66 pottery had been reconstructed from such my museum, where you perceive ornaments fragments. I observe, in passing, that the of a more advanced period, though still befragments of pottery are of rough manufacture, longing to the Lake-people. Look at these and, in their dark burnt-looking substance bracelets of horn, so deep in circumference contain morsels of shining quartz, or mica, but so small in diameter; you would think unassimilated to the prevailing texture. I that even a child's hand could not enter possess some fragments, that, by carrying out them; yet here are the human bones still in the segments of the circle, appear to have them." This was true. The professor, findbeen of great size (singular exception to the ing the bracelets on the skeleton of a fullgeneral littleness of the relics): as big, in-grown person, had fixed the bones of the deed, as Roman wine-vases. Another thing wrist within the bracelets by pouring cement to be observed, is, the way these pots were round them. Look, also, resumed the proevidently supported. They had pointed ends, fessor, at that bronze sword, still later in date and near them are found circular open rings found at a time when the Age of Wood and of pottery whose use was evidently to support Stone became the Age of Bronze; observe the pointed ends of the vases, which were in- that the handle is only co-extensive with three capable of standing by themselves. The ring of my fingers, though my hand, like myself, of burnt clay was the mortise, the pegtop-like is not very big. I met, some time ago, a termination was the tenon of the vase. In Peruvian lady, who was the last descendant connection with this the professor told me of Montezuma, and hers was the only hand that Admiral Elliot, who had visited the mu- and wrist I have ever known slip easily into seum, recognized this primitive form of sup- that bracelet, which is as inflexible for the port as still used by the Hindoos and other hand as Cinderella's glass slipper was for the Indian people. feet." This brings me to the probable origin of That these Lake relics are, in very truth, these ancient predecessors of the Swiss. of a most remote antiquity, was proved in They were a wave of that great tide which various ways by Professor Troyon. He said, set in towards Europe from the East, choos-"A discovery that was made in the valley of ing chiefly the inland seas, and ascending the Orbe may give an idea of this antiquity. rivers, as their roadways, or rather waterways, to new regions, where they should replenish the tenantless earth. Naturally such tribes, accustomed to water, chose water whereon to found their first settlements. Moreover, the long narrow causeways of wood, that led from the shore to their habitations, became a protection to them from wild beasts, or wilder human enemies. Also the waters supplied them with ready food, and were as Nature's own clearings amidst the shaggy mountains and impenetrable forests, the mere fringe of which they with difficulty cut away for household purposes. Advanced into the free lake, the settlers could look around them and breathe the air of heaven. Herodotus has described similar lacustrine dwellings belonging to the Pæonians, who had settled on Lake Prasias, in Turkey. When I asked the professor, "Why the implements of this ancient race were so babylike and sma?" he replied, "Probably because they themselves were small, and, like the Orientals, had very small hands and feet. However," he continued, "this is not conjecture, but fact. Look here at the next case in The Lake of Neufchâtel, it is well-known, is always, because of the increase of the peatbogs and the delta of alluvial matter formed by the rivers Thiele and Buron, retreating further back from the Lake of Neufchâtel. In the time of the Romans, the actual site of Yverdun was under water. There was even a time when all the valley was covered by the lake. Then Mount Chamblon was an island, and, at the foot of this mount, were Lake-villages of the ancient people, whose relics, which are all of the Age of Stone, are now found many feet below the surface of the bog. By accurate calculation of the time that the lake now takes in its retreatings, we find that the destruction of these lake-dwellings must have occurred, at latest, in the fifteenth century before the Christian era. "But here is another proof of this," continued the professor. Look at these firpoles which were found in the Lake of Geneva, the supports of ancient villages of a later date, though still of a period long previous to the Roman conquest. You see that they are the real wood, while I only possess casts of the primitive poles; and that they are not on.v ripened grain (for the catastrophe must have happened at harvest time), such as, even at this day, may be seen floating on the halfquaggy, inundating rivers and channel-pools much longer than the ancient stakes, but curiously worn to a gradual slenderness, and to a point, by the gentle but constant action of the waves upon their upper surfaces. Why Is this difference? Because, these poles, of China. Penetrate into those circular Red when discovered, still projected two or three feet above the mud of the lake, while the others were covered by the mud itself. Now it is calculated that a thousand years, at least, must have elapsed before the fir-poles could oe brought, by the slow action of tideless water, to the level of the bed of the lake. Indian-like wigwams that stand like beehives on the stationary rafts, and see the rude pots upon the earthen shelves, the traps in the floor for catching or preserving fish, the little barbarian children, tethered by the foot with a cord to a projecting stake, lest they fall into the water (both these particularities are menI own that these reasons did not quite con- tioned by Heredotus in his account of the vince