whether they sleep.

Inclining to the opinion that they do, Mr. Millais runs counter to the views of Dr. Racovitza, although he apparently has the support of the well-known Norwegian naturalist, Professor Collett. If whales really do sleep, it can scarcely be elsewhere than at the surface, since the fishermen's theory that they sleep at a considerable depth appears to have been decisively disproved by Dr. Racovitza.

Whether the sense of hearing, as opposed to that of sight, is the one on which cetaceans chiefly rely for protection, is another question which has exercised the minds of both whalers and naturalists. The absence of external ears has of course nothing to do with the matter, as these would obviously be useless in water. On the other hand, the great development of the internal structures of the ear leaves little doubt that the hearing, or rather the power of perceiving vibration, of these creatures must be extremely acute; and it is probable that it is this sense alone which prevents them from approaching too near the shore. The rudimentary condition of the nasal organs, coupled with the small size of the eye (which, by the way, would be useless at any considerable depth), likewise point to the same conclusion.

As to the depth to which whales can descend, opinions have changed considerably of late years. It was once supposed that they went down to great depths; but the effects of pressure would manifestly render this quite impossible; and in the opinion of the great authority already cited, a depth of one hundred yards is probably their extreme limit. This conclusion receives support from the fact that the food of most species consists of animals living on or near the surface; and likewise by the practical experience of whalers in connection with the amount of line taken out by harpooned whales. The sperm-whale, which feeds on large cuttlefishes, seems, however, in some deThe Saturday Review.

gree, to be an exception; there being circumstantial evidence that these monsters, in certain instances, touch the ocean bottom, although at what depth is still unknown.

Modern observation has thrown much new light on the "spouting," or breathing, of whales. In this connection it is perhaps almost superfluous to mention that the water, or spray, included in the "spout" is merely adventitious, and due either to the condensed moisture of the breath, or to the creature beginning to "blow" before reaching the surface. Recent photographs of spouting whales, among which those given by Mr. Millais are specially interesting, have demonstrated not only that there is great difference in the form of the spout, but also that the height to which it ascends is much less than formerly supposed; even that of the "sulphur bottom," or Sibbald's whale the hugest member of the whole group-averaging not more than fourteen feet, although occasionally reaching as much as twenty feet.

Whether the reference in Psalm civ. to "that leviathan, whom thou has made to play therein," really relates to the gambols of rorquals or humpbacks in the Red Sea or not, certain it is that cetaceans of every kind are among the most playful and sportive of all animals. The greatest adept at these sportive performances (as is admirably illustrated in one of Mr. Millais' exquisite plates) is undoubtedly the humpbacked whale, which delights to throw its huge carcase clear out of the water, to lie on its side with one of the long white flippers standing vertically out of the water like a gigantic sword, or to "dance" upright, with its head raised above the surface. The sperm-whale is, however, not far behind in this respect, and when "breaching" shoots its sixty feet of length to a height above the surface sufficient to render itself visible from the masthead at a distance of half a dozen miles.

Gray hairs are out of fashion nowadays, when the hoary head is counted less a glory than a reproach. Old age meets with small patience and slight reverence at the hands of the rising generation, who seem unmindful of the admonition--as true to-day as nineteen hundred years ago "With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again," and who forget that when they, in their turn, move up a step on the ladder of Time, they will reap from those below them only that which they themselves have sown.

A man's attitude towards age furnishes no bad test of the temper of his soul. He who has learnt to bear the infirmities of others, and to contemplate with serenity the limitations which the advancing years will impose upon himself, has not been to school under the great teacher Life in vain. Few of us, indeed, can hope to attain the sunny height of him who cried, with an optimism as rare as it is bracing

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,

The last of life for which the first was made.

Too many are ready to echo the dying words of him who trod the slippery ways of Courts, only at last to inscribe on the fly-leaf of his Bible the night before execution:

Time takes in trust Our youth, our joys, our all we have, And pays us but with age and dust.

But there are some among us who can add with him

But from this earth, this grave, this dust,

My God shall raise me up, I trust!

