OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

THE RUSSIAN PRESS.

In its present form Russian journalism is a kind of geological diagram, the primary strata being typified by the ministerial organs (the Russian Invalid and the Northern Bee) and their shadow the Journal de St. Pétersbourg; the transition period by the Voice (Golos) and the Moscow Gazette; and the more advanced ages by the Russian World (Russki Mir). The last, although dating back only to the Franco-German war, has already made itself conspicuous for the exceptional accuracy of its information, the wide range of its topics and the frank and manly tone of its criticism. Thanks to it and to its two great forerunners above mentioned, the utterances of Russian journalism carry with them more weight than they would otherwise do—a result materially aided by the decay of the censorship, the worst and meanest legacy of Russia's dark ages, which has lately had a chance of showing itself as absurd as it is hateful under the congenial guidance of General Schidlovski. The rulers of the empire have begun to perceive that it is hardly worth while to hire men at exorbitant prices to deface articles which they cannot read and condemn books which they cannot understand; and the common sense of Russia has long since revolted against a system which is still as uselessly and childishly vexatious as when pilloried in imperishable language a century ago by Beaumarchais.

This is a great deal, but it is not enough. Like many other native institutions, Russian journalism is merely a fine fragment. Russia has a multitude of ships, but no navy; a number of ministers, but no government; a host of journals, but no press. The Russian daily papers (with the exception of an occasional "double edition" on the part of the Bourse Gazette) consist of a single broadsheet, the large type of which reduces its contents to a minimum. Fully one-half of this limited space is usually occupied with advertisements and official announcements, while even the few remaining columns are often deplorably misused. One detestable custom, originally borrowed from France, is that of "padding" a journal with tenth-rate novels, pointless anecdotes and would-be humorous feuilletons, such as the weakest "comic annual" would decline without thanks. Another failing of Russian journalism is its fondness for the tu-quoque style of argument, retorting every mention of Poland by an allusion to Ireland. But, despite all this, there is much hope for the future of Russian journalism. It is no slight gain that, in a country which has long been regarded as the very incarnation of truth-stifling despotism, any journal should be found to speak as the Golos recently spoke on the question of Russia's naval forces: "The Crimean war, which tried so severely the qualities of our army, cannot be said to have tested those of our fleet, inasmuch as it never gave itself a chance of being tested. At the first approach of the enemy it hastened to shelter itself behind the forts of Cronstadt, whence it never emerged till the close of the war. Now, if the sole use of the navy upon which we yearly expend millions of roubles be to shrink out of harm's way at the first sign of danger, we might just as well have no navy at all."

Besides the journals above named, the Moscow Son of the Fatherland and two others published in the capital (the Birjeviya Vedomosti, or Bourse Gazette, and the Peterburgskiya Vedomosti, or St. Petersburg Gazette), though now eclipsed by their younger rivals, formerly held a high place among Russian dailies. The Russian magazines cannot be dealt with in the limited space of the present article: it must suffice to mention the two most important—namely: the Russki Vestnik (Russian Courier) and the Vestnik Yevropi (Courier of Europe). Several of M. Tourgueneff's later stories have made their first appearance in the pages of the latter, which, numbering among its contributors some of the foremost writers in Russia, and combining, like the Revue des Deux Mondes, the functions of a review with those of a magazine, is in every way the worthy successor of its now defunct forerunner, the Sovremennik (Contemporary), formerly owned and edited by the poet Nekrassoff.[B]

The comic element of Russian journalism is represented by the Iskra (Spark) and Budilnik (Alarm-Bell), the latter having the superiority in pictorial illustrations, though the savage and personal cast of its satire, together with its imprudent fondness for political allusions, has more than once all but occasioned its suppression. Both journals are published weekly, and both have a considerable circulation, though it must be owned that their title of "comic" is for the most part a sad misnomer. That the Russians are naturally devoid of humor no reader of Gogol or Griboiedoff, Pushkin, Kriloff or Tourgueneff, can believe; but the comic journals themselves have fallen far too much into the hands of the Imperial University, whose literary style is a combination of the humor of the cider-cellars with the verbal fluency of Billingsgate. Under such auspices the ill-starred periodicals naturally oscillate between insipid propriety and labored coarseness. For a month or two the talented contributors go smoothly on in their career of untranslatable pleasantry, till some special atrocity calls forth the fatherly admonition of the police. Immediately a reaction ensues, filling the objectionable columns with harmless sneers at the weather and other safe objects of attack, until the effect of the warning has died away, and all goes on as before.

Those of our readers who were in Russia a few years ago must remember the famous caricature of "National Music," representing the various journals as a band of musicians. In the foreground stands the minister of police as bandmaster, regulating the time with the flourish of his baton: on his right is the Russian Invalid (the government organ) with a trombone, on his left the Military Gazette with a kettledrum. Immediately below, the Moscow Gazette, in the person of its celebrated chief, M. Katkoff, is playing in a reckless, haphazard fashion upon an enormous bass fiddle. Close by are the two leading comic journals, the one tinkling a triangle, the other blowing the pandean pipes. Farther on the Voice (Golos) is bawling through a speaking-trumpet, and the Bourse Gazette flourishing a tambourine, a host of minor performers being loosely sketched in the background; while far in the distance a hand outstretched from a cloud of mist is tolling a cracked church-bell, symbolical of M. Kerzen's famous Kolokol (Bell), at that time in the zenith of its sinister renown; and Russia, as a young lady in a ball-dress, is vainly attempting, with a look of dismay, to close her ears against the uproar.

Equally clever and equally audacious is a more recent travesty of the well-known scene in Dante's Inferno where Bertrand de Born, a noted sower of sedition, comes forth with his severed head in his hands. In the Russian version the renowned editor of the Moscow Gazette is seen hobbling along with a cannon-ball labelled "Police Surveillance" at his ankle, and carrying by the hair his own head, which is so drawn as to bear a grotesque likeness to an inkstand with a pen in each ear. The text of Dante is thus travestied:

The backwardness of the Russian press, attributed to so many different causes, is really due to one very simple one—the want of readers. Among a population of whom only nine per cent. can read, and who neither know nor care what passes in the world of politics, the existence of free public opinion, or indeed of any opinion at all, can hardly be expected; and thus, while no country contains such frantic republicans as Russia, no government is more absolutely secure. Upon that tremendous passivity the utmost efforts of such men as Netchaieff and Bakounin fall like a pellet on the hide of an elephant. The popular cries which madden other races are utterly meaningless to the docile, unemotional "mujik," loyal and conservative to the very marrow of his bones.

But the vivifying of these petrified millions may safely be left to the influence of time. The provincial schools recently established may be trusted to do their work, however slowly; and the "educated Russia" dreamed of by Alexander I. may yet crown the age of Alexander II. Those who, like the writer, have lived in the villages of the interior, and have seen the Russian peasant as he really is, cannot but have hopes of his future, in the teeth of the hasty and one-sided observers who love to depict him as a brute with the single human attribute of dishonesty. The ignorance, sluggishness and intemperance of the mujik belong to the system under which he has been reared: his frank hospitality, cheery good-humor and simple child-like piety are all his own. To raise these brave, simple natures out of the unwholesome darkness which has so long imprisoned them is a noble and Christian work; as far above the mere material emancipation of 1861 as the soul is above the body.

D. K.

A MIDSUMMER NOON'S PHANTASM.

"Ghosts? No, I don't believe in ghosts: I have seen too many of them," is a very fair thing on one of the oldest of subjects. My case is different. I have been trying all my life to believe in ghosts, and saw my first four days ago. Toward noon I fell into a doze—very short and slight it must have been—over my book. No one was in the room, and the door was closed. The book was held up in the usual position, a little below the level of the eye, in the right hand. I awoke—if the word can be applied to what was so very slight a slumber—and saw limned with perfect distinctness against the page the head of a girl or boy six or eight years old, blue-eyed, light-haired, and fair but not clear in complexion. It was below life-size, not more than four inches in height. Only the head was visible, without anything below the jaw. At first it seemed perfectly solid, but the lines of print, which were still held up as in reading, gradually showed themselves through the fading apparition until it entirely died away. This happened in about a third of a minute, the beautiful little face continuing the whole time to gaze at me with a calm but not sad expression. It was not in full front, the right side being turned to me in what is called a three-quarter position. The light which illuminated it did not come from the window, which was directly behind me and gave all the light there was in the room, and yet the impression was in no respect that of a picture. Not for a moment did this interpretation occur to me, strongly as did the evanescent character of the head militate against the idea of reality. The fading was most rapid at the occiput, and may be said to have begun there, extending to the right and upward. There was no background or accessory of any kind, the head being quite isolated and detached, objectively as subjectively.

