of centralization. It is what he has been praising all his life, and at the age of seventy-five he has a chance of seeing it realized. But the Commune may be quite right in saying that the idea which it seeks to establish in the French mind may grow and fructify even though the insurrection proves unsuccessful. There are really only two political ideas in France, the idea of the Commune and the idea of Imperialism; the idea of letting localities distinguished by great divergencies of feeling and opinion develop themselves, each in their own way, and the idea of using the force of one set of these localities to keep down the other set. If Paris is to be held down, if its municipal officers are to be Government nominees, if the voting is to be so manipulated that candidates who find favour with the authorities always win, or at least secure, enough seats to preponderate in the Assembly if, in short, centralized France is to go on exactly as it has gone on, why not have the Emperor back at once? Surely he knows the tricks of his trade better than any amiable Bourbon who has grown up in exile can know them. But if Imperialism is not to be re-introduced in one shape or another, France must be decentralized to a consid erable extent; and as rural and urban France differ so widely, they must be content in a great measure to leave each other alone, just as Cantons in Switzerland which are divided by differences at least equally great manage to leave each other alone, and yet to combine for the purposes of a common country. The Communists very much exaggerate, we in England should think, the value and grandeur of their idea. A country in which the urban and town populations are blended together, do not quarrel, and do not seek for dominion the one over the other, seems to us a much more advanced and a more happily constituted country than France would be under the wisest and best of federal organizations. But then in France the question is whether the rural population shall, through any person or set of persons who may manage to get hold of its votes, annihilate the political existence of the urban population; and if this is the issue, the best friends of France may wish that the idea put forward in this manifesto should not be stamped out, but should make itself felt long after the Official Journal has ceased to issue the programmes of the present occupants of the Hôtel de Ville. THE spring time is coming, and lovers of the country will soon be a-field, enjoying the gen- | tle pleasures which nature has provided for them free of expense. Addison, of the Spectator, like a true poet, was also a true admirer of nature's beauties. Here are two charming extracts from letters written by him to the young Earl of Warwick-who was afterwards his sonin-law — when a boy. In the first, we see that Addison had the faculty, which few great men possess, of bringing himself down to the level of the youthful mind. What boy at the present time, even though he were a lord, would not be delighted with such a letter as this? "MY DEAR LORD-I have employed the whole neighbourhood in looking after birds' nests, and not altogether without success. My man found one last night; but it proved a hen's, with fifteen eggs in it, covered with an old broody duck, which may satisfy your lordship's curiosity a little; though I am afraid the eggs will be of little use to us. This morning, I have news brought me of a nest that has abundance of little eggs, streaked with red and blue veins, that, by the description they give me, must make a very beautiful figure on a string. My neighbours are very much divided in their opinions upon them. Some say they are a sky lark's, others will have them to be a canary bird's; but I am much mistaken in the turn and colour of the eggs if they are not full of tom-tits. If your lordship does not make haste, I am afraid they will be birds before you see them; for if the account they gave me of them be true, they can't have above two days more to reckon." Again, there is a freshness and natural simplicity in the next letter that makes us wish that we could live back into the old Spectator days, and accept this invitation ourselves: "MY DEAR LORD-I can't forbear being troublesome to your lordship whilst I am in your neighbourhood. The business of this is to invite you to a concert of music which I have found out in a neighbouring wood. It begins precisely at six in the evening; and consists of a blackbird, a robin-redbreast, and a bullfinch. There is a lark that, by way of overture, sings and mounts till she is almost out of hearing; and afterwards, falling down leisurely, drops to the ground, or as soon as she has ended her song. The whole is concluded by a nightingale, that has a much better voice than Mrs. Tofts, and something of the Italian manner in her diversions." Once a week. ROME, ITALY, April 4, 1871. ber of the commission is Lord Robert Montagu, brother of the Duke of Manchester. This nobleman belongs to the Queen's privy council, and was minister of public instruction in the Disraeli cabinet. Viscount Campden, Lord Howard, uncle of the Duke of Norfolk, Lord Arundel of