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"There is a soupçon of onion in this also, is there not?" "Just enough to swear by-do you think it too much?"

"I did not say a taste, I said a soupçon—are you answered?"

"There ain't no Souchong in it no how-nor no Hyson, nother. He'll be a swearin' it's Java coffee next"-said Tom, waxing again somewhat wrothy.

"He is thirsty again," said Frank-"what shall it be? I say hock after this boiled white meat."

"Right, Frank, for a thousand!" said Harry, "and after the woodcock, which Tim is bringing in, we'll broach a flask of Burgundy.-Hock with your white game, Burgundy with your brown! But hold, hold! Timothy, Mr. Draw will not touch that hock-it's too thin and cold for his palate."

"Rot-gut!"-replied Tom-" None o' your hocks nor your clarets for me-there ain't no good things made in France except champagne wine and old Otard brandy."

"Well, which of the two will you have, Tom?"

"That 'are champagne 's good enough for the likes of me."

"Oh! don't be modest, pray. It will hurt you!"

"What this here wine?-not what I've drinked on it, no how-I could drink all of a dozen bottles of it, without its hurtin' me a mite." The woodcock followed, were discussed, and pronounced perfect; they were diluted with a flask of Nuits Richelieu, so exquisitely rich and fruity, and of so absolute a bouquet, that even the hostility of fat Tom toward all French wines was drowned in the goblet, thrice the full of which, mantling to the brim, he quaffed in quick succession.

The Stilton cheese, red herring, and caviare, which succeeded, again moved his ire, and were denounced as stinkin' trash fit for no one to eat but a darned greedy Englishman; but the bumper of port again mollified him, and he said that if they ate them cussed nasty things jist to make the wine taste the better for the contrast, he didn't see no sense in that, for it was mazin' nice without no nastiness afore it.

The devilled biscuits he approved mightily, as creating a wholesome drought, which he applied himself to assuage by emptying three bottles of pale sherry to his own cheek, while the three young men were content with one double magnum of Chateau Latour. But when he emptied the third bottle he was as cool and collected as if he had not tasted a single drop, and was half disposed to run rusty at being summoned into the library to take a cup of coffee and an old cheroot-but here again his wrath was once more assuaged by the curaçoa, of which he drank off half a tumbler, and then professed himself ready for a quiet rubber, while Tim was gittin' supper.

Cornelius Conway Felton.

BORN in Newbury, Mass., 1807. DIED at Chester, Penn., 1862.

THE LIFE OF GREECE.

[Greece, Ancient and Modern. 1867.]

THE HE life of Greece was a life of a thousand years. A nation, like an individual, comes upon the stage in the freshness and vigor of youth, passes to its maturity, begins to decay, and finally yields its place to others. It has been recently said that this analogy has no basis in necessary truth; that it is the creation of fancy; that national life is not, like individual life, made up of perishable elements, and has no inherent principle of decay. Perhaps this is theoretically correct, or at least plausible; but the sources of a nation's character and the means of a nation's growth are changeable and exhaustible. The faith and enthu siasm which belong to the period of its youth—the period of construction and development-do not endure forever. Heu prisca fides, was the natural exclamation of the Roman poet, when Rome meant the world; but the ancient Roman spirit was felt to be dying out. The physical resources of a country do not last always; and the crowded population of one epoch dwindles away, leaving another age to wonder how it could ever have been. Forests are cut down; the soil is exhausted; the ferti lizing rivers shrink to streamlets, or entirely desert their ancient beds. Perhaps art might resist the gradual exhaustion of nature; but the attractions of new regions draw off the adventurous spirits, and the world is never full. The lines of commercial intercourse change. The great land-roads are deserted for the more expeditious and less expensive passage by sea. New and more convenient centres are found; and imperceptibly the splendors of the ancient seats become dim, and grass grows up through the crevices in the pavements. Power flies to other strongholds, and empires that once ruled the world fall into inward and outward decline. Where are Babylon, Persia, Syria, Egypt? It was not vice alone that destroyed them. It was a combination of causes, physical, moral, and mental. It was the ever-shifting relations of the world. The process goes on around us; but we do not heed it. Old communities are decreasing; young communities are increasing; change, fluctuation, death, are written on all human things; development and dissolution are the law to which men and nations are alike subjected. Some have a longer, others a shorter, term of existence; but the longest is a mere span, nor has any medicine yet been found to arrest or conquer death in either. The oldest nations now on the European stage

have not reached the age of Greece and Rome. Farther east, the existence of nations has been artificially protracted; but it is only a life in death. We are less than a century old; and we can hardly infer an endless existence from the unexampled rapidity of our childhood's growth. Rather let us fear the seeds of a premature decay, unless we guard our national constitution by a wise temperance, justice, moderation, integrity, morality, religion,-the laws of national health.

The life of Greece, as I have said, may be considered as lasting, effectively, a thousand years. How long was the period which preceded its actual appearance on the stage,-how many ages were consumed in combining the elements of its being and character, and preparing it for its great career, it is impossible to say. That this period was neither short nor unimportant, the length, variety, and brilliancy of its historical existence afford us trustworthy proof.

