She

Mrs. Jeremy's face grew more and more startled as she read the indictment to herself at breakfast. cast a glance of loathing at the innocent piece of bread in front of her, shuddered and pushed the plate away.

"Dear," she said earnestly, looking up from her paper, "we must get some Standard Bread in at once."

"Bread," said Jeremy, looking up from his. "Certainly, dear." He pulled the board towards him and cut a large slice. ""Your bread," he remarked, and held it out to her.

She looked up again in surprise and, seeing the bread, shrieked.

"I didn't ask for it, Jeremy. In fact I simply daren't touch it now. 'Doesn't it say anything about it in your paper?"

"What's the matter with it?" said Jeremy, taking an immense bite. "It's ordinary bread."

"It's Poison."

"Then I think you might have said so before. I've been eating it steadily for half-an-hour." He got up with dignity and stood in front of the fire. "At least you could have saved me that last bite. Doctors will tell you that it is always the last bite which is fatal. We'd better have Baby down. She might like to say good-bye to me." "Don't be absurd. It can't really be as bad as that. Only haven't you noticed anything about the bread? I can't bear it. It suddenly seems horrid to me."

"What is there to notice in bread? I always notice if I haven't got any, and sometimes I notice if you haven't got any, but—"

"Well, there's too much starch in it, the paper says."

"That accounts for it," said Jeremy, feeling a piece. "I thought it was

simply stale. Well, tell them not to put so much in next week."

"There isn't going to be a next week. We're going to start Standard Bread to-day. You're going out on your bicycle to buy some." You'll have to go

to Hillborough-they'll never have it in the village."

Jeremy prowled round the room in search of his tobacco, found it, filled his pipe, and returned to the hearthrug.

"What is Standard Bread?" he asked between puffs.

"You won't ask when you've once eaten it. It does you twice as much good as this stuff. I'm longing to try it."

"But how is it different from this stuff?"

"It contains," said his wife, who knew it by heart now, "at least eighty per cent. of the whole wheat, including the germ and the semolina."

"Including what?" said Jeremy sharply.

"The germ and the semolina."

"Oh!" He paused for a moment. "I'm not at all sure that I like germs," he announced.

"These aren't those germs, dear," said Mrs. Jeremy soothingly. "These won't hurt you at all."

"I don't see how you know that. Besides, it's very easy to make a mistake with germs. They're tricky little things, I can tell you. The baker may think he's putting in quite a harmless one, a slight cold or something of that sort, and then, just while he's turning round for the semolina, in hops a diphtheria germ looking as innocent as you please. And, anyhow, that reminds me I loathe semolina. We've been married two years, and you ought to know that I always refuse semolina."

"There, there, get on your bicycle like a good boy and go into Hillborough. I know Cobb won't have it here."

Jeremy grumbled, jumped on to his bicycle and rode off. Having arrived

at the baker's he walked firmly in and gave his order.

"I want," he said "a loaf of Standard Bread."

"Standard bread, Sir?"

"Yes. There's a lot about it in one of the papers. The Standard, I suppose. It's a new loaf that they've invented."

"We never see the papers, 'cept a Sunday."

"To-day's Wednesday-that's awkward. We can't wait. But, after all, you're a baker; you oughtn't to want to look up things about bread in papers. It's different for me."

"What's it like?"

"I've never seen any. As far as I am informed it's just like ordinary bread, only it has to contain eighty per cent. of something which I have just forgotten." He put his hand to his head and thought. "Wait-waitit's coming back. Microbe and tapioca microbe and tapioca

mi

"Whatever"

"No, it isn't actually that, but that's what I remember it by. Ah, now I've got it!" He cleared his throat impressively. "It's got to include the germ and the semolina. And the semolina,

mind. Now does that convey anything to you?"

The man scratched his head thoughtfully.

"Maybe I'm wrong about the paper that invented it," said Jeremy. "Now I think of it we don't take in The Standard. My wife takes in somebody's Home Dressmaker, but it wouldn't be that. And The Times still only sells books. How about Black and White bread?"

The man scratched his head again, pulled down a dark loaf and suggested it hopefully.

"Well," said Jeremy, "some people might call it merely brown, but I suppose it's near enough. Thank you. I'll take it with me. I've got a bicycle outside."

Mrs. Jeremy received him joyfully, but her face fell when she saw the loaf.

"Why, that's brown bread," she cried.

