berately to him, took off my hat and said: 'Dr. Livingstone, I presume?' 'Yes,' said he, with a kind smile, lifting his cap slightly. I replace my hat on my head, and he puts on his cap, and we both grasp hands, and I then say aloud: 'I thank God, Doctor, I have been permitted to see you.' He answered: 'I feel thankful that I am here to welcome you.'

29. PETER THE GREAT AS A CARPENTER.

Peter the Great was the first Sovereign of Russia who bethought himself of civilizing his people, and of causing his country to take her proper position in the family of nations. In order to effect his object, as he was possessed of no navy, and of no subjects able to undertake the construction of ships, he determined to travel incognito into various maritime countries. In 1697, then, Peter set out in the suite of his own ambassador, and arrived in the city of Amsterdam, where he entered himself as a working carpenter, took his place among the artisans, and became in all respects one of themselves, wearing the same dress, eating the same sort of food, and inhabiting equally humble lodgings. In this way he passed several months, bearing a considerable part in the building of a ship, which was named St. Peter, and afterwards purchased by the royal artisan as the germ from whence was to proceed a mighty navy.

30. THE GERMANS AT WAR.

The movement of the troops is incessant, though no one is told whither they are going, and with each advance the Prussians bring forward their Feld-Post and their military telegraph. A more perfect system of organization it is difficult to imagine. The columns of provisions creep like great serpents over the country. From side to side for many a mile the whole country is on the move. Now a regiment of cavalry goes by, with infinite jingling of harness and clattering of hoofs. Now the bayonets of the infantry shine out among the trees, or there is an interminable train of guns dragged

past. I fancy that the villagers are simply astounded at what they see, and think that all Germany is upon them. 'All of us here?' The soldiers laugh and tell of the other two great armies which are invading France. The Fatherland is quite safe; the war has scarcely troubled a single German village, and, rain as it may, the men are thoroughly cheerful. They will be, as our lads express it, 'bad to beat in their next engagement.'

31. THE BATTLE OF GRAVELOTTE.

Now darkness was drawing on, and after eight o'clock we could trace the direction of troops by the fiery paths of their bombs, or the long tongue of fire darting from each cannon's mouth. The lurid smoke-clouds of burning houses joined with the night to cast a pall over the scene and hide it for ever. At half-past eight o'clock one more terrible attack by the French on the Prussian right—and that is over. At a quarter to nine a fearful volley against the extreme Prussian left, a continuous concert of artillery, and the growling whir of the mitrailleuse above all-and then that is still. The battle of Gravelotte is ended, and the Prussians hold the heights beyond the Bois de Vaux. As I went back to the village of Gorze, to pass the night, I turned at the last point to look upon the battlefield. It was now a long, earth-bound cloud, with two vast fires (burning houses) at each end of it. The day had been beautiful, and now the stars looked down with splendour, except where the work of agony and death had clouded the glow of heaven.

32. THE PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION.

In truth we are under a deception similar to that which misleads the traveller in the Arabian desert. Beneath the caravan all is dry and bare; but far in advance, and far in the rear, is the semblance of refreshing waters. The pilgrims hasten forward and find nothing but sand where an hour before, they had seen a lake. They turn their eyes and see

a lake where, an hour before, they were toiling through sand. A similar illusion seems to haunt nations through every stage of the long progress from poverty and barbarism to the highest degree of opulence and civilization. But if we resolutely chase the mirage backward, we shall find it recede before us into the regions of fabulous antiquity. It is now the fashion to place the golden age of England in times when noblemen were destitute of comforts, the want of which would be intolerable to a modern footman; when farmers and shopkeepers breakfasted on loaves, the very sight of which would raise a riot in a modern workhouse; when to have a clean shirt once a week was a privilege reserved for the higher class of gentry; when men died faster in the purest country air than they now die in the most pestilential lanes of our towns.

