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bummers in the woods, or finds a party of them at a house by the wayside. This party bears all the outward aspect of an authorized and perfectly legitimate foraging party: the capacious waggons are there, with caparisoned mules; blooded horses stand tethered within reach of their apparent owners; the camp-fires burn brightly; a sumptuous meal is ready. But if one of these men be accosted with some such question as this, "To what command do you belong?" the answer comes thus: "Well, we don't answer for anybody in particular 'bout every corps in the army; eh, Bill, ain't that so? "Bill" says, "Reckon! and thinks it a great joke, and then everybody except the interlocutor laughs. "How long have you been away from your regiment? At this question the bummer rises upon his feet, and replies, rather more respectfully: "A week or ten days, cap'n." Have you any authority for foraging? "No, sir." "What use or benefit are you to the service, to say nothing of the criminality of your absence without leave? Now, you belong to a class which has brought discredit upon your comrades. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, all of you." The dozen muscular and daring fellows who heard this little speech seemed to fail to see the point of it. One of them replied:-" See hyar, cap'n; we ain't so bad after all. We keep ahead of the skirmish line allers. We let's 'em know when an enemy's a-comin'; and then we ain't allers away from the regiment. We turn over all we don't want ourselves, and we can lick five times as many Rebs as we are, any day. Ain't that so, boys?" "Lick 'em? d -n 'em, yes.". Why, of course!" were the instant replies of the "boys." "Rather shoot Rebs than hogs, any day!" roared another. It may be readily imagined that high moral precepts are lost upon these men, and that conversation with them upon the general impropriety of their conduct are decidedly useless. They are the Bohemians of the camp, and they act upon this consolatory reflection. A "bummer" may once have been a foot-soldier, but I never saw one who was not mounted on some sort of an animal. Sometimes he bestrides a superb blooded horse, which is the envy of every general in the army; more frequently he rides a broken-down nag that is able to hobble along sufficiently fast for its owner's purposes; but the favourite is the mule. There may be little or no actual poetry in a mule - although I profess an unwillingness to admit any slur upon that much-abused beast-yet it would be difficult to find a more hardy, long-winded, strong-legged, uncomplaining and altogether loveable creature for the use of man than the mule. The "bummer" appreciates his good qualities, and hence the favouritism. Sometimes we see the "bummer" approaching the camp from a piece of woods with a waggon which he has overloaded with good things. The scene is frequently exhilarating. The "bummer," coming in on horseback, holding

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the bridle in his teeth, clasps under one arm a basket of fresh eggs, and under the other a pailful of delicious honey, while a brace of fat sheep, hams, chickens, or geese, lie across the saddle in front and rear, and the carcase of a hog, firmly tied to the mule's tail, is dragged along the road. The "bummer" himself is probably clothed in an irregular sack-coat of linen, with a ridiculously unmilitary hat perched on one side of his head, and, as he approaches, his face beams with smiles of recognition, tempered by a half-suppressed apprehension, lest his bounteous supplies should not be accepted as a peace-offering for his delinquencies. Aside from the freedom from conrol which gives bad men opportunities to commit wanton deeds of violence, these wanderers from the ranks are often of great benefit to the Better flankers cannot be found. Spreading out from the marching column, they are the first to scent danger, and the last to leave the field, unless actually forced back. They understand the art of squad fighting to perfection. Parties of them, without officers, will join together to resist an onset of Rebel cavalry, or to make an attack upon the enemy, and they are almost always the victors in a skirmish.

army.

From the Spectator, 23 Sept.

