not forgotten to note and to record those | circus" with "eighteen fairy-like and dilittle traits of character which convince a aphonous stalls pitched in the centre of the wondering world that even princes and arena." And we have to observe besides actors sometimes behave like ordinary mor- that the Telegraph is, as might be extals. The representative of the Times pected, more completely at home in matmust, we think, have had a special license ters of feminine costume. Upon one for the occasion. He has slipped into the point all the reports are in agreement. poetry of the Telegraph, just as Mr. Hep Owing to the exceptional interest that was worth Dixon in his most impassioned felt in the French poor, even the "faultless moments glides unconsciously into the circus" of the Albert Hall was crowded to majestic flow of blank verse. His opening the point of suffocation, and on the second sentences of description have that kind of day the number was so great as almost luscious flavor which recalls the glowing to interfere with business. Society, thereperiods in which Claude Melnotte before, has not merely snatched a selfish guiled the Lady of Lyons. "The arena," pleasure. If there has been enjoyment, he writes, "had become in ten minutes there has been suffering and suffocation from the opening a confused symphony in as well; and the sense of this inconpink, white, and blue, through which flitted venience will doubtless lend a certain air richly apparelled forms with waving hands, of moral dignity to what might otherwise some scattering flowers, some offering seem a frivolous amusement. sweetmeats." The idea of offering sweetmeats "with waving hands" was no doubt specially devised for this occasion, and it is a custom which ought not to be forgotten in other charitable fêtes. That it involved a certain amount of danger to the distinguished visitors is, however, clear from the fact that "two tall policemen, assisted by the Comte de Montebello," were required to make a way for the royal party. The Prince of Wales, we are told, "was thus enabled to purchase a box of bonbons from Mrs. Langtry, who stood in a flat yellow bonnet, and wearing a brocade dress, at the stall of the Comtesse de Bulow." The efforts of "the two tall policemen" were certainly not wasted, if they did no more than enable the Prince of Wales to see a lady standing in a flat yellow bonnet, a proceeding that would not indeed be very comprehensible upon a less interesting occasion. But we suppose that at a fancy fair in honor of the poor a lady may even stand in her bonnet without remark. That the Duke of Edinburgh laid out 10s. 6d. for a flower to place in his buttonhole, and that the Prince of Wales afterwards" enriched his collection by two paper lamp-shades, a photograph-case, and some dessert knives," are two little bits of information that we take at random from a host of interesting details with which the enthusiastic reporter of the Times has been allowed to supply the readers of that decorous journal. In comparison with the Times the Telegraph itself seems for once to be almost prosaic. We have nothing about the waving hands and not a word of the two tall policemen. On the other hand, there is, it must be confessed, a very heavy sentence of description in which the Albert Hall is spoken of as "this faultless For the objects of the charity it is doubtless a fortunate event that so large a sum should have been collected. The French actors will soon have returned to Paris. French plays, so diligently studied during the last few weeks will be put aside, and it may be a long time before society again takes it into its head to be interested in the French poor. But we suppose it is inevitable that different kinds of suffering should each in turn enjoy a season of fashion. In the month of May the charitable thoughts of the world are absorbed by the spiritual needs of the negro, and during the progress of the season various forms of physical disease find little coteries of charitable people eager to dance or to sing in order to support the hospitals devoted to their cure. If it were not for these constant and varied appeals, society would be in danger of being depressed by a sense of its own unworthiness. The pursuit of pleasure, and even the higher interest of dress, would cease to hold their present proud position. There would be no credit in being extravagant, no moral reward for splendor of attire, and, what is still worse, there would be no excuse for indulging in those little eccentricities of conduct which form such a welcome relief to the routine of ordinary life. To go about with "waving hands" scattering sweetmeats would obviously be under ordinary circumstances a terrible breach of decorum, nor would it be possible, in the absence of philanthropy, for young ladies to exhibit the kind of fascination that is involved in biting off the end of a cigar in order to enhance its value. And yet the liberty to indulge in these harmless amusements is doubtless very precious to society. The vast majority of men and women like now and then to break through the privacy of their everyday life. They are glad to have the opportunity of playing a part, and of appearing in a character that is something different from their own. And perhaps a fancy bazaar is the readiest and the most innocent form in which they can indulge their ambition. From The Spectator. A SMALL market-town on a branch line of railway is apt to look dull at the best of times, and no one would imagine, from the first view of the long, grass-grown street of Barnard Castle that the town had any thing picturesque or interesting about it, except its name. However, the present writer had known from early days that Turner had drawn a castle, river, and bridge, and called the view by that name; he had seen pictures of it by other men, in later times; but he expected a pleasure over and above that of seeing a beautiful place, in seeing what