sensibility to the graceful and refined in with some success, was seated in a coffeewoman, in a common allegiance to the do- room, when the following scene ensues :— mestic affections, in a genial relish for the humorous in character, and a kindred appre-inquest, by a gentleman who was reading a news"He heard his name coupled with a coroner's ciation of the pathetic. The close sympathy paper to a friend. He asked to see the paper, between Leslie and many of the literary men which was handed to him with the remark that of his day was indeed not surprising, for his "it was very extraordinary that Coleridge the art was in itself eminently literary. His poet should have hanged himself just after the pictures were mostly taken from books; and success of his play; but he was always a strange his vocation as a painter seems specially to mad fellow.' Indeed, sir,' said Coleridge, it have been to translate into a kindred art the is a most extraordinary thing that he should have great works of the English classics. Shak- hanged himself, be the subject of an inquest, and speare was to him a mine of wealth. "Henry yet that he should be at this moment speaking VIII.," the "Merry Wives of Windsor," the had said nothing to hurt his feelings,' and was to you.' The astonished stranger hoped that he "Twelfth Night," and the "Winter's Tale," made easy on that point. The newspaper rereceived from his graphic pencil repeated il-lated that a gentleman in black had been cut lustration. Addison, too, like Irving,-who down from a tree in Hyde-park, without money has been sometimes called the Addison of or papers in his pockets, his shirt being marked America, was a writer by refinement and S. T. Coleridge;' and Coleridge was at no quiet humor specially after Leslie's heart. loss to understand how this might have hap"Roger de Coverley going to Church" was pened, since he seldom travelled without losing one of the earliest works which brought the a shirt or two." painter into notice. From this point his As a writer Leslie is known favorably by progress seems to have been rapid, and his the life of his friend Constable, and by his success came as the sure reward of conscien- lectures published under the modest title tious striving and untiring industry. Within "Handbook for Young Painters." His writthe circuit of his comprehensive art he em- ten works, as his pictures, show an humble braced wellnigh the entire field of modern aim and the disadvantage of a circumscribed literature. Shakspeare he made, as we have education. He had never entered Italy, and seen, his own. "Sir Roger" was the affec- the grand frescoes of the great masters were tion of his youth, and the veneration of his by him unappreciated and unknown. Art maturer age. "Uncle Toby," "The Widow was for him an elegance, a refinement, and Wadman," and "Tristram Shandy" seem enjoyment, but scarcely, as in olden times, to have freely walked in and out of his study- an elevation and a worship. He attained to door, ever and again sitting for their por- what he sought; his pictures happily reflect traits. Then going further from home he the simplicity and the beauty of his own namade acquaintance with "Le Bourgeois Gen- ture, add to the innocent delight of the famtilhomme," ," "Le Malade Imaginaire," "Don ily and the home, and, to adopt the words of Quixote" in the Sierra Morena, and "Sancho Addison, by their "cheerfulness keep up a Panza as he sat in the apartment of the kind of day-light in the mind, and fill it with Duchess. Keeping with such good com- a steady and perpetual serenity." Many a pany in his pictures, it was likely that in his private collection in England is enriched by home and daily walk he should group around these elegant and pleasing works, and our him interesting characters from among the readers will be glad to remember that South living. His autobiography is in fact a gal- Kensington, in the Vernon and Sheepshanks lery of cabinet paintings, in which his most bequests, can above all other galleries boast illustrious friends are sketched with that of the choicest and most numerous examples. point, humor, and kindly charity which adorn When a public man departs it is some conhis painted works. We laugh as we read, solation to find that so much of his genius and yet nothing has been set down in malice; remains as a legacy to his country. As a we enjoy the joke, and part company from closing tribute to so true an artist and so his friends with hearty shake of hands, hop- good a man we would adopt the words of ing to meet again. The anecdotes which Mr. Tom Taylor, and say," Leslie's name abound in these pleasant volumes are al- must stand honored, for the prevailing presways pointed and telling,-touched off with ence in his works of good taste, truth, charthat neatness of the hand which shows an acter, humor, grace, and kindliness, and for artist's skill. The following may be taken the entire absence of that vulgarity, bravado, as a fair example of the fun and satire with self-seeking, trick and excess, which are by which these pages sparkle. Coleridge had no means inseparable from great attainbeen lecturing on Shakspeare-had been ments in painting, and which the conditions spouting as usual on things in general; and of modern art are but too apt to engender having latterly written a tragedy which met and to foster."