THE TOY-REVOLUTION IN IRELAND. THERE is, as well as folly, something almost pathetic in the childishness of the treason which the Government of Ireland is now putting down so promptly and efficiently. It is kindness and not severity indeed to seize and punish the mischief-makers, however humble, in Ireland, just as it is kindness and not severity to punish Tommy and Billy pretty smartly for playing at lighting straws in the nursery. But the punishment should be given without any of the sort of indignation and resentment which we feel towards incendiaries. Goethe at eight years of age made a little sacrifice in his bed-room with pastilles and a burning glass in imitation of patriarchal sacrifices, and he was much in need of severe discipline for the freak, but in punishing him it would have been very absurd to assume the judicial air of an offended judge towards a guilty criminal. These Fenians are really children who need bringing to their senses with hard labour and spare diet, but after all there is something pathetic about their wild dream. They are really no worse than Goethe in his childhood, playing at making little private sacrifices to liberty in their own infantine way. Think only of the various grotesqueries which are involved in their con

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kitchen, and pile a lot of wood upon it, and
set it all on fire, "and then the whole
house will be in a blaze, you know, mam-
ma," after which ingenuous confession
Tommy is quite aghast to find the foot-
man despatched to confiscate the lucifers
and gunpowder, Billy put to bed by order,
and himself in the corner for naughty and
mischievous designs. "Our brothers at
home," write the Fenians candidly, are
organized in a manner far superior to any
oppressed people we have read of. The
day of provisional government is establish-
ed- an army of 200,000 men is sworn to
sustain it. Öfficers, American and Irish,
who have served with distiction in your ser-
vice, are silently moving into Ireland, to
assume control of the active operations to be
inaugurated in a few months
much sooner, than any of you can believe.
All they require now is arms, to enable them
to meet the enemy on something like equal-
ity." And then the "brothers at home'
are struck with amazement to find their
little drills interrupted, their revolvers
wanted, and their correspondence seized.
It is all just like infants telling their little
plots aloud, and then wondering at the mar-
vellous knowledge displayed by their parents
in counteracting them.

ception. In the first place, the real disaf- among the children at play as to where they fected of Ireland are thoroughly divided shall borrow the light from which to light amongst themselves about their true pat- their straws, the amazing frankness and rons. The Fenians in America send them candour with which they reveal their misword that the North is their friend, and chievous game to their parents and guardiwill support them against England, because ans, and the surprise they show when after England has been so notoriously Southern being told all about it the latter use that in her sympathies. But then unfortunately knowledge to interfere with their tricks, the North has just been putting down se- and the humerous pathos of the situation is cession, and a secession of precisely the same complete. It is just like Tommy telling his kind as the Irish rebellion would be, a se- mamma that Billy's brother has promised to cession for which there was no excuse, for to lend them some lucifers and a little gunIreland can obtain, whenever she will, a rem-powder, and that then they are going to get edy for any real political grievance through together a great heap of straw in the back her representatives in the British Parliament. It is not likely the North will support on this side of the water what they have so bitterly condemned on that, even out of resentment, and if they would, it is still less possible that they will succed in reaching across the Atlantic to effect in a foreign country, all whose power is concentrated and well in hand, what it has taken them four years and a great national debt to effect against a very inferior enemy to Great Britain, whose resources were small and widely scattered. Then there is another great difficulty. The more sensible among the Irish malcontents, or rather the least destitute of sense, rightly conceive that their true friend should have been the South, and not the North. The boiling Celtic blood has always shown, in its original state, a natural antipathy to the tame industry of the Northern American, and a glow of sympathy with such rude society as that of the South, with its strong social distinctions, its wild authority over man, its oligarchy, and its slavery. Hence it takes a generation to make the Irishman of the North a genuine Northerner; at first he is almost always an ally of slavery and the South. John Mitchel, the most bitter of the Irish rebels, has been the strongest of Southern sympathizers and the best apologist of slavery. The Nation, savagely as it detests England, cannot conceal its abhorrence of the North and its disgust at the dream of Northern help. So here are the Irish dreamers not even united as to where they ought to look for help. France has long been hopeless. The most powerful section of the Americans are not likely to help them, and the most intelligent or least frenzied of the Irish rebels do not choose to have help from them. If Mr. Jefferson Davis had succeeded, then indeed what might not John Mitchel have attempted for Ireland? As it is, where are they to turn for help?

