During the intervals of war, they pass their time less in hunting than in a sluggish repose, divided between sleep and the table. All the bravest of the warriors, committing the care of the house, the family affairs, and the lands, to the women, old men, and weaker part of the domestics, stupefy themselves in inaction: so wonderful is the contrast presented by nature, that the same persons love indolence, and hate tranquillity! It is customary for the several states to present, by voluntary and individual contributions, cattle or grain to their chiefs; which are accepted as honorary gifts, while they serve as necessary supplies. They are peculiarly pleased with presents from neighboring nations, offered not only by individuals, but by the community at large; such as fine horses, heavy armor, rich housings, and gold chains. We have now taught them also to accept of money.

It is well known that none of the German nations inhabit cities; or even admit of contiguous settlements. They dwell scattered and separate, as a spring, a meadow, or a grove may chance to invite them. Their villages are laid out, not like ours in rows of adjoining buildings; but every one surrounds his house with a vacant space, either by way of security against fire, or through ignorance of the art of building. For, indeed, they are unacquainted with the use of mortar and tiles; and for every purpose employ rude unshapen timber, fashioned with no regard to pleasing the eye. They bestow more than ordinary pains in coating certain parts of their buildings with a kind of earth, so pure and shining that it gives the appearance of painting. They also dig subterraneous caves, and cover them over with a great quantity of dung. These they use as winterretreats, and granaries; for they preserve a moderate temperature; and upon an invasion, when the open country is plundered these recesses remain unviolated, either because the enemy is ignorant of them, or because he will not trouble himself with the search.

The clothing common to all is a sagum fastened by a clasp, or, in want of that, a thorn. With no other covering, they pass whole days on the hearth, before the fire. The more wealthy are distinguished by a vest, not flowing loose, like those of the Sarmatians and Parthians, but girt close, and exhibiting the

shape of every limb. They also wear the skins of beasts, which the people near the borders are less curious in selecting or preparing than the more remote inhabitants, who cannot by commerce procure other clothing. These make choice of particular skins, which they variegate with spots, and strips of the furs of marine animals, the produce of the exterior ocean, and seas to us unknown. The dress of the women does not differ from that of the men, except that they more frequently wear linen, which they stain with purple; and do not lengthen their upper garment into sleeves, but leave exposed the whole arm, and part of the breast.

The matrimonial bond is, nevertheless, strict and severe among them; nor is there anything in their manners more commendable than this. Almost singly among the barbarians, they content themselves with one wife; a very few of them excepted, who, not through incontinence, but because their alliance is solicited on account of their rank, practise polygamy. The wife does not bring a dowry to her husband, but receives one from him. The parents and relations assemble, and pass their approbation on the presents presents not adapted to please a female taste, or decorate the bride; but oxen, a caparisoned steed, a shield, spear, and sword. By virtue of these, the wife is espoused; and she in her turn makes a present of some arms to her husband. This they consider as the firmest bond of union; these, the sacred mysteries, the conjugal deities. That the woman may not think herself excused from exertions of fortitude, or exempt from the casualties of war, she is admonished by the very ceremonial of her marriage, that she comes to her husband as a partner in toils and dangers; to suffer and to dare equally with him, in peace and in war: this is indicated by the yoked oxen, the harnessed steed, the offered arms. Thus she is to live; thus to die. She receives what she is to return inviolate and honored to her children; what her daughters-in-law are to receive, and again transmit to her grandchildren.

HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE

HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE, a French philosopher, historian, and critic Born at Vouziers (Ardennes), April 21, 1828; died at Paris, March 5, 1893. Author of an "Essay on La Fontaine's Fables," "Essay on Livy," "Journey to the Pyrenees," "French Philosophers in the Nineteenth Century," "Essays in Criticism and History," "Notes on England," "Contemporary English Writers," "History of English Literature," "English Idealism," "Philosophy of Art," "The Ideal in Art," "The Old Régime," "Anarchy," "The Revolutionary Governments," "The Modern Régime."

Taine was remarkable for his clear insight and just discrimination of literary values.

(The following selection from the "History of English Literature" is used by permission of Henry Holt and Company, New York, the publishers.)

