It was anciently called "holy herb," because, says | connected with the poppy plant. Theocritus tells us Dioscorides, it was considered "good in expiations that the silken petals of the poppy prove talismans for making amulets." It was also much used for for Cupid, thus:decorating altars. Another of its popular names is Juno's tears. In some places it is still called pigeon's grass. Its reputation in Ben Jonson's time was sufficient for him to write, "Bring your garlands, and with reverence place The vervain on the altar." "By a prophetic poppy-leaf I found Your changed affection, for it gave no sound, The opium poppy was cultivated by the ancients in the time of Dioscorides, and Homer mentions it as being valuable for assuaging the agonies of wounded Dryden, too, from the following lines, would seem to heroes. In the East, poppy seeds are frequently indicate that it was formerly used for food: "Some scattering pot-herbs here and there he found, And, bruised with vervain, were his daily fare." It is said to be an antidote against melancholy, and the accompanying Italian recipe "against melancholy" is amusing:-"In order that the melancholy man may be gay, take some leaves of vervain, and boil them in good white wine, and let him drink of this wine; or some of this plant may be put into his soup, and he will be always gay. Moreover, take some juniper berries, put them on hot embers, and inhale the smoke through the nose and mouth, and it will always make thee feel merry.' "The Germans, we are informed, even at the present day, present a hat of vervain to the newly-married bride. Aubrey, in his "Miscellanies," informs us that this plant was supposed to prevent the evil influence of witchcraft: "Vervain and dill, Hinder witches from their will." A flower that brightens up the cornfield with its bright blue blossom is the corn bluebottle, or as it is called in Scotland, blawort, or blue bonnet. It has been termed also "hurt sickle," because, says Cul"with its hard wiry stem it turneth the edge peper, of the sickle that reapeth the corn." It receives its Latin name, Centaurea, because, according to an old legend, the centaur Chiron cured himself of a wound received in the foot from Hercules. Another flower that gracefully adorns the cornfields is the red poppy, called sometimes the corn-rose. It has many nicknames, which vary in different counties. Some of its most popular names are headache, red-weed, corn-poppy, and canker-rose. The term headache is applied to it because its bright red colour is supposed to have injurious effects on the head. It has also been nicknamed "Joan's Silverpin," because, says Parkinson, alluding to its showy flower and staining juice, "it is fair without and foul within." According to Forby, the term "Joan's Silverpin " means, among "the East Anglians, a single article of finery produced occasionally and ostentatiously among dirt and sluttery." The ancients considered no cornfield good which had not a sprinkling of red poppies, and at a harvest thanksgiving the ears of corn and the seeds of the poppy were among the offerings presented to Ceres. It has generally been regarded as a symbol of death, and has hence been called "the sister of sleep." Spenser, describing the garden of Proserpina, says:— "There mournful cypress grew in greatest store, Shakespeare mentions it once in his "Othello" (Act sprinkled on sweetmeats and cakes. Kitto supposes that the cracknels spoken of in the First Book of Kings, sent by Jeroboam as a present to the prophet Ahijah, were a kind of cake sprinkled over in this manner with poppy seeds. The corn-cockle is often found in the cornfields along with the poppies. It is not a popular plant with the farmers, being said to do mischief to the wheat, because its seed gets mixed with the corn. It from the earliest times seems to have had a bad character. Job says, "Let thistles grow instead of wheat, and cockle instead of barley."* Shakespeare makes "Coriolanus" (Act I, Sc. 1) say— "We nourish 'gainst our senate The cockle of rebellion." The idea here, of course, is that the cockle grows up with and chokes the corn. The same notion occurs nourished against themselves the naughty seed and in North's Plutarch :- “Moreover, he said that they cockle of insolency and sedition, which had been sowed and scattered abroad among the people." Spenser speaks in the same strain :— "And thus of all my harvest-hope I have Nought reaped but a weedie crop of care, Which when I thought have thresht in swelling sheave, Cockle for corn, and chaff for barley bare." Northamptonshire it is known as the corn-pink, and in some places is called the corn-campion. In * Some think the poppy is here alluded to. SWISS HIGHLANDS AND DUTCH LOWLANDS. BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE REGULAR SWISS ROUND." I. I HAD so often passed by Holland, on my way to the Alps, that this last year, instead of rushing through France by express train, I determined to stop at Rotterdam and thence spend a week in the flattest before proceeding to the highest parts of Europe. And we were meteorologically so unfortunate in our Swiss tour-it rained so prodigiously