Soothe thy soul awhile in Holland, land re- | Where the spires of many churches stretch claimed from tide and flood, for miles and miles away, Where the cattle and the people chew an everlasting cud. Set aside thy hat of topness, and thy coat of shining twill, "Chuck" thy ledgers and thy day-books, cut thy ear-supported quill. Come and see the tulips blooming as they Never mind those wretched T-cloths, and those shirtings you call grey, At the prices you are getting you are giving them away. And ever up from Liverpool, by telegraph or mail, Comes the banshee of the spinner in a cottonwoolly wail. "Cotton hardens! Cotton hardens!" and as cotton must be had, Brokers jog along, but spinners gallop wildly | to the bad. "Cotton hardens! Cotton hardens!" madness lies in the refrain; For the hardening of cotton tends to softening of the brain. Leave the cotton of the future; cease to play upon the "spot; ' For work without a profit is unmitigated rot. Don't postpone your little outing till the August heat and cram; Come along with me to Harwich and across to Rotterdam. With a minimum of luggage, and a maximum of "go," Board the packet like a pirate, dive immediately below: And behold the land beneath us stretching miles on miles away. Tip the steward, say, two shillings, hint a possible two more; And we twain shall hold the cabin which is really meant for four. Then as dawn is softly shutting out the night with silver bars, We will go on deck and find that we are steaming up the Maas. Find the land, unlike all other lands, reclaimed from tide and flood, Where the cattle and the people chew an everlasting cud. Where the sails of countless windmills rolling round and round and round, Give a soft susurrant echo of a swishing, swirling sound. On the grass-grown streets and causeways of the cities of the dead. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. LOST ATLANTIS. LOST Atlantis sleeping lies Far away 'mid sunny skies, And the sea is ever blue; Naught is old, and naught is new; In the ages past. But we, In the days when life was May. All the friends of days gone by - Her eyes are like the blue speedwell, her hair has sunlight in it, Her voice is like the sighing of the south wind 'mid the flowers; And I love her very dearly; then, blackbird, stop a minute, And tell me where she's wandering through the long sunshiny hours. Tell me, is she in the woodlands where the violets are dreaming? Did she take the meadow pathway that leads to the river-side? For the noonday sun to-morrow shall behold our good ship steaming Far away, and I would ask her if she'll one day be my bride. Chambers' Journal. MAGDALEN ROCK. From The National Review. THE NEW EMPEROR AND HIS NEW On the 31st December, 1888, about six months after his accession to the throne, William II. of Germany addressed his chancellor, Prince Bismarck, a telegram as follows: Dear Prince, - The year which has brought us such severe afflictions and irreparable losses is drawing to a close. The thought that you still stand faithful at my side, and enter the New Year in vigorous strength, fills me with joy and comfort. From the bottom of my heart I desire for you happiness, blessings, and, above all, lasting health, and pray Heaven that I may long be permitted to work with you for the welfare and greatness of our Fatherland. Within fifteen months of the date of this complimentary message the young emperor had (on March 22, 1890) telegraphed to a friend in Weimar : I Many thanks for your friendly letter. have indeed gone through bitter experiences, and have passed many painful hours. My heart is as sorrowful as if I had again lost my grandfather! But it is so appointed to me by God; and it has to be borne, even though I should fall under the burden. The post of officer of the watch on the ship of State has fallen to my lot. Her course remains the same: so now full steam ahead! else, in a firm and lusty voice. The fall of Prince Bismarck was and is still felt by all to be one of the wonders of the cen tury; and assuredly no more unexpected event ever happened, though the French, it is true, will have it that nothing is so certain as the unexpected. Cloyed as it is with the taste of manifold sensations, the palate of the European public was tickled, as it had never been before, by the revelation that even a Bismarck was not at all deemed indispensable to the continued welfare of his country, and that a young and inexperienced ruler like the emperor William had been capable of so supreme an act of courage as to dispense - and rather brusquely too with the services of a man who had been the making of his nation. 'If our young emperor," said people in Berlin, "has the daring to do a thing like this, what will he not yet have the audacity to do?" Of a truth his courage and capacity are great; and if his life is long enough, and opportunity offers, some successor of his, using the words uttered by Frederick the Great over the ashes of the great elector, may also point to his tomb, and exclaim, "Messieurs, Der hat viel gethan." It is not the object of the present article to discuss the causes which led the new emperor to part with the old chancellor. Those causes, which were set forth with The recipient of this note was variously more or less fulness and accuracy at the supposed, at the time, to be either the time, may be reduced to one succinct emperor's relative, the grand duke of explanation — incompatibility of age and Weimar, or Admiral Bartsch; but the temper. "How was it possible," renaval imagery employed in the telegram