THE OBSTRUCTIVE PRESIDENT.

any number of negroes, and negro evidence is not even accepted against a white; so long as negroes are taxed for the schools which white children alone may attend, and white men burn down the schools for negroes with absolute impunity; so long as deliberate massacres of the negroes go absolutely unpunished; so long as Southern Courts laugh at the Constitutional Amendment, and declare it unconstitutional. Let slavery be declared abolished, and yet all these things of which we have spoken go on without interference on the part of Congress or the Executive, and it is clear that the results of the war are cast to the winds. Yet this is precisely what Mr. Johnson has Conmoved heaven and earth to effect. gress passed a Freedmen's Bureau Bill last Session to protect the negroes in the South. Mr. Johnson vetoed it. Congress passed a Civil Rights Bill declaring all native negroes citizens of the United States, and entitled to all the civil rights of whites born under the same circumstances. Mr. Johnson vetoed it. During the long vacacation a most bloody and malignant plot was laid by the citizens of New Orleans against the Free-Soil party of that State, and a massacre organized which in part took effect, which actually cost the lives of more than a score of loyalists, and but for the United States troops would have been a second St. Bartholomew. Mr. Johnson did his best at the time, and has done his best ever since, to palliate the guilt of that deliberate massacre and to throw the blame the victims. All this has long been upon known. But now Mr. Johnson is playing more and more boldly the same disgraceful part. This session Congress, which is the only legislature of the district of Columbia in which Washington lies, has passed by two-third majorities in both Houses a Bill giving the suffrage to negroes in that district. Mr. Johnson has vetoed it, although his power only extends to delaying it for a day or two, when the same majorities given after his veto will pass it into law. Still worse, the only power by which the evil passion of the South against its freedmen was mitigated was the military power. Till lately it was known that if negroes were murdered and the State Courts refused to take cognizance of the crimes, or acquitted the criminals, the military authorities would interfere. In Georgia in the last year there have been three hundred such murders of which only three, or 1 per cent., were punished, and these under the influence of fear of the military authorities, who would have had far more influence

but for the known bias of the President
against the negroes. Mr. Johnson has just
withdrawn this one feeble offset against the
malignant negro-hatred of the South. The
Supreme Court has decided that in Indiana,
-a State where there never was any
rebellion, the military tribunals had no
authority except over soldiers, and has set
aside a sentence on a civilian passed by a
military Court. Mr. Johnson with indecent
haste has used this decision to further his
purpose of giving each of the Southern
States full freedom to slay or torture its
own negroes, without danger of interfer-
ence from the Central Government.
has revoked as unconstitutional the military
order directing the Federal officers to in-
terfere in case of any flagrant repudiation
by the Southern Courts of the plain civil
rights of the negroes, and has himself dis-
solved the Commission sitting to try a self-
confessed

He

murderer at Richmond, Dr. James L. Watson, who had been acquitted by the local Court, in spite of his own boastful confession of the murder, simply and solely on the ground that negro murder is not murder. In this case a negro coachman called Echols had driven his mistress's carriage against Dr. Watson's. Dr. Watson, the next day, proceeded to cowhide Echols, and on Echols running away called him back under pain of death to undergo more cowhiding, and shot him for not returning. Of this the murderer Watson boasted, and the County Court acquitted him as guiltless of murder. The Military Commission which was sitting to try him is dissolved by Mr. Johnson, on the ground that the Supreme Court had declared trials by military commission in the Northern States, where there never was And Dr. Watson any rebellion or need of military authority, unconstitutional. may murder a fresh negro each day of the new year with absolute certainty of impunity, if not of fame. In Maryland the judges, aware that Mr. Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Bill, which was passed over his veto, and will do nothing to enforce it, are setting it at naught in the most flagrant manner, and on Saturday, 22d December, four negroes were sold for a term of years at Annapolis for some slight offence, — we believe under the vagrant laws, them being actually permitted to buy himself in, which he certainly would not have been if the offence had been more than nominal. The other three were sold to farmers for a term of years, Judge Magruder declaring the Civil Rights Bill passed by Congress, which refuses to admit any distinction in