The country, as we have seen, was admirably fitted for an energetic development of intellectual power. The face of nature was young and fresh; its features diversified and beautiful. Mountain, hill, and vale; woodland and meadow; rivers, lakes, harbors; fertile plains alternating with hard and uneven soil; a climate of unsurpassed healthfulness and loveliness, and of every variety; the whole surrounded by the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, along whose shores were clustered the noblest seats of ancient culture,-these were the framework within which Hellenic life unfolded its fairest and most fragrant flowers. Here was laid the only true foundation of civil society, in the family relation, extending the range of its influence to the remotest branches of kindred. Here were formed political societies, in which constitutions were modelled, embracing every principle of social and political science. Here poetry unfolded itself under the most inspiring circumstances and the most favoring auspices. Here eloquence was applied to its highest and noblest ends, with a consummate mastery of the resources of speech, logic, and intellectual force. Here belief in the existence of the gods gave to every form of nature and every affection of the human heart its relation to the divine nature, and clothed itself in the glories of plastic art. Here sprang up the exact sciences, geometry, astronomy; the intellectual science of the philosophy of the human mind; the moral or ethical science of duty towards God and man. Here a noble system of education, the germs of which were planted in Greece long before history was able to record them, developed the faculties of the mind and the powers of the body in harmonious proportion. Here history, an art closely allied to political liberty, not only began its career, but reached its highest perfection. These are the springs, the momenta of the life of Greece. For the life of a nation grows out of the family affections; it is strengthened by the patriotic spirit, which sees the welfare of the indi

vidual bound up in the welfare of the state; the chastisement of suffering and disaster nerves it to brave endurance; the sunshine of national prosperity expands it into luxuriant growth; the teachings of nature give it coloring; the splendors of creative genius exalt and refine it; letters and art remove it from rudeness; poetry kindles its fervor; eloquence heartens it to the great contests which it may have to breast before its day has risen to the height of heaven; philosophy shows its intellectual relations; religion opens its view into the other world; on the breast of Mother Earth the soul and character of a nation lovingly repose; underneath the sky, its teeming energies are wakened into thrills of ecstasy; action tasks its strength, by putting the ideal to the test of reality; and so by unnumbered influences, some too subtile to be expressed in human speech, is evolved by slow degrees that wonderful phenomenon of creative power and goodness, a nation's life.

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OME time ago the writer's notice was arrested by an advertisement in one of the newspapers, which closed with words similar to the following: "INQUIRE AT AMOS GILES'S DISTILLERY." The reader may suppose, if he choose, that the following story was a dream, suggested by that phrase.

Deacon Giles was a man who loved money, and was never troubled with tenderness of conscience. His father and his grandfather before him had been distillers, and the same occupation had come to him as an heirloom in the family. The still-house was black with age, as well as with the smoke of furnaces that never went out, and the fumes of tortured ingredients, ceaselessly converted into alcohol. It looked like one of Vulcan's Stithies, translated from the infernal regions into this world. Its stench filled the atmosphere, and it seemed as if drops of poisonous alcoholic perspiration might be made to ooze out from any one of its timbers or clapboards on a slight pressure. Its owner was a treasurer to a Bible Society; and he had a little counting-room in one corner of the distillery where he sold Bibles.

"He that is greedy of gain troubleth his own house." Any one of

those Bibles would have told him this, but he chose to learn it from experience. It was said that the Worm of the Still lay coiled in the bosom of his family, and certain it is that one of its members had drowned himself in the vat of hot liquor, in the bottom of which a skeleton was some time after found, with heavy weights tied to the ankle-bones. Moreover, Deacon Giles's temper was none of the sweetest, naturally; and the liquor he drank, and the fires and spirituous fumes among which he lived, did nothing to soften it. If his workmen sometimes fell into his vats, he himself oftener fell out with his workmen. This was not to be wondered at, considering the nature of their wages, which, according to no unfrequent stipulation, would be as much raw rum as they could drink.

Deacon Giles worked on the Sabbath. He would neither suffer the fires of the distillery to go out, nor to burn while he was idle; so he kept as busy as they. One Saturday afternoon his workmen had quarrelled, and all went off in anger. He was in much perplexity for want of hands to do the work of the devil on the Lord's day. In the dusk of the evening a gang of singular-looking fellows entered the door of the distillery. Their dress was wild and uncouth, their eyes glared, and their language had a tone that was awful. They offered to work for the Deacon; and he, on his part, was overjoyed; for he thought within himself that as they had probably been turned out of employment elsewhere, he could engage them on his own terms.

He made them his accustomed offer; as much rum every day, when work was done, as they could drink; but they would not take it. Some of them broke out and told him that they had enough of hot things where they came from, without drinking damnation in the distillery. And when they said that, it seemed to the Deacon as if their breath burned blue; but he was not certain, and could not tell what to make of it. Then he offered them a pittance of money; but they set up such a laugh, that he thought the roof of the building would fall in. They demanded a sum which the Deacon said he could not give, and would not, to the best set of workmen that ever lived, much less to such piratical looking scape-jails as they. Finally, he said, he would give half what they asked, if they would take two-thirds of that in Bibles. When he mentioned the word Bibles, they all looked towards the door, and made a step backwards, and the Deacon thought they trembled; but whether it was with anger or delirium tremens or something else, he could not tell. However, they winked, and made signs to each other, and then one of them, who seemed to be the head man, agreed with the Deacon, that if he would let them work by night instead of day, they would stay with him awhile, and work on his own terms. To this he agreed, and they immediately went to work.

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