OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

A WOMAN'S OPINION OF PARIS AND THE PARISIANS.

I have now lived in Paris two consecutive years, and during this time the question has often been put to me, "How do you like Paris and the Parisians?" That question I will now try to answer.

Like Paris? Of course I do—heartily and truly. Cold indeed must the heart be that does not find space in its depths for a true affection for the fair queen-city which welcomes all strangers so kindly and hospitably, which has a smile for all, and which at the wide banquet of her bounty sets forth food for every phase of mental hunger. Do you wish to study? Her libraries lie open to your research—her monuments, her galleries, her public institutions are given to your inspection, freely and without price. Do you seek amusement? Paris, in that respect, is like the rollicking heroine of Barbe-Bleu: there is none like Boulotte, "quand il s'agit de batifoler." Do you wish to hide yourself in depths of unbroken quiet? There are in her very heart lonely streets where scarce a cart ever penetrates, and in her suburbs green shaded nooks where the spirit of Solitude reigns supreme.

Life runs on such smooth and well-oiled wheels for all humanity in Paris that half the cares that torture us are cast aside as soon as we enter her precincts. Take, for instance, the grand question of housekeeping. Fancy living in a land where all the servants are skilled and civil, if not all trustworthy and honest; where washing-days and ironing-days and baking-days are unknown; where there are no staircases to sweep down and no front-door steps to scour; where rents and eating and all other household expenses may be gauged in accordance with one's purse. If you wish to entertain, you may give a soirée that will cost ten dollars if you cannot afford to give a ball that costs five thousand. Nothing is de rigueur in Paris. It is neither incumbent upon you to be housed splendidly nor to feast sumptuously—to drive your own carriage nor to entertain an army of servants. "Do the best you can" is the motto of Parisian life. And so it often happens that in a small room, up half a dozen flights of stairs, with a cup of tea for sole refreshment and music or conversation for sole amusement, one will find some of the pleasantest society in Paris. You do not get champagne and boned turkey and the German, but you hear sometimes a little music, such as one pays untold gold to hear at the opera, or a fragment of declamation by some noted elocutionist, or a new poem fresh from the pen of some celebrated writer. And you have always conversation; that is to say, the wit and sparkle of the wittiest and brightest nation on the face of the earth. In a world that is becoming more and more a Paradise of Fools the charm of sheer brain and brightness is irresistible. To live in such an intellectual centre is in itself delightful. Paris is a veritable Foire aux Idées. Its criticism, keen as the sword of Saladin, overwhelming as the battle-axe of Coeur de Lion, is in itself a study. It is not so much the intellectual productions of Paris as the comments they call forth that are at once instructive and fascinating.

When we turn from the world of intellect to that of ordinary life the same charm haunts our footsteps. Everything is so well done, so gracefully and so winningly presented! The exquisite perfume of refinement hangs about every trivial detail. Your washerwoman is a lady, and your coalman a Chesterfield. If a Frenchman is ever rude, he is rude with malice prepense and aforethought. He knows better, we may be sure. Patrick may err on the score of politeness from ignorance, but Alphonse is a beast only because he chooses to be bestial. All the traditions of his race run counter to his conduct when he forgets the supreme suavity that should characterize a Gaul.

