124

a future life; and vice versa, a badly conducted Britisher would be degraded into becoming French in his secondary stage of existence.

In describing "Marshall St. Arnaud, formerly Le Roy," Kinglake says he was the impersonation of what our forefathers had in their minds when they spoke of "a Frenchman;" then follows, as every one will remember, the pitiless dissection of a character whose nearest approach to virtue was personal daring and unscrupulous ambition. Kinglake's bitter animosity against this soldier of France, may be explained by the fact that he had been with St. Arnaud in Algiers; had ridden with him in fellowship across the desert when the French forces were sent to punish the revolted tribes. The Englishman had cordially admired the handsome colonel, with his charming manner and eager style of speech, little thinking that beneath that gay exterior and light-hearted vanity there lay concealed, in grave secrecy, the hellish purpose that doomed five hundred fugitives to a hideous death in the cave of Shelas. St. Arnaud's letter to his brother describes the event with unparalleled cynicism. He says:

I had all the apertures [of the cave] hermetically stopped up. I made one vast sepulchre. No one knew but myself that there were

five hundred brigands therein. . . . Brother, no one is so good as I am by taste and nature. ... I have done my duty as a commander, and to-morrow I would do the same again.

The disgust and horror excited by this foul deed, executed in secrecy and cold blood, in close proximity to where he stood, as he (Kinglake) thought, on the field of a fair fight, made a deep and last ing impression on him; in truth it must be allowed to be the key-note of his detestation of the "brethren of the Elysée."

Whether the time and manner of Kinglake's unsparing attack on the emperor of the French was well chosen or in good taste under the circumstances, may be questioned. Louis Napoleon is reported to have said on reading the volumes, in reference to the attack on himself, "c'est ignoble." History has had her final word since then and scored for Kinglake.

The quid nuncs who are always suspecting the "eternal feminine," declared that the historian had a grievance against Prince Louis that made his hatred a very personal matter indeed. Kinglake liked the society of clever women; the illogical vivacity of the female mind amused and excited him. He was capable of very

sedate friendships with the other sex; his life-long regard for Mrs. Proctor is an instance. After his return from the East he read with her husband for the Chancery Bar; and in this way became acquainted with one of the cleverest, and at the same time one of the most sarcastic, women in London society. It was believed amongst his associates that Mrs. Proctor was "Our Lady of Bitterness," alluded to in the preface to "Eōthen." This preface, by the way, unlike most things of the kind, is excellent reading. Kinglake felt and believed in female influence; he used to say, "Men will never be made really religious till the Church establishes an order of Priestesses. Women have their spiritual pastors; a man should have his priestess his Egeria."

On being asked why he had never mar ried, certainly being no woman hater, he replied, "Because he had observed that wives always preferred other men to their own husbands." Kinglake was chivalrous about ideal men and women; his imagination revelled in a picturesque glamor of things; but his fastidious nature would never have borne with equanimity the inevitable rubs of life in double harness.

Kinglake's fastidiousness moulded his manner into its ultimate form of literary presentment. His letters generally were wanting in the characteristic brilliancy of style that marked his finished work. Some men's letters, on the contrary, in their freshness and freedom, are better reading than their more labored productions. The proof-sheets of some portions of the "Invasion of the Crimea" were a perfect marvel of elaborate and careful finish. The corrections and interpolations were endless. The writer was evidently a severe critic of his own work. The balance of a sentence was very often rearranged, and other words and phrases substituted for those that stood in the first reading. The corrections were done with such consummate skill that you came to see it would not be possible to find language more terse, more lucid, or more appropriate than that of the final form adopted by Kinglake to express what he had to say. It is the old remark exemplified easy reading is hard writing.

But with all its elaboration, perhaps over-elaboration of style there is nothing in the "History" which can at all compete with the charm of that single volume of travel which made Kinglake's reputation.

"Eōthen "in a chapter of autobiography written in the happiest vein of humorous self-portraiture. Who can forget the inci

In speaking of his travels, at a time when the recollection was not yet too remote, Kinglake would on rare occasions give in a few vivid words the description of a picturesque incident, in a manner impossible to reproduce, but which remained stamped with the seal of genius on the listener's memory. Sometimes it was an account of the landing near Abydos after a glorious sail through classic Hellespont; the wild ride that brought them within sight of the tomb of Achilles, and the keen starlight that canopied their bivouac on the banks of the Scamander. He made you feel the rapture that kindled his own nature when, at length, standing on the plains of Troy, the beautiful story lost its fabulous character, and assumed the proportions of reality; and then was he enabled to identify in a manner satisfactory to his own mind the sight of the far-famed city.