Wardour, the Master of Herries and the Lord of Herries, the Master of Lovat, Lord Archibald Douglas and some fifteen or twenty more noblemen and gentlemen of high rank, wealth and influence compose this ninteenthcentury pilgrim band from the Anglo-Saxon island to Pius IX. They attended the private ceremony of the Pope in the Pauline Chapel on Palm Sunday, received blessed palms from the Holy Father's hands, then went down into St. Peter's, and were present at the Chapter Mass. Boston Daily Advertiser. JUST now Rome at the Vatican is deeply interested in the visit of the English deputation to the Pope. The high rank of its members reminds one of days far back in the middle ages, when Offa, king of Mercia, established the tax called "St. Peter's Penny," and Anglo-Saxons made pilgrimages to Rome. Even Saxon kings took the holy journey. William of Malmesbury tells us of Ina, king of Sussex, who left kingdom and crown, came a pilgrim to Rome with his. pious queen, was "shorn a monk," and founded the Anglo-Saxon college in this city in 788. Florence of Worcester, too, records that in 1031 King Canute travelled over sea and land to the Eternal City and made some fresh arrangements with the Pope for the treatment of the English bishops when they came to receive their palliums. Canute had an eye to business, for all his pilgrimage piety; he selected the time for visiting Rome when many great princes were assembled here,- the Emperor Conrad of Germany, Rudolph, king of Burgundy, and others, in order to make treaties in his recent interesting and instructive address with them by which he obtained a free and unmolested passage to and from Rome through their dominions for English travellers, whether ecclesiastics or merchants. These treaties were faithfully carried out during the middle ages, and led to the custom of passports which are now, owing to the changes of time and habits, so annoying to the modern traveller. | The Vitality of Yeast.- Mr. H. J. Slack, to the Royal Microscopical Society, stated that M. Melsens made experiments last year on the vitality of beer-yeast. He found fermentation possible in the midst of melting ice, a temperature at which the yeast would not germinate. The life of the yeast-plant was not destroyed by the most intense cold that could be produced, about 100° C. below zero. In close vessels when the products of fermentation gave a pressure of about twenty-five atmospheres the process stopped, and the plant was killed. M. Boussingault, who was present when this communication was made to the French Academy, accepted the statement, on account of the known ability of M. Melsens, but he detailed experiments to show that other ferments had their activity destroyed by exposure to temperature much less severe, or even by ordinary frost. These English pilgrims of 1871 bring "St. Peter's penny" in a good round sum, and sympathy deep and strong for the Holy Father; but they do not come in peaceable treaty-making times; nor are they kings or representatives of governments. The island of saints became an island of heretics to the Holy Father many long centuries ago, when the ancestresses of the young nobleman who heads the deputation were furnishing wives to that royal Bluebeard, Henry VIII. The Duke of Norfolk, who is the chief of these modern English pilgrims, is first peer of Great Britain, earl marischal of England, ranks all the nobility of the land, and takes precedence next to the royal family. Though Escape of the Abbé Moigno and Injury to no king, he is the descendant of kings; the third M. Ch. Girard.- The "Chemical News of duke of his house married the daughter of Ed-February 24 states that it has just received a ward IV., the Princess Anna, and his family has been connected by marriage with the sovereigns of France, England and Scotland. He is a good-looking youth of twenty-four, and is going to marry a princess as his ancestors and his cousin of Lorne have done. Margaret of Orleans, the daughter of the Duke de Nemours, is to be the future Duchess of Norfolk. The next in rank in this deputation is Earl Denbigh, who is descended from the house of Hapsburgh, a branch of which famous line settled in England some centuries back. Lord Denbigh is about 45 or 50 years old. Another distinguished mem letter from the Abbé, dated Paris, February 15, 1871. From this it understands that the distinguished savant had a narrow escape during the bombardment. A shell exploded in his bedroom, and destroyed more than a thousand valuable books, but he escaped uninjured. Les Mondes, the publication of which was suspended last September, will reappear as soon as communications are open. M. Ch. Girard has, we regret to say, received serious injury from the fall of a shell, but our readers will be glad to hear that he is now convalescent. NUMBERS OF THE LIVING AGE WANTED. The publishers are in want of Nos. 1179 and 1180 (dated respectively Jan. 5th and Jan. 12th, 1867) of THE LIVING AGE. To subscribers, or others, who will do us the favor to send us either or both of those numbers, we will return an equivalent, either in our publications or in cash, until our wants are supplied. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON. FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually for warded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year, nor where we have to pay commission for forwarding the money. Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars. The sets, or volumes, will be sent at the expense Any Volume Bound, 3 dollars; Unbound, 2 dollars. of the publishers. PREMIUMS FOR CLUBS. For 5 new subscribers ($40.), a sixth copy; or a set of HORNE'S INTRODUCTION TO THE BIBLE. unabridged. in 4 large volumes, cloth, price $10; or any 5 of the back volumes of the LIVING AGE, in numbers, price $10. THE Lord, Who fashioned my hands for working, Set me a task, and it is not done; I tried and tried since the early morning, To one so little and weak as I - Others around me cheerfully toiling, Showed me their work as they passed away; Filled were their hands to overflowing, Proud were their hearts and glad and gay. Laden with harvest spoils they entered Laid their sheaves at the feet of the Master, From The Edinburgh Review. LORD BROUGHTON'S RECOLLECTIONS OF A LONG LIFE.* LORD PALMERSTON and Lord Broughton - who was better known to his contemporaries, as he will be to posterity, by the familiar name of John Cam Hobhouse —were born within a few months of each other; the one in 1784, the other in 1786. The lives of both these eminent men were extended to the furthest span of human existence, for they passed the age of fourscore in full possession of their faculties. The time in which their lives were cast was the most eventful period of modern history; and in the parliamentary and administrative service of their country both of them bore a conspicuous part. Although Lord Palmerston entered life as a political descendant of Pitt and Canning, with all the advantages of high birth and early official connexions, whilst Hobhouse sprang from a humbler stock of Bristol merchants party, and of peculiar interest to ourselves, we allude of course to the Memoirs of he had completed his eightieth year. But Lord Brougham, written by himself after in this case also we must be content to wait until the work is more advanced. At The volumes before us- five goodly octapresent our task is altogether different. iniscences of his long and varied life. vos contain Lord Broughton's own remThey were extracted by himself in the years immediately preceding the close of it, from journals and memoranda he had kept in his possession. They contain a vast variety of incident and anecdote, and Dissenters, and owed his early celeb-present Lord Melbourne and Lord John Russell, of the one blended with the Radical tendencies of the other. The life of Lord Palmerston has in part been written and published by one who, as a public servant and a private friend, is eminently qualified to do justice to that great Minister. The work in its unfinished state has already been fully examined by several of our contemporaries. We reserve our judgment upon it until it is completed and we will then endeavour to take a connected survey of Lord Palmerston's politi cal career. The same remark applies to the publication of the first volume of the Autobiography of another veteran of still higher distinction in the ranks of the Whig ** Recollections of a Long Life (1786-1869). By the late Lord BROUGHTON DE GYFFORD. 5 vols. 8vo. [Not published.] 1865. 2 The Life of Henry John Temple, Viscount Temple, with Selections from his Diaries and Correspondence. By the Right Hon. Sir HENRY LYTTON BULWER, G.C.B.,M.P. 5 vols. 8vo. London: 1870. acute sketches of character, animated pictures of parliamentary contests now almost dations of curious passages in ministerial forgotten, and sometimes important elucihistory. But the form given to this interesting record by its author is not such as to justify its complete publication in its shape or at the present time. Lord Broughton's own use, or at most for These volumes were printed solely for the amusement of his own family, and to ensure the preservation of them. They have therefore not the strictly confidential character of private manuscripts, but neither were they intended for the public eye: accordingly they have been communicated with the greatest reserve and to very few persons. We are however enabled, by the kind permission of his nearest representatives, to make use of them on the present occasion for the purpose of presenting to our readers a sketch of the life of one of the ablest and most energetic members of the Liberal party and champions of the Liberal cause, in times now long gone by. It has been thought that, if there be one place more than another in which such a sketch may appropriately appear, it is in the pages of this Journal, be regarded as a contemporary of Hobhouse himself, and which has won whatever reputation and influence it possesses on the same fields on which he contended. Much, no doubt, must be left unsaid in reviewing memoirs of a confidential character, relating to times and persons still so near to us. We shall exercise a discreet forbearance with reference to some points and some characters, which may which may |