The deaths from actual immediate starvation were few that came to my knowledge. It was the effect of long privation in breaking down the constitution that was so fatal.

One of the saddest cases of death from famine was in a family of a small tenant not far from me. He had several children. They and his wife seemed to support the privation tolerably, but the father was failing fast-a hale, middle-aged man, and one who would make every effort, submit to every hardship, rather than go upon the rates.

He died. The doctor said nothing ailed him that he should die, and it was known that his little store of potatoes was not quite exhausted. He and his family were seen making a scanty meal of them daily. The doctor made an examination to discover his malady, and found that he was full of indigestible potato-skins, of which he had been in the habit of making his meals-giving the inside to his loved

ones.

One of the good effects of the famine was--in this district at least-to draw together all the educated and wealthier part of the people-parson, priest, landlord, merchant. And the individual knowledge of the priests among the poorer portion made their hearty aid doubly valuable.

After the famine was over, though we were still smarting from the wound, the Government sent some gentlemen round the country (I do not remember under what designation) to inquire into the state of the people.

One of these officers came to me, and saying that my name having been mentioned in the report of the Board of Works, he begged of me to allow him to make use of me in his investigation.

Among other things, he asked me if, among the many laborers he saw I still had at work, I could show him one, not living on my land, who had worked with me steadily through the three bad years, 1846-7-8, and begged of me to let him speak to the man without my interfering at all.

We went to my farm, and I pointed out such a man to him.

He accosted him. The man rested on his spade and returned his salute.

"How long have you been working here ?"

"Pretty regular these three years, sir."

“Oh no, sir. If we work as much as the leading squad, whose work sets the price of whatever is doing, we get eighteenpence. But I have a bit of land, and it suits me and the rest of us to work by measure, for we can come and go as it is convenient, and need not leave our little industry at home behind. But I and my son work here pretty regular, and generally have twelve or fourteen shillings a week to take home with us."

"Did you ever get any of the relief meal?"

"Is it the charity meal that they gave to them that were starving? No, sir, I thank God I never did.”

"Did any of your neighbors get any of that meal ?"

"Well, I suppose they did."

"Why did they prefer that to coming to work!"

"I'm sure I don't know. It's nothing to me. They might have come if they'd liked, for the work was open to all."

"Maybe they got more by the way they took. How many of a family have you!"

"Nine of us, sir, altogether."

"Could you think of any neighbor who got the charity meal, who had about as many !"

"Just as many. I do know of such a

one.

"Now do you know how much worth of meal his allowance was weekly for nine people!"

"To be sure I don't. What's it to me!" "Well, I will tell." (And taking out his pencil and pocket-book, he calculated the quantity and price.) "Just one or two shilings worth more than you got by working. So which do you think was best off-you and yours, or he and his!"

My man looked very indignant, and was silent for a minute, and then said, "Ay, poor fellow, he might have more meat in his belly, but can he have the soul of a man left in him?"

And he turned abruptly away to his work.

The inquirer said to me, "I would gladly have come all the way from London

to hear that fine fellow's words.

He has a sense of what he is saved from by the opportunity of earning his support, and by the manliness to choose the earned bread rather than the gratuitous. I daresay there are many others who would give nearly the same answers?"

"I won

I assured him that such was my belief. Then I followed my man to speak to him. He accosted me gruffly. der, sir, what made you bring that Englishman here to insult us; the way he talked about us taking the charity meal!"

But when I explained the matter to him, he said, "Well, then, I'll forgive him. But he needn't think too hardly of them that took it. There's many a one, besides a poor laboring man, that would be tempted if he'd be offered more for idling than working. Only I thank God I did earn all I got, and with His blessing I will do so."

This is one of the very many instances in which the poor peasantry show a character which commands respect much more than it excites compassion.

Unfortunately the violent, hot-headed, misled, or the broken-spirited, pauperized, beggarly portion of the population, being naturally in the position to attract most attention, have been taken as the samples of Irish peasantry. This has occasioned scant respect to be shown or felt towards the mass of the people; and it must be confessed that the want of respect shown even by benefactors, who exhibit pity and benevolence enough, has tended to lower the respectability of the people.

