much of the sparkle of life, we must | It is not that the machinery of their try to be sorry for them too.

minds was originally planned on a poor, And now having considered the case mean scale; far from it. But some of of real stupidity, let us rise a stage the common screws or nuts are misshigher to the dim but not dark, to ing, and so they fail in the simple, that which has light enough to see its every-day work easily accomplished by own deficiencies and to suffer keenly far smaller intellects. There is natufrom the consciousness of them. The rally a great variety in the deficiencies persons who belong to this class are of this class. Some members of it not devoid of ideas, but they can never are clear-sighted enough about abstract do justice to them. They are afflicted ideas, but utterly stupid in business with a general inadequacy and incom- matters, in which an average Nationalpetency of mind, which make the School child would get the better of mental operations that are a pleasant them. Others are thoroughly wrongexercise to quicker wits, a toil, a weari-headed, and unable to see what is ness to theirs. They cannot keep pace obvious and self-evident to ordinary with others. They go slowly, and they minds. They have a wrong judgment go lamely. If they try to repeat an in all things, so that we should only argument they miss out an important wish for their advice, that we might link, and see with a pang a smile of avoid it. A third group in the class amusement creep over the faces of have plenty of ideas in their heads, but their audience. An idea they may they are as confused and ill-arranged as have floating before their minds would poor Juliet's tangled silks in the tale in look highly respectable if some one "Evenings at Home." A fourth can else would state it, but in their hands work very well alone, but from some it is a ridiculous, sorry scarecrow. want of tact or administrative ability, They are interested in some subject, always act stupidly in conjunction with but when they take up a book about it, other people. They have a fiue coach difficulties bristle in every page. To of their own to drive, but must needs make even a simple arrangement costs charge into every other carriage they them twice the amount of thinking that meet on the road, while smaller, it does to normal minds. They are meaner vehicles thread their way skilalways at the bottom of the class in fully along to their destination. In all life, and grow more and more certain such cases, and in kindred ones, the in their despondency, that the world is owners of the imperfect minds suffer made for the clever. It takes a brave sharply under their failures, none perspirit to bear up against these depres-haps more than the wrong-headed persions; for if nothing succeeds like suc-son, who cannot understand for the cess, nothing fails like failure, which lowers the vitality of the mind, and diminishes what power it may have. And such trials as these are among the pains and the penalties of this class of feeble minds.

life of him, why other people cannot take his view of a subject, and who is like the man serving on a jury, who, finding himself in a minority of one, remarked that "he never knew eleven men more mistaken in his life." And Another case that demands our sym- their sufferings are aggravated by a pathy, is that of the imperfect minds. curious perturbation of feeling. On They cannot be charged like the others the one hand, in watching the small with a general all-round stupidity, for profits and quick returns of the minds they have too much breadth of their that work better within a far more limown as a rule, and often gifts of a high ited range, they are filled with admiraorder. Yet as they are signally and tion of their little triumphs, and are abnormally deficient in some respects, always thinking how admirably their they not only pass for stupid in the owners perform all that is required of eyes of the world, but are actually and them in life, and comparing themselves practically so in the conduct of life. I with the successful ones to their own

disadvantage.

On the other hand, there are times and seasons, too, when they know all the time at the bottom of the stupid, above all others, have their their hearts that, faulty and imperfect special uses. So thought the man who, as their own minds may be, they are of when asked who his banker was, refar higher calibre, and that they see plied, "Mr. So-and-so; and if I knew scores of things in heaven and earth a stupider man I would go to him.” undreamt of in the philosophy of the In his opinion stupidity and safeness others. And the consciousness that were synonymous. Cleverness is by this capacity of theirs is unrecognized no means always welcome. "Pray let or unappreciated rouses within them us get away from this fatiguing man," a sense of being misunderstood and was the sotto-voce remark we once undervalued. Well, we cannot make heard a poor young lady make, who everything quite even and easy in this had been an unwilling listener throughimperfect world. But in all kinds and out all the courses at dinner, to a toodegrees of stupidity it is generally pos- instructive father. There is a legend sible to help the lame dog over the abroad that clever men prefer stupid stile, instead of making merry over wives, in which case there is a field his awkward struggles. And after all, open to the dull members of one sex at even the cleverest people are apt to any rate. If the clever men have had break down somewhere; witness the to ride the intellectual high-horse all brilliant Dean Stanley, who had such day themselves, it is natural that they an inaptitude for figures that, as his should like a complete rest from the biographer expressed it, he never could exercise when they are off duty. understand the difference between There is no doubt that we must one eighteenpence and one-and-eightpence. and all have tasted the charms of the "My father and Lady Elizabeth," society of "gentle dulness" at times. writes Miss Edgeworth in one of her There is something really soothing, lively letters, "counted so quickly at when we are tired or lazy, in a downcribbage that I was never able to right honest platitude. It is as good as keep up with them, and made a sorry a pillow to our heads, and we love to figure. Worse, again, at some geneal- be with the dear old stupids who utter ogies and intermarriages, which Lady it in their simplicity, as if it were a E undertook to explain to me, till great discovery. We can talk away to at last she threw her arms flat down them with the pleasing consciousness on each side in indignant despair and that if we have lost or mislaid some of exclaimed, 'Well, you are the stupid- our facts, they will never miss them; est creature alive!"" If such superior that if our arguments leak a little and minds had their weak points, inferior will not hold water, they will never ones may well claim allowance. And find it out; and that our own commontiresome as stupid people may some- places which we give them in exchange times be, most persons know well for theirs, will be received with due enough where their own intellectual respect. Their society may not be imshoe pinches, to give them a fellow-proving, but it is extremely comfortfeeling for a fellow - creature. And able.

