VIII.—THE LAST GREAT INVADER OF FRANCE.
You remember Franklin’s story of the speckled axe; how he turned the grindstone to polish it up nice, and, tiring of the revolutions, concluded he “liked a speckled axe best.” There was a king of England who had a very speckled character and the people of England (who turned the grindstone for him) long liked their king’s speckled character best of all the kings that they had known.
When Prince of Wales he “cut up” so that he got the name of “Madcap Harry,” some of the most amusing of his pranks being highway robbery and burglary, for all which he was admired in his day and immortalized, along with Jack Falstaff, by Shakspere. One of the light spots on this character is his obedience to the commitment by Chief Justice Gascoigne; and although it belongs to the realm of tradition, it is so pleasant to believe and is so quaintly told by Lord Campbell that we’ll e’en accept it: One of the Prince’s gang of cut purses had been captured and imprisoned by Gascoigne, and the Prince came into court and demanded his release, which was denied. The Prince, says the chronicle, “being set all in a fury, all chafed and in a terrible maner, came up to the place of jugement, men thinking that he would have slain the juge, or have done to him some damage; but the juge sitting still without moving, declaring the majestie of the king’s place of jugement, and with an assured and bolde countenance, had to the Prince these words following: ‘Sir, remember yourself. I kepe here the place of the kinge, your soveraine lorde and father, to whom ye owe double obedience: wherefore eftsoones in his name I charge you desiste of your wilfulness and unlawfull enterprise, and from hensforth give good example to those whiche hereafter shall be your propre subjectes. And nowe, for your contempte and disobedience, go you to the prison of the Kinge’s Benche, whereunto I committe you, and remain ye there prisoner untill the pleasure of the kinge, your father, be further knowen.’”
The prince’s better nature, and a sense of his family’s precarious situation before the law perhaps, induced him to accept the sentence and go to jail. On hearing this the king is recorded as saying: “O merciful God, how much am I bound to your infinite goodness, especially for that you have given me a juge who feareth not to minister justice, and also a sonne, who can suffre semblably and obeye justice.”
In keeping with this wonderful “spasm of good behavior” is the sudden change that came over the Madcap as soon as he became King Henry V. He became as remarkable for his austere piety as he had been for his wickedness. Unfortunately, his piety took the shape of burning Lollards (the shouting Methodists of that day), and he signed the warrant under which the brave and innocent Sir John Oldcastle, his old friend and boon companion, was hung up in chains over a slow fire.
There could be but two outlets in those days for such a degree of piety as Henry had achieved: as whatever he undertook must be bloody and cruel, the choice lay between a crusade or an invasion of France. As the latter promised the most booty and least risk he seemed to have a call in that direction. The attempt seemed about equal to an able bodied man attacking a paralytic patient in bed. The king of France was insane: his heir was worthless and lazy; the queen regent was an unfaithful wife and an unnatural mother, who took sides with the faction that was trying to dethrone the king and destroy his and her son. The kingdom was torn to pieces by civil strife between the Orleanists and the Burgundians, each vying with the other in cruelty, treachery, violence and plundering the government and outraging the people. There was an awful state of affairs—just the chance for a valiant English king.
Henry put up a demand for the French crown, under the pseudo claim of Edward III., whose house his father had deposed. A usurper claiming a neighbor’s crown by virtue of the usurped title of an overturned and disinherited dynasty; as if one stealing a crown got all the reversions of that crown by right. Henry would have made a good claim agent in our day! And the English people, with the remembrance of Cressy and Poictiers, of the Black Prince, and the captive King of France, and all the booty and cheap glory that made England so rich and vain sixty years before, fell in with Henry’s amiable designs on France. It was perfectly clear to the whole nation, from the chief justice down to the clodhopper, that Henry’s claim to the crown of France was a clear and indefeasible one; that the war would be for a high and holy right—and could not fail to pay.
And this was the main object of Henry after all: to divert the kingdom’s attention from his own usurped title by a foreign war; to fortify usurpation at home by attempted usurpation abroad. His father had enjoined upon him this policy, in Shakspere’s words—
“Be it thy course to busy giddy minds
With foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out,
May waste the memory of the former days.
How I came by the crown, O God, forgive;
And grant it may with thee in true peace live.”
So in July, 1415, Henry and 30,000 more patriots, sailed across the channel on 1,500 ships and landed unopposed at the mouth of the Seine. It took them six weeks and cost half the army to reduce the Castle of Harfleur, surrounded by a swamp, and then his generals advised him to abandon the campaign. But he dare not go back to his insecure throne with failure written on his very first attempt at glory; the expedition had cost too much money and he must have something to show for it. So boldly enough he struck for the heart of France.
This whole campaign was a close copy after the invasion by Edward III. in 1346. There was the same unopposed march to the walls of Paris, almost over the same ground; the retreat before a tardy French host; the lucky crossing of the river Somme, over the identical Blanchetacque Ford, and the bringing to bay of the English by many times their own number of French, were all faithfully repeated; while the battle of Agincourt took place only a short distance from the field of Cressy, and in its main features was a repetition of that engagement. But in one respect, honorable to him, Henry did not copy after Edward and the Black Prince. He forbade all plundering and destruction; a soldier who stole the pix from a church at Corby was instantly executed.
The description of the scenes before the battle, when,
“Proud of their number and secure in soul,
The confident and over-lusty French
Do the low-rated English play at dice;”
the contrary despondency of the English, the lofty, heroic tone of Henry with his men, when he declared gaily he was glad there were no more of them to share the honor of whipping ten to one of the French; and his proclamation that any man who had no stomach for this fight might depart; we “could not die in that man’s company that fears his fellowship to die with us.” But his humble prostration in the solitude of his own tent when he prayed piteously,—
“O, God of battles! steel my soldiers’ hearts;
Possess them not with fear; take from them now
The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers
Pluck their hearts from them. Not to-day, O Lord,
O, not to-day, think not upon the fault
My father made in compassing the crown!”
All this makes up one of Shakspere’s most moving scenes. The action and the result of this battle are as inexplicable as those of Cressy and Poictiers. We know that now, as then, the sturdy English archers did their fearful execution on the massed French. France had learned nothing in seventy years of defeats and adversity; she had no infantry, entrusted no peasantry with arms: still depended on gentlemen alone to defend France—and again the gentlemen failed her. Sixty thousand were packed in a narrow passage between two dense forests. On this mass the bowmen fired their shafts until these were exhausted. Then throwing away their bows, swinging their axes and long knives, and planting firmly in the earth in front of them their steel-pointed pikes, they waited the charge of the French chivalry. The mud was girth-deep. The horses stumbled under their heavily-armored riders. Such as reached the English line struck the horrid pikes and were hewn down by the stalwart axmen. They break and retreat, carrying dismay and confusion to the main body. The pikes are pulled up, and the line advanced. A charge of English knights is hurled upon the broken mass of French, and their return is covered by the axmen, who advance and form another line of pikes to meet the countercharge of French. So it goes on, until the French host is a mob, and the English are everywhere among them, hewing, stabbing, and thrusting. “So great grew the mass of the slain,” said an eye-witness, “and of those who were overthrown among them, that our people ascended the very heaps, which had increased higher than a man, and butchered their adversaries below with swords and other weapons.” It all lasted three hours before the French could be called defeated, for they were so numerous and were packed so closely that even retreat was long impossible. Before the battle had been decided, every Englishman had four or five prisoners on his hands, whom he was holding for ransoms. This was the grand chance to recoup all their losses and sufferings and grievous denial of plunder. This was a predicament for a victorious army, and if a small force of the French had made a rally they might then have reversed their defeat on the scattered English. Henry tried to avert such a catastrophe by sounding the order for every man to put all his prisoners to death: but cupidity saved many, nevertheless.
The flower of the chivalry of France perished on this field, greatly to the relief and benefit of France. Seven of the princes of the blood royal, the heads of one hundred and twenty of the noble families of France, and eight thousand gentlemen were counted among the 30,000 slain. The feudal nobility never recovered from the blow,—but France did, all the sooner for lack of them.
The victorious army made its way to Calais, and Henry returned to England, “covered with glory and loaded with debt.” But there was unlimited exultation when Henry came marching home, into London, under fifteen grand triumphal arches, insomuch that an eye-witness says, “A greater assembly or a nobler spectacle was not recollected to have been ever before in London.”
Campaign after campaign into France followed; she being plunged deeper and deeper into civil war, anarchy, and mob-rule. Rouen fell in 1419, and the two kings arranged a peace and a marriage between Henry and the princess Catherine. (The courtship in Shakspere is racy.) In 1420 the two kings, side by side, made a triumphant entry into Paris, and Henry was acknowledged as successor to the French crown after Charles VI. should die. Another great demonstration was seen in London when the French Catherine was crowned Queen of England (1421). Ah! there was a fearful Nemesis awaiting this newly-married pair in the insanity of their son, inherited from Catherine’s father. And England was to pay dearly for her French glory in the miseries of the reign of Henry VI. and the dreadful Wars of the Roses. Indeed, she was already paying dearly in the load of taxation and the loss of life those wars had entailed, insomuch that even now there was a scarcity of “worthy and sufficient persons” to manage government affairs in the boroughs and parishes.
The English army in France met with a sudden reverse, the commandant, the Duke of Clarence, being slain. More troops had to be raised and taken to France, and in the effort to keep his grasp on the prostrate kingdom, Henry himself was prostrated in the grasp of an enemy he could not resist. So, on the 31st of August, 1422, in the midst of his campaign, Henry died.
The priests came to his bedside and recited the penitential psalm: when they came to “Thou shalt build up the walls of Jerusalem,” the dying man said: “Ah, if I had finished this war I would have gone to Palestine to restore the Holy City.” He was the last of the crusade dreamers, and the last of the great invaders of France among English kings. In a few years all that he had won, and all that the greatest English generals and the prowess of her archers could avail were scattered by a mere girl creating and leading to victory new French armies.
And this bauble of war was all there was of Henry Fifth’s reign, the pride of the House of Lancaster. So we can hardly join in the lamentation of the Duke of Bedford:
“Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night,
Comets, importing change of time and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars
That have consented unto Henry’s death!
King Henry the Fifth, too famous to live long!
England ne’er lost a king of so much worth.”
The historian, White, pretty well sums up this “speckled character:”
“His personal ambition had been hurtful to his people. In the first glare of his achievements, some parts of his character were obscured which calm reflection has pointed out for the reprobation of succeeding times. He was harsh and cruel beyond even the limits of the harsh and cruel code under which he professed to act. He bought over the church by giving up innovators to its vengeance; he compelled his prisoner, James I. of Scotland, to accompany him in his last expedition to France to avenge a great defeat his arms sustained at Beaugé at the hands of the Scotch auxiliaries, and availed himself of this royal sanction to execute as traitors all the Scottish prisoners who fell into his hands. His massacre of the French captives has already been related, and we shall see how injuriously the temporary glory of so atrocious a career acted on the moral feelings of his people when it blunted their perception of those great and manifest crimes and inspired the nobles with a spirit of war and conquest which cost innumerable lives and retarded the progress of the country in wealth and freedom for many years.”