GENTLEMANLY PROFESSIONS.

euphemism which meant to beg for him. But there were plums in those days-real plums

From The Saturday Review. and look forward to the next with some apprehension lest the society should be mixed. We are all of us sufferers under the ty- It is one of the fundamental precepts of their ranny of gentility. From the moment we goddess that their sons shall be brought up begin to dress in the morning till we retire as "gentlemen;" which clastic word is furagain at night, we never escape from its ther limited by the gloss that they shall serve sway. It haunts us as we eat and as we walk no one except the queen or the Church, or, -it peers into our dressing-rooms and spies if they are to receive payment for work done out all our daily habits. It puts chimney- from anybody else-a practice at which the pots on our heads, and coats of quaint and strictest professors of the sect look askance uncouth cut on our backs, ranks omnibuses it must be as barristers or doctors. If any as unholy things, and sets before us as the one of them steps beyond this line, and beobject of our ambition the glory of being comes a merchant, or a farmer, or a clerk in served by powdered louts arrayed in gay any but a government office, he is held to court dresses. But, being a patient people, have degraded himself, and incurs the full we suffer all these little tyrannies gladly, es- penalty denounced by their religion against pecially as they give us the pleasure of an backsliders-a penalty so awful that none occasional laugh at our neighbors when they of them can ever be induced particularly to fail to come up to the required standard. describe it, but which appears to consist prinBut when gentility steps out of its small do- cipally in being looked down upon by the main and attempts to govern the greater sect. This was all very well in the good old things of life, the society of the nineteenth days of jobbing, when there was a berth for century resists. It used to force a man who everybody and everybody for his berth. In had been insulted to stand up and be shot at those days, the magic circle of gentility was by the man who had insulted him. For some very limited, and the condition of the law and time past the English world has abandoned of the government made the horizon of genthis mediæval absurdity to the enlightened teel prospects very wide. Every thing went and advanced democracy of the West. Time by favor, and therefore every thing was got was when it insisted that marriages should by begging. To push your son was a polite be a sort of heraldic partnership, in which each side was to bring an equal number of inches of pedigree into the common stock, which were worth a good deal of begging and a mésalliance was looked upon as some- and a good deal of dirt-eating, and which thing considerably more dishonorable than satisfied the hungriest when they were shaken an adultery. But in recent times the com- down at last. Unhappily, the evil days have mon sense of the community-except, of come upon us since then. The magic circle course, in the agricultural counties, where has infinitely widened-the spoils provided that faculty is languid-has adopted the more for the sustenance of those whom it includes sordid view that the comfort and happiness have become infinitely scantier. The "genof the persons immediately concerned ought tlemanly professions" are in a great measto be principally consulted. But there is one ure occupied by aspirants pressing in from department of human action over which gen- without, who argue that because the "caste" tility still exercises a pernicious remnant of frequent them, therefore they will constitute of its old usurped dominion. There are still an admission to the "caste"-an object which such things as gentlemanly professions; and people value just as they value ugly green by an inevitable consequence, there is a great china, because it is not in everybody's power and growing mass of gentlemanly poverty. to possess it. The result is, that gentility is There is a large section of the educated beginning to be sorely pressed to satisfy the portion of the community with whom the pre- vulgar necessity of living. The gentlemanly cepts of gentility are a religious obligation labor-market is glutted. The supply of well-a law of the Medes and Persians which al-dressed young gentlemen looking for work tereth not. They are marked off by no distinct line of rank, or property, or manner, or refinement, or even of political opinion -for many advanced Whigs will be found among their number. Intellect seems to be the only quality incompatible with their faith. Like some of the Hindoo sects, they worship a Goddess of Evil, whose name is Mrs. Grundy, and strive to propitiate her by ascetic and self-torturing observances of the convenances and the bienséances. They live in this world in constant fear of losing caste,

