of distributing goods to the people; to examine their influence on the vast congregation of buyers and sellers; and finally to inquire into the time and cause of their final decay as commercial agencies, would be a field of inquiry not only interesting, but of great importance. So far, only local fairs have been spoken of. It is true that in all highly civilized communities, the fairs that are now held exist for a different purpose than the fairs of olden times. The rapid growth of a large number of towns; the increase of stores for the sale of the commodities of life, and the marvelous improvement in the systems of intercommunication, with all their intricate ramifications, have almost made fairs obsolete as a commercial factor. But if they no longer continue to be places where goods are bought and sold, they have become the places where goods which are to be bought and sold may be advertised. As "industrial exhibitions" or "agricultural fairs," they still have a powerful hold on the commercial activity of the world. This is daily exemplified in many ways. But it is curious to observe how, in some cases, the old spirit of the fair of former times is still preserved in the fair of to-day. Especially is this true of the agricultural fairs, where the same old fort of the people is still kept up. Horse racing, fire-works, circuses, marvelous feats of strength, military drills, and games at fairs of to-day differ little in their aim from the wheel-barrow races and sack running of other days. It is true that special protection is not now given to the people attending the fairs, nor are the roads guarded against rob bers and thieves as in former times. But the railroads give their encouragement by reducing the price of tickets. But while these local fairs are of great in terest to the student of political and economic institutions, the greater fairs, those national and international exhibitions, are of still greater importance. The ancient local mar ket with its session of two or three days culminates in the World's Fair of the nineteenth century, and the climax marks a progress in the world's history of centuries' duration, and teeming with the histories of shattered crowns, bloody wars, and scattered, forgotten empires. With the slow evolution of the idea of a world-state comes the idea of a world's fair. As year by year the barriers which shut out the people of one nation from the people of another nation are broken down, the commercial jus gentium slowly as serts itself, and Hermes is once more the god of boundaries, of tradesmen, and o idea of providing for the enjoyment and com- ambassadors. B. J. Ramage. A COUNTRY GARDEN. JUST as of yore! Let me not think of that old time- With courtly and old-fashioned grace here leading down In stately minuet The slender mignonette; And thronging groups of poppies, dark-browed, crimson veined, O'er batchelor-buttons bent, in shining green surcoats Dun bird neath wrinkled yew Cease-voice re-iterant! Cease thy ghostlike chiding About my path, glad elfin bells and fox-gloves chime; The touch of unforgotten hands still clings;-And rue; Of their white crumpled lips Red dabbled in summer's wine.-Forth from his leafy lair From meadows spoiled, thy gold.— Yet hush thy drowsy drone, thou gay-striped dusty thief: With fragrance coldly fine, there's thyme; sweet-clover too; With clinging feet, sweet peas Upclambering to the sunflower's disc of gold. In snowy drifts, faint flame-streaked, roses lie; and stoled Where cocks.combs blaze, still blows her pale forget-me-not. Sleek creoles of the year. Oh bearded moth, close shut within the lily sheaves Methinks these should be birds to mount within the blue, Phantom like slipped away Ere April morns were dead--(Ah, olden days were sweet!) Open your sleep-brimmed eyes! Oh dragon-fly a-tilt 'mong bending jasmine sprays, Ada Langworthy Collier. THE LITERATURE OF MR. JUSTICE SHALLOW. PERHAPS there is no character in Shakes- it is impossible to avoid remarking a certain peare with which we feel so intimately familiar (unless it be that of Falstaff) as with that of Robert Shallow, Esquire, gentleman born, Justice of the Peace, and Custos Rotulorum. His importance thinly hiding his weakness, his harmless lies concerning the exploits of his youth, his veneration for Sir John Falstaff—who laughs at him and borrows his money-his fussy hospitality, his family pride, and the "dozen white luces" on his coat of arms, are described with such minute fidelity that we feel he is a portrait rather than a study; and the accessories of his picture are as valuable as the central figure itself. All Shakespeare's creations are ideal; but Mr. Shallow-in that respect very much resembling "my uncle Toby "-is both