And yet it is possible for an American—or rather an Anglo-Saxon—to live for years in the midst of this brilliant, polished, fascinating people, and never to feel specially interested in them, either individually or nationally. What is the reason? Why is it that, loving Paris like a second home, we do not take the Parisians to our hearts as brothers and sisters, or at least as dear first cousins? The causes are many and various. In the first place, the Parisians do not like us. The popularity which Americans were said to possess in Paris has vanished with the Empire—that is, if it really existed. It probably was nothing more at any time than the courtesy shown by an astute sovereign of a nation of shopkeepers to a nation of purchasers. To-day Americans are not popular in Parisian society. It is almost impossible that they should be. Our ideas, our social customs, our notions of right and wrong, are diametrically opposed to all the social theories of France. Our girls, with their free frank ways and their liberty of speech and action, are so many disreputable horrors in Parisian eyes. Madame la Comtesse de St. Germain would as soon think of taking her daughters to see Schneider as of permitting them to associate with young ladies who are allowed to receive morning calls from gentlemen without the presence of their parents—who call the male friends of their childhood by their first names—and who are suffered to witness Faust at the opera and La Haine at La Gaîté. Americans, especially wealthy ones, usually draw around them a vast circle of French acquaintances, it is true, but these are mostly sponges and adventurers, well born and well bred, it may be, but decidedly, to use a vulgar but expressive American idiom, "on the make." Of the pure and inner sanctuary of French society scarce a glimpse is afforded to these alien eyes. It would not amuse them very much if it were, for, by all accounts, this hallowed inner circle is as dull as it is exclusive. The charm of French society is to be found in those salons which are frequented by the kings of Parisian Bohemia—journalists, poets, dramatists, artists—wherein the Republic is queen and Victor Hugo a god.

Two great and ineradicable defects underlie the brightness and fascination of the external part of French character—namely, selfishness and insincerity. Perfect in manner, in dress, in grace, in suavity, in sweetness it may be, the French are utterly and wholly unreliable. They resemble the phantom woman in the story told by Leigh Hunt, that was only a suit of clothes, with no face beneath the hood and no body inside of the robes; or rather those malignant spirits that look like fair women when seen in front, but when seen from behind show only as hollow shells.

And the tradespeople, the bourgeoisie—your dressmaker, your milliner, your tailor, your butcher and baker and candlestick-maker—skilled and suave and generally charming—O heaven and earth! how they do lie! Not occasionally, not when hard-pressed, not when truth will not do as well, but persistently, calmly, eternally. "I swear to you, monsieur," will your Parisian say, "that your work shall be done in two hours," Esteem yourself fortunate if it is finished in two days: very probably two weeks will see it still uncompleted. Send for a workman to execute some little job about your house. "He will come at once—yes, at once." Days roll round, and he never comes at all. Your dressmaker agrees to make you a dress for a certain price: your bill comes home for half as much again. An American in Paris ordered an extra door-key, giving the original key as a pattern. The key was to cost four francs. Here is a copy of the bill as presented:

Francs.

For taking off lock (a process wholly unnecessary, by the by), 1-1/2

For putting it on again, 1-1/2

Workman's time, 1

Journey from shop (about half a square), 1

Key, 4

——

Total 9

Another American sent for a bell-hanger to inspect an electric bell which was thought to be out of order, but which proved on inspection to be all right. He got a bill of five francs, whereof one item ran thus: "For looking at the bell, 2 francs." He had not touched the thing, be it borne in mind.

I cannot refrain from here making answer to a remark too often heard from American lips, that America is as immoral as France—that American society is every whit as depraved as the French. It is not. The immorality of America is as a festering wound on an otherwise healthy body: the immorality of France is like a scrofulous taint that poisons the whole life-current. One gets weary and heartsick with the old eternal song, the everlasting theme, which is sung and told and dramatized and written about and painted—that flies in your face at every corner and stares up at you from every inch of printed paper, every square of colored canvas, in the whole nationality. And to sum up at last this, "a woman's opinion," I will freely state that the longer I live in France the more I admire the Parisians and the less I like them.

L. H. H.

THE COLLEGIO ROMANO.

The Collegio Romano was always worth a visit, because it contained the celebrated Kircherian Museum and the admirable observatory presided over by Father Secchi, the world-celebrated astronomer. But these are matters sufficiently treated of by the guide-books, and may be left to them. Of the story of the enormous building they have less to tell, though there is much of curious interest to be told. But neither is that my object on the present occasion. My purpose is to speak of the strangely-changed fortunes and destinies of the old historic pile, and of what it now is and is to be. But little in Rome, as we all know, has remained unchanged in these strange latter days. But few things—at least few material things—have experienced such a change as the Collegio Romano. The "Collegio Romano" was in fact nothing more than the principal convent of the Jesuits. The establishment was founded immediately after the institution of the order, and mainly by the care and energy of Saint Francisco Borgia, the third general of the order. The present building, however, was raised in the pontificate of Gregory XIII. by the Florentine architect Ammanati, the first stone having been laid in 1582. It is an enormous mass of building—enormous even among the huge structures for which Rome above all other cities is remarkable—situated near the church of the Gesù and not far from the Piazza di Venezia. There is nothing remarkable in its outward appearance save the vast size, the object of the builders having evidently been only to adapt it in a business-like way to the purposes to which it was destined. These included not only the provision of a residence for the fathers of the order resident in Rome, and for the all-but all-powerful general of the terrible order—the "Black Pope," as the Romans were wont to call him—but also all the locale necessary for a very large educational establishment, whence the building took its name.