liberties a great composer had taken with its representation. The castle is certainly a little difficult to find, and we can imagine our guide telling us some of the main points of its history while we are on our way to it. The lordship of the Baliols is the chief feature; it is markedly compact and characteristic. For two centuries they reigned here with all the power of petty kings, making their little laws, granting privileges and charters to the burgesses of the town which had grown up at their castle gates, adding bar ony to barony, and climbing to one height after another, until at last they gave a king to Scotland, and then, exactly two hundred years after they had become possessed of Barnard Castle, all their estates were confiscated; their name occurred no more in history, with the exception of one short effort to retrieve their fall, and now what is left of their work is a ruin by Teesside, and a famous college in Oxford. The castle in which these men lived is almost as hard to find out, amongst gasworks, mills, and modern houses, as it is to disinter from ancient deeds and charters any new fact connected with its origin. The usual approach is through a narrow passage leading from the street to the stable-yard of the King's Head Inn, and after a few steps further, all the beauty of Barnard Castle suddenly discloses itself, for we are on the abrupt edge of the bank which dips down into the Tees, and by opening a postern-door, one of the most beautiful views in England can be ob tained. A river, with thickly wooded hillsides, and a distance of faint blue mountain and moorland, from which it flows; a shattered tower or mass of masonry, with a mingling of angles and cornices and ruined chambers high aloft, looking altogether as if it could not stand against a very strong wind; a rock base of limestone, quite steep, and with its crannies filled with flowering weeds, make a picture which would be perfect, were it not for some mills on the opposite side of the river, which are too big and too ugly for any poetical feeling to reduce to harmlessness. The fortress was never very large, but the steepness of the rock, which rises one hundred feet above the water, gave it strength; and where the precipice ended, a broad, deep ditch began. It was strongly walled, and had two gates, one opening on to the present market-place, and the other on the meadows to the north. The area entered from the market-place had no direct communication with the chief stronghold, but was separated from it by a fosse. This area was used as a refuge for the townsfolk and their cattle, in cases of urgent need. The ballad of "The Rising of the North" gives a fair idea of the powers of resistance of this portion of the fortifications: Sir George Bowes to his castle fled, The Erles have won them presentlie. For they were cut in rock and stone. In point of fact, these walls turned the tide of rebellion. The earls (of Northumber land and Westmoreland) never did win them, for Sir George held out for eleven days, until the queen's army came. Nor is the ballad-maker right in calling the castle Sir George's. It was the Earl of Westmoreland's, and on the first news of his defection Sir George Bowes, of Streatlam, seized and held it for the queen. Now, this uttermost wall, which they won so easily, encloses a lovely orchard, and no one interferes with your entrance but a shilling-compelling guide, with a key. Little remains of the castle but Brackenbury's Tower, which tells so picturesquely in the view we have already spoken of; and the keep, now called Baliol's Tower. This last is circular, about forty feet in diameter and fifty feet in height, with a basement, and three upper chambers, | on passing the Burns' Head Inn we are reached by stairs cut in the wall, and with reminded of a good story, which has, we a magnificent view, which Scott has described in his grand, panoramic way. It is easy enough to look down on the river from the castle, but very hard to get a sight of the castle from the river. If you cross the bridge, a huge, unsightly mill fills up all the ground, and has such numerous dependencies, that you have to go much higher up the stream before you can see the ruin at all; and when at last you have got to this point, you find that the authorities have thought fit to place their hideous gas-works in the very eye of the picture. These works come in even worse in the still finer view on the opposite side, -Turner's view, with Baliol's Tower and the castle-walls and bridge. These works hide the base of the castle, blacken the trees with their smoke, and interpose their tall chimney and vermilion-colored gasometer at every turn, as leading features in the landscape. Besides this, the refuse they throw out is raising up a great black embankment. Gone is the old pathway under the trees, with its pretty, natural dip into the water, and the streamlet and footbridge which Creswick so often painted wisely, but not too well-all are now covered with ashes. The river is as lovely as ever. The tawny, bubbling currents still rush and tumble over their rocky bed, or lie in wicked-looking and treacherously deep pools of the most intense purplebrown. The town, for the most part, consists of two streets; one, which you enter from the railway station, is wide and irregularly built, and bears the ominous name of Gallowgate. It has obviously set out with the intention of taking you direct to the castle, but just as it is almost under the very walls it darts off at a right angle and by the houses on its own right hand blocks off all approach to that building, except through the aforesaid stable-yard. Having taken this freakish, but resolute course, the street runs down hill to the river, and in this short limit you have all the shops and nearly all the inns of the place. Such tiny, unassuming, passivelooking shops - such numbers of inns as From The Saturday Review. there are! We counted five-and-thirty in