[To be continued.]
It is hard in this world to win virtue, freedom, and happiness, but still harder to diffuse them. The wise man gets everything from himself, the fool from others. The freeman must release the slave—the philosopher think for the fool—the happy man labor for the unhappy.—Jean Paul F. Richter.
PHYSIOLOGY.[E]
Our last article gave us a complete description of the human organization. In the present number we will inquire how we move this complex system of bones, nerves, flesh, and tissues.
We will take a particular motion and see if we can understand that. For instance, you bend your arm. You know that when your arm is lying on the table you can bend the forearm on the upper arm (or part above the elbow) until your fingers touch your shoulder. How is this done?
Look at the arm in a skeleton; you will see that the upper part is composed of one large bone, called the humerus, the fore part of two bones, the radius and ulna. If you look carefully you will see that the end of the humerus, at the elbow, is curiously rounded, and the end of the ulna, at the elbow, is scooped out in such a way that one fits loosely into the other. If you try to move them about, one on the other, you will find that you can easily double the ulna very closely on the humerus, without their ends coming apart; and as you move the ulna you will notice that its end and the end of the humerus slide over each other. But they will slide only one way—up and down. If you try to slide them from side to side they get locked. At the elbows, then, we have two bones fitting into each other, so that they will move in a certain direction; their ends are smoothed with cartilage, kept moist with a fluid and held in place by ligaments, and this is all called a joint.
In order that this arm may be bent some force must be used. The radius and ulna (the two move together) must be pushed or pulled toward the humerus, or the humerus toward the radius and ulna. How is this done in your arm? Imagine that a piece of string were fastened to either the radius or ulna, near the top: let the string be carried through a little groove, which there is at the upper end of the humerus, and fastened to the shoulder-blade. Let the string be just long enough to allow the arm to be straightened out, so that when the arm is straight the string will be just about tight. Now draw your string up into a loop and you will bend the fore-arm on the humerus. If this string could be so made that every time you willed it so, it would shorten itself, it would pull the ulna up and would bend the arm; every time it slackened the arm would fall back into a straight position.
In the living body there is not a string, but a band of tissues placed very much as our string is placed, and which has the power of shortening itself when required. Every time it shortens the arm is bent, every time it lengthens again the arm falls back into its straight position. This body, which can thus lengthen and shorten itself, is called a muscle. If you put your hand on the front of your upper arm, half way between your shoulder and elbow, and then bend your arm, you will feel something rising up under your hand: this is the muscle shortening or, as we shall now call it, contracting.
But what makes the muscle contract? You willed to move your arm, and moved it by making the muscle contract; but how did your will accomplish this? If you should examine, you would find running through the muscle soft white threads, or cords, which you have already learned to recognize as nerves. These nerves seem to grow into and be lost in the muscle. If you trace them in the other direction you would find that they soon join with other similar nerves, and the several cords joining together form stouter nerve-cords. These again join others, and so we should proceed until we came to quite stout white nerve-trunks, as they are called, which pass between the vertebræ of the neck into the vertebral column, where they mix in the mass of the spinal cord. What have these nerves to do with the bending of the arm? Simply this: If you should cut through the delicate nerves entering the muscle, what would happen? You would find that you had lost all power of bending your arm. However much you willed it, the muscle would not contract. What does this show? It proves that when you will to move, something passes along the nerves to the muscle, which something causes the muscle to contract. The nerve, then, is a bridge between your will and the muscle—so that when the bridge is broken the will can not get to the muscle.
If, anywhere between the muscle and the spinal cord, you cut the nerve, you destroy communication between the will and the muscle. If you injure the spinal cord in your neck you might live, but you would be paralyzed; you might will to bend your arm, but could not.
In short, the whole process is this: by the exercise of your will a something is started in your brain. That something passes from the brain to the spinal cord, leaves the spinal cord and travels along certain nerves, picking its way along the bundles of nervous threads which run from the upper part of the spinal cord, until it reaches the muscle. The muscle immediately contracts and grows thick. The tendon pulls at the radius, the radius with the ulna moves on the fulcrum of the humerus at the elbow-joint, and the arm is bent.
Why does the muscle contract when that something reaches it? We must be content to say that it is the property of the muscle. But it does not always possess this property. Suppose you were to tie a cord very tightly around the top of the arm close to the shoulder. If you tied it tight enough the arm would become pale, and would very soon begin to grow cold. It would get numb, and would seem to be heavy and clumsy. Your feeling in it would be blunted, and soon altogether lost. You would find great difficulty in bending it, and soon it would lose all power. If you untied the cord, little by little the cold and clumsiness would pass away, the power and warmth would come back, and you would be able to bend it as you did before. What did the cord do to the arm? The chief thing was to press on the blood-vessels, and so stop the blood from moving in them. We have seen that all parts of the body are supplied with blood-vessels, veins and arteries. In the arm there is a very large artery, branches from which go into all parts of the muscle. If, instead of tying the cord about the arm, these branches alone were tied, the arm, as a whole, would not grow cold or limp, but if you tried to bend it, you would find it impossible. All this teaches that the power which a muscle has of contracting may be lost and regained as the blood is stopped in its circulation, or allowed to circulate freely.
Our next question is, What is there in the blood that thus gives to the muscle the power of contracting, or that keeps the muscle alive? The answer is easy. What is the name given to this power of a muscle to contract? We call it strength. Straighten out your arm upon the table and put a heavy weight in your hand; then bend your arm. Find the heaviest weight that you can raise in this way, and try it some morning after your breakfast, when you are in good condition. Go without dinner, and in the evening when tired and hungry, try to raise the same weight in the same way. You will not be able to do so. Your muscle is weaker than it was in the morning, and you say that the want of food makes you weak; and that is so, because the food becomes blood. The things which we eat are changed into other things which form part of the blood, and this blood going to the muscle gives it strength. What is true of the relations of the blood to the muscles is true of all other parts of the body. The brain and nerves and spinal cord have a more pressing need of pure blood. The faintness which we feel from want of food is quite as much weakness of the brain and of the nerves as of the muscles, perhaps even more so.
The whole history of our daily life is, briefly told, this: The food we eat becomes blood; the blood is carried all over the body, round and round, in the torrent of the circulation; as it sweeps past them or through them, the brain, nerves, muscles and skin pick out new food for their work, and give back the things they have used or no longer want; as they all have different work, some pick up what others have thrown away. There are also scavengers and cleansers to take up things which are wanted no longer, and to throw them out of the body.
Thus the blood is kept pure as well as fresh. Thus it is through the blood brought to them, that each part does its work.
But what is blood? It is a fluid. It runs about like water, but while water is transparent, blood is opaque. Under a microscope you will see a number of little round bodies—the blood-discs, or blood-corpuscles. All the redness there is in blood belongs to these. These red corpuscles are not hard, solid things, but delicate and soft, yet made to bear all the squeezing they get as they drive around the body. Besides these red corpuscles, are other little bodies, just a little larger than the red, not colored at all, and quite round. These are all that one can see in blood, but it has a strange property which we will study. Whenever blood is shed from a living body, within a short time it becomes solid. This change is called coagulation. If a dish be filled with blood, and you were to take a bunch of twigs and keep slowly stirring, you would naturally think it would soon begin to coagulate; but it does not, and if you keep on stirring you find that this never takes place. Take out your bundle of twigs, and you will find it coated all over with a thick, fleshy mass of soft substance. If you rinse this with water you will soon have left nothing but a quantity of soft, stringy material matted among the twigs. This stringy material is, in reality, made up of fine, delicate, elastic threads, and is called fibrin; by stirring you have taken it out. If the blood had been left in the dish for a few hours, or a day, you would find a firm mould of coagulated blood floating in a colorless liquid. This jelly would continue shrinking, and the fluid would remain; this fluid is called serum, and it is the blood out of which the corpuscles have been strained by the coagulation. All these various things, fibrin, serum, corpuscles, etc., make up the blood. This blood must move, and how does it move? You have had the different organs which assist in its circulation described, but let us illustrate.
All over the body there are, though you can not see them, networks of capillaries. All the arteries end in capillaries, and in them begin all veins. Supposing a little blood-corpuscle be squeezed in the narrow pathway of a capillary in the muscle of the arm. Let it start in motion backward. Going along the narrow capillary it would hardly have room to move. It will pass on the right and left other capillary channels, as small as the one in which it moves; advancing, it will soon find the passage widening and the walls growing thicker. This continues until the corpuscle is almost lost in the great artery of the arm; thence it will pass but few openings, and these will be large, until it passes into the aorta, or great artery, and then into the heart. Suppose the corpuscle retrace its journey and go ahead instead of backward. It will go through passages similar to the other, and it would learn these passages to be veins. At last the corpuscle would float into the vena cava, thence to the right auricle, from there to the right ventricle, by the pulmonary artery to the lungs; there it, with its attendant white corpuscles, serum and other substances, would be purified, then sent by pulmonary vein to the left auricle and ventricle, and then pumped over the body again. Some one may ask, What is the force that drives or pumps the blood? Suppose you had a long, thin muscle fastened at one end to something firm, and a weight attached to it. Every time the muscle contracted it would pull on the weight and draw it up. But instead of hanging a weight to the muscle, wrap it around a bladder of water. If the muscle contract now, evidently the water will be squeezed through any opening in the bladder. This is just what takes place in the heart. Each cavity there, each auricle and ventricle is, so to speak, a thin bag with a number of muscles wrapped about it. In an ordinary muscle of the body the fibers are placed regularly side by side, but in the heart, the bundles are interlaced in a very wonderful fashion, so that it is difficult to make out the grain. They are so arranged that the muscular fibers may squeeze all parts of each bag at the same time. But here is the most wonderful fact of all. These muscles of the auricles and ventricles are always at work contracting and relaxing of their own accord as long as the heart is alive. The muscle of your arm contracts only at your will. But the heart is never quiet. Awake or asleep, whatever you are doing or not doing, it keeps steadily on.
