of Mr. Kingsley's histories and stories will see that he stands much nearer to Carlyle in all these things than any mere imitator could do.

In this connection two lady novelists deserve mention for their truthful portraiture of local character in two Norse countiesMrs. Gaskell in Lancashire, and Charlotte Brontè in Yorkshire. "Who does not feel," says The Saturday Review, "that half the deep interest of Jane Eyre is due to the faithful pictures it contains of the stern, earnest Yorkshire folk, strong alike in their virtues and their crimes? Mary Barton, in the same way, owed at least as much to the Lancashire peculiarities, and the new, strange revelations of factory life and factory miseries, as to its thrilling story. . . . . It would be well if more of our living novelists would turn their attention to local tales."

In the field of industry England owes much of her pre-eminence, and has always owed it, to the Norse race. Her Watts and Stephensons gave their whole energy to the making of her steamengines and locomotives; the factories of Yorkshire and Lancashire, as of old those of Devonshire, as well as those of the western Lowlands and of Ulster, have been manned by the stock that Charlotte Brontè describes in Shirley and Jane Eyre. Where the Saxon stock predominates, as in Dorsetshire and Kent, the people are capable of little else than agriculture. Much as may be said of the wretchedness of English factory life, it still remains true that the cotton spinner stands many grades above the mere clod-hopper of the South-he has more independence, more thoughtfulness. He has his own political and religious creed, while the clod-hopper takes his from "the quality." He may be misled by such fanatics as Murphy, into such folly as the Orangework of the last general election in Lancashire, but his very blunders bespeak his independence. Nor should Americans forget that the workmen of Northern England and Lancashire, when brought to the very verge of starvation by the cutting off the cotton supply, refused to join the cotton lords of Liverpool in agitating to force the English government to raise "the paper blockade" of the Confederate ports. They sat with folded hands and closed lips, in dismal, hopeless suffering, rather than utter a word that might help to rivet the chains on their fellow-men. They remembered Buxton and his Northern associates in the great cause of Negro Emancipation, and were not faithless to his memory.

We close with a reference to the field of science. We have referred to Prof. Huxley as a type of the Norse character. He is one of the most interesting and curious figures in the scientific world of to-day-a savan with the fire and spirit of an old crusader-at once the most eloquent and the most incautious of his class. Old Sam Johnson was not more dogmatic; Tom Carlyle is not more contemptuous, nor Kingsley more enthusiastic. He fights for science with all the zeal that a controversialist of the old school could have fought for a theological distinction. Conclusions that other men have reached in cold blood he defends in hot. He is Darwin set on fire. It is well that he is the most incautious of men; he thus gives a fair chance to those who think that the legitimate conclusions of his opinions would be the abandoning of much that is true and valuable in our birthright as Christian nations. But, however they may dissent or protest, they must regard with respect the whole-hearted sincerity of the champion who gives no quarter and asks none.

Such are the two great factors which have worked together in the long course of English history, as we are able very imperfectly to trace them. A fuller history of them might be the work of years in surveying the field of their settlements and tracing. them step by step through century after century of English history, showing where the two have worked together in strength and harmony, where they have been weak by their antagonisms. The assimilation of the entire mass of the inhabitants of the fastanchored isle into one homogeneous whole has never been entire; in all probability, never will be so. The strength of England has not been in intermarriage and the blending of races. Miscegenation is not a law of nature, nor a source of social strength. Where different races work together in harmony, each supplies the defects of the other, and contributes to the common strength and stability of the whole, even when no bond of marriage unites them, and their habitats within the same national boundaries are totally distinct. Michelet has grandly traced this truth in one of the opening chapters of his "History of France." So in the American nation. It is not the promiscuous commingling, but the harmonious union of distinct national and race elements, which will develop in the highest degree the strength of each for the common benefit of all.

R. E. THOMPSON.

THE BACKBONE OF AMERICA.

[Continued.]

NOT far from the Gate to this Garden of the Gods and under the shadow of the King Peak of the chain, near a sunny, grassy upland, rise some springs, on both banks of the "Fontaine-quibouille." The largest of these boils up into its semi-circular basin with a violence which raises the water in the middle six inches above the general level. Another spring near this is almost as large in area, but is neither so deep nor so active as the bathing spring. The smaller spring on the other bank of the creek has the strongest water, and tastes like the Congress at Saratoga and the Rakotsky in Kissingen. The exhilarating effects of a bath in the Bathing Spring, when taken just before sunrise, just as the little patch of snow, far up the side of old Pike, begins to reflect in rosy light the growing glory of the god of day, to be appreciated must be ascertained by personal experiment.

