trop étroites, l'air trop troublé pour qu'on aperçoive le ciel. Il se perd dans la fumée des fabriques et le brouillard qui monte des toits humides; et puis la vie est tellement dure pour la plupart de ces gens-là, que si l'idée d'une Providence se mêlait à leurs misères, ce serait pour lui montrer le poing et la maudire. Voilà pourquoi il y a tant de suicides à Paris. Ce peuple qui ne sait pas prier

est prêt à mourir à toute heure."

Poor little Désirée had tasted-ever so little of the honey of romance, and she had to die. Fortunately few of her countrywomen take matters so tragically. In general, the girl of the petite bourgeoise marries the most prosperous of her suitors and makes the best of him, whether she can manage to love him or not. She is the partner, if not of her husband's soul, at any rate of his business, and no inactive partner either. We have sometimes, indeed, been tempted to think that the thrift which distinguishes Frenchwomen of this class is an instinct implanted in their hearts by a beneficent and pitying Providence to furnish some poor nutriment for the imaginative faculty which otherwise would perish by atrophy. Everything which gives the future predominance over the present offers in its way food for imagination, and though gaining and saving may not be romantic in themselves, they contain some of the true elements of romance trust in the unknown and forgetfulness of the real in the contemplation of the unreal. The visions that " rise from a cheeseparing" are not lofty, but they are visions nevertheless, and, in so much, partake of the nature of poetry. A dull sort of poetry if you will. Still these visions give strength to the young and pretty mother to relinquish finery and pleasure and submit to daily labor and privations to put by the dot of her little daughter, in order that she may in her turn marry and save. Economy and frugality are not elevating influences, but, on the whole, it is perhaps more ennobling to save for others than to spend recklessly on one's self. So it may be that thrift has other uses than that of repairing the losses caused by the Franco-German war. As soon as we saw that M. Daudet had made Sidonie unthrifty and childless we knew that he had doomed her to perdition.

As we write we are reminded of one particularly bright little bourgeoise,whose

life we followed from afar during many years. When we first knew her, more than twenty years ago, she was a young and blooming bride, who took possession of the seat reserved for her at the till in her husband's shop as proudly as if it had been a throne. It was a large grocery shop in the Rue St. Denis, and the business was flourishing. Madame M▬▬'s throne was fenced off from the shop on three sides by a brass-wire netting, leaving only an opening in front which served as a frame for her bright and ever-pleasant countenance. There she sat day after day, with the heavy leatherbound books and ledgers before her, always busy and never hurried; with a gracious smile for every customer, and a vigilant eye for all the shopmen. In the summer, when the Rue St. Denis was hot and stifling; in the winter, when the ever-opening door sent in cold draughts of wind, there she sat. One would like to think that in the evening there was some relaxation; but as every account that was sent in by that house, was in her handwriting, we fear there was often evening-work as well. After a time, a little girl took her seat beside her within the sanctuary of brass-wire netting, and played with her doll, or did some little bit of childish needlework under the mother's eye. The doll soon made room for slates and copybooks; but still the child was there, and kept her mother company. In time, she took her place now and then at the heavy books by way of initiation into the mysteries, while her mother worked by her side. Years went by, and Madame M- was still there; her eye was as vigilant, perhaps more vigilant than ever, but it was less bright; her smile was as gracious and as unfailing, but it was less varied and more conventional; in a word, her youth was gone, utterly passed away behind that commercial cage of brass-wire. other day, looking into the shop, we noticed that there was a new master. But the mistress was not new; the child, the girl, the woman whose whole life had been spent there, now reigned in her mother's stead. The shop, her dot, herself, had been handed over together to the same purchaser. "Her father and mother had retired," she said. "They live in the country now," she added, not without a touch of pride.

The

If any one wishes to know what becomes of the retired Parisian tradesman, he should "view"-as the house-agents say the small country houses with one or two acres of land which are for sale, at prices varying from Sool. to 1200/., in the vicinity of Paris. They are constantly changing hands, as each successive owner finds out that he is not fitted for country life. It has been the dream of his-and especially his wife's-life to have a country house some day. When they used to go into the country for their Sunday holiday, the little houses with their green window blinds seemed so cool and pleasant when compared to the hot, dusty road over which they trudged. There can be no greater difference of position than that which exists between one man who stands on the high road, on a broiling summer's day, and looks at a house with pretty flowers and green trees, and another who looks at the hot high road out of the windows of that same house. And then to think that while they were toiling wearily back to the railway station and baked-up Paris, the happy owners of that house were dining with their windows open, and sipping their coffee on those green benches outside the door! No wonder they register a vow to have such another paradise of their own some day! and, unfortunately for them, they keep their vow.