THE LATE YOUTH OF PHILOSOPHERS. a very short walk. No one would imagine PHILOSOPHERS ripen late. In their that there was one point of interest in the youth the closest observers can scarcely whole street, except a very lovely gabled- distinguish them from prigs. They are house, in which Cromwell slept when here. very much in earnest about matters which "Nasty, unconvenient place!" said a wom-seem indifferent to the world. They are an to whom we expressed our admiration of it, "look how ancient it is!" The street is, however, by no means so barren of interest as might appear; for instance, believe, never yet been given in print. The sign is a portrait of the poet, said to be an excellent likeness. At any rate, Mr. Morritt, uncle of the present owner of Rokeby, thought so, and once when he had walked over here from Rokeby with Sir Walter Scott, he pointed it out to him, and praised it as a highly successful bit of portraiture. "How long has it been there?" asked Scott. "Two or three years," was the answer. "Then," said Scott, "take my word for it, it is no like Burns. Robbie Burns would not have stayed so long outside a public!" Near this inn is a watchmaker's shop, with the name of "Humphrey" and a large clock over the door; and just opposite to it is the King's Head Inn, where Dickens spent six weeks while studying the Do-the-boys' Hall part of "Nicholas Nickleby." He, from his sitting-room window, daily looked on this tiny shop over the way, and the name Humphrey, clockmaker, fixed itself so fast in his mind, that he gave it to the clockmaker in his next new story, and wrote to tell Master Humphrey, of Barnard Castle, what he had done. With this letter came a copy of "Master Humphrey's Clock," "from the author." Are not these things stored up in the archives of the Humphrey family, and though the clock over the door is changed, is not the remembrance of them green? Half-way down, and in the very middle of this street, is the market cross. It is cumbrous and ugly, and popped down with very little regard to convenience; but it becomes much more interesting when we know that within its walls, in box within box, are safely stored most of the charters obtained so long ago from the Baliols. The moors on one side and Cross Fell on the other invite us onwards, though it is only at intervals that the curtain of rain and mist is lifted, and to High Force and Rokeby we hope to go. always asking "why" men do this or that, which other people do without pausing to speculate. In life, as in the hunting-field, the majority of men find that “the pace is too good" to inquire about duties which | philosophic neophyte. This enthusiam is, we perform or leave alone as it may hap- however, his only sign of youth. He dispen. The young philosopher is always in- likes young ladies. He spernit choreas, quiring, he does not find the pace at all and, indeed, he could not find a partner if too good, and his own rate of progress is he wanted one. He can play at no games, spoken of by those who know him as he is skilled in no sports, he boasts that he "slow." Many philosophers have been "detests everything that is done in the so slow that they appear to enjoy no youth open air." At dinner he holds his tongue at all. Then they are looked on as gloomy till he finds a chance of wrangling in argumembers of society. If they are in love ment with some man old enough to be his they let concealment feed upon their father. Then he "lifts up his hands "damaged cheeks," as the profane paro- against his father Parmenides," and, undist said who shocked Mr. Trollope. luckily, he generally has the best of the They do not adorn this perishable shrine battle. At the theatre, the young philosoof the soul- that is to say, they dress pher looks as much bored as did the vir very badly, worse even than young poets. tuous Cato when the Romans frankly The philosopher, with all these drawbacks, requested him either to seem amused or to takes himself very seriously. The amount leave the place. If you try to talk to the of time and thought he expends on his young philosopher about the events of the own culture," and on the absolute seems day he fiercely snubs you. He never out of all proportion to the real importance knows what has happened. He never of these objects. The world cannot un reads the newspapers. He has never derstand what the absolute is to the stu- heard of anything or any one not mendent, or he to the absolute; but the world tioned in a pleasing Hegelian serial pubis perfectly certain that he thinks a great lished at St. Louis in the United States. deal too much about himself. In short, the young philosopher deserves all the abuse that Erasmus poured, in his haste, on the heads of philosophers in general: One symptom of youth the philosopher has, but it does not make him more popular. He is a furious partisan. No long. haired dingy member of a cénacle of romantic painters, no frowzy young poet, cultivating a tiny reputation as he lately cultivated a moustache, has more violent likes and dislikes than the young philosopher. The great man of his "school," be he Hegel, or Mr. Herbert Spencer, or John Stuart Mill (he always gives him all his names, as once a fond but frail journal revelled in the sound of William Ewart Gladstone) is the only real philosopher that ever existed. Like other enthusiasts, the young philosopher “runs a moist pen through everything" that was written before his own vast intellect woke and proclaimed that it was indeed "a permanent conscious self." Young poets do this kind of thing too, and fondly assure you that up to the time of Osric Smith (who writes odelettes in the Renaissance) poetry was an infant and inarticulate art. Paint ers will say as much for the last impressioniste. But none of these fledgings are so cock-sure, so iconoclastic, and so vicariously bumptious as the young philosopher. He swallows his master's formulæ wholesale; and one of these formulæ is that, before