me of the deduction at which the pro- Pæonians), and behold the industrious natives fessor wished to arrive; namely, that the themselves, the pigmy race, with their small, first, and not altogether savage, inhabitants but constructive and not cruel heads, and of Switzerland, dated from two thousand years their long, flexible, Hindoo-like hands. Enter before Christ. Many circumstances-drain- their manufactories for their ingenious tools ing, for instance-might, I thought, have ex- and petty ornaments; and, when you have pedited the retiring of the waters, or the set the whole nation busy at their several emwearing away of the piles. Nevertheless, with all the caution of scepticism, it is impossible not to allow that the Lake-relics proceed from an age long anterior to the Christian era, and very far more remote than the Roman conquest. Even supposing the objects now discovered, to be coeval with the time when Herodotus mentions the Pæonian Lakers, caey remount to the seventy-fourth Olympiad, answering to four hundred and eighty-four years before Christ-an antiquity to be respected by us poor mortals, who grow old in seventy whirls of our little planet. ployments, suddenly crush the whole of your scene and drama by the irruption of some wild band of warlike Gauls, who annihilate our poor aborigines, and their fragile dwellings, by casting fire-balls into the Lake-villages, and killing or carrying away the inhabitants. No other combination of circumstances can account for the appearances which the remains of the Lake villages present. The carbonized corn, the pieces of wood half burnt, the marks of fire everywhere, all testify to the destruction of these villages by fire. Then. Pursuing our investigations, we find that, again, it is apparent that all industry stopped dark as it may appear in its origin, the end of suddenly. The workman was at his polishthis Lacustrine dynasty has a sad light casting, the housewife was grinding corn by hand upon its cause. The villages, the inhabitants, between two flat stones, but, by a fate worse all evidently perished by a sudden catastrophe; and that catastrophe was fire. than that denounced upon Jerusalem-" the one taken and the other left "—of our poor To understand this, reconstruct, by the Lake people none were left. The late exarchitecture of fancy, the primitive villages of plorers of these mysteries came, at Moosseethe Swiss Lakers. Take your stand on some dorf, upon a marvellous heap of objects of rock of vantage, whence you can see all that industry, which, by their state and number. is not water or snowy summit, covered with crowded over a considerable area, proved that black-looking crowded pine forests that teem the discoverers were standing on the site of with the red-deer—once numerous in Switzer- the village manufactory of industrial impleland, now extinct. Throw out your narrow ments. Professor Troyon showed me many wooden causeways a hundred yards forward proofs that it was so-pieces of serpentine, into the shallow waters nearest the shore, half-fashioned and thrown away because they drive whole quincunxes of fir-poles into the had been broken in the cutting, and renderea hed of the lake, top them with rudely fash-unfit for use; split stag's-horn also rejected; ioned planks, and upon the artificial peninsula and, more affecting still, instruments that now elevated above the waters, transport a were not thrown away because of defect, but oit of rivery Orientalism: dwelling-places for were dropped unfinished because of a sudden man, gardens, if you wish, or patches of catastrophe: axes that lay beside the handles, into which time was not given to insert them; poniards yet unsharpened; needles or hairpins yet unpointed. of gems, far from being unknown, were displayed in works of human fancy, then young and vigorous, which modern art but feebly imitates. There is, however, one group of relics of the ante-Roman period, evidences of an event that probably occurred two centuries before Christ, which I cannot pass over in silence, since these evidences contrast most strikingly with any revelations that we obtain of the cept the poniards-peaceful people of the Lakes. He who visits Pompeii is not so much affected by the architecture he finds there, as by the signs of human life that realize the sudden destruction of the city. The woman's crouching form, impressed upon the lava that had filled a cellar, interests the heart more than hundreds of tesselated pavements. The remains fetched up from the subaqueous Pom- harmless, childish, and in all respects-expeiis of Switzerland also produce this touching and human effect. They are more than books or oldest parchments wherein to read how race after race of men do verily pass away, according to old Homer's deathless simile, like leaves on trees. Science, too, on such evidences of abrupt conclusions to things, is wonderfully impelled to speculate on the wherefore of these stern closings-up of human periods. It is as if some power had grown tired of a particular creation. Strong relation here to the geology of nature, in which the mintage of preceding eras is found suddenly to cease; the medals, indeed, laid up in the stupendous repositories of a past creation, but the die that stamped them broken forever, and cast away as a thing of no account. No otherwise is it with the geology of man, with human relics subterrene or subaqueous. In the midst of their full life they were suddenly and utterly destroyed; if not by a volcano or an earthquake that ingulfs or overwhelms them, by man's own rage. The excavations of Wroxeter display a people suddenly crushed by some other people. The conquered are gone: the conquerors themselves have passed away. Similarly, the Swiss lakes are now giving up their records of hasty catastrophes, and nations blotted out forever. But why so sudden? Why