one of

the civil laws founded on colour, as uncon- | confusion in it, we fancy, between the effects stitutional and inconsistent with the law of of bad weather and the effects of that strife Maryland. All over the South the same absolute contempt for the civil rights of the negro is shown, under the fostering care of Mr. Johnson's justice. North Carolina papers declare that State ready for a new rebellion on the basis of Mr. Johnson's principles. South Carolina rejects the new Constitutional Amendment, which incorporates the Civil Rights Bill, by 95 to 1. In Memphis, Tennessee, organizations to prevent by terror commercial dealings with loyal shopkeepers are formed. In Missouri the burning down of freedmen's schools is a popular amusement. And everywhere the President's cry is to 'let be,' unless the very people who conspire to do these things interfere by their own Courts or militia to prevent them.

These are not iniquities merely requiring a strong-handed remedy, but mockeries of the whole policy of the war. If this be constitutional, -as our "Yankee" correspondent, in his blind ardour for legalities, boasts, it was far more constitutional to permit secession at first, than for the nation now, after paying hundreds of millions sterling to prevent secession, to foster all the springs of secession into a new and still more threatening activity. Whatever price must be paid to reap the full fruits of the greatest and most successful of human struggles clearly must be paid. And if so insignificant a President as Mr. Johnson must be thrown overboard to prevent the wreck of the ship in the very sight of port, why no one will regret him, though many may regret the necessity of having to do anything that looks revolutionary for the sake of clearing away so trivial an impediment, which by an unfortunate accident of position is yet a formidable drag on the movement of a great nation.

From the Spectator.

THE EFFECT OF WEATHER ON THE
MIND.

"IT is the hard gray weather," sings Kingsley, in one of the very best of his slighter pieces, "breeds hard Englishmen," and the verse expresses one of the most popular of English superstitions. It is not a pleasant idea, nevertheless, that the worse the weather the more manly one ought to be, particularly as one isn't, and we feel very much inclined to question whether it has any true or soild foundation. There is a

with difficulties, when carried on for generations, which undoubtedly strengthens the character of any race submitted to it. We English are all accustomed to say, with that love for avenging oneself on Nature which is so permanent a characteristic of human beings, that the denizens of bad climates are always stronger than the races which "bask" in or otherwise enjoy sunshine, but it is not true. The great races of earth, the races which have done things, which have thought and fought and taught with permanent effect, have lived in almost all climates except the very cold. Most of our ideas of theology come from a small knot of clans belonging to one race which lived in the hot valleys and on the vine-growing hillsides of the seaboard of Syria, where weather, at all events. is not hard. Grapes of Eshcol dislike gray skies. Half our knowledge comes from the inhabitants of islands and small peninsulas bathed in the eternal summer of the Eastern Mediterranean, where the olive grew without cultivation, and sky-coloured eyes meant eyes of blue. The strongest race which ever lived, the true Roman patriciat, lived under a sky for which Englishmen crave in vain, a sky which for ten months in the year is the very reverse of gray, which is, indeed, either blue, deep, perfect blue, yielding enjoyment through its mere clearness, or blazing like molten brass. We never could quite make out, indeed, in a proper theoretic way, what the Roman had to fight in the way of nature in such a climate and on such a soil as his; but of course he had something, or what would Mr. Kingsley do? The most energetic of Asiatic races, the Arab, was produced under a sky which knows not of gray, which is every colour but grey, a vicious sky, a malignant sky, scorching the souls out of men, but always, if you could only look up, possessing in calmness its own blue beauty. The only climate on earth exactly like that of England, or differing from it only in being slightly more equal, that of Tasmania, produced the lowest race of savages who ever came in contact with civilized man and died of the meeting. On the other side of the Atlantic our race grows great in all climates, produces under the hard gray weather Yankees proper, under a really beautiful climate the men of the West, and under tropical skies the Southerners, whose special fault is certainly not want of "grit." The theory of greyness seems to be as baseless as the counter theory about light. For all à priori reasons

