fresh outbreak had occurred in Acheen. The Dutch reported having captured a strong position at Alangpria. In the engagement fought on this occasion they lost fifty-six killed and wounded, while the loss of the Acheenese was given at 680. Large reinforcements of European troops were passing through Singapore from Java.

When the Dutch Legislature opened, one of the principal labours of the session proved to be to find means of coping with the serious financial difficulties the kingdom had experienced of late years. The expedition to Acheen had entirely disarranged the Budget of Holland. From the occupation of this district, in which England acquiesced seven years ago, in exchange for the cession of the Dutch possessions on the Guinea Coast, Holland had derived very little glory and still less profit. The East Indian Budget for 1879 showed a deficit of 10,000,000fl., caused by the expenses of the war in Acheen and the expenditure for the construction of new railways. The Ministry proposed to cover the deficit temporarily by advances from the treasury to the Indian Finance Department, and ultimately by a loan. The expense attending the occupation of Acheen was estimated at 9,000,000я. In opening the Parliament the King expressed his appreciation of the cordial affection manifested towards the royal family on the occasion of the recent marriage of the Prince and Princess Henry. The speech went on to say that the relations of the Netherlands with foreign powers were most friendly, and that the national industry, particularly agriculture, was in a generally satisfactory condition. The state of the finances called urgently for attention, and his Majesty recommended to the consideration of the Legislature the question of the reform of taxation. The Government promised to present to the Chambers the draft of a new penal code. The speech stated that the condition of affairs in the Dutch East Indian possessions was satisfactory, although the maintenance of the Dutch authority in the north of Sumatra required fresh extraordinary measures. The King, in conclusion, eulogised the services of the army in Sumatra.

In bringing forward the Budget for 1879, the Finance Minister said after that year it would be necessary to find means of increasing the annual public revenue by 4,000,000fl., and the Minister intended to propose with that object income and property taxes. The state of affairs was "not alarming, but required the exercise of care, foresight, and economy."

The Second Chamber of the States-General adopted, by fortyseven votes to thirteen, the Address in reply to the speech from the throne, almost paraphrasing the Royal Speech. M. Vanhouten, an advanced Liberal, delivered a speech in the course of the debate, in which he energetically advocated a general reform of the system of taxation. The members of the Catholic party also took part in the discussion, warmly condemning a report presented to the King by the Government against the petitions.

asking the King to refuse his sanction to the law on elementary instruction. The Minister for the Colonies, in reply to some objections expressed by M. Casembroot, stated that, according to advices from the Dutch Commandant in Acheen, twelve complete battalions of troops were at present engaged, forming a force amply sufficient to terminate the war.

The betrothal of the King to Princess Emma of WaldeckPyrmont (which had been often affirmed and denied) was officially announced at the Hague at the end of September, just when a telegram from the Governor-General of the Dutch Indies was received at the Colonial Office announcing the unconditional surrender of Habib Abdul Rachman to Dutch authority. He not only consented to leave, with his followers, the Bay of Olehleh, the Dutch port on the mouth of the Acheen river, but urged the other chiefs to submission. Further reinforcements, to the number of 2,500 troops, had arrived at Acheen.

The Socialist question came up in the States-General at the close of the year; but Mynheer Kappeijne van de Cappelle, the Home Secretary, being asked on December 4 whether he would not adopt any measures against the agitations of Ultramontanes and Socialists, quietly replied that he had no such intention, and that liberty of speech and the freedom of the press were the best of all safeguards.

DENMARK.

In Santa Cruz, West Indies, a dependency of Denmark, with a population of some 23,000 souls, chiefly free negroes, and one-half of its soil under sugar-cane crops, a revolt of negroes occurred this autumn. The rioters murdered several leading planters, half the town of Frederiksted, the second in the island, was all destroyed, and out of some fifty sugar estates, forty were burnt. The Governor was summoned from St. Thomas, but only found fifty soldiers available for the restoration of order. With this small force, nevertheless, and no doubt with the voluntary assistance of the planters, the insurgents were withstood, and European superiority was asserted-" the negroes were routed, and 200 of their number killed." The Danish authorities appealed for aid to the Governments of the other islands, and the arrival of a French frigate soon put an end to all further danger. A telegram from Jamaica then announced that the insurrection had been quelled, and the ringleaders captured. The rising originated in a disagreement on the subject of labour contracts. Santa Cruz is one of the three Danish settlements in the Antilles, the two others being St. Thomas and St. John. A few years ago the Danish Government sold these islands to the United States, but the bargain had to be cancelled on account of the United States Senate refusing its assent.

The Government now asked for a loan of 1,200,000 crowns in favour of the planters, but the Folkething, by a majority of one,

resolved to refer the Bill to a committee, which is tantamount to its rejection. The Government, in order to show its disregard of the wishes of the Legislature, thereupon actually granted a subsidy of 60,000l. to the planters of St. Thomas, and at the end of the year an attempt was expected to impeach the Ministry. The Folkething was dissolved in December by royal decree.

The marriage of the Princess Thyra to the Duke of Cumberland, son of the dethroned King of Hanover, was celebrated in December with great pomp.

PORTUGAL.

Early in the year the Portuguese Ministry resigned, in consequence of a vote of censure in the Chamber of Deputies, and Senhor de Fontes Pereira de Mello was called upon to form a new Cabinet.

MEXICO.

