The New York Herald Newspaper, December 8, 1872, Page 8

NEW YORK HERALD BROADWAY AND ANN STREET. JAMES GORDON BENNETT, PROPRIETOR. THE DAILY HERALD, published every day in the year, Four cents per copy. Annual! subscription price $12. No, 343 ‘olume XXXVII., BOOTH'S THEATRE, Twenty-third street, corner Sixth avenue.—Lapr or Lyons, OLYMPIC THEATRE, Broadway. between Houston and Bleecker sts.—La Brute Heuenk. BOWERY THEATRE, Bowery.—Tux Dovare Bavpep Roou—Tar Goup Brut. WOOD'S MUSEUM, Broadway, corner Thirtieth st— On Hann, Afternoon and Evening. ACADEMY OF MUSIC, Fourteenth street.—ITauian Orgta—MIGNon. GRAND OPERA HOUSE, Twenty-third st. and Eighth sy.—Rounp tax CLoce. ed NIBLO’S GARDEN, Broadw: Houston streets.—Lro axp Lor between Prince and UNION SQUARE THEATRE, Broadway, between Thir- teenth and Fourteenth streets.—AGNes. FIFTH AVENU® THEATRE, Twenty-fourth street.— Tux SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL, WALLACK'S THEATRE, Broadway ana Thirteenth street.—Our American Cousin THEATRE COMIOU 514 Breadway.—Arrica: or, Livinaston® anv STANLEY. STADT THEATRE, Nos. 45 and 47 Bowery.—Oreaa— 01 mua, 8 BROOKLYN THEATRE.— MRS. F. RB. CONWA Argan Na Pour, BROOKLYN ACAD) rattan Orera—Ho0 MUSIO, Montague st— NoTS. STEINWAY “Dante O'CONNRLL.” COOPER INSTITUT 3x New Yorx.” BRYA OPERA HOUSE, Twenty-third st., corner pe av.—NeGro Minstrensy, HALL, Fourteenth street.—Lecturr, xcturs, “How Women Live CEN TRICITY, dc, ATHENEUM, No. 585 Broadway.—SrueNpip Vaniety oF Novettns. CANTERBURY VARIETY THEATRE, Broadway, be- tween Bleecker and Hoi Vaninty ENTERTAINMENT. TONY PASTOR'S OPERA HOUSE, No. 201 Bowery.— Graxp Variety ENTeRtarNMent, &c. SAN FRANCISCO MINSTRELS, corner 28th st. and Broadway.—EtH1or1an MinstRELsy, &C, BARNUM'S MUSEUM, MENAG ‘Fourteenth street, near Broadway. NEW YORK MUSEUM OF ANATOMY, 618 Broadway.— Science axp Art. ——— New Yerk, Sunday, Dec. 8, 1872. THE NEWS OF YESTERDAY. RIE AND CIRCUS, Day and Evening RUPLE SHEET. YTo-Day’s Contents of the Herald. THE BAYONET IN THE STATE HOUSE AT NEW ORLEA! A DISGRACEFUL CONDITION OF AFFAIRS!"—LEADING EDITORIAL AR- TICLE—EIGHTH PaGE. WHE WARMOTH-KELLOGG FIGHT ORLEANS! FEDERAL BAY! “LOCKED” AT THE ENTRAN STATE HOUSE! POLITICAL AND LEGAL COMPLICATIONS: COUNTING UNREGIS- TERED NEGRO VOTES—FirtH Pace. IMPROVING PROSPECTS FOR PEACE IN FRANCE! MEETING BETWEEN PRESIDENT THIERS AND THE CHAIRMA COMMITTEE IN NEW 'S STILL E TO THE G A DISSOLUTION OF THE A LY—NINTH PAGE. RICHARD B. CO! L. 3 UP! HAVANA'S | MYSTERIOUS STRA BOUND FOR RITORY—REPORTS, RAELI VOTE GOW—NINTH Pag LAS- THE FIENDISH MURDER OF JOHN ALLING- HAM! A MULATTO HELD FOR’ THE CRIM THE FEARFUL V PON OF DEATH: A WOMAN IN THE CASE—Firta Page. FEDERAL C. ! IMPORTANT NAVAL CONUNDRUM: AD- y DEEDS— MARINE NEWS FASHIONS FOR THE HOLIDAYS! V "ER COS- AND HOW 10 WEAR THEM: BE ‘S BELLES"— PERSONAL IN HE KENTUCKY LIBRARY LOT- TERY—NINTH PAGE. CONQUERING CUBA! LARGE HERALD CORPS : MAL 7 THUS BISMARCK'S COUSIN AMON THEM—TENTH PAGE. UNDER THE ATLANTIC A AN ENGLISH STEAMER, DER OF SEVENTH PAG SHIPWRECKED MAP SUFFER- INGS OF A SCHOONER'S WITH- OUT LIFEBOATS ON A_ SHATTERED ‘TH PAGE. TO-DAY! INTERESTING > AMERICAN AND ROM- IsH CATHOLI RICAL CHANGES— SIXTH PAGE. LEGAL INTELLIGENCE—A PLUCKY TEXAN WO- MAN SHOOTS A BRUTAL BLACK WHO FORCES HIS WAY INTO HER BEDROOM— FATAL RAILROAD CASUALTY—THIRTEENTH Page. WEST SIDE PROPERTY LOOKING UP! THE RIVERSIDE PARK A ‘T CON- FIRMED: THE NEW ‘A THROUGH WASHINGTON HEIGHTS—ELEVENTH Pace. AQUATIC—YACHTING—FOOTBALL AT THE ELY- SIAN FIELDS—HIPPOGRAPHS—THE ARI- ZONA MOCK DIAMON REPORT UF THE INDIAN COMMISSIO) TYNTH PAGE. TO MR. GREELEY— ‘| THE BIBLE—PROPOSED ECUMENICAL COUNCIL OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH—SEVENTH PaGE. 4 “FREE LANCE” CRITIQUE OF OPERA AND DRAMA—MUSICAL AND THEATRICAL—THE GUATEMALA—LOCAL PARAGRAPHS—Sey- ENTH Pa Forty-two Coums ADVERTISEMENTS are @mong the good signs of commercial activity in every branch of trade which the HenaLp brings to its readers to-day. Tue Duamatic Season in this city lags from lack of encouragement. Starting with bril- fiant promise aud showing much excellent | acting, the public has not taken that interest in the drama which is its due. art can only be attained or preserved by o generous appreciation, and we give this hint because it seems demanded by the occasion, OF THE ASSEMBLY | DIs- | The Bayonet in the State House at New Orleans—A Disgraceful Condt- tion of Affairs. Up to present indications no immediate rupture leading to sanguinary consequences seems probable in New Orleans, although a contest between ‘State Rights’’ and ‘cen- tralization’’ looms up out of this fight between mere politicians. The federal bayo- nets still glistened around the building used as a State House, and the war was being car- ried on in the