In another mood the traveller has been known to recall the unwonted sentiment of reverence that subdued his spirit when the end of a long day's ride brought him among the hills of beautiful Galilee, and when, within sight of Nazareth, he saw the sun go down in solemn splendor.

A man can better face the prosaic limitation, the tedious conventionality of our indoor, plodding life in the West after he has steeped his soul in the glamor of the Orient. Something of this may have led Kinglake to take his pleasure in the East, "to fortify himself," as he said, "for the business of life." Some of his early friends found it difficult to understand what motive could impel a man of his temperament to undertake so toilsome and so dangerous a journey; for in his day the impediments and risks of travel had to be taken into account. The desire did not arise, it is true, from any special orthodox reverence for the "holy places," for Gibbon might have been his sponsor in all matters of faith.

Half a century and more has passed since this Eastern journey took place. It is needless to say how much is changed. It was early in July, 1834, that Kinglake gave his college friend Lord Pollington, a

that "in making the Danube one of the great commercial highways of the world, steam has united the East with the West." But nature had placed the iron gates of the Danube in the way of this consummation.

When Kinglake arrived at Semlin, the frontier town of Turkey, Belgrade frowned upon him from the other side of the Save. On entering this fortress, it was to commit himself to a plague-suspected country, with "wheel-going Europe" left behind. And now he was to see with his own eyes "the splendor and the havoc of the East."

The romance of travel belongs to the past. The traveller of to-day, instead of starting from Belgrade on horseback, with a retinue of dragomen and tatars armed to the teeth, leaves his hotel in an omnibus, and departs from the railway station armed only with a Cook's ticket; leaving at 9.30 A.M., say, on Tuesday morning, and he is due at Constantinople at four o'clock on the afternoon of the next day. So passes away the glory of travel.

It took Kinglake fifteen days to accomplish the ride of eight hundred and fifty miles from Belgrade to Constantinople; he was delayed somewhat by the illness of his friend, but not long, for there was no hospitality to be obtained en route for a sick man, who by token of his sickness fell under the terrible suspicion of being plague-stricken. Our travellers journeying through the majestic forests of Servia, rousing the eagles of the Balkans " in the pass of Sapoli, and toiling on from thence to Philippopolis and Adrianople, trod in the very steps of the first Crusaders. The iron road of to-day does not deviate very far from the same line of march. His Eastern tour, in point of time, extended beyond its original limits, owing in great part to the serious outbreak of the plague in Egypt, where he was detained. He was absent altogether more than fifteen months, and did not return to England till October, 1835.

The record of his travels did not appear in print till 1844, and then not till the MS. had been rejected by some of the leading publishers. From the moment that his book made him famous, Kinglake's intimate friends delighted in calling him

From The Leisure Hour. COST OF A LONDON FOG.

A LONDON fog is not merely a cheerless and disagreeable, but also a very costly affair. Some years ago, after a day of regular fog in the month of January, the following statement was issued by the Gas Light and Coke Company: "Ninety million cubic feet of gas were sent out during the twenty-four hours ending at midnight. This quantity was an increase on that of the corresponding day in the previous year (which may be taken as an ordinary January day) of thirty-seven per cent., or over thirty-five million cubic feet."

The price was at that time three shillings per thousand cubic feet, so that the public had to pay to this one company £5,250 extra on account of the fog. No less than nine thousand five hundred tons of coal were carbonized during the twentyfour hours to produce ninety million cubic feet of gas the largest quantity ever sent out in one day by the Gas Light and Coke Company.

Let it be remembered that this was the quantity ascertained and declared by only one of the companies supplying gas to the public; others having also an enormous production, such as the South Metropolitan Gas Company, the strike at the works of which at Lambeth last year caused so much difficulty and annoyance. What was the total amount over the average due to that January day's fog, there are no statistics to show; but it is evident that the cost to the public for additional light must be very great.

Nor is it by gas bills only that the cost of a fog is to be reckoned, in the matter of artificial light. Gas meters and the records of gas companies afford some approximate statistics, but how can we reckon the total expense to the multitudes who use candles and lamps of every kind?

