The Chautauquan, November 1883

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The Chautauquan.

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE PROMOTION OF TRUE CULTURE. ORGAN OF
THE CHAUTAUQUA LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC CIRCLE.

Vol. IV. JANUARY, 1884. No. 4.

Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.

President—Lewis Miller, Akron, Ohio.

Superintendent of Instruction—Rev. J. H. Vincent, D.D., New Haven, Conn.

Counselors—Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D.; Rev. J. M. Gibson, D.D.; Bishop H. W. Warren, D.D.; Prof. W. C. Wilkinson, D.D.

Office Secretary—Miss Kate F. Kimball, Plainfield, N. J.

General Secretary—Albert M. Martin, Pittsburgh, Pa.

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Contents

[REQUIRED READING]
FOR THE
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle for 1883-4.
JANUARY.

[GERMAN HISTORY.]

By Rev. W. G. WILLIAMS, A.M.

IV.

The C. L. S. C. student is already aware that it is not pretended here to write the history of Germany, but properly these are entitled “Readings in German History.” To write with any degree of fulness or detail the history of a people which has played so large and important a part in the modern world, would require more volumes than are the pages allotted to us. It has been, and still remains the design to select those events and characters of greatest interest, and which have had the largest influence upon the current of subsequent history. The purpose, also constantly in view, has been to stimulate the reader to further study of the subject, by perusal of the best works accessible to the reader of English.

In this number no choice is left us but to pass, with only a glance or two, over the long period from the death of Charlemagne to that day-dawn of modern history, the Reformation. It is the period in which the historian traces, successively the beginning, vicissitudes, decay and extinction of the Carlovingian, Saxon, Franconian and Hohenstauffen houses. Following these is the great interregnum which precedes the Reformation. Included in this long stretch of time are what is known as the “dark ages.” Yet in Germany it was not all darkness, for now and then a ray of light was visible, prophetic of the rising sun, which heralded by Huss, appeared in the person and achievements of Martin Luther. It is about the work and character of the latter personage that we purpose to make the chief part of this chapter. Especially are we disposed so to do, now that protestant christendom is celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of the birth of the great reformer, and all civilized mankind has its attention called to his bold doctrines and brave career.

But, before we are prepared for Luther, we must note the change which has come in the claims and pretensions of the church. The different attitude which made possible a few centuries later, such a mission as Luther’s can not better be exhibited than during the reign of the Franconian Emperor, Henry the Fourth.

HENRY THE FOURTH—HIS SUPPLIANT VISIT TO CANOSSA.

The student of the history of the Romish church is aware that during the first five centuries after Christ the pope was vested with little, if any, other powers or dignities than those which pertained to him as Bishop of Rome. His subsequent claim to unlimited spiritual and political sway was then unthought of, much less anywhere advanced. Even for another five centuries he is only the nominal head of the church, who is subordinate to the political potentates and dependent upon them for protection and support in his office. But in the year 1073 succeeded one Gregory VII., to the tiara, who proposed to erect a spiritual empire which should be wholly absolved from dependency on kings and princes. His pontificate was one continuous struggle for the success of his undertaking. Of powerful will, great energy and shrewdness and with set purpose his administration wrought great change in the papal office and the relations of the church to European society. His chief measures by which he sought to compass his design were the celibacy of the priesthood and the suppression of the then prevalent custom of simony. The latter bore especially hard on the German Emperor, much of whose strength lay in the power to appoint the bishops and to levy assessments upon them when the royal exchequer was in need. In the year 1075 Gregory proclaimed his law against the custom, forbidding the sale of all offices of the church, and declaring that none but the pope might appoint bishops or confer the symbols of their authority. With an audacity unheard of, and a determination little anticipated, he sent word to Henry IV., of Germany, demanding the enforcement of the rule throughout his dominion under penalty of excommunication. The issue was a joint one, and a crisis inevitable. No pope had ever assumed such an attitude or used such language to a German Emperor. Henry was not disposed and resolved not to submit. So far as a formal disposition of the difficulty was concerned the case was an easy one. He called the bishops together in a synod which met at Worms. They proceeded with unanimity to declare Gregory deposed from his papal office and sent word of their action to Rome. The pope, who had used every artifice to gain popularity with the people, was prepared for the contest and answered back with the ban of excommunication. The emperor might have been able to carry on the struggle with some hope of success had he been in favor with his own subjects. But he had alienated the Saxons by his harsh treatment of them and the indignities heaped upon them; and others of his states looked upon him with suspicion. Pitted against the ablest foe in Europe, he found himself without the sympathy and aid of those to whom alone he could look for help. Meanwhile Gregory was sending his agents to all the courts of Europe and employing every intrigue to effect the emperor’s dethronement. In 1076 a convention of princes was called to meet near Mayence, Henry not being permitted to be present. So heavy had the papal excommunication fallen by this time that the emperor sent messengers to this convention offering to submit to their demands if they would only spare his crown. Gregory was inexorable, and they adjourned without any reconciliations being effected, to meet in a few months at Augsburg. Henry now realized the might of the hand that for centuries had been silently gathering the reins of spiritual power, only to grasp at last the political supremacy as well. With the burden of excommunication ready to crush out his imperial scepter he sued for pardon at any price. The pope had retired for a time to the castle of Canossa, not far from Parma. Thither went the Franconian Emperor of Germany to implore the papal forgiveness. He presented himself before the gate barefoot, clad in a shirt of sack-cloth, and prayed that he might be received and forgiven as a penitent sinner. But Gregory chose to prolong the satisfaction he had in witnessing his penitence. So throughout the whole day, without food, in snow and rain, he stood begging the pope to receive him. In the same condition and without avail, he stood the second and the third day. Not until the morning of the fourth day did the pope admit him, and then his pardon was granted on conditions which made his crown, for the time, a dependency of the Bishop of Rome.