The house, viewed dispassionately, is hideous-a square box with white plastered walls, and a complete absence of that creeping leafy ornament which Englishmen associate with the idea of a cottage. If there is a view, the house may, or may not, turn its back to it; the bour geois does not much care. The garden is inclosed within four high walls, for there must be plenty of fruit-bearing espaliers. These, in their season, have their charms; but they require sun and air, so no large, unprofitable trees are suffered in their neighborhood. The whole establishment betrays the utilitarian tendencies of the owners. There is a pigeon-house, a fowl-house, rabbit-hutches innumerable, and standard fruit trees in every available corner, but few flowers. The idea evidently is to live cheaply, and especially to make a great many confitures. There is no greater

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bliss for the petite bourgeoise during the honeymoon of proprietorship than to make her own confitures from her own fruit, out of her own garden. But no bliss is lasting, and ennui soon creeps into the ugly little paradise. Monsieur begins to be bored and runs up to Paris on business;" then Madame is still more bored, and vows that she is afraid when she is left alone. She is too economical to spend her money in going up to town, and too prudent, moreover, to leave her little bonne unwatched during a whole day. So, at last, she speaks out boldly, and the dream of her life is got rid of to her infinite satisfaction. They return to Paris; Monsieur to his boulevards, his café, and his games of piquet or dominoes; Madame to her marketing, her gossip, and her envying friends with whom she dilates on the charms of the country house her husband would sell.

In a still humbler line, M. Daudet has given an excellent picture of the life of M. and Madame Chèbe at Montrouge, and there is not much exaggeration when he describes Madame Chèbe following with her eye the omnibus as it starts for Paris, and compares her to an employé of Cayenne or New Caledonia watching the departure of the packet for France.

With one remark we must conclude. M. Daudet's book may be taken as a picture of bourgeois manners, but not of bourgeois morals. The particular form which vice assumes in George Fromont and Sidonie, and the immorality of old Gardinois, are evidently the results of their social station, and M. Daudet, not uninfluenced perhaps by the prejudices of the literary caste, has dwelt with complacency on the ugliness of bourgeois vice; but it would be very unfair to take such people as samples of their class. It is in the details of life, in the mise en scène, so to speak, of the story, and in his minor personages, that he is an inimitable portrayer of bourgeois life. The opening marriage scene, the death and funeral of Désirée, are wonderfully accurate pictures. Above all, the long fruitless waiting of Frantz Risler at the railway terminus is a scene which could only have been painted by the hand of a master.-Macmillan's Magazine.

question, which careful enquiry afterwards proved to have no real foundation in fact.

Subsequent study, however, of the whole subject of the validity of Testimony, has led me not only to attach yet greater importance to what metaphysicians call its subjective element-that is, the state of mind of the witness who gives it; but, further, to see that we must utterly fail to appreciate the true value of evidence, if we do not take the general experience of intelligent men, embodied in what we term educated common sense,' as the basis of our estiIn all ordinary legal procedures, the witnesses on each side depose to things which might have happened; and in case of a 'conflict of testimony,' the penetration of the presiding judge, and the good sense of the jury, are exerted in trying to find out what really did happen; their search being guided partly by the relative confidence they place in the several witnesses, but partly by the general probabilities of the case.

Now, it would be at once accepted as a guiding principle by any administrator of justice, that the more extraordinary any assertion-that is, the more widely it departs from ordinary experience-the stronger is the testimony needed to give it a claim on our acceptance as truth; so that while ordinary evidence may very properly be admitted as adequate proof of any ordinary occurrence, an extraordinary weight of evidence would be rightly required to establish the credibility of any statement that is in itself inherently improbable, the strength of the proof required being proportional to the improbability. And if a statement made by any witness in a Court of Justice should be completely in opposition to the universal experience of mankind, as embodied in those laws of nature which are accepted by all men of ordinary intelligence, the judge and jury would most assuredly put that particular statement out of court as a thing that could not have happened-whatever value they might assign to the testimony of the same witness as to ordinary matters. Thus if, in order to account for the signature of a will in London at a certain time, by a person who could be proved, beyond reasonable doubt, to have been in Edinburgh only an hour before, either a single witness,

or any number of witnesses, were to affirm that the testator had been carried by the spirits' through the air all the way from Edinburgh to London in that hour, I ask whether the common sense of the whole Court would not revolt at such an assertion, as a thing not in rerum natura? And yet there are at the present time numbers of educated men and women, who have so completely surrendered their 'common sense' to a dominant prepossession, as to maintain that any such monstrous fiction ought to be believed, even upon the evidence of a single witness, if that witness be one upon whose testimony we should rely in the ordinary affairs of life!

