, a rod; men who undertook, and in certain unenlightened regions do still undertake, to discover wells of water, veins of minerals, or hidden treasures of money and jewels, by means of divining-rods. ]
The workers born into the world are widely different in temperament and disposition, and antagonistic in principles, sentiment, and action. They consist both of those who work with their hands alone, and of those who work up into a practical form the reveries and speculative schemes of the dreamers. Physiologically viewed, the extreme type of the worker exhibits most frequently the bullet-shaped head, square jaw, muscular, thick neck, large chest development, and elemental hand, commonly also the sanguine, sanguine-nervous, or sanguine-bilious temperament, They have an irresistible propensity to do, to acquire, to conquer or invade; they are fertile in resource, opulent in stratagem, full of quarrel, and essentially aggressive. A contest is to them an occasion of inexplicable delight; and naturally dedicated to action, they are as unable to conceive of disappointment as the other class are to resist that which is or seems to be their destiny. They become engineers, manufacturers, merchants, inventors, mighty hunters, soldiers, sailors, pioneers, emigrants, rough-riders, pugilists, smugglers, aeronauts, acrobats, and celebrated performers in travelling circuses and menageries, lion-tamers, snake-charmers, rat-catchers, burglars, thieves, and highwaymen. They are gamekeepers, and devote their lives to circumvent and strive in mortal strife with poachers; or they are poachers, and spend their days and nights in plotting against and harassing and threatening the gamekeepers. As clergymen they are most hard-working, zealous and excellent, but also the most quarrelsome and intolerant. When they come on to the earth as younger members of the aristocracy, who may neither dig, trade, nor fight in the ring, and have not the wherewithal to keep racehorses and hunters, they enter the army or navy, and there in times of peace, when no legitimate outlet presents itself for the expenditure of these energies, they form a very insubordinate and turbulent item of the population. The lower classes of the workers who cannot get work, then crusade against the upper classes, who are in the same predicament; and we see the result in the perpetual placarding in some journals and newspapers of "deplorable blackguardism in high life." Three parts out of five, or even a larger proportion, of the Anglo-Saxon population are composed of workers as opposed to dreamers; and the seething unquiet mass of humanity known and described by some writers as our "dangerous classes" is almost entirely recruited from their ranks. Many centuries ago they were Vikings, pirates, and border robbers; they scoured the seas, made raids, reived the cattle, and levied black-mail; anon they were crusaders, for though Peter the Hermit was a dreamer, his followers were workers; subsequently they destroyed monasteries; and in these days they have made railroads and abolished the corn-laws. But, nevertheless, the men who first built churches, and dwelt in monasteries, and discovered the mysterious agency by which the engine was to do its work, were not workers, but dreamers, and were reviled in their day as visionaries and enthusiasts. Where a dreamer would have been an alchemist, a modern worker finds his mission to be a gold-digger; where one is a shepherd, the other will be a hunter or trapper:--the first works that he may retire to dream. [{421}] the second dreams how he shall arise and work.
The dreamers among men select as mates the workers among women, or are (perhaps more often) selected by them, and vice versa. It is the old eternal law of nature--the duality pervading all things, types, and classes, man and woman, positive and negative, matter and spirit, reason and faith; and, in spite of the gentle scorn which dreamers cherish for workers, and the undisguised contempt with which workers regard dreamers, so they will continue to exist side by side until the day comes when the worker can work no more, and the dreamer shall have dreamed for the last time.
MISCELLANY.
The Old Church at Chelsea, England,--Mr. H. H. Burnell read a paper before the British Archaeological Society lately, on the Old Church of Chelsea. The chancel, with the chauntries north and south of it, are the only portions of ancient work left. The north chauntry, called the Manor Chauntry, once contained the monuments of the Brays, now in very imperfect condition, having been destroyed or removed to make space for those of the Gervoise family. There remains, however, an ancient brass in the floor. Of the south, or More Chauntry, he stated that the monument of Sir Thomas More was removed from it to the chancel; and the chauntry had been occupied by the monuments of the Georges family, now also removed, displaced, and destroyed. Mr. Blunt showed that, notwithstanding the current contrary opinion, founded on Aubrey's assertion, the More monument is the original one for which Sir Thomas More himself dictated the epitaph. Mr. Burnell, the architect of the improvements effected subsequently to 1857, spoke positively as to the non-existence of a crypt which conjecture had placed under the More Chauntry. The foundation of the west end of the church before it was enlarged in 1666, he found west of Lord Dacre's tomb. On the north side of the chancel an aumbrey, and on the south a piscina was found, coeval with the chancel (early fourteenth century). The arch between the More Chauntry and the chancel is a specimen of Italian workmanship--dated 1528--a date confirmed by the objects represented in the carved ornaments, those objects being connected with the Roman Catholic ritual. It is a remarkably early instance of the use of Italian architecture in this country. In a window of this chapel, then partly bricked up, was found in the brickwork in 1858 remains of the stained glass which once filled it. The body of Sir Thomas More was, according to Aubrey, interred in this chapel, and his head, after an exposure of fourteen days, testifying to the passers-by on London Bridge the remorseless cruelty of Henry VIII. and his barbarous insensibility, was consigned to a vault in St. Dunstan's Church, Canterbury. It was seen and drawn in that vault in 1715.--Reader.
