ded and defied, has just received a new and
somewhat startling illustration in the sudden death of the amiable
daughter and much-beloved wife of Secretary Bayard. Can it be necessary
that society should sacrifice its brightest ornaments, and literally do
itself to death, in order to maintain its existence? "Come ye yourselves
into a desert place, and rest a while," reveals a law of health and
happiness as inexorable and exacting in its demands, and as universal in
its sway and scope, as any at work in the frame of material nature. Let
us learn the truth and value of this ancient hint over the tear-bedewed
grave of Kate Bayard.

Still streams
Oft water fairest meadows, and the bird
That flutters least is longest on the wing.

* * * * *

The inevitable sequel of the English Parliamentary elections has come a
little sooner than the twin foes of Lord Salisbury's ministry had
ventured to anticipate. The "Constitutional" party, as English Toryism
loves to style itself, has suffered signal and humiliating defeat, after
a brief and precarious career of a few months; and the collapse is quite
as complete as it is sudden. Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Parnell on the one
hand, and the Marquis of Salisbury and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach on the
other, must have been equally unprepared for what has happened. The
Queen, caring not to conceal her political predilections, hesitated not
to give her ostentatious approval and powerful endorsement to Tory
management by consenting to open Parliament, as she had previously done
for Lord Beaconsfield after his return from Berlin. A phenomenally large
and brilliant assemblage of dukes, marquises, earls and viscounts, at
Lord Salisbury's parliamentary dinner had made a similar attempt, a few
days before, to awe and fascinate by a spectacle of pomp and pageantry
the too impressionable Briton. Nothing has been omitted that could in
any way buttress the insecure and tottering fabric of aristocratic
power. But as the ancient sage shrewdly observed, dementation is the
prelude of doom; "whom the gods destroy they first infatuate." The
representatives of the nation have taken the earliest opportunity that
offered itself of rebuking this formidable attempt to over-ride by an
ill-advised and illegitimate use of the "favor of the sovereign" the
definitely declared will of the British people. The last Parliament was
exceptionally rich in the displa