Courts. The Returning Board, in the hands of Kellogg and Casey, promul- gated yesterday a return of the members said to have been elected, which gives a republican majonty of forty-five in the House and twenty in the Senate. The return promulgated on Thursday last by the Governor's Board of course gives quite another political complexion to the Legislature. We are fur ther informed that this pleasant result for the Custom House people was achieved through the process of counting in some thousands of votes belonging to negroes alleged to have been refused registration in their districte. This performance, which would give the Custom House faction all it desires—and it desires everything—from the United States Senator and Governor down to every particle of State and federal patronage within the confines of Louisiana, meets with determined opposition from Warmoth and his party. Their intent is announced to be a calling of the Legisla- ture, as announced by the Governor's Board, and it seems likely that we shall witness the disgraceful scenes of two rival bodies, each claiming to represent the unfortunate Com- monwealth, each anxious to plunder it as much as possible, and neither possessing a clear title to existence. Such is the deplorable picture which carpet-baggism has sketched in one of its wildest freaks. For the sake of present peacefulness it is well indeed that the majority of the popula- tion look on either in apathy or disgust at this demon dance of the plunderers. But, with the threatening phase of this difficulty removed, the immobility of the respectable masses will become a reproach they will do well to wipe out at an early day. The leaven of corrup- tion will rise more quickly and continuously than any other, and will pervade the whole mass of society until nothing short of the scorching heat of revolution will kill it. As the extent of the corruption is greater or lesser so must be the means of eradicating it History has recorded that even the overwhelming violence of an _ outraged people swamping it in torrents of blood, has not succeeded wholly in the object. The sword, the axe and the guillotine may kill corruptionists; but if the contagion itself has not been grappled with and made a moral as well as a physical horror, society is nothing bettered, for the executioners, with power in their hands, will become corrup- tionists in turn. On the miserable, plun- dered and outraged past of Louisiana, since carpet-bag ascendancy, we shall not now speak in detail. It is needless to state that those from the North who undertook the task of ruling the canquered but yet secth- ing South were men requiring but little incentive to become the most un- principled scoundrels civilization with its half-teachings could produce. The well-to-do, the patient and the honest, who might have left the South in a few years as contented with their lot as asense of humil- iation would permit, betrayed no inclination to leave their quiet comfort for the after risks of the war. For the carpet-baggers to enlist the negroes on their side was no hard work, and to make them abettors and sharers in their knavish schemes scarcely more difficult. The worst feature was yet to come—namely the absorption of much of the white Southern element into the ranks of the scramblers for plunder. The material benefits of political immorality once palpable, its pursuit, regard- less of all consequences, became far more wide than many at the North suppose. As if | all the malign influences were conspiring to make the wounds of the South less curable, the hot-headed masqueraders of the Ku Klux, with their fantastic deeds of inane bloodthirsti- ness, came upon the scene. Giving as they did a spurious crown of martyrdom to the carptt-baggers, they only succeeded in fasten- ing them more firmly in their midst. A strongly radical Congress took the opportunity of disciplining the South with bayonets, and | the foolish fellows of the midnight mask, the pistol and the whip found that arbitra- | question. Excellence iu | ment by force was more than ever out of the When the Ku Klux excesses had "| failed, as they deserved, of their object, there began the no less dangerous era of com- promise. With the birth of the liberal move- ment at Cincinnati it was fully put under way. In many States of the Sonth—North and South Carolina and Louisiana for instance— the indecency of the plunderers had excited tardy remonstrance from the Executive circles in Washington as they had aroused indignation everywhere else. The fight for the spoils had split up the carpet-baggers themselves into bitter factions, and wherever an attempt was made for a choice between them at Washington, it resulted in sending the re- jected faction with unreal shibboleths of re- | form over to the