“The bare, barren mountains and bog, I must state, The poor Irish farmer he must cultivate; Whilst the land-shark is watching His chance underhand, To gobble his labor, his house, and his land. But the Devil is fishing, and he'll soon get a pull, Of those bad landlords and agents His net is near full.... Then hurrah! for the Land League, And Parnell so brave; Each bad landlord, my boys, We'll muzzle him tight. May the banner of freedom And green laurels wave O'er the men of the Land League, And Parnell so brave.” Irish humor is not dead yet, but it is decaying or dormant; and if ever, in spite of the malign influence of the Gulf Stream, and the Nationalist Party, and a sense of their past wrongs, and race-hatred, and half-a-dozen other drawbacks, Ireland should recover her sanity and grow prosperous and contented, then, and not till then, may we expect to see her sons grow merry as well as wise,—unless, indeed, their sense of humor is entirely improved out of them in the process. Judging from the character of the men of Antrim, this is not impossible. But valuable as is the gift of humor, the harmony of Great Britain would not be too dearly bought by its sacrifice.—_The Spectator._ PRINCE BISMARCK'S CHARACTER. The late general election in Germany showed results which have signally verified Prince Bismarck's calculations on the tendencies of modern democracy. The Liberalists, who represent the opinions of the Manchester school, lost a great number of seats—no less than forty-four; while signal victories were won by the Conservatives, the Catholics, and the Socialists. The doctrines of the Liberals were treated with unequivocal contempt in the large cities, and several members of the party retained their seats only through the support grudgingly given to them by Socialist electors at the second ballot. At the first ballot the Socialists testified to their absolute hatred of the Liberals by voting for Conservative or Catholic candidates in constituencies where they were not strong enough to carry candidates of their own; but at the second ballot they dictated terms to the sorely mortified party whose overthrow they had caused, and agreed to assist Liberals who promised to vote for a repeal of the law against Socialists. The Liberals swallowed the leek and made the promise, though throughout the electoral campaign they had denounced the Socialists as the worst enemies of human progress. The Socialists, on their side, went to the polls as if obeying the injunction which Ferdinand Lassalle laid upon working-men eighteen months before his death[27]: “I have always been a Republican, but, promise me, my friends, that if ever a struggle should take place between the Divine Right Monarchy and the miserable Liberal middle-class, you will fight on the King's side against the _bourgeois_.”