The Chautauquan, Vol. 04, January 1884 / A Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Promotion of True Culture. / Organ of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.

by Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle; Chautauqua Institution

IV.—THE SEA.

It has been ascertained that water covers about three times more of the earth’s surface than the land does. We could not tell that merely by what we can see from any part of this country, or indeed of any country. It is because men have sailed round the world, and have crossed it in many directions, that the proportion of land and water has come to be known.

Take a school-globe and turn it slowly round on its axis. You see at a glance how much larger the surface of water is than the surface of land. But you may notice several other interesting things about the distribution of land and water.

In the first place you will find that the water is all connected together into one great mass, which we call the sea. The land, on the other hand, is much broken up by the way the sea runs into it; and some parts are cut off from the main mass of land, so as to form islands in the sea. Britain is one of the pieces of land so cut off.

In the second place, you cannot fail to notice how much more land lies on the north than on the south of the equator. If you turn the globe so that your eye shall look straight down on the site of London, you will find that most of the land on the globe comes into sight; whereas, if you turn the globe exactly round, and look straight down on the area of New Zealand, you will see most of the sea. London thus stands about the centre of the land-hemisphere, midway among the countries of the earth. And no doubt this central position has not been without its influence in fostering the progress of British commerce.

In the third place, you will notice that by the way in which the masses of land are placed, parts of the sea are to some extent separated from each other. These masses of land are called continents, and the wide sheets of water between are termed oceans. Picture to yourselves that the surface of the solid part of the earth is uneven, some portions rising into broad swellings and ridges, others sinking into wide hollows and basins. Now, into these hollows the sea has been gathered, and only those upstanding parts which rise above the level of the sea form the land.

When you come to examine the water of the sea, you find that it differs from the water with which you are familiar on the land, inasmuch as it is salt. It contains something which you do not notice in ordinary spring or river water. If you take a drop of clear spring water, and allow it to evaporate from a piece of glass, you will find no trace left behind. Take, however, a drop of sea water and allow it to evaporate. You find a little white point or film left behind, and on placing that film under a microscope you see it to consist of delicate crystals of common or sea salt. It would not matter from what ocean you took the drop of water, it would still show the crystals of salt on being evaporated.

There are some other things beside common salt in sea water. But the salt is the most abundant, and we need not trouble about the rest at present. Now, where did all this mineral matter in the sea come from? The salt of the sea is all derived from the waste of the rocks.

It has already been pointed out how, both underground and on the surface of the land, water is always dissolving out of the rocks various mineral substances, of which salt is one. Hence the water of springs and rivers contains salt, and this is borne away into the sea. So that all over the world there must be a vast quantity of salt carried into the ocean every year.

The sea gives off again by evaporation as much water as it receives from rain and from the rivers of the land. But the salt carried into it remains behind. If you take some salt water and evaporate it the pure water disappears, and the salt is left. So it is with the sea. Streams are every day carrying fresh supplies of salt into the sea. Every day, too, millions of tons of water are passing from the ocean into vapor in the atmosphere. The waters of the sea must consequently be getting salter by degrees. The process, however, is an extremely slow one.

Although sea water has probably been gradually growing in saltness ever since rivers first flowed into the great sea, it is even now by no means as salt as it might be. In the Atlantic Ocean, for example, the total quantity of the different salts amounts only to about three and a half parts in every hundred parts of water. But in the Dead Sea, which is extremely salt, the proportion is as much as twenty-four parts in the hundred of water.

Standing by the shore and watching for a little the surface of the sea, you notice how restless it is. Even on the calmest summer day, a slight ripple or a gentle heaving motion will be seen.

Again, if you watch a little longer, you will find that whether the sea is calm or rough, it does not remain always at the same limit upon the beach. At one part of the day the edge of the water reaches to the upper part of the sloping beach; some six hours afterward it has retired to the lower part. You may watch it falling and rising day by day, and year by year, with so much regularity that its motion can be predicted long beforehand. This ebb and flow of the sea forms what are called tides.

If you cork up an empty bottle and throw it into the sea, it will of course float. But it will not remain long where it fell. It will begin to move away, and may travel for a long distance until thrown upon some shore again. Bottles cast upon mid-ocean have been known to be carried in this way for many hundreds of miles. This surface-drift of the sea water corresponds generally with the direction in which the prevalent winds blow.

But it is not merely the surface water which moves. You have learnt a little about icebergs; and one fact about them which you must remember is that, large as they may seem, there is about seven times more of their mass below water than above it. Now, it sometimes happens that an iceberg is seen sailing on, even right in the face of a strong wind. This shows that it is moving, not with the wind, but with a strong under-current in the sea. In short, the sea is found to be traversed by many currents, some flowing from cold to warm regions, and others from warm to cold.

Here, then, are four facts about the sea:—1st, it has a restless surface, disturbed by ripples and waves; 2ndly, it is constantly heaving with the ebb and flow of the tides; 3dly, its surface waters drift with the wind; and 4thly, it possesses currents like the atmosphere.

For the present it will be enough if we learn something regarding the first of these facts—the waves of the sea.

Here again you may profitably illustrate by familiar objects what goes on upon so vast a scale in nature. Take a basin, or a long trough of water, and blow upon the water at one edge. You throw its surface into ripples, which, as you will observe, start from the place where your breath first hits the water, and roll onward until they break in little wavelets upon the opposite margin of the basin.

What you do in a small way is the same action by which the waves of the sea are formed. All these disturbances of the smoothness of the sea are due to disturbances of the air. Wind acts upon the water of the sea as your breath does on that of the basin. Striking the surface it throws the water into ripples or undulations, and in continuing to blow along the surface it gives these additional force, until driven on by a furious gale they grow into huge billows.

When waves roll in on the land, they break one after another upon the shore, as your ripples break upon the side of the basin. And they continue to roll in after the wind has fallen, in the same way that the ripples in the basin will go on curling for a little after you have ceased to blow. The surface of the sea, like that of water generally, is very sensitive. If it is thrown into undulations, it does not become motionless the moment the cause of disturbance has passed away, but continues moving in the same way, but in a gradually lessening degree, until it comes to rest.

The restlessness of the surface of the sea becomes in this way a reflection of the restlessness of the air. It is the constant moving to and fro of currents of air, either gentle or violent, which roughens the sea with waves. When the air for a time is calm above, the sea sleeps peacefully below; when the sky darkens, and a tempest bursts forth, the sea is lashed into waves, which roll in and break with enormous force upon the land.

You have heard, perhaps you have even seen, something of the destruction which is worked by the waves of the sea. Every year piers and sea walls are broken down, pieces of the coast are washed away, and the shores are strewn with the wreck of ships. So that, beside all the waste which the surface of the land undergoes from rain, and frost, and streams, there is another form of destruction going on along the coast-line.

On some parts of the coast-line of the east of England, where the rock is easily worn away, the sea advances on the land at a rate of two or three feet every year. Towns and villages which existed a few centuries ago, have one by one disappeared, and their sites are now a long way out under the restless waters of the North Sea. On the west coast of Ireland and Scotland, however, where the rocks are usually hard and resisting, the rate of waste has been comparatively small.

It would be worth your while the first time you happen to be at the coast, to ascertain what means the sea takes to waste the land. This you can easily do by watching what happens on a rocky beach. Get to some sandy or gravelly part of the beach, over which the waves are breaking, and keep your eye on the water when it runs back after a wave has burst. You see all the grains of gravel and sand hurrying down the slope with the water; and if the gravel happens to be coarse, it makes a harsh grating noise as its stones rub against each other—a noise sometimes loud enough to be heard miles away. As the next wave comes curling along, you will mark that the sand and gravel, after slackening their downward pace, are caught up by the bottom of the advancing wave and dragged up the beach again, only to be hurried down once more as the water retires to allow another wave to do the same work.

By this continual up and down movement of the water, the sand and stones on the beach are kept grinding against each other, as in a mill. Consequently they are worn away. The stones become smaller, until they pass into mere sand, and the sand, growing finer, is swept away out to sea and laid down at the bottom.

But not only the loose materials on the shore suffer in this way an incessant wear and tear, the solid rocks underneath, wherever they come to the surface, are ground down in the same process. When the waves dash against a cliff they hurl the loose stones forward, and batter the rocks with them. Here and there in some softer part, as in some crevice of the cliff, these stones gather together, and when the sea runs high they are kept whirling and grinding at the base of the cliff till, in the end, a cave is actually bored by the sea in the solid rock, very much in the same way as holes are bored by a river in the bed of its channel. The stones of course are ground to sand in the process, but their place is supplied by others swept up by the waves. If you enter one of these sea-caves when the water is low, you will see how smoothed and polished its sides and roof are, and how well rounded and worn are the stones lying on its floor.

So far as we know, the bottom of the sea is very much like the surface of the land. It has heights and hollows, lines of valleys and ranges of hills. We can not see down to the bottom where the water is very deep, but we can let down a long line with a weight tied to the end of it, and find out both how deep the water is, and what is the nature of the bottom, whether rock or gravel, sand, mud, or shells. This measuring of the depths of the water is called sounding, and the weight at the end of the line goes by the name of the sounding-lead.

Soundings have been made over many parts of the sea, and something is now known about its bottom, though much still remains to be discovered. The Atlantic Ocean is the best known. In sounding it, before laying down the telegraphic cable which stretches across under the sea from this country to America, a depth of 14,500 feet, or two miles and three-quarters, was reached. But between the Azores and the Bermudas a sounding has been obtained of seven miles and a half. If you could lift up the Himalaya mountains, which are the highest on the globe, reaching a height of 29,000 feet above the sea, and set them down in the deepest part of the Atlantic, they would not only sink out of sight, but their tops would actually be about two miles below the surface.

A great part of the wide sea must be one or two miles deep. But it is not all so deep as that, for even in mid-ocean some parts of its bottom rise up to the surface and form islands. As a rule it deepens in tracts furthest from land, and shallows toward the land. Hence those parts of the sea which run in among islands and promontories are, for the most part, comparatively shallow.

You may readily enough understand how it is that soundings are made, though you can see how difficult it must be to work a sounding line several miles long. Yet men are able not only to measure the depth of the water, but by means of the instrument called a dredge, to bring up bucketfuls of whatever may be lying on the sea floor, from even the deepest parts of the ocean. In this way during the last few years a great deal of additional knowledge has been gathered as to the nature of the sea floor, and the kind of plants and animals which live there. We now know that even in some of the deepest places which have yet been dredged there is plenty of animal life, such as shells, corals, star-fishes, and still more humble creatures.

We can not, indeed, examine the sea bottom with anything like the same minuteness as the surface of the land. Yet a great deal may be learnt regarding it.

If you put together some of the facts with which we have been dealing in the foregoing lessons, you may for yourselves make out some of the most important changes which are in progress on the floor of the sea. For example, try to think what must become of all the wasted rock which is every year removed from the surface of the land. It is carried into the sea by streams, as you have now learnt. But what happens to it when it gets there? From the time when it was loosened from the sides of the mountains, hills, or valleys, this decomposed material has been seeking, like water, to reach a lower level. On reaching the hollows of the sea bottom it can not descend any further, but must necessarily accumulate there.