ENGLAND IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY

IN no age or nation of the earth, I believe, has matter ever been better handled and utilized. Enter London by water, and you will see an accumulation of toil and work which has no equal on this planet. Paris, by comparison, is but an elegant city of pleasure; the Seine, with its quays, a pretty serviceable plaything. Here is all vast. I have seen Marseilles, Bordeaux, Amsterdam, but I had no idea of such a mass. From Greenwich to London the two shores are a continuous wharf: merchandise is always being piled up, sacks hoisted, ships moored; ever new warehouses for copper, beer, ropework, tar, chemicals. Docks, timber-yards, calking basins, and dockyards multiply and encroach on each other. On the left there is the iron framework of a church being finished, to be sent to India. The Thames is a mile broad, and is but a populous street of vessels, a winding work-yard. Steamboats, sailing vessels, ascend and descend, come to anchor in groups of two, three, ten, then in long files, then in dense rows; there are five or six thousand of them at anchor. On the right, the docks, like so many intricate, maritime streets, disgorge or store up the vessels.

If you get on a height, you see vessels in the distance by hundreds and thousands, fixed as if on the land; their masts in a line, their slender rigging, make a spider-web which girdles the horizon. Yet on the river itself, to the west, we see an inextricable forest of masts, yards, and cables; the ships are unloading, fastened to one another, mingled with chimneys, amongst the pulleys of the storehouses, cranes, capstans, and all the implements of the vast and ceaseless toil. A foggy smoke, penetrated by the sun, wraps them in its russet veil; it is the heavy and smoky air of a great hothouse; soil and man, light and air, all is transformed by work. If you enter one of these docks, the impression will be yet more overwhelming: each resembles a town; always ships, still more ships, in a line, showing their heads; their hollowed sides, their copper chests, like monstrous fishes under their breastplate of scales. When we descend below, we see that this breastplate is fifty feet high; many are of three thousand or four thousand tons. Long clippers of three hundred feet are on the point of sailing for Australia, Ceylon, America. A bridge is raised by machinery; it weighs a hundred tons, and only one man is needed to raise it. Here are the wine stores there are thirty thousand tuns of port in the cellars; here the place for hides, here for tallow, here for ice. The universe tends to this center. Like a heart, to which the blood flows, and from which it pours, money, goods, business, arrive hither from the four quarters of the globe, and flow thence to all the quarters of the world. And this circulation seems natural, so well is it conducted. The cranes turn noiselessly; the tuns seem to move of themselves; a little car rolls them at once, and without effort; the bales descend by their own weight on the inclined planes, which lead them to their place. Clerks, without flurry, call out the numbers; men push or pull without confusion, calmly husbanding their labor; whilst the cool master, in his black hat, gravely, with spare gestures, and without one word, directs.

Now take rail and go to Glasgow, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, to see their industry. As you advance into the coal country, the air is darkened with smoke; the chimneys, high as obelisks, are crowded by hundreds, and cover the plain as far as you can see; multiplied diagonal lines, lofty buildings,

in red monotonous brick, pass before the eyes, like rows of economical and busy beehives. The blast-furnaces flame through the smoke; I counted sixteen in one group. The refuse of minerals is heaped up like mountains; the engines run like black ants, with monotonous and violent motion, and suddenly we find ourselves swallowed up in a monstrous town. This manufactory has five thousand hands, one mill 300,000 spindles. The Manchester warehouses are Babylonian edifices, a hundred and twenty yards wide and long, in six storys. In Liverpool there are 5000 ships along the Mersey, which choke one another up; more wait to enter. The docks are six miles long, and the cotton warehouses on the border extend their vast red rampart out of sight. All things here seem built in unmeasured proportions, and as though by colossal arms. You enter a mill; nothing but iron pillars, thick as tree-trunks, cylinders as broad as a man, locomotive shafts like vast oaks, notching machines which send up iron chips, rollers which bend sheetiron like paste, fly-wheels which become invisible by the swiftness of their revolution. Eight workmen, commanded by a kind of peaceful colossus, pushed into and pulled from the fire a tree of red iron as big as my body. Coal has produced all this growth. England has twice as much coal as the remainder of the world. Add brick, the great schists, which are close to the surface, and the estuaries filled by the sea, so as to make natural ports. Liverpool and Manchester, and about ten towns of 40,000 to 100,000 souls, are springing up like plants in the basin of Lancashire. Glance over the map, and you see the districts shaded with black - Glasgow, Newcastle, Birmingham, Wales, all Ireland, which is one block of coal. The old antediluvian forests, accumulating here their fuel, have stored up the power which moves matter, and the sea furnishes the true road by which matter can be transported. Man himself, mind and body, seems made to profit by these advantages. His muscles are resistive, and his mind can support tedium. He is less subject to weariness and disgust than other men. He works as well in the tenth hour as in the first. No one handles machines better; he has their regularity and precision. Two workmen in a cotton mill do the work of three, or even four, French workmen. Look now