so complete these destructions? Here, the doombook is silent and decipherless. The time had grown warlike: as the bronze spear-heads and swords demonstrate. The human beings had grown larger: I could almost insinuate my hand into the inflexible bronze circle without a clasp, which was called a woman's bracelet, while a woman's bronze girdle, with clasp, gave no wasplike idea of the women's waists of the period. Society had left the lakes, as too tame, in order to dwell in the hills and forests: living, to construct bloody altars; dying, to be burnt and potted in tumuli. The relics I was now surveying came from a tumulis opened some years ago, under the direction of Professor Troyon, of course, in a forest, on a hill. The hill and the forest are about five miles inland from Lausanne. The relics are three earthen pots which are filled with a calcined-looking stuff; then, sundry small bones of animals; then a number of warlike implements, and a still greater number of female ornaments, consisting of glass-bead necklaces and bracelets, that have an Egyptian character, and a very curious appendage, like a little bronze cage with a round white stone loose in it—a child's rattle, in fact. These objects were found in the following order: Lowest were the earthen pots that held all which had once been a hero, or heroes. Above these, came a vast assemblage of bones, I can only glance at later eras to be read supposed to be those of the warrior's favorite in the contents of Professor Troyon's museum. animals, which were slain in order that they Arranged with infinite knowledge, this com- might accompany him into Hades. At the plete collection rises from the age of stone summit of the tumulus-crowning the terrible and wood to that of bronze (which composite interest-were four skeletons of females, supmaterial, though imperfectly mixed, does, sin-posed to be the warrior's four wives, also sent gularly enough, precede any demonstration of after him to Hades. simple iron), and so on to periods, still remote, but which, like the Eocene and Phocene of geology, are assimilated to our own time by form and material; periods in which the luxury of the precious metals, and the beauty Concentrating the interest, I take the professor's account of the uppermost skeleton. It was that of a young female in an attitude of supplication and wild agony. The knees were bent, as if she had implored for life; the arms were cast on high, as if in frantic deprecation of her fate. She had evidently been tossed upon the top of the pile, and her limbs yet retained the very posture in which she died. Then earth and stones had been thrown hastily over the corpse, to crush out the remains of life, if any remains of life there were. A large stone had shattered one of her feet; another lay across her arm, the bone of which it had broken. "Was she stoned to death?" I asked. "No," replied the professor: "she was probably slaughtered at a stone-altar, which was c.ose to the tumulus, and in which the customary blood-basins of the heathens are still to be seen in situ-for, the altar, as we had others of the same kind, we did not remove from its place. Besides, it was the wish of the owner of the wood that the relic should remain on his property." "Did you preserve the skeleton ?" "I could not. It fell into a thousand pieces in being removed from the pile. But here is the young creature's skull; and you see by the teeth (magnificent are they not?) that the poor thing was young." I was struck by the preservation of the small and perfect teeth; and moreover by the fact that the skull was beautifully and intellectually formed. "Ay!" said the professor, "it was an affecting sight to see that skeleton uncovered, telling its own poor history of two thousand years ago! Several ladies, who were present at the exhumation (the whole search into the tumulus took four days; and, as it excited great interest, was attended by many people), shed tears as they looked at the remains." I felt how possible it was, even for a man, to have wept at such a drama; and the thought occurred to me, " Eras do not always rise to better things! The poor gentle sav ages on their artificial islets would not have done the deed which the nation of the forest, capable as it was of higher arts, arms, and manufactures, so fanatically perpetrated. Was there ever a priest upon the tethered rafts of the Lakers? We find no trace of him! But here was evidently a grand sacrificator, and an unexceptionable altar. Blessed be the faith which has overturned every sacrificial altar save that of the loving heart!" should end; but I cannot help throwing out Here, according to all the laws of climax, I one hint in parting to the antiquarian explorers of my own country: "Look well into the British lakes." CHRISTMAS IN AMERICA. In the United States the modes of observing Christmas vary somewhat from the modes of the old world, and vary also in different sections of the Union. In New England the old Puritan antipathy to such observances has not yet entirely died out, and Thanksgiving Day is more of a festival and holiday than Christmas. In New York the day is more generally observed, but it is less of a holiday than New Year's Day. In Pennsylvania, where the English and German sentiments both survive, there is probably a more marked and universal regard for Christmas than in any state of the Union. Here there is scarcely a house that has not its Christmas tree; scarcely a family where the children's stockings are not hung up; scarcely a household that does not collect its scattered members around the Christmas dinner-table, where roast turkeys, mince pie, plum pudding and other traditional dainties are served up. In the counties where the German population prevails, there are still kept up some of the quaint old customs, such as the Christmas eve visit of