It is evident, then, that between the floor of the sea and the surface of the land, there must be this great difference: that whereas the land is undergoing a continual destruction of its surface, from mountain crest to sea shore, the sea bottom, on the other hand, is constantly receiving fresh materials on its surface. The one is increased in proportion as the other is diminished. So that even without knowing anything regarding what men have found out by means of deep soundings, you could confidently assert that every year there must be vast quantities of gravel, sand and mud laid down upon the floor of the sea, because you know that these materials are worn away from the land.

Again, you have learnt that the restless agitation of the sea is due to movements of the air, and that the destruction which the sea can effect on the land is due chiefly to the action of the waves caused by wind. But this action must be merely a surface one. The influence of the waves can not reach to the bottom of the deep sea. Consequently that bottom lies beyond the reach of the various kinds of destruction which so alter the face of the land. The materials which are derived from the waste of the land can lie on the sea floor without further disturbance than they may suffer from the quiet flow of such ocean currents as touch the bottom.

In what way, then, are the gravel, sand and mud disposed of when they reach the sea?

As these materials are all brought from the land, they accumulate on those parts of the sea floor which border the land, rather than at a distance. We may expect to find banks of sand and gravel in shallow seas and near land, but not in the middle of the ocean.

You may form some notion, on a small scale, as to how the materials are arranged on the sea bottom by examining the channel of a river in a season of drought. At one place, where the current has been strong, there may be a bank of gravel; at another place, where the currents of the river have met, you will find, perhaps, a ridge of sand which they have heaped up; while in those places where the flow of the stream has been more gentle, the channel may be covered with a layer of fine silt or mud. You remember that a muddy river may be made to deposit its mud if it overflows its banks so far as to spread over flat land which checks its flow.

The more powerful a current of water, the larger will be the stones it can move along. Hence coarse gravel is not likely to be found over the bottom of the sea, except near the land, where the waves can sweep it out into the path of strong sea currents. Sand will be carried further out, and laid down in great sheets, or in banks. The finer mud and silt may be borne by currents for hundreds of miles before at last settling down upon the sea bottom.

In this way, according to the nearness of the land, and the strength of the ocean currents, the sand, mud, and gravel worn from the land are spread out in vast sheets and banks over the bottom of the sea.

[SUNDAY READINGS.]

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SELECTED BY THE REV. J. H. VINCENT, D.D.

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[January 6.]
ON SPIRITUAL CHRISTIANITY.

By ISAAC TAYLOR.

Read the Gospels, simply as historical memoirs; and by such aids as they alone supply, make yourself acquainted with him who is the subject of these narrations. Bring the individual conception as distinctly as possible before the mind; allow the moral sense to confer, in its own manner, and at leisure, with this unusual form of humanity. “Behold the man”—even the Savior of the world, and say whether it be not historic truth that is before the eye. The more peculiar is this form, yet withal symmetrical, the more infallible is the impression of reality we thence receive. What we have to do with in this instance, is not an undefined ideal of wisdom and goodness, conveyed in round affirmations, or in eulogies; but with a self-developed individuality, in conveying which the writers of the narrative do not appear. In this instance, if in any, the medium is transparent: nothing intervenes between the reader and the personage of the history, in whose presence we stand, as if not separated by time and space.

It may be questioned whether the entire range of ancient history presents any one character in colors of reality so fresh as those which distinguish the personage of the evangelic memoirs. The sages and heroes of antiquity—less and less nearly related, as they must be, to any living interests, are fading amid the mists of an obsolete world; but he who “is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever,” is offered to the view of mankind, in the eyes of immortality, fitting a history, which, instead of losing the intensity of its import, is gathering weight by the lapse of time.

The Evangelists, by the translucency of their style, have given a lesson in biographical composition, showing how perfectly individual character may be expressed in a method which disdains every rule but that of fidelity. It is personal humanity, in the presence of which we stand, while perusing the Gospels, and to each reader apart, if serious and ingenuous, and yet incredulous, the Savior of the world addresses a mild reproof—“It is I. Behold my hands and my feet; reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side, and be not faithless but believing.” And can we do otherwise than grant all that is now demanded, namely, that the Evangelists record the actions and discourses of a real person?

It is well to consider the extraordinary contrasts that are yet perfectly harmonized in the personal character of Christ. At a first glance, he always appears in his own garb of humility—lowliness of demeanor is his very characteristic. But we must not forget that this lowliness was combined with nothing less than a solemnly proclaimed and peremptory challenge of rightful headship over the human race! Nevertheless, the oneness of the character, the fair perfection of the surface, suffers no rent by this blending of elements so strangely diverse. Let us then bring before the mind, with all the distinctness we can, the conception of the Teacher, more meek than any who has ever assumed to rule the opinions of mankind, and who yet, in the tones proper to tranquil modesty, and as conscious at once of power and right, anticipates that day of wonder, when “the king shall sit on the throne of his glory,” with his angels attendant; and when “all nations shall be gathered before him,” from his lips to receive their doom! The more these elements of personal character are disproportionate, the more convincing is the proof of reality which arises from their harmony.

We may read the Evangelists listlessly, and not perceive this evidence; but we can never read them intelligently without yielding to it our convictions.

If the character of Christ be, as indeed it is, altogether unmatched in the circle of history, it is even less so by the singularity of the intellectual and moral elements which it combines, than by the sweetness and perfection which result from their union. This will appear the more, if we consider those instances in which the combination was altogether of an unprecedented kind.

Nothing has been more constant in the history of the human mind, whenever the religious emotions have gained a supremacy over the sensual and sordid passions, than the breaking out of the ascetic temper in some of its forms; and most often in that which disguises virtue, now as a specter, now as a maniac, now as a mendicant, now as a slave, but never as the bright daughter of heaven. Of the three Jewish sects extant in our Lord’s time, two of them—that is to say, the two that made pretensions to any sort of piety, had assumed the ascetic garb, in its two customary species—the philosophic (the Essenes) and the fanatical (the Pharisees); and so strong and uniform is this crabbed inclination, that Christianity itself, in violent contrariety to its spirit and its precepts, went off into the ascetic temper, within a century after the close of the apostolic age, or even earlier.

Under this aspect, then, let us for a moment consider the absolutely novel phenomenon of the Teacher of a far purer morality than the world had heretofore ever listened to; yet himself affecting no singularities in his modes of living. The superiority of the soul to the body was the very purport of his doctrine; and yet he did not waste the body by any austerities! The duty of self-denial he perpetually enforced; and yet he practiced no factitious mortifications! This Teacher, not of abstinence, but of virtue; this Reprover, not of enjoyment, but of vice, himself went in and out among the social amenities of ordinary life with so unsolicitous a freedom as to give color to the malice of hypocrisy, in pointing the finger at him, saying, “Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber; a friend (companion) of publicans and sinners!” Should we not then note this singular apposition and harmony of qualities, that he who was familiar with the festivities of heaven did not any more disdain the poor solaces of mortality, than disregard its transient pains and woes? Follow this same Jesus from the banquets of the opulent, where he showed no scruples in diet, to the highways and wildernesses of Judea, where, never indifferent to human sufferings, he healed—“as many as came unto him.”

These remarkable features in the personal character of Christ have often, and very properly, been adduced as instances of the unrivaled wisdom and elevation which mark him as preëminent among the wise and good.

It is not, however, for this purpose that we now refer to them, but rather as harmonies, altogether inimitable, and which put beyond doubt the historic reality of the person. Thus considered, they must be admitted by calm minds as carrying the truth of Christianity itself.

[January 13.]

There are, however, those who will readily grant us what, indeed, they can not with any appearance of candor deny—the historic reality of the person of Christ, and the more than human excellence which his behavior and discourses embody; but at this point they declare that they must stop. Let such persons see to it—they can not stop at this point; for just at this point there is no ground on which foot may stand.

What are the facts?

The inimitable characteristics of nature attach to what we may call the common incidents of the evangelic history, and in which Jesus of Nazareth is seen mingling himself with the ordinary course of social life.

But is it true that these characteristics suddenly, and in each instance, disappear when this same person is presented to us walking on another, and a high path, namely, that of supernatural power? It is not so, and, on the contrary, very many of the most peculiar and infallible of those touches of tenderness and pathos which so generally mark the evangelic narrative, belong precisely to the supernatural portions of it, and are inseparably connected with acts of miraculous beneficence. We ask that the Gospels be read with the utmost severity of criticism, and with this especial object in view, namely, to inquire whether those indications of reality which have already been yielded to as irresistible evidences of truth, do not belong as fully to the supernatural, as they do to the ordinary incidents of the Gospel? or in other words, whether, unless we resolve to overrule the question by a previous determination, any ground of simply historic distinction presents itself, marking off the supernatural from the ordinary events of the evangelic narratives?

If we feel ourselves to be conversing with historic truth, as well as with heavenly wisdom, when Jesus is before us, seated on the mountain-brow, and delivering the Beatitudes to his disciples; is it so that the colors become confused, and the contour of the figures unreal, when the same personage, in the midst of thousands, seated by fifties on the grassy slope, supplies the hunger of the multitude by the word of his power? Is it historic truth that is presented when the fearless Teacher of a just morality convicts the rabbis of folly and perversity; and less so when, turning from his envious opponents, he says to the paralytic, “Take up thy bed and walk?” Nature herself is before us when the repentant woman, after washing the Lord’s feet with her tears, and wiping them with her hair, sits contrasted with the obdurate and uncourteous Pharisee; but the very same bright forms of reality mark the scene when Jesus, filled with compassion at the sight of a mother’s woe, stays the bier and renders her son alive to her bosom.

Or, if we turn to those portions of the Gospels in which the incidents are narrated more in detail, and where a greater variety of persons is introduced, and where, therefore, the supposition of fabrication is the more peremptorily excluded, it is found that the supernatural and the ordinary elements are in no way to be distinguished in respect of the simple vivacity with which both present themselves to the eye. The evangelic narrative offers the same bright translucency, the same serenity, and the same precision, in reporting the most astounding as the most familiar occurrences. It is like a smooth-surfaced river, which, in holding its course through a varied country reflects from its bosom at one moment the amenities of a homely border, and at the next the summits of the Alps, and both with the same unruffled fidelity.

As the subject of a rigorous historic criticism, and all hypothetical opinions being excluded, no pretext whatever presents itself for drawing a line around the supernatural portions of the Gospels, as if they were of suspicious aspect, and differed from the context in historic verisimilitude. Without violence done to the rules of criticism, we can not detach the miraculous portions of the history, and then put together the mutilated portions, so as to consist with the undoubted reality or the part which is retained.

Or take the narrative of the raising of Lazarus of Bethany. A brilliant vividness, as when a sunbeam breaks from between clouds, illumines this unmatched history; and it rests with equal intensity upon the stupendous miracle, and upon the beauty and grace of the scene of domestic sorrow. If we follow Martha and Mary from the house to the spot where they meet their friend, and give a half-utterance to their confidence in his power, at what step—let us distinctly determine—at what step, as the group proceeds toward the sepulchre, shall we halt and refuse to accompany it? Where is the break in the story, or the point of transition, and where does history finish, and the spurious portion commence? Is it when we approach the cave’s mouth that the gestures of the persons become unreal, and the language untrue to nature? Where is it that the indications of tenderness and majesty disappear—at the moment when Jesus weeps, or when he invokes his Father, or when, with a voice which echoes in hades, he challenges the dead to come forth; or is it when “he who was dead” obeys this bidding?

We affirm that, on no principles which a sound mind can approve, is it possible either to deny the reality of the natural portions of this narrative, or to sever these from the supernatural. But this is not enough; for it might be in fact more easy to offer some intelligible solution of the difficulty attaching to the supposition that the gospels are not true, in respect of the ordinary, than of the extraordinary portion of their materials. If we were to allow it to be possible (which it is not) that writers showing so little inventive or plastic powers as do Matthew the Publican, and John of Galilee, should, with the harmony of truth, have carried their imaginary Master through the common acts and incidents of his course; never could they, no, nor writers the most accomplished, have brought him, in modest simplicity, through the miraculous acts of that course. Desperate must be the endeavor to show that, while the ordinary events of the gospel must be admitted as true, the extraordinary are incredible. On the contrary, it would be to the former, if to any, that a suspicion might attach; for, as to the latter, they can not but be true: if not true, whence are they?

The skepticism, equally condemned as it is by historical logic and by the moral sense, which allows the natural and disallows the supernatural portion of the history of Christ, is absolutely excluded when we compare, in the four Gospels separately, the narrative of what precedes the resurrection, with the closing portions, which bring the crucified Jesus again among his disciples.

[January 20.]

If those portions of the evangelic history which reach to the moment of the death of Christ are, in a critical sense, of the same historic quality as those which run on to the moment of his ascension, and if the former absolutely command our assent—if they carry it as by force, then, by a most direct inference, “is Christ risen indeed,” and become the first fruits of immortality to the human race. Then it is true that, “as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.” No narrative is anywhere extant comparable to that of the days and hours immediately preceding the crucifixion; and the several accounts of the hurried events of those days present the minute discrepancies which are always found to belong to genuine memoirs, compiled by eye-witnesses.

The last supper and its sublime discourses; the agony in the garden, the behavior of the traitor, the scenes in the hall of the chief priest, and before the judgment-seat of the Roman procurator, and in the palace of Herod, and in the place called the Pavement, and on the way from the city, and in the scene on Calvary, are true—if anything in the compass of history be true.

But now, if our moral perceptions are in this way to be listened to, not less incontestably real are the closing chapters of the four Gospels, in which we find the same sobriety and the same vivacity; the same distinctness and the same freshness; the same pathos and the same wisdom, and the same majesty; and yet all chastened by the recollected sorrows of a terrible conflict just passed, and mellowed with the glow of a triumph at hand.

Let it be imagined that writers such as the Evangelists might have led their Master as far as to Calvary; but could they, unless truth had been before them, have reproduced him from the sepulchre? What abruptness, harshness, extravagance, what want of harmony, would have been presented in the closing chapters of the Gospels, if the same Jesus had not supplied the writers with their materials by going in and out among them after his resurrection.

On the supposition that Christ did not rise from the dead, let any one whose moral tastes are not entirely blunted, read the narrative of his encounter with Mary in the garden, and with his disciples in the inner chamber, and again on the shore of the lake; let him study the perfect simplicity and yet the warmth of the interview with the two disciples on their way to Emmaus. The better taste of modern times, and the just sense of what is true in sentiment and pure in composition, give us an advantage in an analysis of this sort. Guided, then, by the instincts of the most severe taste, let us spread before us the final portion of the Gospel of Luke, namely, the twenty-fourth chapter, which reports a selection of the events occurring between the early morning of the first day of the week, and that moment of wonder when, starting from the world he had ransomed, the Savior returned whence he had come. Will any one acquainted with antiquity affirm that any writer, Greek, Roman, or barbarian, has come down to us, whom we can believe capable of conceiving at all of such a style of incident or discourse; or who, had he conceived it, could have conveyed his conception in a style so chaste, natural, calm, lucid, pure? Nothing like this narrative is contained in all the circle of fiction, and nothing equal to it in all the circle of history; and yet nothing is more perfectly consonant with the harmonies of nature. We may listlessly peruse this page, each line of which wakens a sympathy in every bosom which itself responds to truth. But if we ponder it, if we allow the mind to grasp the several objects, we are vanquished by the conviction that all is real. But if real, and if Christ be risen indeed, then is Christianity indeed a religion of facts; and then we are fully entitled to a bold affirmation and urgent use of whatever inferences may thence be fairly deduced.

Acute minds will not be slow to discern, as in perspective before them, the train of those inferences which we shall feel ourselves at liberty to deduce from the admission that Christianity is historically true. This admission can not, we are sure, be withheld; and yet let it not be made with a reserved intention to evade the consequences. What are they? They are such as embrace the personal well-being of every one; for, if Christianity be a history, it is a history still in full progress; it is a history running on, far beyond the dim horizon of human hopes and fears.

[January 27.]

But it is said, all this, at the best, is moral evidence only; and those who are conversant with mathematical demonstrations, and with the rigorous methods of physical science, must not be required to yield their convictions easily to mere moral evidence.

We ask, have those who are accustomed thus to speak, actually considered the import of their objection; or inquired what are the consequences it involves, if valid? We believe not; and we think so, because the very terms are destitute of logical meaning; or imply, if a meaning be assigned to them, a palpable absurdity.

If, for a moment, we grant an intelligible meaning to the objection as stated, and consent to understand the terms in which it is conveyed, as they are often used, then we affirm that some portion of even the abstract sciences is less certain than are very many things established by what is called moral evidence—that a large amount of what is accredited as probably true within the circle of the physical and mixed sciences is immeasurably inferior in certainty to much which rests upon moral evidence; and further, that so far from its being reasonable to reject this species of evidence, the mere circumstance of a man’s being known to distrust it in the conduct of his daily affairs, would be held to justify, in his case, a commission of lunacy.

No supposition can be more inaccurate than that which assumes the three kinds of proof, mathematical, physical, and moral, to range, one beneath the other, in a regular gradation of certainty; as if the mathematical were in all cases absolute; the physical a degree lower, or, as to its results, in some degree, and always, less certain than those of the first; and, by consequence, the third being inferior to the second, necessarily far inferior to the first; and therefore, always much less certain than that which alone deserves to be spoken of as certain, and in fact barely trustworthy in any case.

Any such distribution of the kinds of proof is mere confusion, illogical abstractedly, and involving consequences, which, if acted upon, would appear ridiculously absurd.

It is indeed true that the three great classes of facts—the universal, or absolute (mathematical and metaphysical)—the general, or physical, and the individual (forensic and historical) are pursued and ascertained by three corresponding methods, or, as they might be called, three logics. But it is far from being true that the three species of reasoning hold an exclusive authority or sole jurisdiction over the three classes of facts above mentioned. Throughout the physical sciences the mathematical logic is perpetually resorted to, while even within the range of the mathematical the physical is, once and again, brought in as an aid. But if we turn to the historical and forensic department of facts, the three methods are so blended in the establishment of them, that to separate them altogether is impracticable; and as to moral evidence, if we use the phrase in any intelligible sense, it does but give its aid, at times, on this ground; and even then the conclusions to which it leads rest upon inductions which are physical, rather than moral.

The conduct of a complicated historical or forensic argument concerning individual facts, resembles the manipulations of an adroit workman, who, having some nice operation in progress, lays down one tool and snatches up another, and then another, according to the momentary exigencies of his task.

That sort of evidence may properly be called moral, which appeals to the moral sense, and in assenting to which, as we often do with an irresistible conviction, we are unable, with any precision, to convey to another mind the grounds of our firm belief. It is thus often that we estimate the veracity of a witness or judge of the reality or spuriousness of a written narrative. But then even this sort of evidence, when nicely analyzed, resolves itself into physical principles.

What are these convictions which we find it impossible to clothe in words, but the results in our minds, of slow, involuntary inductions concerning moral qualities, and which, inasmuch as they are peculiarly exact, are not to be transfused into a medium so vague and faulty as is language, at the best?

As to the mass of history, by far the larger portion of it rests, in no proper sense, upon moral evidence. To a portion the mathematical doctrine of probabilities applies—for it may be as a million to one—that an alleged fact, under all the circumstances, is true. But the proof of the larger portion resolves itself into our knowledge of the laws of the material world, and of those of the world of mind. A portion also is conclusively established by a minute scrutiny of its agreement with that intricate combination of small events which makes up the course of human affairs.

Every real transaction, especially those which flow on through a course of time, touches this web-work of small events at many points, and is woven into its very substance. Fiction may indeed paint its personages so as for a moment to deceive the eye, but it has never succeeded in the attempt to foist its factitious embroideries upon the tapestry of truth.

We might take as an instance that irresistible book in which Paley has established the truth of the personal history of St. Paul (“The Horæ Paulinæ”). It is throughout a tracing of the thousand fibres by which a long series of events connects itself with the warp and woof of human affairs. To apply to evidence of this sort, the besom of skepticism, and sweepingly to remove it as consisting only in moral evidence, is an amazing instance of confusion of mind.

It is often loosely affirmed that history rests mainly upon moral evidence. Is then a Roman camp moral evidence? Or is a Roman road moral evidence? Or are these and many other facts, when appealed to as proof of the assertion that, in a remote age, the Romans held military occupation of Britain, moral evidence? If they be, then we affirm that, when complete in its kind, it falls not a whit behind mathematical demonstration, as to its certainty.

Although it is not true that Christianity rests mainly upon moral evidence, yet it is true that it might rest on that ground with perfect security.

It is to this species of evidence that we have now appealed; not as establishing the heavenly origin of Christianity, which it does establish, but simply as it attests the historic reality of the person of Christ, and here we must ask an ingenuous confession from whoever may be bound in foro conscientiæ to give it, that the notion of Christianity, and the habitual feelings toward it of many in this Christian country, are such as if brought to the test of severe reasoning could by no ingenuity be made to consist either with the supposition that Christianity is historically false, or that it is historically true! This ambiguous faith of the cultured, less reasonable than the superstitions of the vulgar (for they are consistent, which this is not,) could never hold a place in a disciplined mind but by an act, repeated from day to day, and similar to that of a man who should refuse to have the shutters removed from the windows on that side of his house whence he might descry the residence of his enemy.

If Christianity be historically true it must be granted to demand more than a respectful acknowledgment that its system of ethics is pure; or were it historically false, we ought to think ourselves to be outraging at once virtue and reason in allowing its name to pass our lips. While bowing to Christianity as good and useful, and yet not invested with authority toward ourselves, we are entangled in a web of inconsistencies, of which we are not conscious, only because we choose to make no effort to break through it. If Christianity be true, then it is true that “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ,” and must, “every one of us, give an account of himself to God.” What meaning do such words convey to the minds of those who, with an equal alarm, would see Christianity overthrown as a controlling power in the social system; or find it brought home to themselves, as an authority, they must personally bow to? Christians! How many amongst us are Christians, as men might be called philosophers, who, while naming Newton always with admiration, should yet reserve their interior assent for the very paganism of astronomy.

A religion of facts, we need hardly observe, is the only sort of religion adapted powerfully to affect the hearts of the mass of mankind; for ordinary or uncultured minds can neither grasp, nor will care for, abstractions of any kind. But then that which makes Christianity proper for the many, and indeed proper for all, if motives are to be effectively swayed, renders it a rock of offense to the few who will admit nothing that may not be reduced within the circle of their favored generalizations. Such minds, therefore, reject Christianity, or hold it in abeyance, not because they can disprove it, but because it will not be generalized, because it will not be sublimated, because it will not be touched by the tool of reason; because it must remain what it is—an insoluble mass of facts. In attempting to urge consistency upon such persons, the advocate of Christianity makes no progress, and has to return, ever and again, to his document, and to ask: Is this true, or false? If true, your metaphysics may be true also; but yet must not give law to your opinions; much less, govern your conduct.

Resolute as may be the determination of some to yield to no such control, nevertheless if the evangelic history be true, “one is our Master, even Christ.” He is our Master in abstract speculation—our Master in religious belief, our Master in morals, and in the ordering of every day’s affairs.

It will be readily admitted that this our first position, if it be firm, sweeps away, at a stroke, a hundred systems of religion, ancient and modern, which either have not professed to rest upon historic truth, or which have notoriously failed in making good any such pretension. These various schemes need not be named; they barely merit an enumeration; they are susceptible of no distinct refutation, for they are baseless, powerless, obsolete.

Say you that Christianity is intolerant in thus excluding all other systems? A religion which excludes that which is false is not therefore intolerant. If it be true, it must exclude all that is untrue. Let us have a religion willing to walk abreast with other religions—religions affirming what it denies, and denying what it affirms—but indulgent toward all. An intolerant religion is the religion of a sect, and of a sect in fear.

[POLITICAL ECONOMY.]

By G. M. STEELE, D.D.

IV.
DISTRIBUTION.

I. Distribution in economics embraces those principles on which the proceeds of industry are divided among the parties employed in their production.

If each man owned all the capital concerned in his business, and performed all the labor involved in each product, this question would be a very simple one. But when, as in the manufacture of chairs, of hardware and watches, and in the building of houses, there are many laborers of widely diverse capabilities, and especially when we remember that there are innumerable subsidiary occupations, as in the preparing of materials, the making of tools and machines, the protection of the workmen, the superintendence of the business, and in many other ways, the problem becomes a most complicated one.

The subject may be divided as follows:

1. Wages, or the compensation of labor.

2. Profits, or the compensation of the proprietor or employer.

3. Interest, or compensation for capital reckoned as money.

4. Rent, or compensation for the use of land.

5. Taxes, or compensation for protection by the government.

II. On the subject of wages diverse and contradictory opinions prevail. A large proportion of the British economists hold the theory that a low rate of wages is all that can be maintained, or is, on the whole, desirable among ordinary unskilled laborers. That a man should have compensation sufficient to furnish him with such food, raiment and shelter as are essential to keep him in good working condition; also, in addition, enough to enable him to support a wife (with what she can herself earn), and to rear at least two children, themselves prepared to become laborers; and to make some additional allowances for probable periods of sickness and inability to labor. So much is deemed absolutely essential even to the capitalist and employer, in order that their interests may not suffer. The school of writers referred to profess to find in the human constitution a law which prevents wages from going much beyond this limit. It is said that if they do go much beyond this, the population will multiply so rapidly, and the number of laborers will so greatly increase, that wages will not only fall back to their limit, but that great suffering will ensue.

Most American writers reject this view, though some of them appear to hold opinions logically implying it. Henry C. Carey takes the ground that there is not only no such law, but that there is one of a diametrically opposite character, which as thoroughly coincides with, as this antagonizes, the general provisions of an all-wise and beneficent creator. This law, as developed by Mr. Carey, is substantially that in any community where violence is not done to natural principles in the relations between capitalists and laborers, the share of the latter in the joint product to which both are contributors, is constantly increasing. While at first the capitalist receives much more than half, as time and the development of society go on his proportion is steadily diminishing till it becomes a small fraction of the whole, while that of the laborer is steadily increasing. At the same time, though the proportion of the capitalist is always smaller, the amount is always larger, owing to the always increasing productiveness; and for the same reason both the proportion and the amount received by the labor is enhanced. Evidence of this might be made obvious by comparing the compensation received by laborers in the earlier ages of almost any civilized race as compared with that received in its most advanced stage; and this, too, notwithstanding the vast imperfections under which society has labored and the unnatural conditions to which the laboring classes in all the earlier periods of history have been subjected. In the opinion of some writers this law is one of the grandest and most important of the recent discoveries in political economy.

III. Wages depend upon various considerations. Some of the chief of these are physical ability, greater or less degree of skill, agreeableness or disagreeableness of the work, greater or less difficulty and cost of preparation, constancy or inconstancy of employment, amount of trust involved, intellectual and moral qualities required, social conditions, the character of the government, etc.

There is a distinction to be made between nominal and real wages. The former is the amount of money received for a certain amount of labor. The latter is the amount of useful commodities which that money will purchase. Sometimes a dollar a day is better compensation than a dollar and a half at other times, since in the latter case the dollar and a half may purchase fewer of the necessaries of life than the dollar in the former case.

Men fail sometimes to get a clear understanding of the terms dear labor and cheap labor. A Russian serf at fifty cents a day is dearer than an ordinary American laborer at a dollar and a half, simply because the labor of the latter would be about four or five times as efficient as that of the former. In other words, that labor is the cheapest which will produce the most at the least expense.

The interested and wise laborer will seek information wherever he can find it on the effect of even moderate education on individual wages, (and this he will find to be very considerable); on the sanitary conditions which are best for laborers, the real and ultimate effects of strikes and trades unions, and the advantages and disadvantages of coöperative industry and trade, and the great benefit to be derived from making the laborer a sharer in the profits of any business in which he may be engaged. The employer also would receive great benefit from a careful study of these same questions, as well as from a consideration of the results of paying in all cases not the lowest wages for which labor can be procured, but the highest which he can really afford, since in many cases the quality and quantity of work secured from this cause, more than compensates the extra outlay.

IV. Profits are the share of the product which go to the proprietor or employer. Very often the latter are confounded with the capitalist, and hence arises a like confusion concerning the nature of profits. Among more recent writers a distinct place is assigned to the employer, whereas formerly he was practically lost sight of. But in our modern system of industry he is one of the most important, if not actually the most important factor in the system. The capitalist is not necessarily an employer—more frequently than otherwise he is incompetent for this office. Nor is the employer always a capitalist. He is a man who must have the somewhat rare ability to organize and superintend labor so as to get the most possible out of it, and at the same time have such financial talent as will enable him to make the best possible disposition of his means in buying material, etc., and the best possible disposition of his goods in selling. Frequently the capital which he uses is borrowed. Profits, then, are what remains after paying all stipulated wages and salaries, including a fair compensation to the employer himself, together with the material, rent, interest on capital owned or borrowed, taxes, insurance, etc. Obviously no one would assume all the care and responsibility, and incur the risk implied in any considerable business unless something more was likely to come from it to him than what his talent and ability would bring in the way of salary. Sometimes the profit is very small; sometimes, also, it is very great. Free competition will furnish the requisite conditions usually, so that the profits will not be so large as to be disadvantageous to the community generally.

V. Interest depends upon various considerations. That the compensation implied is proper is obvious from the fact that though ostensibly money is that which is loaned, in most cases it is really capital in some other form; and no one denies that when a man lends his horse, or his mill, or his farm, he should receive something for the use of it.

The rate of interest depends upon several conditions: 1. The amount of money in circulation. 2. The amount of other capital. 3. The rate of profit, which again depends upon the industrial system and the state of society; as society develops the rate diminishes. 4. The security or insecurity of property. 5. The facilities with which the securities can be reconverted into money. 6. The promptness and regularity of the payment of the interest. On these last two conditions rests in part the low rate of interest on government bonds.

VI. Rent is intimately connected with the value of land, and land is the most important instrument and condition of wealth. In most countries, other than ours, the land is principally in the possession of a few owners who let it to other parties for agricultural and other purposes, and receive compensation therefor. The amount of compensation depends upon the value of the land. For this latter reason we may treat the whole question of the value of land under the head of rent, though on some accounts it should be considered in another place.

The theory respecting rent which has prevailed in England, and largely in this country for the most of the present century, is that of Ricardo; and closely connected with it is his theory of value. He held that rent arises in this way: On the first settling of a new country, where there is an abundance of more or less fertile land, none of the land has any value. Every man takes as much as he wants, selecting, of course, the most productive. As population increases the best land will be all taken up. Then those who want land must have a poorer quality, or a second grade. Now, one who gets this second quality would rather pay something for the first quality than to have the former for nothing. So when all the land of the second grade is all taken up, and the third quality begins to be occupied, it is deemed more profitable to pay something for the second quality, and still more for the first quality than to have the third for nothing. Closely connected with this theory of rent is that of Malthus concerning population, which is, that there is a law of the uniform increase of population, so that unless artificial checks are applied over-population must, at no distant day, become the condition and bane of humanity. Another theory closely related to both these is that of “diminishing returns,” as stated by J. S. Mill. Substantially this is, that after a certain, not very advanced period in the development of agriculture, a given amount of land will produce less and less in proportion to the labor expended upon it. That is, after a certain degree of culture, a given quantity of land which yields a given quantity of product, while it will produce more if the labor upon it is doubled, will not produce double the former quantity. It follows from these theories, taken in combination, that as men multiply and their wants increase, the provision for those wants proportionately diminishes—a most unnatural and dismal theory, and up to the present time quite contrary to human experience.

A more reasonable, more natural, and far more hopeful doctrine is that developed by Mr. Carey. He declares it altogether untrue that the most productive lands are those first occupied. On the contrary, in the infancy of society men are wholly unable to subdue the richer soils. These must wait till society becomes more numerous and capable of combination. At first only the thinner soils can be cultivated, on account of the feebleness of the inhabitants. Then, as the latter increase in numbers and in the power and art of combination, the deeper and heavier soils can be subdued, and finally, those which are covered with gigantic forests or rich swamps and vast deposits of vegetable mold. These are many times more productive than the soils first cultivated, and thus for a long period proportionately increasing instead of diminishing returns are found to go with the increase of population. There is scarcely any nation, the inhabitants of which have even now cultivated its most productive soil, and it is likely to be some time yet before the theoretical limit of diminishing returns is reached.

The Malthusian doctrine of population is also widely, though not universally rejected, and it is evident that various counteracting principles prevail to affect the law of the uniform increase of population, even if that were demonstrably or approximately true. It is tolerably obvious that the fecundity of the human race diminishes as its development and civilization increase. This, taken in connection with the preceding statements, gives us great grounds, at least, for dispensing with the more forbidding features of what has been called “the dismal science.”

Mr. Carey’s theory of the occupancy of land, as he abundantly shows, is consistent, and the only one consistent, not only with the great fundamental principles of association, but with the facts reached in the history of every civilized nation. He also holds that the value of land depends upon the same principle as that of any other value, namely, the labor that has been expended upon it. For, as he shows, there is in general no land that has a value which exceeds that of the labor which has been requisite to bring it and the property related to it into its present condition.

VII. Taxation furnishes the compensation paid to the government for its protection. Government is simply the agent of society, and those who are the individual constituents of this agency are entitled to a share of the aggregate product proportionate to the amount and quality of the labor bestowed.

The great economical question concerning taxation is how to secure the greatest degree of protection to persons and property at the least possible expense to the persons protected. Its decision depends partly upon the expensiveness of the government agencies, and partly upon the methods of levying and collecting the taxes. As to the former, there is a great variety of usage in different nations, or in the same nation at different periods. Not only is this difference seen in the amount of compensation paid to personal agents directly concerned in the administration of public affairs, but in the costliness of the public buildings and other means for carrying out the purposes of the government. It is evident a true economy does not demand either parsimony or niggardliness in these respects. The best agents can only be secured by making the compensation to correspond to that paid for the same grade of services in other employments. The edifices and other structures and furniture should both correspond with the purposes for which they are to be used, and with the general style of expenditure prevailing in the community. But all expense for the mere sake of show, all extravagance and prodigality, and all compensation bestowed as a reason for partisan service or out of personal favoritism, is not only uneconomical, but for the most part fraudulent.

In the levying and collecting of taxes for revenue two general methods are pursued, namely, direct and indirect. In the former the tax is paid by the party upon whom it is levied. Such are taxes upon real estate, tools, machinery, domestic animals, etc. In indirect taxation the tax, though levied upon one person, is usually paid by another. Thus, during our civil war, there was a stamp-tax of one cent on each bunch of matches. The manufacturer paid the tax to the government, but the consumer of matches paid a cent more for each bunch of matches than it would have otherwise cost him. Duties on foreign imports are of this character.

Direct taxes, though by far more just and equable than indirect, are far less popular. The reason of this is doubtless to be found in the fact that when the tax-payer meets his obligation in the former case he does it consciously and with a clear sense that he is parting with so much actual wealth. In the latter case it is often done unconsciously, and almost always without realization of the fact. Yet, for this very reason, it is better that the tax be direct than indirect.

[READINGS IN ART.]

I. ARCHITECTURE.[I] INTRODUCTION.

Architecture may be described as building at its best, and when we talk of the architecture of any city or country we mean its best, noblest, or most beautiful buildings; and we imply by the use of the word that these buildings possess merits which entitle them to rank as works of art.

The architecture of the civilized world can be best understood by considering the great buildings of each important nation separately. The features, ornaments, and even forms of ancient buildings differed just as the speech, or at any rate the literature, differed. Each nation wrote in a different language, though the books may have been devoted to the same aims; and precisely in the same way each nation built in a style of its own, even if the buildings may have been similar in the purposes they had to serve. The division of the subject into the architecture of Egypt, Greece, Rome, etc., is therefore the most natural one to follow.

But certain broad groups, rising out of peculiarities of a physical nature, either in the buildings themselves or in the conditions under which they were erected, can hardly fail to be suggested by a general view of the subject. Such, for example, is the fourfold division to which the reader’s attention will now be directed.

All buildings, it will be found, can be classed under one or other of four great divisions, each distinguished by a distinct mode of building, and each also occupying a distinct place in history. The first series embraces the buildings of the Egyptians, the Persians, and the Greeks, and was brought to a pitch of the highest perfection in Greece during the age of Pericles. All the buildings erected in these countries during the many centuries which elapsed from the earliest Egyptian to the latest Greek works, however they may have differed in other respects, agree in this—that the openings, be they doors, or be they spaces between columns, were spanned by beams of wood or lintels of stone. Hence this architecture is called architecture of the beam, or, in more formal language, trabeated architecture. This mode of covering spaces required that in buildings of solid masonry, where stone or marble lintels were employed, the supports should not be very far apart, and this circumstance led to the frequent use of rows of columns. The architecture of this period is accordingly sometimes called columnar, but it has no exclusive claim to the epithet; the column survived long after the exclusive use of the beam had been superseded, and the term columnar must accordingly be shared with buildings forming part of the succeeding series.

The second great group of buildings is that in which the semicircular arch is introduced into construction, and used either together with the beam, or, as mostly happened, instead of the beam, to span the openings. This use of the arch began with the Assyrians, and it reappeared in the works of the early Etruscans. The round-arched series of styles embraces the buildings of the Romans from their earliest beginnings to their decay; it also includes the two great schools of Christian architecture which were founded by the Western and the Eastern Church respectively—namely, the Romanesque, which, originating in Rome, extended itself through Western Europe, and lasted till the time of the Crusades, and the Byzantine, which spread from Constantinople over all the countries in which the Eastern (or Greek) Church flourished, and which continues to our own day.

The third group of buildings is that in which the pointed arch is employed instead of the semicircular arch to span the openings. It began with the rise of Mohammedan architecture in the East, and embraces all the buildings of Western Europe, from the time of the First Crusade to the revival of art in the fifteenth century. This great series of buildings constitutes what is known as pointed, or, more commonly, as gothic architecture.

The fourth group consists of the buildings erected during or since the Renaissance (i. e., revival) period, and is marked by a return to the styles of past ages or distant countries for the architectural features and ornaments of buildings; and by that luxury, complexity, and ostentation which, with other qualities, are well comprehended under the epithet modern. This group of buildings forms what is known as Renaissance architecture, and extends from the epoch of the revival of letters in the fifteenth century to the present day.

The first two of these styles occupy those remote times of pagan civilization which may be conveniently included under the broad term ancient; and the better known work of the Greeks and Romans—the classic nations—and they extend over the time of the establishment of Christianity down to the close of that dreary period not incorrectly termed the dark ages.

It may excite surprise that what appears to be so small a difference as that which exists between a beam, a round arch, or a pointed arch, should be employed in order to distinguish three of the four great divisions. But in reality this is no pedantic or arbitrary grouping. The mode in which spaces or openings are covered lies at the root of most of the essential differences between styles of architecture, and the distinction thus drawn is one of a real, not of a fanciful nature.

Every building when reduced to its elements, as will be done in these papers, may be considered as made up of its (1) floor or plan, (2) walls, (3) roof, (4) openings, (5) columns, and (6) ornaments, and as marked by its distinctive (7) character, and the student must be prepared to find that the openings are by no means the least important of these elements. In fact, the moment the method of covering openings was changed, it would be easy to show, did space permit, that all the other elements, except the ornaments, were directly affected by the change, and the ornaments indirectly; and we thus find such a correspondence between this index feature and the entire structure as renders this primary division a scientific though a very broad one.

A division of buildings into such great series as these can not, however, supersede the more obvious historical and geographical divisions. The architecture of every ancient country was partly the growth of the soil, i. e., adapted to the climate of the country, and the materials found there, and partly the outcome of the national character of its inhabitants, and of such influences as race, colonization, commerce, or conquest brought to bear upon them. These influences produced strong distinctions between the work of different peoples, especially before the era of the Roman Empire. Since that period of universal dominion all buildings and styles have been influenced more or less by Roman art. We accordingly find the buildings of the most ancient nations separated from each other by strongly marked lines of demarcation, but those since the era of the empire showing a considerable resemblance to one another. The circumstance that the remains of those buildings only which received the greatest possible attention from their builders have come down to us from any remote antiquity, has perhaps served to accentuate the differences between different styles, for these foremost buildings were not intended to serve the same purpose in all countries. Nothing but tombs and temples have survived in Egypt. Palaces only have been rescued from the decay of Assyrian and Persian cities; and temples, theaters, and places of public assembly are the chief, almost the only remains of architecture in Greece.

A strong contrast between the buildings of different ancient nations rises also from the differing point of view for which they were designed. Thus, in the tombs, and, to a large extent, the temples of the Egyptians, we find structures chiefly planned for internal effect; that is to say, intended to be seen by those admitted to the sacred precincts, but only to a limited extent appealing to the admiration of those outside. The buildings of the Greeks, on the other hand, were chiefly designed to please those who examined them from without; and though no doubt some of them, the theaters especially, were from their very nature planned for interior effect, by far the greatest works which Greek art produced were the exteriors of the temples.

The works of the Romans, and, following them, those of almost all western Christian nations, were designed to unite external and internal effect; but in many cases external was evidently most sought after, and, in the north of Europe, many expedients—such, for example, as towers, high-pitched roofs, and steeples—were introduced into architecture with the express intention of increasing external effect. On the other hand, the eastern styles, both Mohammedan and Christian, especially when practiced in sunny climates, show in many cases a comparative disregard of external effect, and that their architects lavished most of their resources on the interiors of their buildings.

Passing allusions have been made to the influence of climate on architecture; and the student whose attention has been once called to this subject will find many interesting traces of this influence in the designs of buildings erected in various countries. Where the power of the sun is great, flat terraced roofs, which help to keep buildings cool, and thick walls are desirable. Sufficient light is admitted by small windows far apart. Overhanging eaves, or horizontal cornices, are in such a climate the most effective mode of obtaining architectural effect, and accordingly in the styles of all southern peoples these peculiarities appear. The architecture of Egypt, for example, exhibited them markedly. Where the sun is still powerful, but not so extreme, the terraced roof is generally replaced by a sloping roof, steep enough to throw off water, and larger openings are made for light and air; but the horizontal cornice still remains the most appropriate means of gaining effects of light and shade. This description will apply to the architecture of Italy and Greece. When, however, we pass to northern countries, where snow has to be encountered, where light is precious, and where the sun is low in the heavens for the greater part of the day, a complete change takes place. Roofs become much steeper, so as to throw off snow. The horizontal cornice is to a large extent disused, but the buttress, the turret, and other vertical features, from which a level sun will cast shadows, begin to appear; and windows are made numerous and spacious. This description applies to gothic architecture generally—in other words, to the styles which rose in northern Europe.

