From The Examiner. ANDALUSIAN TALES. To the collections of popular tales of divers countries, which we have already named, we may add, though the date on its title-page is 1859, the "Cuentos y Poesias populares of Andalusia, collected by the lady who assumes the name of Fernan Caballero. The collection was suggested by Grimm's note upon the wealth of Spanish legend, that has not yet been brought to book. Of the popular poetry Trueba has given many a transcript; Don José Maria Goizueta has made a collection of the Traditions and Songs of the Basques, and here is a clever lady who retains the phrase and manner of the Andalusians-there is no vulgarity, in a mean sense, in any form of provincial Spanish-while she repeats all she has heard of Andalusian song or story. The tales are for the most part humorous, often dashed with Catholicism, and animated with a halfmalicious love of mischief. The family likeness of many of them to stories that are to be found in Grimm's collection and elsewhere is very distinct, but equally distinct are the turns of local character that fit them to the Spanish soil. There is a story, for example, in Grimm of "Three Spinners" answering to the Andalusian tale of the Souls,-which, as we here find it, curiously illustrates among other things the lowness of the morality sustained by superstition: :Once upon a time there was a poor old woman who had a good and very pious niece, blindly obedient to her, but shy and stupid. What, thought the poor woman, would happen to my nicce if at my death she were unmarried? Now the aunt had a neighbor who took lodgers, and among her lodgers was a rich Indiano (that is the Spanish form of nabob, enriched in the West instead of the East Indies, or in South America), and the rich Indiano, it was said, was well disposed to take to wife a well-bred, industrious, and active girl. The aunt, when she heard this, went directly to the cavalier and told him what a jewel of a niece, she had, a girl active enough to catch a swallow flying. "Very well, I'll come and see her," said the nabob. He did come, next morning, and the first thing he asked the girl was whether she could spin. "Spin indeed!" said the aunt for her," she'll twist a thread as soon as you will drink a glass of water." "What have you done, Señora!" said the niece, when the rich cavalier was gone away, leaving her three bundles of flax to prove her skill upon. "What have you done, Señora! You know that I can't spin." "Let be," said the old woman. "We must always make ourselves out better than we are, and leave the rest to God. How else should we get on?" "It is a wicked business," the niece said, weeping. And she wept in her room at night, commending herself to the protection of the Blessed Souls, that she had in especial reverence. Whilst she prayed three Souls clothed in light and wonderful in beauty appeared to her and told her not to vex herself, for they would help her in return for all the good she had done them by her prayers. Each took a bundle of flax, and in a twinkling had it spun into a thread fine as a hair. "Sew "A Next day, when the nabob came, he was amazed at the girl's skill and industry. "Didn't I tell your noble worship so?" bragged the old woman. The cavalier asked whether the girl could sew. indeed," the aunt answered for her. needle in the hand or a cherry in the mouth would be all one to her." The nabob gave her linen to be made into three shirts, and as it was with the spinning so it was with the sewing. So it was also on the next following day and night with the embroidering of a fine waistcoat. Only that on the third night the Souls said to the girl: "Don't vex yourself. We will do the embroidering, but upon one condition,-that you ask us to your wedding." "What," cried the girl amazed, "and am I to be married too!” "Yes," said the Souls, "you are to be the wife of that rich Indiano." So it was. For when the cavalier saw that the waistcoat was embroidered so magnificently as almost to blind him with its splendor, he said to the aunt that she must let him have her niece in marriage. Aunt was delighted, but the girl said to her, "O Señora, what will become of me when my husband finds out that I can do nothing?" "Pooh, nonsense," the aunt said, "Trust the Blessed Souls who have got you out of other hobbles to find you a way also out of that." The wedding-day was fixed, and on the eve of it the bride went to an altar dedicated to the Blessed Souls, and asked them to her wedding. So at the wedding, when the fes- | man and asked why her eyes started out of tival was at its height, there came into the her head and were so red? "Dear son,” room three old women so excruciating in she replied, twisting her eyes round like a their ugliness that the bridegroom, struck top as she spoke, "that comes of much sewwith horror, opened his eyes wide and ing and bending over needlework." The couldn't shut them. One had an arm too words were hardly out of her mouth before short and an arm too long that she dragged the nabob was by his wife's side again, and after her upon the ground; the second had said to her, "Take your needles and your a humped back and a crooked body. The threads and throw them down the well, and third had eyes that started from