The Jesuits, like all other members of the almost innumerable monastic establishments in Rome, have, as we all know, been turned out of their homes, their property has been—or rather is being—sold, and the convents have become national property. Many of these are vast buildings, but no one of them is to be compared with the great Jesuit convent, which was the central home and head-quarters of the "Company of Jesus." And a memorable day it was in Rome, and a very singular sight, when, the dreaded fathers of the terrible "Company" having taken their departure, the few remaining goods and chattels in the convent were sold by public auction. Few and not of much value were the articles to be sold; for the fathers are not men to take no heed of those shadows which coming events cast before them, and they had long foreseen that their day in Rome was at an end, and had contrived to leave as little as might be to the spoiler. None the less was it a strange sight, as I say, to see the profanum vulgus of the buyers of old furniture, and the still more numerous herd of the curious, looking on with very diversified feelings—some with bitterness enough in their hearts—pushing and tramping through those noble corridors and vast halls and secret cells, on which no profane gaze had rested for more than three hundred years.

There has been abundance of doubt, but no difficulty, in disposing of the great number of buildings which have thus come into the possession of the nation. Many of the smaller convents have been sold in the same manner as the other property of the ousted communities. But this has not been done—and indeed could hardly have been done—in the case of the larger buildings; and there has been a competition very much in the nature of a scramble for the appropriation of them by the heads of the several governmental departments. That of Public Instruction, now worthily represented by Signor Bonghi, has succeeded in laying hands on perhaps the grandest prize of all, the great Jesuit establishment of the Collegio Romano; and, looking to the uses to which it is being put by Signor Bonghi, it may, I think, be said that it could not have been better bestowed. Under his auspices it is intended to assume, and is indeed rapidly assuming, the functions of the still vaster pile of building in Great Russell street, London, known to all the world as the British Museum, as will be seen from the following statement of the purposes it is intended to serve and of the various matters to be housed in it.

On the ground-floor there is already established a "Museo Scolastico-Pedagogico"—a museum of all the means and appurtenances that are used, or have been used, in different countries for the ends and purposes of instruction. This is the idea and the creation of Signor Bonghi; and it will, I think, be admitted that it is a very happy one and likely to be fruitful in good results. A visit to it is more interesting than might perhaps at first sight be imagined. I may mention that on asking the very competent and enlightened director of the establishment what people he considered to have done most and as foremost in the work of educating the masses, he said that the Germans had done most theoretically and in the way of thinking on the philosophy of the matter, but that the Americans had done most practically in the way of improving the material means for popular education.

