could have told thee that one day thou shouldst be sold for a handful of gold, to merchants come from the fogs of the north? They buy and will make profit of their acquisition; they will turn the cannon of Famagousta, where the Italian founders impressed their names, against the Italian ships ploughing that sea. They, from the rocks where the flag of Savoy waved, will seek to sink the ships carrying the flag of Italy. Oh, how sweet it would be to think that this also was a dream! Nevertheless, patience. Upon the shores of the Mediterranean rose Carthage, the emporium of universal commerce, the terror of the world; and a few years later Marius, the great exile, sat meditating among her ruins. LA LIBERTA, Rome. AUSTRIA at Cattare and England at Cyprus, represent facts which for us are of a gravity sufficient to involve the most serious complications - facts with which Italy cannot and ought not to be content. They fatally open the door to consequences which will day by day become more imperious. From The Economist. THE AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS OF CYPRUS. THE following statistics as to the agricultural products of Cyprus are taken from a report furnished to the Imperial Geographical Society of Vienna by an officer of the Austrian army. Although written so far back as 1873, the report will still be found interesting, owing to the great scarcity of information regarding the island. Of wheat, which is one of its chief products, Cyprus raises in a good year about one million five hundred thousand bushels. Of these about one million bushels are consumed in the island, leaving about five hundred thousand bushels for export. The shipments commence in the month of June, and in 1872 the average price of wheat, placed free on board ship, was about 45. 2d. per bushel. Barley is also cultivated to a considerable extent, but the bulk of it is consumed in the island; and in some localities small quantities of maize, oats, and millet are raised. Carobs, or locust-beans, are largely cultivated. The annual harvest of these varies from eight thousand to twelve thousand tons, and the fruit is generally ready for export about the beginning of September. Its price varies from 70s. to 140s. per ton, and about three-fourths of the total export goes to Russia, Egypt taking the bulk of the remainder. Of raisins, Cyprus produces annually about one hundred and fifty tons. They are of medium quality, fetch about 11. per ton, and are mostly shipped to Alexandria, Beyrout, and Constantinople. Wine is still one of the chief products of the island. About one hundred and forty thousand gallons of the common red wine are produced yearly, the retail price being about 10d. a gallon. Somewhere about one-third of this quantity is consumed on the island. Of the better wines, the annual product is about eighteen thousand gallons, and these are nearly all exported. They are bought up by speculators, who store them until matured; the price ultimately realized for Commandine, which is the kind most sought after, varying from 4s. 2d. a gallon when it is two years old, to twenty times that sum when it has been kept for twenty-five years. Brandy also is made from raisins and damaged grapes, and about thirty-four thousand gallons are sent each year to Alexandria. Nearly eight thousand bales of cotton, of the average weight of two hundredweight each, are exported yearly, the home consumption absorbing an additional one thousand bales. Silk used to be an important article of export, but owing to the outbreak of a disease the production has been greatly curtailed. In good years about two hundred and twenty thousand gallons of olive oil, two hundred and fifty to three hundred and fifty tons of madder root, and one hundred tons of nuts are produced. Sumach grows without particular care, and from three hundred to four hundred tons are yearly exported to England and Syria. In 1873 the total value of the exports from Cyprus was 360,000l., and of the imports, 88,000l. In 1875, according to our consular reports, the exports amounted to 384,000l., and the imports to 200,000l. Two-thirds of the total tonnage of ships trading with Cyprus belonged to Austria. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. An extra copy of THE LIVING AGE is sent gratis to any one getting up a club of Five New Subscribers. 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 & GAY. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. FAIR rises the morning with rosy beams The voices of merry children at play : Then is it a dream of the silent night To grasp their hold of life again? O sunlit ocean! and can it be Of the sea-bound home of those sleepers pale. Golden Hours. In the white glory of the summer moon? The cottage, half in shadow, where the scent Of honeysuckle grew so subtly sweet, And how the watch-dog bayed, and suddenly The crickets loudly chirped beneath our feet? Just where the little trembling stream Splashed its white feathers o'er the rocky ledge, He stopped to pull me roses, wild and sweet, And there we lost the quiet evening's peace, In such unkind displeasure thus to part; And as those roses on that summer eve Told what my lips could never, never say, Forth from the silence and the pain of years My heart goes out and claims his heart today. Good Words. C. BROOKE MADAME DU DEFFAND.* -- 579 From The Quarterly Review. of the guests. The 'grands seigneurs philosophes' came to her to learn to depreciate the titles, the degrees, the prejudices in a word, the classes, on which their existence depended. In the houses of Madame Geoffrin, of Baron d'Holbach, of Helvetius, the philosophers were at home; at Madame du Deffand's they found themselves in the presence of those whose minds they led astray whilst preparing their ruin." Add, that all foreigners of distinction eagerly sought admission to her circle, and we see at once why it is still traditionally regarded as the most We recently named Saint-Simon as a striking instance of a celebrity of whom little was popularly known in this country beyond the name. Madame du Duffand is another and still more striking instance. The reading public of England know next to nothing of her besides her connection and correspondence with Horace Walpole, forming a mere (if important) episode in the concluding years of her life. Yet that life is mixed up and associated with one of the most brilliant periods of the social and literary history of France. "Born," says M. de Lescure, "in the reign (en plein règne) of Louis XIV., and, by virtue of a privilege of longevity, which she shares. with Voltaire and the Marshal de Richelieu, dying under Louis XVI. at the moment when the curtain is beginning to rise on the scene of the Revolution, Madame du Deffand is - along with