Each time the heart contracts what happens? Let us begin with the right ventricle full of blood. It contracts; the pressure comes on all sides, and were it not for the flaps that close and shut the way, some of the blood would be forced back into the right auricle. As it is, there is but one way,—through the pulmonary artery. This is already full of blood, but, because of its wonderful elasticity, it stretches so that it holds the extra fluid. The valve at its mouth closes, and the blood is safely shut in, but the artery so stretched contracts and forces the blood along into the veins and capillaries of the lungs, in turn stretching them so that they must force ahead the blood which they already contain. This blood is forced into the pulmonary vein, thence to the left auricle; the auricle forces it into the ventricle, and the latter pumps it into the aorta; the aorta overflows as the pulmonary artery did, and the blood goes through every capillary of the body into the great venæ cavæ, which forces it into the right auricle; thence to the ventricle where we started. In this passage every fragment of the body has been bathed in blood. This stream rushing through the capillaries contains the material from which bone, muscle, and brain are made, and carries away all the waste material which must be thrown off.
The actual work of making bone or muscle is performed outside of the blood in the tissues. You say, the capillaries are closed, and how can the blood get to the tissues? It will be necessary here to speak of a certain property of membranes in order that you understand how the tissues are built up by the blood apparently closed within the veins. If a solution of sugar or salt be placed in a bladder with the neck tied tightly, and this placed in a basin of pure water, you will find that the water in the basin will soon taste of sugar or salt and after a time will taste as strong as the water in the bladder. If you substitute solid particles, or things that will not dissolve, you will find no change. This property which membranes, such as a bladder, have, is called osmosis. It is by osmosis chiefly that the raw, nourishing material in the blood gets into the flesh lying about the capillaries. It is by osmosis chiefly that food gets out of the stomach into the blood. It is by this property that the worn-out materials are drained away from the blood, and so cast out of the body. By osmosis the blood nourishes and purifies the flesh. By osmosis the blood is itself nourished and kept pure.
We must now understand how we live on this food we eat. Food passing into the alimentary canal is there digested. The nourishing food-stuffs are dissolved out of the innutritious and pass into the blood. The blood thus kept supplied with combustible materials, draws oxygen from the lungs, and thus carries to every part of the body stuff to burn and oxygen to burn it with. Everywhere this oxidation is going on, changing the arterial blood to venous.
From most places where there is oxidation, the venous blood comes away hotter than the arterial, and all the hot venous blood mingling, keeps the whole body warm. Much heat is given up, however, to whatever is touching the skin, and much is used in turning liquid perspiration into vapor. Thus, as long as we are in health, we never get hotter than a certain degree.
Everywhere this oxidation is going on. Little by little, every part of the body is continually burning away and continually being made anew by the blood. Though it is the same blood, it makes very different things: in the nerves it makes nerve; in the muscle, muscle. It gives different qualities to different parts: out of one gland it makes saliva, another gastric juice; out of it the bone gets strength and the muscle power to contract. But the far greater part of the power of the blood is spent in heat, or goes to keep us warm.
One thing more we have to note before we answer the question, why we move. We have seen that we move by reason of our muscles contracting, and that, in a general way, a muscle contracts because a something started in our brain by our will, passes through the spinal cord, through certain nerves, until it reaches the muscle, and this something we may call a nervous impulse. But what starts this?
All the nerves do not end in the muscles, but many in the skin. These nerves can not be used to carry nervous impulses from the brain to the skin. By no effort of yours can you make the skin contract. For what purpose then are these nerves? If you prick your finger, you feel the touch, or say that you have sensation in your finger. If you were to cut the nerve leading to the finger you would lose this power of feeling. These nerves, then, ending in the fingers have a different use from those ending in the muscles. The latter carry an impulse from the brain to the muscles, and are called motor nerves. The former carry impulses from the skin to the brain, and are called sensory nerves, or those which bring about sensations. Motor nerves are of but one kind, but there are several kinds of sensory nerves, each kind having a special work to do. The several works which these nerves do are called the senses. By means of these sensory nerves we receive impressions from the external world, sensations of heat, cold, roughness, good and bad odors, taste, sound, and the color and form of things. Thus impressions of the external world are made upon the brain, and it is these impressions that stimulate the brain to action. The brain worked on by them, through ways that we know not of, governs the muscles, sends commands by the motor nerves, and rules the body as a conscious, intelligent will.
[TO THE NIGHTINGALE.]
By DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN.
Sweet bird, that sing’st away the early hours,
Of winters past or coming void of care,
Well pleased with delights which present are,
Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers;
To rocks, to springs, to rills, from leafy bowers
Thou thy Creator’s goodness dost declare,
And what dear gifts on thee he did not spare,
A stain to human sense in sin that lowers.
What soul can be so sick which by thy songs,
Attir’d in sweetness, sweetly is not driven
Quite to forget earth’s turmoils, spites, and wrongs,
And lift a reverent eye and thought to heaven?
Sweet artless songster, thou my mind dost raise
To airs of spheres, yes, and to angels’ lays.
[SUNDAY READINGS.]
SELECTED BY THE REV. J.H. VINCENT, D.D.
[May 6.]
FILTHY LUCRE.[F]
By Rev. WILLIAM ARNOT.
These “ways,” as described by Solomon in the preceding verses, are certainly some of the very worst. We have here literally the picture of a robber’s den. The persons described are of the baser sort: the crimes enumerated are gross and rank: they would be outrageously disreputable in any society, of any age. Yet when these apples of Sodom are traced to their sustaining root, it turns out to be greed of gain. The love of money can bear all these.
This scripture is not out of date in our day, or out of place in our community. The word of God is not left behind obsolete by the progress of events. “All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away; but the word of the Lord endureth for ever” (1 Peter, i: 24, 25). The Scripture traces sin to its fountain, and deposits the sentence of condemnation there,—a sentence that follows actual evil through all its diverging paths. A spring of poisonous water may in one part of its course run over a rough, rocky bed, and in another glide silent and smooth through a verdant meadow; but, alike when chafed into foam by obstructing rocks, and when reflecting the flowers from its glassy breast, it is the same lethal stream. So from greed of gain—from covetousness which is idolatry, the issue is evil, whether it run riot in murder and rapine in Solomon’s days, or crawl sleek and slimy through cunning tricks of trade in our own. God seeth not as man seeth. He judges by the character of the life stream that flows from the fountain of thought, and not by the form of the channel which accident may have hollowed out to receive it.
When this greed of gain is generated, like a thirst in the soul, it imperiously demands satisfaction: and it takes satisfaction wherever it can be most readily found. In some countries of the world still it retains the old-fashioned form of iniquity which Solomon has described: it turns free-booter, and leagues with a band of kindred spirits, for the prosecution of the business on a larger scale. In our country, though the same passion domineer in a man’s heart, it will not adopt the same method, because it has cunning enough to know that by this method it could not succeed. Dishonesty is diluted, and colored, and moulded into shapes of respectability, to suit the taste of the times. We are not hazarding an estimate whether there be as much of dishonesty under all our privileges as prevailed in a darker day: we affirm only that wherever dishonesty is, its nature remains the same, although its form may be more refined. He who will judge both mean men and merchant princes requires truth in the inward parts. There is no respect of persons with him. Fashions do not change about the throne of the Eternal. With him a thousand years are as one day. The ancient and modern evil-doers are reckoned brethren in iniquity, despite the difference in the costume of their crimes. Two men are alike greedy of gain. One of them being expert in accounts, defrauds his creditors, and thereafter drives his carriage; the other, being robust of limb, robs a traveler on the highway, and then holds midnight revel on the spoil. Found fellow-sinners, they will be left fellow-sufferers. Refined dishonesty is as displeasing to God, as hurtful to society, and as unfit for heaven, as the coarsest crime.
This greed, when full grown, is coarse and cruel. It is not restrained by any delicate sense of what is right or seemly. It has no bowels. It marches right to its mark, treading on everything that lies in the way. If necessary, in order to clutch the coveted gain, “it takes away the life of the owners thereof.” Covetousness is idolatry. The idol delights in blood. He demands and gets a hecatomb of human sacrifices.
Among the laborers employed in a certain district to construct a railway, was one thick-necked, bushy, sensual, ignorant, brutalized man, who lodged in the cottage of a lone old woman. This woman was in the habit of laying up her weekly earnings in a certain chest, of which she carefully kept the key. The lodger observed where the money lay. After the works were completed and the workmen dispersed, this man was seen in the gray dawn of a Sabbath morning stealthily approaching the cottage. That day, for a wonder among the neighbors, the dame did not appear at church. They went to her house, and learned the cause. Her dead body lay on the cottage floor: the treasure-chest was robbed of its few pounds and odd shillings, and the murderer had fled. Afterward they caught and hanged him.
Shocking crime!—to murder a helpless woman in her own house in order to reach and rifle her little hoard, laid up against the winter and the rent! The criminal is of a low, gross, bestial nature. Be it so. He was a pest to society, and society flung the troubler off the earth. But what of those who are far above him in education and social position, and as far beyond him in the measure of their guilt? How many human lives is the greed of gain even now taking away in the various processes of slavery? Men who hold a high place, and bear a good name in the world, have in this form taken away the life of thousands for filthy lucre’s sake. Murder on a large scale has been and is done upon the African tribes by civilized men for money.
The opium traffic, forced upon China by the military power of Britain, and maintained by her merchants in India, is murder done for money on a mighty scale. Opium spreads immorality, imbecility, and death through the teeming ranks of the Chinese populations. The quantity of opium cultivated on their own soil is comparatively small. The government prohibited the introduction of the deadly drug until England compelled them to legalize the traffic. British merchants brought it to their shores in ship-loads notwithstanding, and the thunder of British cannon opened a way for its entrance through the feeble ranks that lined the shore. Every law of political economy, and every sentiment of Christian charity, cries aloud against nurturing on our soil, and letting loose among our neighbors, that grim angel of death. The greed of gain alone suggests, commands, compels it. How can we expect the Chinese to accept the Bible from us while we bring opium to them in return? British Christians might bear to China that life for which the Chinese seem to be thirsting, were it not that British merchants are bearing to China that death which the best of her people loathe.
A bloated, filthy, half-naked laborer, hanging on at the harbor, has gotten a shilling for a stray job. As soon as he has wiped his brow, and fingered the coin, he walks into a shop and asks for whisky. The shopkeeper knows the man—knows that his mind and body are damaged by strong drink—knows that his family are starved by the father’s drunkenness. The shopkeeper eyes the squalid wretch. The shilling tinkles on the counter. With one hand the dealer supplies the glass, and with the other mechanically rakes the shilling into the till among the rest. It is the price of blood. Life is taken there for money. The gain is filthy. Feeling its stain eating like rust into his conscience, the man who takes it reasons eagerly with himself thus: “He was determined to have it; and if I won’t, another will.” So he settles the case that occurred in the market-place on earth, but he has not done with it yet. How will that argument sound as an answer to the question, “Where is thy brother?” when it comes in thunder from the judgment-seat of God?
