ingly, they lightened the ship as fast as possible, each taking what seemed to him the most valuable. Silks, velvets, and broadcloths were the chief objects of rescue, though I have heard that one man selected a sheaf of umbrellas (that article which on all occasions invites sequestration), while another devoted himself to the safe transportation of an "elegant family Bible," the character of the freight perhaps giving a religious color to the proceeding. My chronicler records that, while engaged in this salvation of property, the participants sustained life by making free use of the ship's provisions. On their return journey, the ice parting compelled some to remain out over night, exposed to very bitter cold; others were extremely glad to reach shore empty-handed, having consigned their booty to the Lake, which was afterwards seen flaunting in silks and velvets. The impromptu colporteur was of all the company most unfortunate; both his feet having been frozen in their evangelical progress, and permanent lameness resulting. He is reported to have made the following plaintive statement of his case: "Always went in the very best society, before I got my feet froze; but now it's different, and I'm sure I don't see why." The owners of the vessel subsequently brought suit against these misguided wreckers, who constantly maintained that their sole purpose in the expedition had been to save property. The moral of this coastwise episode is to be found in the fact that the actors were possessed of the average probity, or, at least, while on land would never have committed the smallest larceny. Nothing but the theory of a wrecking epidemic can account for their deflection from the right line of conduct. A few winters since, a schoouer with iron ore from the upper lakes foundered off our coast. The water washing upon the ore acquired for rods around a dark red flush, though a mighty libation of wine had

as

been offered. Of this wreck a farmer on the shore preserves a relic most absurdly framed, "Jane Bell" (the name of the sunken vessel) now serving as a legend over his barn door. It strikes me, he ought not to complain if, having thus dedicated his property to the nautical powers, he should some morning find it had deserted its site, and gone a-sailing, from barn converted into ark.

Tame as this shore appears, it has nevertheless received its tragic deposi tions from the waves. Voyagers, whose bearings were forever lost, have lain on its pebble-strewn beach; it has even happened to them to be manacled with ice, as though their estate were not already cold and sure enough. In my wrecking experience, such as it has been, nothing ever came more serviceable than the finding of a piece of ship timber, half sunken in the sand, but still displaying the horse-shoe which had been nailed upon it for luck! What luck had they met with, who had so striven to procure the good will of fate? Surely, here was the most effective silent sermon ever preached against the use of charms and phylacteries!

If we closely observe the sand left bare by the receding wave, we shall see occasional perforations, from which the escaping air drives a little jet of water,

minute pattern of a geyser. Such perforations are probably caused by the sinking of fine gravel. If we have no business more pressing, it may be worth our while to make an inventory of the various articles that lie on this curiosity shelf, the beach. There is, first, the driftwood: judging from the bone-like shape and whiteness of the ligneous fragments with which the Lake strews its margins, we might suppose it to have a taste for palæoutology. More than one fossil-resembling model of nameless ancient beast, as well as the originals of all the nondescripts in heraldry, shall we rescue from the sand. It would be curiously interesting to follow the vary

And

ing fortunes of yonder tree, which, lately uprooted by the wind, lies prone upon the water, its leafage unconscious of destiny, still being nourished with sap; how long will it take the great planer and turner to convert this tree into effects as fantastic as those we have noted in the drift? This artificer, the Lake, abhors angles, and strives to present the line of beauty in whatever it turns out of its laboratory. Here, among those least bowlders, crystalline pebbles from the far north, is a lump of coal, worn to an oval contour, well polished, and hinting of cousinship with the diamond. Here, beside the abundant periwinkle, are thin flakes of clam-shell, iridescent and beautiful; trinkets made from the spines of fish; the horny gaunt lets of the crab; a dragon-fly; the blue and bronze plates of large beetles not seen inland; and the fluttering, chaffy shells of the "Canada soldiers," shortlived myrmidons of the shore. here is a tithe of last year's hickory and butternut mast; the burs of various rough marsh plants; a lock of a lake- maid's hair (or is it only a wisp of blanched rootlets from some distant stream side?); an ear of corn, half buried, its kernels, with mustard-seed faith, pushing up green blades through the lifeless, unstable sands. Now and then you see the feather of a gull or other water-haunting bird, a plume in your cap if you find a quill of the eagle! I have just picked up an arrowhead, which I would fain believe has lain here ever since an Indian hunter shot it at a stag that had come down to drink at sunrise. Heaven saved the mark and frustrated the hunter; for which I cannot be sorry. This missile may have been carved out at the arrowhead armory, the site of which a farmer thinks he has found in one of his fields. is a piece of rising ground, where, before successive plowings had entirely changed the surface, the spring yield of flints was unusually large. As most of