ideal and representative. He differs from the other characters of Shakespeare, much as Dickens's Pecksniff does from Molière's Tartuffe. The latter is a type of hypocrisy: Mr. Pecksniff is an individual hypocrite, who lived near Salisbury and wore high shirt collars. Whether or not the story of the deerstealing at Charlecote is true, we are convinced that Mr. Justice Shallow was drawn from some country squire of Shakespeare's own time. Now the squire of this period was in some respects a very exceptional person. The revival of learning in some form or other were it only in the form of affectation—had penetrated among all classes. During the reigns of Elizabeth and James the world seemed to have regained the first enthusiasm of school-boyhood. We all know that delightful time of life, when we read without reflection and acquired knowledge without discrimination; when we studied biography from Cornelius Nepos and Robinson Crusoe, and when we learned concurrently from the pages of Euclid and the ghost stories of our old nurse the properties of triangles and apparitions. And in the literature of the Tudors frank unreasoning school-boyishness of feel- But the poet has not left us without a few ints as to Shallow's attainments. We are We are old that in his youth he lay at Clement's nn, and in his riper years, wrote himself armigero" in any bill, warrant, or requiition. It is evident that the worthy squire as by no means an uneducated clown. Of is cousin Slender's literary tastes we have till further information. "I had rather," aid Slender, "than forty shillings I had my ook of songs and sonnets here." "How ow, Simple! you have not the book of ridles about you, have you?" We have no desire to represent Mr. hallow and his kin as widely or deeply arned. No doubt the sowing of the headnds with red wheat, the baiting of the bear ickerson, the running of the fallow greyound on the Cotswold Hills, or a drunken rouse in "honest, civil, godly company," cupied most of the justice's time and oughts. Yet, among the calivers, halberts, ar spears, and dog couples, there might rtainly be found in the parlor window of e Gloucestershire manor-house, more than e dog-eared volume which afforded inuction and merriment to the family circle the long winter evenings, when the snow s deep on the ground, when the roasted ples hissed in the bowl, and "William ok" served up some "pretty little tiny kshaws." Sir Roger de Coverley's whole rary consisted of Baker's Chronicle. t we have shown that Shallow belonged to nore learned age. Much in that spirit which induces cockis to make summer pilgrimages to the asant village of Cobham, that they may st their eyes on the very room in which . Pickwick discovered Mr. Tupman eating past fowl after being jilted by Miss RachWardle, or which brought Charles Lamb declare that he felt an unappeasable deto learn what was the "one good thing" t Sycorax did, we confess to a morbid iosity respecting this Book of Riddles, ɔse absence so disturbed Slender. And flatter ourselves that we have found a k, which, though it can hardly be the book in question, is most certainly its immediate successor. This book is so characteristic of the credulities, the superstitions, the conceited learning, and the pompously false science which amused or bewildered our ancestors in the age of Shakespeare and Lord Bacon, that we propose to give briefly some account of its contents. The title of the book is "A Helpe to Discourse, or a Missellany of Seriousness with Merriment; Consisting of Witty, Philosophical, Grammaticall, and Astronomicall Questions and Answers; as also of Epigrams, Epitaphs, Riddles and Jests; together with the Countryman's Counsellour, next his yeareley Oracle or Prognostication to consult with, contayning divers necessary Rules and Observations of much Use and Consequence being knowne. Now for the sixt time published, and much enlarged, by the former authors, W. B. and E. P." The date of this sixth edition is 1627. As was customary in that age, the Helpe to Discourse, though merely a pocket manual, is adorned with no less than six poetical addresses or prefaces. There is the inevitable address to the reader, the author's appeal in sorrow and bad Latin, “ad non emptores istius Libri"-to those who refused to buy. Poetical friends lend their aid, and contribute some awful poetry or rather doggerel, in which the book is compared to a stately edifice, to a balm-of-Gilead, to a complete synod, to Jonah's gourd, and to a treasure of gold. The funny part of all this laudation is, that the authors are not "sarkastic," as Artemus Ward would say, but they really mean it: so with the passing thought that the most brilliant achievement of the human intellect could hardly