On the first and second floors the great national library, the "Biblioteca Vittorio Emmanuele," is—or, it would perhaps be more accurate to say, will be—placed and made accessible to the public. At Florence there exists the celebrated Magliabecchian Library, which when Florence became the capital of Italy was called the National Library—somewhat ungratefully, it will probably be thought, to the learned and indefatigable collector who gave his life and his means to the formation of it, and then bequeathed it to his native city. And I am inclined to believe that this library is still, for all the general working purposes of a nineteenth-century student, the best in Italy. In Rome, when the Eternal City in its turn became the capital of a New Italy, there existed nothing that deserved to be called a national library, and the present minister of Public Instruction set about doing what was possible to supply the want. The Company of Jesus possessed a fine and valuable library, containing about one hundred and seventy thousand volumes. This, when the Jesuits were turned out, was declared national property, and it forms the nucleus of the new Victor Emmanuel Library. While the Jesuits inhabited their old home it was arranged in one very fine hall built in the form of a cross, which will continue to be one of the principal receptacles, in the new establishment. It was in the middle of 1874 that the Italian government took possession of this collection. To this have been added forty-eight other libraries, the former property of the suppressed convents of the city and provinces of Rome. They were placed for the nonce in the cells which had been inhabited by the Jesuit fathers. The mass of books thus collected amounts to about four hundred thousand volumes. It will be seen at once that the labor of reducing to order, classifying and arranging such a confused mass must be truly herculean. But the first librarian of the Victor Emmanuel Library, Signor Carlo Castellani, well known in the literary world as a palaeographer of great eminence, is laboring at the colossal task with an energy and a zeal that have already accomplished much, and is daily making sensible advances in the work. It is, however, also evident that four hundred thousand volumes thus collected must include an immense number of duplicates; and, worse still, that (as may be readily supposed from the sources whence the books have come) one special branch of general literature will be represented in very undue proportion. Of course, the greater portion of the conventual libraries was theological. It may be presumed that classical and (old) historical literature will be found to exist, the former in tolerable completeness (so far as regards old and in many cases now obsolete editions), and the latter in considerable abundance. But of modern literature little or nothing can be expected, even of Italian, and still less of any other language. Among the number of volumes which has been mentioned there are some seven or eight thousand manuscripts, and perhaps an equal number of the editions of the fifteenth century, which go far to make the library an interesting one to the learned and to the student and lover of bibliography, but are of very little avail toward rendering the collection worth much as a national working library. The question then arises, What means has Italy of procuring such a library for her capital? Something may be probably expected from the liberality of her Parliament in furtherance of this great national object. But for the present, in the depressed (though improving) state of the Italian finances, this cannot be much. There exists in Italy a law similar to that on the same subject in England, by which every publisher is obliged to deposit one copy of every book published in the national library. But this copy at present is sent to the Magliabecchian Library at Florence. Signor Castellani hopes that the privilege may be transferred, as seems but reasonable, to Rome. But I do not see why it should be necessary thus to impoverish Florence to enrich the capital. In England the law requires eleven copies which are distributed to the great libraries of the three kingdoms. It is true that this exaction has sometimes been complained of, and it is said that in the case of very costly illustrated works the tax is a very heavy one, and that in some instances it has operated to make the production of certain books impossible. And perhaps it may be reasonable to make some regulation by which such works should be exempted from the obligation. But in ordinary cases the tax is an almost inappreciable one, and, such as it is, must of course fall ultimately on the writers and readers of books—mainly on the latter—for the benefit of which classes libraries exist. It seems to me, therefore, that a somewhat larger number of copies than one or two might reasonably and advantageously be exacted from publishers. And if three or four copies were delivered to the great Roman library, there would be the means of effecting very advantageous exchanges with other countries. I asked Signor Castellani what increase in the number of volumes the locale now at the disposal of the library would be capable of accommodating. He said that there would be room for about seven hundred thousand volumes, evidently a quite inadequate provision for the future. Many years will not elapse before the measure which is now demanded at the British Museum—viz., the removal of all the various collections housed there to other localities, and the dedication of the entire building to the library—will become necessary at the old Collegio Romano. Vast as the building is, the entirety of it is not at all too large for the Roman library of the future. Or—since we are allowing our thoughts to consider events which cast their shadows before as if they were accomplished facts—may it not perhaps be found better some of these days to move the whole of the present collection to the Vatican, to be united with the colossal and almost unknown hoards there buried in one collection? As it is, a new reading-room, after the model of that existing at the National Library in Paris, is about to be built in the courtyard of the Collegio Romano. The classification, arrangement and methods of working the library will be copied in great measure from those introduced by Mr. Panizzi at the British Museum. Unlike the liberal practice of the great German libraries, no volume will be on any account permitted to leave the library. I was sorry to find that in one all-important respect the Roman practice as regards the national library will differ from that of London. The collection is being catalogued in slips, to be kept, after the fashion of booksellers, in boxes made for the purpose, and there is no present intention of making any catalogue in volumes accessible to the public. Of course it is impossible to allow the public to have access to the slips; and all who have ever really used a great library know but too well that a library the catalogue of which is not accessible to the student is at least half useless. Even putting aside the numerous cases in which an inquirer knows of the existence of such or such a work, but is not aware of the author's name, and cannot therefore ask for or obtain the book in question, it happens more often than not that a person inquiring on any given subject finds his best guide to the available sources of information in the catalogue.

