold complexion of our recent wits? Who can read the pious diaries of the Eng