This

these were imperfect, and mixed with a great proportion of shapeless chippings, they were supposed to be waste and rejected material, such as always accumulates around a workman's bench. Here, then, in the days that have no historian, sat a swarthy Mulciber, plying his trade with, the clumsiest tools, either alone, or the centre of a group of idle braves and story-telling ancients. More verifiable is the tradition of an aged and solitary Indian, living at some distance back in the forest; a red man of destiny, by his tribe doomed to perpetual exile for some capital offense, of which he had been found guilty. Of the great nation whose name is borne by this water (Lake Erie, Wildcat Lake!) only the meagrest account has been transmitted. The Eries were gone long enough before this region owned the touch of civilization.

We frequently speak of the Lake as "frozen over," but this is a mistake; there is always a central channel of free water. The glassy quay that builds out from shore remains immovable the entire winter, but the ice bordering that open mid-stream is greatly subject to the pleasure of the wind, sometimes driven southward, sometimes far to the north; in the latter case, the dark line of moving waters is visible from our coast. Frozen, the Lake seems possessed of a still but strenuous power, as though, after the habit of water on a cold winter night, it might crack the great bowl in which it was left standing. The arrested waves are raised against the shore as if in act to strike: the blow will never be dealt; they will not lower all at once, but, as the winter relaxes, the sun will turn away their wrath and they will go down from the shore assuaged. It is no miracle to walk the waves, when the waves are firm as marble; yet in so doing you feel a strong sense of novelty. Along their projecting edges, rows of icicles, like the stalactite trimmings of a cave,

are formed. In the thawing weather of early spring, it is rather strange and decidedly pleasing to hear the tinkling fall of the little streams that are cran

nying the ice. For the moment you might think it a place of rocks abounding in springs, being helped to that fancy by the masses of frozen gravel as well as by the musical sounds from the melting ice. The charm to the ear is in the contrast drawn between this slender melody and the remembered din of the waves. What we hear is the old Lake waking up with infantine prattle and prettiness, not yet alive with the consciousness of power.

I am aware that the Lake is not the ocean its waves are shorter, running not so high; and though it is occasionally heard to boom, it has not the deep, oracular voice of the sea. Its beach is not the spacious beach of ocean, yet, and I note the fact with interest, its sands support the sea-rocket (Cakile maritima) and the beach-pea (Lathy rus maritimus), plants that will thrive under kisses more pungent than those of fresh-water spray. When I am praising the Lake, I should not forget that, after tarrying long upon its shore, I become conscious of a serious lack in its nature can it be salt that is wanting? Edith M. Thomas.

THERE is an interest belonging to Mérimée's personality as well as to his literary work. In Taine's brief memoir are to be found a few lines descriptive of the appearance and manner of the author of La Double Méprise, Colomba, and Carmen which bring him very distinctly before us; so that in reading the volumes of his correspondence, to which this biographical sketch is prefixed, we have always present to the mind's eye the man himself, "tall, erect, pale," who, "except for his smile, had an English air, at least that cold and distant manner which repels in advance all familiarity;" who even among intimates was never otherwise than impassive, calm-voiced, without glow or sparkle. It is a manner that some men affect, and one may perhaps be inclined to suspect Mérimée, who had it so perfectly, of a partial affectation, until one hears him speak for himself in the Letters that follow, and which belong to such an extended period of his life. Men some times reveal themselves most openly when least aware of it, and it happened

so with Mérimée in these communications, intended only for her to whom they were addressed. Not that he had need to conceal aught of his life and character from the world's eye; and if there had been anything to conceal he would have disdained to cover it, as one soon comes to know. He was not frank, but he had the sincerity that is born of a deep pride.

