arts such a
charm to the works of one with whom he has been erroneously
identified--the anonymous author of _Friends in Council_. But, after
all, he is one of those writers to whom our current literature is
really indebted, and whose sage, sententious, and well-hammered
thoughts may be profitably, as well as safely, commended to every
thinking soul among us.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[2] _Notes from Life._

[3] Ibid.

[4] _Literary Remains._

[5] _Lectures on the History of France._

[6] Namely, Jacques van Artevelde, 'the noblest and the wisest man
that ever ruled in Ghent,' and whom the factious citizens slew at his
own door.

[7] Duke of Burgundy, in the last scene of Part II.

[8] Beginning:--

'Rocks that beheld my boyhood! Perilous shelf
That nursed my infant courage! Once again
I, stand before you--not as in other days
In your gray faces smiling; but like you
The worse for weather.'...

How sweet the lines:--

The sun shall soon
Dip westerly; but oh! how little like
Are life's two twilights! Would the last were first,
And the first last! that so we might he soothed
Upon the thoroughfares of busy life
Beneath the noon-day sun, with hope of joy
Fresh as the morn,' &c.
--_Act II. scene ii._

[9] Preface to _Notes from Life._

[10] _Levana_, of which an able translation was published by Messrs
Longman in 1848.

RAILWAY JUBILEE IN AMERICA.

The opening in September last of the grand railway which unites
Massachusetts with British North America is one of the most noticeable
events of our times. Before this, the commercial path of transit from
Europe lay from the Atlantic up the St Lawrence, the navigation of
which--at all times difficult and dangerous--is closed by ice during
five months of the year, and thus all intercourse through the States,
except by sleighs, stopped. Now, goods may be brought direct to Boston
and shipped to Europe, or unshipped at Boston for the Canadas without
interruption. But in a moral and social point of view, the subject is
still more important. Rivalry and bad feeling vanish before
intercourse, and the locomotive mows down prejudices faster than corn
falls before the Yankee reaping-machine.

When I heard that there was to be a _procession_, the word vulgarised
the whole affair. It conjured up before my mind's eye our doings of
the sort in