The part marked 1 is preeminently the Dickens country, from Yarmouth on the north to Dover on the south. Apart from "David Copperfield," "Pickwick," "Great Expectations," etc., it comprises Gad's Hill and Broadstairs, for long the novelist's two favorite places of residence. Rochester (the Cloisterham, Dullborough, Mudfog, etc., of the novels) may be called its literary capital. (Several of the novels, mostly cast in London or other towns, run into No. 1, as, besides those named, "A Tale of Two Cities," "Bleak House," etc.)

No. 2. For parts of "Oliver Twist," "Old Curiosity Shop," ," "Barnaby Rudge," etc.

No. 3. Mainly for "Nicholas Nickleby" in its two sections, and also in its upper part for "Master Humphrey's Clock."

No. 4. The country of "Martin Chuzzlewit" away from London.

No. 5. The country of "Dombey and Son."

IN

DICKENS AND LANDSEER.

N the February number of the Magazine of Art there is an interesting article on "Charles Dickens as a Lover of Art and Artists," written by his youngest daughter, Mrs. Kate Perugini. The following recollections of Landseer are quoted from this article:

"For Edwin Landseer, my father had a peculiarly enthusiastic admiration, placing him with Maclise in the high estimation he held of their many-sided genius; and I have often heard him say that of all the men he had known during his literary career, those two must inevitably have risen to the highest point of excellence in whatever profession or position in life they may have found themselves.

"In Edwin Landseer he had not only a warm friend, but one for whom his own regard increased as they both grew older and Landseer had a little put aside the slight affectation of manner which his position of a renowned painter, a great wit, and a spoiled pet of society had tempted him to indulge in. There is a story my father used to tell touching upon this, and upon the excessive nervousness and the sensitive nature of the artist, which I think I may relate. LANDSEER'S NERVOUSNESS.

"It happened that on one occasion when Landseer was engaged to dine at my father's house all the company had assembled in the drawing-room with the exception of the painter. My father, who had invited him earlier than his other guests, knowing that he would probably arrive the last of all, grew impatient, but drawing out his watch, determined to wait for him another quarter of an hour. After that time had elapsed, no Landseer appearing, he decided upon going downstairs with his friends, and dinner was well-nigh half over before Landseer walked in. My father received him rather coldly, thinking that his affectation was becoming intol erable and deserved a slight punishment; but my aunt, who sat near to where Landseer was placed, noticed that he was very pale, and that his hands and face were twitching nervously. He became more composed as the dinner proceeded, and after it was over, took my father aside and told him that he had left his studio early enough to reach Devonshire Terrace in good time for dinner, and was anxious to be in time, as he knew my father's punctual habits, but that, as his foot almost touched the doorstep of the house, one of those terrible fits of nervousness and shyness to which he was subject came upon him, and he was obliged to walk up and down the street for a long time before he could sum. mon up courage to ring at the bell. I can imagine

how the severity of my father's manner softened

STUDIES IN BIRD-SONG.

ately he must have assured his friend of his warm sympathy. "

WAS AMERICA THE CRADLE OF ASIA?

AN interesting article in the March Harper's,

by Dr. Stewart Culin, "America the Cradle of Asia," shows the falsity of our usual conception of America as "the new world," and gives some almost startling evidence to support the belief that Asiatic civilization was cradled on this side of the Pacific. We find upon the western continent things not only similar to those of Asia, but precisely identical with them; things not only the same in form and use, but in source and development as well, and at the same time so empirical and complex that no theory of their having been produced independently under like conditions, of their being the products of a similar yet independent creative impulse, seems longer tenable.

"If we reject the theory of Asiatic origin, there are two explanations open to us: First, that at one period of man's history he had certain ideas in common on both continents; that his customs were fundamentally the same and knew no geographical boundaries. Second, that these identical customs originated in America, and were disseminated thence over the world; that the American culture, no longer to be regarded as sterile and unproductive, must be given its due place among the influences which have contributed to the origin and development of our own civilization."

Dr. Culin supports the latter view notwithstanding that it presupposes an antiquity for American civilization as great, if not greater, than the earliest known or suspected Babylonian or Egyptian eras.

Among the curious evidences cited to support this theory are the divining-rods described in the oldest known Chinese book, the Yi King, dating from the twelfth century B.C. "Now, the splints used in Asia find their counterpart in America in the gambling-sticks used by many tribes. Thus, in Hupa Valley, California, we find the same bundle of fine rods, manipulated in the same way by rolling in the hands, divided at random into two bundles and counted off as in Asia. Even the number of the sticks remains practically the same." The common use of the arrow as a symbol for man, the similarity of the Mexican game of patolli to the Hindu game of pochesi, and other such marvelous coincidences are described by Dr. Culin to support his theory that America contributed her share to the world's civilization.

solid articles of the London Quarterly Review when Mr. Robert McLeod favors us with an essay on the development of bird-song. He reviews two works on the subject by Mr. Charles A. Witchell, who defines bird-song as the whole range of voice in birds. He suggests that the first vocal sounds were cries of terror or anger. To the danger-signal and combat cry is added the call-note. These three strands have been woven into the song of most of our birds.