democracy. Warmoth, the present Governor of Louisiana, was one of these ‘converts’ to reform. Snubbed, as he was at Cincinnati, by the honest and earnest of the experimental party, he possessed | so much real power in his State that the democracy fell into the snare and helped him to make his fight for revenge and continued The insincerity in principle of the bargain, which was, doubtless, one of the causes of the failure of the coalition everywhere, has now found its fruit in | the present position of affairs in New | Orleans. Manipulating laws and __ per- sons to suit his ends, removing this man | and crushing the other, he prepared with his party for the election. Lest any light should be | shed upon the matter the rival returning boards | arrive at opposite conclusions, the United | States Courts under the Enforcement act fight | power. | step in, an appeal is sent on to Washington, NEW YORK HERALD, SUNDAY, DMUMMBER 8, 1872—QUADKUPLH SHEET. ple gape atolidly at tho deplorable exhibition betore them. The earnest mind, in contemplating this, must wish for a solution—for an escape from the shame and the danger. It will naturally lio in the first instance with the honest masses of the citizens of Louisiana, who must awake from their dormant condition and work ear- nestly and continuously for the advancement of the moral principle rather than a political one in their government. It will be con- tinually argued by this class that the hold of the carpet-baggers on the negroes neujralizes all such efforts. Hore, then, is the point on which they can be helped from out- side. The republican party, if it does not glory in the spoliation of the South, has been glad to receive the power which ita carpet-bag offspring preserved for it. With the great prestige which the party has gained from the late election it can surely now afford to be just, and to be just means to discounte- nance carpet-bagism everywhere. Can not President Grant or his advisers find some equitable solution of the present difficulty without straining his power, since both sides have appealed to him, and cannot he give a proof of civil service reform by limiting the New Orleans Custom House to its proper sphere? It is certain, however, that no effort from outside can complete the cure ; that will lie, as we have said, in the hands of the honest masses of the State ; but he can take care that no poison is placed in the wound through the agency of the federal office-holders. The Greeley Monument, Our oxplanation of yesterday with reference to the amounts received in consequence of the Henaup's appeal on behalf of the daughters of Mr. Greeley has brought us satisfactory evidence that our faith in the contributors was not misplaced. Yesterday we published the letter of a great-hearted American jour- nalist subscribing one thousand dollars to the endowment fund. In view of our ex- planation conveying the gratifying intelligence that the Misses Greeley were nowise in want of such assistance Mr. George W. Childs, of the Philadelphia Ledger, the gentleman re- ferred to, telegraphed us yesterday as fol- lows :— PHILaDELPata, Dec. 7, 1872. To J. G. BENNETT, Esq My subscription can be appropriated in any way the family of Mr. Greeley may indicate. GEORGE W, CHILDS. In another column we publish the commu- nication of a fellow journalist, who subscribed one hundred dollars to the fund, and who now promptly intimates his desire to have the amount diverted to the erection of a statue to the memory of Horace Greeley. Thus the kindliness which dictated the responses in the first instance shows itself unchanged, although the object is not of a nature so directly appealing to the best feelings of human nature. It is, nevertheless, one ad- mirable and fitting. The .World of Amusement. Though the best and greatest die, though hearts ache and familiar places are made void by the absence of those who will never return, the world of amusement wags on, shaking its head more or less facetiously at sorrow, whis- pering, moralize as we may, that ‘‘all the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players;’’ which, in truth, it is, and most of the players are nature’s journeymen, they imitate humanity so abominably. Good and bad have had their exits and their en- trances during the past week—the Merry Wives of Windsor still playing their mad pranks upon a Falstaff much longer than he is broad, Sothern still convulsing the habitués of Wallack’s with Lord Dundreary’s sublime idiocy, Miss Ethel unwearyingly depicting the highly moral spectacle of woman's devotion to worthless man, Folly revolving ‘‘Round the Clock” at the Grand Opera House amid a glare of fireworks, aided and abetted by a genuine boxing mill calculated to thrill the pugilistic soul to its inmost fibre; ‘Leo and Lotos’’ at Niblo’s, and ‘Blue Beard’ at the Olympic, engaging in amicable rivalry by generous displays of spectacular limbs; Miss Neilson impersonating Miss Neil- son under the name of Rosalind, in ‘‘As You Like It,"’ at Booth’s; Mr. Thompson being “On Hand” at Wood's Museum, and “Tom and Jerry’’ among the classic shades of the Bowery; minstrel after minstrel leading us into dark ways; Barnum, the grand moral showman of the universe, driving the little people quite wild by matinées, where lions do roar as gently as any sucking dove, and won- ders in wax and flesh and blood make eaeh particular hair stand on end with that delight peculiar to ingenuous youth; and Max Maret- zek, or, as he so felicitously styles himself, ‘‘a necessary evil,"’ proving, like a dying swan, that his sweetest operatic notes are his last. “Mignon” diegonly to live as the most suc- cessfully rendered opera of a singularly barren season. Thus the players of one stage pursue the players of another, and every mood—from grave to gay, from lively to severe—finds more or less reflection in that mirror held up before Nature's speaking countenance. Ovr Votuntrers ror Cupa Strut Pour In their applications for an opportunity to dis- tinguish themselves in the service of the Heratp. Elsewhere we print a number of letters, mostly of the amusing order, from among the immense quantity we have received on the subject, It may be remarked that this apparent levity on the matter overlies in every case a real desire to undertake the dangerous mission. It will, however, be a serious mat- ter, and the cream of the joke will be skimmed long before the task can be attempted. The air of mystery which, in the eyes of our Cuban | contemporary, whose article we reprint, en- shrines the matter with us cannot for the | present be avoided. When it becomes neces- sary to be more explicit we shall assuredly take that course. Tur Arvapama Deaprock.—Delegations | from the two contending factions at Mont- | gomery are now in Washington. Attorney | General Williams yesterday granted an andi- | the State Courts under local laws, the troops | | ence to the democratic delegation; but, as | stated in our special despatch, published to- | and it is a question of fear, not scruple, which | day, he refused to give an opinion, Both sides prevents a carnival of blood following it. How | seek to be recognized by the government; | this remarkable and disgraceful state of things | plausible stories are carefully told by each, in can end will not be known before Monday. | Kellogg, the carpet-bagger on the one side, is | confident, and Warmoth, the carpet-bagger on | the other, expresses his resolution to stand by his cause to the end. The unfortunate State thus stands between rival camps, and its peo- order that the federal authorities may step in and settle the matter. It is probable the At- torney General will refuse to compromise the government and will suggest the advisability of @ settlement by @ compromise between themselvom The Religious Press on the Topics of the Day. The religious press this week is prolific in its eulogies of the late Horace Greeley. It would seem as if the love and veneration for the departed Sage of Chappaqua were not con- fined to any particular sect in religion nor to any faction in politics, but that the memory of the man himself, that of the philosopher whom all respected, receives universal defer- ence, with one or two exceptions. Tho Independent trusts that his (Greeley's) soul is in peace. His last words, ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth,'’ are characterized by that journal as fitting words to grace his lips when his sinking humanity lay shivering on the extreme verge of life and the frontier of an opening eternity. ‘They contain,’’ con- tinues the Independent, ‘a sinner's confession of faith when the word Redeemer is most welcome and when the gracious services of a Redeemer are most needed.’’ The Independent does not, apparently, hug the memory of Horace as Abraham did Lazarus, to its bosom. It thinks the democratic party has done ita work and ought to have the grace to die. ‘Destructive and rapacious in life," says the Independent, ‘‘ita carcass may serve to enrich the nation’s soil, and some fruits of equality and peace may draw their trans- formed juices from its praiseworthy suicide.” Who killed the democratic party ? The Christian Union (Henry Ward Beecher) speaks from the editor's brain when his pen indites: — So robust a mind, so vital a nature, so fresh and youthful a presence had this tireless worker, that sixty seemed the very prime and fush of man- hood, and years of labor appeared to beckon him, But many griefs broke the great heart, and the strong body crumbled in a day. From his life a great legacy remains; the vast influence