and flickering in the herbage. They twitter tiny fluty phrases over and over again to themselves, the way that sleepy children say their prayers at night.

The redwings, with snatches of their sweet unfamiliar melody, come hurrying to rest, and the trooping fieldfares with their raucous call-note. The

robins, chinking little pebbly sounds, dive into holly-bushes and hawthorns, the tits drop into holes in tree or bank, the yellowhammers consort with the linnets, the finches' dormitory appears to be on the lower fir-boughs. The pigeons are very light sleepers, and, once they have settled to rest, after immense preliminary fussing, it annoys them dreadfully for any one to pass through their wood. Your carefullest footstep will break their dreams, and they all flap out, and huddle in and out of the branches, in the most irrational discomposure. The thrush mutters a few low trills before it nestles down into silence; the jays vociferate final discords. And now, through the rain-veiled twilight, there comes a sudden whirl of plumage. Two huge flocks of starlings are wheeling overhead. It is the most singular spectacle imaginable, this contre-danse of birds, "with woven paces and with waving arms," or rather pinions. Measured, ordered, symmetrical, the aery The Spectator.

dance goes on. The two companies circle round and round; they meet in mid-air, looping in and out, passing and repassing, describing intricate evolutions with the most practised and infallible art. It is almost incredible while you watch it, this last after-supper dance, this merry game before the party breaks up. In vain the eye endeavors to follow the mazy movements threaded by the players; however often recapitulated, they are ingenious beyond belief. Suddenly, with a harsh whooping scream, the flocks separate as at some recognized signal. In a sweeping torrent of wings, with a noise of pouring cascades, they swoop to the birch and fir tops, there to fight and scold for eligible positions till drowsiness shall reluctantly overtake them. When the last starling has ceased to fidget, and the last wood-pigeon has temporarily assured himself that nobody is on the prowl, the stillness that accrues is like a blanket flung over a cage. Black and palpable darkness wraps the slumberers, and the rain runs on above their hidden heads. With no tent-pegs to hammer, no fires to light, no clothes to dry, no blankets to spread-as having nothing, and yet possessing all things-the vagabond families of the air have camped for the night.

the author of several books in the fields of biography and fiction, but Lady Durand also has contributed to literature a volume of travel and, it is reported, is now engaged upon a novel.

Mrs. George Madden Martin, to whom the world is indebted for that charming creation "Emmy Lou," is now essaying fiction of quite a different order. She has completed a novel, the action of which takes place on the border line some years after the civil war, and the characters in which illustrate both Northern and Southern types.

A series of books which, if properly edited, ought to be both interesting and worth while, is promised by the London house of Kegan Paul & Co., under the general title of "Dryden House Memoirs." It will reproduce in convenient and inexpensive form many volumes of memoirs of bye-gone days. Among the first issues will be the "Memoirs of the Reign of George II."

Lafcadio Hearn, who has a volume of Japanese goblin tales and fairy stories, "Kwaidan," on the list of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. for early publication, has long seemed more Japanese than American in his temper of mind, and it will surprise no one to learn that he has been for some years a Japanese subject. He is credited with a good many eccentricities, one of which is a studious, avoidance of English and American travellers.

Sir Clements R. Markham is writing a comprehensive history of the Polar regions for publication next fall, and he is also preparing a monograph on the Spanish navigator Quiros, the discoverer of the New Hebrides in 1606. This will be published by the Hakluyt Society. The same busy writer is also editing letters from admirals and captains received by his great-uncle Admiral John Markham, who was a Lord

of the Admiralty under Lord St. Vincent during the Addington administration, 1801-4, and First Sea Lord during Lord Grenville's administration, 1806-7.

The manuscript of the first book of "Paradise Lost," the offering of which at public auction in London has been the occasion of so much discussion, consists of seventeen pages in the handwriting of an ordinary scrivener. Such a blunder as that of "sealy" for "scaly" in Line 206 indicates that the writer had no literary intelligence, as does the further fact that he wrote the first four pages with small letters at the beginning of the lines and had to transform them into capitals afterward. The copy is the identical one which was licensed for the press and It bears still the imprimatur of the chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, to whom all poetry had to go to be licensed. The manuscript bears unmistakable signs of the poet's connection with it. There are a great many corrections, an examination of which shows them to be due to the poet himself. Some are corrections of spelling, some are made to elucidate the scansion, and some are corrections of the text. In Line 156, "Whereto with speedy words the Fiend replied"-"the Fiend" is corrected to "th' Archfiend," where there can be no question of the scrivener. Still less, if possible, can any one but Milton himself be responsible for the changes, to which Mr. Churton Collins called attention, in the passage which now reads

As in an organ from one blast of wind To many a row of pipes the soundboard breathes.

