impracticable to them. First, we must get public opinion in favour of the plans of peace. Then we must induce our government to sanction the measure, and to invite the co-operation of other governments. The different nations should be invited to send delegates to confer as to the adoption of some substitute for armed force. Then, the plan being taken, it would be a work of time to organize it in all its details and to bring it into working order. However, if we can secure the first step, we shall not fear for the rest. If we can get public opinion to our side of the question we shall soon rejoice in the success of our endeavours. Secondly. Men deem the proposed plans impracticable because they have little faith in human nature. They seem to think that passion must always rule the human mind. They do not give men credit for the amount of good that is in them after all. Most men would be glad to see warfare abolished, and only need their attention to be drawn to a feasible substitute to at once desire its adoption. The good sense of society has put down the practice of duelling in this and other countries, then why should not international duelling be abolished likewise. Disputes that were formerly settled by single combat are now settled far more satisfactorily by law, then why should not international disputes be settled by law instead of armed force? The only answer is because people have not placed the noble aim before them. They will be content with a low and imperfect ideal, and instead of striving ever to go upward and forward towards perfection, they are satisfied if they reach a comparatively low stage of the ladder, saying, perhaps, that that is as high as men can get, thus placing a limit where God has placed none. It would be well if men would devote their attention to this great subject, and instead of thoughtlessly opposing the proposals of the friends of peace, they would carefully consider their schemes. They will then, perhaps, come to the conclusion that, after all, peace men are not such fanatics as they are by some considered, and that their plans of peace are not so impracticable after all. English and American Birds. W. E. B. Fron Elihu Burritt's forthcoming "Walk from Land's End to John O'Groat's. Having spent a couple of hours very pleasantly at Tiptree Hall, I turned my face in a northerly direction for a walk through the best agricultural section of Essex. While passing through a grass field recently mown, a lark flew up from almost under my feet. And there, partially overarched by a tuft of clover, was her little all of earth-a snug warm nest with two small eggs in it, about the size and colour of those of the ground-chipping bird of New England, which is nearer the English lark than any other American bird. I bent down to look at them with an interest an American could only feel. To him the lark is to the bird world's companionship and music what the angels are to the spirit land. He has read and dreamt of both from his childhood up. He has believed in both poetically and pleasantly, sometimes almost positively, as real and beautiful individualities. He almost credits the poet of his own country who speaks of hearing "the downward beat of angel wings." In his facile faith in the substance of picturesque and happy shadows, he sometimes tries to believe that the phoenix may have been, in some age and country, a real, living bird, of flesh and blood and genuine feathers, with long, strong wings, capable of performing the strange psycological feats ascribed to it in that most edifying picture emblazoned on the arms of Banking Companies, Insurance Offices, and Quack Doctors. He is not sure that dying swans have not sung a mournful hymn over their last moments, under an affecting and human sense of their mortality. He has believed in the English lark to the same point of pleasing credulity. Why should he not give its existence the same faith? The history of its life is as old as the English alphabet, and older still. It sang over the dark and hideous lairs of the bloody Druids centuries before Julius Cæsar was born, and they doubtless had a pleasant name for it, unless true music was hateful to their ears. It sang without loss or change of a single note of this morning's song, to the Roman legions as they marched, or made roads in Britain. It sang the same voluntaries to the Saxons, Danes, and Normans, through the long ages, and, perhaps, tended to soften their antagonisms, and hasten their blending into one great and mighty people. How the name and song of this happiest of earthly birds run through all the rhyme and romance of English poetry, of English rural life, ever since there was an England! Take away its history and its song from her daisy-eyed meadows and shaded lanes, and hedges breathing and blooming with sweetbriar leaves and hawthorn flowers,— from her thatched cottages, veiled with ivy,-from the morning tread of the reapers, and the mower's lunch of bread and cheese under the meadow elm, and you take away a living and beautiful spirit more charming than music. You take away from English poetry one of its pleiades, and bereave it of a companionship more intimate than that of the nearest neighbourhood of the stars above. How the lark's life and song blend in the rhyme of the poet, with "the sheen of silver fountains leaping to the sea," with morning sunbeams and noontide thoughts, and the sweetest breathing flowers, and softest breezes, and busiest bees, and greenest leaves, and happiest human industries, loves, hopes, and aspiration! The American has read and heard of all this from his youth up to the day of setting his foot, for the first time, on English ground. He has tried to believe it, as in things seen, temporal and tangible. But in doing this he has to contend with a sense or suspicion of unreality,- —a feeling that there has been great poetical exaggeration in the matter. A patent fact lies at the bottom of this incredulity. The forefathers of New England carried no wild birds with them to sing about their new cabin-homes in the new world. But they found beautiful and happy birds on that wild continent, as well dressed, as graceful in form and motion, and of as fine taste for music and other accomplishments, as if they