66

MIMICRY IN BIRDS.

Imitation is represented as one of the principal sources of musical composition among birds: The warblers have, as we might expect, much in common in their voices; and the sedge warbler, a mighty singer, is a gifted mimic. There

is practically no limit to the variety of sounds it can reproduce. We have listened to its extraordinary song, a medley of many strains, when twilight was deepening into darkness, and have been entranced. It is impossible to describe it,-rapid, of many tones, of manifold lights and shades, of varied cadences, reproducing with absolute fidelity the songs of neighbor birds, in some cases apparently arranged in a preconcerted order. Buntings imitate pipits; greenfinches and yellow-hammers have similar voices; and we know that in winter they seek their food in the same places, and hear each other's calls. So imitative is the jay in a wild state that it has been known to introduce into its song not only the shrill whew of the kite, the scream of the buzzard, and the hooting of the owl, but the bleating of the lamb and the neighing of the horse. A sparrow, we are told, educated under a linnet, hearing by accident a goldfinch sing, developed a song that was a mixture of the songs of these two birds; while another, brought up in a cage of canaries, sang like a canary, only better; a third, reared in a cage close to a skylark, imitated with surprising success the skylark's song, but interrupted the strain with its own call-notes.

Animal cries, too, have been imitated. The roar of the ostrich and of the lion, it is said, are so similar that even Hottentots are sometimes unable to discriminate between them."

THE NIGHTINGALE'S REPERTORY.

Mr. Witchell is undoubtedly a bold man. He has not feared to attempt a description of the witchery of the nightingale's song. The prosewriter has rushed in where even poets feared to tread; and we are grateful to the reviewer for reproducing the passage which follows:

The fullness of tone which the nightingale

displays interferes with the accuracy of imitation in many instances; and, indeed, so wonderful is the song that the listener is apt to forget all else than the supreme impulse and passion of the singer. Perhaps the surroundings of the bird increase the effect. The murmur of the stream; the soft moonlight which bathes the dewy meadow and sheds white waves across the woodland tract, checkered with shadows of clustering fresh May leaves,-these are suitable features in the realm of this monarch of song, and increase the effect. Now it prolongs its repetitions till the wood rings. Now its note seems as soft as a kiss; now it is a loud shout, perchance a threat (rrrrrr); now a soft peeuu, peeuu, swelling in an amazing crescendo. Now it imitates the sip sip sip sisisisisi of the woodwarbler, now the bubbling notes of the nuthatch. The scientific investigator is abashed by this tempestuous song, this wild melody, the triumph-song of Nature herself, piercing beyond the ear, right to the heart. It is pleading now! But no, it is declamatory; now weird, now fierce; triumphant, half merry. One seems to hear it chuckle, mock, and defy almost in the same breath."

WHY BIRDS SING.

The reviewer thinks that the influence of love on the evolution of bird-song has been much exaggerated. In the case of migrants, the male bird sings rapturously before the arrival of the female, but "as a matter of fact, it is not till courtship is over, the nest built, and domestic cares begun that the bird utters its full heart. . . . The perfect melody is not that of one who woos, but of one who has won. . . . Song, which in its highest display belongs to the spring of the year, is uttered in the main by the adult male. It is probably a manifestation of vigor and exuberant vitality. It is the overflow of the new life and contagious gladness which the springtide, with its abundance of food and its bright sunshine, bring to the healthy bird."

LIFE IN A CONSUMPTION SANATORIUM.

ACCORDING to the French specialists in

tuberculosis, fresh air and food will do much, but they will do more for the consumptive patient if the cure is carried out in a high

calls that of Oberammergau, is situated in the French Jura, and the sanatorium is about a mile from the village. It is a very large building, of which the most important section is called the cure gallery, consisting of a sort of huge roofed-in balcony of course entirely open to the air, and where the patients spend the whole day reclining on deck chairs. A rather melancholy feature of the sanatorium-to Anglo-Saxon notions is that the sexes are never allowed to meet; each sex has its own dining-room, drawing-room, even its own gardens.

Of course, the fact that the sanatorium is a philanthropic institution makes it far easier to carry out the rules, and in some ways makes the experiment a more interesting one. No cases in the very first or in the very last stages of the disease are accepted for treatment.

A SANATORIUM HOTEL.