But the struggle of the German rulers with popedom was not ended at Canossa. Henry himself renewed it a few years later with far better results to his side. The spirit of protestantism was ever alive in some form in Germany, and, as we have said, was prophetic of him who should rise in the fifteenth century and dare to protest against the claim of spiritual supremacy by the autocrat of Rome. From that time till now it has been a by-phrase with German princes in their conflicts with the church that they “will not go to Canossa.”

BEFORE THE REFORMATION.

At this time superstition and dense ignorance were widespread. Stories of magic were constantly told and believed, and the miracles with which the church offset them were hardly less absurd. Other terrors were added. Public justice was administered so imperfectly that private and arbitrary violence took its place; while the tribunals which formerly sat in the open sunlight before the people now covered themselves with night and secrecy. “The Holy Feme” sprang up in Westphalia. Originally a public tribunal of the city, such as is found in Brunswick, and in other places, it afterward spread far and wide, but in a changed form. Its members held their sessions in secret and by night. Unknown messengers of the tribunal summoned the accused. Disguised judges, volunteer officers, from among “the knowing ones,” gave judgment, often in wild, desolate places, and often in some ancient seat of justice, as at the Linden-tree at Dortmund. The sentence was executed, even if the criminal had not appeared or had made his escape. The dagger, with the mark of the Feme, found in the dead body, told how surely the avenging arm had struck in the darkness. It was a fearful time, when justice, like crime, must walk in disguise.

The habits of thought which made possible such beliefs and actions as these were part of the same movement to which the corruption of church doctrine and government must also be referred. The perverted Roman Christianity from which the Reformation was a revolt was not the Christianity of Charlemagne, nor even that of Hildebrand. Hasty readers sometimes imagine that the church, for many centuries before the Reformation, had firmly held the doctrines which Luther rejected. But, in fact, most of them were recent innovations. Peter the Lombard, Bishop of Paris in the twelfth century, was the first theologian to enumerate “the Seven Sacraments,” and Eugene IV., in 1431, was the first of the popes to proclaim them. The doctrine of transubstantiation was first embodied in the church confession by the Lateran Council of November, 1215, the same which first required auricular confession of all the laity. It was more than a century later before the celibacy of the clergy and the denial of the sacramental cup to all but priests became established law, and the idea that the pope is the vicar of Christ upon earth, and the bearer of divine honors, was accepted. All these corruptions of the earlier faith were the results of ambition in the hierarchy, and of gross and sensual modes of thought in the people; and the same causes led to the rapid development, in the fifteenth century especially, of the worship of the Virgin Mary, who was honored with ceremonies and prayers from which Christians of earlier ages would have shrunk as blasphemous. Nor can the church of the beginning of the sixteenth century be understood by studying the confession adopted by the Council of Trent a generation or more afterward. The teachings and practices which called forth Luther’s protest were far too gross, when once explained, to bear the examination of sincere friends of Romanism; who, without knowing it themselves, were greatly influenced, even in their formal statements of belief, by the controversies of the Reformation. The value of that great event to the world can not be comprehended without a knowledge of what it has done for the Catholic church within its own boundaries.[A]

PREPARING FOR THE REFORMATION.