33. THE FAMILY OF BEDFORD.

The widow of Lord Russell, daughter of the well-known Lord Southampton, the most honest man ever found to have been in the service of Charles the Second, was grand-daughter of Shakspeare's Southampton, and appears to have united in her person the qualities of both. She was at once a pattern of good sense and of romantic affection. Nor are the two things incompatible when either of them exists in the highest degree, as she proved during the remainder of her life. For though she continued a widow all the rest of it, and it was a very long one, and though she never ceased regretting her lord's death, and had great troubles besides, yet the high sense she had of the duties of a human being enabled her to enjoy consolations that ordinary pleasure might have envied; first in the education of her children, and secondly in the tranquillity which health and temperance forced upon her. Her letters, with which the public are well acquainted, are not more remarkable for the fidelity they evince to her husband's memory, than for the fine sense they display in all maters upon which the prejudices of education

had left her a free judgment, and especially for their delightful candour

The present ducal family of Bedford has the honour to be lineally descended from these two excellent persons, and to derive their very dukedom from public virtue--a rare patent. And they have shown that they estimate the honour. What must not Lady Russell have felt when James II., within six years after the destruction of her husband, was forced to give up his throne? And what, above all, must she not have felt, when she heard of the answer given by her aged father-inlaw to the same prince, who had the meanness, or want of imagination, to apply to him in his distress? 'My Lord,' said James to the Earl of Bedford, 'you are an honest man, have great credit, and can do me signal service.' 'Ah, sir,' replied the Earl, 'I am old and feeble, but I once had a son.' The King is said to have been so struck with this reply, that he was silent for some minutes.

34. THE LAW OF SACRIFICE.

Through human life, from the first relation of parent and child to the organization of a nation or a church, in the daily intercourse of common life, in our loves and in our friendships, in our toils and in our amusements, in trades and in handicrafts, in sickness and in health, in pleasure and in pain, in war and in peace, at every point where one human soul comes in contact with another, there is to be found everywhere, as the condition of right conduct, the obligation to sacrifice self. Every act of man which can be called good is an act of sacrifice, an act which the doer of it would have left undone, had he not preferred some other person's benefit to his own, or the excellence of the work on which he was engaged to his personal pleasure or convenience. In common things the law of sacrifice takes the form of positive duty. A soldier is bound to stand by his colours. Everyone of us is bound to speak the truth, whatever the cost. But beyond the limits of positive enactment, the same road, and the same

road only, leads up to the higher zones of character. The good servant prefers his employer to himself. The good employer considers the welfare of his servant more than his own profit. The artisan or the labourer, who has the sense in him of preferring right to wrong, will not be content with the perfunctory execution of the task allotted to him, but will do it as excellently as he can. From the sweeping of a floor to the governing of a country, from the baking of a loaf to the watching by the sick-bed of a friend, there is the same rule everywhere. It attends the man of business in the crowded world, it follows the artist and the poet into his solitary studio.. Let the thought of self intrude, let the painter but pause to consider how much reward his work will bring to him, let him but warm himself with the prospects of the fame and the praise which is to come to him, and the cunning will forsake his hand, and the power of his genius will be gone from him. The upward sweep of excellence is proportioned with the strictest accuracy to oblivion of the self which is ascending.

35. THE GENIUS OF MILTON.

Imagination was extinct. Taste was depraved. Poetry, driven from palaces, colleges, and theatres, had found an asylum in the obscure dwelling where a great man, born out of due season, in disgrace, penury, pain, and blindness, still kept uncontaminated a character and a genius worthy of a better age. Everything about Milton is wonderful; but nothing is so wonderful as that, in an age so unfavourable to poetry, he should have produced the greatest of modern epic poems. We are not sure that this is not in some degree to be attributed to his want of sight. The imagination is notoriously most active when the external world is shut out. In sleep its illusions are perfect. They produce all the effect of realities. In darkness its visions are always more distinct than in the light. Every person who amuses himself with what is called building castles in the air must have experienced this. We