is constantly in excess of the demand for their valuable services, and the artificial stimulus prevents the inequality from rectifying itself. Gentlemanly employments are becoming more and more overstocked, and less and less remunerative. Gloomier and gloomier is the prospect that rises before the needy English hidalgo with five promising sons to dispose of. England indeed is growing incalculably richer; but her wealth is due to manufac tures, and colonies, and commerce, and it is in these that they who would share in

petitive examinations are bringing into the would confer, no one would be satisfied with offices. The gentility superstition will drive government pay as it is now, either in the even clever lads into the dismal career of a civil or military services. It would no doubt government clerkship; but it will hardly, be an acute suffering to Mr. Gladstone to be when they are middle-aged men, comfort obliged to raise his estimates; but the nathem for what they have done. Of course tion would be the gainer. The exchequer all this discontent would be removed if a might suffer for a time from the necessity of healthier feeling prevailed as to the choice greater liberality, but a heartier and more of an occupation. If professions were se- genuine service would more than make up lected without any regard to the caste they the loss.

QUEEN VICTORIA AND PRESIDENT BUCHANAN.President Buchanan to Queen Victoria. To her Majesty Queen Victoria,-I have learned from the public journals that the Prince of Wales is about to visit your Majesty's North American dominions. Should it be the intention of his Royal Highness to extend his visit to the United States I need not say how happy I should be to give him a cordial welcome to Washington. You may be well assured that everywhere in this country he will be greeted by the American people in such a manner as cannot fail to prove gratifying to your Majesty. In this they will manifest their deep sense of your domestic virtues, as well as their convictions of your merits as a wise, patriotic, and constitutional sovereign.-Your Majesty's most obedient

servant,

JAMES BUCHANAN.

Washington, June 4, 1860.
QUEEN VICTORIA TO PRESIDENT BUCHANAN.
Buckingham Palace, June 22, 1860.

My Good Friend,-I have been much gratified at the feelings which prompted you to write to me, inviting the Prince of Wales to come to Washington. He intends to return from Canada through the United States; and it will afford him great pleasure to have an opportunity of testifying to you in person that these feelings are fully reciprocated by him. He will thus be able, at the same time, to mark the respect which he entertains for the chief magistrate of great and friendly state and kindred nation.

The Prince of Wales will drop all royal state on leaving my dominions, and travel under the name of Lord Renfrew, as he has done when travelling on the continent of Europe. The Prince Consort wishes to be kindly remembered to you.

I remain, ever your good friend,

VICTORIA R.

MIND AND MATTER.-Isaac Taylor, in his Physical Theory of Another Life (ed. Bell and Daldy, 1857), p. 17, says:—

"The doctrine of the materialist, if it were followed out to its extreme consequences, and consistently held, is plainly atheistic, and is therefore incompatible with any and with every form of religious belief. It is so because, in affirming that mind is nothing more than the product of animal organization, it excludes the belief of a pure and uncreated mind-the cause of all things; for if there be a supreme mind, absolutely independent of matter, then, unquestionably, there may be created minds, also independent.”

To this it may be added, that a person who asserts that mind is the secretion of the brain, may be placed on the same level as a man who declares that one of Beethoven's Sonatas is the secretion of the piano. JOHN PAVIN PHILLIPS.

-Notes and Queries.

MESSRS. W. and G. Young, of Leith, sent out in some of their vessels engaged in the Greenland whale fishery, harpoons poisoned with prussic acid. This was so arranged that as the line was drawn tight, the poison was injected into the wound made by the harpoon. One ship so provided met with a fine whale. The harpoon was deeply and skilfully buried in its body; the leviathan immediately "sounded," or dived perpendicularly downwards, but in a very short time the rope relaxed, and the whale rose to the surface quite dead; but the men were so appalled by the terrific effect of the poisoned harpoon that they declined to use any more of them.

Roman Catholics seem to consider that variety in the form of worship of the blessed Virgin is a test of devotion; she is our "Lady of Charity," our "Lady of Victories," and a thousand other names, and now it is announced that a new mode of devotion is invented under the style of our "Lady of the Legion of Honor."

From The Economist.