Prior to the fourteenth century all learning was monopolized by the church. Its power was exercised to make every branch of knowledge harmonize itself with the teachings of Catholic Christianity. In revolt against these shackles arose a few independent spirits who sought to rest religious doctrine on the foundations of reason to some degree, at least. Nevertheless, superstitions still clung to and mingled with all these new studies, and the age did not witness their separation. The higher intelligence traveled gradually, but very slowly. The art of printing came to its assistance and proved to be its strongest auxiliary. To Germany belongs the glory of this invention, and she can boast no higher service rendered to mankind. The art of wood-engraving was the preliminary step which led to it. It was soon employed for pictures of sacred scenes and persons; so that the many who could neither read nor write had a sort of Bible in their picture collections. But the grand conception of making movable types, each bearing a single letter, and composing the words of them, was first formed by John Gutenberg, of the patrician family of Gänsefleisch, of Mayence. He was driven from his native city by a disturbance among the guilds, and went to Strasburg, where he invented the art of printing about the year 1450. Great trouble was experienced in discovering the proper material in which to cut the separate letters; neither wood nor lead answered well. Being short of resources, Gutenberg formed a partnership with John Faust, also of Mayence. Faust’s assistant, Peter Schöffer, afterward his son-in-law, a skillful copyist and draughtsman, discovered the proper alloy for type-metal, and invented printing-ink. In 1461 appeared the first large book printed in Germany, a handsome Bible, exhibiting the perfection that the art possessed at its very origin.

When Adolphus of Nassau captured Mayence in 1462, the workmen skilled in the art, which had been kept a secret, were scattered through the world; and by the end of the fifteenth century the principal nations of Europe, and especially Italy, France, and England, had become rivals of Germany in prosecuting it. Books had previously been transcribed, chiefly by monks, upon expensive parchment, and often beautifully ornamented with elaborate drawings and paintings. They had therefore been an article of luxury, and confined to the rich. But a book printed on paper was easily made accessible to all classes, for copies were so numerous that each could be sold at a low price. Beside books of devotion, the writings of the Greek and Latin poets, historians and philosophers, most of which had fallen into oblivion during the Middle Ages, now gradually obtained wide circulation. After the fall of Constantinople, and the subjugation of Greece by the Turks, fugitive Greeks brought the works of their forefathers’ genius to Italy, where enlightened men had already begun to study them. This branch of learning, called “the Humanities,” spread from Italy through Germany, France, England, and other countries, and contributed powerfully to produce a finer taste and more intelligent habits of thought, such as put to shame the rude ignorance of the monks. It was the art of printing that broke down the slavery in which the blind faith of the church held the human mind; and even the censorship which Rome set up to oppose it was not able to undo its work.

Just as the convents fell before the art of printing, so did the castles of the robber knights before the invention of gunpowder. Thus, at the coming of the Reformation, these degenerate remnants of the once noble institutions of knighthood were swept away. It is supposed by many that the knowledge of gunpowder was brought into Europe from China during the great Mongolian emigration of the thirteenth century, the Chinese having long possessed it. The Arabs, too, understood how to make explosive powder, by mixing saltpeter, charcoal, and sulphur. But all the Eastern makers produced only the fine powder, and the art of making it in grains seems to have been the device of Berthold Schwarz, a German monk of the Franciscan order, of Freiburg or Mayence, in 1354; and he is commonly called the inventor of gunpowder. He had a laboratory, in which he devoted himself to alchemy; and is said to have made his discovery by accident. But as early as 1346, a chronicle reports that there was at Aix “an iron barrel to shoot thunder;” and in 1356 the armory at Nuremberg contained guns of iron and copper, which threw missiles of stone and lead. One of the earliest instances in which cannon are known to have been effectively used in a great battle was at Agincourt in 1415. But gunpowder was long regarded with abhorrence by the people, and made its way into general use but slowly.[B]

MARTIN LUTHER.

Martin Luther was born at Eisleben on the 10th of November, 1483, on the eve of St. Martin’s day, in the same year as Raphael, nine years after Michael Angelo, and ten after Copernicus. His father was a miner and possessed forges in Mansfield, the profits of which enabled him to send his son to the Latin school of the place. There Martin distinguished himself so much that his father intended him for the study of law. In the meantime Martin had often to go about as one of the poor choristers singing and begging at the doors of charitable people at Magdeburg and at Eisenach, to the colleges of which towns he was successively sent. His remarkable appearance and serious demeanor, his fine tenor voice and musical talent procured him the attention and afterward the support and maternal care of a pious matron, into whose house he was taken. Already, in his eighteenth year, he surpassed all his fellow-students in knowledge of the Latin classics, and in power of composition and of eloquence. His mind took more and more a deeply religious turn; but it was not till he had been two years studying at Eisenach that he discovered an entire Bible, having until then only known the ecclesiastical extracts from the sacred volume and the history of Hannah and Samuel. A dangerous illness brought him within the near prospect of death; but he recovered and tried hard to obtain inward peace by a pious life and the greatest strictness in all external observances.[C] He then determined to renounce the world, and in spite of the strong opposition of his father, became a monk of the Augustine order of Erfurt. But in vain; he was tormented by doubt, and even by despair, until he turned again to the Bible. A zealous study of the exact language of the gospels gave him not only a firm faith, but a peace and cheerfulness which was never afterward disturbed by trials or dangers.[D]