in the valleys, and the clouds were so thick on the hills-that I came back with a disposition to see the worst in a country which I had often visited with pleasure. The loss of spirits caused by wet defiles, misty mountains, sloppy roads, slippery paths, damp tourists, disappointed climbers, and grumbling natives appeared to make me perceive the depressing influence which peaks, passes, and glaciers Laus have upon those who are continually surrounded by them, and have had to endure not merely occasional bad summers, but inevitable bitter winters, tique OUT of mind. Thus I found myself comparing Holland with Switzerland, and thinking the inhabitants of the former country better placed than those of the latter. Before I venture on any expansion of this sentiment, which must seem grossly heretical to some who associate a visit to Switzerland with the most agreeable impressions they have received on the Continent of Europe, let me jot down a few of my Dutch ones. The country did not strike me as particularly clean. There are some show-villages always being scrubbed, and I certainly saw a woman wash the paws of a little dog before he was allowed to set foot on the deck of his master's barge after jumping ashore on the quay; but the prevailing idea of the whole place is muddy; and when mud is dry it means dust-and dirty dust too. Certainly there is plenty of water, and you have not to dig far to find an abundant supply of it. You fancy you have only to thrust the point of your stick or umbrella into the ground in order to create a little fountain. A man walking across the country with a wooden leg might, methinks, be tracked by a line of jets. Water over your head on the other side of the dams, ditches brimful of water instead of hedges, canals everywhere, water under your feet ready, it would seem, to squirt up on the least provocation. But the water itself does not look clean or smell clean. How can it, when every ditch, river, and canal has a bottom of several feet of soft black mud, which, especially in the neighbourhood of towns, is always being stirred up by the long poles of the bargemen? Holland is wholly made of mud. Part of this is dry enough to walk on, and grow grass which is munched by countless herds of piebald cattle all over the face of the country. We will now pass from these general impressions to some other aspects of life which present themselves to the passer-by. The trade of Holland is not what it once was, but, barring the Hague, the towns seemed to be busy. The first thing which struck us in looking out from the hotel in which we stopped at Rotterdam was the manifest business which still survived in the place. Close under our window was a canal-there is always a canal under your window in Dutch cities-with a bridge crossing it which was incessantly opening in the middle and tilting up its two halves to let some masted vessel through. Though this was done very quickly, the interrupted traffic of foot and wheel accumulated so rapidly on either side of the bridge, that on settling down again into its place it was immediately black with a crossing mob. There appeared, too, to be no idlers among the highshouldered, broad-backed crowd; all had something to do, and were doing it. The next thing that struck me was the closeness of Dutch merchants to their business. The docks and the west end seemed to meet on the quays, the lower part of handsome, substantial houses being devoted to offices, while the families of not merely well-to-do but wealthy people lived above them. The merchant having commerce with the Indies can look upon his great ships from his drawing-room window, and have the men who empty and reload them literally under his eye. And whether it comes from this residential nearness of classes, or from a radically better state of morals among the shore-working population here than is found in London I cannot say-though I suspect it is from the former cause-but certainly I failed to see that degrading entourage which marks the docks of our metropolis, and where even the office, much more the dwelling-house of the merchant, is far removed from the spot where his ships lie, and which directly represents the source of his wealth. I must say that, during a twenty-four hours' stay in Rotterdam, though I wandered about the quays and neighbouring streets, great and small, I did not see a drunken man nor any woman who, by her carriage at least, appeared to be otherwise than an honest one. Dutchmen are not teetotalers, and there was many a "Bier Haus" (or beerhouse) to be seen, but these latter had mostly an air of comparative refinement about them, which showed a marked contrast to the glaring gin-shops in the neighbourhood of the London Docks. There was no bleareyed fringe of sots and idlers about the door nor noise of riot from within. Surely the immediate propinquity of rich and poor dwellings, and the constant presence in the crowded streets of the members of the families of the upper commercial class, must have the effect of keeping a place at least outwardly decent. It is the wide separation of the East from the West of London, and the habit among