The influence of materials on architecture is also worth notice. Where granite, which is worked with difficulty, is the material obtainable, architecture has invariably been severe and simple; where soft stone is obtainable, exuberance of ornament makes its appearance, in consequence of the material lending itself readily to the carver’s chisel. Where, on the other hand, marble is abundant and good, refinement is to be met with, for no other building material exists in which very delicate mouldings or very slight or slender projections maybe employed with the certainty that they will be effective. Where stone is scarce, brick buildings, with many arches, roughly constructed cornices and pilasters, and other peculiarities both of structure and ornamentation, make their appearance, as, for example, in Lombardy and North Germany. Where materials of many colors abound, as is the case, for example, in the volcanic districts of France, polychromy is sought as a means of ornamentation. Lastly, where timber is available, and stone and brick are both scarce, the result is an architecture of which both the forms and the ornamentation are entirely dissimilar to those proper to buildings of stone, marble, or brick.

EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE.

The remains of Egyptian architecture with which we are acquainted indicate four distinct periods of great architectural activity: (1) the period of the fourth dynasty, when the great pyramids were erected (probably 3500 to 3000 B. C.); (2) the period of the twelfth dynasty, to which belong the remains at Beni-Hassan; (3) the period of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, when Thebes was in its glory, which is attested by the ruins of Luxor and Karnak; and (4) the Ptolemaic period, of which there are the remains at Denderah, Edfou, and Philæ. The monuments that remain are almost exclusively tombs and temples. The tombs are, generally speaking, all met with on the east or right bank of the Nile: among them must be classed those grandest and oldest monuments of Egyptian skill, the pyramids, which appear to have been all designed as royal burying-places. A large number of pyramids have been discovered, but those of Gizeh, near Cairo, are the largest and the best known, and also probably the oldest which can be authenticated. The three largest pyramids are those of Cheops, Cephren, and Mycerinus at Gizeh. These monarchs all belonged to the fourth dynasty, and the most probable date to be assigned to them is about 3000 B. C. The pyramid of Cheops is the largest, and is the one familiarly known as the Great Pyramid; it has a square base, the side of which is 760 feet long,[J] a height of 484 feet, and an area of 577,600 square feet. In this pyramid the angle of inclination of the sloping sides to the base is 51° 51′, but in no two pyramids is this angle the same. There can be no doubt that these huge monuments were erected each as the tomb of an individual king, whose efforts were directed toward making it everlasting, and the greatest pains were taken to render the access to the burial chamber extremely hard to discover. This accounts for the vast disproportion between the lavish amount of material used for the pyramid and the smallness of the cavity enclosed in it.

The material employed was limestone cased with syenite (granite from Syene), and the internal passages were lined with granite. The granite of the casing has entirely disappeared, but that employed as linings is still in its place, and so skilfully worked that it would not be possible to introduce even a sheet of paper between the joints.

In the neighborhood of the pyramids are found a large number of tombs which are supposed to be those of private persons. Their form is generally that of a mastaba or truncated pyramid with sloping walls, and their construction is evidently copied from a fashion of wooden architecture previously existing. The same idea of making an everlasting habitation for the body prevailed as in the case of the pyramids, and stone was therefore the material employed; but the builders seem to have desired to indulge in a decorative style, and as they were totally unable to originate a legitimate stone architecture, we find carved in stone, rounded beams as lintels, grooved posts, and—most curious of all—roofs that are an almost exact copy of the early timber huts when unsquared baulks of timber were laid across side by side to form a covering.

When we come to the series of remains of the twelfth dynasty at Beni-Hassan, in middle Egypt, we meet with the earliest known examples of that most interesting feature of all subsequent styles—the column. Whether the idea of columnar architecture originated with the necessities of quarrying—square piers being left at intervals to support the superincumbent mass of rock as the quarry was gradually driven in—or whether the earliest stone piers were imitations of brickwork or of timber posts, we shall probably never be able to determine accurately, though the former supposition seems the more likely. We have here monuments of a date fourteen hundred years anterior to the earliest known Greek examples, with splendid columns, both exterior and interior, which no reasonable person can doubt are the prototypes of the Greek doric order.

Egyptian temples can be generally classed under two heads: (1) the large principal temples, and (2) the small subsidiary ones called Typhonia or Mammisi. Both kinds of temple vary little, if at all, in plan from the time of the twelfth dynasty down to the Roman dominion.

The large temples consist almost invariably of an entrance gate flanked on either side by a large mass of masonry, called a pylon, in the shape of a truncated pyramid. The axis of the ground-plan of these pylons is frequently obliquely inclined to the axis of the plan of the temple itself; and indeed one of the most striking features of Egyptian temples is the lack of regularity and symmetry in their construction. The entrance gives access to a large courtyard, generally ornamented with columns: beyond this, and occasionally approached by steps, is another court, smaller than the first, but much more splendidly adorned with columns and colossi; beyond this again, in the finest examples, occurs what is called the hypostyle hall, i. e., a hall with two rows of lofty columns down the center, and at the sides other rows, more or less in number, of lower columns; the object of this arrangement being that the central portion might be lighted by a kind of clerestory above the roof of the side portions. This hypostyle hall stood with its greatest length transverse to the general axis of the temple, so that it was entered from the side. Beyond it were other chambers, all of small size, the innermost being generally the sanctuary, while the others were probably used as residences by the priests. Homer’s hundred-gated Thebes, which was for so long the capital of Egypt, offers at Karnak and Luxor the finest remains of temples; what is left of the former evidently showing that it must have been one of the most magnificent buildings ever erected in any country.

It must not be imagined that this temple of Karnak, together with the series of connected temples is the result of one clearly conceived plan; on the contrary, just as has been frequently the case with our own cathedrals and baronial halls, alterations were made here and additions there by successive kings one after another without much regard to connection or congruity, the only feeling that probably influenced them being that of emulation to excel in size and grandeur the erections of their predecessors, as the largest buildings were almost always of latest date. The original sanctuary, or nucleus of the temple, was built by Usertesen I., the second or third king of the twelfth dynasty.

Extensive remains of temples exist at Luxor, Edfou, and Philæ. It should be noticed that all these large temples have the mastaba form, i. e., the outer walls are not perpendicular on the outside, but slope inward as they rise, thus giving the buildings an air of great solidity.

The Mammisi exhibit quite a different form of temple from those previously described, and are generally found in close proximity to the large temples. They are generally erected on a raised terrace, rectangular in plan and nearly twice as long as it was wide, approached by a flight of steps opposite the entrance; they consist of oblong buildings, usually divided by a wall into two chambers, and surrounded on all sides by a colonnade composed of circular columns or square piers placed at intervals, and the whole is roofed in. A dwarf wall is frequently found between the piers and columns, about half the height of the shaft. These temples differ from the larger ones in having the outer walls perpendicular.

The constructional system pursued by the Egyptians, which consisted in roofing over spaces with large horizontal blocks of stone, led of necessity to a columnar arrangement in the interiors, as it was impossible to cover large areas without frequent upright supports. Hence the column became the chief means of obtaining effect, and the varieties of form which it exhibits are very numerous. The sculptors appear to have imitated as closely as possible the forms of the plant-world around them. In one they represent a bundle of reeds or lotus stalks. The stalks are bound round with several belts, and the capital is formed by the slightly bulging unopened bud of the flower, above which is a small abacus with the architrave resting upon it: the base is nothing but a low circular plinth. The square piers also have frequently a lotus bud carved on them. At the bottom of the shaft is frequently found a decoration imitated from the sheath of leaves from which the plant springs. As a further development of this capital we have the opened lotus flower of a very graceful bell-like shape, ornamented with a similar sheath-like decoration to that at the base of the shaft. This decoration was originally painted only, not sculptured, but at a later period we find these sheaths and buds worked in stone. Even more graceful is the palm capital, which also had its leading lines of decoration painted on it at first, and afterward sculptured. At a later period of the style we find the plant forms abandoned, and capitals were formed of a fantastic combination of the head of Isis with a pylon resting upon it. In one part of the temple at Karnak is found a very curious capital resembling the open lotus flower inverted. The proportion which the height of Egyptian columns bears to their diameter differs so much in various cases that there was evidently no regular standard adhered to, but as a general rule they have a heavy and massive character. The wall-paintings of the Egyptian buildings show many curious forms of columns, but we have no reason for thinking that these fantastic shapes were really executed in stone.

Almost the only sculptured ornaments worked on the exteriors of buildings were the curious astragal or bead at all the angles, and the cornice, which consisted of a very large cavetto, or hollow moulding, surmounted by a fillet. These features are almost invariable from the earliest to the latest period of the style. This cavetto was generally enriched, over the doorways, with an ornament representing a circular boss with a wing at each side of it.

One other feature of Egyptian architecture which was peculiar to it must be mentioned, namely, the obelisk. Obelisks were nearly always erected in pairs in front of the pylons of the temples, and added to the dignity of the entrance. They were invariably monoliths, slightly tapering in outline, carved with the most perfect accuracy; they must have existed originally in very large numbers. Not a few of these have been transported to Europe, and at least twelve are standing in Rome, one is in Paris and one in London.

ANALYSIS OF BUILDINGS.

The early rock-cut tombs were, of course, only capable of producing internal effects; their floor presents a series of halls and galleries, varying in size and shape, leading one out of the other, and intended by their contrast or combination to produce architectural effect. To this was added in the latter rock-cut tombs a façade to be seen directly in front. Much the same account can be given of the disposition of the built temples. They possess one front, which the spectator approaches, and they are disposed so as to produce varied and impressive interiors, but not to give rise to external display. The supports, such as walls, columns, piers, are all very massive and very close together, so that the only wide open spaces are courtyards.

The circle, or octagon, or other polygonal forms do not appear in the plans of Egyptian buildings; but though all the lines are straight, there is a good deal of irregularity in spacing, walls which face one another are not always parallel, and angles which appear to be right angles very often are not so.

The later buildings extend over much space. The adjuncts to these buildings, especially the avenues of sphinxes, are planned so as to produce an air of stately grandeur, and in them some degree of external effect is aimed at.

The walls are uniformly thick, and often of granite or of stone, though brick is also met with; e. g., some of the smaller pyramids are built entirely of brick. In all probability the walls of domestic buildings were to a great extent of brick, and less thick than those of the temples; hence they have all disappeared.

The surface of walls, even when of granite, was usually plastered with a thin fine plaster, which was covered by the profuse decoration in color already alluded to.

The walls of the propylons tapered from the base toward the top, and the same thing sometimes occurred in other walls. In almost all cases the stone walls are built of very large blocks, and they show an unrivaled skill in masonry.

The roofing which remains is executed entirely in stone, but not arched or vaulted. The rock-cut tombs, however, contain ceilings of an arched shape, and in some cases forms which seem to be an imitation of timber roofing. The roofing of the hypostyle hall at Karnak provides an arrangement for admitting light very similar to the clerestory of gothic cathedrals.

The openings were all covered by a stone lintel, and consequently were uniformly square-headed. The interspaces between columns were similarly covered, and hence Egyptian architecture has been, and correctly, classed as the first among the styles of trabeated architecture. Window openings seldom occur.

