From The Spectator.

GRAMMARS-COTTON-WINE.

WE are indebted to the Tower of Babel for three Grammars. "Elaborate treatises

This being the case, it may be worth while to consider the practicability of adopting Sir W. H. Holm's suggestion to turn British Guiana into a cotton-growing district. There is no doubt whatever that the cultiva tion of cotton might be carried on there to any extent, if capital and labor were pro obtained from China and India, and the for curable. The latter, indeed, is now being mer will not be slow in flowing into a profitable channel.

have been written," says Mr. Kalisch, "to prove that Hebrew is an easy language, and manuals have been published professing to teach it in four-and-twenty lessons." He himself does not "flatter the student with hopes so pleasing and gratifying." As a preliminary step, therefore, he calls upon the "Good wine," says the proverb, "needs learner to master two formidable volumes on no bush," but the difficulty is to find good Grammar, which, he is careful to add, "is wine. It is quite clear that a very large only the vestibule of the temple which enproportion of the wines drunk in this counshrines the literature." For our own part try are vile adulterations, in which the juice we cannot venture beyond the threshold, of the grape plays a very subordinate part. and consequently shall not tarry long even No unsophisticated wine, says Mr. Tovey,† over Mr. Beamont's "Concise Grammar of and least of all Claret, can be sold at the the Arabic Language," + though he assures us that "the importance of that language firms. The mixture that usually passes curprices advertised by certain unscrupulous to the study of Hebrew, the living to the rent as a cheap Claret, is simply a concocdead, can scarcely be overrated." If, as Mr. tion of Cetti, Beni-Carlo, and Pontac, while Beamont asserts, it is our imperative duty in one instance he "found that a marvel"to attempt the conversion of the Moslem subjects of Turkey to the Christian faith," it may be conceded that it would be very desirable we should be able to hold familiar intercourse with them. We therefore commend this Grammar to the attention of all such as have other designs upon Turkey than the conversion of Kaimes. We are next invited to acquire the Dutch tongue in order to converse with the Japanese. The "enterprising British merchant," and every "literary man with the smallest pretensions to philology," are alike interested in making themselves master of "the most perfect of any of the Lower Teutonia dialects."

lously low-priced Claret consisted of a mixture of British spirits and water dashed with an acid, which had been racked upon wine lees colored with dyewood." Really good wine, it seems, can never be otherwise than high-priced, owing to the comparatively small area on which it is produced, and the positively large demand for it in all parts of the globe. Many erroneous impressions and prejudices on the subject of French and German wines are successfully combated and removed by Mr. Tovey in his unpretending but exceedingly interesting little manual, and much useful information imparted in a The cultivation of Cotton on scientific revelations, however, will be hardly agreeaSome of his simple and concise manner. principles forms the subject of an extremely ble either to the keepers or frequenters of useful little volume by Dr. Mallet.§ And taverns, though the latter have reason to be not only does he minutely investigate the grateful for his courageous exposure of the elements and causes of its successful culture, fraudulent practices of "mine host." It is but he also furnishes a careful account of satisfactory to know on such good authority the practice actually pursued in the Southern as that of Dr. Jola brown, of Edinburgh,‡ States of North America. The results of that a moderate use of sound wine will his researches are decidedly adverse to any gladden the heart of man without injury to expectations that may have been formed of his constitution. The author of "Rab and obtaining large supplies of a firstrate arti- his Friends" is not only a humorist of a cle from India, and this conclusion is borne high order, but a sensible and experienced out by all the best authorities in that matter. practitioner of the healing art. His opinion A Hebrew Grammar, with Exercises. By M. on all that belongs to bodily health is thereM. Kalisch, Ph.D., M.A., Part I. Longman and fore entitled to consideration, and he has Co. the merit of tendering his advice in homely language intelligible to all classes.

t A Concise Grammar of the Arabic Language,

revised by Sheikh Ali Nady El Barrany. By w

J. Beamont, M. A. Bell and Daldy.

A Concise Grammar of the Dutch Language. By Dr. F. Ahn. Translated by H. Van Lauh. Trübner and Co.

Cotton: the Chemical, Geological, and Meteorological conditions involved in its successful Cultivation. By Dr. John W. Mallet. Chapman and Hall.

*Free Cotton: How and where to grow it. By Sir W. H. Holms. Chapman and Hall.

↑ Wine and Wine Countries; a Record and Manual for Wine Merchants and Wine Consumers. By Charles Tovey. Hamilton, Adams, and Co.

Health: Fire Lay Sermons to Working People. By John Brown, M.D. Hamilton, Adams, and Co.

POETRY.-A Song in Time of Order, 594. A Tale of a British Captain, 594. The April Hours, 594. Love in a Haze, 632. On the Death of a Child, 632. Sonnet, 632.

SHORT ARTICLES.-Admiration, 616. Stockton's Poems, 616. Reprint of Shakspeare as Published in 1623, 619. David Bruce, 619. Duchess d'Angoulême and Count de Chambord, 622. St. Napoleon, 622. Luther's Version of the Apocrypha, 631.

PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY

LITTELL, SON, & CO., BOSTON.