those most engaged in commerce of living far away from their place of business, which creates much of what is called the squalor of many parts of our great city. And when once a place has anywise the character of being degraded, the few socially superior families who remain are the more tempted to flit. Then the master of the household, who runs in by train or omnibus, puts up with scenes of unseemliness which do not interrupt the transaction of business, knowing that he has à refined or quiet home, to which he returns from the rough surroundings of his work, of which his wife and children know nothing. Meanwhile the families of the decent poor are left to witness, by day and night, the grosser phases of life in such a neighbourhood as immediately surrounds, say the London Docks, with its fringe of sailors on leave, and are likely enough to have their perception of indecency more and more blunted as families of education and leisure are withdrawn from their midst. The sight of the handsome dwellings of the wealthy merchants of Rotterdam, whose upper windows looked upon the masts and yards of big ships, and whose households necessarily mingled with the busy crowd upon the quays, forced upon me a keen realisation of one of the most socially mischievous results which follow from the wide separation of great classes of the community in our metropolis. The enormous size of London is fatal to its social communion. Its carcass is too big to have any esprit de corps. It is not a structure, but a heap of bricks. Here, in the Dutch cities, their old civic and commercial life was not spoiled by their material extension, and thus wholesome signs of social coherence survive. What I saw in Rotterdam to this effect, struck me also in the other chief cities of Holland. But busy though they still seem to be to a passerby, one could not help feeling a sense of decadence in thinking of the almost inconceivable throes through which the inhabitants of this "low land, nether land, hollow land, or Holland" have passed, not merely in securing any dry place at all to stand on, but in taking a mighty position among the nations as the promoters of commerce, civil liberty, and religious freedom. Thoughtful Dutchmen must often be depressed at the suspicion that they live more in the past than in the present. The moss of history has begun to gather thick upon their walls and institu | tutions. We read with so much admiration of what Holland has done, that we perhaps expect to see more striking signs of life than we have any right to expect as we traverse its dead flats and look upon its silent canals. The precise resemblance between many of the ships two hundred years old which still sail on the canvas of pictures in its museums, and divers of those which are now being built in and launched from its dockyards, appears to suggest the presence of that repose which must needs follow long strains and sharp spasms of national energy. If any people have earned a deep sleep it is the Dutch. Still, as I have said, it was evident that much business was yet in hand, though this I thought showed itself more at Rotterdam than elsewhere. Anyhow, slow growth generally involves long life. Let us believe that this remains to Holland. I was curious to observe what relics of protest against popery may be found in such equipment and use of churches as are patent to a passer-by, and thus bent my steps to the "Groote Kerk," or Great Church of Rotterdam, with much interest. This was consecrated in 1477, or, speaking roughly, some one hundred years before the yearnings for Dutch liberty, civil and religious, came to a head. It is "adapted" from Roman Catholic to Protestant use after an internal fashion which seems to rejoice in defying its original usage. The building itself is Gothic and spacious, though architecturally not to be compared with the best cathedrals of Belgium. Now the body of the church is filled with ugly pews, all looking towards a central pulpit, and surrounded by a high painted and grained hoarding, obviously intended to keep the draught from the unused part of the place out of the necks of the sitters. The building is not open for private devotion. Just inside the main door where on the Continent one expects to see a receptacle for holy water, sat a man at a table, smoking a pipe. He demanded twopence as we essayed to enter farther into the church. The choir or chancel was divided off by a double iron railing, within which the space once occupied by the high altar was aesthetically bare. A small wooden table was set in a corner, apparently for use at the administration of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. We all know the intensity of the earnestness and bitterness of the pains with which this part of the Low Countries repudiated Romanism, but the importunate internal ugliness of the Groote Kerk of Rotterdam seemed needlessly staring. At the same time a curious recognition of the past might be seen within its walls. There was high scaffolding in, the choir, whereon masons were at work in the restoration of some of the capitals of the stone columns. It was not substantial but