and their ancestors had sung before the courts of Europe for twenty generations. These sang their sweet songs of welcome to the Pilgrims as they landed from the "May Flower." These sang to them cheerily, through the first years and the later years of their stern trials and tribulations. These built their nests where the blue eyes of the first white children born in the land could peer in upon the speckled eggs with wonder and delight. What wonder that those strong-hearted puritan fathers and mothers who "Made the aisles of the dim wood ring should love the fellowship of these native singers of the field and forest, and give them names their hearts loved in the old home land beyond the sea! They did not consult Linnæus, nor any musty Latin genealogy of old world birds, at the christening of these songsters. There was a good family resemblance in many cases. The blustering partridge, brooding over her young in the thicket was very nearly like the same bird in England. For the mellow throated-thrush of the old land they found a mate in the new, of the same size, colour, and general habits, though less musical. The blackbird was nearly the same in many respects, though the smaller American wore a pair of red epaulettes. The swallows had their coat tails cut after the same old Englisn pattern, and built their nests after the same model, and twittered under the eaves with the same ecstacy, and played the same antics in the air. But the two dearest home-birds of the fatherland had no family relations nor counterparts in America; and the pilgrim fathers and their children could not make their humble homes happy without the lark and the robin, at least in name and association; so they looked about them for substitutes. There was a plump, full chested bird, in a chocolate-colored vest, with blueish dress coat, that would mount the highest tree-top in early spring, and play his flute by the hour for very joy to to see the snow melt and the buds swell again. There was such a rollicking happiness in his loud, clear notes, and he apparently sang them in such sympathy with human fellowships, and hopes, and homes, and he was such a cheery and confiding denizen of the orchard and garden withal, that he became at once the pet bird of old and young, and was called the robin; and well would it be if its English namesake possessed its sterling virtues, for with all its pleasant traits and world-wide reputation, the English robin is a pretentious, arrogant busybody, characteristically pugilistic and troublesome in the winged society of England. In form, dress deportment, disposition, and in voice and taste for vocal music, the American robin surpasses the English most decidedly. In this our grave forefathers did more than justice to the home-bird they missed on Plymouth Rock. In this generous tribute of their affection for it, they perhaps condoned for mating the English lark so incongruously; but it was true their choice was very limited. To match the prima donna carissima of English field and sky, it was necessary to select a meadow bird, with some other features of resemblance. It would never do to give the cherished name and association to one that lived in the forest, or built its nest in the tree-tops or house-tops, or to one that was black, yellow, or red. Having to conciliate all these conditions, and do the best with the material at hand, they pitched upon a rather large brownish bird, in a drab waistcoat, slightly mottled, and with a loud cracked voice which nobody ever liked. So it never became a favourite, even to those who first gave it the name of lark. It was not its only defect that it lacked an ear and voice for music. There is always a scolding accent that marks its conversation with other birds in the brightest mornings of June. He is very noisy, but never merry nor musical. Indeed compared with the notes of the English lark, his are like the vehement ejaculations of a maternal duck in distress. Take it in all, no bird in either hemisphere equals the English lark in heart or voice, for both unite to make it the sweetest, happiest, and welcomest singer that was ever winged, like the high angels of God's love. It is the living ecstacy of joy when it mounts up into its " 'glorious privacy of light." On the earth it is timid, silent, and bashful, as if not at home, and not sure of its right to be there at all. It is rather homely withal, having nothing in feather, feature, or form, to attract notice. It is seemingly made to be heard, not seen, reversing the old axiom addressed to children when getting voicy. Its mission is music, and it floods a thousand acres of the blue sky with it several times a day. Out of that palpitating speck of living joy there wells forth a sea of twittering ecstacy upon the morning and evening air. It does not ascend by gyrations, like the eagle or birds of prey. It mounts up like a human aspiration. It seems to spread out its wings and to be lifted straight upwards out of sight by the aflatus of its own happy heart. To pour out this inundulating rivulets of rhapsody, is apparently the only motive of its ascension. This it is that has made it so loved of all generations. It is the singing angel of man's nearest heaven, whose vital breath is music. Its sweet warbling is only the metrical palpitation of its life of joy. It goes up over the roof-trees of the rural hamlet on the wings of its song, as if to train the human soul to trial flights heavenward. Never did the Creator put a voice of such volume into so small a living thing. It is a marvel-almost a miracle. In a still hour you can hear it at nearly a mile's distance. When its form is lost in the hazy lace-work of the sun's rays above, it pours down upon you all the thrilling semitones of its song as distinctly as if it were warbling to you in your window. War and Improvement "The world is past its infancy, and will no longer be contented with spoon meat. Time has added great improvements, but those very improvements have introduced a train of artificial necessities. A collective body of men make a gradual progress in understanding, like that of a single individual. When I reflect on the vast increase of useful as well as speculative knowledge the last three hundred years has produced, and that the peasants of this age have more conveniences than the first emperors of Rome had any notion of, I imagine we are now arrived at that period which answers to fifteen, I cannot think we are older, when I recollect the many palpable follies which are still (almost) universally persisted in. I place that of war as senseless as the boxing of schoolboys; and whenever we come to man's estate (perhaps a thousand years hence) I do not doubt it will appear as ridiculous as the pranks of unlucky lads. Several discoveries will then be made, as several truths made clear, of which we have now no more idea than the ancients had of the circulation of the blood, or the optics of Sir Isaac Newton."