Oh that men’s eyes were opened to know this sin beneath all its coverings, and loathe it in all its disguises! Other people may do the same, and we may never have thought seriously of the matter; but these reasons, and a thousand others, will not cover sin. All men should think of the character and consequences of their actions. God will weigh our deeds; we should ourselves weigh them beforehand in his balances. It is not what that man has said, or this man has done; but what Christ is, and his members should be. The question for every man through life is, not what is the practice of earth, but what is preparation for heaven. There would not be much difficulty in judging what gain is right and what is wrong if we would take Christ into our counsels. If people look unto Jesus when they think of being saved, and look hard away from him when they are planning how to make money, they will miss their mark for both worlds. When a man gives his heart to gain, he is an idolater. Money has become his god. He would rather that the Omniscient should not be the witness of his worship. While he is sacrificing in this idol’s temple, he would prefer that Christ should reside high in heaven, out of sight and out of mind. He would like Christ to be in heaven, ready to open its gates to him, when death at last drives him off the earth; but he will not open for Christ now that other dwelling-place which he loves—a humble and contrite heart. “Christ in you, the hope of glory;” there is the cure of covetousness! That blessed Indweller, when he enters, will drive out—with a scourge, if need be—such buyers and sellers as defiled his temple. His still small voice within would flow forth, and print itself on all your traffic,—“Love one another, as I have loved you.”
On this point the Christian Church is very low. The living child has lain so close to the world’s bosom that she has overlaid it in the night, and stifled its troublesome cry. After all our familiarity with the Catechism, we need yet to learn “what is the chief end of man,” and what should be compelled to stand aside as a secondary thing. We need from all who fear the Lord, a long, loud testimony against the practice of heartlessly subordinating human bodies and souls to the accumulation of material wealth.
[May 13.]
A CHRISTIAN DESCRIBED.[G]
By the REV. W. JAY.
Who are they that principally occupy the pen of biographers, and allure the attention of readers? Travelers, painters, poets, scholars, writers, philosophers, statesmen, princes. All these have their respective and comparative claims, which we by no means wish to undervalue. But, my brethren, we are going to bring forward this evening a character often, indeed, like the original, “despised and rejected of men,” but superior to them all, and great where they are nothing,—great in the sight of the Lord,—great in the desolation of the universe, great in the annals of eternity: a Christian.
1. Let us consider the commonness of the appellation. We may take three views of the commonness of this name.
In one respect the commonness is astonishing and should be convincing. We may say to an infidel, Pray how came this name to be so common as it now is? The founder (we now refer to his humanity; and the argument requires such a reference)—the founder was a poor man, a mechanic in a village. “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the son of man hath not where to lay his head.” He had received no university education; he was trained up at the feet of no Gamaliel; the people therefore said, “How knoweth this man letters, never having learned?” It was said of him, not only that “the common people heard him gladly,” but that “many of the rulers believed on him.” The chief ministers in his new empire were a company of fishermen in the Lake of Galilee; and the kingdom itself was established on the overthrow of every worldly opinion and fashion. When we consider the nature of the doctrines they preached—the difficulties they had to overcome, in the profligacy of the multitude, in the subtlety of philosophers, in the covetousness of priests, in the opposition and edicts of magistrates and emperors,—and when we consider their natural resourcelessness in themselves, what can be more astonishing than that this name should be spread so rapidly from province to province, and from country to country, till before the termination of three centuries it had reached the boundaries of the unwieldy Roman empire. It has since far surpassed them, and is now advancing toward the ends of the earth. . . . “His name shall endure forever: his name shall be continued as long as the sun: and men shall be blessed in him: all nations shall call him blessed. Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things. And blessed be his holy name for ever and ever, and let the whole earth be filled with his glory!” Amen and amen!
In another view, this commonness is reasonable: we wish it were more common; we wish it prevailed exclusively above every other; we wish no other ever obtained in the world; we wish that the Church could, even now, fling off the world; and we hope that this will be the case by and by, when the pristine glory of Christianity shall revive, and the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea; and we shall see eye to eye. They pay an idolatrous homage to any man who name themselves religiously after him; as Calvinists, after Calvin; Arminians, after Arminius; Baxterians, from Baxter. If I must have a human appellation, I will go back at once to the apostolic times; I will call myself a Johnite, after John, or a Paulite, after Paul. But, no; “who is Paul, and who is Apollos? was Paul crucified for you? or were you baptised in the name of Paul?” No; I will be called by no human name, not even if it be an inspired one: my name shall not be derived from the servant, but from the Master himself. I will remember his command: “Call no man Master, on earth; for one is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren.”
In another view, the commonness of the name is lamentable. Let me explain: The word Christian was once very significant and distinguishing. But, alas! in numberless instances now, it is not distinguishable at all. Whom does it now comprehend? All the world, with the exception of pagans, Turks, Jews, and infidels: all others it takes in: it is now a kind of geographical distinction, rather than religious. France is a Christian country—Portugal is a Christian country—Spain is a Christian country—Italy is a Christian country—England is a Christian country; and this, after all, is a Christian country, comparatively. But a Christian country is not a country of Christians; and, therefore, the term, even amongst us, includes numbers who are swearers, drunkards, and Sabbath-breakers, revilers, and multitudes who, though not distinguished by any grossness of life, yet are entirely opposite to the spirit and commands of Christianity in their principles and tendencies. Often, therefore, now it means nothing—yea, it is worse than nothing—it is even injurious by its indiscrimination. Men are easily deluded in their own opinions; they easily imagine that they are what they are called; and having the name, they imagine that they have the thing, especially when there is no one to dispute their title. Multitudes of these would be offended if you were to withhold from them the name of a Christian; and yet if you were to call them saints, or the sanctified, they would be still more surprised and mortified: and yet the saint and the Christian are the same person, according to the language of the New Testament; and the apostle assures us that “without holiness, no man shall see the Lord.”
Let us consider,
2. The real import of this title—a Christian.
A Christian is one who has a relation to Christ; not a professed, but a real relation—not a nominal, but a vital relation—yea, a very peculiar and pre-eminent relation, arising above every other you can mention; spiritual in its nature, and never-ending in its duration; and deriving the possession and continuance of every enjoyment from Christ. Beware of a Christianity without Christ: it is a stream without a fountain—a branch without a living root—a body without a soul. “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him which is the head of all principality and power.”
A Christian is a lover of Christ’s doctrine. In all systems there are some common principles; but my receiving what is common in the system of a master does not entitle me to be named after him. My believing with a Socinian that there is a God, and that there will be a resurrection from the dead, does not render me a Socinian; but my believing what is peculiar in his creed—that Christ was a mere man, that he was born in the ordinary way of generation, that he died only as a witness of the truth, and not as a sacrifice for sin. Deism has some principles in common with our Christianity: now my believing these will not constitute me a Christian, but my holding those peculiar to Christianity. These are to be found only in the Scriptures; there a Christian searches for them; there he kneels before the oracle of divine truth; there he takes up these principles, and says, these, however mysterious they may be to my reason, however humiliating they may be to the pride of my heart—these I take up on the authority of him who has revealed them. I sit with Mary at Jesus’ feet; I pray to be led by his spirit into all truth, and to be able to say with John, “We have an unction from the holy one, and we know all things.”
A Christian is a lover of Christ’s person. This attachment is deserved and demanded, by all that he has done and suffered for us. Paul describes the subjects of divine grace as those “who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity:” and so far was he from supposing that a man can be a Christian without this love to Christ, that he says, “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema maranatha.” Jesus himself was the essence of humility, and yet he had such a consciousness of his dignity, and of his claims to the supremacy of the human heart, that he made no scruple to say, “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he that forsaketh not all that he hath and followeth me can not be my disciple.”
The Christian is a copier of Christ’s example. Without this in vain you contend for his truth, and talk of your regard to him. “He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.” In all things, indeed, he has the preëminence. But Christians are said to be predestinated to be conformed to his image, that he may be the first-born among many brethren. They are described now as “Beholding in a glass his glory,” and as being “Changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the spirit of the Lord.” He indeed had the spirit without measure; but the Christian possesses the same spirit; for “If any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” We must, therefore, if we are Christians, resemble him who went about doing good,—who said, “The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up,”—who pleased not himself,—who, “Though a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” in the midst of the church sang praises to God. We are no further Christians than as we are like him, and have the same mind in us which was also in him.
A Christian is a dependent on Christ’s mediation. He rejoices in Christ Jesus, and has no confidence in the flesh. He says with the Church, “In the Lord have I righteousness and strength.”
“The best obedience of my hands
Dares not appear before thy throne;
But Faith can answer thy demands
By pleading what my Lord has done.”
He therefore comes to God only by him; and he looks for acceptance as to his person and service in him; and while he makes mention of his righteousness only, he also goes forth in his strength. He feels that without him he can do nothing—that he can not stand longer than he holds him; that he can not walk further than he leads him; but then he sees that there is an all-sufficiency in him, and he believes that while without him he can do nothing, he equally believes that through his strengthening him he can do all things. As he begins his course in this way, so he carries it on; and, however advanced he may be in the divine life, yet he acknowledges himself an unprofitable servant, and “looks for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.”
The Christian is an expectant of Christ’s coming. Jesus said to his disciples, when he was withdrawing from them, “If I go away, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also.” This spake he; therefore they are described as now looking for him; “to them that look for him will he appear without sin unto salvation.” This produces a marvelous difference between him and all other men. Others are now at home—the Christian is now from home. The Christian views his present possessions and enjoyments, whatever they may be, as only the accommodation of the passing time; he feels and acknowledges himself to be a stranger and a pilgrim upon earth; all his treasure is in heaven; therefore he can not be happy, unless he be there too. “Where the treasure is, there will the heart be also.” And Jesus knew this disposition; therefore he said, “Father, I will that they whom thou hast given me be with me, that they may behold my glory.”
This, in brief, is a Christian; a learner of Christ’s doctrine—a lover of Christ’s person—a copier of Christ’s example—a dependent on Christ’s mediation; and an expectant of Christ’s coming.
[May 20.]
THE UNITY OF THE DIVINE BEING.[H]
By Rev. JOHN WESLEY.
And as there is one God, so there is one religion, and one happiness for all men. God never intended there should be any more; and it is not possible there should. Indeed, in another sense, as the apostle observes, “There are gods many, and lords many.” All the heathen nations had their gods, and many whole shoals of them. And generally, the more polished they were, the more gods they heaped up to themselves; but to us, to all that are favored with the Christian revelation, “There is but one God;” who declares of himself, “Is there any God, beside me? There is none; I know not any.”
But who can search out this God to perfection? None of the creatures that he has made. Only some of his attributes he hath been pleased to reveal to us in his Word. Hence we learn that God is an eternal being. “His goings forth are from everlasting,” and will continue to everlasting. As he ever was, so he ever will be; as there was no beginning of his existence, so there will be no end. This is universally allowed to be contained in his very name, Jehovah; which the Apostle John accordingly renders, “He that was, and that is, and that is to come.” Perhaps it would be as proper to say, “He is from everlasting to everlasting.”
