delicate relations and complaints are spoken of and discussed without the slightest attempt at concealment or periphrasis.  It is no doubt true, that marriage is far from general among the middle and lower classes; and a woman may live with a man in open concubinage without serious detriment to her character or position, so long as she remains faithful to him.[1] It is only when she becomes “light o’ love” and indiscriminate in her conduct, that she is avoided and despised.  And although the remark may sound strangely to American ears, I have no question that this left-hand compact, on the whole, is here quite as well kept as the vows which have secured the formal sanction of the law and the Church.

[Footnote 1:  But few statistics relating to this subject are in existence; but those few quite bear out these observations.  According to the official returns of the District of Amatitlan in Guatemala, the whole number of births in that Department for the year 1858 was 1394, of which 581 were illegitimate!]

[To be continued.]

THE “CATTLE” TO THE “POET."[Footnote]

  How do you know what the cow may know,
    As under the tasselled bough she lies,
  When earth is a-beat with the life below,
  When the orient mornings redden and glow,
  When the silent butterflies come and go,—­
    The dreamy cow with the Juno eyes?

  How do you know that she may not know
    That the meadow all over is lettered, “Love,”
  Or hear the mystic syllable low
  In the grasses’ growth and the waters’ flow? 
  How do you know that she may not know
    What the robin sings on the twig above?

  [Footnote:  See “The Poet’s Friends,”
  Atlantic Monthly, vol. v., p. 185.]

MORE WORDS ABOUT SHELLEY.

There is a moral or a lesson to be found in the life of almost every man, the chief duty of a biographer being to set forth and illustrate this; and a history of the commonest individual, if written truly, could not fail to be interesting to his fellows; for the feelings and aspirations of men are pretty much alike all the world over, and the elements of genius not very unequally distributed through the mass of mankind,—­the thing itself being a development due to circumstances, very probably, as much as to anything singular in the man.  But there are few good biographies extant; the writers, for the most part, contenting themselves with superficial facts, refusing or unable to follow the mind and motive powers of the subject,—­or following these imperfectly.  For this reason, they who would read the truest kind of biographies must turn to those written by men of themselves,—­that is, the autobiographies; and these are, in fact, found to be among the most attractive specimens of literature in our language, or any other.