-Lady Mary Wortley Montague. Bond of Brotherhood. DECEMBER, 1863. A Congress of Nations. "Still it moves!" said the persecuted Galileo, as he arose from his knees before the court of Cardinals who had forced from his lips a recantation of the heresy of the Earth's motion. It was a bold and almost involuntary exclamation. The pent up faith in the great fact burst out of him in these memorable words. They may well serve as a motto for the moral reformers of the world. They were uttered in the darkest day that a philosopher ever saw for his theory. The senses of all the millions of Christendom arose up against it, as an outrage upon their evidence. The church raised its tremendous anathema over it and apparently crushed it and its author for ever at a blow. But the hero of science, with his knees still trembling from their forced flection on the marble floor, facing the scarlet-robed cardinals, facing the false witnesses of forty centuries of men's external senses, facing the incredulities of all ages, made the stilled court room echo with the exclamation, "E pure si muove!" "And still it moves!" This year, 1863, has been the darkest for the cause of peace that has come upon the world for a quarter of a century. War, for months, has threatened to enwrap the whole globe with its " garments rolled in blood." It is raging at the two antipodes, the American Republic and Japan. The Polish torch has threatened to envelope all the space between these two points in a grand conflagration. Never before in the world's history has there been such a general talk of war, such stupendous preparation for it. Never before were human science, genius, and enthusiasm brought to bear with such effect upon the production of life-destroying machinery. Never before were the nations of Christendom running such a race of eager competition in the invention and perfection of this terrible enginery. In the natural and inevitable demoralisation resulting from this condition of things, the deplorable and sanguinary struggle in America comes to be watched with the sharp, unpitying speculation of a scientific eye-almost with the same interest that attaches to a Shoeburyness experiment with different calibres of cannon; as a great and practical target-shooting by land and sea, which is to test the capacities and qualities of iron-clads, steam rams, ordnance of enormous bore, the Enfield rifle, earth-works, granite casemates, conical shells, Greek fire, &c. Gradually the idea of war has taken hold of governments and peoples like a universal sensation. Now at such a crisis as this, those who have laboured so long to bring the great public of Christendom to a better mind on the subject of war, may find it difficult to see or say that "still it moves." Indeed, it would have required a very bold and far-seeing faith to enable one to say such a thing a month ago. But the last man the world expected to put forth such an utterance has said it. The man who stands in the first position of political power in Christendom has said it for us of feebler faith. The first intellect among the earth's sovereigns has said it, in his proposal of a CONGRESS OF NATIONS, as a substitute for the arbitrament of the sword to settle the questions which are threatening to engulf Europe in war. That does not measure the whole compass of the proposition. Its imperial author has given it all the proportions which the most ardent friends of peace, on both sides of the Atlantic, contemplated when they first pressed it upon the attention of governments and peoples thirty years ago. The Emperor, apparently, has adopted it, pure and simple, as it was developed in the great Peace Congress of the People in Paris, in 1849. He espouses and invests it with all the authority of his position, not only as the best and only measure for settling satisfactorily the difficult and exciting questions now agitating Europe, but also for organising a new condition between the nations; for establishing peace and order among them on a basis similar to that on which the harmonies of individual societies are fonnded; for so arranging for the proper settlement of all future questions, that nations, now arming to the teeth, may, as it were, put off their armour and put on a civilian dress; that they may reduce, at least, their military and naval establishments by stipulated diminutions. Now we would put it to every friend of peace, who may have been depressed and unhopeful in regard to the cause, for the last few years: Is there any sovereign in the world that you would have preferred to the Emperor of the French to have put forth the proposition of a Congress of Nations, for the settlement of these existing questions and for arranging the basis of proportionate and simultaneous disarmament? Could there be a moment more fitting than the present for the emanation of such a proposal? We most earnestly hope that the friends of peace in Great Britain will be able to say, "Still it moves!" in view of this great event; that they will not only be able to say it, but to help it move. It is a moment of immeasurable importance to the world. Its issues, one way or other, will affect deeply future generations. It indicates a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at its flood, leads on to fortune; leads on to peace and to all those happy conditions predicted by the holy seers of old. If there was ever a time for those who have laboured and prayed for the advent of these great realities of prophecy, to come forward with new activity, hope and faith, this is the moment. The |