Power, of Springfield, is one of the most painful on record. Others no doubt suffered equally, but their privations have not been preserved by the pen of the historian.

This incident, preserved by Mr. John Carrol

Illinois. There the country was open, and the wave could exercise its full power. In Indiana and Ohio the country mainly is timbered, then very heavily, forming an excellent protection from such sudden outbursts.

"CHARMING affair that reception of Mrs. Du Barry's," the visitor said. The country cousin didn't think so, but she kept her thoughts to herself, and endeavored to smile in a way that was neither positive nor negative. This was how it seemed to her. In the first place, the young gentlemen of the family, or "the boys," as she mentally termed them, wouldn't go. "No, it was stupid and a bore; you wouldn't catch them there!" so they sent their cards and stayed away. She disliked some of their affected airs, but she did like their gay nonsense; and their staying away meant just so much less pleasure for herself. Then the reason why she could not tell, but so it was her city cousins always seemed to take the occasion of an especial afternoon or evening entertainment to go shopping in the morning They would come in tired out, but just in time to make a hasty toilet for the afternoon reception and start. Arrived at their destination just as the shades of evening were beginning to gather, they would meet a crowd of people coming away, and a smaller crowd arriving. The colored waiter advanced and presented a silver salver for their cards, which, with the "total depravity of inanimate things," refused to be forthcoming, till a hasty and confusing search at last produced them. Then they with difficulty made their way up stairs and divested themselves of their outside wrappings, when of course some necessary addition to the toilet had been left at home, and equally of course the new kid glove split down the centre.

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A little flushed in face and perturbed in mind by these contretemps, they descended again with some difficulty through the crowd of people coming and going. "Any dancing?" the country cousin whispered. "No, my love," was the reply, "unless you wish to use your neighbors' toes as a floor on which to trip the light fantastic." Would they ever reach the bottom of that staircase? It seemed problematical, but they did. Then how to reach and speak to their hostess? 'So near and yet so far" her smile was alternately seen and lost behind a sea of heads. At last there was a slight break, and they rushed frantically forward to seize the opportunity which might in one moment be lost. They have secured her attention and her smile. "Delight-" she murmurs, but whether she was delighted to see them or whether it was a delightful day remains forever an unsolved conundrum, for another influx of visitors has ruthlessly swept them away from their vantage ground. No introductions; and, as ill luck would have it, no familiar face is discoverable at this particular juncture anywhere near; so they stand helplessly and endeavor to preserve a charmed and charming smile, but feel it slipping from their grasp. The smile must be lost, for their hostess with a slightly anxious expression leans forward and asks them if they "wont walk up stairs and have a cup of tea." Tea! What on earth do they want with tea at this unreasonable and unseasonable hour! thinks the country novice. Have they not had a lunch, which would have been her dinner at home? and

are they not going to return to a six o'clock dinner at her cousin's? If she spoke the truth she would say no, she did not want any tea; so they both smile politely, say "thank you," and get out of the range of their hostess's solicitous eyes. Then gradually thread their way up the stairs again to the room at the head of the first flight, where two or three ladies gorgeously arrayed are dispensing the aforesaid tea. There is an oppressed air about the small sprinkling of gentlemen among the crowd of ladies, but they have donned their swallow-tails, and are making a valiant fight to be both useful and ornamental. The country cousin in the corner is so engaged in watching all this that she forgets that no one has handed her "the cup which cheers, but not inebriates," till with a motion of some impatience her companion has succeeded in engaging the attention of a colored waiter, and they are at last served. Then with a rustle and a rush some one comes across the room and greets them most enthusiastically. And lo! it is a feminine acquaintance who passed them

yesterday on the street with the barest recognition. So much for coming across the oasis of a familiar face in the desert of strangers. Then they conclude to take their departure, which suggestion the country cousin greets with a secret sigh of relief. Then they battle their way down the stairs again; again stand on the outskirts of the circle which surrounds their hostess, and at last interrupt one of the few agreeable conversations she has probably had in the whole course of the afternoon, to her well-concealed and the almost evident annoyance of the gentleman to whom she is talking, to make their adieux; murmur "charming" in their turn to match her former "delight;" go and shake hands with her mother or her aunt, who has a very confused idea as to their identity, thread their way out into the street, and another "kettledrum" is a thing of the past. And this is why the country cousin didn't think "that affair of Mrs. Du Barry's so charming."

THIS celebrated Grecian statue, found buried in the soil near the close of the fifteenth century, and set up by Pope Julius II. in the Belvidere of the Vatican, has been universally regarded as the perfection of sculpture. But modern criticism claims, and the claim seems to be well founded, that it is the product of Greek genius in its decline, and is vastly inferior to those of the age of Pericles.

It is now declared that the anatomy is pretentious; that the attitude and expression are foreign to the simplicity of the true Greek style; that the elegant sandals and carefully-adjusted hair suggest the coxcomb; that the polished evenness of the rounded marble, instead of representing an ideal removed from the conditions of humanity, are simply signs of empty mechanical workmanship! Further, the artist who restored the mutilated hand should have furnished it with Jupiter's ægis

instead of with the familiar bow. Again, it is believed to be probable that the statue was an imitation of an earlier one in bronze, even this having been cast as late as 279 B.C. These are the views which now prevail among students of art.

It is evident that great critics, like the rest of us, may see things through the glamor of their heated fancy; and that in the aesthetic world, as much as in the theological, orthodoxy may be something very variable. And yet it does not follow that there is no fixed standard of taste. It is just because there is one, that the Apollo Belvidere has had to come down from the throne where it had reigned supreme for centuries, and do profound homage to the royal masterpieces of the earlier Greek period, to whose lofty ideals, truth. to nature, severe simplicity, and exquisite finish the highest taste of all time bows.