her head, mind well that on the day I see you with a worse than a crab's, and were as red as two needle and thread in your hand, I divorce crab-apples. "Jesus Maria!" shrieked the you. For the wise man takes warning by bridegroom, "Who are these scarecrows?" the hurt of others." "Friends of my father," the bride said, "whom I invited to the wedding." The cavalier, being of good breeding, then offered them seats and entered into conversation with them. "Tell me, madam, I pray you," he said to the first, "why you have one arm so short and one so long?" "Dear son," said the old woman, "that comes of my having spun so much." Then up rose the Indiano, slipped to his wife's side, and said to her, "Go instantly and burn your distaff and spindle. Let me never see you spin." Then he inquired of the second old woman why she was so hump-backed and crooked? "Dear son," she answered, "that comes of so much bending over the embroidery frame." The nabob took three leaps to the side of his bride. 66 Upon the spot burn your embroidery frame, and let it never in your life again enter your head to embroider!" After this he turned to the third old wo So the helpful Souls, for they were the old women, saved their worshipper from all her trouble. The collection from which we tell this tale includes among many good stories a dramatic proverb expressing the popular Spanish notion of the worldly way out of perplexities, "Ver venir, dejarse ir, y tenerse allá "-Let come, let go, and withhold one's self; which rule of "gray grammar" is the exact opposite to national sentiment in England. But the large dramatic element in Spanish folk lore the editor has found it necessary, as a whole, to exclude from her collection. There are anecdotes, jests, and a rhymed peasant's calendar. In verse also there are moral couplets, lullabies, love and war songs of labor, rhymed jests, satires, and epigrams. With some of the lullabies and other songs the editor gives also the music that shows how they are sung by the Andalusians. The Cottage History of England. By the Author | which certainly does at least full justice to the of "Mary Powell." London: Hall, Virtue and Co. THIS little book is designed to introduce into kitchens and cottages a knowledge of some of the leading events in English history. If it ever penetrates into the places which it is intended to reach, it may possibly carry out its purpose to some extent. In an apologue prefixed to the preface the author implies that her history occupies the same place, in relation to those of Hume and Macaulay, that a penny tart does to roast mutton and baked potatoes, a comparison merit of the smaller work. The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow including his Translations and Notes. London: H. G. Bohn. THIS is, as far as we know, the only edition which contains, in one volume, the whole of Longfellow's poetical works. It is illustrated by twenty-four engravings, which neither add to nor detract from the value of the book to any material degree. Nor aught presenting visibly and well My father, I remember to this day, "Such is thine own dear mother-guard her well." And did I guard her, I, thy careless son? Better by far it seemed to me, when first And through the world, thenceforth, our souls retain And haunt us with a load of vain regret- And in my spirit hoard a life-long grief, Better by far it seemeth to me now Fathomed the meaning of a mother's heart, So have I learned to love thee more and more; And if of absence I could speak, forgive- Is freedom blind of memory above? Or, loving, smile in absence evermore, Coldly debarred from all they felt before? For me, I doubt not, though no human eye Pierces that interval of mystery, Lying in cloud, with dark conjectures rife, Limnèd upon the heart in lines more true, We murmur lispingly our childish prayer; Drew generous tears, and changed the weeper's heart; Here, worn with watching, anxious and alone, She calmed her sick one's suffering with her eyes; Three little words-yet meaning vast they bear, There lives, though planted in a barren place, I feel that I have power to please thee still; And Christ, in mercy to my soul, with thine Hence, by a road not wholly without flowers, And thine no longer shall be answerless. THE WEATHER LAST WEEK. WHAT is that faint and melancholy note, Borne feebly on the sharp east wind, It sounded forth of yonder clump of oak, It was the Cuckoo's cry! That timid thrill outpoured from yonder brake! The breeze cuts short the poor bird's tale, The Throstle, too, as though for cold in pain, High perched upon the leafless tree, Attempts a fitful and a dreary strain, Sung in a minor key. There's one, an only, Swallow to be seen; What doeth he out in this air so keen, Unless he flies for exercise? On such a day no gnat will stir for him: He would not catch one midge, were he to skim The Redbreast shivers o'er her callow brood; The badger, dormouse, hedgehog, squirrel creep Ah, how I pity birds and beasts that roam I know what I shall do; I shall go home, Command a basin of hot soup, and dine On Christmas beef; and, having fed, Brew for mysea tankard of spiced wine; Have that, go to bed. -Punch, 18 May. From The Spectator, 8 June. ery seemed to work so ill. To talk