Nearly allied to the eternity of God is his omnipresence. As he exists through infinite duration, so he can not but exist through infinite space; according to his own question, equivalent to the strongest assertion; “Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord” (heaven and earth, in the Hebrew idiom, implying the whole universe) which, therefore, according to his own declaration, is filled with his presence.
This one, eternal, omnipresent being is likewise all perfect. He has from eternity to eternity, all the perfections and infinitely more than it ever did, or ever can enter into the heart of man to conceive; yea, infinitely more than the angels in heaven can conceive: these perfections we usually term the attributes of God.
And he is omnipotent, as well as omnipresent: there can be no more bounds to his power than to his presence. He “hath a mighty arm: strong is his hand, and high is his right hand.” He doeth whatsoever pleaseth him, in the heavens, the earth, the sea, and in all deep places. With men, we know, many things are impossible; “but not with God: with him all things are possible.” Whensoever he willeth, to do is present with him.
The omniscience of God is a clear and necessary consequence of his omnipresence. If he is present in every part of the universe, he can not but know whatever is, or is done there: according to the word of St. James, “Known unto God are all his works,” and the works of every creature, “from the beginning” of the world; or rather, as the phrase literally implies, “from eternity.” His eyes are not only “over all the earth, beholding the evil and the good,” but likewise over the whole creation; yea, and the paths of uncreated night. Is there any difference between his knowledge and his wisdom? If there be, is not his knowledge the more general term, (at least according to our weak conceptions), and his wisdom a particular branch of it? namely, the knowing the end of everything that exists, and the means of applying it to that end?
Holiness is another of the attributes of the Almighty, All-wise God. He is infinitely distant from every touch of evil. He “is light; and in him is no darkness at all.” He is a God of unblemished justice and truth: but above all is his mercy. This we may easily learn from that beautiful passage in the thirty-third and thirty-fourth chapters of Exodus: “And Moses said, I beseech thee, show me thy glory. And the Lord descended in the cloud, and proclaimed the name of the Lord, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth; keeping mercy for thousands, and forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and sin.”
This God is a spirit; not having such a body, such parts, or passions, as men have. It was the opinion both of the ancient Jews and the ancient Christians, that he alone is a pure spirit, totally separate from all matter: whereas, they supposed all other spirits, even the highest angels, even cherubim and seraphim, to dwell in material vehicles, though of an exceeding light and subtile substance. At that point of duration, which the infinite wisdom of God saw to be most proper, for reasons which lie hid in the abyss of his own understanding, not to be fathomed by any finite mind, God “called into being all that is;” created the heavens and the earth, together with all that they contain. “All things were created by him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” He created man, in particular, after his own image, to be “a picture of his own eternity.” When he had raised man from the dust of the earth, he breathed into him an immortal spirit. Hence he is peculiarly called, “The Father of our spirits;” yea, “The Father of the spirits of all flesh.”
“He made all things,” as the wise man observes, “for himself.” “For his glory they were created.” Not “as if he needed anything,” seeing “He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things.” He made all things to be happy. He made man to be happy in himself. He is the proper center of spirits; for whom every created spirit was made. So true is that well-known saying of the ancient fathers: fecisti nos ad te: et irrequietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te. “Thou hast made us for thyself; and our heart can not rest till it resteth in thee.”
This observation gives us a clear answer to that question in the Assembly’s catechism: “For what end did God create man?” The answer is, “to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” This is undoubtedly true: but is it quite clear, especially to men of ordinary capacities? Do the generality of common people understand that expression,—“to glorify God?” No; no more than they understand Greek. And it is altogether above the capacity of children; to whom we can scarce ever speak plain enough. Now is not this the very principle that should be inculcated upon every human creature,—“you are made to be happy in God,” as soon as ever reason dawns? Should not every parent, as soon as a child begins to talk, or to run alone, say something of this kind; “see! what is that which shines so over your head? that we call the sun. See, how bright it is! feel how it warms you! it makes the grass to spring, and everything to grow. But God made the sun. The sun could not shine, nor warm, nor do any good without him.” In this plain and familiar way a wise parent might, many times in a day, say something of God; particularly insisting, “he made you; and he made you to be happy in him; and nothing else can make you happy.” We cannot press this too soon. If you say, “nay, but they can not understand you when they are so young,” I answer, no, nor when they are fifty years old, unless God opens their understanding. And can he not do this at any age?
Indeed this should be pressed on every human creature, young and old, the more earnestly and diligently, because so exceedingly few, even of those that are called Christians, seem to know anything about it. Many indeed think of being happy with God in heaven; but the being happy in God on earth never entered into their thoughts.
Let all that desire to please God, condescend to be taught of God, and take care to walk in that path which God hath himself appointed. Beware of taking half of this religion for the whole, but take both parts of it together. And see that you begin where God himself begins: “Thou shalt have no other God before me.” Is not this the first, our Lord himself being the judge, as well as the great commandment? First, therefore, see that ye love God! next, your neighbor, every child of man. From this fountain let every temper, every affection, every passion flow. So shall that “mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” Let all your thoughts, words, and actions, spring from this! So shall you “inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world.”
[May 27.]
READINGS FROM THOMAS À KEMPIS.
OF BEARING WITH THE DEFECTS OF OTHERS.
Those things that a man can not amend in himself, or in others, he ought to suffer patiently until God orders things otherwise.
Think that perhaps it is better so for thy trial and patience.
2. If one that is once or twice warned will not give over, contend not with him; but commit all to God, that his will may be done, and his name honored in all his servants, who well knoweth how to turn evil into good.
Study to be patient in bearing with the defects and infirmities of others, of what sort soever they be: for that thou thyself also hast many, which must be suffered by others.
If thou canst not make thyself such a one as thou wouldst, how canst thou expect to have another in all things to thy liking?
We would willingly have others perfect, and yet we amend not our own faults.
We would have others exactly corrected, and will not be corrected ourselves.
The liberty of others displeaseth us, and yet we will not have our desires denied.
Thus it appears how seldom we weigh our neighbors in the same balance with ourselves.
3. If all men were perfect, what should we have to suffer of our neighbor for God?
But now God hath thus ordained it, that we may learn to bear one another’s burdens; for no man is without fault; no man but hath his burden; no man is self-sufficient; no man has wisdom enough for himself; but we ought to bear with one another, comfort, help, instruct, and admonish one another.
Occasions of adversity best discover how great virtue each one hath:
For occasions make not a man frail, but show what he is
OF AVOIDING RASH JUDGMENT.
Turn thine eyes unto thyself, and beware thou judge not the deeds of other men.
In judging others a man laboreth in vain, often erreth, and easily sinneth; but in judging and examining himself, he always laboreth fruitfully.
We often judge of things according as we fancy them: for affection bereaves us easily of a right judgment.
If God were always our desire, we should not be so much troubled when our inclinations are opposed.
2. But oftentimes something lurks within, which draweth us after it.
Many secretly seek themselves in their actions, but know it not.
They live in peace of mind when things are done according to their will: but if things succeed otherwise than they desire, they are straightway troubled.
Diversity of inclinations and opinions often causes dissensions between religious persons, between friends and countrymen.
3. An old custom is hardly broken, and no man is willing to be led farther than himself can see.
If thou dost more rely upon thine own reason, than upon Jesus Christ, late, if ever, shalt thou become illuminated.
OF WORKS DONE OUT OF CHARITY.
The outward work, without charity, profiteth nothing; but whatsoever is done out of charity, be it ever so little and contemptible in the sight of the world, is wholly fruitful.
For God weigheth more with how much love one worketh, than how much he doeth.
He doth much that loveth much.
2. He doth much that doth a thing well.
He doth well that serveth his neighbor, and not his own will.
Often it seemeth to be charity, and it is rather carnality; because natural inclinations, self-will, hope of reward, and desire of our own interest, are motives that men are rarely free from.
3. He that hath true and perfect charity seeketh himself in nothing, but only desireth in all things that God should be exalted.
He envieth none, because he seeketh not his own satisfaction: neither rejoiceth in himself, but chooses God only for his portion.
He attributes nothing that is good to any man, but wholly referreth it unto God, from whom, as from the fountain, all things proceed: in whom finally all the saints rest.
O that he had but one spark of true charity, he would certainly discern that all earthly things are full of vanity!
[End of Required Reading for May.]
[THE ROMANCE OF ASTRONOMY—ASTROLOGY.]
By R. K. MILLER.
A very interesting portion in the study of planetary astronomy is the mysterious influence which these bodies were supposed to have had on the affairs of men. Astrology comprehended the other heavenly bodies as well as the planets, but the simple regularity of their movements rendered them far less interesting than the “wanderers.” The seemingly arbitrary and irregular course of these bodies caused them to be selected to represent the varying turns of fortune’s wheel. The father of the written science of astrology was Ptolemy, who seems to have studied astronomy for astrological purposes. According to him, the planet in the ascendant at the time of birth was the chief ruler of the character and fortune of the “native,” as the person was technically called. Mercury presided over the mental faculties and literary and scientific pursuits; he caused a desire of change. Venus was called the Lesser Fortune. She produced a mild disposition, with an inclination to pleasure, and brought good fortune to the native in his or her relations to the other sex. Mars was the Lesser Infortune: his influence was decidedly risky, and needed to be well aspected by the other planets to lead to good. He, of course, presided over war and over trades connected with iron and steel. Jupiter was regarded as by far the most propitious of the heavenly orbs. He ruled all high offices. The mortal born under him would be high-minded, liberal, just and devout. Happy the kingdom ruled by a sovereign on whose birth he shone. English astrologers tell with pride that Queen Victoria was born when Jupiter rode high in the heavens. Next to him we have the grim and ill-omened Saturn, the Greater Infortune. Those born under him are gloomy and reserved—faithful in friendship but bitter toward an enemy. Failure, disease, disgrace and death beset the steps of the child of Saturn. Uranus causes abruptness of manners and general eccentricity, while astrologers have not made up their minds about Neptune. The signs of the Zodiac were supposed to have a good deal to do with personal appearance. Thus Pisces produced a short person, with round face and slow gait; Taurus, a well-set person, with broad face and thick neck. Different parts of the human life were allotted to different luminaries, as infancy to the Moon, youth to Venus, and so on. Lastly the visible firmament was divided into twelve equal portions. The first was the house of health; the second, that of wealth; the third, brothers and sisters; the fourth, parents; the fifth, children and amusements; the sixth, sickness; and so on up to the twelfth. The connection is, of course, obvious, as Saturn in the fifth house foretells misfortune with one’s children.
Probably few persons have their horoscopes erected now-a-days, but we have before us that of the Prince of Wales, calculated at the time of his birth of Zadkiel, according to the rules of Ptolemy. The sign in ascendant was Sagittarius, which produces “a tall, upright body, an oval face, ruddy complexion and chestnut hair, good eye, courteous, just, a lover of horses, accomplished and deserving of respect.” The Sun, being well aspected, foretold honors, and as he was in Cancer, in sextile with Mars, the Prince was to be partial to maritime affairs, and win naval glory. The house of wealth was held by Jupiter, and this betokened great wealth through inheritance—a prognostication which, in spite of republican shoemakers and baronets, is not unlikely to come true. The house of marriage was inhabited by Venus, Mars and Saturn, but fortunately the first was to predominate, and the Prince, “after some trouble in his matrimonial speculations,” was to marry a princess of high birth. A few particulars of history are given, but we are overwhelmed with information about his character, over fifty characteristics actually being enumerated, and the horoscope ends, “All things considered, though firm and sometimes decided in opinion, this royal native, if he lives to mount the throne, will sway the scepter of these realms in moderation and justice, and be a pious and benevolent man and a merciful sovereign.”
[AMUSEMENTS—TENNIS.]
By ROBERT MACGREGGOR.
It was in France that what its devotees call “the king of games,” tennis, was originated; but the ground-work is found in the simple old hand ball play that figured so conspicuously in the every-day life of the classical world. It is of little use to speculate in which of the varieties of ball-play mentioned by ancient writers is to be found the progenitor of this pastime. At any rate, a game very like tennis, in which the ball was driven to and fro by a racket, was played in 1380, and soon after we find Richard II. including this game among those unlawful for laboring people. The name “tennis” first occurs in Gower’s “Ballade” in 1400. There is an old story of historical interest told in connection with our game. When Henry V. was meditating war against the King of France, the old “Chronicle” tells us that “The Dolphyn thynkyng Henry to be still given to such plaies and follies as he exercised before the tyme that he was exalted to the croune, sent hym a tunne of tennis balles to plaie with, as he saied that he had better skill of tennis than of warre.” Shakspere makes Henry reply to the ambassador who brought the gift and message:
“We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us;
His present and your pains we thank you for;
When we have matched our rackets to these balls,
We will, in France, by God’s grace, play a set
Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard.”
While Henry received the ambassadors, James I. of Scotland lost his life, it may be said, through his devotion to tennis. While holding the Yuletide festival at Perth, conspirators attacked the castle. The king tore up a plank in the flooring of the room where he was, and dropped into a vault below the apartment, where it was thought escape would be easy. There had been an opening by which he might have escaped, but this had, a few days earlier, been closed by his own orders, because the balls by which he played at tennis were apt to drop into it.
When we reach the reigns of the fourth and fifth Jameses of Scotland, we find from the accounts of the lord high treasurer many evidences of the kings’ fondness for this game and the considerable sums they lost at it.
Henry VII., as the register of his expenditures shows, was a tennis player.
The fifth Scottish James was so devoted to pastimes of all sorts that all his leisure was devoted to amusements, and naturally his people followed his example, especially his fondness for tennis: even the friars caught the fever, for Lyndesay draws us a picture, probably common in that age:
“Though I preich nocht, I can play at the caiche [tennis].
I wat thair is nocht ane amang you all
Mair ferilie can play at the fute ball.”
The game is traced in English history to Henry VIII., who was very fond of it. It is said by a historian: “His propensity being perceived by certayne craftie persons, they brought in Frenchmen and Lombards to make wagers with hym; and so he lost muche money, but when he perceyved theyr crafte he escheued their company and let them go.” Though devoted to the game, the bluff old king passed a stringent act against the keeping of any tennis-court, and against the enjoyment of several games by apprentices, mariners, artificers, and many others. This was only repealed in 1863. The Reformation gave the game a shock, especially in Scotland. During the Commonwealth the exiled court played the game abroad. At the Restoration Charles reintroduced the game, and probably the next few years were the palmy days of tennis in England. In 1664, we learn from Pepys’ diary, that the gossipy secretary had been watching the king at tennis, but was disgusted with the flattery bestowed upon him. He says: “I went to the tennis-court and there saw the king play at tennis. To see how the king’s play was extolled, without any excuse at all, was a loathsome sight, though sometimes he did indeed play very well, but such open flattery is beastly.”
During the last century the records of tennis are meagre: it seems to have been played in only one or two places. Even in England it may be said that tennis as a popular game went out with the Stuarts. Of course the pastime has never actually died out, and in recent years it has had increased attention paid to it, but even now the number of courts does not appear to exceed a score. “Tennis,” says the Edinburgh Review, “the most perfect of games, because with the most continuous certainty it exercises and rewards all the faculties of the player, has only been prevented hitherto from becoming as popular as it deserves from its being, under its original conditions, so expensive, so difficult to learn, and so puzzling to count, as to discourage those who are not ‘to the manner born,’ from touching it.” The first objection of expense seemed almost insuperable, the cost of a tennis-court being from fifteen to twenty thousand dollars, until the recent revival turned the game out to grass, and introduced its rudiments to our lawns. Lawn-tennis, however, like the croquet, which it drove off the lawn, is not a new form of tennis. It is at least three centuries old.
[CELIA SINGING.]
By THOMAS STANLEY.
Roses in breathing forth their scent,
Or stars their borrowed ornament,
Nymphs in the watery sphere that move,
Or angels in their orbs above,
The wingèd chariot of the light,
Or the slow silent wheels of night,
The shade which from the swifter sun
Doth in a circular motion run,
Or souls that their eternal rest do keep,
Make far less noise than Celia’s breath in sleep.
But if the Angel, which inspires
This subtle flame with active fires,
Should mould this breath to words, and those
Into a harmony dispose,
The music of this heavenly sphere
Would steal each soul out at the ear,
And into plants and stones infuse
A life that Cherubim would choose,
And with new powers invert the laws of fate,
Kill those that live, and dead things animate.
[GERMAN-AMERICAN HOUSE-KEEPING.]
By the Author of “Home Life in Germany,” etc.
I received a letter from Germany the other day, written by a young American woman who was recently married to a German officer. They live in a city with about the population of Rochester, N. Y., only distinguished from other places of its size in possessing an old cathedral, a water-cure (Bade Anstalt), and being a military post. These distinguishing features have nothing to do, however, with the part of her letter which I desire to reflect upon. She writes:
“I am so fortunately situated in domestic matters; I have really no care, the mädchen is so competent, and so willing, it is a real pleasure to keep house.”
Just before the arrival of this letter I had patiently listened for two hours to the just and lamentable complaints of an American house-keeper about “the impossibility of procuring a good servant!” The latter resides in a university town, and if a university is worse than a garrison, or students than military men, in destroying the tone of the laboring women and girls, then let the fact have its weight against the statement that the relation between mistress and maid in Europe is better regulated and understood than in America. The two cases I have presented seem to me to have about equal accessories, and it is a curious search to find the reasons for the difference in them.
“Six years ago the Empress of Germany announced that she would henceforth decorate with a golden cross every female servant who had passed forty years of her life in the same family. The Empress has been called upon to bestow this mark of her royal favor 893 times. Can any other country make such a remarkable showing? In America house-maids are apt to reckon their terms of continuous service by weeks and months instead of by years. The beginning of reform in this matter is anxiously awaited by millions of worried households. The heavy emigration from Germany to this country ought to bring to our shores some of these steady-going maids. Possibly there is something in the atmosphere of America, in the restless movement of our people that puts the devil of change into the heads of Gretchens and Bridgets.”
It is the “devil of change,” as the writer expresses it, which gets into the heads of the Gretchens and Katherinas when they come to this country. I think I have discovered a still better reason, which I shall timidly reveal later on, for, in doing so, I must encroach upon national taste and education.
First of all, we should consider that especially the uneducated German man, or woman, girl, or boy, loves the Vaterland. The heimath, with its low ceilings and plastered walls, its sanded floors and wooden bench outside the door, where the father smokes his pipe in the evening, while the mother knits, is all enshrined in the hearts of the children, and the recollection of the festtage, when the father and mother put on their best clothes and take all the children to the neighboring beer-garden to hear music, is always joyous. It is only by rumors of “higher wages” that such people are ever induced to bundle up the feather beds, and lock the wooden chest, and start as poor steerage passengers across the great Atlantic. After the horrors of the voyage, and the strange and confusing days of Castle Garden, what do they find in place of the old home and the familiar ways of the Vaterland? The daughters hire out probably for cooks. First of all, they are expected to cook a heavy breakfast by 8 o’clock, and nothing seems so hard to a foreigner as this. Their traditions are at once set at naught. They begin to grind on a differently constructed wheel. Just as John Chinaman has to learn that we even turn the screw the opposite way to the way in which he has been drilled, so the poor Germans have to learn that if Americans offer higher wages, they also expect things done in their own way. The dull gray kitchen is perhaps a previous disappointment to the heavy breakfast. No white tiles around the oven; no brassware to see her face in! No open market with benches where she can sit and talk with the market women under their red umbrellas, and watch the lads go by: covered, dull grey places are our American markets compared with the bazar appearance of the meat and vegetable markets of Europe. No concert in the evening for five cents. Nothing—but a long day and a longer evening in an uninteresting kitchen, with different food and different duties. Finding a young, fresh-looking girl with her white cap on her head, in the kitchen of a friend of mine, recently, where I chanced to be visiting, I asked her in German if she was contented in this country, remarking at the same time that she was fortunate to live with a lady who could speak German, and who was so kind. “O yes,” said she; “but then I think I can do better. If I can’t, it were happier for me in the Vaterland.”
One of our distinguished politicians and scholars, who served in Germany as United States minister, brought back with him a German diener, or butler. Karl did well for a season; maintained his respectful bearing toward the herrschaften and their guests until finally he announced he was “discontented,” and the reason for his desire to change places was that the herrschaften did not entertain as grandly in this country as they did in Germany, and that the guests were not such fine ladies and gentlemen—they did not give trink-gelt (civility money). But the most heartfelt reason was, he was lonely. He missed music, he missed beer, he missed gemüthlichkeit, and fine and high titles by which to call the ladies and gentlemen. And then the festtage—no days in America for the poor working classes to be relieved from care and have a good time. This did not please Karl.