The writer went on from Hauteville to another sanatorium, managed on very different lines. There he soon discovered that the patients were mostly of the wealthier classes, and in many cases the guest under treatment was accompanied by several relations, while, of course, there was no bar put to ordinary intercourse between the sexes. Indeed, he says that it would be diffi cult to tell such a sanatorium from an ordinary hotel, were it not for the cure gallery, and for the fact that in many of the rooms the windows have been bodily taken out.

DAVOSPLATZ.

From this place he went on to Davosplatz, of all the high-altitude cures in some ways the most interesting, though, of course, it is only comparatively lately that the open-air cure, as now understood, has been practised there. It is clear from this paper that the French municipal authorities are tackling the whole problem of consumption and its cure in a business-like spirit. Ere long, every great industrial center in France will have its state-managed sanatorium, where the poorest will have the best and most skillful of care.

THE REFORM OF THE JAPANESE SYSTEM OF WRITING.

Ta time when European institutions of

AT

de Paris a vivid and most interesting account of life in a French sanatorium, or open-air

cure.

The sanatorium described is that of Hauteville en Bugey, and is entirely devoted to the needs of the consumptive workers of Lyons. The tiny village, of which the description re

guage and literature into their curricula, Columbia University being the first one in this country to offer courses in Chinese, this winter, the Japanese, who more than 1,200 years ago adopted the Chinese system of writing, are delib erating the means of discarding that system as

too cumbersome and adopting a phonetic system similar to the Latin alphabet. The system of Chinese hieroglyphics and its disadvantages for a progressive people like the Japanese, anxious to assimilate Western culture, is discussed in a fascinating article by Ludwig Riess, an exprofessor of the university of Tokyo, in the Preussische Jahrbücher for December. This complicated system of eastern Asia, that is still the principal subject of instruction in progressive Japan and backward Korea, that puzzles the Dutch soldier and the German planter on Java and Sumatra, and that in our ethnographic museums is the means of bringing to light the inexhaustible intellectual treasures of ages long past, the writer designates as one of the greatest marvels of human ingenuity.

CHINESE IDEOGRAMS.

Some analogies to the Chinese ideograms may be found among Western peoples; for instance, numerals, mathematical signs, chemical formulæ, signals, escutcheons, emblems, flags at halfmast, the Red Cross, etc., are signs that are universally recognizable. Ideograms, directly expressing ideas without the medium of words, form the basis of the system of the thousands of signs by means of which the eastern Asiatic peoples express their thoughts to the eye, whereas for the Western peoples the sound that reaches the ear is the chief medium for transmitting thought, for even in reading we unconsciously translate the letters into sounds. The Chinese

sees in his ideogram a concrete conventional image of the idea presented to him. Thoughts are transmitted to him by his system of writing as clearly and intelligibly as thoughts are transmitted to the architect by his plan, to the geologist by his map, to the physician by the curves of temperature of his patient, to the meteorologist by his weather chart. As the image called up before the eye is originally independent of the sounds that convey the same thoughts to the ear, discrepancies may arise between the written and the spoken words that are entirely impossible in a phonetic system. Faithful stenographic reports of speeches seem strange to the reading public of Japan. The Japanese is not impressed by the solemn proclamations of the Emperor when he listens to them, but when he sees them in good print. The work of the great Japanese poet does not delight the ear by its harmonies of sound, but the eye by its brilliant display on paper. On the stage, the exaggerated situations and the pantomime of the players serve to supply the limitations of the language.

Centuries ago, the Japanese adopted the Chi

nese system of writing, together with Chinese culture, their intellectual life becoming SinoJapanese, as the culture of ancient Italy was Græco-Roman. And through the continued study of Chinese literature, more than thirty thousand ideograms became fixed in the memory of the educated classes. When the Japanese decided to accept European culture, about half a century ago, and introduced in an amazingly short time the appliances of modern civilization, they were confronted with the question that the writer still regards as the most important one for Japan's future: Shall the system of writing adopted from the Chinese be retained, in view of this new condition of things? or can and will a convenient means of written communication similar to the European alphabet crown the work of Europeanizing Japan, that has been so auspiciously begun ?

DISADVANTAGES OF THE CHINESE SYSTEM.

Although attempts have been made to introduce a phonetic system that in theory has been brought nearly to perfection, the writer holds that at the present stage of the intellectual development of Japan it is impossible to discard at once the Chinese system, as it is too intimately connected with the life and literature of the people, countless ideograms being fixed in the memory of most men and half of the women, and 2,350 of these signs alone being used in the daily papers. Still, its disadvantages are patent in any attempts to acquire a more universal culture. As the writer says: "Seven years of schooling and a one-sided development of the memory are the price that every Japanese must pay for acquiring his national culture. Although he receives in addition an unusual training of the eye and develops great skill in drawing that is of advantage to all the arts and crafts, the Japanese pupil is far behind Western children as regards intellectual activity and practical knowledge. In common sense, independent thinking, ethical ideals, and imagination, the Japanese student cannot compare with the German graduate." These differences, the writer thinks, are due not so much to racial peculiarities as to the schooling the Japanese receives. Up to the age of thirteen or fourteen, the Japanese child cannot read anything outside of his class lesson, and is therefore shut off from all those sources of information that a Western child finds in his outside, miscellaneous reading.