with YOUNG AMERICA AT PARIS. Mr. Cowdin of the national Union being WE have earned our right to a candid formed not for Americans alone, but for "the hearing, when we remonstrate with the for- whole family of man," or even with Mr. Bureign representatives of the American Gov- lingame, of its being the "noblest which ernment on the perverse and suicidal policy ever shed its blessings on mortal man," is which they have recently been pursuing. simply American rodomantade. We, at We at least have uniformly expressed the least, do not think so, and if English symwarm sympathy which is felt by the great pathy is to be heartily enlisted it cannot be mass of the English people with the North- on the mere constitutional aspects of the ern cause, and we do not believe that a few struggle. And the Republicans would do hasty and rather blustering speeches even well to look further than this even as regards from those who seem to represent the official their own support at home. The Union mind of the Federal Government will have feeling is strong, but alone it will scarcely the power to wean English sympathy either give birth to an endless crop of militiamen from the cause or the party which represents or volunteers to supply the place of those it. But nevertheless we must speak from who fall in an internecine strife. Unless a the very depth of our sympathy with that greater issue is distinctly raised, and the cause, a few words of warning to those who people learn that they are fighting for a so grievously neglect its true interests. If final condemnation of slavery in the civilthere be a policy by which they can so far ized world, the requisite spirit of self-sacriplay into the hands of their adversaries as fice may not be easily maintained. No great to paralyze for a moment the popular sym- civil war has ever been sustained long in pathy in England, and to change the hesitat- modern times without something deeper ing attitude of the press into one of fixed than a political issue. In England and in damaging intent, it is the policy they are France religious enthusiasm, and that alone now adopting of hesitating principle, un- was powerful enough to draw the middle worthy flattery to the French despot, and and fower classes in hosts into the ranks: blustering defiance to English statesmen. and the slavery cause, which is essentially On slavery they are still quite too reticent; a religious issue, will alone be found strong on Napoleonism they almost fawn; on Eng- enough to feed the zeal of the Northern land they openly frown, muttering challenges freemen. If the Republican_diplomatists and maledictions. The Union has hitherto are to open their lips to England and the gained credit for the most able and acute world, it is a pity they do not take more dediplomatists in Europe-surely, it will not fined ground on this head. be from the date of the first Republican Administration that that reputation will begin to decline? At present we must say that they have spoken, and spoken very unwisely, where silence would have been the truest dignity, and that, having spoken, they have omitted to say almost the only important thing which it would be well for the Republican party openly to proclaim. First, then, if those who can claim to represent the Republican party really wish to excite the full sympathy of England, it would be well for them to accept rather more distinctly the great issue on which our sympathy depends. We can understand the Union feeling-the true freedom. It is not pleasant to English cars national feeling-in the United States, and to hear the question, "Does any man venheartily condemn the calculating treachery ture to say that the French of to-day have of the seceders. But, sincere as this feeling paid too much in treasure and blood for the is, we certainly could never be expected as liberties they now enjoy, which this great peoa nation to indulge in any profound grief ple and the great chief of their choice equally over the break-down of a democratic consti- recognize? And though Mr. Clay tells us tution which we never affected to admire. in the next sentence, in that august style to On that ground, though we feel sincere re- which Mr. Dickens has accustomed us, that gret, we can pretend to no national emotion, this "world-wide statesman and philanthroand were not the cause of the struggle one pist, waiting upon nature, and following of far deeper principle, we should probably upon the fading footprints of the ages, withwatch with equanimity the experiment of a holds the hand of rash propagandism.” yet little political rivalry where the old machin-, we fear he can scarcely intend to convey Next, if they deliberately wish to soil their pure cause, not merely in England, but in Europe, they could not do better than fawn upon Louis Napoleon and accept his system as the natural outcome of popular institutions. When Mr. Cassius Clay recalls the old alliance between France and America against England, and reminds the emperor that the exile of St. Helena is unavenged, we smile at his clumsy diplomacy. But when he apologizes for the French system almost in the language of panegyric, it is hard to realize that he is indeed the man who has sacrificed so much in the cause of |