The columns have been already described to some extent. They are almost always circular in plan, but the shaft is sometimes channeled. They are for the most part of sturdy proportions, but great grace and elegance are shown in the profile given to shafts and capitals. The design of the capitals especially is full of variety, and admirably adapts forms obtained from the vegetable kingdom. The general effect of the Egyptian column, wherever it is used, is that it appears to have, as it really has, a great deal more strength than is required. The fact that the abacus (the square block of stone introduced between the moulded part of the capital and what it carries) is often smaller in width than the diameter of the column aids very much to produce this effect.

Mouldings are very rarely employed; in fact, the large bead running up the angles of the pylons, etc., and a heavy hollow moulding doing duty as a cornice, are all that are usually met with. Sculpture and carving occur occasionally, and are freely introduced in later works, where we sometimes find statues incorporated into the design of the fronts of temples. Decoration in color, in the shape of hieroglyphic inscriptions and paintings of all sorts, was profusely employed, and is executed with a truth of drawing and a beauty of coloring that have never been surpassed. Almost every object drawn is partly conventionalized, in the most skillful manner, so as to make it fit its place as a piece of a decorative system.

The character is gloomy, and to a certain extent forbidding, owing to the heavy walls and piers and columns, and the great masses supported by them; but when in its freshness and quite uninjured by decay or violence, the exquisite coloring of the walls and ceilings and columns must have added a great deal of beauty: this must have very much diminished the oppressive effect inseparable from such massive construction and from the gloomy darkness of many portions of the buildings. It is also noteworthy that the expenditure of materials and labor is greater in proportion to the effect attained than in any other style. The pyramids are the most conspicuous example of this prodigality. Before condemning this as a defect in the style, it must be remembered that a stability which should defy enemies, earthquakes, and the tooth of time, was far more aimed at than architectural character; and that, had any mode of construction less lavish of material, and less perfect in workmanship, been adopted, the buildings of Egypt might have all disappeared ere this.

[SELECTIONS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE.]

FITZ GREENE HALLECK.

If one is not too critical there is a good deal of pleasure to be got out of Halleck’s volume.—National Magazine (1852).

Dana, Halleck and Bryant rose together on steady wings and gave voices to the solitude; Dana with a broad, grave undertone like that of the sea; Bryant with a sound as of the wind in summer woods, and the fall of waters in mountain dells; and Halleck with strains blown from a silver trumpet, breathing manly fire and courage.—Bayard Taylor.

To * * * *

The world is bright before thee,

Its summer flowers are thine,

Its calm, blue sky is o’er thee,

Thy bosom pleasure’s shrine;

And thine the sunbeam given,

To nature’s morning hour,

Pure, warm, as when from heaven

It burst on Eden’s bower.

There is a song of sorrow,

The death-dirge of the gay,

That tells, ere dawn of morrow,

These charms may melt away,

That sun’s bright beam be shaded,

That sky be blue no more,

The summer flowers be faded,

And youth’s warm promise o’er.

Believe it not, though lonely

Thy evening home may be;

Though beauty’s bark can only

Float on a summer sea;

Though time thy bloom is stealing,

There’s still beyond his art

The wild-flower wreath of feeling,

The sunbeam of the heart.

In Memory of Joseph Rodman Drake.

Green be the turf above thee,

Friend of my better days!

None knew thee but to love thee,

Nor named thee but to praise.

Tears fell when thou wert dying,

From eyes unused to weep,

And long, where thou art lying,

Will tears the cold turf steep.

When hearts whose truth was proven,

Like thine, are laid in earth,

There should a wreath be woven

To tell the world their worth;

And I, who woke each morrow

To clasp thy hand in mine,

Who shared thy joy and sorrow,

Whose weal and woe were thine,—

It should be mine to braid it

Around thy faded brow,

But I’ve in vain essayed it,

And feel I cannot now.

While memory bids me weep thee,

Nor thoughts nor words are free,

The grief is fixed too deeply

That mourns a man like thee.

---

There are some happy moments in this lone

And desolate world of ours, that well repay

The toil of struggling through it, and atone

For many a long, sad night and weary day.

They come upon the mind like some wild air

Of distant music, when we know not where,

Or whence, the sounds are brought from, and their power,

Though brief, is boundless.

RICHARD HENRY DANA.

Among the first to make a creditable appearance in the field of American literature was Richard Henry Dana, the last of the writers of his generation who achieved success both in prose and verse, and won the right to be ranked among the most vigorous authors of the first half of the present century.—James Grant Wilson.

From “THOUGHTS ON THE SOUL.”

Turn with me from pining thought

And all the inward ills that sin has wrought;

Come, send abroad a love for all who live,

And feel the deep content in turn they give.

Kind wishes and good deeds—they make not poor;

They’ll home again, full laden, to thy door.

The streams of love flow back where they begin;

For springs of outward joys lie deep within.

E’en let them flow, and make the places glad

Where dwell thy fellow-men, shouldst thou be sad,

And earth seems bare, and hours, once happy, press

Upon thy thoughts, and make thy loneliness

More lonely for the past, thou then shalt hear

The music of those waters running near;

And thy faint spirit drink the cooling stream,

And thine eye gladden with the playing beam,

That now upon the water dances. Now,

Leaps up and dances in the hanging bough.

Is it not lovely? Tell me, where doth dwell

The power that wrought so beautiful a spell?

In thine own bosom, brother? Then, as thine,

Guard with a reverent fear this power divine,

And if, indeed, ’tis not the outward state,

But temper of the soul, by which we rate

Sadness or joy, e’en let thy bosom move

With noble thoughts, and wake thee into love;

And let each feeling in thy breast be given

An honest aim, which, sanctified by heaven,

And springing into act, new life imparts,

Till beats thy frame as with a thousand hearts.

The earth is full of life; the living hand

Touched it with life; and all its forms expand

With principles of being made to suit

Man’s varied powers, and raise from the brute.

And shall the earth of higher ends be full,—

Earth which thou tread’st,—and thy poor mind be dull,

Thou talk of life, with half thy soul asleep!

Thou “living dead man,” let thy spirits leap

Forth to the day, and let the fresh air blow

Thro’ thy soul’s shut-up mansion. Wouldst thou know

Something of what is life, shake off this death;

Have thy soul feel the universal breath

With which all nature’s quick, and learn to be

Sharer in all thou dost touch or see;

Break from thy body’s grasp, thy spirit’s trance;

Give to thy soul air, thy faculties expanse;

Love, joy, e’en sorrow—yield thyself to all!

They make thy freedom, groveller, not thy thrall,

Knock off the shackles which thy spirit bind

To dust and sense, and set at large the mind;

Then move in sympathy with God’s great whole;

And be, like man at first, A Living Soul!

A Clump of Daisies.

Ye daisies gay,

This fresh spring day

Closed gathered here together,

To play in the light,

To sleep all the night,

To abide through the sullen weather;

Ye creatures bland,

A simple band,

Ye free ones, linked in pleasure,

And linked when your forms

Stoop low in the storms,

And the rain comes down without measure;

When the wild clouds fly

Athwart the sky,

And ghostly shadows, glancing,

Are darkening the gleam

Of the hurrying stream,

And your close, bright heads gayly dancing;

Though dull awhile,

Again ye smile;

For, see, the warm sun breaking;

The stream’s going glad,

There’s nothing now sad,

And the small bird his song is waking.

The dew-drop sip

With dainty lip!

The sun is low descended,

And moon, softly fall

On troops true and small;

Sky and earth in one kindly blended.

And, morning! spread

Their jewelled bed

With lights in the east sky springing;

And, brook! breathe around

Thy low murmured sound!

May they move, ye birds, to your singing;

For in their play

I hear them say,

Here, man, thy wisdom borrow;

In heart be a child,

In words, true and mild;

Hold thy faith, come joy, or come sorrow.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

Bryant’s writings transport us into the depths of the solemn, primeval forest, to the shores of the lonely lakes, the banks of the wild, nameless stream, or the brow of the rocky upland, rising like a promontory from amidst a wild ocean of foliage; while they shed around us the glory of a climate fierce in its extremes, but splendid in its vicissitudes.—Washington Irving.

His soul is charity itself—in all respects generous and noble.—Edgar A. Poe.

We may have had elsewhere as faithful citizens; as industrious journalists; as ripe scholars, and poets, it may be, equally gifted and inspired, but where have we had another who has combined in his own person all these? In him a rare combination of extraordinary qualities was united; strength and gentleness, elevation of thought and childlike simplicity, genius, common-sense, and practical wisdom. Where there were controverted questions, whether men agreed with him or not, they never for an instant doubted his nobleness of purpose.—Rev. R. C. Waterston.

To the Fringed Gentian.

Thou blossom bright with autumn dew,

And colored with the heaven’s own blue,

That openest when the quiet light

Succeeds the keen and frosty night,—

Thou comest not when violets lean

O’er wandering brooks and springs unseen,

Or columbines, in purple drest,

Nod o’er the ground-bird’s hidden nest.

Thou waitest late, and com’st alone,

When woods are bare, and birds are flown,

And frosts and shortening days portend

The aged year is near its end.

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye

Look through its fringes to the sky,

Blue, blue, as if that sky let fall

A flower from its cerulean wall.

I would that thus, when I shall see

The hour of death draw near to me,

Hope, blossoming within my heart,

May look to heaven as I depart.

Extract from Bryant’s Translation of the Iliad. Book I.
(620-774.)

* * * But when now, at length,

The twelfth day came, the ever-living gods

Returned together to the Olympian mount

With Jove, their leader. Thetis kept in mind

Her son’s desire, and, with the early morn,

Emerging from the depths of ocean, climbed

To the great heaven and the high mount, and found

All-seeing Jove, who, from the rest apart,

Was seated on the loftiest pinnacle

Of many-peaked Olympus. She sat down

Before the son of Saturn, clasped his knees

With her left arm, and lifted up her right

In supplication to the Sovereign One:

“O Jupiter, my father, if among

The immortals I have ever given thee aid

By word or act, deny not my request.

Honor my son, whose life is doomed to end

So soon; for Agamemnon, king of men,

Hath done him shameful wrong: he takes from him

And keeps the prize he won in war. But thou,

Olympian Jupiter, supremely wise,

Honor him now, and give the Trojan host

The victory, until the humbled Greeks

Heap large increase of honors on my son.”

She spake, but cloud-compelling Jupiter

Answered her not; in silence long he sat.

