is almost inconceivable to those who have not witnessed it. The writer was once in the Red Sea during an incident of the kind. The day was apparently quite fine, when a squall coming from the east, through the aperture between Sinai and Horeb, struck the giant steamer, and though she was of more than three thousand tons, and moving at ten miles an hour, she was thrown on her side, and but for the immense momentum from her engines would have been utterly lost. We have somewhere also, but cannot find, an account of a squall which struck a railway train in New Jersey, and though it was moving, as the drivers declared, at twenty miles an hour, blew it from the rails, a feat which seems, of all incidents that ever occurred through the agency of wind alone — as a rule, when heavy bodies are lifted and deposited far off, there is water, with its unyielding pressure, to help — to be the most impossible. There is practically no one to blame, and no conceivable human method of preventing such catastrophes entirely. There is no substitute for the human mind, and no plan of making the human mind equally efficient, cautious, and decided at all seasons and under all circumstances. Captain Hare's mistake may have been the most accidental thing in the world, and of all human beings he had most to protect him from making it.
It is just the same in all human affairs, and the law is just as often forgotten. In the storm of comment which the modern critical spirit flings upon all occurrences, we forget the limitations of our powers. Make what laws we will, and occasionally they will be harsh, and often inapplicable. Construct what tribunals we will, and the judge will now and again be prejudiced, or tired, or sleepy, the leading juryman stupid, or the counsel forgetful of his duty. Relax punishment as you will, and sometimes it will fall too heavily, or fall, upon the innocent. Abolish the penalty of death, and the sentence may kill as certainly as the guillotine; graduate sentences to imbecility, and no two inflicted for the same crime will ever fall with equal weight; elaborate trials till human patience is overborne, and still perjury will sometimes be successful. All that human beings can obtain by the most unrelaxing effort, and patience, and attention to duty is an approximation to justice, which to beings a little higher, who can see facts, but not motives, must often appear a mockery of fair play. It is a limit put upon us by nature or by God, and we shall not get past it. Arthur Helps was not always profound, but it was a profound thought of his that if the object of the arrangements of the universe was to make man happy, he would have been gifted with at least five minutes' foresight. He will never get one minute, and if he had it, the limit would be but imperceptibly pushed back. Sir Arthur Helps's minute would not have saved the "Eurydice" or her crew.
We have often wished exceedingly that this notion of the occasional necessity of accepting an approximation to the ideal could be made to take a stronger hold in the popular mind. It would create much content, and would prevent much shiftiness in our politics. It is quite hopeless to expect that a reform, or a new constitution, or a war can produce, or be made to produce, all the results expected from them, — as hopeless as to look for an Admiralty whose ships will never be lost. The influence of mind must enter into every human concern, and where mind is present, the mathematical ideal cannot reasonably be hoped for. Some one will always err, whether from incapacity, or vice, or negligence, and the error upsets often half the calculation. All that the politician can do is to fix principles as accurately as possible, to select the best men he can get, to furnish all necessary means, and then to await the result as confidently or as submissively as he can. At the last moment, all his precautions may fail, or his whole plan be overthrown, by a squall as sudden and as unexpected as that which proved fatal to the unfortunate "Eurydice."
THE DOMESTIC SPHINX
Compared to a cat, a dog is a very simple and transparent creature. Sometimes, indeed, he is guilty of acts of deception and hypocrisy, but they are crude and ingenuous compared to the unfathomable wiles of a cat. Mr. North's dog, for instance, who ate the pigeon out of the pie and stuffed up the hole with Mr. North’s ink-sponge, was not an adept in the art of theft; and a fox-terrier with whom the present writer enjoys the intimacy of a common household has disgraced herself this last week by what was, to all intents and purposes, a lie, when a little more astuteness would have shown her the futility of falsehood, in the face of an alibi. She had been tearing up paper and strew-