If these reminiscences shall lead some of their readers to believe in the existence of a high, noble, virtuous spirit in my poorer fellow-countrymen, and to respect them accordingly, I shall be thankful to have been able thus to discharge a little of the debt of obligation to those among whom I have lived so long, and whose kindly and neighborly intercourse and behavior not merely makes me their friend, but makes me proud to call them my friends.

(To be continued.)

It is singular and at the same time eminently characteristic of his nation's scholarship that the most learned and most popular philologist who writes the English language is not an Englishman or an American, but a German. No writer has entered more deeply into the origin and development of the English language itself than Prof. MAX MÜLLER; none, we think, has done so much in tracing out and explaining those local idioms which are so prevalent in England, and which in one or two cases amount to well-defined dialects; and many intelligent readers, no doubt, especially in this country, have derived all the knowledge they possess of comparative philology from the books which he has published on the subject.

FRIEDRICH MAX MÜLLER was born in 1823 (Dec. 6th), and, as our readers will see by the portrait, is now a hearty and sleek-looking man of forty-seven years. His birth-place was Dessau in the province of Anhalt, Germany; and his father was Wilhelm Müller, an author whose life and works he has embalmed in an admirable essay contained in the last volume of

his "Chips from a German Workshop." He was educated at the University of Leipsic, where he devoted his time almost exclusively to the study of Sanscrit and the oriental languages; and went to Paris in 1845 to procure material for an edition of the Rigveda with the commentary of Sayanacarya. While in Paris he met Humboldt and the greater and lesser lights of the French Academy; but three years later we find him in England, where the great work mentioned above was published in 1849-54, at the expense of the East India Company. Deciding to remain in England, he was appointed, in 1850, deputy Taylorian professor of literary history and comparative grammar in the University of Oxford, and a year later was made honorary member of the university. In 1854 he was appointed to the professorship of modern European languages in the same institution, and is now professor of the recently established chair of Sanscrit, the study of which he has done more probably than any living man to promote not only in Europe but in India.

Professor MÜLLER has been an industrious writer, and among the works which he has published since his settlement in England are a treatise "On the Comparative Philology of the Indo-European Languages in its bearing on the Early Civilization of Mankind;" "The Languages of the Seat of War," written during the Crimean war; "Buddhism and the Buddhist Pilgrims;" and a "History of Sanscrit Literature." His most important and best-known works are the "Lectures on the Science of Language," delivered at the Royal Institution, London, the first series in 1861, and the second in 1863. These Lectures may be said to have made good for the first time the claims of Philology to be ranked among the scien

ces; and by these and his popular series of "Chips from a German Workshop," comprising his miscellaneous writings for various periodicals, is he best known in America.

All of Professor MÜLLER's most important books have been written in English, and he uses our language with a fluency, elegance, and precision that could hardly be surpassed. The hypercritical Saturday Review says, “Prof. Muller is really one of the best English writers of the day; and that this praise is well-merited our readers were probably convinced by the three articles from his pen in our last year's volumes, entitled "Lectures on the Science of Religion."

IT is related of Miss Alcott, that when her first work was written and she had concluded to make a venture with the public, the publisher to whom she offered the manuscript advised her to "stick to school-teaching," for she was certain to make a failure in literature. It would seem like ex post facto wisdom to ridicule this publisher now, and it would hardly be fair to make his blunder the text for disparaging comments upon the judgment and discrimination of publishers in general, for Miss Alcott is precisely the kind of writer whom the average publisher suspects in the premi

ses.

If she had written an ordinary and orthodox book, in the ordinary and orthodox way, said publisher would probably have been quite ready to add her name to his list of bookmakers; but Miss Alcott has displayed marked and decided individuality from the start, and the publisher, if he understands the matter at all, knows very well that genius itself is not more capricious than the kind of reception which the public is likely to extend to an author who departs from the established type.