In the year 1508 the elector of Saxony nominated him professor of philosophy in the university of Wittenberg; and in 1509 he began to give biblical lectures. These lectures were the awakening cause of new life in the university, and soon a great number of students from all parts of Germany gathered round Luther. Even professors came to attend his lectures and hear his preaching. The year 1511 brought an apparent interruption, but in fact only a new development of Luther’s character and knowledge of the world. He was sent by his order to Rome on account of some discrepancies of opinion as to its government. The tone of flippant impiety at the court and among the higher clergy of Rome shocked the devout German monk. He then discovered the real state of the world in the center of the Western church. He returned to the university and took the degree of Doctor of Divinity at the end of 1512. The solemn oath he had to pronounce on that occasion, “to devote his whole life to study, and faithfully expound and defend the Holy Scripture,” was to him the seal of his mission. He began his biblical teaching by attacking scholasticism, at that time called Aristotelianism. He showed that the Bible was a deeper philosophy. His contemporaries praised the clearness of his doctrine. Christ’s self-devoted life and death was its center; God’s eternal love to mankind, and the sure triumph of Faith, were his texts.[E]

SALE OF PAPAL INDULGENCES—LUTHER’S RESISTANCE.

In the year 1517, the pope, Leo X., famous both for his luxurious habits and his love of art, found that his income was not sufficient for his expenses, and determined to increase it by issuing a series of absolutions for all forms of crime, even perjury, bigamy and murder. The cost of pardon was graduated according to the nature of the sin. Albert, Archbishop of Mayence, bought the right of selling absolutions in Germany, and appointed as his agent a Dominican monk of the name of Tetzel. The latter began traveling through the country like a peddler, publicly offering for sale the pardon of the Roman church for all varieties of crime. In some places he did an excellent business, since many evil men also purchased pardons in advance for the crimes they intended to commit; in other districts Tetzel only stirred up the abhorrence of the people, and increased their burning desire to have such enormities suppressed.

Only one man, however, dared to come out openly and condemn the papal trade in sin and crime. This was Dr. Martin Luther, who, on the 31st of October, 1517, nailed upon the door of the church at Wittenberg a series of ninety-five theses, or theological declarations, the truth of which he offered to prove, against all adversaries. The substance of them was that the pardon of sins came only from God, and could only be purchased by true repentance; that to offer absolutions for sale, as Tetzel was doing, was an unchristian act, contrary to the genuine doctrines of the church; and that it could not, therefore, have been sanctioned by the pope. Luther’s object, at this time, was not to separate from the church of Rome, but to reform and purify it.

The ninety-five theses, which were written in Latin, were immediately translated, printed, and circulated throughout Germany. They were followed by replies, in which the action of the pope was defended; Luther was styled a heretic, and threatened with the fate of Huss. He defended himself in pamphlets, which were eagerly read by the people; and his followers increased so rapidly that Leo X., who had summoned him to Rome for trial, finally agreed that he should present himself before the Papal Legate, Cardinal Cajetanus, at Augsburg. The latter simply demanded that Luther should retract what he had preached and written, as being contrary to the papal bulls; whereupon Luther, for the first time, was compelled to declare that “the command of the pope can only be respected as the voice of God, when it is not in conflict with the Holy Scriptures.” The Cardinal afterward said: “I will have nothing more to do with that German beast, with the deep eyes and the whimsical speculations in his head!” and Luther said of him: “He knew no more about the Word than a donkey knows of harp-playing.”

The Vicar-General of the Augustines was still Luther’s friend, and, fearing that he was not safe in Augsburg, he had him let out of the city at daybreak, through a small door in the wall, and then supplied with a horse. Having reached Wittenberg, where he was surrounded with devoted followers, Frederick the Wise was next ordered to give him up. About the same time Leo X. declared that the practices assailed by Luther were doctrines of the church, and must be accepted as such. Frederick began to waver; but the young Philip Melanchthon, Justus Jonas, and other distinguished men connected with the university exerted their influence, and the elector finally refused the demand. The Emperor Maximilian, now near his end, sent a letter to the pope, begging him to arrange the difficulty, and Leo X. commissioned his Nuncio, a Saxon nobleman named Karl von Miltitz, to meet Luther. The meeting took place at Altenburg in 1519; the Nuncio, who afterward reported that he “would not undertake to remove Luther from Germany with the help of 10,000 soldiers, for he had found ten men for him where one was for the pope”—was a mild and conciliatory man. He prayed Luther to pause, for he was destroying the peace of the church, and succeeded, by his persuasions, in inducing him to promise to keep silence, provided his antagonists remained silent also.

