living creatures that with song, or hum, | leaves. The phenomena of plant-life, and thousandfold other voices of restless- then, during the night are diverse; but ness, or passion, or pain, made vocal the all remind us of something human, and, hours of day. They all slumber in the generally, of something connected with high grass, on lofty boughs, or whereso-sleep. ever they have built their houses, nests, or other habitations. Over the whole plant-kingdom, too, has the Night poured out the cup of her drowsy enchantments. Vanished are all the flowers which in the sunlight beamed upon us like merry, laughing, joyous human faces. Here and there, a single one lingers half-open in the deepening shades. But most of them have folded their petals close together, and returned to the bud-like form of their infancy; just as human faces in sleep put off the marks of thought, and care, and guilt, and wear once more childhood's look of innocence and calm. But, again, this so-called sleep of plants, extends to all their parts; to the foliageleaves for instance. In general, they press more closely to the stem; some fold up like the flowers; others hang more loosely on to the stem, and lie one over another, just as our limbs are prone to dispose themselves when the tension of the muscles is relaxed in slumber. In this manner, the feather-like leaflets of the Mimosas, Acacias, Cassias, and of all similar Papilionaceous plants, arrange themselves by night; while the leaves of the trefoil, and still more of the woodsorrel, cling together by the edges, and This phenomenon is called the sleep of remain thus till daylight. plants, which, supposing that they really Besides these day-flowers, there are sleep, have certainly different manners of uight-flowers, chiefly tropical. These are sleeping. To speak familiarly, some go generally very short-lived. They will to sleep with their eyes open, others with bloom, and load the air with perfume a their eyes shut. They do not all fold their summer's night through, and then drop petals close together, in the manner we off. Of night-flowers, the most magnifihave described; but all exhibit sleep-cent and striking is the Cereus grandiphenomena of some kind. Of those which flora, or Night-blowing Cereus. At about do thus close and assume the bud-form, midnight, its broad white blossoms, six the various species of the Composite family are the most numerous, and, by reason of their bright yellow and white, or wholly yellow flowers, the most conspicuous. Members of this family are the Dandelion, Daisy, Hawkbit, Hawkweed, and Cat's Ear. Our readers may soon see for themselves (if they have not noticed already) how the ligulate florets of the ray, at the approach of night, close up over the tubular florets of the disk, like some fond mother bending over a child, and lulling it to sleep. or eight inches in diameter, burst forth so suddenly that you can almost see them unfold. At the same instant, the conservatory is filled with a delicious odour, which we have heard compared to vanilla. We cannot end more satisfactorily this little essay upon flowers than with Heinrich Heine's beautiful words about their odours : "Odours are the feelings of flowers; and as the human heart in the night-time, when it believes itself alone and unlistened to, feels more profoundly than by day; so the flowers, too modest to utter themselves in the light, seem to wait for the covering of darkness to express their feelings completely, and breathe them out in soft odours." But monopetalous flowers-those whose corolla is formed of a single piece - cannot do this. They keep their corolla open by night, as by day; but they do not wholly resist the soothing sleep-suggestions of the darkness, nevertheless. See how the foxglove and the stately mullein droop their proud heads, like a man thoroughly tired by a long day's toil or travel; and how the Euphorbias, or the masses of tiny-flowered wood-galium, bend their blossoms towards each other, EVERY nation has some thorn in its like a group of children crouching to- side, and Italy has more than one; but, gether for mutual warmth and comfort of all its thorns, Sicily is perhaps the during nocturnal cold and rain! So, too, most troublesome. Sicily has had a mellike children seeking protection beneath ancholy history, and has been going their mother's apron, the tender blos- downwards ever since it ceased to be the soms of the touch-me-not balsam at night- | granary of Rome. It has been confall cover and hide beneath their own quered, pillaged, overrun by its numer From The Saturday Review. SICILY. Government to protect it, society in Sicily would be arrayed altogether against the Italian Government. And what troubles England with regard to Ireland also troubles Italy with regard to Sicily. A Constitutional Government must respect the forms of freedom, and as Sicily returns deputies to the Italian Parliament, these deputies, although politically they may not belong to the party in Sicily hostile to the Government, naturally seek to please their local friends by calling out that Sicily is enslaved and oppressed whenever means adequately strong are taken to repress crime. It is not therefore to be wondered at that Sicily annoys and embarrasses each Italian Ministry in turn; and of no part of the Italian Kingdom is it more true than of Sicily that Ultramontanism is for Italy a political danger, and not merely a preposterous creed, and that it means the central energy of a great force which is doing its utmost to shake off a civilization it detests, and to