On these festtage in Germany a servant man or woman has as good a chance to go to a picture gallery, or a pottery, or a museum, or a concert, as gentlefolks; and does not the knowledge and pleasure gained at such places make the servant more cheerful, and intelligent, and competent to look at work not as drudgery, but as something in which the whole human family is engaged in one way or another? Said an observing servant to me after an afternoon in a picture gallery: “How can those poor artists sit all day long with their feet on the stone floor and copy pictures? They look so tired I was glad I was not one of them!” After a visit to the Königliche Porzellan Manufactur, in Charlottenburg, I remember once having asked a servant if she knew how much labor it required to manufacture a cup and saucer; and I proceeded to tell her how the feldspar found in the vicinity of Berlin was ground to powder, cleaned through various tanks of water, each time running through a sieve, then how they pass it between heavy weights so that it came out in great sheets of pliable putty, which are laid over moulds, just as a piece of dough is laid over a pie-pan. When these forms are taken off, they are carefully finished in every indentation by skilful workmen, who have delicate tools for the purpose. Afterward they take these forms, cups, saucers, plates, vegetable dishes, as they may be, and bake them in ovens for sixteen hours the first time, and after they are taken out they are glazed and baked again, and then if the ware is to be painted it must be baked again; and if gilded, still again. I ended this elaborate description all out of breath, for it required as much command of the German language as I at that time thought I had. The attentive girl, however, relieved my excitement by saying: “Yes; I have been out there, gnädige frau, and seen it all, and this is why I try to be so careful with china.” In the five years this good girl had lived with me she had rarely broken a piece. I could but think how unlike the answer “Biddy” would have given, that “the kitchen floor is very hard on china.” I have known servant girls as much interested in the collections of laces in the museums, especially the specimens made by poor peasant women in different centuries, as any high-born lady, and much more capable of reproducing specimens of this industry. The costumes of the peasants and the costumes of the kings and queens, and the furniture used by the latter, will attract crowds of ignorant people by the hour in European museums. But who ever sees any but the intelligent and rich walking about in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, or the Academy in Boston. We do not care to interest the working classes in this country; only care to see that they work well and as many hours as possible. “There remains,” says a writer on duties of contract, “outside of their actual service, or of any assumption of authority on our side, really limitless fields for the exercise of our natural influence as their immediate superiors and friends.” I think, in the matter of lodging—the rooms the Americans give their servants to sleep in—they fare infinitely better than in any foreign country; but the food is not so well adapted to their physical wants. Delicate dishes and highly seasoned food are sent into the kitchen for the servants by our American housekeepers, and you hear them say: “O, we would not think of denying our servants all the dainties of our own table.” Do they ever think that a working man or woman, no matter of what nationality, prefers boiled beef and turnips, or bacon and cabbage, to sweet breads and peas, or venison and cauliflower. But this is an inexhaustible theme, and one I must defer yet again before I venture to say what I think about the genuine American table.
In the town of Delitzsch, in the province of Posen, resides a man—Herr Schulze-Delitzsch—who has devoted himself almost exclusively for years to the study of the labor question and the elevation of the working classes. He is a great reformer, but escapes being known as a revolutionist. More practical and perhaps more methodical than Lasalle, he relies not upon the state for aid, but upon the sympathy and help of the working classes themselves. He organized workingmen’s associations, union stores, etc. France, Belgium, Italy, and even England, became awakened, and looked with interest upon his work, and inquiries were made by authority of the English government into the real manner and methods adopted. As a writer on the subject remarks: “Schulze’s methods are economical and reformatory; Lasalle’s were political and revolutionary.” The Credit und Vorschuss Verein, which is a species of savings bank, was practically his work. The members contributed of their savings to this fund, and when old age, sickness, or misfortune overtook them, and they were obliged to give up laboring by the day, they were in turn helped. The Vereins were entirely under the management of the members. The investment of the capital was entirely under their control, the surplus being divided annually, and the “sick funds” and “funeral funds” were distributed by them. The first institution was founded in 1850, and in 1869 the number reached 1,750. The permanent capital was then 12,000,000 thalers. The hired laborers form a tenth of the membership of the unions, and they are on the increase; the farmers something more than a fifth; the tradesmen a tenth, and the mechanics a third. The farmer’s aim is, in part, the procuring, in common, seed, implements, etc.; in part, the sale in common of milk, butter, cheese, hops, wine, and other products. Thus, through moderate and just ideas and management, much has been accomplished. Working people must not be fed on incendiary ideas. Ruskin’s lectures to working men savor of dilettante ideas. A man who has never been poor rarely knows how to appeal to the poor or guide them. Schulze-Delitzsch’s philosophy has been learned from actual experience. There is nothing of the factious orator about him, but he is calm and persuasive. He is not a social-democrat, but belongs to the progressive party, which stands for the most advanced form of liberalism. He organizes the poor to teach them to resist their own worst faults. He was burgomaster of Delitzsch at one time, after leaving political life in the capital, because of differences which arose. He was assisted by his mother to go on lecturing tours, and when this was no longer practicable—as she had also small means—there was a purse raised by the citizens, which reached the sum of 50,000 thalers; the greater part being given by the poor working people in paltry sums. Thus he was saved for higher work, and gave up the position of burgomaster. He accepted this money only in trust—investing part in a home at Potsdam and the rest in such a way that the interest only accrues to him. If it was worth England’s time to inquire into the economic methods of the Credit und Vorschuss Verein, perhaps America could utilize some ideas on this subject. Germany is finding out many of our ways and means, which she considers superior to her own conservative methods. Dr. Max Zering, of Berlin, was recently commissioned by the government of Prussia to investigate and report upon the agricultural and transportation interests and methods of the United States. He will visit the different cities, make the acquaintance of their boards of trade, chambers of commerce, and railroad managers. It seems that the day has come when nations are becoming very liberal toward one another. The exclusive spirit which prevails in China, more than in any other country, is fast being eradicated, and all people are exclaiming, “If you know anything better, or accomplish anything in an easier way than we do, pray let us have a lesson of you.”
Perhaps different nations show their identity more in regard to preparing and eating food than in any other particular. The roots from which their different languages spring are more easily discerned by a philologist, than the common-sense basis which has suggested to each people its separate ideas on food and the preparation of it, is found out by any scientific chemist. I have been asked so often how the German markets and groceries compare with ours in variety and price, that it occurs to me to insert here an extract from an account book of my butcher and grocer of the preis courant for the years 1876, 1877, 1878, etc.:
| Price per pound. | |||
| Marks | Pf. | $ cts. | |
| Filet (Beef) | 1 | 20 | .28½ |
| Schmorfleisch (Stewing Meat) | 1 | 00 | .238 |
| Schabefleisch (Hashed Meat) | 90 | .21 | |
| Rindfleisch-Braten (Roast Beef) | 95 | .22½ | |
| Suppenfleisch (Meat for Soup) | 80 | .19 | |
| Kalbskeule (Veal) | 90 | .21 | |
| Kalbsbrust (Breast of Veal) | 75 | .18 | |
| Kalbs-Cotelette (Veal Cutlets) | 1 | 20 | .28½ |
| Hammelkeule (Shoulder of Mutton) | 80 | .19 | |
| Hammel-Cotelettes (Mutton Chops) | 75 | .18 | |
| Hammelbrust (Breast of Mutton) | 75 | .18 | |
| Schweinefleisch (Pork) | 90 | .21 | |
This was taken from a printed circular which every butcher of standing in a large German city presents to his customers once a year. The market list below is not complete, of course, but the great American turkey, it will be observed, brings a high price in Germany, as well as American hams.
| Marks | Pf. | $ cts. | |
| One Goose, | 3 | 00 | .71 |
| One Turkey, | 10 | 00 | 2.38 |
| Fish, | — | — | —— |
| Oysters, | — | — | —— |
| Ham per lb. | 1 | 80 | .428 |
| Corn Beef per lb. | 2 | 00 | .47½ |
| Cheese per lb. | 50 | .12 | |
| Butter per lb. | 1 | 80 | .428 |
| Lard per lb. | 90 | .21 | |
| Candles per lb. | 1 | 00 | .238 |
| Salt per lb. | 1 | 00 | .238 |
| Sugar per lb. | 60 | .14 | |
| Coffee per lb. | 1 | 50 | .35½ |
| Rice per lb. | 40 | .10 | |
| Chocolate per lb. 80 Pf. .19 cts. | |||
| One dozen Vienna rolls or cakes of bread for 30 days cost $2.50. | |||
Some of these prices will show that Germany is no longer a cheap country to live in, but the way in which articles of food are used and managed is where the French and Germans excel in economy. For instance, American housekeepers say in the winter and fall and spring, “It is so difficult to keep a good table, because there is so little variety in our markets.” And when they say this there will oftentimes be ten different meats and as many vegetables to be had. Now why does this complaint go on from year to year? Men and women are both to blame for it, and to show how they are is an easy task. If these ten meats and corresponding number of vegetable are judiciously managed, both health and economy can be forwarded. I will enumerate the meats and vegetables, that no housekeeper may say this is random talk: Beef (1), mutton (2), veal (3), pork (4), ham (5), corn beef (6), turkey (7), chicken (8), fish (9), game (10); kidneys, sweet-breads, and the like, not to be mentioned here, for fear our American taste will falter. Vegetables: Potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips, carrots, onions, cabbage, beets, beans, squash, celery. Here you have ten without all the fine canned peas and tomatoes and corn on your shelves. Now, I am laughing because every delicately-minded woman in America exclaims at once, “But you have enumerated vegetables that our husbands and we ourselves would not touch!” Well, neither would a Frenchman, if they came on his table with the combinations of meat, etc., that you serve them with. A Frenchman knows (and the highest toned German has learned from him) that there are chemical affinities in food, and he selects his meat to correspond with his vegetable, or vice versa, as carefully as he would combine chemical properties in a laboratory; or as discreetly as he would choose guests for his drawing-room or dinner-table; or as daintily as his wife would select gloves to match her bonnet. Food assorted with bad taste and judgment on his table is as distasteful as a delicate watercolor framed in a moulding which belongs to a heavy old historical oil painting is to his eye. The subject may seem to many unworthy such attention. There are those who boast that “they do not care what they eat, so they get enough! or how the table is set, or whether everything comes on at once or not!” Well, this is the way Frederick the Great’s father felt; the ruder and rougher, the better for his children; whether they took bread with a fork, or ate with their knives, or mixed cabbage and eggs, it didn’t matter to him, so the exchequer was sound. But what effect did all this boorish home-life have upon young Frederick? It made him eschew every German custom, every Teutonic idea, and give himself up entirely to the French, to be ruled by his French cooks, and dressed by French tailors, and entertained by French wits. Now the Germans have established their own reputation for combinations which they consider good, and it appears that the wife of our honored poet, who died as United States Minister in Berlin (a German woman by birth), is not ashamed to write on German cookery, although a woman of high and unquestioned literary attainments, who could help her husband in the arduous task of translating Faust. We Americans do not study this matter, or if we do, and make an effort to improve, it is simply an imitation, and a poor one at that, of some European ways. As health and happiness depend so much upon whether our dinner “sets well,” the knowledge of instituting such a mode of living as is best calculated to preserve health, is a most desirable acquisition. And if errors are committed in this respect, our injured system must suffer the bad consequences.