Writers of every time have set forth the sorrows of decrepitude: the most impressive, and at the same time the most poignant, imagery was his who had tasted everything that the world had to give and who pronounced everything to be vanity! If the weariness and satiety of the "evil days" when the grasshopper is a burden and desire fails, press thus heavily upon those whose lot is lightened by all the alleviations that love and money can suggest, with what an overwhelming load of misery must it not weigh upon the aged poor! In olden days, before "houses of industry" were thought of, or the feeding and clothing of the "poores" were "lett out" to the lowest bidder, men founded almshouses to the glory of God and the comfort of their "aged, impotent, and needy” brethren, where they might slide gently to the grave unharassed by the guawing anxiety of how to provide the bare necessaries of life. The present writer knows one such foundation dating from 1610, which affords relief to eighteen old women and men-"lone" people all -who are enjoying a rest on the last stage of the highway which has proved such hard travelling to most of them. The buildings lie away from the main thoroughfares in a remote hamlet of a Wessex vale, and though without any pretensions to artistic or archeological worth, their quaint porches, diamondpaned windows brightened by flowers, and strips of border where sunflowers and hollyhocks rear their tall heads against the warm red of the bricks, render them sufficiently picturesque to arrest the passing traveller and make him linger beside the gates. From these, which are set in a high sheltering wall and flanked by the sombre green of two Irish yews, a tiled path

leads up the rectangular court, between the dwellings, to the "prayerroom" under the round-faced clock. The founder, with others in his day, held that "prayers are old age's alms," and morning and evening the chaplain, whose stipend consists of "ten pounds a year and a room in the house to dwell in," gathers the bedesfolk together in the tiny chapel for service. It is a pathetic little company in some respects. All are old; many are infirm; some are deaf; one at least is blind, having lost her sight through a cruel trick which the children of the house where she was employed played upon her. They sprinkled gunpowder in the mouth of the baker's oven, so that when she lighted the fire in the morning it exploded, burning off her eyelashes and eyebrows, and injuring her sight beyond recovery. Happily she

secured election to one of the almshouses, where she "scambles along" with the help of her neighbors. Her cottage, though scantily furnished, is neat and clean; nor does she repine at her lot, which might be so much worse! To sit with folded hands is counted no hardship among the poor, and blindness does not entail on this woman, who still has the use of hearing and speech, the same amount of suffering that it would do on one of more cultured tastes and more varied results.

Another inmate who does not allow herself to be overlooked is a wonderful old lady, ninety-two years of age. With her tricks of gesture, the dainty neatness of her attire, and her fine manners, she is less English than French in appearance, and her slight, active figure, girlish step, bright eyes, and small, alert features remind one of some brisk, chirruping bird. She is the oldest inhabitant of the almshouses; but her age, though remarkable, is more than equalled by that of an old shepherd in the village, who, owing to his wife being still alive, is ineligible

as a candidate for admission. He has completed his ninety-fifth year, and, what is even more remarkable, not until two and a half years ago did he come upon the ratepayers for support. Folks are long-lived in the vale. The little old almswoman is proud of her age, and proud of the fact that though her sight "is not what it used to be," she can manage to read large print without glasses. Her greatest trial is her deafness; she cannot hear the service in the prayer-room, "which I misses sadly, seein' I've always been accustomed to go to church and Sacrament." The infirmity, however, matters the less in that her tongue is so nimble she gives her friends small chance of speaking! Her mother belonged to a family that once was of consequence in the neighborhood, and owned a considerable part of the parish. The lands in these parts have long had a knack of casting their owners, and the daughter was obliged to enter domestic service. She left her place after fifteen years, to marry. ""Twas a heart-breaking affair, an' I could scarce go through it at the last; but it don't do to disappoint a man, 'cause you never knows what dreadful things it mightn't lead to." Her husband is dead, her children and friends are all dead, yet she is still cheerful, like the robin that sings through wintry weather.

Equally cheery is the widow in the opposite corner. Her two-roomed tenement is a model of comfort and homely prettiness. The muslin curtains, the flowers in the window that looks south over trees and green fields, the china round the walls, the Windsor armchair and round, mahogany, "hooffooted" table, bespeak the best type of rural cottager. A further picturesque touch is added by the low fire on the hearth, which in these days of cheap grates is unusual. A neighbor next door, who owns an oven, cooks her

bakemeats, and when one has a special dainty she "gives the other a taste." The sight of her good-tempered face is sufficient to put discontent to flight. "I was happy the first day I come," she declares, “an' I've bin happy as the birds in the sky ever since. I cleans the place, I does my bit o' dinner, I sews an' reads now an' agen, an' when there's nothen more to do, I just sits an' rests. Ah! 'tis nice to sit an' rest wi' nothen on your mind,-no rent to pay, no one to come botherin' round 'so much to pay this week an' so much next'! Then, you're never dull here, 'cause yu've allus some one to talk to. If any one's cross an' wants to quar'l, as they do sometimes, 'cause there ain't a smart lot o' difference in folks whether they lives in a big house or a little, I just lets 'em alone. If they wun't look at me, I don't look at they; if they wun't spake to I, I don't spake to they. I just lets 'em alone till they're better. Yes, I'm as thankful as I can be that I got into one of these nice little places."