There is, indeed, no other test than that of 'common sense,' for distinguishing between the delusions of a Monomaniac and the conclusions drawn by sane minds from the same data. There are many persons who are perfectly rational upon every subject but one: and who, if put on their trial, will stand a searching cross-examination without betraying themselves, especially if they know from previous experience what it is that they should endeavor to conceal. But a questioner who has received the right cue, and skilfully follows it up, will generally succeed at last in extracting an answer which enables him to turn to the jury and say 'You see that whilst sane enough in other matters, the patient upon this point is clearly mad.' Yet the proof of such madness consists in nothing else than the absurd discordance between the fixed conviction entertained by the individual, and what is accepted by the world at large as indubitably true; as for example, when he declares himself to be one of the persons of the Trinity, or affirms (as in a case now before me) that he is a victim to the machinations of Infernal powers, whom he overhears to be conspiring against him. We have no other basis than the dictates of common sense' for regarding such persons as the subjects of pitiable delusions, and have no other justification for treating them accordingly. Their convictions are perfectly true to themselves; they maintain in all sincerity that it is only they who are sane, and that the rest of mankind must be mad not to see the matter in the same light; and all this arises from their having allowed their

minds to fall under subjection to some 'dominant idea,' which at last takes full possession of them. Thus, for exThus, for exainple, a man suffering under incipient melancholia begins by taking gloomy views of everything that concerns him; his affairs are all going to ruin; his family and friends are alienated from him; the world in general is going to the bad. Under the influence of this morbid coloring, he takes more and more distorted views of the occurrences of his present life, and looks back with exaggerated reprobation at the errors of his past; and in time, not only ideal misrepresentations of real occurrences, but ideal constructions having scarcely any or perhaps no basis in actual fact, take full possession of his mind, which credits only his own imaginings, and refuses to accept the corrections given by the assurances of those who surround him. So I have seen a woman who has had the misfortune to fix her affections upon a man who did not return them, first misinterpret ordinary civilities as expressions of devoted attachment, and then, by constantly dwelling upon her own feelings, mentally construct ideal representations of occurrences which she comes to believe-in as real; not allowing herself to be undeceived, even when the object of her attachment declares that the sayings and doings attributed to him are altogether imaginary.

It is in this way that I account for what appear to me to be the strange delusions, which have laid hold at the present time of a number of persons who are not only perfectly sane and rational upon all other subjects, but may be eminently distinguished by intellectual ability. They first surrender themselves, without due enquiry, to a disposition to believe in occult' agencies; and having so surrendered themselves, they interpret everything in accordance with that belief. The best protection against such surrender appears to me to be the early culture of those scientific habits of thought, which shape, when once established, the whole future intellectual course of the individual,

The case is not really altered by the participation of large numbers of persons in the same delusion; in fact, the majority sometimes goes mad, the few who retain their 'common sense' being

the exceptions. Of this we have a notable instance in the Witch persecutions of the 17th century, mainly instigated by King James I. and his Theological allies; who, because witchcraft' and other 'curious arts' are condemned both by the Mosaic law and by Apostolic authority, stirred up the people' against those who were supposed to practise them, and branded every doubter as an atheist. The 'History of Human Error' seems to me, in fact, to have no pages more fuil of instruction to such as can read them aright, than those which chronicle the trials for witchcraft in the seventeenth century; presided over by judges-like Sir Matthew Hale-of the highest repute for learning, uprightness, and humanity. Not only were the most trivial and ridiculous circumstances admitted as proofs of the charge, but the most monstrous assertions were accepted without the slightest question. Thus in 1663 a woman was hanged at Taunton, on the evidence of a hunter that a hare which had taken refuge from his pursuit in a bush was found on the opposite side in the likeness of a witch, who, having assumed the form of the animal, took advantage of her hiding-place to resume her proper shape. And the proof of these marvels did not rest on the testimony of single witnesses. In 1658 a woman was hung at Chard Assizes for having bewitched a boy of twelve years old, who was seen to rise in the air, and pass some thirty yards over a garden wall; while at another time he was found in a room with his hands flat against a beam at the top, and his body two or three feet above the floor-nine people at a time seeing him in this position.

The Witch-persecution carried on by James VI. in Scotland, before his accession to the English throne, is believed to have caused the sacrifice of several thousand lives; but in England, under the too celebrated Witch Act, which was passed by Parliament under his influence, in the first year of his reign, it was far more terribly destructive. No fewer than seventy thousand persons are believed to have been executed for witchcraft between the years 1603 and 1680; a number far larger than that of the sufferers in all the religious persecutions of the later Tudors.

In 1677, however, an able work was