light ought to influence brain, but it does | But to the great majority bad weather like not, the English being in acuteness even, that of the past fortnight is, we suspect, a and certainly in inductive power more than mere evil, a mere exhaustion, a mere cona match for Bengalees, and inferior to Athenians, with their yet more cloudless atmosphere. Indeed we question if mere grayness of sky does even produce fortitude, the "hardness" Kingsley writes about, whether the Southern Asiatic has not more of that quality than the Northern. Strength he has not, but a Bengalee will bear unmoved tortures which would drive a Calmuck mad, or induce him to forswear himself to an unlimited extent. Lighted lucifers placed under a Malay's nails would not induce him to deny his creed or give up a plan upon which he had resolved, and they would induce most Englishmen. It is the contest with difficulties, and especially natural difficulties, which, apart from vexed questions as to the influence of "race" properly so called, makes a people, not the contest with weather, and even that axiom is not invariably true. What had the Athenian to fight in particular except the sea, and that sea the Mediterranean?- -or what had the Roman? An Icelander had twice as much to contend with, or a Malay, and developed just nothing at all, any more than the Finns did, who, in the possession of hard, gray weather, are richer than all mankind, except the islanders of Skye, who have done nothing.

It is quite vexatious to hear an argument so palpably false as Kingsley's pressed, just when everybody is suffering from the hard, gray weather he is so fond of. We do not believe London is a bit the better for the weather of the past fortnight, hard, gray weather of the worst kind, snow, and rain, and wind, and all climatic unpleasantnesses having been ceaseless in their action. On the contrary, we believe it is a good deal worse. There are men of course, generally men with a coat of fat, a swift circulation, and a belief in alcohol, who are the better for a thermometer at 20°. They enjoy it, to begin with, and genuine enjoyment wonderfully quickens all the powers. No wonder angels are tall, and swift, and energetic vide pictures passim - when they always live in heaven. Such men have, too, a sense of superiority to weaker beings, a pleasure as of a great-coated caste, and it is the permanent sense of superiority which constitutes whatever of truth there is in the aristocratic theory. Above all, they get a good fight with limited liability to injury; and a good fight in which one has a hard tussle, and yet cannot feel despair, always brings out the manliness of the strong.

sumer of energy without any compensating benefit at all. They either feel bored, or depressed, or, to use a beautiful Suffolk word, which is, we suspect, Saxon, and if it is not, ought to be," fra'an." Do you know what it is to be "fra'an," reader? It is to feel that your blood will freeze if you do not exert yourself and to be incapable of doing it, to be hungry with cold, thirsty with misery, ready to stamp, if only the wind had left you energy enough. It is not a good-tempered condition or a healthy one, and if hot coffee is procurable, drink it. A bit of energy goes in keeping up the circulation, and a bit more in avoiding depression, and a big bit more in striving vainly to maintain an equable frame of mind. Of course these effects manifest themselves very differently in different temperaments. One man is provoked by bad weather into a chronic ill temper, accompanied by a vague disposition to laziness, and a distinct tendency to snub his wife, as responsible, if not for the weather, at least for that sense of damp elastics which the weather has produced. Another is afflicted with chronic "lowness," modified by a disposition to lugubrious humour, as if rain should patter on flagstones to a faintly comic tune. A third, of whom the writer knows more perhaps than of any other human being, avenges himself on the weather by lazy day-dreaming, and wakes conscious that the world generally is going wrong with him, but very much puzzled to discover why. A fourth, and this is the commonest of all impressions, simply goes about his work a little duller and stupider than he is by nature, remarking, if at all scientific, that he is "a peg too low,

want of ozone in the atmosphere." None of these people benefit by snow, and cold, and rain, and damp, and slush, and burst pipes and the necessity for driving in cabs with wet seats or dripping glasses. Does anybody? Of course, if the victim is compelled by the weather to encounter difficulties, to walk to a newspaper office, say from Paddington, through kneedeep slush, and does conquer them, he is a stronger man thenceforth provided he does not get a catarrh - or at least English superstition compels us to admit that he is stronger, but the majority of men do not conquer weather difficulties. They succumb to them and keep indoors, or put up umbrellas, or take cabs, or make other folk do their work, in a decidedly pusillanimous manner, or get cross and unjust, or swear