The lineaments were not those of any one of my acquaintance, and recalled no countenance I had ever seen. If the appearance suggested a young member of the family, it was not because of resemblance, but from his being frequently in my mind, and apt to be associated with any alarm due to the tinge of superstition from which none of us are wholly free. For the reason already given it could not have been a reminiscence of a picture. The shading and coloring were too exact for anything painted. My easel was, it is true, near by, on the opposite side of me, and on it were two heads of nearly the size of that I describe; but they were hard-featured old saints of a deep mahogany hue, relieved by a very dark background, and therefore the exact antipodes of my shadowy visitant. On these I had been painting an hour or two before; and that is the solitary connection conceivable between the spectre and anything tangible. The reader will perhaps be inclined to set it down as having been complementary to them. I do not think it was; but were it so, the point mainly craving explanation remains untouched—that what I saw was with the waking eye. It may have come from the land of dreams, or from a remote outlying province of it, but its perceptible existence was entirely in the realm of actualities. I was not conscious, and had no recollection, of having had a dream. It is true that, according to a theory necessarily and in its nature incapable of being sustained by positive proof, we may have unconscious dreams, and be always dreaming when asleep without knowing it. Persons who rise at night, take pen and paper and solve problems which had been the worry of their waking hours, and return to their couch still asleep, present cases analogous to mine in so far as their unconscious mental activity leaves an outcome and expression obvious to the senses. Another parallel would be that of a sleep-walking artist who should when in a state of somnambulism execute a picture. But neither case would be identical in principle with mine. The artist and the mathematician would both have executed in their sleep what they had laid the foundation of when awake. I, on the other hand, would, should I transfer my aërial sitter to canvas, simply paint what I saw when wide awake, just as in undertaking to reproduce any other face from memory, whether observed once for twenty seconds or frequently and for longer periods.

It is usual to explain the common stories of phantoms by attributing them to ocular illusion, aided or not aided by the imagination or by particular conditions of the bodily or mental health. The eye, of course, is never quite proof against deception, but there needs some little material for it; and in my case there was absolutely none—no waving sheet or trees or clouds, nothing but the printed page; and that was visible, unchanged except by the utterly inharmonious and contrasted image before it. My imagination was not affected before, at the time, or after. My pulse may have been a little quickened for the moment, for I did not accept the appearance as a matter of course, as we do everything, however preposterous, in a dream, but, on the contrary, quite recognized its abnormal character. I know of no existing cause of especial or temporary liability to any delusion of the kind. In short, though I have not—and had not when I continued after the disappearance to contemplate, without moving a muscle, the book against which the head had been projected, and coolly reflect upon what I had seen—the slightest belief that it was supernatural, I should be compelled, if called on in court, to swear that I had seen what must be provisionally named a spectre. "If I stand here, I saw it!"

E. C. B.

THE BIRTHPLACE OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

As the traveller is whirled along over the great stretch of railway between Liverpool and London, he passes (about midway) through Nuneaton, a busy little manufacturing town, situated in a most delightful and fruitful part of the "Garden Land." About two miles from this town (which the gifted authoress has dubbed "Milby" in her Scenes of Clerical Life), on the broad smooth highway leading to the ancient and renowned city of Coventry, stands the house where Marian Evans was born. It is a large brick building, surrounded by a well-stocked and pleasant garden, devoid of ornament, but highly suggestive of comfort and convenience—such a house as our forefathers used to build fifty years ago, when comfort was not sacrificed to appearance, and when the owner had more to do with the design than the architect.

Robert Evans, the father of the renowned authoress, was bailiff to Lord Howe and to Sir Roger Newdigate—father of the present M. P. of that name, who is such an earnest champion of Protestantism as it is reflected in the Church of England, and who has made such earnest but as yet fruitless endeavors to have a bill passed for the periodical visitation and inspection of the monastic and conventual institutions of Great Britain. Her brother, Isaac P. Evans, still occupies that responsible position, and resides in the old homestead. The country around Mrs. Lewes's early home is rich in historic associations. Not far away is Bosworth Field, and in another direction are the ruins of Astley Castle, within whose strong walls Lady Jane Grey passed a portion of her brief, chequered life. Near the castle stands—or stood—a tree in which her father, the duke of Suffolk, took refuge when pursued by the emissaries of the sanguinary queen. A small table used by him while concealed in the huge hollow trunk is still preserved.

There are several very ancient churches in the vicinity of the residence where George Eliot passed her early days. The parish church of Nuneaton, to which she alludes in her Scenes of Clerical Life, is a grand structure, six hundred years old, with a massive embattled tower containing a chime of eight melodious bells; and Coton (Shepperton) Church, which in her girlhood she attended with her parents, is perhaps still more ancient, as it is certainly more weatherbeaten and venerable in appearance. The writer's parents have often seen the future authoress sitting in the antiquated, high-peaked family pew and taking part with grave attention in the service.