his master's time, there was no philosophy. This is an intelligible position for a master to hold who is acquainted with no language, ancient or modern, but his own, which he has corrupted, but the brag becomes tedious in the mouth of the One would pardon philosophers [says Erasmus] for discharging their public functions about as well as donkeys play the lyre, if they ask a philosopher to dinner; his silence, his were good for anything in private life. But gloom, or the extraordinary questions he asks, will spoil the pleasure of the party. Let him dance, he displays the gracious agility of a dromedary; if he is taken to the theatre, his dreary visage throws a shade over the whole entertainment. . . . In short, his friends and relations can expect no good from such a being, because he is absolutely unfit for every employment, and keeps aloof from ordinary ways and makes him universally detested. It is a mad This difference in taste popular opinions. world, and all our business in life is lunacy. Why should one man, then, hold himself sulkily apart? Fortunately for himself, the philosopher does not always remain in surly isolation. While he is young he seems to have the moroseness of old age. He is settling the questions of life for his own satisfaction, and is composing his great work, "The Problems of Existence." He cannot be content, he cannot rest till he has solved all the problems, printed his solution, and proved that every other philosopher has been grossly careless and illogical. Then there comes middle age. Other philosophers feel bound to read "The Progress of Existence," to criticise, to reply. In about twenty years the great public, always | is a necessary "moment" in the evolution rather slow, begins to hear of the work. of the philosopher. When Socrates, and It is mentioned in magazine articles. Aristippus, and Protagoras, and Dr. JohnNewspaper writers read the magazines, son were young, no one paid them much pick up their own irresponsible views of attention. They were shabby and shy, not "The Problems of Existence," and airily at ease with themselves, and at enmity refer to the distinguished author. The with their fellow-creatures. Then came Americans have found him out, too, by fame, and kings, tyrants, noble lords, and this time. The contributors to speculative young swells like Critias, Alcibiades, and transatlantic literature hie across the ocean | Mr. Bennet-Langton, to knock at the philwith letters of introduction. They entreat osophic door. "If you are for a frolic, my their entertainers to introduce them to the lads, I am with you," answered the philosauthor of "Problems," etc. The puzzled opher to the festive summons, and he went Britons go about inquiring of their friends forth, chaffed the bargees, and enjoyed his who this unknown prophet is, and then old life in the sunshine. There may be they ask him to dinner. people who call the philosopher inconsisFrom this moment the social sun comes tent. Youth is the time for that genial out, and the late youth of the philosopher amusement which he reserves for old age. begins to grow ripe and mellow. He Young men are wise by nature, it is said, basks, the honest soul, in the warm glow and naturally begin with that free and goodof recognition and reputation. He still humored habit of life to which the philososnubs people, but they don't mind, nay, pher reverts as the result of all nis neditathey are rather proud of it, as people were tions. But the sage has, if he chooses, a proud of being "sat upon" by Dr. John- good deal to say for himself. He has first son. The philosopher believes that his established a metaphysical position; and, entertainers have read all the six series of when he begins to amuse himself, doubt his problems, in which he began by con- and welt-schmerz have long ceased to sidering the effect of sun-spots on the exist. He has also escaped the scrapes evolution of morality, and ended with a into which youth runs blindly, and is free theory of transcendental constitutionalism from the dreary burdens of bills and debts in politics. Thus the thinker (he revels and wives and domestic cares that youth in being called a thinker), is easy in his hangs about its neck. Further, the philmind, for who could peruse his works osopher can now enjoy himself in much without being convinced? He has now better and more amusing society than his own disciples around him, men and would have been open to him in his youth. wondrous ladies with spectacles always to The ladies of baronets, and even duchtheir noses faithful. But the frisky phil- esses themselves, now "darkly hold him osopher does not conceal the fact that great and wise." Are not their stately he is often bored by these admirers. He flatteries and entertainments much better likes the society of the fair and thought- than the garret and Musette that would less, he flirts with the aplomb and security have welcomed the philosopher thirty of a man who settled the riddle of the pain-years ago? The world and a sound moralful earth before he began to enjoy himself. ity agree on this point, and it is difficult to He frequents the theatres, he looks on at burlesques"with a blush and an excellent opera-glass," he goes behind the scenes; he chats (like Socrates, a good example in his later day of the frisky philosopher) with ladies who would adorn any profession. The philosopher has now a mature and disciplined taste in wines and cigars. He plays croquet and lawn tennis, and his name has been printed in the Field, and in other journals patronized by "the barbarous athlete of the arena." Nay, more wonderful than all, the philosopher has been seen in church, where he would have scorned to go where he was hot with youth and still tackling "The Problems of Existence." A glance at the copious volumes of Zeller, Preller, Ritter, and other historians of philosophy, will prove that this late youth deny that the philosopher has really chosen |