For Six Dollars a year, in advance, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded free of postage.

Complete sets of the First Series, in thirty-six volumes, and of the Second Series, in twenty volumes, handsomely bound, packed in neat boxes, and delivered in all the principal cities, free of expense of freight, are for sale at two dollars a volume.

ANY VOLUME may be had separately, at two dollars, bound, or a dollar and a half in numbers.

ANY NUMBER may be had for 13 cents; and it is well worth while for subscribers or purchasers to complete any broken volumes they may have, and thus greatly enhance their value.

-Have they bought over God with a fee?- To Wilson would he stretch his hand, his only While three inen hold together,

66

BY DUTTON COOK, AUTHOR OF PAUL FOSTER'S DAUGHTER," ETC.

"A lytel misgoyng in the gynning causeth mykel errour in the end."-Chaucer's "Testament of Love."' large room of the George Inn, Grilling Abbots.

CHAPTER I.

GOOD ACCOMMODATION FOR
MAN AND BEAST.

WOULD he live through the night? Would he die before his eldest son arrived? Could it be that the parent and the child, separated since so many years, were not to meet again on this side of the grave? How many times had the sun gone down upon their wrath, and risen again to find it yet turbulent and restless, and surging like a sea that would not be stayed! And now would not even Death bring penitence and peace and forgiveness ?

Would the old gentleman last through the night? Was old Mr. Hadfield of the Grange really going? So they asked each other in low, awful whispers. The question went buzzing round as though it had been part of a fireside forfeit game, and each man was bound to propose it to his neighbor, and to give to it an evasive answer when his turn came to be examined on the subject. Indeed, it might have been a game. It was the season of the year for forfeits, and such amusements. The day after Christmas Day. There was merriment enough and to spare at other places. There was a grand ball at Mowle, for instance; while up in London, very likely there were thousands shrieking with laughter at the clown's first leap on to the stage-at his soiling his new clean motley in his first slip and tumble. There was little mirth, though, at Grilling Abbots. They were warm and snug, the fire glowing splendidly, the kettle always proffering boiling water, the mugs full, and the rummers emitting most deliciously inebriating perfume. But there was no mirth. This question about old Mr. Hadfield oppressed all terribly. Already there seemed to be a gloom as of crape covering and saddening

Who could answer? Not pale Mr. Fuller, the surgeon of Grilling Abbots, the nearest town; not Dr. Barker, who had come over expressly summoned from the Mowle Infirmary: not Dr. Chillingworth, who had hurried down post-haste from London. They had met in serious conclave round the sick man's bed. They had held a solemn-almost a grim-consultation upon the case. They had retired to the library adjoining, and whispered to each other, and compared notes. They talked so earnestly, yet in voices so subdued they were inaudible a few yards off, while their heads approached together in so close a cluster that they seemed almost to pertain to one body, and looked like three apples growing on a single stalk. Pale Mr. Fuller went through a sort of friendly cross-them. examination as to the course of treatment he had pursued; he set forth his medicines and his motives in applying them: he stated his knowledge of the invalid, with particulars as to age, constitution, previous ill-possibly, and make the children next door nesses, predisposition to disease, etc. The doctor from Mowle patted the surgeon of Grilling Abbots familiarly, yet approvingly, on the shoulder. The physician from London patted both his professional brothers on the back, and nodded a great many times his approbation at all they had said and done. "Nothing could have been betternothing, nothing," he said; and they had each a glass of Madeira and a biscuit. They could not answer, they said, for the poor sufferer's life: no, they agreed,-not from one moment to another.

Who could answer, then, if these could not? Certainly not that cosy group of guests round the glorious red fire in the

It was a small enough event from any other than a Grilling-Abbots point of view, it must be admitted. It was like an explosion in a room-it would break the windows

scream and clutch their mother's skirts; but out of a certain small radius it would be quite inaudible. Yes, they would hear it at Mowle; they would be moved by it at Mowle-not, of course, so much as at Grilling Abbots, but still considerably. You know he had sat for Mowle-in the old times before the Reform Bill. No, he never set foot in the House after the Bill. He swore he never would, and he kept his oath. There was no mistake about him. If he once said a thing, he kept to it through thick and thin,-ay, that he did. A true, stanch, stout old English gentleman-that he was. There was no mistake about him. They were all agreed upon that. Yes, they would

feel his loss at Mowle. But in London? | the assembly. For some considerable time Those Cockney chaps would read it in the afterwards he ruled very low-as the money

and think and care nothing about the mat- A very old family-the schoolmaster told ter, and never know how valued was the old no one news when he told that. They had man in the neighborhood of his estate, how been seated at a very early period in Upgood a friend he had been to the poor of landshire-that was no great news either. Grilling Abbots; how treasured was his Surely, all Grilling Abbots knew that. They name and his memory amongst them; how had received territorial grants from Henry old a family he came of, and how many VIII. at the dissolution of the monasteries pages were devoted to the chronicles of his-that was certain also. And there was a house in that interesting work, the "History Richard Hadfield, barrister-at-law, Recorder of Uplandshire."