I have not left myself room, I fear, to say anything on the present occasion of the other highly interesting collections which are at present lodged, or in the course of being placed, under the all-sheltering roof of the Collegio Romano. I must content myself with simply enumerating them, with the hope of giving some account of them at some future time. I may briefly state, then, that the celebrated Kircherian Museum, formed toward the close of the sixteenth century by the learned Jesuit father Kircher, still occupies the rooms on the ground-floor, with a somewhat improved arrangement, which it occupied when the fathers of the Company inhabited the building. The collection of ancient Roman marbles discovered in the excavations of the buried city of Ostia have been brought thence, and arranged in rooms also on the third floor—a fact which strikes one as not a little to the credit of the handiwork of Ammanati, the Florentine architect. Also on the third floor there is an exceedingly interesting collection, of which I hope to speak somewhat more at length another time. It is called a palaeo-ethnographical museum, and consists of a large collection of the implements of all sorts of the people belonging to the pre-historic period, together with a similar gathering of articles used by the uncivilized races of the present day. The interest of such a comparative study as is here suggested is, as may be readily understood, very great. On the fourth floor there is a very considerable collection of objects illustrating Italian art of the ante-Roman period, and also a Museum of Industrial Art, conceived on the plan of the English School of Art at South Kensington.

T. A. T.

TRADES UNIONISM IN ITS INFANCY.

In these days of trades unionism and strikes an account of the germ of such associations in this country is not without interest. So far back as 1806 a remarkable trial arising out of such a combination took place before the recorder of Philadelphia and a jury. It lasted three days and excited extraordinary interest. Jared Ingersoll and Joseph Hopkinson were counsel for the prosecution, and Caesar A. Rodney and Walter Franklin for the defence.

The defendants, eight in number, were indicted for not being content to work at the usual prices, but contriving to increase and augment them, and for endeavoring to prevent by threats, menaces and other unlawful means other artificers from working at the usual rate, and uniting into a club or combination to make and ordain unlawful and arbitrary rules to govern those engaged in their trade, and unjustly exact great sums of money by means thereof.

The evidence went to show in the clearest manner that a system of frightful thralldom had been put in force. A witness named Harrison stated that when he reached the United States in 1794 he found this system of terrorism prevalent. He went to work for a Mr. Bedford, and presently got a hint that if he did not join the association of journeymen shoemakers he was liable to be "scabbed," which meant that men would not work in the same shop, nor board or lodge in the same house, nor would they work at all for the same employer. The case of this man seemed exceptionally hard. He made shoes exclusively, and when "a turn-out came to raise the wages on boots" he remonstrated, pleading that shoes did not enter into the question, and urging that he had a sick wife and a large family. But it was all to no purpose. He then resolved that he would turn a "scab" unknown to the association, and continue his work; but having a neighbor whom it was impossible for him to deceive, he went to him and said that he knew his circumstances, and that his family must perish or go to "the bettering-house" unless he continued to work. This neighbor, Swain, replied that he knew his condition was desperate, but that a man had better make any sacrifice than turn a "scab" at that time. He presently informed against him, and Mr. Bedford (his employer) was warned that he must discharge his "scabs." He refused, saying that, "Let the consequence be what it might, we should sink or swim together." However, one Saturday night, when all but Harrison and a man named Logan had left him, Bedford's resolution gave way, and he exclaimed, "I don't know what the devil I am to do: they will ruin me in the end. I wish you would go to the body and pay a fine, if not very large, in order to set the shop free once more." The fine offered was refused, and Mr. Bedford's shop remained "under scab" for a year. Still, Mr. Bedford, who must have been a very plucky fellow, would not give Harrison up, but removed in 1802 to Trenton. Harrison stated that although he could not, had Mr. Bedford given him up, have got work anywhere else, and that he might have ground him down to any terms, yet he (Bedford) very nobly always gave him full price. At length, by paying a fine, Harrison became reconciled to his persecutors, and Bedford's shop was once more free.