"Only where it fell off the bicycle," said Jeremy.

"And inside too," said Mrs. Jeremy, cutting it open. "Ordinary brown bread."

"That's the germ," said Jeremy. "They're all brown this year. Gregarious little beggars-just like sheep the way they follow each other. Simply no individuality."

"I wonder if brown bread is all right." She broke a piece off and nibbled at it. "It is ordinary brown bread."

"Is that poison too?" "I-I don't know."

"Then let's ask cook-she knows everything .. Oh, cook," Jeremy went on bravely, "about this new bread we're all talking of now"

"I was just going to ask you, mum," said cook, wiping her hands on her apron. "Did you both like it? Cobb sent up a loaf to-day-”

"Darling," said Jeremy to his wife,

as he put his arm round her waist and led her to the baby's cradle, "let us all sing something together. Father is not poisoned.

Punch.

He lives.

The family is re-united and goes on." "I knew there was something funny about that bread," said Mrs. Jeremy. The baby said nothing-only smiled. A. A. M.

It is only natural that England, whose Government led the way fifty years ago in recognizing the Kingdom of Italy, should share with a special sympathy the rejoicings of memory with which the creation of that Kingdom is now being celebrated. There is, perhaps, no series of events to which Englishmen can look back with greater satisfaction in the history of Europe than the series that resulted in making Victor Emmanuel King of Italy. Thanks to Russell, Palmerston, and Gladstone, and to the traditions they inherited, England, almost alone among the States of Europe, so acted from first to last amid the dazzling escapades of Garibaldi and the diplomatic master-strokes of Cavour as to reap a harvest of honor and gratitude. Waterloo is a magnificent memory; but if Waterloo marked the close of England's long duel with a giant who seemed invincible, it marked also the beginning, or, rather, the ratifying of a rule infamous for selfishness, corruption, and cruelty over a great part of Europe. Napoleon's rule was hateful till his successors combined to make it an amiable and honorable tradition. At least, if it had not been for the recollection of that rule, and the institutions it had founded, the peoples who were put back under this ancient servitude might never have learnt to rebel. And if Waterloo ushered in that kind of régime for Europe, no nation suffered so cruelly as the nation that had won the triumph. It is difficult to imagine a high-spirited people

reduced to such a condition of wretchedness and misgovernment as was the lot of the English people in the first twenty years of the nineteenth century. Even the spectacle of Waterloo could not romanticize their own bitter oppression.

The making of Italy leaves no such scars, and, in aiding it, England never helped indirectly the cause of tyranny. There have been few great events that have been accomplished with less bloodshed at the time, and there have been fewer of which it could be said that success brought such unqualified gain to the world. There were great sacrifices made, but they were not sacrifices of the freedom of other races. They were the sacrifices of Italians, who not only gave their blood, but, a far more difficult thing, postponed their special ideals and causes to the great aim of national unity. The greatest miracle of all was the power that combined for one purpose such diverse natures, sympathies, and talents as those that are found in the four men who between them made modern Italy. The results are seen in the nature of the rejoicings to-day. In no nation are the contrasts of riches and poverty more vivid; in no nation are the differences of North and South sharper or more difficult. Yet every Italian is recalling the same memories to-day in the same spirit of pride and patriotism, and the events of fifty years ago are a more undisputed sign and symbol of unity and concord to this nation than any event that can be clothed

in the history of any other people. No country can boast a past comparable with the past of Italy: a fact that helped to alienate Ruskin from all her modern life and interests.

When Garibaldi and Mazzini were flinging down the youth of Rome before the shameful guns of France, they felt that, if ever Italy was to come to life again, they must give her something to worship in place of the superb memories that had made Papal Rome draw half the world to her feet. That was the real fruit of the campaign of 1849; and it was, in this sense more than in any other, that 1849 was necessary to 1860. Their success was not only an inspiration for the hour, but an inspiration for the future. Italians who might look back only to frescoes, pictures, cathedrals, castles, and towers that seem to turn all modern achievements into something paltry and insignificant, have taken the more manly part of refusing to allow their imagination to be intimidated by the most tremendous past. Surrounded by the inheritance of that past, they have seen the romantic glories of their own struggle against Europe for the right to live, and they are not so full of classical and medieval poetry as to close their ears to the epic of Garibaldi and his comrades. Whatever we may think of the huge structure that is slowly throwing its audacious shadow over all the ancient treasures of Rome, it is impossible not to admire the courage with which modern Italy challenges her illustrious history. She has all the confidence and spirit of the Popes who rivalled the Cæsars, and we may hope that, with Signor Boni at her side, she will treat her treasures with a gentler hand.