New Artesian Well in Paris,--A third artesian well is now being added to the two which Paris' has already. Already the perforation has reached the depth of eighty-two metres, being twenty metres below the sea-level. Before reaching this point, considerable difficulties had to be overcome in the shape of intermediate sheets of water, which form a series of subterranean lakes. The first of these was kept in its bed by means of a strong iron tube driven perpendicularly through it; that which followed received wooden palings, and the subsequent stratum being clay, the masonry was continued without difficulty to about five metres above sea-level. But at this point a layer of agglomerations was reached, which let a great deal of water escape. It thus became necessary to have again recourse to pumps: those employed were in the aggregate of 20 horse-power. Owing to the bad nature of this stratum, it was resolved to protect the perforation by a revetment of extraordinary thickness; and in order that the well might preserve its diameter of two metres notwithstanding, the upper part has had to be widened in proportion, so as to [{422}] give it the enormous width of four metres at the top. After this labor the work of perforation was continued through a stratum of pyrolithic limestone. At the depth corresponding to the level of the sea, they reached a layer of tubular chalk, all pierced with large holes, forming so many spouts, as thick as a man's thigh, through which water poured into the well with incredible velocity. While the pumps were at work to get rid of this water, a cylindrical revetment of bricks was built on a sort of wheel made of oak, and laid down flat at the bottom of the perforation by way of a foundation, and the intermediate space between this cylinder and the chalk stratum was filled with concrete, 47,000 kilos, of which were expended in this operation. As soon as the concrete might be considered to have set, or attained sufficient consistency, the brick cylinder was taken to pieces again, and the perforation continued to the pressure point, where a new sheet of water has been reached, requiring ingenious contrivances.--Artisan.
New Irish Coal Fossils. --Through the labors of Professor Huxley, Dr. E. P. Wright, and Mr. Brownrig, some very interesting fossils from the Castlecomer coal-measures of Co. Kilkenny, Ireland, have been brought under the notice of geologists. The specimens consist of fish, insects, and amphibian reptiles. Three out of the five forms of these amphibians are undoubtedly new to science, and, in all probability, the remaining two also. The first, and most remarkable genus, Professor Huxley has named "Ophiderpeton," having reference to its elongated, snake-like form, rudimentary limbs, peculiar head, and compressed tail. In outward form Ophiderpeton somewhat resembles Siren lacertina and Amphiuma, but the ventral surface appears covered with an armature of minute, spindle-shaped plates, obliquely adjusted together, as in Archaegosaurus and Pholidogaster. The second new form, which he names Lepterpeton, possesses an eel-like body, with slender and pointed head, and singularly constructed hourglass-shaped centra, as in Thecodontosaurus. The third genus, which Professor Huxley names Ichthyerpeton, has also ventral armor, composed of delicate rod-like ossicles; the hind limbs have three short toes, and the tail was covered with small quadrate scutes, or apparently horny scales. The fourth new amphibian Labyrinthodont he appropriately names Keraterpeton, a singular salamandroid-looking form, but minute as compared with the other associated genera. Its highly ossified vertebral column, prolonged epiotic bones, and armor of overlapping scutes, determine its character in a remarkable manner. A paper has been read before the Royal Irish Academy upon the subject, and, in the course of the discussion which followed, Professor Haughton said he had Professor Huxley's authority for stating that the coal-pit at Castlecomer had within a few months afforded more important discoveries than all the other coal-pits of Europe.--Geological Magazine.
The Accommodation-Power of the Eye.--The manner in which the human eye alters its focus for the perception of objects at various distances has always been a difficult problem for physiologists and physicists. The literature of medical science is full of dissertations on this subject, yet very little, if anything, is positively known of the exact means by which the alteration is achieved. There appears to be now a tendency among ophthalmologists to believe that the effect required is produced by an alteration of the form of the crystalline lens of the eye, which becomes less or more convex as occasion demands. This view has just received a rather strong condemnation by the Rev. Professor Haughton, of Trinity College, Dublin, in some remarks published in the "Dublin Quarterly Journal of Science." Speaking of the alteration of form in the lens, he says:--"Even this must take place on a far greater and more important scale than anatomists have as yet suspected. The change amounts to the addition of a double convex lens of crown glass having a radius of a third of an inch. Anatomists have not as yet discovered a mechanism for changing the shape of the lens sufficient to produce these results. The lens should almost be turned into a sphere, and I know of no ciliary muscles capable of effecting so great a change."--Popular Science Review.