restore the beloved reign of every kind of abuse. ous oppressors, but never has had any good done to it; and its last holders before it was annexed to the kingdom of Victor Emmanuel, the Neapolitan Bourbons, adopted the simple plan of allowing it to do exactly as it pleased, and get on as it best could with its inveterate abuses, provided it yielded a handsome annual revenue for the King to spend. From time immemorial there has existed in Sicily a peculiar species of brigandage, which is even now one of the greatest powers in the island. The brigands are not like the Neapolitan brigands. They do not form bands, and swarm about districts which they have made their own. They are part and parcel of ordinary Sicilian society, and seem to pursue the ordinary avocations of life in the four western provinces, and especially in the city of Palermo. When they are wanted by their chiefs to act they are ready, and meanwhile they do a large amount of robbery and murder on their own account in a quiet way, and with almost perfect impunity. If they commit smaller crimes they are, indeed, punished when A writer in the Revue des deux Mondes, they are caught, but if they go high M. Louis- Lande, has collected from enough in crime to be tried by a jury, | Italian sources many curious facts bearthey are acquitted as a matter of course. ing on the recent history of Sicily. BeFrom time immemorial, also, the brig-fore Garibaldi arrived in 1860 to make ands have been the allies of the clergy; Sicily the basis of those operations which not always the political allies, for the were to end in imposing on Sicily the brigands joined Garibaldi with conspicu- Government of Victor Emmanuel, there ous enthusiasm, but the social and do- was a state of things, even in the bad parts mestic allies, and now they and the of the island, which had a strange outside priests are sworn friends, and hate with show of order. The police were the equal intensity the Italian Government. brigands, and the brigands were the poFormerly the Sicilian Church had a sort | lice; and there was a kind of organized of independence of Rome, but since the robbery which made things not so very proclamation of the Pope's Infallibility bad for those who had no choice but to this independence has been abandoned, submit to be fleeced. The public force and the Sicilian priests are the obedient consisted of what were termed "compatools of the directing authorities of Ul-nies of arms," relics of the times when tramontanism. The soil of Sicily is for the most part the property of great holders, and such cultivation as is bestowed on it is the work of peasants who live in towns and go out to labour for a few hours in the day. There are no villages, no farmhouses, and scarcely any roads, so that there is no rural population to withstand the brigands, or to be oppressed by them. The great proprietors have long been accustomed to live on very comfortable terms with the brigands and the priests, with both of whom they made satisfactory bargains. Were it not that Eastern Sicily is more advanced in civilization than Western, and that even in Western Sicily there is some sort of commercial life which asks the Italian each feudal owner had his retainers to fight for him and carry on his quarrels with his neighbours. The captain of a company undertook to be responsible for the peace of a district. If any very great outrage was committed, or if the injured person had sufficient social standing to call with effect for redress, the captain paid an indemnity. No one ever thought of following up the offender by any process of law; but if the criminal was one of the friends of the brigand police, the captain repaid himself by spoiling as quickly as he could some inhabitant of a neighbouring district, while if the criminal was a stranger trespassing on the sacred ground of the company, then he was killed off at the first oppor tunity, and the Judge of the district- It is a bad state of things, but it must for the farce of having Judges was kept be said, in justice to the Italian Governup was merely informed that there had ment, that it is a state of things which it been a death, and no more trouble was has worked hard to mend. General Meditaken. For eleven years the whole po- ci, one of Garibaldi's companions, was lice of Sicily was under the direction of sent to Palermo in 1868, and for four years a first-class brigand, who, until he got held the chief civil and military authority excited by adverse political news in 1859, in his hands, and made even the brig was the mildest of men, and made every- ands respect him. But there were loud thing as comfortable as possible. There outcries against this unconstitutional was sort of security a under his union of the civil and military powers, administration. Travellers paid to be and it unfortunately happened that some safe, and they were safe. And it was of the leaders of the Parliamentary Oponly towards the close of this supreme position who had joined in these outpolice-brigand's reign that he lost his cries came into office, and had to see the authority, because a brigand in a very result of their clamour in the resignation inferior position ventured to try to as- of General Medici, and in things getting sassinate him in open day as he was much worse in Palermo since he left. walking with his wife, and was allowed The Palermo brigands tried the experito escape with impunity. When Gari- ment in 1866 of an open outbreak against baldi arrived, the brigands generally the Government, and for about a week took his side, and, as