"A Mexican question," we quote from the news of August, "has been looming ahead for some time, and may before long break out in such an acute form as to complicate political affairs on both sides of the Rio Grande. General Porfirio Diaz is now recognised as President of the Mexican Republic throughout the interior; but on the northern border General Escobedo, known as 'the Butcher,' continues to infest the country in the interest of the principal claimant to the rickety Presidential chair, Senor Lerdo de Tejada, and both parties manage somehow to make raids across the river on Texan territory every now and then, and abstract as much cattle and other moveable property as they can manage to secure before a couple of United States soldiers appear on the scene. Of late the commander of the American troops in the border districts has repeatedly taken it on himself to pursue the thieves across the frontier, and now both sets of patriotic marauders vie with one another in asseverating that they will wreak vengeance on the Gringos, which is the nickname they give to the Americans. As yet this looks like a tempest in a teacup, but before long it may assume proportions almost as large as the grandiloquent proclamation of the Mexican chieftains."

RETROSPECT

OF

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART IN 1878.

LITERATURE.*

"W. M. Hunt's Talks about Art."-A book with some quaint maxims, such as the following :

"Your parents don't like your work? Of course they don't; they haven't been through enough. Don't mind what your friends say of your work. In the first place, they all think you're an idiot; in the next place, they expect grand things from you; in the third place, they wouldn't know if you did a good thing."

"Ah, those great men! their life was one prayer. They did nothing but their work; cared only for what they were doing; and how little the world knows of them! There was Poussin, a lovely old chap. How the critics were down on him when he painted 'Moses Striking the Rock!' The owner wrote him, 'I don't like it. Here's a lake made in a single moment! You've been trivial. I don't want your picture!' To which came the calm reply,-'Don't worry. I thought if Moses were going to strike a rock, he might as well strike where there had once been a fountain. He knew what he was about!

"Walks in London." By A. J. C. Hare.—"Of all the barbarous and ridiculous injuries," says Mr. Hare, "by which London has been wantonly mutilated within the last few years, the destruction of Northumberland House has been the greatest. The removal of some ugly houses on the west, and the sacrifice of a corner of the garden, might have given a better turn to the street now called Northumberland Avenue, and have saved the finest great historical house in London, commenced by a Howard, continued by a Percy, and completed by a Seymour, -the house in which the restoration of the monarchy was successfully planned in 1660, in the secret conferences of General Monk."

The book is a strong protest against the destructive mania; and describes how narrowly the portico of St. Martin's Church, "the masterpiece of Gibbs, and the only perfect example of a Grecian portico in London,” escaped the Board of Works in 1877, by the help of Parliament; and how Milton's garden-house in York Street, Westminster, where Hazlitt lived afterwards, did not escape, but was pulled down. The rich literary associations of London are much dealt with by the writer.

"Works on the Catacombs." J. H. Parker. The Rev. S. Northcote,

*Our review of the Literature and Art of the year is for the most part abbreviated from articles in the Spectator. We have thought it advisable this year, in deference to various opinions expressed, to confine ourselves as far as possible to analysis and extracts.

the author of the "Buried Cities.”—Anything like a consecutive history of the Catacombs we cannot possibly construct from the meagre and incidental notices of them which have come down to us. It is certain, however, that they were begun in the first century, and Mr. Parker has found brickwork which he confidently pronounces to belong to Nero's age. It may be too much to describe any of the Catacombs as Apostolic, but still the time-honoured tradition which fixes the place of St. Paul's burial as the Via Ostiensis is not to be lightly disregarded. In the second and third centuries they became places of assembly, as well as of burial, and this was the age of the "Church in the Catacombs." In the three years of Diocletian's great persecution, at the beginning of the fourth century, they were confiscated, and lost to the Christian community. The Edict of Milan in A.D. 312, reversed all this, and from this time it appears that interments in the Catacombs became rarer, and that towards the close of the century the subterranean crypts were almost wholly abandoned. It was at this period that the splendid basilicas were raised over the tomb of Christian martyrs. Pope Damasus won for himself a good and saintly reputation by the diligence with which he sought out the burial-places of men and women who had been thus honoured, and preserved their memories in brief inscriptions. Writing of the Catacombs in the fourth century, St. Jerome says that when he was a boy at school at Rome, he used to visit them on Sundays, and that they reminded him by their profound darkness of the prophet's words, "Let them go down alive into Hades." After Rome's capture and plunder by Alaric, in A.D. 410, when, to quote the same father, "the most beautiful light in the world was put out," burial in them appears to have become less and less common, and it is even a question whether a single well-authenticated instance is to be found. From the fifth century the Catacombs tended to become places of pilgrimage and the resorts of pilgrims. In the Gothic and Lombard invasions of the sixth and eighth centuries they were fearfully desecrated and rifled, and in fact, for a long period they ceased to attract any but a few occasional visitors. Pope Nicholas I. made in the ninth century an effort to rescue them from oblivion; but they were not "rediscovered" till the sixteenth, when Antonio Bosio, called by Dr. Northcote "the Columbus of this new world of subterranean Rome," began the work which in our day is being worthily carried out by De Rossi.

"Life and Habit." By Samuel Butler.-This is another of the many productions of modern "thought;" a name which vague speculation nowa-days seems to arrogate for itself. The main problem it batters at was solved at once and for ever two thousand years ago for those who care to accept the solution simply; and will never be solved by book-makers in this world, for those who do not. One extract from this last utterance of human wisdom is enough: "Life is that property of matter whereby it can remember. Matter which can remember is living, matter which cannot remember is dead." We add a "humorous" passage :

"A grain of corn, for example, has never been accustomed to find itself in a hen's stomach,-neither it nor its forefathers. For a grain so placed leaves no offspring, and hence cannot transmit its experience. The first minute or so after being eaten it may think it has just been sown, and begin to prepare for sprouting, but in a few seconds it discovers the environment to be unfamiliar; it therefore gets frightened, loses its head, is carried into the gizzard, and comminuted among the gizzard-stones."