of a gen- eration which learned from him that honesty, honor, simplicity, frugality, generosity, purity, temperance, are above all worldly gains. From his death the gospel of tolerance takes deeper mean- ing, the cruelty of partisanship looks meaner, the charity that believevh all things seems divine. For the rest, his friends will keep his memory green, * * «© There are bleak skies to watch above the dead, and the earth offers but cold shelter. Yet one fancies that he whose life was full of storms, whose aggressive spirit could not rest, whose th ‘hts run ever on and on, should find a deeper ye in the rigid fixity of the Winter slumber than in the languorous thrill and stir of June. The Golden Age (Theodore Tilton) concludes an eulogistic panegyric*on the deceased phi- losopher as follows :— Had he lived longer, after such a shock as his re- cent illness, it would only have been as an old and broken man—the sad remainder of his better self—a living ruin, How many of our eminent public men unfortunately survive their influence and fritter away their fame! Not so with this great man, who, in the hour of defeat, and after two-thirds of the nation had registered their verdict against him, suddenly in his fall now rises superior to his fate, and by a fortunate death takes possession of the hearts of all his countrymen, reutters his name in eulogies through all their lips, restores his broken image in all their hearts, bows the whole nation into mourning at his bier, and thus transmutes, as by a mora) miracle, his unparalleled vanquishment into the most illustrious triumph possible to a hu- man career. The Observer does not go beyond ordinary ecclesiastical hints in making its observations this week. It wants to know whether the red man has any rights which the white man is “bound to respect,’’ and publishes a com- munication from a gentleman who has been spending some time in the Indian Territory. This communication is dated at ‘Chata- Tamaha, Choctaw Nation,’’ but its informa- tion is so far behind the Heratp’s reports from the same quarter that we fail to disco ver anything worthy of reproduction. The fact that the Choctaw Nation has ordered all white men from its territory presents a new phase to this interesting matter. The Freeman's Journal (Catholic) seems disposed to accept the election of General Grant for a third and even a fourth term, provided he satisfies the conditions of admin- istering, fairly and impartially, the powers of his great office, without yielding to any nar- row and therefore dying ideas of preference for persons or for cliques that may claim to own him. ‘He has,’’ continues the Journal, “the freest field ever any man in his position has had. All the old political parties are dis- solved. But the principles that used to dis- tinguish the democratic party are not dis- solved. He that knows how to preserve them will be the leader of the future.’’ The Catholic Review is full of Father Burke, Mr. Froude and the Bishop of Rochester, Dr. MeQuaide. The Boston Pilot is out this week in its usual form with some marked improvements in its editorial as well as typographical appearance. The Christian Intelligencer, referring to the late Horace Greeley, says, after a review of the career of the deceased, that ‘candor compels the verdict that this great man, with all his admitted power, was the hapless vic- tim of his own struggles for political prefer- ment.’’ Continues the Intelligencer :— In a republican government like ours the highest prizes of office are open to the honorable ambition of every citizen. Nor is it strange that, with such examples of successful attainment before him, Mr. Greeley should aim to secure the object of his de- sires. But the singular history of his double nomi- nation for the Presidency, the excitements of the campaign, the result of the election and the sad close of his life amid the gloom of his crushing de- feat, will long remain as an admonitory chapter in American politics. The Jewish Messenger advocates Hebrew free schools, and says the society for the en- couragement of such schools is dependent upon the city for support—‘‘a society for the dissemination of Hebrew learning, neglected by the Jews, and actually forced to seek as- sistance from the public funds!’ The Mes- senger does not appear to regard this position of things in regard to Hebrew free learning with much satisfaction. The Liberal Christian (Rev. Dr. Bellows) speaks of the late Mr. Greeley as— A Christian of a positive and professed faith, a church-goer, at times even a preacher, he was able to reconcile a busy, partisan, active and aggressive political and editorial career with an open, earnest | and Intelligent claim to the religious character and | the Christian name, and to establish his right to | be counted among the lovers of God and man, of Christ and immortality. The Jewish Times, referring to the deceased founder of the Tribune, says ‘this heart recog- nized no difference between native American | and foreign born, between Christian and Jew, Caucasian and African—he was first man, then American, Christian or party man."’ The Baptist Weekly (Rev. Dr. A. 8. Patton) | concludes an obituary of the late Mr. Greeley | as follows: — Perhaps the most questionable impuise of his life | ‘was that ambition which was developed in bis last | political aspiration and wh ‘was 40 emphatically rebuked at the polis. r existing circum: | stances we may not impugn his motives io seckin, and accepting the support of a@ political party wit which he had ali his life been in bitter antagonism, nor will we reflect on his honesty in his attitude to his old party and to the administration of General Grant; but the gid fact of his humilt- ating disappointment ana the reaction he experi- enced in such a complete defeat, is suMcient, in itself, to account for his mental prostration and his premature death. Our country religious contemporaries do not furnish us, as they should, with the progress of religious revivals in their communities. This is an important feature in making up a history of the advancement of Christianity in $$$ $e our country—ono in which all pious people are deeply interested, and ono which should not be overlooked by our brethren of the cleri- cal press everywhere. Se! je Fiction. About a year ago Charles Reade’s “Ter- rible Temptation’’ threw prudery into convul- sions. Formality hid her face and sanctimony blushed to the eyelids. Obstetrics had invaded the precincts of fiction, and one of the most popular novelists of the age was nothing if not parturient. Already the equivocal theme had been tenderly touched in “Griffith | Gaunt ;"" but in the later novel a simulated accouchement was deliberately introduced as an essential point of art. Fielding himself might have hesitated before treading such delicate ground, Alfred de Musset have drawn back and George Sand gaid “No, thank you.” But before censuring Mr. Reade too abso- lutely let us ask the motive of such audacity. To be original was no longer easy. Miss Austen had painted the superficies of society with innumerable minute and marvellously vivid touches. Scott had filled his spacious canvas with a panorama crowded with pageants and prinees. Bulwer had beguiled history into becoming romance, and infused therewith a sentimentalism somewhat effemi- nate, to be sure, but full of warmth and rich- ness. Dickens had glorified realism with a pathos and humor irresistibly contagious. Thackeray's sharp-eyed cynicism had put on the neutral tinted glosses of charity and seen all the better for that tempering medium. Trollope’s pictures were a sort of still life, with a human element breathed into it. And George Eliot, with but an iota of her individ- uality obtruding itself, had dome with the hu- manity with whom she came in contact what Rosa Bonheur had done with animals, and re- produced it with a sub-creative power almost unparalleled in the annals of literature. It anything new remained to be done the task was at least difficult. Wilkie Collins had re- fined upon Mrs. Radcliffe with a delicacy and ingenuity which left nothing to be expected in that line, and Mr. Fargeon, possessing at once eccentricities which afiiliate him with Mr. Dickens, and a broad philanthropic tempera- ment and a poetic organization of which com- paratively little trace is evident in the works of that great humorist, had woven Australian romance and English realism into a fabric which had touched the hearts alike of average and of esoteric circles. Since the day when “Tom Jones’’ broke upon the world the task of introducing a new element into fiction had never been so difficult. The future will doubtless give birth to quite as startling and quite as successful attempts as that of Mr. Reade. Science has laid her hand upon art, literature, and even the drama, and will not loose her hold. The literary critic is fond of claiming that some day the last novel will have been written, since all the combinations of which human characters and events are susceptible will have been ex- hausted. But those who make this claim take it for granted that these characters and events are determinate in number, and therefore sub- ject to the arithmetical rule of permutation. For all practical purposes, however, the combi- nation brought about by the relations of char- acter to circumstances may be assumed as infinite. Or if, as Professor Fiske, the Har- vard sceptic, maintains, humanity, having had a beginning, will one day have an end, that end is vastly too remote to be taken into con- sideration in the present