Curiosities of Statistics.-As a fair example of the curiosity of statistics, says Spofford, the Congressional Librarian, "take the army of Xerxes when it crossed the Hellespont to invade Greece. Herodotus gives it as 1,700,000 foot, 100,000 horse, and 517,000 naval forces; total, 2,317,000, and adds that this was swollen by the attendants to 5,200,000; and all this to invade a country which in no age known to history contained over 1,500,000 inhabitants! Another favorite myth of historians is the story of that famous Alexandrian Library of 700,000 volumes, burned by the Caliph Omar, A.D. 640, with a rhetorical dilemma in his mouth. Unfortunately for this highly dramatic tale, no two writers are agreed as to the circumstances, except as to the single fact, that there was a library at Alexandria, and that it ceased to exist in the seventh century. To ask a modern inquirer to believe that 700,000 books were gathered in one body 800 years before the invention of printing, while the largest library in the world, four centuries after the multiplication of books by printing began, contained less than 200,000 volumes, is altogether too great a stretch of credu lity. Even in reporting the size of modern libraries, exaggeration holds sway. The library of George IV., inherited by that graceless ignoramus from a book-collecting father, and presented to the British nation with ostentatious liberality only after he had failed to sell it to Russia, was said in the publications of the time to contain about 120,000 volumes. But an actual enumeration when the books were lodged in the King's Library at the British Museum, where they have ever since remained, showed that there were only 65,250 volumes, being little more than half the reported number. Many libraries, public and private, are equally over-estimated. It is so much easier to guess than to count,

and the stern test of arithmetic is too seldom applied, notwithstanding the fact that 100,000 volumes can easily be counted in a day by two or three persons, and so on in the

same proportion. Here, as in the statistics of population, the same proverb holds good, that the unknown is always the magnificent, and on the surface of the globe we inhabit, the unexplored country is always the most marvelous since the world began."

As Mr. Spofford is a most excellent authority on the subject of statistics, we prefer giving our correspondents, "W. R. N." and " Spectator," his views concerning the matter,

and in his own words.

Passaconaway. In answer to the communication of "Fowler," we would state that Passaconaway, sometimes called Papisseconewa, was the Sachem of the Merrimack tribe and Great Sagamore of Panumkog, or Pennacook, who died about 1663-69 at a very great age. At the time of his death he held control over the tribes of Southern New Hampshire and a portion of Massachusetts, and was at the head of a powerful confederacy when the whites first settled the country. In May, 1629, he conveyed to John Wheelwright and his associates at Squamscot (now Exeter), the tract of land extending from the Piscataqua to the Merrimack westward, and from the line of Massachusetts thirty miles northward. In 1648 he invited the Indian Apostle, Eliot, to take up his abode near his tribe, so that they might be taught Christianity, at the same time avowing his belief

in God. He was sagacious and cunning, and had a great reputation as a pow-wow or sorcerer. At a great dance in 1660, he made his farewell speech to his people, and exhorted them to live in peace with the English, as he had tried his arts as a pow-wow against them in vain.

Our correspondent will no doubt find further information upon this subject by referring to the Farmers' Monthly Visitor of February, 1852, which gives a very complete biographical sketch of the Chief.

The Oldest Piano in America.-In Toledo, Ohio, there is a piano that was sent to the West in 1833, but is supposed to have been brought to America in the last century, having been made by Astor & Co., of Cornhill, London, who began business in 1770, introducing this style of piano in 1779. It has been in the family of Mrs. E. D. Jermain, of Toledo, for seventy five years. Mrs. Jermain's aunts, one of them now eighty-six years of age, took lessons thereon when a young girl. It was bought in Montreal, Canada, of a German music teacher, by Mrs. Jermain's grandfather, Mr. David Page, of Middlebury, Vermont. It was said that Mr. Jonas Chickering made a study of this piano as a model for his first instruments. The instrument is five feet long by two and a half wide, with frame of mahogany, inlaid with satin wood, everything being made of wood except the wires and keys. The only date about it is on the inside, where are the words, "A good instrument in 1808," indicating that at that time it was so old that its good condition was regarded as remarkable.

Hair-Dress in the Last Century.-One of the most

interesting chapters in Racinet's "Le Costume Historique," furnishes some curious details with regard to the headdresses of women in France during the eighteenth century, highly important branch of the fine arts in modern civilizaand illustrates indirectly the progress of that, to the ladies, tion. The chignon, it appears, was scarcely known prior to the middle of that century. Artificial hair was worn by men for more than a hundred years without exciting the jealousy of the angelic fair, until about the year 1730, when the women began to adorn their heads with counterfeit tresses, but so disguised as to be scarcely visible. But in 1750 they adopted the peruke in the full-blown glories of its flowing locks, in order, it is said, to escape the torture of submitting the natural hair for hours to the hands of the professional hair-dresser. These perukes were of all forms and colors, and were purposely sprinkled not only with white powder, but with gray, russet and red. The illustrations of these architectural structures present a signal example of female enterprise. A great variety of specimens, both of womanly and manly beauty, in different styles, are given.

History, we believe, has failed to record what we see stated in papers, that the first settlement in New England was not at Plymouth, but at Phippsburg, Maine. A settlement was made in this town by Sir George Popham and one hundred colonists from England in August, 1607, more than thirteen years before the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth.