Lastly, I'm to keep the siller: This upon your saul you swear. Mr. Thomas gave New York no such opportunity, and she is now lamenting him as Tom Hood's "female Ranter" mourns "The Lost Heir," "for he's my darlin' of darlin's." She wonders why he did not continue Sitting as good as gold in the gutter, a-playing at making dirt-pies: I wonder he left the court, where he was better off than all the other young boys, With two bricks, an old shoe, nine oyster-shells and a dead kitten by way of toys. And, in truth, Mr. Thomas got little more from the city he has for twenty-five years clung to and taught. If he came back, is it not likely he might meet with the Lost Heir's reception? In the Scotch ballad also we are left in uncertainty as to the genuineness of Meg's tears and promised reform; and in any case no one can blame Mr. Thomas for announcing his intention only after it was beyond alteration. It is not that New York cares for the money which would have kept him. When did it refuse money when its sympathies were aroused? Look at its magnificent charities, its help to Chicago, to famine-stricken China, and the thousands that were daily poured into the hands of the sufferers from yellow fever in the South. Religion is supported with the same munificent liberality. But when literature, music or art are to be sustained, the community becomes either flighty or apathetic. The best of New York's monuments are the gifts either of societies formed upon the basis of a common sentiment with which society at large has no active sympathy, or of men of other nationalities. It has been broadly hinted that New York would never have acquired the Cesnola collection of Cypriote pottery, gems and statuary had it not found a competitor in England. The luxury of beating the Britishers was too tempting to be declined, and led to a result which might not have been reached had the question been nothing more than one of art and art-education. Competition supplied the stimulus which should have been furnished by a sense of the desirability of securing a collection so rich and in every way, historically and artistically, so valuable. The New York public, again, was never really interested in the Castellani collection. It grudged the additional entrance-fee of twenty-five cents levied by the trustees of the Metropolitan Museum. No leader arose to open its eyes to the true value of a complete collection of majolica and mediaeval jewelry. The only known authority upon the subject of ceramics proved to be a blind leader of the blind, and the only result of Mr. Clarence Cook's interference was to leave the aforesaid gentleman in the melancholy plight of a plucked crow. The collection was reshipped to Europe while the feathers were still flying, and the public felt itself to be a gainer to the extent of witnessing a piece of good sport. No sense of loss spoiled its enjoyment of the fun.