decorative repair that was going on, and yet there appeared no indication whatever, not the slightest conceivable, of any revival of what is called Catholic usage or sentiment in the belongings or treatment of the church. A party of the masons' children, who seemed to have brought in their fathers' dinners, were having a noisy game of romps about the old church screen, in a fashion which showed that they knew nothing whatever of any cassocked sacristan. The only visible attendant was the man who sat smoking his pipe inside the door. The church was glaringly whitewashed. An enormous organ spread itself over nearly the whole breadth of the west end of the nave, but the ear alone seemed to be regarded. No colour in window or on wall offered any accompaniment to this huge promise of sound. The pulpit was the This focus of the place, the centre of respect. A canopy over it was fitted with a gas sun-burner giving straight down upon the preacher, so that, hindered by no upright standards, the congregation might have a full view of himself as they heard his sermon. was the spot of brilliance in the building. How significant of sentiment is the internal structure and fitting of a church! When this one was built the chief light was the lamp burning before the pyx, over the high altar. Now, in the course of religious revolution, the star has mounted over where the preacher is set. I wondered what the faint phase of that "renovation" meant which was evidenced by the workmen touching up the stone carvings of the chancel. Well, anyhow the industry and decency of the streets seemed to indicate that some wholesome moral influences were at work in Rotterdam. Having left the church, and presently standing back from the rain in an archway, I had a long talk with a native about the social state of the place, and especially the administration of charity. Though we saw no beggars, there are, of course, poor in the town, and my acquaintance, who told me that he was on an administrative charitable committee, said that the first test of applicants for relief was the attendance of their children at school. He spoke English very fluently, though with a curious misuse of words. He informed me that a fair, then being held, had been banished to some fields outside the town because the tramps who attended it had once brought "yellow" fever into the place. He meant "scarlet." And, on my remarking that the heels and toes of the horses' shoes were so much turned up as to give the animals the appearance of walking on pattens, he said that this was to hinder them from "sinking through" the stones. He meant "slipping on" them; but the use of the wrong word by one who spoke English without the slightest hesitation, and seemed to know even the formula of "committee" language, might give a qualm of self-reproach or suspicion to some who air their fragmentary ungendered French and German with confidence, and without producing even a smile in the faces of those whom they address. One agreeable characteristic of Dutch towns is the abundance of trees by the side of the canals, but seldom with seats beneath them. Though we associate much "sitting down" with Dutchmen, I suppose they are too busy to do it out of doors. We went to the Hague, Leyden, Haarlem, and Amsterdam by rail, stopping as we pleased. The train seems to have killed the track boats in Holland as it has the coaches in our own country. I wanted to have travelled part of the way at least by one of these passenger barges, but was told that they had generally been "taken off" the canals. One still runs, however, for the short distance between the Hague and Scheveningen, its watering-place, and we went by it. As a survivor of a race it enabled us to appreciate the exceeding quietness of this mode of travelling, which seems chiefly to arise from the great distance of the horse from the track boat he tows. Thus the boat seems to have no obvious and immediate mode of progression. You slip along without sail or steam. There is no pulse of the oar, no patter of the paddle, no wriggle of the screw. The horse in front seems too far off to belong to you. You slide silently between mud banks, past patient anglers, whose floats curtsey with deceptive dip as the wash of your track boat reaches them. The passengers sit in a low cabin, or on its roof, on forms | fashionable Dutch we saw here many peasant women which seem to have come out of the smallest of infant-school rooms. I was wondering why they should be so very low when we reached a bridge, which barely allowed them passage beneath it, and would have scraped any sitters clean off, or spread them on the roof of the cabin like jam. Scheveningen-it is spelt in divers ways, like the Hague, which is called indifferently, "La Haye," "S'Gravenhage," and "Den Haag,"-is the sandiest place in the world. Built seaward of the gritty Dunes, with sand behind and sand before, it is the fashionable watering-place of Holland. Its modern houses and hotels-the old village lies somewhat inland, despising sea views are very square and ugly, but seem to drive a good trade. The company sit on the beach, concealed in huge wicker