audibly, or otherwise lose all the benefit umbrellas were not required. The truth which, according alike to religion and phi- about weather is, we believe, that that which losophy, they ought to obtain from a trial. a man likes best does him most good, and Evangelical women always say they like that many Northerns like cold best, and trials, but just ask an evangelical woman, accept cheerfully any evils which may be when her nose is red, and her lips blue, and inseparable from their favourite temperaher hands swollen, and her temper up with ture. They are happy; and being happy, a journey through sleet, how she enjoys have of course the advantage over the that, and her answer will savour much miserable majority who detest east winds, more of Deborah than of Dorcas. Those and hate sleet, and anathematize "slud," who suffer from bad weather are not stronger, for they have usually been defeated, and a repetition of defeats is weakening; nor are their rivals, for they have simply wasted energy in fighting rain and wind which had better have been expended upon more worthy objects. Londoners would have more in them by a great deal if the sky were bright, and the air pure, and the smoke in its proper place, and the snow at home, and the sleet anywhere except exactly between their neckties and their necks. They would fight harder, and work longer, and resist difficulties more strenuously if

and feel miserable if they cannot see the sky at least once a fortnight. The few "feel like fortitude," as the Americans say, and forget that there is no tonic like a little happiness, that nothing strengthens men like the "exceeding peace" to which the weather of the past fortnight is fatal. If a Quaker angel there must be Quaker angels-had to traverse the Strand in weather like that of Wednesday last that Quaker angel would swear, and how could that make him any better? Harder, pace Mr. Kingsley, no angel would willingly become.

A HOUSE AT DAMASCUS.- Accompanied by some of the apartments of the mansion and of a most gayly-dressed, showy young Syrian, who the harem, the ladies of which were absent at speaks English beautifully, we proceeded to pay a summer villa in the garden. The buildings a visit to Assab, one of the principal men in Damascus, for the purpose of inspecting his very handsome house. When we arrived at the front of the mansion, we were surprised at the meanness of its appearance-at the walls of sunburnt bricks, and the few miserable windows stuck here and there without order or arrange ment, possessing no glass, but covered in with a thick lattice formed of cross-bars of wood. Great, however, was the contrast between the exterior of the house and the scene that presented itself when we passed through a door opened by a slave. We saw, to our surprise and pleasure, a spacious and magnificent court paved with Dutch tiles and marble. In the centre of it was a large fountain, bubbling over into a cool, clear, circular reservoir of water filled with pet fish. Around this court extended a range of buildings one story high of a pretty, fantastic style of architecture, decorated with Moorish or Saracenic ornaments. At the upper end of the court was a grotto, or alcove, floored with various coloured marbles, opening on the spacious area, but elevated three steps above it. A rich figured divan extended around the walls, and the little secluded spot presented a cool and delightful smoking retreat, from whence the large court and the murmuring fountain were most agreeably surveyed. Seating ourselves on the soft, luxurious divan, we were served with coffee. Some black slaves, in scarlet dresses, with long white wands, then came to conduct us to see

on the western side of the court contained a succession of detached handsome rooms: the floors were covered with a thick matting, and the ceilings were painted in a beautiful manner and with great taste. The walls were adorned with rich carving and gilding; and all around them, raised about a foot and a half from the floor, extended a divan covered with the rich figured mixed silk and cotton stuff of Damascus manufacture. The grand saloon or receptionhall, on the ground floor, on the northern side of the court, in which strangers and visitors are received, was by far the finest apartment of the place. We first came on to a square floor paved with different coloured marbles, having a fountain in the centre, and overhead a handsomely painted and gilded ceiling. From this floor we ascended by steps to other raised floors, paved with marble and covered with a very handsome matting. Scrolls and different devices were painted around the walls, something in the Chinese style, and divans extended around the apartment, placed against the wall. Gilded bowls of sherbet were handed round, and slices of lemon and chopped almonds floating in it; then came a black slave, who held in his hands an embroidered handkerchief, which he just pressed to our lips when we had ceased drinking. The presence of the slaves was commanded by clapping of hands, as mentioned in the "Arabian Nights." Cups of coffee were then again handed round. - Baillie.

CHAPTER XV.