William Forgrave said that "the name of a 'scab' is very dangerous: men of this description have been hurt when out at night." He had been threatened, and joined the association from fear of personal injury. A vast deal more of evidence was given and eloquent speeches delivered by counsel, but the foregoing gives the sum and substance of the case.

In the course of the summing up Recorder Levy said: "To make an artificial regulation is not to regard the excellence of the work or quality of the material, but to fix a positive and arbitrary price, governed by no standard, but dependent on the will of the few who are interested.... What, then, is the operation of this kind of conduct upon the commerce of the city? It exposes it to inconveniences, if not to ruin: therefore it is against the public welfare. How does it operate upon the defendants? We see that those who are in indigent circumstances, and who have families to maintain, have declared here on oath that it was impossible for them to hold out. They were interdicted from all employment in future if they did not continue to persevere in the measures taken by the journeymen shoemakers. Does not such a regulation tend to involve necessitous men in the commission of crimes? If they are prevented working for six weeks, it might lead them to procure support for their wives and children by burglary, larceny or highway robbery."

The jury found the defendants "guilty of a combination to raise their wages," and the court sentenced them to pay a fine of eight dollars each, with costs of suit, and to stand committed till paid.

MORAL TRAINING IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

One of our popular clergymen, in a late Sunday discourse upon the Bible in the public schools, labored to show that the question was a very unimportant one. because none were much interested in it except infidels and politicians—a sufficiently absurd position for a professed teacher of the people to assume. Doubtless it is a folly to fan into flame the slumbering embers of a quarrel, but it is a greater folly to pretend, in the face of the common sense of the people, that all signs of fire are extinguished or never existed where there is so much inflammable material about and the "wind of doctrine" running high.

This question of secular education for our public schools is in fact one of the most difficult of solution. Chicago has met it in a summary manner by excluding the Bible from all her free schools, but this does not settle the question, because both believers and unbelievers in the various creeds of the churches admit that there should be provision made for the training of the moral faculties of the children in our public schools. Many of them, especially in cities and large manufacturing centres, come out of the dark alleys where intemperance, poverty and ignorance tend to arrest the development of their higher sentiments. For the unfortunate children of such homes the sessions of the public school afford the only glimpse of a better life, the only chance for moral and æsthetic culture. Protestants, as a rule, honestly believe that the reading of the Bible at the opening of school tends to waken and develop the moral aspirations of the child. Just as honestly and conscientiously do Catholics disbelieve in the efficacy of Bible reading, while they boldly condemn secular education as a principle. Father Muller, priest of the congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, in his work upon public school education, published three years ago in Boston, says: "The language of the Vicar of Christ in regard to godless education is very plain and unmistakable".... "Our Holy Father, Pope Pius IX., has declared that Catholics cannot approve of a system of educating youth unconnected with the Catholic faith and the power of the Church".... "The voice of common sense, the voice of sad experience, the voice of Catholic bishops, and especially the voice of the Holy Father, is raised against and condemns the public school system as a huge humbug, injuring and not promoting personal virtue and good citizenship, and as being most pernicious to the Catholic faith and life and all good morals. A pastor, therefore, cannot maintain the contrary opinion without incurring guilt before God and the Church. He cannot allow parents to send their children to such schools of infidelity. He cannot give them absolution and say, Innocens sum."