Add to this little petulant difference

sooner,

Of course it would, as the Northern Whig reminds us, be as absurd to confound these Irish political children with the whole people of Ireland, as to confound the rick-burners of Yorkshire with the people of England. And it is equally true, as the same able contemporary remarks, that the Irish peasant, in spite of his treason and his folly, shows much less brutal stupidity than the English agricultural labourer. Yet that is precisely the political misfortune of the Irish peasant, that he is such a lively child, taking in so much to such little practical purpose, and estimating the liabilities around him as if he were living in a fairy tale rather than in a world of constant forces and permanent laws. He has bright, childish perceptions, and sup

soreness of the stripes has faded away. Let us pity the Irish malcontents while we punish them, for it is in the blood, and rather a hopeless affair. They are not perhaps the lower in the general scale of humanity for a little political idiocy. They have many fine gifts, though, as Father Newman said of the Irish beggar-woman, "I do not say, my dear drethren, that she is perfection." Even he had to plead that the

prejudice to the sanctity of the Church," and assuredly a little more balance, and power to measure the strength of their own capacities, would make them much easier to govern than they are likely to be during our time or that of our children.

From the Examiner.

RISE AND FALL OF THE PRICE OF COM-
MODITIES.

poses them to be as good as mature experience. The English agricultural labourer is far stupider and far denser no doubt, but he makes no such mistake as to his own powers. He says to himself, in his black moods, "I'm starving and miserable, and it's a shame; Squire ought to help me, he ought, and he doant; I'll be even with him, and burn down his ricks for him." He really can do thus much; and he does it. He probably expects to be caught and punished," politicial state of Catholic Ireland was no but doesn't care. He knows what is within his power, and knows it is wicked and a mere act of rage, and he does it. He is far more brutal, far wickeder than the Irish peasant who drills and watches for the Fenian fleet. But he is a politician compared to him. He has few false hopes, and no false estimates of his own powers. The Irish rebel, on the other hand, will live in a fool's paradise, will shed far more blood if he can, and shed it more ruthlessly, but he has a vision before his eyes of all sorts of impossible glories, of an Irish republic and perhaps a few kings to brighten its monotony, a division of the land and a landed aristocracy, rich commerce and high duties on the goods of all the rest of the world, large capital and no capitalists, an end to bad harvests, abolition of the excise on spirits, but all the joy of illicit distilleries, perfect liberty and an immense standing army, finally, a brilliant career of conquest with all the blessings of peace. It may be perhaps it is not only a much more imaginative and elastic mind, but a mind higher in the rank of humanity than that of the vindictive English drudge, but assuredly it is a mind far less fitted for political stability. It confuses its half-knowledge, its fancies, its dreams, with realities, and the English boor never does this. A stealthy, dull resolve to burn your neighbour's rick is not a noble qualification for political life; but the race which is thus stupid and limited in its crimes is not in danger of taking fire at the mere mention of a secret society and the sight of a revolver. The Irish traitors have been very properly and decisively put down, but it is unfortunately far easier to crush their toy-revolutions than to crush the wild and imaginative spirit which "makes belief" so very much that toy-revolutions are to succeed. We have a sensation both of sadness and hopelessness in punishing these hair-brained fellows for their dangerous folly. It is like whipping schoolboys for plundering orchards and tying tin kettles to a dog's tail,- a sort of penalty which keeps the practice down a little, but has no tendency to prevent it altogether, rather enhancing the excitement when once the

WE have often shown in this journal that the vast influx of new gold which has taken place during the last seventeen years had produced no depreciation of gold itself nor enhancement in the price of the commodities which it represents. The value of the influx may be approximately estimated at the enormous sum of 350,000,0002 But this is not all, for the relative value of gold and silver is at present the same, namely, from 60d. to 61d. the ounce, that it was before the discoveries of California, Australia, New Zealand, and New Columbia; and it follows, therefore, that new silver equal in value to the new gold must have come into the market of the world, making the total value of the influx of the precious metals within the comparatively short period in question no less than 700,000,000l. This far exceeds the influx of the precious metals which followed the discovery of the New World, but instead of being poured, as it was then, into a very narrow market, it has been poured into a very wide and great one. If a depreciation in the value of the precious metals with an enhancement of the cost of all the commodities they represent was the result of the influx of the sixteenth century, we think it can be easily shown that no such consequence has followed the modern influx.