Many readers will remember the famous "Economical Project," as he called it, of

Benjamin Franklin. He thus introduced his plan to the people of Paris: "I was the other evening in a grand company, where the new lamp of M. Lange was exhibited, and much admired for its splendor. But inquiry was made, whether the oil it consumed was not in proportion to the light it afforded; in which case there would be no saving in the use of it. No one present could satisfy us in that point; but I was pleased to see the general concern for economy, for I love economy exceedingly." A few days after, Franklin published his project, which was no other than a recommendation to use sunlight more, and artificial light less. The paper is in Franklin's best style, full of sound sense and genial humor, but our reference to it is only on account of the calculation he makes as to the cost of candle-light. Suppose, he says, there are one hundred thousand families in Paris, and that these families consume in the night half a pound of bougies, or candles, per hour. Taking one family with another this, he thought a moderate estimate. In the six months between March 20 and September 20 there are one hundred and eighty-three nights, during seven hours of which candles are burnt; in all twelve hundred and eightyone hours. These hours multiplied by one hundred thousand give the total of one hundred and twenty-eight million one hundred thousand hours. At the current price of wax and tallow, he demonstrated that the city of Paris could save ninety-six million seventy-five thousand livres, in the half year, by early rising and using sunlight! There would be also considerable saving in the other six months, though the days are shorter. It is pleasant to recall this jeu d'esprit of Franklin, as it sets us a-thinking what must be the actual cost of candle-light and lamp-light in the hundreds of thousands of houses and work-rooms, shops and offices, during a regular London fog.

There are many things besides the increased expense for light that must be counted in the cost of a fog. We wonder how much the railway companies have to pay for the detonating signals, heard on every line and near every station, on a foggy morning or evening, for the safety of the crowds of passengers, as well as of property. Inquiry at one of the chief stations failed to obtain any trustworthy estimate of this expense.

The largest and most serious loss due to fog is caused by the total cessation of labor and traffic on the river. Not the steamers only, but the barges and lighters

and boats of every kind, have to be laid up, to avoid collision and other mishaps; and work has to be suspended at the riverside wharves and quays. On some occasions, when the fog has been dense and long-continued, the commercial loss has been enormous, and the poor laborers have also suffered from the enforced suspension of business on the river.

Shopkeepers detest fogs because customers avoid dark days for shopping, and carriage people" stay at home. Cabmen dislike them, from the waste of time and the damage to which their vehicles are liable. Drivers of omnibuses, and of wheeled vehicles of every sort, know the danger, especially as it is almost impossible to discern the customary signal of raising the hand or the whip, which warns those behind to stop. The crash of broken | panels is no infrequent sound amidst the gloom. To some outdoor trades and occupations a fog puts a complete stop, and many an indoor industry is seriously hindered. One winter, not long ago, there was a loud complaint from painters, and color printers, and artists, that the fogs interfered so much with their work that the loss to them was very great. In fact, to all sorts and conditions of men, except to thieves and rogues, a London fog is an injury and a nuisance.

A far more serious thing is the loss of life inevitable during a fog. Some years ago there was an unusual visitation during the time of the Cattle Show at Islington, and not a few of the animals perished. At the Cattle Show of 1890 there were also many casualties from pulmonary disease caused by the fog, including the queen's prize ox, which had to be slaughtered. It may be said that this was natural, as the fat, overfed pigs and oxen had difficulty

enough in breathing even when the air was clear. But the fatal effect of the fog was much commented on at the time, and may now remind us how injurious it is to men as well as to animals. There may in ordinary fog be no remarkable or immedi ate increase in the rate of mortality, but the permanent mischief done to those of delicate lungs and feeble constitution tells afterwards.

Then there is scarcely a fog in which fatal accidents are not reported, either in the streets or on the river. Every winter a certain number of persons are struck down and maimed or actually slain in the confusion and darkness of a London fog. We may well wish success to all undertakings which give promise of lessening the evils of such visitations, whether by larger introduction of electric light, or draining the Essex marshes, or compelling chimneys to consume their own smoke.

A recent statement by Mr. Sowerby at a meeting of the Royal Botanic Society shows that the loss is large in the vegetable as well as in the animal world. In answer to a question by Professor Bentley, vice president of the society, the secretary said the destructive action of fog on plants was most felt by those tropical plants in the society's houses of which the natural habitat was one exposed to sunshine. Plants growing in forests or under tree shade did not so directly feel the want of light; but then, again, a London or town fog not only shaded the plants, but contained smoke, sulphur, and other dele. terious agents, which were perhaps as deadly to vegetable vitality as absence of light. Soft, tender-leaved plants, and aquatics, such as the Victoria regia, suffered more from fog than any class of plants.

the stream. Then arose a cry from the spec tators, for they saw that the Japanese was going to sink. By this time the Englishman had almost reached the opposite bank, but when he heard the cries of the crowd he turned about, and seeing the drowning Japanese he again faced the current, and, coming up with the drowning man, caught him with one arm and, swimming with the other hand he brought him ashore amid the cheers of the crowd. "How chivalrous was his action!" exclaims the Japanese journalist in conclusion. “His name we know not, but he has our highest admiration.'