Now let us make a practical résumé of the subject: There are ten meats and ten vegetables in the market and twenty-one meals in the week to provide for. Let us first think of Sunday, for every man wants a good dinner on Sunday, especially if he has done his duty at church, and contributed his rightful portion to the Lord’s kingdom. If a woman has but one girl, or servant, it seems only right for her to take Sunday about with that servant, or propose to do so, that the poor girl may also know occasionally the pleasure of putting on her good clothes early Sunday morning and walking with a quiet conscience to the house of God. And then it gives the lady of the house a good two hours to reflect upon the drudgery that the hired laborer does for the household—and if she be an inexperienced woman, she should learn to cook one dinner a week. Perhaps these are rigid rules, but they bring good results to a woman’s heart and home. Suppose you have purchased some game for Sunday dinner: see that it is prepared for cooking on Saturday, so that the mere roasting of it will cause you little trouble on Sunday; and if, in addition to this, you and your husband have determined, instead of having six vegetables, as most American tables present, to have but one and a salad, let it be in this instance mashed Irish potatoes and celery, or lettuce, or even fine-chopped cabbage, if no other acid can be had. If you have not had soup, manage to compensate by beautiful desserts, which are easily arranged on Saturday also. Blanc mange or custards are better by being cold. Then you can have fresh fruits, and after dinner coffee. Does this seem a meagre and miserably arranged dinner, or does the following combination, which I not long ago found on an American table, seem better? Fish, beef, onions, eggs, cabbage, dried peaches, and pickles, before one’s eyes all at once! There is as much difference to an æsthetical taste between the simple but harmonious dinner, described above, and the incongruous, distasteful dinner just mentioned, as there is between a well-selected costume on a pretty woman, and an ugly mixture of color and cut, covered by laces and jewelry, on an ugly woman; or, between a tastefully arranged drawing-room and a hodge-podge of furniture and drapery, which have no one element of similitude.
As the legend goes, Monday is the “tug of war” for housekeepers. Admit that the dinner is the secondary thing and that it must be late in starting. But if you have an understanding with your butcher to send a piece of beef for boiling and you put it on at 10 o’clock with a few carrots and an onion to flavor it, you will have some deliciously tender stuff at 12 o’clock, with enough bouillon to set away for to-morrow, and if you have horse-radish to eat your beef with, and some macaroni a la creme, or baked tomatoes or sweet potatoes (one, not all three), with a good salad (an indispensable article), your Monday dinner will not be so dreadful, although it has cost little or no time in the preparation. See that your husband makes the salad dressing if he is well disposed to do his part, at the table. A woman has enough to look after of such details. Dispense with the dessert on Monday, but let fresh fruit never be absent from your table if you can afford it. Oranges, bananas, apples, grapes, pears, peaches; how lavish Nature is in this direction!
For our Tuesday dinner we have the bouillon set away from yesterday—so that a roast is essential—always alternating between boiling and roasting, and never letting a dinner be roasted throughout, or vice versa. A roast of lamb or mutton with mint sauce, and turnips boiled, and apple jelly, will perhaps answer, as we have had the soup to begin with. A good plum pudding would taste well after this and some acid fruit, with your coffee to finish with. Of course, Europeans begin every dinner with soup, and their recipes are innumerable. But we are here endeavoring to get up inexpensive meals that almost any family can indulge in.
Wednesday: Chickens or squirrel fricasseed, or boiled with rice and seasoned with East India curry, makes a very inviting dish, if the rice is laid around the chicken and garnished with parsley. Give us peas, or lima beans, or Saratoga potatoes with this meat. Saratoga potatoes served when the chicken is brought on, and later a course of tongue and peas—if the gentleman of the house complains that chicken is too delicate a fowl for him to make a dinner from. Dessert, a lemon pie or pudding, etc., etc.
Thursday: To-day the washing and ironing are all through with, and the best dinner of the week can be prepared. What shall it be? An Englishman would say, roast beef; a German, a goose; an Italian, veal, tomatoes, and macaroni; a Frenchman, wild pigeons, or sweet-breads, or deviled crabs, or some dainty combinations. What does the great American heart cry out for? Turkey and oysters! turkey and oysters! and six vegetables; everything the season affords, reserving nothing for the morrow. Have your own way about this Thursday dinner. I shall not interfere with economic ideas or European combinations, but promise to tell me when it is over if your purse is not lighter and your stomach heavier than you anticipated? If so, Friday, I shall take you under instruction again, and to restore your over-taxed stomach we will have, first, a good beef soup, and, to invigorate you mentally, after the soup, we will have a beautiful salmon, or any large fish, stuffed and baked; served with potatoes and barley bread, which will also give phosphorus. Stewed cherries for dessert, and cheese and crackers will supply other needs.
By Saturday you will have recovered from that heavy dinner of Thursday, and from Friday’s dinner the cook will possibly have saved enough fish to make some nice little fish patties to serve before the good, rare roast of beef, which for our Saturday dinner is accompanied by spinach, made very fine, mashed to the consistency of mashed potatoes, and served with a plateful of bread-dice, (in form of cubes), which have been fried as one fries doughnuts; roasted potatoes and a fresh salad; a cardinal, or transparent, or cream pudding, and your fresh fruit, and after dinner coffee.
You will feel, as Sunday approaches again, that you have at least had variety from day to day, and not eaten something of everything the market affords every day, until you are utterly tired of everything! From the beef of Saturday can be prepared for Sunday breakfast what the French call a râgout, which is more savory than hash, because the pieces of meat are left about two inches in size, and flavored with a bit of bacon, potatoes, carrots, and onions.
In this enumeration I have left beefsteak, liver, kidneys, sweet-breads, and ham untouched. All of these I presumed you would claim for your breakfasts and teas. Sardines, and dried beef and tongue, and many other things the market also gives you, and in exercising some ingenuity you will not have to repeat the same dish day after day, nor confine yourself to roasting and frying everything, when things are often better boiled, or stewed, or smothered. And now I will not intrude upon another Sunday dinner. I can only hope, in parting from the subject and from you, that the kitchen and dining-room have grown more interesting.
I think of but one other habit and one custom in which the Germans differ from us. Instead of sitting in their bed-rooms, as so many Americans do, they invariably have a sitting-room attached to the bed-room, and the bed-room is used merely as a place for repose.
They pay their physicians so much a year, whether there be need for their services or not. Some years it happens there will be many members of the household sick, but the doctor is not expected to ask more that year than he did the year before, when he was only called once or twice. Fifty thalers is the usual amount for a small family, or about forty dollars of our money. Professional nurses are to be found even in small provincial towns, and neighbors are not called upon, as among us, to serve this purpose.
“Slander,” says Saint Bernard, “is a poison which extinguishes charity, both in the slanderer and in the person who listens to it; so that a single calumny may prove fatal to an infinite number of souls, since it kills not only those who circulate it, but also all those who do not reject it.”—Pascal.
[CHANGES IN FASHIONS.]
From the French of M. A. CHALLAMEL.
Fashion is the expositor of our habits and our social relations, from the standpoint of costume. It is a much more serious subject than it may seem at first; far from serving only as a source of frivolous talk, even when it is specially concerned with our dress and ornamentation, the subject of fashion, it has been wisely said, has its value as a moral sign-post, and supplies the historian, the philosopher, and the novelist with a guide to the prevailing ideas of the time.
It is of the French fashions we speak here; for in France, the land of classic fancy, the empire of fashion, has assuredly been more deeply felt than elsewhere. Even in primitive Gaul were the fashions fixed, but their common sense is to be commended. The Gallic woman was demanded by fashion to follow a strict course of bathing. In every locality baths were established, and they were to her a delight, a duty, and a necessity. At Marseilles young girls were forbidden by custom the use of wine, lest it should injure the ivory whiteness of their complexion. To guard against excess in dress, the law required that the highest marriage portion of a woman should not exceed one hundred golden crowns. The history of political events has had more influence on fashion than may be generally supposed. Upon the conquest of the country by Cæsar, Roman manners were introduced into primitive Gaul, and the Gallic women, declining to be beaten in the art of pleasing, as their husbands had in arms, adopted the fashions of Rome. Extravagance in dress became boundless. We have in this early period the beginning of two modern fashions. Some ladies chose to wear garments which, on account of their breadth, were called by Horace palissades. From these the crinoline appears to have been derived. Ovid observes that to equalize the shoulders, if one were slightly higher than the other, it was customary to drape lightly the lower of the two. Thus originated padding. These Gallo-Roman ladies were elegant in all their surroundings, and the Frenchwoman of to-day has not a better sorted wardrobe. Parasols, mirrors, fans, perfumes, pomatums, and cosmetics—all these things were known to the Gallo-Roman period.
It was not until about the tenth century that dress in France became original. The women of the provinces adopted costumes of their own, and, at their will, added details. Indeed, if the history of fashion is studied, it will be seen that the original type of dress has not changed. It is the subordinate parts that undergo continual alteration. The skirt, the tunic (or overskirts), the mantle, the cap and reticule have always existed since the time of our Gallic mothers. One modification of the skirt produced a great furore in religious circles—it was the trail to the gown. A disgusted prior said: “The tail gives a woman the look of a serpent,” and the council of Montpellier forbade the appendix in question on penalty of excommunication. No fashion ever brought down more anathemas on the fair sex than the “hennins.” It was introduced, too, in a period when it would naturally be supposed that the very terror of the time would have destroyed all passion for dress and capricious fashions—the melancholy time of the Hundred Years’ War. This hennin was a kind of two-horned head-dress, made of muslin, stiffly starched and kept in place by fine wire, and of most exaggerated size. Paradin says: “It was peaked like a steeple, or with tall horns; from these horns hang flags, capes, fringe and other material. Such head-dresses were naturally very expensive, and husbands were loud in complaint.” Confessors and monks added their curses. They considered the hennin as an invention of the evil one, and organized a deadly warfare against the obnoxious article; but this uproar availed nothing, the women only gave up their hennins from a caprice similar to that which had invented them.
One strange fashion of the whole Middle Ages related to the color of the hair. Fair hair alone was considered beautiful. On this point the French and the Greeks were of one mind. In Shakspere’s play of “As You Like It” we find Rosalind as she hoots at Phœbe, laughing at her “black silk-hair” as a mark of her plainness. The word “fashion” seems to convey an almost absolute sense of novelty, but that which is new to-day may be but a revival of what is old. “There is nothing new under the sun,” applies with special force to fashion. The pretty trifles worn by women of to-day are nothing but the reproduction of similar ornaments worn by the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, or the Gauls, and all our novelties find their origin many centuries in the past.
[THE HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION.]
By W. T. HARRIS.