We read the correspondence, given to the world after his death, for the sake of the self-sketched portrait of the writer it contains, to the interest of which is added the spice of an ungratified curiosity concerning the recipient of the letters and the relation of the two. Mérimée's feeling for his correspondent appears in the beginning hardly more than a sentiment, gentle and refined, a matter of the head as much as of the heart; and though with some fluctuations, some rising tidal waves of emotion, the lover seems never to find too great difficulty in keeping it within bounds. So far, at least, as shows here, there is nothing like an outspoken fer

vency of passion. Doubtless there was more in it than any demonstration here proves, for it was the man's nature to detest the display of any kind of feeling. It all ended, as Taine says, in a true and lasting friendship; the tone of gallantry and sentiment of the earlier letters changes almost imperceptibly to one of gentle familiarity and friendly confidence. Little or nothing is discoverable about the unknown friend: the reader is permitted to approach her only at a respectful distance, the correspondence having probably been revised for that purpose. If we did not know its true character, we might easily take the letters of the first quarter of the initial volume for an admirably composed fiction; they are so polished, graceful, just what they should be for the opening chapters of a romance. Coming from Mérimée, they could not fail of a charming style; the finished man of letters shows throughout the whole correspondence. They are always in one strain, embellished with a number of light and pleasing variations. Each letter resembling as it does the preceding, the wonder is how unwearied we find ourselves with the repeated theme; how gratified with the little details of his life and work which the writer records for us; how charmed with the brief glimpses into his mind, the occasional reflections and aphorisms he indulges in. He has the art of never saying too much, of touching and letting go, of never being tiresome. We are amused from time to time with satirical descriptions of persons and things he meets in the world. In a letter from London he tells of a visit to the newly-built House of Commons, which he calls a frightful monstrosity, and adds, "You have no idea what may be done with a complete want of taste and two million pounds sterling." And in another: "I begin to have enough of this country. I am tired of perpendicular architecture, and the equally perpendicular manners of the

natives.

I

gave a half-crown to a black-coated person who showed me the cathedral, and then asked of him the address of a gentleman to whom I had a letter from the dean. He found it was himself to whom the letter was addressed. We both looked foolish; but he kept the money." Mérimée is always as ready to mock at what seems. to be pretension in himself as in another. He tells his friend that on the 14th of March his fate will be decided, meaning the question of his election to the French Academy. "In the mean time, I conscientiously make visits. I find people very civil, accustomed to their parts, and taking them very seriously. I do my best to take mine gravely also, but it is difficult. Does it not seem to you ridiculous to say to a man, Monsieur, I think myself one of the forty cleverest men in France. I am as good as you,' and such-like facetia? I have to translate that into terms variously polite, according to the persons." After Mérimée has attained the academic dignity, he is present at a banquet at Caen, at which his health is proposed, with allusion to his titles to honor as senator, man of letters, and savant. "There was only the table between us, and I had a great desire to throw a plate of rum jelly at his head. While he was speaking I meditated my reply, and could not find a word. When he ceased I comprehended that it was absolutely necessary to speak, and I began a phrase without knowing how I should go on. I talked in that way for five or six minutes, with great self-possession, and with very little idea of what I was saying. I am assured that I was extremely eloquent." He laughs at the gemüthlich Germans, who made a lion of him at Vienna. "I was as amiable as possible. I wrote sublime thoughts in albums, and made sketches; in a word, I was perfectly ridiculous." Once in a while this smiling satirist changes his tone to one of undisguised contempt for