The Sources of the Nile: being a General
Survey of the Basin of that River, and
of its Head-Streams; with the History of
Nilotic Discovery. By Charles T. Beke,

Ph.D. James Madden.

north. On all these sides, however, have we during centuries persisted in our endeavors to penetrate inwards, while the east coast has been unattempted and remained almost totally unknown. And yet it is in this direction that the interior of intertropical Africa is approachable with the greatest facility.

THE volume before us is based on an "Of the physical character and climate of essay "On the Nile and its Tributaries," Eastern Africa a general outline is given in my contributed by Dr. Beke to the Royal Geo-Essay on the Nile and its Tributaries;' and I graphical Society at the close of the year cannot do better than repeat, on the present oc1846, and on various subsequent papers casion, the concluding remarks there made on which bring down the history of these geo-acter of the plateau of Eastern Africa cannot the subject: This survey of the physical chargraphical investigations to the present time. The last few years, as Dr. Beke points out, rected to a most important practical result which be concluded without special attention being dihave been marked rather by an intelligent it affords. It is, that the eastern coast of that and consistent reconstruction of the map of continent presents facilities for the exploration the district in accordance with ascertained of the interior very superior to those possessed information than by any great accession of by the western coast. For, when the narrow geographical facts. The result has been the belt of low land along the shores of the Indian establishment of what Dr. Beke claims as a Ocean-which, from its general dryness, arising special theory of his own. "The principal mountain system of Africa," he observes, is now found to extend from north to south, in proximity to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, instead of running across the continent from cast to west, as shown in all maps, both ancient and modern, excepting only those recently constructed, in which the 'Mountains of the Moon' are laid down in accordance with my views." A more important result from this theory was pointed out to her majesty's government by Dr. Beke as long ago as 1852. The vast continent of Africa has hitherto "remained, as it were, a sealed book" to civilized Europe, and this has been attributed to its "arid and inhos-selves for penetrating westward into the interior; pitable character, its want of navigable rivers, and the barbarism of its inhabitants. But, active as all these causes may have been, and still continue to be, recent discoveries have shown that they are far from being true to the extent generally attributed to them; for it is now demonstrated that Africa possesses fertile and genial regions, large rivers and lakes, and an immense population, which, if not civilized, is yet to a considerable extent endowed with kindly manners, humane dispositions, and industrious hab-circumstance, be compelled to abandon his jour its."

"The fundamental cause," Dr. Beke proceeds to say, "of the erroneous notions prevalent respecting Africa, is that Europeans have always approached that continent in a wrong direction. Towards the north, the districts skirting the Mediterranean Sea are cut off from the other portions of the continents by the rainless sands of the great Desert; towards the west, the climate truly exercises those baneful influences on European constitutions which have stamped their mark on the rest of the continent; towards the south, the forms of the peninsula, which there runs almost to a point; prevents ready access to the vast internal regions further to the

from the absence of large rivers, is far from unhealthy at most seasons of the year-is once passed, and the castern edge of the elevated table land is attained, a climate is met with which is not merely congenial to European constitutions, but is absolutely more healthy than that of most countries. I speak from the experience of upwards of two years passed on the high land under circumstances any thing but favorable. Here, that is to say, on the edge of the elevated plateau, and not in the low desert country along the sea coast,-settlers might take up their permanent residence, without apprehenriod of the year; while travellers might wait in sions as to the effects of the climate at any pesafety, and even with advantage to their health, till suitable opportunities should present them

and, in the event of their having to retrace their steps, they would only return upon a healthy and delightful country, where they might remain till the proper season should arrive for their journey down to the coast. On the other hand, the climate of the western coast, even far inland, is baneful influences; while a traveller is necessinotoriously such, that few can long withstand its tated to press forwards, whatever may be the time of the year, whatever the condition of the country, whatever even his state of health. And should he from sickness or any other unforeseen

ney, he must do so with the painful knowledge, that the further he retrogrades the more unhealthy are the districts which he has to traverse, and the less likelihood there is of his ever reach ing the coast, more fatal than all the rest.""

The ancients, as Dr. Beke, following the steps of Heeren, points out, were well acquainted with the fact now only beginning · to be recognized by the modern world. Commerce has left the footprints of her former achievements in "a chain of ruins extending from the shores of the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean." And with commerce have been introduced to a considerable extent the