argument. As the race progresses the various objects which em- ploy its thoughts and energies will indefinitely increase, and must sooner or later be reflected in literature. But as the basis of hu- manity ever remains the same, we may safely assume that romance, in some form or other, will always flourish and mirror the transition stages in humanity's career. Thus the history of fiction will, to a certain extent, be the history of the human mind, a conclu- sion borne out by facts. Those social phases which are reflected in English and American literature to-day immensely differ from those which will be reflected there five hundred years hence. Already we stand on the verge of a new era in fiction—the scientific era. Mr. Darwin having plausibly argued that the genuine Adam and Eve were apes, and Pro- fessor Huxley, with his protoplasmic theories, having reasoned original creative power into a phantasm, mankind’s tenderest traditions are trodden under foot, and, convinced against our will, we ate compelled to abandon ruefully the old paths of sentiment, and to ask what romanesque interest inheres in these later and sterner facts. Science has crept into the hiding places of faith and aspiration. Our ereeds are called credulities and our forms formule. Tyndall applies his gauge to prayer, and next, we suppose, we shall have love to God and man settled by logarithms. Only a year ago Mr. James Steele Mackaye attempted to show that acting was a sort of alge- bra, in which any one might learn to solve the histrionic equation. In the recent play of ‘‘Pygmalion and Galatea,’’ the pro- cess by which the statue disappeared is a salient instance of the stireness with which science is getting the upper hand of art. Asa scientific experiment the process was beautiful and interesting; as an illustration of dramatic art it was in miserably bad taste. In the novel the encroachment is equally evident, and Mr. ‘Reade, as we have already intimated, is an evidence of how heavily the hand of physi- ology may be laid upon fiction. His latest hero is a physician, who comes near being jilted for venturing to hint that the heroine, to whom he is engaged, laces her corsets too | tightly. Chivalry, gallantry and religion formed the staple of the mediwval novels—those which ! find their exponent in the tales ot the Court of Arthur and of Amadis of Gaul. Science threatens to form the basis of the fiction of the future, With the literary aspirant patience will usurp the place of passion and cool in- spection succeed fine frenzy in the ci-devant | , | have again been inundated by heavy’freshets poet’s eye. Research, not rapture, willechar- acterize the muse, and when she looks to heaven a telescope will be the medium. Her observations of a landscape will be taken | with a theodolite and plane trigonometry will supersede the ornamentations of rhetoric. Parental, filial and fraternal love will slink to ignominious death beneath the heroic gaze of stirpiculture, and a heaven-aspiring humanity, which glories in its quadrumanous kinship, will feel the stir of wings in tho cold shoulder it glibly gives to tedious conservatism. The fas- cination of science will consist in proving that nothing is respectable which we have hitherto belicved in; that the Past is a well-meaning old Goasip who is well got rid of, and the Future @ young fellow of great expectations aud good sense, whom it is prudent to cultivate. Should we ever really arrive at such a stage as this, let us hope that, like the anger of the Lard, it will endure but for a moment. Other- wise without the spirituality that keeps it human mankind will lose its essence, which is self-development to a diviner issue, and sur- vive like a parglyzed Briareus, all hands and no help. The French Crisis—Hopes Entertaine@ of a Quiet Settlement. Our latest news from Versailles is that ML Pasquier, Vice President of tho Assembly Committee of Thirty, had called upon Presi- dent Thiers, and that from a long and friendly conversation with him the government situ- ation is believed to be improving. Certain Cabinet changes are also rumored, which, if made, will be calculated to facilitate a com- promise between the Prosident and the Assem- bly. But everything now depends upon the report which is expected trom the Committee of Thirty to-morrow. The case is, “indeed, desperate if in the interval “some half-way house of diplomatic rest’’ cannot be agreed upon between the committee and President Thiers. He is a crotchety old gentléman, but he knows very well the point at which safety ends and. where danger begins. We expect, therefore, that between this and to-morrow he will contrive to arrange a satisfactory agree- ment with the Assembly that will hold the ex- isting government together some time longer, but how long