The almswomen outnumber the almsmen by a majority of four to one; why, it is difficult to say. The founder left the trustees free to select whom they would from the parish benefited; but the aged women appear usually to have been more favored by the Committee. At the present time there are but four men in the settlement, two of whom are very "rickety," to quote a local expression; and though the village can show an extraordinary number of old fellows creeping about in the sunshine, most of them, if not all, like the shepherd, have wives. One, a farm laborer past work, of the comparatively tender age of eighty-five, remembers the times when superstition was a living force among the country people. The Spectator.

"We ha'n't never had many ghostes in these parts," he said, "but we usted to have witchcrafters as 'ud gallop the 'arses about all night, so's the carters found 'em all of a lather in the morning. The men 'ud nail an old 'arseshoe upside down over the stabledoor, then they couldn't come in, 'ee knaw.” In answer to the question whether the witches were ever caught abstracting the horses, he shook his head. "Not as I heard on; them sort, 'ee knaw, can do most things; they can crape through a keyhole an' make theirselves so's narra-one can't see 'em. I knawed one once as lived in one o' the almshouses: I usted to see her when I went up to see my grandfather there. She was a cur'ous-looking ooman, stoutish, wi' light hair." When asked whether she could creep through a keyhole his sense of humor was tickled for an instant. ""Twould ha' bin a smartish job fur the likes o' she," he replied with a flicker of a smile; "but," recovering himself, "them sort can do most things."

One remembers Sir Thomas Browne, and wonders what would have been the fate of this poor "witchcrafter" had she lived in the days of the pious founder of the home that sheltered her declining years. The almsfolk receive four shillings a week and two fagots, with in addition halfa-ton of coal during the winter. Nor are they precluded from earning a trifle to supplement their allowance if able to do so. Would that there were more of these quiet havens throughout the length and breadth of the land, where the deserving poor, when the long working day is done, might sit and rest in the twilight until the clear call them to a more abiding

summons house.

While the publication of a third impression of the late Mr. Gleeson White's standard work on "English Illustration: the Sixties" (Constable, 12s. 6d. net) may warrant the inference that an increased interest is being taken in this branch of pictorial art, a comparison of its contents with the pages of any of our present illustrated weekly or monthly periodicals inevitably points to the lowered standard of contemporary illustration. That the illustrations which appear in the pages of our popular magazines and illustrated journals are collectively greatly inferior in artistic interest to the designs published nearly half a century ago in Once a Week, Good Words, and other periodicals of the time, is a fact as indisputable as that there are now liv. ing in our midst black-and-white draughtsmen fully as skilled, and fully as artistic, as those who made the sixties a "golden decade of English Illustration." It has to be admitted that nowadays illustrations are not always made by those most qualified to illustrate, that many a good draughtsman has abandoned the creation of noble designs in black and white for the production of mediocre performances in color. It may not be possible to produce such an array of illustrators as those who figure in Mr. Gleeson White's book-Ford Madox Brown, A. Boyd Houghton, Arthur Hughes, Charles Keene, M. J. Lawless, Leighton, Millais, Du Maurier, J. W. North, Pinwell, Rossetti, W. Small, Sandys, Whistler and Fred Walkerbut contemporary illustration could, if it would, make a brave show with the help of Messrs. Abbey, John D. Batten, Anning Bell, Frank Brangwyn, Walter Crane, Garth Jones, Maurice Greiffenhagen, Laurence Housman, Wm. Nich

Ravenhill,

olson, Pennell, Rackham, Claude Shepperson, Byam Shaw, Sime, Strang, and E. J. Sullivan, not to mention men who, like Sir Luke Fildes, have abandoned black-and-white work for painting, or like Messrs. Orpen, Rothenstein and Muirhead Bone, who ought to be illustrating and are not. Moreover in this hasty list, compiled haphazard, many woeful omissions will occur to students of contemporary black-and-white work, and the more readily these are perceived the more willingly should it be granted that the inferiority of our present-day magazine illustration is due to a fault in the demand rather than in the supply.

No one acquainted with the admirable etchings and black-and-white drawings occasionally shown at West End exhibitions can fail to realize that our art-editors as a body do not make the best use of the talent at their disposal. To these, however, or to the public for whom they cater, blame is rarely attached, for, arguing on the post hoc ergo propter hoc principle, false prophets have succeeded in establishing the fallacy that the decay of illustration is due to the decay of wood-engraving. That this belief is as erroneous as it is widespread is sufficiently indicated by the following sentences from Mr. Gleeson White's book:

If any one doubts that nearly all the drawings of the sixties lost much, and that many were wholly ruined by the engraver, he has but to compare them with reproductions by modern processes from a few originals that escaped destruction at the time. If this be not a sufficient evidence, the British Museum and South Kensington have many examples in their permanent collections which will quickly convince the most stubborn. If some few engravers managed to impart a certain interest at the