Wz again comimeuce our jottings with a few words about the Chamiel Tunnel. 'The enterprise seems to have been actually put in hand, no less a distance than eleven hundred' yards of grey chalk having been already excavated, - Mir, Sala tells us that he was one of a party who drank. the Queen's health in this novel banquet-ball, sixty feet below the bottom of the sea having on a previous occasion performed that loyal ceremony in a balloon at the altitude of one mile above the earth. After this performance Mr. Sala went home and read a five old crusted article in an old number ut the Quarterly Keview on a projected railway. "Here is an extract from ats to those persons who speculate on making railways venerally throughout the
thaiseay and, ly alor, every other med erwaggous, malts, and stage-coucher, poste Lom, ad mayerveing all the eau, al
veyance by lant we deem Ulver mudd there powers of ti pea mu-carriage) may delude for a time; but must end in the uiortification of all concerned.
The promoters had the rdihood to s: that this railway, which was te com London with Woolwich, would attain a speed of twelve miles' an hour. This seems to have increased. the wrath of the Reviewer With all these assurances we should as expect the people of Woolwich to sull selves to be fired off upon one of cochet rockets as to trust themselves Ww the mercy of sth a machine, going at such a rate.
On the whole Mr. Sala seems very favourable to the Tuunel scheme, fur he speaks of it as bound to run the gauntlet of all the opposition once directed against rail-Che Spectator. stil nes stron:
alfurding facilities for invasis mott Wolseley and Admiral Lord appear to condemn the scheme on the same ground. But it certainly appears to us that if the Tunnel rendered invasion easier, it would be corres-pendingly easy' to defend. An invading tiny could never arrive in Dover without warning, and & comparatively small force stationed at the Dover end would be suiflicient to prevent it landing or even returning to France alive, The cireumstances would be those of the Pass of Thermopylee or the defence of the Bridge by Horatio Cocles, over again. Sir Andrew Clarke hints that the Tunnel would enable us to defend France in case of a German invasion, and therefore make our alliance very valuable. However, the question will soon be settled one way or another. To turn from the practical and actual to the and vague, we recommend who have a penchant for transcendentalism to read the article in the Spectator headed 'Ann English Preacher of Nirvana.' The late Mr. Hinton, on whose book the article is based, was a distinguished aurist, but he writes more like "some old Buddhist or Taoist mystic. Many of his theories appear almost contradictory. "He denounces Persouality in the name. of all true Being. He denounces it as the negation of true Being. He denounces it as the antagonist of all true science. He denounces it with his head and heart alike. He denounces all that is involved in it, for example, the belief in personal immortality; and he declares that the desire of personal immortality is not traly a noble or worthy attitude of humanity." Not unconnected with this, is the subject of a future life, with its rewards and_punishments. A Correspondent of the Spectator tells the following amusing story of how a clergyman was converted from the belief that unbaptised babies went to hell A few years ago, a friend of mine—th no har wow in telling this story, referred tw in it ix exploded, if not every certainly among your readers—was taking a country walk with " friend, clergyman, when the latter suddenly wheeled round, his face towanis, home reply 5 have been tuo late! "And i€ you had been, what then?" "Why, then, T suppose, the poor little thing would have been fast." "Eternally?" "Well, yes, according to our May Lask whut sort of boots you uy friend, Boots? Elastic always." Now, suppose you wore ged, and they had taken two minutes to put chiid would have been dead, aud,—hav's a peculiar view think over wy posi-the clergyman met my friend, and said, have thought that matter over, and must alter my view. The boots did i 'From an article on the 'Statistics of Suicide' we learn the interesting fact that the greatest number of cases of female suicides Occur on Sundays; while among men, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are the days chosen for taking a summary farewell of life. A much cheerfuller article deals with Miss Gordon Cumming's charming book on Fiji. There are two passages here that we shall quote. One is from the book itself, and pictures the Fijians before the troduction of Christianity berately strangled on the death of any great mau; the living victime who were Yuried beside every post of a chief's house, and must needs stand clasping it the earth: was gradually heaped over devoted heads; or those who were bound hand and foot and laid on the ground to ack as rollers when a chief launched, and thus doomed to a death of excruciating og time when there was not the slightest security. for life or property, and no man know how quickly his own hour of doom might come when whole villages were depopulated simply to supply their ours with fresh meat, Just think of all this, and of th change that has been wrought, and then just white men who eau sueer at Missionary work in the way they do."
The other is from the article Each district has dances peculiar to itself, and Miss Camming speaks with the greatest delight of one which represented th king of the waves onacoral reef. The mission in her judgment, have shown super-common-sense in their method of with native amusements and customs, between the innocent and the evil. These wild-looking people, half-savages though they still may be, have renounced within a few years the horrid -crueltios of heathendom, and accepted with the simplicity ie faith of Christ, Some of them, nid to exhibit such intensity of to look for ints. In some parts th in operation for several years; im others for a much shorter period, and the writer, upon visiting one of the islands, observes that half of the charm of wandering among the mountaing was the knowledge that two years before she would errtainly have been eaten, She bad no fear, however, in apendi ight-alone in thia' island among natives who had never before seen a white woman, and ao hospi was the welcome given, that it wa with could escape the infliction of a great fens 'Who Saturday has a good many pleasantly written and chatty papers, among which 'Vhe Decadence of Modern Manners, "'Phings that a Lady would like to Know and 'Servant-Hunting' may be mentioned, Among the reviews we have one of Mr, Hall Came's 'Sonnets of three Centuries, which is a collection including, among others, a considerable number of unpublished' sonnets by living poets, Here is "comic? specimen, said to have been thrown off impromptu by Hartley Coleridy:
Oh, when I have a sovereign in my pocket Teannot 5 my toes extempore dance, miber sou of merry Feat "tis ike grey hie enclosed in gi locket, wold and glass by contrast ave to but, soon, alas a docket he obliterating sponge Of fell reves makes all our joys exhale, Shall Lin ocean take a fatal plunge Or atusll £, with riy-worth of ale Ca ent? or get quite And just Hibernify myself with whisky The World quotes a paragraph about the dredging of the Woosung Bar which it says appears under the head of Legal News? in the Luw Times, and asks whether the ostic remedy proposed would be advisable the case of the English Bar? The Athenwwm accords the place of honour among its reviews to the book of Sonnets compiled by Mr, Came (noticed above), and reviews it very favourably. It also gives specimens of the con and extract one more—the 'Pipe-player,' by frou the torrid, heat, the twin pipe che lip to toy puts his singing by, Some air of bulrush-glooms where lovers un swart musician, time aul fame are fleet, Brief all delight, and youth's feet fain to fy Pipe on in peace ly-morrow must we 'What matter, if our life to-day be aweot Soon, soon, the silver paper-reeds that sigh 'Along the Sucred River will repent 'The echo of the dark stoled bearers' feet, Who carry you, with wailing, must lie Your swathed and withered body, by and by, In perfumed darkness with the grains of wheat, Wo notice that the Rey. Dr. Matheson's book, 'The Religions of China: Con-"ism,' is acknowledged though not hile the Literary Gossip column interesting items, with which we close.—Bir. Austin Dobson has undertaken to write the life of Fielding for the English Men of Letters" series published by Messrs, Macmillan, Prof, Calvin will write on Keats, and Prof. Jowett on Jeremy Taylor, for the same series, Mr. Frederic Harrison has finished hismonograph on Macaulay. Sumy letters, among the last written by George Elliot, addressed to Miss Elizabeth Stuart Phelps,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.