Every nation needs these stimulating memories, and no nation more than one that has come into such a legacy as the legacy left by ancient Italy. It

sometimes looks as if nations may use up in a few splendid years the nervous energy that is needed for the ordinary troubles and cares of daily life. This kind of phenomenon is observable, for example, in the history of France, where a sudden blaze of vigor and imaginations is followed by long years of quiet, commonplace, and apparently effortless, existence. Some would see it also in the history of Italy, and ask whether there are successors to Garibaldi, Mazzini, and Cavour; and whether Italian public life can be maintained at the same high level tide any more than the public life in the cities that used to burn themselves out in medieval Italy. But all these comparisons are superficial and misleading, for they ignore the difference in the conditions of national life. The problems of 1849 and 1860 were not the problems of modern Italy. The set of circumstances that called for a Mazzini and a Garibaldi have passed. When the first glory of the dawn fades into the light of common day, it is inevitable that all politics should seem impoverished, and that observers, watching a nation in the midst of quite different difficulties, should ask what is become of the race that produced heroes and martyrs who astonished the world. The difference between modern politics and the politics of the past is largely a difference of subject-matter, and the fact that men stand out less conspicuously does not mean, as pessimists often conclude, that we are breeding degenerate statesmen, but that great tracts of country that were formerly neglected are now being explored and redeemed. What a great field of human conduct and misery lies outside the world in which we watch such careers as those of Pitt, or Peel, or even Gladstone! The very nature of the work to be done means that the triumphs of the future will be less the triumphs of individuals and more the

successes of communities. Of the difficulties that beset all attempts to reconstruct national life, Italy has had more than her share. Her good fortune seemed to leave her with the miracles of 1860. The bad old political system survived Cavour by ten years, and Cavour was the one man of her founders who was still indispensable. Less than fifty years ago Rome was not the centre of Italy, but the asylum of any ruffian who defied her flag. No nation can overtake in half a century the results of centuries of bad, corrupt, and alien government. Italy put herself at a grievous disadvantage for that task when she caught the disease of her neighbors; but her mood of adventure was briefer than it has been in other countries, and she renounced The Nation.

it with a moral courage that is not often displayed. With the strange, dramatic spectacle of the trial now proceeding at Viterbo, we are not likely to forget how far-reaching and powerful are the forces of evil and disorder in a State which can still remember so vividly the rule of Pope and Bourbons. But we remember also that the fact that this dreaded society has been brought to trial shows how far Italy has advanced since the old days; and the actual achievements of modern Italy, and the temper in which, under a King who has inherited 'the' best spirit of The Risorgimento, she recalls the great events to which she owes her existence, embolden us to look forward to her future with a quiet hope.

་

Environment, with which we may include their "bringing up," has so great an influence upon birds that many of them not only develop peculiar characteristics but retain them throughout the lives of generations until they ultimately become hereditary. Thus the domestic pigeon, when in the country, rarely sets foot on a branch, preferring the securer perch afforded by a familiar roof, yet, with a strange perversity, this bird when living in towns, where trees are few and roofs plentiful, often goes out of its way to find the former in which it may enjoy a temporary rest. One might multiply such peculiarities to any extent. The byways of the open country afford them at every turning and there is but little doubt in my mind that it is partly on account of the fact that the instincts and habits of animals, and even plants, are continuously in a state of transition that nature study is so fascinating. That

which we call a fixed instinct or characteristic to-day is to-morrow discovered to be plastic and as sensitive to outside influences as a barometer. It is the birds which share our habitations with us which are often, in this respect, the most interesting. It is they which owe the least allegiance to Mother Nature's apron strings, and it may be owing to the fact that they have so effectually broken away from the old primitive life, and joined us in what we presume to be a higher and more go-ahead plane of evolutionary development, that we feel towards them a certain sense of comradeship. Who can say but that the London sparrow, when horses and nosebags have gone out of fashion, will not acquire a taste for petrol and axle grease? But that is by the way.

Of the many birds which have thus thrown in their lot with us, the starling is perhaps one of the most interesting. This bird has increased enor