In Atteborough, a village in the same neighborhood, there resided an eccentric character named Joe Liggens. He had received a university education, but, lacking application and industry, had chosen no pursuit in life, and passed his time in lounging around his native village and frequenting the tap-room of its alehouse, where, surrounded by an admiring crowd, he puffed away at his long pipe, removing it from his lips only when he deigned to express an opinion upon some subject of debate and give his open-mouthed hearers the benefit of his wisdom and erudition. When Scenes of Clerical Life first appeared in Blackwood's Magazine, describing places and persons familiar to the villagers, they naturally wondered who the author could be, and decided at last that it could be no other than Joe Liggens. Had he not been to Oxford? Didn't he know Latin and all sorts of things? And wasn't he acquainted with the scenes and personages described in the new book? No one else could be thought of combining these various and essential qualifications. When Joe was questioned on the subject he merely smiled and said nothing—the strongest confirmatory proof, and an exhibition of the modesty inherent in genius. In recognition of the honor he had conferred upon his native place, a subscription was started for the impecunious Joe, and a goodly sum was on the point of being presented to him when the real name of "George Eliot" was revealed, and Joe Liggens found himself treated as an impostor by those who had thrust upon him undeserved honors.

W. B.

THE FATE OF SOUTH JERSEY.

The Camden and Atlantic, the Philadelphia and Atlantic City, the New Jersey Southern, and some minor railroads, pass through portions of New Jersey long known as the "Jersey Barrens." They are all new roads, comparatively speaking, but they have wonderfully stimulated the enterprise that has created so many flourishing villages that ten years ago had never been heard of. Vineland, the fairest and most flourishing village in the country, as well as the largest, is only about fifteen years old. Its population is six thousand. Forbidding-looking swamps, giving rise to swarming myriads of mosquitoes and to malaria through their dank, decaying vegetation, have been converted into flourishing cranberry-meadows, and the dry land into fine vineyards and fruit-orchards surrounding homes of every grade of elegance, from the simple vine-covered cottage to the costly villa with carefully-kept evergreen hedges enclosing exquisite lawns, statues, fountains and rare flowers. The extent of these hedges is estimated at seventy-five miles.

But this prosperous reclamation of the waste lands of South Jersey has already received a check from an insidious but terrible enemy, destined to undo the labor of years unless promptly and wisely attacked. This enemy is drought, traceable directly to the destruction of the forests. Formerly, glass-manufacturing companies established themselves in well-wooded regions, used the forests for their furnaces, and when these were exhausted migrated to new places to repeat the work of devastation. Then the settlers "cleared up" the land extensively, and since the railroads have been built the burning of the woods along their routes by cinders from the locomotives has been terribly frequent, and often extensive. A conductor on the Camden and Atlantic stated last year that he had counted fifteen forest-fires during one trip from Camden to the sea.

Yet nothing is done to prevent these ever-recurring calamities. The citizens complain, mourn over the destruction, grumble at the railroads, and thank God when the fires are at a safe distance from their own homes. When personally threatened, they turn out, men, women and children, aided by terror-stricken and sympathizing neighbors, and "fight the fire" by felling trees and clearing away the inflammable matter in the path of the fire. Sometimes a whole neighborhood will struggle for days together without respite as only the desperate can. Many of these fires, it is said, are due to the wilful mischief of boys and others. Hundreds of acres are destroyed every year. Along the Camden and Atlantic almost every tract of woodland has been burned over once or more.

The effect of the decrease of the rainfall in South Jersey is already serious. The water-supply in Vineland, Hammonton and other places is constantly lowering: all the wells except those that were dug very deep at first have had to be lowered at least two feet.

The most practical step at present toward arresting the destruction of woodlands is no doubt the organization of forest-protecting and planting societies like those in Germany, which have now so far secured the aid of the legislative power that no landowner can cut down one of his own forest trees without the consent of the authorities. This seems like tyranny, but it is really that wisdom which recognizes the good of the whole community as paramount to any private consideration.

M. H.

THE SAFFAH COBBLESTONES.

Le Devoir gives some interesting information about the wonderful stones of Saffah, now on exhibition in the Asia Minor department of the Museum of the Louvre. This department has lately been reopened to the public, after being closed six months for internal improvements. Visitors pass before the cases containing these ordinary-looking cobblestones, and wonder why they should be there instead of in the street, where they seem to belong. But these ordinary-looking stones are, in the eyes of scholars, among the most precious objects of history: they are covered with writings in some unknown, and even unheard-of, tongue. Some of the writing is fine, some coarse: sometimes the lines are straight, from right to left, and sometimes they wind about, like the trail of a serpent, in every direction. Saffah is a desert plain in Syria extending east from the lakes of Damascus, and a part of it is covered with these curious stones. Antiquaries like Renan, Ganneau, De Vogué, Waddington and Pierret are sorely puzzled over the writing on them, for the character resembles none that has yet been deciphered. They will not, however, abandon the task, for antiquaries are Patience personified; and we shall one day know the history, language, manners and customs of a race whose very existence up to the present time has not even been suspected.

M. H.

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