marked a German diplomatist when dis(for his Majesty can be all things to all cussing the subject with me, "for a clearmen) seems to settle the point in favor of sighted and self-willed young emperor of the admiral, who, by the way, was at one thirty to continue running in the same time expected to succeed to Prince Bis- leash (so to speak) with an autocratic chanmarck. Well, then, within fifteen short cellor of over seventy?" An agreeable months of his addressing a fervent hope person, says one of Lord Beaconsfield's for continued co-operation between him- characters, is a person who agrees with self and his political Palinurus, who had you; and Bismarck, in the eyes of his guided the ship of State through so many new master, had ceased to fulfil this defistorms and perils, the emperor had sud- nition of the term. The differences which denly "dropped his pilot" (nor was any soon sprang up between them were partly one, as I happen to know, more impressed personal and partly political; and for by Punch's cartoon on the subject than once in his life Bismarck found, to his his Majesty himself), and taken his own great astonishment, that the world constand on the bridge, shouting out his tained a man with a will stronger than his orders to the man at the wheel, and to all own. Of the old emperor, Bismarck once said to the late Lord Ampthill, "Mein | curiously enough escaped the notice of alter Herr ist stets ueberredet venn nicht German writers; and Bismarck, too, acueberzeugt gewesen; " "I have always cording to his own avowal (for who does not been able to talk over if not convince my remember the veiled reproaches against old master;" and, indeed, numerous cases a certain statesman colleague with which might be quoted, the war of 1866 included, he began his lamentations and recriminato show that William I. often based his tions at Friedrichsruh ?), found his native decisions, in relation to his chancellor, on Butlers, his Devereux, his Leslies, and the reversed order of conviction and con- his Gordons. He suffered the inevitable sent. But his grandson, who had the ad- penalty of all who have ever risen to tranvantage of inheriting his English mother's scendent heights of influence and power. strength of will with his mother's mental In the course of his table-talk, during the force and perspicacity, soon displayed a French war, the ex-chancellor once retendency to rebel against the submission marked that, though the Prussian people of his judgment to any authority save huzza'd and beclapped their great Fredthat of his own instincts and intelligence; erick when alive, they secretly rubbed their and in doing so, as is thought by many hands in glee when finally the old tyrant well-qualified heads in Berlin, he rendered had breathed his last. And the same -though at no slight risk. -a very con- remark applies, to some extent, to Bissiderable service to the monarchical prin- marck's own official death, which certainly ciple in Prussia and Germany, for which excited surprise throughout Germany, and his successors will give him credit. sentimental sorrow, but comparatively little real regret and no great apprehension for the future. As a financial journal well expressed it at the time, "even the aspenleaves of the Bourse never so much as quivered at the news of the mighty chancellor's fall." His countrymen adored him, vowing to be eternally grateful for the great things he had done, and were intensely proud of him as part of their national greatness; but, to speak the honest truth, they were beginning to groan under the weight of his personal authority and will, which overshadowed every walk of their public life; and this was more especially the case with his colleagues and immediate subordinates, with whom the iron chancellor enjoyed as little official popularity as was inspired by Wellington in the hearts of the troops whom he so often led to victorious battle. Every one felt that Bismarck's life-work was done, and that there would now be no great danger- nay, that there would be a positive advantage-in his leaving the further pursuit and development of his task to younger and fresher hands. In the oftquoted words of Schiller: There can be little doubt that, in the course of his long and magnificent career, Prince Bismarck had insensibly come to establish a kind of personal imperium in imperio within the limits of the Prussian crown. No one had fought more desperately than he to save the rights of this crown from the curtailing scissors of a constitution, as no one had been a more jealous defender of these rights after they had at last been limited and reduced to charter-form by the revolutionary movement of '48. Yet, if the truth must be told, this very same Bismarck had gradually, and perhaps even unconsciously, ended by absorbing into his own person the exercise of some of those rights which appertained exclusively to his sovereign. He would doubtless be the first to protest against this view; but if he can fully account for his dismissal from office on any other general theory, there are thousands of his most candid and intelligent countrymen who would be grateful for the explanation. With the accession of the young emperor authority within the empire had become divided and contested, as it had also come to be under Ferdinand and Wallenstein. The analogy is not perfect; but there is a clear similarity of a certain kind between the two cases, though it has Der Mohr hat seine Schuldigkeit gethan, But it is a thousand times more easy to wean one's self from the love of drink |