ily immediately before death; and also the "choice history" of Captain Coucy, who, dying in Hungary, sent his heart back to France, as a gift to his own true love. She, however, had been forced by her father into a reluctant and unhappy marriage; and her husband, intercepting the token, had it cooked into a "well - relished dish," which he persuaded his wife to eat. When she had obeyed, he told her, in cruel sport, the ghastly nature of the food; but she, "in a sudden exaltation of joy, and with a far-fetch'd sigh, cried, This is a precious cordial indeed,' and so lick'd the dish, saying, 'It is so precious that 't is pity to put ever any meat upon it.' So she went to her chamber, and in the morning she was found stone dead." Did ever rueful tale have such triumphant ending?

Of other letter-writers, Charles Lamb and Madame de Sévigné are perhaps best suited for our dozy hours, because they are sure to put us into a good and amiable frame of mind, fit for fair slumber and the ivory gates. Moreover, the bulk of Madame de Sévigné's correspondence is so great that, unless we have been very faithful and constant readers, we are likely to open into something which is new to us; and as for Lamb, those who love him at all love him so well that it matters little which of his letters they read, or how often they have read them before. Only it is best to select those written in the meridian of his life. The earlier ones are too painful, the later ones too sad. Let us take him at his happiest, and be happy with him for an hour; for, unless we go cheerfully to bed, the portals of horn open for us with sullen murmur, and fretful dreams, more disquieting than even the troubled thoughts of day, flit batlike round our melancholy pillows.

Miss Austen is likewise the best of midnight friends. There stand her novels, few in number and shabby with much handling, and the god Hermes smiles

upon them kindly. We have known them well for years. There is no fresh nook to be explored, no forgotten page to be revisited. But we will take one down, and re-read for the fiftieth time the history of the theatricals at Mansfield Park; and see Mr. Yates ranting by himself in the dining-room, and the indefatigable lovers rehearsing amorously on the stage, and poor Mr. Rushworth stumbling through his two-and-forty speeches, and Fanny Price, in the chilly little schoolroom, listening disconsolately as her cousin Edmund and Mary Crawford go through their parts with more spirit and animation than the occasion seems to demand. When Sir Thomas returns, most inopportunely, from Antigua, we lay down the book with a sigh of gentle satisfaction, knowing that we shall find all these people in the morning just where they belong, and not, after the fashion of some modern novels, spirited overnight to the antipodes, with a breakneck gap of months or years to be spanned by our drooping imaginations. Sir Walter Scott tells us, with tacit approbation, of an old lady who always had Sir Charles Grandison read to her when she felt drowsy; because, should she fall asleep and waken up again, she would lose nothing of the story, but would find the characters just where she had left them, "conversing in the cedar-parlour." It would be possible to take a refreshing nap did our sympathy allow us such an alleviation while Clarissa Harlowe is writing, on some tiny scraps of hidden paper, letters which fill a dozen printed pages.

Lovers of George Borrow are wont to claim that he is one of the choicest of bedside comrades. Mr. Birrell, indeed, stoutly maintains that slumber, healthy and calm, follows the reading of his books just as it follows a brisk walk or rattling drive. "A single chapter of Borrow is air and exercise." Neither need we be very wide awake when we skim over his pages. He can be read

with half-closed eyes, and we feel his stir and animation pleasantly from without, just as we feel the motion of a carriage when we are heavy with sleep. Peacock is too clever, and his cleverness has too much meaning and emphasis for this lazy delight. Yet, nevertheless, The Misfortunes of Elphin is an engaging book to re-read-if one knows it well already in moments of drowsy satisfaction. Then will the convivial humor of Seithenyn ap Seithyn awake a sympathetic echo in our hearts, shorn for the nonce of all moral responsibility. Then will the roar of the ocean surging through the rotten dikes make the warm chimney corner doubly grateful. Then is the reader pleased to follow the fortunes of the uncrowned prince among a people who, having "no pamphleteering societies to demonstrate that reading and writing are better than meat and drink," lived without political science, and lost themselves contentedly "in the grossness of beef and ale." Peacock, moreover, in spite of his keenness and virility, is easily forgotten. We can "read him new," and double our enjoyment. His characters seldom have any substantiality. We remember the talk, but not the talkers, and so go blithely back to those scenes of glad good-fellowship, to that admirable conservatism and that caustic wit.

Let us, then, instead of striving so strenuously to remember all we read, be grateful that we can occasionally forget. Mr. Samuel Pepys, who knew how to extract a fair share of pleasure out of life, frankly admits that he delighted in seeing an old play over again, because he was wise enough to commit none of it to memory; and Mr. Lang, who gives his vote to Pepys's Diary as the very prince of bedside books, the one "which may send a man happily to sleep with a smile on his lips," declares it owes its fit ness for this post to the ease with which it can be forgotten. "Your deeds and misdeeds," he writes, "your dinners and

kisses, glide from our recollections, and being read again, surprise and amuse us afresh. Compared with you, Montaigne is dry, Boswell is too full of matter; but one can take you up anywhere, and anywhere lay you down, certain of being diverted by the picture of that companion with whom you made your journey through life. . . . You are perpetually the most amusing of gossips, and, of all who have gossiped about themselves, the only one who tells the truth."