a good way of the city was in their hands. But when a showing their enthusiasm for his sacred sufficient number of troops could be colcause, broke open all the prisons, and restored their suffering brethren to a liberty by which they profited so much that Garibaldi's regiments were quite inconveniently full of convicts. But Garibaldi was not the sort of man to let his followers pursue their own devices; and while his Dictatorship lasted he made the brigands feel they had a master. At last, however, the Italian Government took possession of Sicily, and behaved as a regular government is bound to do. It introduced law and trial by jury, and reforms in the police and in the magistracy, and did its very best to put down brigandage by main force. But its success has been very imperfect, for the brigands gained more by having juries to try them than they lost by having soldiers to hunt them down. It is indeed most difficult to hunt brigands down in Sicily, for almost every one is a brigand or a friend of a brigand, and no one would dream for a moment of doing anything so unhandsome, so dishonourable, and so un-Sicilian as helping Justice to catch and punish a murderer. There is, too, a strong local spirit in Sicily, and the Sicilians are indignant that they have not Home Rule after their own fashion, and that strangers like the Italians persist in interfering and forbidding them to cut each other's throats. Sicily for the Sicilians is the cry of the brigands; and as Sicily for the Sicilians means Sicily for the Ultramontanes, it is the cry of the priests too, and the sort of treason which Prince Bismarck so much dislikes is quite the fashion in Sicilian pulpits. lected, the insurgents received so severe a lesson that it will be with very great hesitation that they will again openly defy Italy. If Italy went to war and encountered disasters of any kind, a Sicilian insurrection would be a certainty. But, as things are at present, there is more of a sul.en opposition to everything the Government does than risk of a violent catastrophe. The law is looked upon as a foreign and evil invention by the true Sicilian, and he resists it as much as he dares, and gains glory and social esteem by the amount of resistance that he ventures to show. If a new law is introduced which is distasteful to the brig ands and the priests, it is simply ignored, unless the penalties of disregarding it are too heavy. The people of Palermo for the most part decline to go through the form of civil marriage, without which the religious ceremony has no legal effect. The Government can make their chil dren illegitimate in point of law, but it cannot make them marry otherwise than as they please. In fact, it is not those who are at present confronting it that the Government can hope to do much with, or reduce to order and obedience. It is obliged to look to the future, to educate children, to make roads, to improve ports, to lay the foundations of a new era of material prosperity. It has done much more in this way for Sicily than could have been expected, considering the great disadvantages under which it has to work. It has built a great number of schools, and got a fair proportion of children to attend them; it has spent large sums on public works; | chance of displaying a political temper at it will soon open up the interior of the all. The masses have only just begun to island, which is at present almost un- will about politics, and nobody can pretend known to the dwellers on the coast; it is to state accurately what their will is, -to making Palermo an excellent commercial assert that it is not conservative, or to harbour, and a very considerable commer- maintain that the new depositaries of cial centre. In the meantime, if it only power will not come to much the same will abolish trial by jury and give up all conclusions as the old depositaries did. attempts to govern Sicily according to We are always hearing of socialism and Sicilian ideas, then, as M. Louis-Lande communism, and the like; but Jacqueries says, there may be hopes for Sicily even have occurred before without much politiin this generation. He invites his French cal result, and after all, outside England readers to look at Ireland and see the a heavy majority of the European peoples happy effects produced there by Coer- are in some form or other possessed of cion Acts. Perhaps Irishmen would not landed property. They have not shown think the comparison complimentary; as yet anything like a strong inclination but it is only when foreign critics ex- to be rid of individual rulers, or except in amine carefully into the difficulties under France to eject the families which hiswhich government is often actually carried toric events have placed in the position on that they can recognize that measures of hereditary leaders. Even in France, must often be taken which Liberal Gov-if the eldest Bourbon had been a person ernments honestly regret. From The Spectator. THE Confirmation of Prince Frederick William Albert Victor of Hohenzollern, the eldest son of the Crown Prince of Prussia, would hardly have been described in such detail, or by telegraph, but for the dulness of the season, but still it has an interest of a kind for all speculative politicians. The lad is the future heir of the greatest throne now existing in the world, but it may be forty years before he ascends it, and it is difficult to avoid a moment's speculation whether, when his turn has arrived, the throne will be there to receive him. In other words, will the extraordinary arrangement under