I write in the present tense, yet as I write these things exist no longer. The red drawing-room is closed, the dwelling on the Rue de Clichy is deserted. Victor Hugo is in Guernsey, and from that far retreat come sinister rumors respecting his failing health. These are denied by his friends, but are stoutly supported by his enemies. Which of them speak the truth? That is hard to tell. It may be that this grand career, long and lustrous as a summer day, has reached its evening hour at last. Perchance we shall see no more the massive head framed in its snow-white locks and beard, the piercing eyes, the stalwart frame that bore so lightly the burden of wellnigh fourscore years. It may be so, and yet we hope, we pray, for the return of him who lights our century with the lustre of the great creative genius of the world. L.H.H. SPIRITS IN SCANDINAVIA. Although it is generally known that there have been of late great and peculiar changes in the laws which regulate the sale of intoxicating drinks in the Scandinavian peninsula, there is not among foreigners an accurate idea of these changes. It may not therefore be uninteresting to state them a little in detail, as well as to glance at the results as gathered from personal experience and observation in different parts of Sweden and Norway. It should be premised that the peculiar "vanity" of both the Swedes and the Norwegians is spirits, and that the recent licensing laws in Scandinavia have been largely levelled against the sale of these drinks. For about a century prior to 1854, Sweden was so given to drunkenness that one who has had special opportunities of judging described it as "the most drunken country in the world." Free trade in spirits was practically in force: every small land-owner could distil on payment of a nominal license fee, and in towns every burgher had the right of sale. The whole country may be said "to have been deluged with spirits;" but, profiting by the exertions of the apostles of temperance, a public opinion was created which twenty-four years ago produced a bill on which the existing _general_ law is based. It abolished the small stills and imposed a comparatively heavy duty on the popular drink, _branvin_. It established a sort of threefold control over the issue of new licenses for the sale of spirits, under which the communal committee, the commune and the governor of a province have power to restrict or lessen the number of such licenses, while each seller of spirits was required to pay to the local rates a tax on the amount of spirits sold. The licenses were issued for periods of three years, and sold by auction to the highest bidders. To such an extent has the sale of spirits been swept under this law from the rural parts of Sweden that in 1871 there were only four hundred and sixty places for the sale of spirits in the country, the towns excepted. From observation and from the report of others the writer is able to say that the effect