This mitigates the error of the publisher, but we should hardly say that it excuses him, for it would seem impossible for the dullest to read a specimen of Miss Alcott's work without seeing that not only did she have something to say, and that her way of saying it was fresh and vivid, but that she had in her all the elements of popularity. Such, at least, was the prompt and emphatic verdict of the public, for no sooner did "Little Women "-the first of her books fairly brought before readers-make its appearance, than it took the whole reading world, old and young, by storm; and from that time to the present, though its circle of readers has steadily widened, we have never seen or heard a criticism on it that was respectable and at the same time disparaging. "Little Women" is indeed almost perfect in its way, and the great success which it has achieved is not only a triumph of good literature over bad, but signally fortunate for

ions in it instead of in the absurdly dull, priggish, and preposterous books usually provided for them. There is little doubt in our mind that it has been as productive of good as it has of amusement.

"Little Men" has been rather more criticized than "Little Women," and the objections are usually well taken, for Miss Alcott undoubtedly understands girls better than she does boys, and her conception of the latter is about as true to life as those mysterious abstractions which female novelists are fond of substituting in their books for men. It is not one whit less interesting, howand it will probably satisfy the majority of readers to know that it introduces us once more to our old friends of "Little Women." Part second

ever,

of that work left us at the end with Meg settled calmly down to her duties as mother of a family, Amy married to Laurie, and Jo married to Professor Bhaer, but still revolving in her mind original schemes of usefulness. "Little Men" brings us again into familiar relations with all these, and takes us besides into the school at Plumfield, where "Jo's boys" number about a dozen. What jolly experiences we go through with those boys it would be impossible even to hint, but the memory of them is pleasant and most vivid. We never meet exactly such boys, it is true, in real life, but one is better for having met them if only in a book; and doubtless many a reader is already looking forward eagerly to that other volume which must take the "little men away from Plumfield, and into the larger relations which lie before even the smallest and most thoughtless of men.

Miss Alcott is, to our mind, the most wholesome and healthy-natured story-teller that New England has produced. She is not one of the

"Folks with a mission, Whose gaunt eyes, see Golden ages rising,"

but who see nothing in the present but "a tangled skein of will and fate" which each one's pen is to unravel. We do not know what her philosophy of life is, or even if she has any; but we are quite

certain of one thing, and that is that we should not envy the one who should take upon himself the task of convincing her of the total depravity of human nature, or that the world is utterly "out of joint." In addition to this, Miss Alcott possesses the prime faculty of a story-teller: that, namely, of inspiring interest. There is not a dull or commonplace chapter in her books; and one can pick them up anywhere and open at any page, and it will not take three minutes to inspire him with the desire to "read on."

If there is any household, or Sunday-school library, or collection of books intended for children, which is yet without these volumes, the duty of the head of such household or keeper of such library seems to us quite clear.

Hours of Exercise in the Alps. By JOHN TYNDALL, LL.D., F.R.S. New York: Appleton & Co. 1871.

D.

PROFESSOR TYNDALL has been very liberal with his readers of late. This is the third volume he has published during the present season, any one of which would suffice to put the public under obligations, and it is probable that another one still, comprising his summer lectures, will be ready before the close of the year.

66

The character of "Hours of Exercise in the Alps" is exactly portrayed in its title. It describes the recreations which Professor Tyndall has enjoyed during the summers of the ten years extending from 1859 to 1869, and is complementary to the Fragments of Science" which we noticed in these pages a couple of months ago. "The two volumes," as the author says, "supplement each other, and, taken together, illustrate the mode in which a lover of natural knowledge and of natural scenery chooses to spend his life." That such a life is as useful and noble an one as it is given to man to spend, we presume few would deny; for even the recreations are not of the kind in which one would suppose that so laborious a student and worker as Professor Tyndall would indulge himself, but are scarcely less bracing, stimulative, and instructive than the more technically scientific work itself. To a man like Prof. Tyndall a mountain, or a glacier, or a bit of scenery, means a good deal more of course than to the ordinary tourist, and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the reader who follows him intelligently through these "hours of exercise" will learn more of the Alps and of the majestic phenomena which they present than from all the guide books and "souvenirs of travel" ever issued from the press. It must not be inferred from this, however, that the volume is oppressively instructive. The dullest of subjects are inspired with new meaning and significance under the hand of Prof. Tyndall, and in addition to this he sees scenery with the eye of a genuine artist and describes it with the fervor of imagination and of diction which belong to a poet.