which the control, or leadership, or presidency of most European States is entrusted to a minute hereditary caste, comprising at most only three families-the Catholic House, the Protestant House, and the House of Othman endure through the active lives of two more generations? It is the custom of the hour to think that it will not, as it is the custom of the hour to fancy that Christianity is dying; but we are by no means confident that the belief is founded upon anything better than an à priori assumption that the age, i.e., the general temper of Western mankind, is hostile to hereditary claims. No one knows or can know very much of the general temper of European peoples, for they have only to-day begun to have a of modern ideas -- peror of Germany, his eldest son, the Emperor of Brazil, Archduke Albrecht of Austria, the late King of Denmark, the Duc d'Aumale, and King Oscar, it seems useless to assert that the caste is mentally worn out. They will have strength, if their people will let them be, to go on being; and as yet there is no proof quite beyond question that their people do not intend to let them be, that they are seriously prepared to supersede them by other Chiefs. On the contrary, the evidence, though too slight as yet for conclusions, points to the theory that they, these Hereditary Royalties, are the only chiefs large populations will endure; that the alternatives lie between them and mere officers, selected almost by chance, and sent back by popular jealousy very quickly into obscurity. In the whole series of Republics now covering both Americas outside Brazil, there cannot be said to be a single figure occupying anything like the position that, for instance, Wellington occupied in this country; not one who is an accepted force, a personage whose influence will endure for life. Of course institutions can be made to take the place of men, but the masses now assuming power may not be more willing than the influential classes who as Marshal von Moltke. For all that ap- world, who are with few exceptions the pears, the caste may endure, if it does picked men of professions twenty er not perish by decay, and we do not re-thirty times more numerous than the member a time when the signs of decay caste; but if we remember the Emwere less visible to ordinary eyes. By all the laws of physiologists, the Royal caste, which intermarries much, which is bred unavoidably in luxury, and which is at least as dissolute as any aristocratic group, ought to be losing its physical vitality, but it is not losing it at all. The Sovereigns, actual or potential, of Europe would make a formidable squadron of dragoons. The Emperor of Germany is perhaps the finest man physically who has reigned since Charlemagne. Any Colonel in the Guards would accept his son as a most hopeful recruit. His nephew, the Red Prince, is as formidable a hussar as ever rode. The Emperor of Austria is as stately of presence as an ideal King. The eldest Wittelbach is a wild rider, who delights in furious midnight galloping. The Prince of Wales, whose pedigree stretches, if not to Odin, far past Egbert, rides as straight to hounds as a professional whip. The King of Italy, the coronet of whose ancestor was closed before Charlemagne died, is a successful chamois-hunter, a good cavalry officer, and a man for whom danger has an actual charm. His eldest son is as strong as himself; and his younger son, Amadeo, a man of reckless personal gallantry. The eldest Romanoff is almost gigantic, and endures un-preceded them to build those institucomplainingly fatigues which try the constitutions of his aide-de-camps. The Bourbons seem more worn, but one of them, the Duc d'Aumale, is the very type of the cultivated, but over-stern General; Don Carlos is six feet one; another, Don Carlos's soldier-brother, is a Murat; a third, the Comte d'Eu, is believed in Brazil to be a General of unusual capacity; and a fourth served with distinction throughout the Franco-German war. It is very well to write about crétins, but there is no evidence whatever that the caste is crétin physically, and not much that it is wearing out in mind. It is badly bred, no doubt, particularly in Catholic countries, and has a certain liability to brain-disease, while it is mentally bothered by the clash between modern ideas and the ideas it is convenient for a reigning caste to hold; but if the whole of it were shovelled into our own Upper House, the Peers as a body would be abler than they are. Few of the Royal Families may be able to compare with the great statesmen of the tions up, may, on the contrary, be much less willing to take all the trouble and make all the sacrifices which impersonal institutions involve. The popular notion that they will, may prove to be an assumption, resting upon nothing better than the fact that for some years past the artisans of cities have been very eager for more comfort, and much inclined to think that they can secure it, by chan ging certain political and social arrangements which they think stand in their way. The artisans of the cities cannot govern Europe, and it is by no means proved yet that if their desire for more comfort were abated by circumstances, as has been the case to some extent in Great Britain, they would remain permanently desirous of a change the first steps towards which would intensify all the evils of their condition. May not, however, to exhaust the speculative possibilities, a movement break out within the Royal Caste itself, a sort of epidemic of Abdication, pro duced either by weariness, or discontent, |