Here the manuscript first reads, "To many a hundred pipes," and then "hundred" is corrected to "hunderd," according to the famous Erratum in the first edition to Line 760-"For 'hundred' read 'hunderd,'" and then "many a hunderd" is struck through and "many a row of" substituted.

Notoriously bad as have been municipal conditions in New York City under Tammany Hall rule, they have been and are now being surpassed in another American city to whose affairs comparatively little attention has been given throughout the United States and in Europe.

Whatever New York's exact rank as a plundered city has been accountedand by reason of its commanding position it has not lacked an unenviable pre-eminence-however universal a byword its low political tone has made it at various times, it at least revealed its self-redeeming powers at the election of 1901. Strongly entrenched as were the Tammany forces which gorged upon New York City's huge resources and its budget and other expenditures of over one hundred and twenty-five million dollars a year, public sentiment, irresistibly aroused, proved a more telling factor than they. Despite Tammany Hall's efficient, almost military organization, its command of an army of not less than fortysix thousand city employés, and its invidious uses of a campaign fund of many millions of dollars, the elements of decency triumphed. The same and

later elections disclosed a different but, sad to say, not altogether unexpected result in Philadelphia, only ninety miles away. There the worst administration-considering all aspects-that any city of democratic institutions ever knew, worse in many respects than even the sway of the unforgettable Tweed, who, with his accomplices, stole over one hundred million dollars from New York City in 1868-71, have obtained additional leases of power under circumstances so revolting as to bring shame to every conscientious believer in republican institutions.

Philadelphia-the "City of Brotherly Love"-founded by William Penn in a spirit of philanthropy, the birthplace of the Declaration of Independence, the memorable spot where was drafted and adopted the Constitution of the United States, now holds beyond possibility of dispute the ignoble palm of being the most corrupt city in the world. All other American cities have made distinct progress towards something approaching higher civic ideals.

It was

only because of a fatuously divided opposition that five years ago Tammany Hall was restored to mastery. Though between 1898 and 1901 this organiza

tion reduced political brigandage to an elaborate system more cunningly scientific than ever before, discarding the clumsy methods of remoter years, and though its blackmail extortions alone have averaged upwards of twenty million dollars a year, it no longer has been able to avail itself of old-time facilities for the rolling up of enormous fraudulent pluralities. Stricter laws and vigilance have tended to minimize that evil, and popular temper, constantly alert, has been abundantly able to check many schemes of plunder coming to public notice. Chicago, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and some other "boss" ridden cities of a few years ago, have risen from the muck of political theft, until now, still far removed as they are from that fairly idealistic state which can come only from the slow maturing, elevating processes of gradually developing finer moral standards, they have ceased to present their former scenes of outright spoliation. Until 1902, St. Louis, it was thought, deserved to be listed among fairly well governed American cities. This belief has been shattered by recent proceedings in the St. Louis criminal courts. So clearly was it shown that the Municipal Assembly for years had regularly trafficked in public franchises for venal ends, that a number of its members together with rich "promoters" have been convicted of bribery and sentenced to prison, while other persons inculpated are under indictment awaiting trial. The details of this mass of corruption are disgusting enough; yet the very fact that summary and condign punishment has been inflicted upon those SO far proven guilty shows that the people of St. Louis are quick to resent rascality, and at once precludes the placing of that city on the low plane of Philadelphia, where notoriously corrupt dignitaries rule and thrive unmolested. In the Old World Naples and Constantinople have

been noted for rampant administrative corruption. Naples, for many years, was the prey of a political organization which skilfully imitated Tammany methods and plans. Controlling all the city officials from mayor down, it not only profited by extravagance in contracts, but blackmailed in every possible way, going even' so far as to examine monthly the books of merchants in order to determine the amount of tribute to be levied. It terrorized the population, and actually succeeded in subsidizing certain local newspapers to prevent disclosures. The Government intervening, it was found necessary to remove the mayor and nearly the entire police force, and to substitute men of probity. Laying aside doctrinal differences, Socialists, Monarchists, and Clericals united at the elections a year ago and swept the corrupt band out of power. Naples, therefore, takes its place, for the time at least, among the regenerated. As for Constantinople, it can well be dismissed from present consideration. It obviously makes no pretensions to rule by popular suffrage; and as Georges Dorys tells in his work The Private Life of the Sultan, its authorities have tacit permission from their capricious master to rob right and left so long as they serve him satisfactorily.

Alone of all the great, at least the largely populated, cities of the world enjoying the benefits of electoral laws, Philadelphia has been retrograding year by year, reaching in 1902 such a depth of incorrigible iniquity as seems scarcely possible. With all the national traits of effusive declamation of patriotism, the jaunty fatalistic optimism with which American judgment is so heavily streaked, American cities have been so misgoverned within the last few decades, so yoked to the tyranny of party "machines," so held under the despotic rule of vulgar political "bosses," that the cynical observer is