A DYE FROM VINE-LEAVES. -Schunk, | yellow. The substance was obtained priKnecht, and Marchlewski, three German marily as a brownish-yellow, partially chemists, as reported in the "Journal of crystalline glucosid. When boiled with the Chemical Society," have obtained from sulphuric acid, this yields sugar and the brown vine-leaves gathered in autumn coloring matter, which is obtained as a a dye that colors wool mordanted with reddish-brown powder. chrome and tin respectively brown and

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Ah, God! from street to street we some- He plays with her, and will not sleep.

As men in masks, and know not friend An unmaternal fondness keep

From The London Quarterly Review.

LABRADOR.1

rivers are swift and broken by innumerable cataracts; a plague of black flies, not to speak of mosquitoes, renders life intolerable; game is no longer plentiful; the brief summer is soon followed by a winter the severity of which makes travel practically impossible- these are some of the difficulties which the explorers of Labrador have to overcome.

Dr. Packard gives us a bibliography of one hundred and forty-five different works dealing more or less directly with Labrador, and, in addition, a list of fifty-five works treating wholly or

TEN centuries have elapsed since, according to the Saga of Erik the Red, the Norsemen discovered the coast of Labrador. A party of Vikings sailing westward to their recently formed colony in south Greenland, in the rude and clumsy craft in which these adventurous rovers scoured all the seas of the northern world, were driven out of their course by tempest, and sighted a land high and mountainous and bordered by icebergs. This was in 990. Ten years later, Lief, the son of Erik the Red, cast anchor in one of the in part of its geology and natural hisbays on this wild coast, landed, found the country "full of ice mountains, desolate, and its shores covered with stones," and called it Helluland, the stony land. As the country was good for nothing in the estimation of the Icelandic seaman, he made no attempt to explore or colonize it, but sailed south in search of more congenial and fruitful lands. After so many centuries, a great part of the interior of Labrador still remains unexplored; a vast, mysterious region of which we know less, perhaps, than of the heart of Africa or Australia, or the shores of Siberia. The obstacles to exploration, and especially to scientific exploration, are enormous. Vast tracks of the country are strewn with massive boulders in chaotic confusion; the great

11. The Labrador Coast: A Journal of Two Summer Cruises to that Region. With Notes on

its Early Discovery; on the Eskimo; on its Physical Geography, Geology, and Natural History. By Alpheus Spring Packard, M.D., Ph.D. With Maps and Illustrations. New York: N. D. C. Hodges. London : Kegan Paul & Co.

2. Explorations in the Interior of the Labrador Peninsula, the Country of the Montagnais and Nasquapee Indians. By Henry Y. Hind, M.A., Professor of Chemistry and Geology in the University of Trinity College, Toronto, etc. In two volumes. London: Longmans, Green & Co.

3. Sixteen Years on the Coast of Labrador. By George Cartwright. In two volumes 4to. Maps, etc. Newark. 1792.

4. The Ancient and Modern History of the [United] Brethren. By David Cranz. London.

1780.

5. Periodical Accounts relating to Moravian Missions. No. 21. March, 1895. London: 32 Fetter Lane.

tory. Many of these are books of great value, though, necessarily, in not a few instances, they cover similar ground, and deal with the coast and those parts of the peninsula which have been opened up by the servants of the Hudson's Bay Company and the Moravian missionaries. Professor Hind presents in his volume the results of his exploration of the Moisie River. McLean ventured where no other white man had set foot. The Moravian missionaries have contributed much knowledge concerning the extreme north, where their stations are situated, and science owes them a great debt. Cartwright's graphic portraiture of the Labrador coast, with its people and fauna and fisheries a hundred years ago, is a book which can never be superseded. It is now a very scarce and costly work. Dr. Packard's volume is at once a fascinating narrative of travel and an accurate scientific text-book of the geology, botany, and zoology of Labrador, incorporating the most recent information. Complete lists are furnished of all classes of creatures mammals, birds, fishes, butterflies, moths, beetles, spiders; of crustaThe book leaves little to be desired as ceans, molluscs, star-fish, and polyps. a journal of travel, and is a most important contribution to our knowledge of the coast and of the country generally.

The coast is one of stern grandeur.

6. Notes of Twenty-five Years' Service in the During the long winter it is ice-bound,

Hudson's Bay Territories. By John McLean.

the extent of the ice-fields being fifty