This was merely a truce, and it was soon broken. Dr. Eck, one of the partisans of the church, challenged Luther’s friend and follower, Carlstadt, to a public discussion in Leipzig, and it was not long before Luther himself was compelled to take part in it. He declared his views with more clearness than ever, disregarding the outcry raised against him that he was in fellowship with the Bohemian heretics. The struggle, by this time, had affected all Germany, the middle class and smaller nobles being mostly on Luther’s side, while the priests and reigning princes, with a few exceptions, were against him. In order to defend himself from misrepresentation and justify his course, he published two pamphlets, one called “An Appeal to the Emperor and Christian Nobles of Germany,” and the other “Concerning the Babylonian Captivity of the Church.” These were read by tens of thousands, all over the country.

Pope Leo X. immediately issued a bull, ordering all Luther’s writings to be burned, excommunicating those who should believe in them, and summoning Luther to Rome. This only increased the popular excitement in Luther’s favor, and on the 10th of December, 1520, he took the step which made impossible any reconciliation between himself and the papal power. Accompanied by the professors and students of the university, he had a fire kindled outside of one of the gates of Wittenberg, placed therein the books of canonical law and various writings in defence of the pope, and then cast the papal bull into the flames, with the words: “As thou hast tormented the Lord and His saints, so may eternal flame torment and consume thee.” This was the boldest declaration of war ever hurled at such an overwhelming majority; but the courage of this one man soon communicated itself to the people. Frederick the Wise was now his steadfast friend, and, although the dangers which beset him increased every day, his own faith in the righteousness of his cause only became firmer and purer.[F]

LUTHER AT WORMS.

Meanwhile Charles of Spain had succeeded Maximilian and became Karl V. in the list of German emperors. Luther wrote to the new emperor asking that he might be heard before being condemned. The elector Frederick also interceded, and the diet of Worms was convened January 6, 1521. Luther was summoned to appear. “I must go; if I am too weak to go in good health, I shall have myself carried thither sick. They will not have my blood after which they thirst unless it is God’s will. Two things I can not do—shrink from the call, nor retract my opinions.” The emperor tardily granted him the safe conduct on which his friends insisted. In spite of all warnings he set out with the imperial herald on the 2nd of April. On the 16th he entered the city. On his approach to Worms the elector’s chancellor entreated him in the name of his master not to enter a town where his death was already decided. Luther returned the simple reply, “Tell your master that if there were as many devils at Worms as tiles on its roofs, I would enter.” When surrounded by his friends on the morning of the 17th, on which day he was to appear before the august assembly, he said, “Christ is to me what the head of the gorgon was to Perseus; I must hold it up against the devil’s attack.” When the hour approached he fell on his knees and uttered in great agony a prayer such as can only be pronounced by a man filled with the spirit of him who prayed at Gethsemane. He rose from prayer, and followed the herald. Before the throne he was asked two questions, whether he acknowledged the works before him to have been written by himself, and whether he would retract what he had said in them. Luther’s address to the emperor has been preserved, and is a masterpiece of eloquence as well as of courage. The following is a part of his words: “I have laid open the almost incredible corruptions of popery, and given utterance to complaints almost universal. By retracting what I have said on this score, should I not fortify rank tyranny, and open a still wider door to enormous impieties? I can only say with Jesus Christ, ‘If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil.’” Addressing himself directly to the emperor, he said: “May this new reign not begin, and still less continue, under pernicious auspices. The Pharaohs of Egypt, the kings of Babylon and of Israel never worked more effectually for their own ruin than when they thought to strengthen their power. I speak thus boldly, not because I think such great princes want my advice, but because I will fulfill my duty toward Germany as she has a right to expect from her children.” The contemptible emperor, seeing his physical exhaustion, and thinking to confound him, ordered him to repeat what he had said in Latin. Luther did so. It was, however, when again urged to retract that we witness what seems the highest point of moral sublimity in Luther’s career. “I can not submit my faith either to the pope or to councils, for it is clear that they have often erred and contradicted themselves. I will retract nothing unless convicted by the very passages of the word of God which I have just quoted.” And he concluded by saying: “Here I take my stand. I can not do otherwise: so help me God. Amen.”[G]

From that day Luther’s life was in greatest and constant danger. The papal dogs had scented the blood of a heretic, and were on his track. Leaving Worms, he was seized by friends under the guise of enemies, as he was passing through the Thuringian forest, and carried away and hid in the castle of Wartburg. Here, secreted from his enemies for many months, he busied himself with translating the New Testament into German. His version proved to be among the most valuable of the services he rendered. In many respects it is superior to any other translations yet made. With all his scholarship, he ignored the theological style of writing, and sought to express the thoughts of the inspired writers in words comprehensible by the commonest people. To this end he frequented the marketplace, the house of sorrow, and of rejoicing, in order to note how the people expressed themselves in all the circumstances of life. “I can not use the words heard in castles and courts,” he said; “I have endeavored in translating to give clear, pure German.”