And the poets allied with Hermes and happy slumber, who are they? Mr. Browning is surely not one of the kindly group. I would as lief read Mr. George Meredith's prose as Mr. Browning's verse in that hour of effortless enjoyment. But Wordsworth holds some placid moments in his keeping, and we may wander on simple errands by his side, taking good care never to listen to philosophy, but only looking at all he shows us, until our hearts are surfeited with pleasure, and the golden daffodils dance drowsily before our closing eyes. Keats belongs to dreamier moods, when, as we read, the music of his words, the keen creative magic of his style, lure us away from earth. We leave the darkness of night, and the grayness of morning. We cease thinking, and are content to feel. It is an elfin storm we hear beating against the casement; it is the foam of fairy seas that washes on the shore.

"Blissfully havened both from joy and pain," wrapped in soft, slumberous satisfaction, we are but vaguely conscious of the enchanted air we breathe, or of our own unutterable well-being. There is no English poem, save only Christabel, which can lead us like The Eve of St. Agnes straight to the ivory gates, and waft us gently from waking dreams to the mistier visions of sleep. But there are many English poets-Herrick, and Marvell, and Gray, and Cowper, and Tennyson—who have bedside verses for us all. Herrick, indeed, though breathing the freshness of morning, is a de

lightful companion for night. He calls us so distinctly and seductively to leave, as he did, the grievous cares of life; to close our ears to the penetrating voice of duty; to turn away our eyes from the black scaffold of King Charles; and to watch, with him, the blossoms shaken in the April wind, and the whitethorn of May time blooming on the hills, and the sheen of Julia's robe, as she goes by with laughter. This is not a voice to sway us at broad noon, when we are striving painfully to do our little share

of work; but Hesperus should bring some respite even to the dutiful, and in our dozy hours it is sweet to lay aside all labor, and keenness, and altruism. Adonis, says the old myth, fled from the amorous arms of Aphrodite to the cold Queen of Shadows who could promise him nothing but repose. Worn with passion, wearied of delight, he lay at the feet of Persephone, and bartered away youth, strength, and love for the waters of oblivion and the coveted blessing of sleep.

Agnes Repplier.

THE recent action of the government of Santo Domingo in establishing an entirely new coinage system has an interest not only as being that of the first of the Spanish-American countries to create a single gold standard, but also as bearing on the solution of the problem which has long confronted India, and now confronts many other silver-using countries. The action of the Dominican government on this question is of an importance out of all proportion to its area and population.1 Instead of seeing its income, paid in silver, diminish in purchasing power with the steady fall in the value of silver, followed by inevitable loss of public credit and domestic bankruptcy, this courageous government has intelligently grappled with the difficulty, and made for itself a stable currency, and a stable basis of exchange with Europe and the United States. Having had a share in devising the system, it seemed to me well to put on record an account of the reform.

The problem of this reform presented many difficulties; only that scheme would be acceptable which was adapted to the situation as it existed. An ideal scheme

1 Its area is about 17,000 square miles, and its population about 400,000. It occupies the

was not looked for. Not only must a means of profit be furnished to the government as a reason for its adoption, but it must commend itself to the public as a means of prosperity and as a liberation from existing evils. When also taking into account the resistance of unthinking minds to accepting a new kind of money, it must be confessed that the solution of the problem was far from easy. Nor was it easy to suit correct monetary principles to practical conditions, when the latter were inflexible. The persistence of monetary habits must not be overlooked. The old money of account was the Mexican dollar; while the exchanges with gold-using countries of Europe and the United States were bewilderingly unstable, and must be reduced to the stability of gold. That is, silver must, for many reasons, remain the money most in use, while at the same time it must have an absolutely fixed relation to gold, or foreign exchange would again fluctuate so as to make business only a matter of betting.

When the special steamer carrying our party arrived at Puerto Plata, the eastern two thirds of the island, the western third of which is Haiti.

situation had culminated in a state of great excitement. In the previous twenty days the silver prices of goods had advanced about thirty per cent. Here was a curious monetary phenomenon. The advocates of silver have confidently declared that silver has not fallen as regards goods, but that gold has risen as regards both silver and goods.1 On this point the experience of Santo Domingo is worth examining. To Americans it is of practical interest; for the Dominicans purchase very largely of American goods, pork, flour, macaroni, soap, and the like. Bought at prices in the United States based on gold, these articles had been sold to retail dealers in Santo Domingo on credit often as long as nine months, and at prices payable in Mexican silver dollars. The experiment, moreover, was not interrupted by any accidents or extraneous influences. It was the silver standard in its simplest form. The Mexican dollar was not the coin of Santo Domingo, and so it circulated only according to its intrinsic value as silver. It was given no fictitious value; no connection with gold or with any other kind of currency enhanced its desirability, or created any discrimination against it. It was receivable at the custom-houses, and for all payments; there was no other circulating. medium. What was the outcome? The result was to have been expected. The Mexican silver dollar was worth only the value of the 377.4 grains of pure silver contained in it. When silver fell in the bullion market, so fell the value of silver in the Mexican dollar; and prices consequently rose. That prices did not rise earlier,