According to the American Annual Cyclopædia for 1875, the Roman Catholic Church has in the United States 1 cardinal, 8 archbishops, 54 bishops, 4872 priests, 4731 churches, 1902 chapels, 68 colleges, 511 academies, and a lay membership numbering over 6,000,000. This shows a great and increasing prosperity of that Church in this country; yet our institutions have nothing to fear from that prosperity unless the principles of Catholicity support the "one-man power" against the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, the foundation-principle of republicanism. Patriotic Catholic citizens claim that there is no conflict. They love their Church and their country, and will labor to preserve peace and harmony. Yet how can harmony be maintained while a large and increasing number of our tax-paying citizens, accepting their Church and its head as infallible, are forced by their spiritual allegiance to send their children to Catholic schools, though at the same time paying taxes to support those "godless" public schools condemned by the infallible Church? To take the ground that these two powers, the Catholic Church and our government, do not conflict, because one is a spiritual and the other a civil power, is simply absurd. We see that they do conflict. The pope interferes with the civil rights of our citizens when—as, for example, in his encyclical letter of December 8, 1874—he commands all Catholics to treat the liberty of speech, of the press, of conscience and of worship, the separation of Church and State and the secular education of youth, as "reprobatas, proscriptas, atque damnatas."

THE EARLIEST PRINTED BOOKS.

A recent lecture of the Rev. Dr. Storrs in New York, before the Society for the Advancement of Science and Art, must have been very interesting to an ordinary audience, but for one composed of professed promoters of learning it could hardly have been sufficiently exact to give general satisfaction if the newspaper reports of it were at all correct. They represent the lecturer as saying that an immense number of books date back to 1450. Now, the first printed book bearing a date is the Psalter of Füst and Schoeffer, 1457. A portion of the Bible was printed by Gutenberg and Füst in 1450, but the work was so expensive and so imperfect that it was abandoned. In 1452, after Schoeffer joined the firm, another Bible is supposed to have been printed, but no copy of it is known to exist. Of course it is well known that many of the earliest printed books are without date, but none could have been printed before 1450; and there is no proof, we believe, that the Bible said to be of 1455 bore that or any date. In that year the firm of Gutenberg, Füst and Schoeffer dissolved. L. Grégoire in his Dictionnaire Encyclopédique, published in Paris in 1817, says that there are only three or four copies of the Füst Bible known to exist. Dr. Storrs, however, says, without giving his authority, that there are fifteen.

The sole idea of the early printers was to imitate exactly the manuscript characters of the scribes. The initial letters of the Bibles and the numbers of the chapters were therefore added with a pen in blue and red ink alternately; and there is not the slightest doubt that these first books were palmed off upon an unsuspecting public as manuscripts. All the servants or employés of Füst and Schoeffer were put under solemn oath to divulge nothing of the secret concerning printing. It is to the policy which the first printers exerted to conceal their art that we owe the tradition of the Devil and Dr. Faustus. Füst having printed off quite a number of Bibles, and had the large initial letters added by hand, he took them to Paris and sold them for about fifty dollars apiece. The scribes demanded about ten times that sum, and they earned the money, for it must have been an herculean task to copy, as they did, every letter of the Bible with such exquisite care, and then draw and illuminate the heads of the chapters and the initial letters. It was a marvel how this new man could produce these ponderous books at so low a rate. And then the uniformity of the letters and the pages increased the wonder, until the cry of "sorcerer" was raised: complaints before the magistrates were made against him, his lodgings were searched and a great number of copies were found and confiscated. The populace in their ignorance and superstition declared that he was in league with the devil, and that the red ink with which the books were embellished was his blood. It is a satisfaction to know that the Parliament of Paris passed an act to discharge the sorcerer from all prosecution in consideration of the usefulness of his art.

M. H.

FLOWERS VS. FLIES.

An Irish clergyman is said to have discovered last autumn a charming antidote to flies, which it is only a pity he could not have lighted on rather earlier in the season. Having occasion to change his abode, he sent on his window-plants, calceolarias and geraniums, to that which he intended to occupy several days before he went himself, and immediately found that he was pestered with flies, whereas previously he had enjoyed perfect immunity from the nuisance. A more agreeable remedy cannot be conceived. Next autumn let our windows be a blaze of brilliancy, so that all visitors to the Centennial may say, at all events, "There are no flies in Philadelphia."