is the all-important and the doubtful question. Meantime the republicans in the departments of the frontier and tho interior are agitating and demanding the dissolution of this Assem- bly. At Credin, for example, in the Depart- ment of Morbihan, M. Louis Blanc presiding, there was, on Friday last, a meeting at which speeches were made and resolutions adopted in favor of the immediate dissolution of this Assembly, and short of this step and a new election by the people we apprehend that neither activity in business nor confidence im Versailles will be restored to France. Highwaymen in New York. Larceny from the person in these days in large cities like this is generally done without great violence. The crowds of pickpocketa who ‘‘work’’ our street cars usually only jostle their victim just enough to divert his attention and leave him with a whole skinand sound limbs, if poorer in pocket and destitute of watch or other valuables. But when these mild measures fail the thieves do not scruple to use hard blows to secure plunder. Suche case has just come under the scrutiny of the Coroner. Mr. Eaton, of Hunter's Point, waa at Madison avenue and Thirty-fourth street on the 2ist of November as a target company was passing, followed by a mob of. roughs, Two of them assaulted him, knocking him down and stealing his carpet bag. He waa earried to Bellevue Hospital and after a few days died. Medical testimony showed a broken skull as the cause of death, and the two young rowdies were held. Fitzpatrick, wha is charged as the principal criminal, is but seventeen years old, and Lynn, accused as ac- cessory to the homicide, is twenty-two. Young as these prisoners are they represent a desperate class, who live by preying upon the community. If fortune favors them they are content to be simply thieves; but when crowded they “lay out’’ a man with as little compunction as they would kick a cur. Brooklyn has just hung one of her corner loafers who killed a policeman for fun, and, no doubt, the example will be found salutary. If the proof, on trial, is conclusive against the slayers of Mr. Eaton we shall hope, though ‘hanging is played out,’’ that their prompt punishment may follow and be an effective warning to the large and dangerous class of thieving bummers who infest certain districts of the city. There are too many per- manent boarders in the Tombs. None should be added to the list. The Condition of Affairs in Spain. It would seem, from all we can gather from the news received from Spain for the last two or three weeks, that time is making strong the government of Amadeus. It has been a hard fight for the young stranger King. He has fought well, however, and no one who has the welfare of Spain at heart ought to have any reason to regret that success promises to crown his patience, his endurance and his perseverance. Our latest news encourages tha belief that Spain is settling down to the habita of peace and industry. The new loan is suc- ceeding well in the London market, the threatened impeachment of Sagasta has been formally abandoned, and the latest insur- rectionary attempts have perished from inanition. With the establishment of order in Spain and the consolidation of the new government system, we shall look for a new and vigorous departure in re gard to Cuba and, Porto Rico. So long as slavery exists as a Spanish institution Spain cannot hope for the sym- pathy and encouragement of the great nations. ‘The Heratp Expedition to Central Africa hag enkindled the anti-slavery spirit, and war to the death will now be waged against the traffie’ in human flesh. The civilized nations are at last in sympathy on this great question, and no quarter henceforward will be given. A new crusade is being organized against the slave trade in Eastern Africa, and if Spain is. not wise enough to make an end of slavery throughout her dominions of her own free will Great Britain and the United States will do it by force, Slavery in the Spanish colonies is the next great question which the’ govern. ment of Amadeus must take up and settle. It will be well for Spain if the question is settled promptly and satisfactorily. More Froops iw Itary.—We are sorry te hear that the valleys of the Po.and the Arno from the mountains. Inasmuch, however, as no appeals from the Italians have been made for outside assistance to the thousands of peo- ple impoverished and left destitute by these destructive floods, we infer that the abounding resources of Italy have been equal to these dis- asters and will be equal to the necessities of those rendered destitute by the repetition of these inundations. Otherwise, the local Italian authorities have only to make known to the world their wants which cannot at once be supplied by themselves, and they will be promptly relieved.