1 E. Benj. Andrews, Quarterly Journal of Economics, June, 1894, page 323.

2 A Chinaman in Puerto Plata, ignorant of the rise of prices decided upon by the larger merchants, found, to his amazement and delight, that his stock of rice and other goods was selling remarkably well; indeed, his sales for the day had exceeded any previous record. Leaving his empty shelves, he went to an importer to replenish his stock. He then discovered that

or adapt themselves more flexibly to the changes in the value of silver relatively to gold in the outside world, is easily accounted for by the friction existing in the methods of doing business in a country removed from rapid communication with other countries, and by the torpid habits of mind among large classes of people. A few men dominated the trade of the country; and these fatuously believed that silver must rise again. At last, however, the fall convinced the most conservative, and it was followed by a sauve qui peut, in which the wealthy looked out for themselves, and the ignorant lost,2-that which generally happens in fluctuations originating in an unstable currency.

The annoyances and losses arising from a fluctuating rate of exchange with gold-using countries formed a large element in the situation. Indeed, this matter is one which is regarded by bimetallists as sufficiently grave to be used as an argument for their theory. The experiment of Santo Domingo, therefore, deserves watching as a means of correcting this difficulty, especially as no resort was made to bimetallism in the system adopted. The fluctuations in silver had produced the fluctuations in exchange; and business calculations even for the near future were made hopelessly uncertain.

Exchange on New York is quoted in the number of Mexican dollars necessary to buy 100 gold dollars. When exchange was quoted at 185 or 208, it meant that 185 or 208 Mexican dollars were regarded as the equivalent of 100 gold dollars. It can be easily under

he could not buy new goods for anything like the price at which he had already sold. By this inductive method he learned to hate silver.

3 Consequently, Dominican exchange on New York fluctuated with the price of Mexican dollars in the New York market. During my stay in Santo Domingo city, Mexican dollars were quoted at 48 cents in New York; and the exchange being obtained by dividing 100 by 48, this would give about 208.

stood, therefore, how business suffered. A sugar-planter, marketing his raw sugar in New York, would draw against the shipment a bill, and sell that in Santo Domingo for the Mexican silver with which to pay his laborers. If, as happened, in a period of two months Mexican dollars fell from 56 to 48 cents in New York, he might find himself with a less number of Mexican dollars in return for his sugar than he would have had, had he waited. On the other hand, since he pays his laborers in silver, by a fall in silver he gets more dollars in silver in exchange for his bill, and thus pays for his labor a less part of the product. In such a case the laborer loses. But producers who export their products generally gain, because they sell in goldusing countries, and pay their expenses in silver. The growers of coffee, cacao, tobacco, and sugar, consequently, were in the main unfavorably affected, under the old silver régime, only by the uncertainty as to the future.

The classes, however, who suffered most were the laborers, and the dealers in imported goods of general consumption. Merchants, for example, import ing cotton goods from gold-using countries, on credit, were under obligations to pay in gold, on settling accounts at the end of the period of credit. In Santo Domingo the importers sell to small dealers, who distribute goods directly to consumers. These small dealers sell on credit, often for as long as nine months, and they pay the importers in silver. Clearly, when silver was paid in nine months after purchase of goods, the loss from the lessened value of silver fell upon the merchants who were obliged to settle accounts in gold. Many articles are imported, and as the class of those engaged in distributing goods is very large, compared with producers, the distress was widespread; and in the minds of all it was clearly associated with its real cause, the fall in silver. The goods did not change in prices relatively to

gold; silver changed relatively to the goods as well as to gold, as every one knew.

As before said, the laborer generally suffered most. He it was who, being less familiar with monetary operations, could not foresee trouble and ward it off; and he also, being the recipient of wages customarily fixed at sixty or seventy-five cents in Mexican coin, was the victim of the rise of prices. His wages did not go as far as before. The fall of silver, in short, lowered his real wages. Hence it was no wonder that the agitation for reform secured a strong support among the natives of the country, who were mainly to be found in the working and trading classes. And it was equally natural that the sugar-planters and exporting classes, who were largely foreigners, should be inclined to look unfavorably upon monetary reform. The latter, moreover, were also affected in other ways; not only did they suffer by a rise of wages, but the establishment of a gold standard brought with it an increase of duties.

The Dominican revenue is obtained almost entirely from customs, which are collected, under a contract with the government, by an American company known as the San Domingo Improvement Company. These duties, having been in the past payable in Mexican dollars, were a diminishing source of revenue, and a diminishing means of paying gold interest on bonds held in Europe and America. So that the government found itself interested in any plan which would increase the revenues, and would prevent the steady decline in the income at its disposal. A stable standard of payment, instead of a steadily shrinking one, would enable the budget to be planned with some certainty as to its future outcome. The same reasons which led the government to favor a reform of the monetary system led the sugar-planters, who paid an export duty and some minor fees connected therewith, to look