During the summer months, and even into the fall, there are usually some persons encamped near the springs, who believe in the virtue of their waters, and who leave the place of their sojourn, where they have enjoyed the pure air, the delicious climate and the healthful hardships of camping out, quite as much benefited as the more fashionable guests of Saratoga and Sharon. Parties, too, intending to ascend old Pike, usually camp here for the first night, and on the timber line for the second, returning to this second camp on the evening of the same day that they reach the

summit.

We take the first road to the right in pursuing our way further south, which leads us through the first line of hills covered with verdure, which have here taken the places of the customary "hogbacks." The valleys between these hills are so narrow that they may be considered cañons, and the sandstone, which here and there appears, is very much eroded and worn.

The country, from here to Canon City, is an inextricable confusion of low hills, which rise and terminate suddenly and run in all directions.

We are now fairly in the region which the Indians make very hot for the ranchmen.

Canon City is a very small town, whose houses can be counted

on the fingers of two pairs of hands, but it possesses a church, where divine service is held and well attended every Sunday. There is a small spring of delicious mineral water just outside the town.

Canon City rests on the Arkansas river, which breaks through the hills of the Arkansas River Park, not very far from here, and continues it course over the great plains to the sea. Some eight or ten miles from Canon City, up Four Mile creek, there occur some oil springs, from which burning fluid of good quality is made, but, unfortunately, the supply is limited to a few gallons a day.

In this whole region the sunsets and sunrises are surpassingly beautiful, and the effect produced by the pale light of the moon on the sombre landscapes is weird-like. In riding out of the Arkansas canon we cross a prairie furrowed by deep chasms with vertical sides, and passing through a small but beautiful grove of cottonwood we have an opportunity to observe the industry of the beaver on a large dam which crosses Hard Scrabble creek. From "Hard Scrabble" we pursue our way south to the St. Charles, through scenery varied and beautiful in the extreme.

To the right, the rugged Snowy Range, brown at the base, peeps out now and then through the canon of some small stream; under, in front of and around you are sandstone tables and benches and mounds. Line after line of these level flat-topped hills stretch out from the flanks of the mountains far into the mist-exhaling prairies.

At the Cuchara, we find the outpost of the Mexicans in their northern progress. A ranchero has located himself on the crest of one of these long, low hills bordering the stream, and, though he is almost surrounded by Anglo-Saxons true to the Latin speaking races, neither he nor any of his numerous family profess or try to speak English. He raises sheep, and you may get of him a nice little carnero for $2.50, by allowing him to keep the fleece and fat. If we pay the old gentleman a visit, we are sure to be hospitably entreated to come in.

As we approach the open door of the adobe hut we find it occupied by two women and three men. The elder woman (of, perhaps, forty-five years) is attired in a loose-fitting jacket, a shabby skirt, and a pair of well-worn slippers. In one of her plump hands she holds some culinary implement of curious shape, while with the

other she stirs something in a saucepan on the fire. She would outweigh any two of the remaining occupants of the hut; but, in complexion, they all closely resemble each other, having that dark olive complexion with resinous lustre, which has given to the Moorish-Spanish Indians the name of "Greasers," (though each of them is less greas-er than greas-y.) The younger woman is small, hardly more than seventeen, and would have some small claim to beauty could one substitute for her mouth a less disagreeable hiatus. She holds an infant in her arms and looks at you in a half-coquettish way as you enter the hut. An old man is seated in one corner on a pile of sheepskins, whose costume may be said to be composed of a pair of pantaloons which have been worn from below upwards, and a loose shirt which may possibly have been once white and clean, whose arms were worn out from the extremities inwards. In fact, this gentleman appears to have been possessed of limbs which exercised a corroding influence on his clothing, whose intensity was directly proportional to the distance from his nerve centres. His seat is so low that his knees are brought to a level with his chin. All smoke cigarettes. "Buenos dias," he exclaims as we approach, "entre, siente." But we feel naturally somewhat distrustful of the sheepskins, and stand hesitating till forced to comply with his request, which we do feeling our flesh to creep.

Further south, the character of the country changes. In place of the sandstone hills we have the lava-capped Mesas; seams of hard glassy basalt (called dykes) intersect the country occasionally; the vegetation grows gradually less green and luxuriant, and the streams grow fewer in number than further north. From this point we obtain one of the finest views to be had from the plains. To the north, Pike's Peak is still discernible above the horizon; to the southwest, the twin Spanish peaks and the Snowies, obscured for a part of their length by the Wet Mountain Range, span the horizon from north to south. The sandstone hills which we see, of which the hard basalt forms the icing, and somewhat similar rocks the plums and citron. Skirting the Spanish peaks, we arrive at Trinidad, a little insignificant Mexican town of but one street, containing none but adobe houses.

This adobe is nothing but mud mixed with grass and twigs, and dried in the sun. From the bricks thus formed, which are frequently ten times as large as one of our bricks, the houses are built and then thatched over.