Kriss-Kingle (a corruption of Christ-Kind) with gifts to scatter among the juveniles. But these visits are often only boisterous frolics, in which | men and boys, in masks and fantastic dresses, and carrying bells and horns, terrify rather than delight the hearts of young folks. The custom of interchanging gifts on Christmas-day is almost universal in Pennsylvania, and it prevails more or less in Ohio and other states which have been largely settled by Pennsylvanians. In the north-western states, whose inhabitants of American birth are chiefly from New England and New York, Christmas is regarded with no more general respect than it is in the states from which they were settled. In Virginia and the Carolinas, and indeed throughout the south, there is a very generous and hearty observance of the Christmas holidays. The negroes are indulged much more liberally then than at any other period of the year, and their merry-makings constitute one of the pleasantest features of the season. At the same time the masters' houses are scenes of festivity, and among the wealthier planters there are displays of that lordly hospitality that is recorded of the old English barons, whose habits and modes of life are thought by some modern English writers to have somewhat resembled those of the Southern planters.-Philadelphia Bulletin. From The Ladies' Companion. THE night-train was about to start from the King's Cross Station. It was a dark winter's night, just before Christmas. Snow had been almost incessantly falling for the last two days, and it was falling still-whitening the tops of the cabs, whitening the hats and umbrellas of the passers-by; even whitening the whiskers of the drivers, and settling in long lines and ridges on their great coats. Such cold-looking, blue, pinched faces as one met on every side; such red eyes; such a chorus of nose-blowing and coughing and hoarse voices claiming carpet-bags and port por his dress bespoke him-was beginning a not very pleasant imprecation that had some connection with his last attack of lumbago, when his eye caught sight of a female figure blocking up the entrance. She had a young child in her arms, and common civility obliged him to offer her the assistance of his hand, and remove some of the lumbering parcels with which he had covered the seats. The lady was all alone, neither nurse nor companion with her; and she had hardly settled in the further seat opposite, and pulled the thick veil from over her face, before the train started. A long whistle-a few lights shining like stars through the misty night— then darkness on either side and unbroken stillness. manteaus! Here and there rushed the ters; now a cry of "Make way!" and the The old gentleman looked across at his passage of a luggage-truck, causing the pas- companion. She was unloosening the child's sengers to fall to one side, or rush desperately wrappings, removing the little bonnet from towards the van, in hopes of discovering some the small head, smoothing the rings of brown missing possession. The gas flickered and hair with a delicate white hand-a hand which blazed and flickered again as the draught proclaimed her a lady at first sight. By ana penetrated into the station; and every now and then one caught the whiff of a cigar, and a suspicious smell of bad tobacco, that might find entrance from the door where the cabmen were staggering in and out with their heavy burdens. The five-minutes'-bell rang. The passengers bundled into the carriages; the porters stowed in the packages; the newspaper-boys held up their baskets to the windows, and screamed: "Punch-To-day's Times-Evening Star-Globe-Bell's Life!— 99 very by she was looking for something in a leathern bag, and presently the child turned round on her knee, with one biscuit disappearing into its mouth and another pressed tight to its little bosom, and carefully hidden by a fat hand, as though it feared the old gentleman. was going to ask for the nicest piece. He The mother was very busy, and as her head came full under the lamplight, the old gentie man had ample opportunity to observe her. She did not look more than twenty, possibly not so much, rather under the ordinary statAn old gentleman was already comfortably ure; with a small, oval face of pure, white ensconced in the corner of a first-class car- coloring, very pale about the lips, almost riage. His umbrella and stick were tidily ar- faultless in feature, but with such a sad exranged above his head, his hat replaced by pression that the old gentleman felt at once a black velvet skull-cap, that nestled that his fellow-traveller was in trouble. warmly on his bald crown, and his feet crossed was sorry for her, she looked so pretty and on the opposite seat, and covered with a interesting; and he made a feeble attempt to crimson and black railway-rug. The draw her into conversation about the child. Punch, and the fresh-smelling book with a But she looked up at him with her serious, paper-knife sticking out from its uncut pages, dark eyes full of tears, and answered so sadly seemed to promise not so unpleasant a jour- and with such low tones, that he was disney after all; for the lamp was burning couraged, and took refuge behind his newsbravely, the oil swinging from side to side of the glass, and the window already dulled over in that pleasant manner which makes one congratulate one's self on being so warm and comfortable inside. open paper. The next time he looked up, the child was asleep, with its head against its mother's breast, its round arm tossed over its pelisse, and its little fat fingers grasping a half-eaten Just at the last moment the door was has- biscuit, from which the motion of the train tily opened, and a porter thrust in a carpet- shook down a number of crumbs on the mothbag. The old gentleman-clergyman though er's dress. The old gentleman made a men |