Luther lived twenty-five years after the diet of Worms—years of heroic battle, sometimes against foes inside of his movement of reform as well as against the church, which never gave up the struggle. He wrote many works, some controversial, others expository of the Bible. His “Battle Hymn” also revealed him the possessor of rare poetic genius.

He died at Eisleben, February 17, 1546. For some time, under the weight of his labors and anxieties, his constitution had been breaking down. The giant of the Reformation halted in his earthly course, but the gigantic spirit and work moved on. As the solemn procession which bore his body from Eisleben to Wittenberg passed, the bells of every village and town were tolled, and the people flocked together, crowding the highways. At Halle men and women came out with cries and lamentations, and so great was the throng that it was two hours before the coffin could be laid in the church. An eye-witness says: “Here we endeavored to raise the funeral psalm, ‘Out of the depths have I called unto thee,’ but so heavy was our grief that the words were wept rather than sung.” Mr. Carlyle closes his “Spiritual Portrait of Luther” with the following words of noble and beautiful tribute: “I call this Luther a true great man; great in intellect, in courage, affection and integrity; one of our most lovable and precious men. Great, not as a hewn obelisk, but as an Alpine mountain—so simple, honest, spontaneous, not setting up to be great at all; there for quite another purpose than being great! Ah yes, unsubduable granite, piercing far and wide into the heavens; yet in the clefts of it fountains, green, beautiful valleys with flowers! A right spiritual hero and prophet; once more, a true son of nature and fact, for whom these centuries, and many that are to come yet, will be thankful to heaven.”

[To be continued.]

[EXTRACTS FROM GERMAN LITERATURE.]

JOHANN JOACHIM WINCKELMANN.

No critic has displayed a keener feeling for the beauty and significance of such works as came within his knowledge, or a truer imagination in bridging over the gulfs at which direct knowledge failed him. And his style, warm with the glow of sustained enthusiasm, yet calm, dignified, and harmonious, was worthy of his splendid theme.—Sime.

More artistic and æsthetic views have prevailed in every direction since Winckelmann became a recognized authority.—Schlegel.

The Apollo of the Vatican.

Among all the works of antiquity which have escaped destruction the Apollo of the Vatican reaches the highest ideal of art. It surpasses all other statues as Homer’s Apollo does that of all succeeding poets. Its size lifts it above common humanity, and its altitude bespeaks its greatness. The proud form charming in the manliness of the prime of life seems clothed with endless youth.

Go with thy soul into the kingdom of celestial beauty and seek to create within thyself a divine nature, and to fill thy heart with forms which are above the material. For here there is nothing perishable, nothing that mortal imperfection demands. No veins heat, no sinews control this body; but a heavenly spirit spreading like a gentle stream fills the whole figure.

He has foiled the Python against which he has just drawn his bow, and the powerful dart has overtaken and killed it. Satisfied, he looks far beyond his victory into space; contempt is on his lip and the rage which possesses him expands his nostrils and mounts to his forehead. Still the peace which hovers in holy calm upon his forehead is undisturbed; his eye like the eyes of the muses is full of gentleness.

In all the statues of the father of gods which remain to us in none does he come so near to that grandeur in which he has revealed himself to the poets as he does here in the face of his son. The peculiar beauties of the remaining gods are united here in one: the forehead of Jupiter, pregnant with the goddess of wisdom, eyebrows which reveal his will in their arch, the full commanding eyes of the queen of the gods, and a mouth of the greatest loveliness. About this divine head the soft hair, as if moved by a gentle breeze, plays like the graceful tendrils of a vine. He seems like one anointed with the oil of the gods, and crowned with glory by the Graces.

Before this wonderful work of art I forget all else. My bosom throbs with adoration as his with the spirit of prophecy. I feel myself carried back to Delos and to the lyric halls, the places which Apollo honored with his presence; then the statue before me seems to receive life and motion like Pygmalion’s beauty; how is it possible to paint, to describe it? Art itself must direct me, must lead my hand, to carry out the first outlines which I attempt. I lay my effort at its feet as those who would crown the god-head, but can not attain the height, do their wreaths.

FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER.

He was a seer—a prophet. A century has passed since his birth, and we revere him as one of the first among the spiritual heroes of humanity.—Vischer. Speech at the Centenary Festival of Schiller’s birthday (1859).

That Schiller went away early is for us a gain. From his tomb there comes to us an impulse, strengthening us, as with the breath of his own might, and awakening a most earnest longing to fulfill, lovingly, and more and more, the work that he began. So, in all that he willed to do, and in all that he fulfilled, he shall live on, forever, for his own nation, and for mankind.—Goethe.

Goethe and Schiller greatly excelled in their department of literary labor, becoming oracles in all such matters. And since their names have gone into history, they share, perhaps not quite equally, the highest niche in the pantheon of German literature. Schiller was, at once, a fine thinker, and poet, able to weave his own subtle thoughts, and the philosophies of other transcendentalists into verse, as exquisite as their speculations were, at times, dreamy and incomprehensible. Carlyle, in a glowing tribute to Schiller, concedes to Goethe the honor of being the poet of Germany; and so perhaps he was, though it is difficult to compare men so widely different. They differed in this: Goethe, with his rich endowment of intellect, was born a poet—an inspired man; the everspringing fountain within him poured forth copiously; Schiller, with genius hardly surpassed, seems a more laborious thinker, ever seeking truth, while his finely wrought stanzas are a little more artificially melodious. He is the most beloved because his countrymen think he had more heart, and breathed out more ardent aspirations for political freedom. We commend what is excellent in his works; the facts and truths expressed with refreshing clearness, and usually of good moral tendency, but we can not ignore his philosophical skepticism, and warn the admiring reader against its pernicious influence. In the supreme matter of religious faith our captivating author was evidently much of his life adrift on stormy seas, “driven of the winds and tossed.” If the fatuity of the venture was not followed by dismal and utter shipwreck, he was near the fatal rocks, and suffered great loss. The beginning was in this respect most full of promise, and his environment favorable. The home training in a devout religious family, and the teachings of the sanctuary had made a deep impression on the mind of the thoughtful youth, and as solemn vows were made as ever passed from human lips. His was for a season really a life of prayer and consecration to Christian service. But all that passed away. And how the change was brought about it is not hard to discover. Though blameless in character, and full of noble aspirations while yet in his adolescence, quite too early, he became acquainted with infidel writings of Voltaire—a perilous adventure for any youth. The foundations on which he rested were shaken, and he fled to the positive philosophy of Kant and others, who interpreted away all that was distinctively true and life-giving in the Scriptures. Faith, whose mild radiance brightened the morning, suffered a fearful eclipse before it was noon: and thence, like a wanderer, he groped for the way; “daylight all gone.” The great man needed God, but turned from him—sought truth with worshipful anxiety, but, in his sad bewilderment, found it not. The difference between his states of faith and unfaith is strongly stated in his own words that we here give. The first extract was written on a Sabbath in 1777. The other tells, about as forcibly as words can, of the unrest and disappointment that were afterward felt.

Sabbath Morning.

God of truth, Father of light, I look to thee with the first rays of the morning sun, and I bow before thee. Thou seest me, O God! Thou seest from afar every pulsation of my praying heart. Thou knowest well my earnest desire for truth. Heavy doubt often veils my soul in night; but thou knowest how anxious my heart is within me, and how it goes out for heavenly light. Oh yes! A friendly ray has often fallen from thee upon my shadowed soul. I saw the awful abyss on whose brink I was trembling, and I have thanked the kind hand that drew me back in safety. Still be with me, my God and Father, for there are days when fools stalk about and say, “there is no God.” Thou hast given me my birth, O my Creator, in these days when superstition rages at my right hand, and skepticism scoffs at my left. So I often stand and quake in the storm; and oh, how often would the bending reed break if thou didst not prevent it; thou, the mighty Preserver of all thy creatures and Father of all who seek thee. What am I without truth, without her leadership through life’s labyrinth? A wanderer through the wilderness overtaken by the night, with no friendly hand to lead me, and no guiding star to show me the path. Doubt, uncertainty, skepticism! You begin with anguish, and you end with despair. But Truth, thou leadest us safely through life, bearest the torch before us in the dark vale of death, and bringest us home to heaven, where thou wast born. O my God, keep my heart in peace, in that holy rest during which Truth loves best to visit us. If I have truth then I have Christ; If I have Christ then have I God; and if I have God, then I have everything. And could I ever permit myself to be robbed of this precious gem, this heaven-reaching blessing by the wisdom of this world, which is foolishness in thy sight? No. He who hates truth will I call my enemy, but he who seeks it with simple heart I will embrace as my brother and my friend.