No rise in price of any commodity has taken place after seventeen years' influx of the new store of precious metals for which good and sufficient grounds cannot be assigned wholly independent of their supposed depreciation. In whatever commodity the

supply has kept pace with the demand, no rise of price has taken place. Reckoning for the ten years from 1854 to 1863, for which we have authentic public documents before us, no rise has taken place in any kind of corn or pulse, in sugar, coffee, cocoa, or tea, in any principal metal, including silver and quicksilver, in culinary salt or alkalies. Within the same period there has been an actual fall of price in some articles, owing to a greater skill in manufacture, increased economy in bringing them to market, or newly-discovered and more abundant sources of supply. Among those we may enumerate glass, brimstone, several foreign dye-woods, indigo, palm oil, rock oil or petroleum, and salt provisions, such as beef, pork, and butter.

very partial degree, since in wealth and populousness they approach ourselves. From these neighbouring countries we import at present about 500,000 head of cattle of all sorts, their value being some 2,500,000 which is about one-third part of the wholesale price we pay for our consumption of the exotic weed called tobacco. Even this much we owe to the discovery of steam navigation, and in this case its coadjutor the railway. "Live cattle," said Adam Smith some ninety years ago, "are perhaps the only commodity of which the transportation is more expensive by sea than by land." The discoveries just alluded to have in some measure nullified the dictum of Adam Smith. The high price of fresh provisions, however inconvenient, is An increase of price has taken place incontestable evidence of populousness and in raw cotton, and necessarily in that of prosperity. In new countries, with sparse all articles of which it is the raw material, populations and abundance of pastoral and in wool, flax, hemp, and jute, because land, the cost of butcher's meat is at the they have been more or less employed as lowest. The contract price of beef for the substitutes for it. The civil war in Ameri- troops in Australia before the gold disca, the main source of the cotton supply, ac- coveries did not exceed 18s. the cwt., percounts for all this, as it does for a rise in the haps about its value in England at the cost of tobacco. A murrain in the silk- Conquest. A hundred years ago the conworm accounts for a great rise in the price tract price of beef, according to the records of raw silk, and a disease in the vine for a of Greenwich Hospital, was about 28s. a rise in the price of wines a mere tempo- cwt., or 10s. more than the Australian price rary rise in both cases, and already greatly quoted. The present price of beef is probabated. One minor article may be here ably not less than 75s. a cwt., or it has admentioned, for although comparatively small vanced in a century's time by near 170 per in quantity and value, it is important. This cent. Our children and our children's is gutta-percha, the inspissated juice of a children must reckon on paying still highforest tree, a native of some of the islands er prices. of the Indian Archipelago, and unknown in any other part of the world. In 1859 our imports amounted only to 18,593 cwts., of the value of 156,1134., the price being 81. 8s. per cwt. Six years later the quantity rose to 21,625 cwt., of the value of 224,961l., the price having risen to 11. When we consider that this article is the main material of all the electric submarine cables of the narrow seas of Europe, and of the cables of the Indian Ocean, while two Atlantic cables have been made of it, measuring between them 4,000 miles long, we cannot wonder that the supply has fallen short of the demand, and the price risen by 25 per

The profits of capital and the wages of labour have both risen with the new influx of the precious metals, and this also is evidence of prosperity, for it is equivalent in its effects to an addition of fertile soil, or, to some extent, to the conversion of an old country into a new one. If, then, gold and silver have suffered no depreciation from the vast increase of them which has taken place since the California mines were opened, it must follow that they have stimulated into existence an amount of additional wealth equal to their own value. The advance which our own external commerce has made from 1854 to 1863 may, we think, be considered a fair indication of the prosThere is one class of commodities in perity which has flowed from the gold diswhich it is, as it were, physically and geo- coveries. In the first of these years our graphically impossible that the supply should joint exports and imports amounted to prove commensurate with the demand. 268,210,145l., while in the last they reached This consists of fresh provisions-beef, the sum of 445,821,4297., being an increase mutton, veal, pork, butter, eggs, &c. Pop- in the brief period of ten years of two-thirds ulation and wealth or increased powers of of their whole amount. In the annals of consumption go on, while countries close at commerce there is nothing comparable to hand alone can supply us, and this only in a this.

cent.

LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-NO. 1117.-28 OCTOBER, 1865.

From the Saturday Review.

in mere faith; but we can scarcely feel for another, or pity intelligently, without imaSOCIAL USES OF IMAGINATION. gination. We think of this faculty as a stimTHERE are times when we are disposed ulant; we connect it with the idea of exto set down all the lesser sins and mistakes citement; but its passive side is fully as imof humanity to simple want of imagination. portant in social life, when it works as a If once we get the notion into our heads, it preventive, a steadier, and often as the only seems to explain so much, to account for so effectual sedative against fussiness and permany blunders, that we scarcely can tell verted useless activity. Certain it is that no where to stop till we have transferred to one can be entirely agreeable without some imagination all that has been said of chari- share of imagination, but it often exists where ty, and proved that no errors are possible it has nothing positive to show for itself-no where that faculty is kept in proper work- particular readiness, sparkle, or play of faning order. From the sin of keeping dinner cy. Its working may be all in the way of waiting to the atrocities of a Roman empe- check, in correcting bad tricks of thought, ror, we find a clue to everything in this one saving its possessor alike from caring for deficiency. Who could dawdle if he realized what is not worth caring for and from carthe pangs of hungry waiters upon his delay? ing for nothing, repressing those vices of and how could the biggest tyrant that ever conversation which spring from prosaic dullived have bullied and oppressed with any ness-such as importunate persistence and comfort if he had once imagined what people talking of self-and keeping him in harsaid of him, or pictured to himself the figure mony with his surroundings, and bright and he cut in the minds of his contemporaries? interesting even in silence and passivity. However, the popular idea of imagination takes so little account of its every-day services that we do not often find persons who take this view. People are not supposed to be possessed of imagination unless they exercise it in some marked and conspicuous manner. It is not commonly perceived of what sterling service a clear imagination is in the household and the family, and how wrong things often go for want of it. In fact, people constantly talk of reason and good sense when this other faculty is the thing really meant- imagination in its ordinary unconscious working. The ingenious arrangement and clever foresight which keep things going and make schemes answer, the grasp of new combinations, realizing all that is involved in apparently immaterial change, the fresh current of small interests, the welcome of new ideas preserving the most monotonous home from stagnation these are rarely recognized for what they are. Still less is the charm of a wide sympathy attributed to its right sources - a power of picture-drawing, and a comprehension of untried situations. Can any sympathy, indeed, go beyond the power of imagining the condition that is to be felt for or pitied? We may relieve positive distress, we may pity

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Most failures in the endeavour to please are due to this one deficiency. People with the best and most amiable intentions miss being pleasant company if they cannot hit their friends' humour, or tell how their own words and manner will affect them. The most awkward kindness has its hour of appreciation; there are joys and sufferings that every good heart can sympathize with; but for the choicer moments of life, for the apprehension of the subtler emotions, imagination is indispensable. Practice, no doubt, will develop minute seeds of sympathy into life, but the incorrigibly prosaic must submit to live amid the outsides of things. It is painful sometimes to see how the best and most unselfish dispositions will fail of their full reward for want of tact, which is nothing else than imagination at close quarters, and put to social and possibly ignoble uses. That power which informs us how fictitious characters will act under every posture of affairs is readily recognized as imagination; but the man of tact possesses the same gift for practical purposes. He may not be able to set the puppets of his own fancy going, but he knows to a nicety what the people about him think and feel. He knows, though perhaps he could give no account of his

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