The present volume, in fact, shows that the author is as much at home in narrative and description as in the more customary field of scientific exposition. One follows him through his record of "hair-breadth scapes," and of adventures amongst 66 'rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven," with almost unalloyed pleasure. We say "almost," for the reader,

even when most interested, cannot divest himself of the consciousness that the man who is deliberately encountering these perils is Professor Tyndall, and that a slip, a misplaced step, the slightest error or accident, would deprive the world of his services while yet in the prime of his life and usefulness,

While "Hours of Exercise" is more especially a "record of bodily action," the scientific aspects of the subject are not excluded, and in the Appendix are notes on the structure, characteristics, and properties of ice and glaciers; an explanation of the phenomena of clouds; Snowdon in winter; and a narrative of the expedition to Algeria to observe the recent solar eclipse. The volume as a whole is a most attractive one, and we trust it will introduce Professor Tyndall to the large circle of readers who have been repelled by the strictly scientific character of his previous books. After once making his acquaintance they are not likely to part company with him hereafter.

Reindeer, Dogs, and Snow Shoes; A Journal of Siberian Travel and Exploration. By RICHARD J. BUSH. New York: Harper & Bros. 1871.

THE successful laying of the sub-Atlantic cable suspended for a time at least the stupendous undertaking of the Russo-American Telegraph Com. pany; but while their great labor and expense were rendered nugatory as far as practical results are concerned, it may be doubted if any purely commercial enterprise ever contributed so much toward the instruction and amusement of mankind. The greater part of what we know of Northwestern British America, of Alaska, of Eastern Sibe ria, and of Kamtschatka, has been derived from the engineers and explorers sent out by the Company; and the books in which they are described are among the most lively and entertaining in the long

list of recent travels.

Mr. Bush's volume is the latest of these, and "pretends to no scientific value," but is simply a record of personal observation and adventure in Kamtschatka and that portion of Siberia bordering on the Sea of Okhotsk and including the country of the Tungusians, the Yakouts, the Koraks, and the Tchuctchus. The region is pretty much the same as that described by Mr. Kennan in his "Tent Life in Siberia," but the narratives by no means traverse each other, and the two volumes should be read in conjunction. Mr. Kennan's is briefer and much the better of the two-is in fact almost a model of what a record of travel ought to be, and Mr. Bush would have greatly improved his book by a little rigid editing; but we can readily appreciate the difficulty of abridging a journal the whole of which is strictly relevant and no portion of which is positively uninteresting, and if the author was as young a man at the time as we take him to have been from hints here and there, his journal is scarcely less creditable to him than the courage with which he encountered the perils of Arctic exploration, and the unaffected modesty with which he has related them.

As suggestions about " 'summer reading" are always in order with the critic at this season, perhaps we had as well adopt this plea as any other for recommending a speedy perusal of Reindeer, Dogs, and Snow Shoes." Campbell said that his idea of happiness was to "lounge upon the rainbow

and read eternal romances of Crèbillon." If anything can inspire pleasure with the thermometer at 90, we should say it would be lying at ease in the shade and following an explorer through a region where the temperature falls to 56° below zero, and where the taking off of mittens long enough to light a pipe involves the freezing of one's fingers.

The volume is published with the usual excellent taste of the Harpers in this field, and the illustrations are both numerous and good.

Books for Girls. Little Sunshine's Holiday. By the author of "John Halifax, Gentleman." New York: Harper & Brothers.

AFTER writing more books for adults than any one person is likely to undertake to read-though they are well worth reading-Miss Muloch has turned her attention to children, and promises to supply the great want which exists everywhere, so she is told, of Girls' Books. The "address" with which she introduces her series is full of the author's usual good sense, and shows that she is very well aware of the nature of the task which she has undertaken to perform. She has written books for twenty-four years; books which, she says with pardonable pride, have been read over half the world, and translated into most European languages. Yet, she continues, it is less as an author than as a woman and a mother that she rests her claim to edit this Series; to choose the sort of books that ought to be written for girls, and sometimes to write them. "I leave myself the widest range of selection, both as to subjects and authors; merely saying that the books will set forth the opinions of no clique-I belong to none; nor will they advocate any special theological creed -I believe only in Christianity. Indeed there will be as little "preaching" in them as possible; for the wisest sermon is usually a silent one-example. But they will be, morally and artistically, the best books I can find, and will contain the experience of the best women of all countries, used for the benefit of the generation to come." Such is the substance of the "address," and there is no doubt that such a Series as it promises will supply a clearly defined want in juvenile literature.

In "Little Sunshine's Holiday" we have the first volume of the Series, and what we may suppose is a fair specimen of the books of which it is to consist. It is written by Miss Muloch herself, and certainly "begins at the beginning," for its heroine is scarcely three years old, and it is designed apparently for girls of that tender age. The story is a simple one, dealing only with the ordinary incidents of a trip to the Highlands, and the marvellous and the exciting are alike rigidly excluded. It is written in Miss Muloch's usual bland and agreeable style, it shows much knowledge of and familiarity with children and their ways, and it indicates a heart lovingly disposed towards them; but at the same time we fear that the little folks to whom the story is addressed would unanimously pronounce it dull. The mental sympathy which enters far more largely than mere literary art into the composition of good children's books is not possessed by Miss Muloch, her standpoint is essentially an objective one, and she describes Little Sunshine and her doings precisely as Darwin, for instance, would describe the ways of his pet monkeys.

The editor has taken upon herself the hardest task which her Series presents,-that of writing for the very young, and she can hardly be said to have performed it successfully. The Series, however, will doubtless be a good one, and the second volume, "The Cousin from India," by Georgiana M. Craik, is said by the English critics to be an interesting, vivacious, and very amusing story.

Till the Doctor Comes, and How to Help Him. By GEORGE H. HOPE, M.D. New York: G. P. Putnam & Sons.

THIS is an excellent little hand-book, and will no doubt become quite as popular here as it is in England, where it has run through five editions. It consists of brief suggestions on all the diseases, affections, and accidents to which man is ordinarily liable, and what it tells on any one point can be got at in a moment. Those who get it expecting a detailed statement of the diagnoses, processes, and treatment of disease, will be disappointed; for it is only intended to serve till the doctor comes, and by no means encourages the substitution of a book for a physician. It is a very useful and a very necessary book nevertheless, and has been improved in some respects by its American editor.

Messrs. Putnam & Sons have also published recently several other excellent books, among which are The Young Mechanic, Containing Directions for the Use of all Kinds of Tools, &c.; Ghardaia, or Ninety Days in the Desert, a book of travel which we fear is more entertaining than true; and Tent Life in Siberia, of which our readers will hear more in our next number.

SCIENCE.

Constitution of the Blood.--An Experimental Inquiry into the Constitution of Blood, and the Nutrition of Muscular Tissue, is the title of a paper by Dr. Marcet recently read at a meeting of the Royal Society. The late Professor Graham, by his process of dialysis, showed that substances were separable into crystalloids and colloids, that is, those which are crystalline in their nature, and those which resemble starch or gum. By taking advantage of this process, Dr. Marcet finds that blood is strictly a colloid fluid. The small quantity of crystalloids which it contains is intended to preserve the fluidity of the blood, and it is of importance that they should be retained during the circulation, owing to the part they play in the vital phenomena of oxidation; in other words, in keeping the blood free from impurities. Among these substances are those known to chemists as phosphoric anhydride and potash, and these are found also in flesh, or muscular tissue, in its complete state. Besides these constituents, there are found in flesh the materials contributed by the blood on their way to impart completeness, and those which, having done their work, have become effete, and are passing out. In the healthy state, flesh contains in store a supply of nourishment equal to about one-third more than its require ment for immediate use; this, as Dr. Marcet remarks, "being apparently a provision of nature to allow of muscular exercise during prolonged fasting." And he concludes that "the blood corpus.