But Thetis, who had clasped his knees at first,

Clung to them still, and prayed him yet again:—

“O promise me, and grant my suit; or else

Deny it,—for thou need’st not fear,—and I

Shall know how far below the other gods

Thou holdest me in honor.” As she spake,

The cloud-compeller, sighing heavily,

Answered her thus: “Hard things dost thou require,

And thou wilt force me into new disputes

With Juno, who will anger me again

With contumelious words; for ever thus,

In presence of the immortals, doth she seek

Cause of contention, charging that I aid

The Trojans in their battles. Now depart,

And let her not perceive thee. Leave the rest

To be by me accomplished; and that thou

Mayst be assured, behold, I give the nod;

For this, with me, the immortals know, portends

The highest certainty: no word of mine

Which once my nod confirms can be revoked,

Or prove untrue, or fail to be fulfilled.”

As thus he spake, the son of Saturn gave

The nod with his dark brows. The ambrosial curls

Upon the Sovereign One’s immortal head

Were shaken, and with them the mighty mount

Olympus trembled. Then they parted, she

Plunging from bright Olympus to the deep,

And Jove returning to his palace home;

Where all the gods, uprising from their thrones,

At sight of the Great Father, waited not

For his approach, but met him as he came.

And now upon his throne the Godhead took

His seat, but Juno knew—for she had seen—

That Thetis of the silver feet, and child

Of the gray Ancient of the Deep, had held

Close counsel with her consort. Therefore she

Bespake the son of Saturn harshly, thus:—

“O crafty one, with whom, among the gods,

Plottest thou now? Thus hath it ever been

Thy pleasure to devise, apart from me,

Thy plans in secret; never willingly

Dost thou reveal to me thy purposes.”

Then thus replied the Father of the gods

And mortals: “Juno, do not think to know

All my designs, for thou wilt find the task

Too hard for thee, although thou be my spouse.

What fitting is to be revealed, no one

Of all the immortals or of men shall know

Sooner than thou; but when I form designs

Apart from all the gods, presume thou not

To question me or pry into my plans.”

Juno, the large-eyed and august, rejoined:—

“What words, stern son of Saturn, hast thou said!

It never was my wont to question thee

Or pry into thy plans, and thou art left

To form them as thou wilt; yet now I fear

The silver-footed Thetis has contrived—

That daughter of the Ancient of the Deep—

To o’erpersuade thee, for, at early prime,

She sat before thee and embraced thy knees;

And thou hast promised her, I can not doubt,

To give Achilles honor and to cause

Myriads of Greeks to perish by their fleet.”

Then Jove, the cloud-compeller, spake again:—

“Harsh-tongued! thou ever dost suspect me thus,

Nor can I act unwatched; and yet all this

Profits thee nothing, for it only serves

To breed dislike, and is the worse for thee.

But were it as thou deemest, ’tis enough

That such has been my pleasure. Sit thou down

In silence, and obey, lest all the gods

Upon Olympus, when I come and lay

These potent hands on thee, protect thee not.”

He spake, and Juno, large-eyed and august,

O’erawed, and curbing her high spirit, sat

In silence; meanwhile all the gods of heaven

Within the halls of Jove were inly grieved.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

A man of true genius.—Edgar A. Poe.

A man’s heart beats in his every line.—George Gilfillan.

Of all our poets Longfellow best deserves the title of artist.—Griswold.

They (Longfellow’s poems) appear to me more beautiful than on former readings, much as I then admired them. The exquisite music of your verses dwells more agreeably than ever on my ear, and more than ever am I affected by their depth of feeling and their spirituality, and the creative power with which they set before us passages from the great drama of life.—William Cullen Bryant in letter to Longfellow.

Santa Filomena.

Whene’er a noble deed is wrought,

Whene’er is spoken a noble thought,

Our hearts, in glad surprise,

To higher levels rise.

The tidal wave of deeper souls

Into our inmost being rolls,

And lifts us unawares

Out of all meaner cares.

Honor to those whose words or deeds

Thus help us in our daily needs,

And by their overflow

Raise us from what is low!

Thus thought I, as by night I read

Of the great army of the dead,

The trenches cold and damp,

The starved and frozen camp,—

The wounded from the battle-plain,

In dreary hospitals of pain,

The cheerless corridors,

The cold and stony floors.

Lo! in that house of misery

A lady with a lamp I see

Pass through the glimmering gloom,

And flit from room to room.

And slow, as in a dream of bliss,

The speechless sufferer turns to kiss

Her shadow, as it falls

Upon the darkening walls.

As if a door in heaven should be

Opened and then closed suddenly,

The vision came and went,

The light shone and was spent.

On England’s annals, through the long

Hereafter of her speech and song,

That light its rays shall cast

From portals of the past.

A Lady with a Lamp shall stand

In the great history of the land,

A noble type of good,

Heroic womanhood.

Nor even shall be wanting here

The palm, the lily, and the spear,

The symbols that of yore

Saint Filomena bore.

Rural Life in Sweden.

There is something patriarchal still lingering about rural life in Sweden, which renders it a fit theme for song. Almost primeval simplicity reigns over that Northern land—almost primeval solitude and stillness. You pass out from the gate of the city, and, as if by magic, the scene changes to a wild, woodland landscape. Around you are forests of fir. Overhead hang the long, fan-like branches, trailing with moss, and heavy with red and blue cones. Under foot is a carpet of yellow leaves; and the air is warm and balmy. On a wooden bridge you cross a little silver stream; and anon come forth into a pleasant and sunny land of farms. Wooden fences divide the adjoining fields. Across the road are gates, which are opened by troops of children. The peasants take off their hats as you pass; you sneeze, and they cry, “God bless you!” The houses in the villages and smaller towns are all built of hewn timber, and for the most part painted red. The floors of the taverns are strewn with the flagrant tips of fir boughs. In many villages there are no taverns, and the peasants take turns in receiving travelers. The thrifty housewife shows you into the best chamber, the walls of which are hung round with rude pictures from the Bible; and brings you her heavy silver spoons—an heirloom—to dip the curdled milk from the pan. You have oaten cakes baked some months before, or bread with anise-seed and coriander in it, or perhaps a little pine bark.

Meanwhile the sturdy husband has brought his horses from the plough, and harnessed them to your carriage. Solitary travelers come and go in uncouth one-horse chaises. Most of them have pipes in their mouths, and, hanging around their necks in front, a leather wallet, in which they carry tobacco, and the great bank-notes of the country, as large as your two hands. You meet, also, groups of Dalekarlian peasant-women, traveling homeward or townward in pursuit of work. They walk barefoot, carrying in their hands their shoes, which have high heels under the hollow of their foot, and soles of birch bark.

Near the churchyard gate stands a poor-box, fastened to a post by iron bands, and secured by a padlock, with a sloping wooden roof to keep off the rain. If it be Sunday, the peasants sit on the church steps and con their psalm-books. Others are coming down the road with their beloved pastor, who talks to them of holy things from beneath his broad-brimmed hat. He speaks of fields and harvests, and of the parable of the sower, that went forth to sow. He leads them to the Good Shepherd, and to the pleasant pastures of the spirit-land. He is their patriarch, and, like Melchizedek, both priest and king, though he has no other throne than the church pulpit. The women carry psalm-books in their hands, wrapped in silk handkerchiefs, and listen devoutly to the good man’s words. But the young men, like Gallio, care for none of these things. They are busy counting the plaits in the kirtles of the peasant girls, their number being an indication of the wearer’s wealth. It may end in a wedding.

Nor must I forget the suddenly changing seasons of the Northern clime. There is no long and lingering spring, unfolding leaf and blossom one by one; no long and lingering autumn, pompous with many-colored leaves and the glow of Indian summers. But winter and summer are wonderful, and pass into each other. The quail has hardly ceased piping in the corn, when winter from the folds of trailing clouds sows broadcast over the land snow, icicles, and rattling hail. The days wane apace. Erelong the sun hardly rises above the horizon, or does not rise at all. The moon and the stars shine through the day; only, at noon, they are pale and wan, and in the southern sky a red, fiery glow, as of sunset, burns along the horizon, and then goes out. And pleasantly under the silver moon, and under the silent, solemn stars, ring the steel-shoes of the skaters on the frozen sea, and voices, and the sound of bells.

Passages from Longfellow.

If you borrow my books do not mark them, for I shall not be able to distinguish your marks from my own, and the pages will become like the doors in Bagdad, marked by Morgiana’s chalk.

A torn jacket is soon mended; but hard words bruise the heart of a child.

The Cathedral of Rouen.—I unexpectedly came out in front of the magnificent cathedral. If it had suddenly risen from the earth the effect would not have been more powerful and instantaneous. It completely overpowered my imagination; and I stood for a long time motionless, gazing entranced upon the stupendous edifice. I had before seen no specimen of Gothic architecture, save the remains of a little church at Havre, and the massive towers before me, the lofty windows of stained glass, the low portal, with its receding arches and rude statues, all produced upon my untrained mind an impression of awful sublimity. When I entered the church the impression was still more deep and solemn. It was the hour of vespers. The religious twilight of the place, the lamps that burned on the distant altar, the kneeling crowd, the tinkling bell, and the chant of the evening service that rolled along the vaulted roof in broken and repeated echoes, filled me with new and intense emotions. When I gazed on the stupendous architecture of the church, the huge columns that the eye followed up till they were lost in the gathering dusk of the arches above, the long and shadowy aisles, the statues of saints and martyrs that stood in every recess, the figures of armed knights upon the tombs, the uncertain light that stole through the painted windows of each little chapel, and the form of the cowled and solitary monk, kneeling at the shrine of his favorite saint, or passing between the lofty columns of the church—all I had read of, but had not seen—I was transported back to the Dark Ages, and felt as I can never feel again.—Outre-Mer.

Bear through sorrow, wrong and ruth,

In thy heart the dew of youth,

On thy lips the smile of truth.

—Maidenhood.

As turning the logs will make a dull fire burn, so change of studies a dull brain.

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

We often excuse our want of philanthropy by giving the name of fanaticism to the more ardent zeal of others.

[End of Required Reading for January.]

[NIGHT.]

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By A. ST. J. A.

I saw the sun sink slowly in the west,

Painting the cloudless skies with liquid gold;

I saw the angel of the night unfold

His dewy wings, and lowly o’er his breast

Bow down his head in meek humility,

As one who works his Master’s wise behest.

I saw the moon in radiant garb uprise

And sail majestic o’er the tranquil skies,

Like some bright vessel on a waveless sea.

And as I gazed, a sense of perfect rest

Stole o’er me, and the sorrows that infest

The life of all no longer burdened me,

But, with the light, fled peacefully away.

Ceased had the plaintive carol of the thrush,

And stillness brooded over everything,

As if the dark-robed angel had unfurled

His ebon pinions and, from off his wing,

Shook silence down upon a sleeping world;

Or the last sigh of the departing day,

Borne through the trees in one long-whispered “Hush!”

Had breathed o’er all a spirit of repose.

So may life’s sun, which at the dawn uprose

Resplendent in its ever-growing light,

In peaceful glory sink at evening’s close

Beyond the margin of death’s silent sea,

And the grey shadows of that wondrous night,

Which ends in day eternal, fall on me.

[ECCENTRIC AMERICANS.]

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By COLEMAN E. BISHOP.

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