PROPOSED REFORMS.

It is proposed, in the first place, to make a selection of the 1,300 most indispensable ideograms, which every child must learn. Next

comes the old Japanese system, the double syllabary with 49 characters each, that are used for particles and inflections. And in the third place, the Japanese child, already overburdened with reading exercises, must learn the Latin letters of our Western alphabet. As regards the sequence of teaching these three systems, the writer holds that the child should begin with the last-named, the European phonetic system, as it is the simplest and most quickly learned, and has moreover the advantage of training the ear as well as the eye, thus enabling the child to learn to read more quickly by himself. Aithough this question of the sequence may seem petty, the writer thinks that it involves much of the efficacy of the impending reform in the intellectual development of the Japanese people.

THE SACRED CITY OF LHASSA REVEALED.

VARIOUS attempts have been made to pene

trate to the city of the Grand Lama, in Tibet. It seems to be the general belief that the feat has always proved impossible; but this is far from being the case, and it is generally to be seen that those adventuring either with large trains or from the Chinese frontier are the ones doomed to failure. There is now living quietly in India a man who has been in Lhassa and knows about all that is to be known of it. His report to the Indian Government, obtainable long since in Russia, has been rescued from obscurity by the Royal Geographical Society, and will soon be published. Mr. Archibald Colquhoun writes an interesting account of Lhassa and Tibet in the January Cornhill.

WHAT IS LHASSA LIKE?

Mr. Colquhoun says:

"It is not difficult, by means of the descriptions of Huc and our traveler, to conjure up a picture of the sacred city; and considering that architecture in Tibet is usually of the most unornamental character, a bird's-eye view must be more impressive than might be expected. Dominating everything is the rugged mass of Potala, the palace of the Dalai Lama, itself some nine stories high in the center, probably about three hundred feet high, and surmounting a conical hill. Flags and strings of colored rags wave and flutter in the breeze from every window, and the gilt domes and roofs glitter in the sunshine. Round Potala are towers, chapels, and pavilions, gleaming with gold and silver, and below lies the town, from which an avenue of giant trees leads to the palace. The center of the city is the great temple, or cathedral, from which all the streets radiate. Here are also the

government offices. The houses are mostly of clay and sun-dried bricks, while those of the richer class are built of brick or stone, hewn into square blocks, and neatly fitted. They are all given a coat of whitewash, which with the redpainted woodwork of the doors and windows imparts a fictitious air of cleanliness. Windows are sometimes glazed, but more often prepared in Chinese fashion, and the buildings rise from two to four stories, some having towers and gilded roofs. Within, the most striking characteristic is the dirt. Very few have any chimney or hole for smoke, which is expected to find its way out of door or window. Nevertheless, the ceilings are frequently silk, the walls hung with satin or brocade, and the floors glossy; but the effect is that of gaudy squalor. For furniture, Tibetans have stuffed rags or flat cushions to sit on, with miniature tables on which food is set. Tea is drunk all day long, a favorite form being 'buttered tea,' a concoction of tea-leaves stewed and mixed with rancid butter and barley flour. Mutton and yak beef are eaten in great quantities, but our traveler speaks of the tsamba,' or barley gruel, as the national food.'"

THE DALAI LAMA.

The life of the little Incarnate Buddhas, who occupy the central position in Lhassa and of the Buddhist faith, seems to be a very unpleasant one, if we may judge by the writer's account of what Manning and the Abbé Huc saw on their visits :

"The hall at the top of the palace in which the poor little fellow sat was full of solemn lamas motionless and silent as the grave, each with his eyes fixed steadily on the tip of his own nose. In the midst of this grave assemblage sat the sacred head of the Buddhist religion, a bright, fair-complexioned boy with rosy cheeks, large and penetrating eyes, and an Aryan type of countenance. His frame was thin with fastings and prayers, and one cannot help feeling heartsick at the thought of the poor child, a mere puppet in reality though invested with so much sanctity, cut off by no fault of his own from all the joys of youth, and probably destined to die a violent death in his early manhood, since the powers that be prefer a young and helpless Dalai Lama. No wonder that Manning, when he visited the Dalai Lama of his time, could think of nothing but the beautiful face of the doomed child, and that he felt his eyes full of tears."

HOW THE DALAI LAMA IS CHOSEN.

Mr. Colquhoun gives an interesting account of how the choice of this chief priest is arrived at: "At present, the choice of this chief priest of