have been heralded with a louder flourish of trumpets, and with the further reflection that Mr. Shallow's intellect must have been prostrated at the outset, we proceed to an examination of the contents. The Helpe to Discourse begins its task very properly by examining Mr. Shallow on the subject of divinity. At the same time we are forced to doubt whether the theological knowledge or imagination of the Shallow family is profitably exercised by a method the Latin word COR, the heart. The first two letters represent by their shape the halfmoon and the circle of the sun, and the letter R the growl of an angry dog. A monkish influence is also very clearly to be discerned in mystic explanations of ordinary facts of nature. Mr. Shallow is asked, for example, why the world is round; and the astounding answer given is, to say the least, calculated to open his eyes and enlarge his intellect. The world is round "lest it should fill the heart of man, which is of a triangular shape!" A captious objection, which per haps might occur to a vulgar mind, that this explanation seems to suppose man created first and the world afterwards, is passed with out notice; but taking it all round, the ex planation is worthy of a member of the Board of Education. In the same way Mr. Shallow is instructed that the eye is the organ which was chiefly concerned in the first transgres sion, and "therefore showeth its sorrow by shedding tears, which no other sense can o doth." Such subtleties as these soar beyond our ordinary notions of cause and effect and must be classed with the question so earnestly debated between Hudibras and his Squire Ralph, whether or not a synod is a mystical bear garden. which reminds us chiefly of those amuse- this somewhat obscure saying is supplied by ments called Sunday puzzles and Sunday questions, by which certain Sunday school publications of the present day endeavor to cheat children into a temporary forgetfulness of their dolls and roller skates. And that the questions are profound if not practical, and puzzling if not edifying, may be gathered from the following specimens: What number is most vital amongst men? Why Adam and Methuselah did not live one thousand years? Whether there was any writing before the Flood? And if so, how preserved? Of what wood was the cross made, and whether of divers kinds of wood? What language shall we speak in the world to come? Many of the questions, indeed, are simply riddles. Thus, Mr. Shallow is asked, with some quaintness, "In what place was it that the voice of one creature pierced all the ears in the world?" The answer, of course, is Noah's Ark. Another branch of the divinity to be found in the Helpe to Discourse is exactly described by Elia, in his letter to an old gentleman whose education had been neglected. "You will be taught," says the essayist, with exquisite humor, "to pronounce dogmatically and catechetically who was the richest, who was the strongest, who was the wisest, who was the meekest man that ever lived; to the facilitation of which solution, you will readily conceive, a smattering of biography would in no inconsiderable degree conduce." In the Helpe to Discourse we also meet with a kind of elaborate trifling, now happily gone out of fashion, which has evidently descended from monkish times, and is due to the learned leisure of the cloister. That busy idleness to which we thankfully own our indebtedness when we admire the fantastic gargoyles, the foliage-wreathed capitals, and the laboriously illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages, becomes offensively silly and puerile when it applies itself to the production of theological enigmas. One instance may suffice: Mr. Shallow is gravely instructed that three things are due to the Deity-namely, "the half-moon, the sun, and the anger of the dog." The solution of But perhaps the most noteworthy and amusing part of Mr. Shallow's manual is that in which it treats of natural history and philosophy. Here, not only most of Si Thomas Brown's vulgar errors are set down as undoubted truths, but supported by an a ray of learned names which might daunt the most conceited infidel. Thus, Mr. Shallow would find that there are only four creatures that live without meat, namely, "the chame leon by the air, the mole by the earth, the seaherring by the water, and the salamander by the fire." While we confess that there is something symmetrical in this enumeration of four creat ures living on four elements, we still miss with regret our old friend the bear, who, we used to be taught, lives in the winter by sucking his paws. Again, it is interesting to learn th the flintstone preserves fire within it; that the crystal is congealed by frost; that the hare |