WHEN Souchey left the room with the note, Nina went to the door and listened. She heard him turn the lock below, and heard his step out in the courtyard, and listened till she knew that he was crossing the square. Then she ran quickly up to her own room, put on her hat and her old worn cloak- the cloak which aunt Sophie had given her and returned once more into the parlour. She looked round the room with anxious eyes, and seeing her desk, she took the key from her pocket and put it into the lock. Then there came a thought into her mind as to the papers; but she resolved that the thought need not arrest her, and she left the key in the lock with the papers untouched. Then she went to the door of her father's room, and stood there for a moment with her hand upon the latch. She tried it ever so gently, but she found that the door was bolted. The bolt, she knew, was on her side, and she could withdraw it; but she did not do so, seeming to take the impediment as though it were a sufficient bar against her entrance. Then she ran down the stairs rapidly, opened the front door, and found herself out in the night air.

It was a cold windy night-not so late, indeed, as to have made her feel that it was night, had she not come from the gloom of the dark parlour, and the glimmer of her one small lamp. It was now something beyond the middle of October, and at present it might be eight o'clock. She knew that there would be moonlight, and she looked up at the sky; but the clouds were all dark, though she could see that they were moving along with the gusts of wind. It was very cold, and she drew her cloak closer about her as she stepped out into the archway. Up above her, almost close to her in the gloom of the night, there was the long colonnade of the palace, with the lights glimmering in the windows as they always glimmered. She allowed herself for a moment to think who might - as she had so often thought before. It was possible that Anton might be there. He had been there once before at this time in the evening, as he himself had told her. Wherever he might be, was he thinking of her? But if he thought of her, he was thinking of her as one who had deceived him, who had tried to rob him. Ah! the day would soon come in which he would learn that he had wronged her. When that day should come, would his heart be bitter within him? "He will certainly be unhappy for a time," she said; "but he is hard and will recover, and she will console him. It will be better so. A Christian and a Jew should never love each other."

be there in those rooms

As she stood the clouds were lifted for a moment from the face of the risen moon, and she could see by the pale clear light the whole façade of the palace as it ran along the steep hillside above her. She could count the arches, as she had so often counted them by the same light. They seemed to be close over her head, and she stood there thinking of them, till the

clouds had again skurried across the moon's face, and she could only see the accustomed glimmer in the windows. As her eye fell upon the well-known black buildings around her, she found that it was very dark. It was well for her that it should be so dark. She never wanted to see the light again.

There was a footstep on the other side of the square, and she paused till it had passed away beyond the reach of her ears. Then she came out from under the archway, and hurried across the square to the street which led to the bridge. and comIt was a dark gloomy lane, narrow, posed of high buildings without entrances, the sides of barracks and old palaces. From the windows above her head on the left, she heard the voices of soldiers. A song was being sung, and she could hear the words. How cruel it was that other people should have so much of light-hearted joy in the world, but that for her everything should have been so terribly sad! The wind, as it met her, seemed to penetrate to her bones. She was very cold! But it was useless to regard that. There was no place on the face of the earth that would ever be warm for her.

As she passed along the causeway leading to the bridge, a sound with which she was very familiar met her ears. They were singing vespers under the shadow of one of the great statues which are placed one over each arch of the bridge. There was a lay friar standing by a little table, on which there was a white cloth and a lighted lamp and a small crucifix; and above the crucifix, supported against the stonework of the bridge, there was a picture of the Virgin with her Child, and there was a tawdry wreath of paper flowers, so that by the light of the lamp you could see that a little altar had been prepared. And on the table there was a plate containing kreutzers, into which the faithful, who passed and took a part in the evening psalm of praise, might put an offering for the honour of the Virgin, and for the benefit of the poor friar and his brethren in their poor cloisters at home. Nina knew all about it well. Scores of times had she stood on the same spot upon the bridge, and sung the vesper hymn, ere she passed on to the Kleinseite.

And now she paused and sang it once again. Around the table upon the pavement there stood, perhaps, thirty or forty persons, most of them children and the remainder girls, perhaps of Nina's age. And the friar stood close by the table, leaning idly against the bridge, with his eye wandering from the little plate with the kreutzers to the passers-by who might possibly contribute. And ever and anon he with drawling voice would commence some sentence of the hymn, and then the girls and children would take it up, well knowing the accustomed words; and their voices as they sang would sound sweetly across the waters, the loud gurgling of which, as they ran beneath the arch, would be heard during the pauses.

And Nina stopped and sang.
a child she had sung there very

When she was often, and the