chairs, like those of hall-porters, which admirably fence off sun and wind, till the rising tide drives them out, and the proprietors move the fringe higher up. Thus they seem to spend their time in playing at so many Canutes till the next meal is due. Beside the and children, whose Batavian proportions it would be impossible for the artist to caricature. I am sure that some of the children measured more across than any other way. Of course this was partly owing to stiff, bulgy garments, but their wearers had no more waists than the ends of so many barges. After dawdling about for some weeks or so, visiting the picture galleries by day, and being almost devoured by mosquitos at night, we rushed by express train to Switzerland. But even at high speed it takes long to leave the flats of Holland. Their continuous flatness leaves a very distinct impression on the mind of universal wet immediately beneath the feet, even at the driest times. The making of a well seems as if it might be the work of a minute, like the digging up of a potato. Amsterdam, as every one knows, is built on piles. There are 300 bridges in the town, and several feet of mud everywhere beneath its stagnant waters. There is no "fall" in Holland. The rapid Rhine sneaks into the sea by sluggish canals. THE BEGUM'S FORTUNE. BY JULES VERNE. " CHAPTER X.-AN ARTICLE FROM UNSERE CENTURIE," A GERMAN REVIEW. A MONTH before the period at which the events we have just related occurred, a review, in a salmon-coloured wrapper, entitled "Our Century," published the following article on the subject of Frankville, an article which was particularly relished by the fastidious people of the German Empire, perhaps because it only studied that city from a purely material point of view: which every thicket and clump of trees in the Old and New World are put in with such exactitude, even this noble monument to geographical science, designed for the use of sharpshooters, does not bear the least trace of Frankville. "We have already given our readers an account of the extraordinary phenomenon which has been produced on the western coast of the United States. The great American republic, owing to the large proportion of emigrants included in its population, has for long accustomed the world to a succession of surprises; but the last, and certainly the most singular, is that of a city named Frankville. Though the very idea of it did not exist five years ago, it is now flourishing, and in the highest degree of prosperity. "This marvellous city has risen as if by enchantment on the balmy shores of the Pacific. We will not inquire whether it is true, as we are assured that the first plan and idea of this enterprise belongs to a Frenchman, Dr. Sarrasin. The thing is possible, as this doctor may boast a distant relationship with our illustrious King of Steel. We may also say, in passing, it is rumoured that a considerable inheritance, which should properly have come to Herr Schultz, has had something to do with the founding of Frankville. Wherever any good springs up in the world, we may be certain it is from German seed; this is a truth we are proud of stating whenever an opportunity offers. But, however that may be, we now wish to give our readers some precise and authentic details on the spontaneous vegetation of a model city. 66 It is useless to look for its name on the map. Even the great atlas in three hundred and seventyeight folio volumes, by our eminent Tuchtigmann, in "The place where the new city now stands was five years ago a complete desert. The exact spot lies 43° 11' 3" north latitude, and 124° 41′ 17′′ west longitude. “It will be seen that this is on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, and at the foot of the secondary chain of the Rocky Mountains, called the Cascade Mountains, sixty miles to the north of White Cape, Oregon State, North America. "The most advantageous site has been carefully sought and chosen from among a number of others. The prominent reasons for its adoption are the temperate climate of the northern hemisphere, which has always been at the head of terrestrial civilisation; its position, in the middle of a federative republic, and in a still new State, which has allowed it to secure its independence and rights similar to those possessed by the principality of Monaco in Europe, on the condition that after a certain number of years it would enter the Union. Its situation on the ocean, which is becoming more and more the great highway of the globe; the varied, fertile, and salubrious nature of the soil; the proximity of a chain of mountains, sheltering it from the north, south, and east winds, leaving to the fresh Pacific breeze the care of renovating the atmosphere of the city; the possession of a little river, whose fresh, sweet, clear water, oxygenated by repeated falls, and by the rapidity of its course, arrives perfectly pure at the sea; lastly, a natural port, formed by a long curved promontory, which may easily be enlarged by moles. "A few secondary advantages may be mentioned, such as the proximity of fine marble and stone quarries, bearings of kaolin, and even traces of auriferous |