Voltaire for ideas, with Richelieu for manners one of the most complete representatives of the eighteenth century, one of the most perfect moral and literary types, one of the most indispensable and agreeable witnesses to be heard." She lived on terms of intimacy with the most remarkable men and women of her time; and M. Thiers calls especial attention to the fact, that in her salon the men of rank were first brought in contact with the men of letters and lived with them on a perfect footing of equality. "What distinguished the suppers of Madame du Deffand from the dinners of Madame Geoffrin, was the high rank of the majority 1. Lettres de la Marquise du Deffand à Horace Walpole. Auxquelles sont jointes des Lettres de Madame du Deffand à Voltaire, etc. Nouvelle édition, augmentée des Extraits des Lettres d'Horace Walpole, etc., et précédée d'une Notice sur Madame du Deffand. Par M. Thiers. Deux volumes. Paris, 1864. brilliant that ever existed in Paris: which is tantamount to saying, in any European capital. Her correspondence is proportionally rich in famous names: famous in courts, camps, academies, and drawing-rooms, in or for art, science, philosophy, history, wit, beauty, accomplishment, and gallantry. And those were days when people thought it right to maintain such reputation as they might possess for talent or ability by their letters; indeed, to make their letters a help or stepping-stone to celebrity. We have been made only too familiar with the tricks by which Pope first contrived to bring his before the world; and Horace Walpole's most cherished hopes of immortality were obviously built upon the studiously polished and carefully copied epistolary compositions, the manuscripts (mostly autograph) of which may be seen as he left them at Strawberry Hill. His French contemporaries, with independent and recognized claims to distinction, were equally anxious to shine in this incidental and professedly unconscious way. D'Alembert took as much pains with his letters to Madame du Deffand as with his articles for the "Encyclopédie;" and Voltaire lavishes on her sheet after sheet of wit, thought, fine observation, and profanity, worthy of "Zadig" or "Candide." common Bearing in mind probably the Horatian maxim, "Difficile est proprie communia dicere," hardly one of her friends, learned or illustrious, condescends to things or the common mode of expression: coûte que coûte, they must shine; and we are constantly reminded, by the eternal struggle after point, that they are denizens of a country where fame has been | What use have I made of so many years? It is pitiable. What have I acquired? what have I preserved?" She was then eighty. Her birthplace, like that of Homer, is unknown; or, like that of the Iron Duke, doubted and disputed: according to one authority, Auxerre; according to another, the Château of Chamrond, in the parish of Saint-Julien de Cray, now forming part of the Arrondissement de Cha won by an epigram or placed on a firm footing by a bon mot. This adds materially to the piquancy of the collection, and to its value as an illustration of nationality. Madame de Genlis, who has left a vivid sketch of Madame du Deffand's salon, was struck by the light, glancing tone of the conversation, and the rare introduction of grave topics: clearly not for lack of knowledge or ability. "I remem-rolles (Saône-et-Loire). Her father, of an ber," writes Lord Bath (Pulteney), "that old Burgundian family, was Gaspar, Comte one day the conversation fell upon our de Vichy Chamrond, of whom nothing is history of England. How confused and recorded; her mother, Ann Brulard, surprised at the same time was I to see daughter of the principal president of the that the persons composing the company Parliament of Burgundy. She had for knew all that history better than we knew godmother her maternal grandmother, it ourselves!" Marie de Bouthillier de Chavigny, widow of the president Brulard, and wife by a second marriage of César-Auguste, father of Etienne-François, Duc de Choiseul: hence the pleasantry which is constantly recurring in her letters of giving the name of "grand'maman” to the Duchesse de Choiseul, who was young enough to have been her granddaughter. : A similar reflection on the want of grasp or depth will occur to the reader of the correspondence who will look in vain for any glimpses of the historical future, any attempt to read the threatening signs of the political horizon, or any token that the highest and most cultivated section of French society were seriously impressed by the proximity or lurid pretokens of the revolutionary tempest, till it broke upon them. They never looked below the surface whilst the ground was trembling beneath their feet; and we shall find them discussing questions of sentiment, or speculating on the best method of getting rid of ennui, as if graceful frivolity was the best of virtues, to be amused the most imperative of duties, and the grand problem to be solved how to get through the day without a yawn. Left an orphan at an early age (the precise date is wanting), she was brought up at the convent of Madeleine de Traisnel, at Paris. M. de Lescure digresses to give an account of some of the convents of the same class, at which, the abbesses setting the example, the novices were quite as likely to learn the way to make love as the way to heaven. Hence probably the whim of the Duc de Richelieu, who had a por trait gallery of contemporary beauties, each attired in the costume of a religieuse. Certain it is, either that small pains were taken to initiate Marie de Vichy-Chamrond in sound principles of religion and morality, or that they lamentably failed. "One sometimes asks oneself," was her reflection at sixty-three, "if one would wish to return to such or such an age? Ah, I should not wish to become young again on condition of being brought up as I was brought up, to live only with the Marie de Vichy-Chamrond was born in people with whom I have lived, and to have 1697, a year after the death of Madame the sort of mind (esprit) and character de Sévigné. In a letter to Walpole, dated that I have." Whilst still a mere child December 25th, 1777, she writes: "To- she was a matured sceptic, and the spir day is my birthday. I should never have itual directors who essayed to bring her believed that I should see the year 1777. | back to the right path ran no slight risk of Madame du Deffand has been fortunate in her editors and biographers. Between them they have left nothing to be desired or done in the way of information or research; and, in our epitome of the known facts of her life, we need aim at little more than making a discriminating selection from the materials collected by them, especially by M. de Lescure and M. le Marquis de Sainte-Aulaire. |