Later in life his anguish is openly expressed in his philosophical letters. “I felt, and I was happy. Raphael has taught me to think, and I am now ready to lament my own creation. You have stolen my faith that gave me peace. You have taught me to despise what I once reverenced. A thousand things were very venerable to me before your sorry wisdom stripped me of them. I saw a multitude of people going to church; I heard their earnest worship as they united in fraternal prayer; I cried aloud, ‘That truth must be divine which the best of men profess, which conquers so triumphantly and consoles so sweetly.’ Your cold reason has quenched my enthusiasm. ‘Believe no one,’ you said, ‘but your reason; there is nothing more holy than truth.’ I listened, and offered up all my opinions. My reason is now become everything to me; it is my only guarantee for divinity, virtue, and immortality. Woe unto me henceforth, if I come in conflict with this sole security!”

The following lines are given as a specimen of his verse. They are taken from Carlyle’s translation of the “Song of the Alps:”

By the edge of the chasm is a slippery track,

The torrent beneath, and the mist hanging o’er thee;

The cliffs of the mountains, huge, rugged, and black,

Are frowning like giants before thee;

And, would’st thou not waken the sleeping Lawine,

Walk silent and soft through the deadly ravine.

That bridge with its dizzying, perilous span,

Aloft o’er the gulf and its flood suspended,

Think’st thou it was built by the art of man,

By his hand that grim old arch was bended?

Far down in the jaws of the gloomy abyss

The water is boiling and hissing—forever will hiss.

Duty—Fame of.

What shall I do to be forever known?

Thy duty ever.

This did full many who yet slept unknown—

Oh! never, never!

Thinkest thou, perchance, that they remain unknown

Whom thou knowest not?

By angel trumps in heaven their praise is blown,

Divine their lot.

What shall I do to gain eternal life?

Discharge aright

The simple dues with which each day is rife?

Yea, with thy might.

Ere perfect scheme of action thou devise,

Life will be fled,

While he who ever acts as conscience cries

Shall live, though dead.

The following verse is from the oft-recited “Song of the Bell,” and is exquisite:

Ah! seeds how dearer far than they

We bury in the dismal tomb,

When hope and sorrow bend to pray,

That suns beyond the realm of day

May warm them into bloom.

JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE.

Goethe differs from all other great writers, except perhaps Milton, in this respect, that his works can not be understood without a knowledge of his life, and that his life is in itself a work of art, greater than any work which it created.... He is not only the greatest poet of Germany; he is one of the greatest poets of any age.... He was the apostle of self-culture.—Sime.

A Criticism on the Poems of J. H. Voss.

Every author, in some degree, portrays himself in his works even be it against his will. In this case he is present to us, and designedly; nay, with a friendly alacrity, sets before us his inward and outward modes of thinking and feeling; and disdains not to give us confidential explanations of circumstances, thoughts, views, and expressions, by means of appended notes.

And now, encouraged by so friendly an invitation, we draw nearer to him; we seek him by himself; we attach ourselves to him, and promise ourselves rich enjoyment, and manifold instruction and improvement.

In a level northern landscape we find him, rejoicing in his existence, in a latitude in which the ancients hardly expected to find a living thing.

And truly, winter there manifests his whole might and sovereignty. Storm-borne from the pole, he covers the woods with hoar frost, the streams with ice—a drifting whirlwind eddies around the high gables, while the poet rejoices in the shelter and comfort of his home, and cheerily bids defiance to the raging elements. Furred and frost-covered friends arrive, and are heartily welcomed under the protecting roof; and soon they form a cordial confiding circle, enliven the household meal by the clang of glasses, the joyous song, and thus create for themselves a moral summer.

And when spring herself advances, no more is heard of roof and hearth; the poet is always abroad, wandering on the soft pathways around his peaceful lake. Every bush unfolds itself with an individual character, every blossom bursts with an individual life, in his presence. As in a fully worked-out picture, we see, in the sun-light around him, grass and herb, as distinctly as oak and beech-tree; and on the margin of the still waters there is wanting neither the reed nor any succulent plant.

Around him, like a dweller in Eden, sport, harmless, fearless creatures—the lamb on the meadows, the roe in the forest. Around him assemble the whole choir of birds, and drown the busy hum of day with their varied accents.

The summer has come again; a genial warmth breathes through the poet’s song. Thunders roll; clouds drop showers; rainbows appear; lightnings gleam, and a blessed coolness overspreads the plain. Everything ripens; the poet overlooks none of the varied harvests; he hallows all by his presence.

And here is the place to remark what an influence our poets might exercise on the civilization of our German people—in some places, perhaps, have exercised.

His poems on the various incidents of rural life, indeed, do represent rather the reflections of a refined intellect than the feelings of the common people: but if we could picture to ourselves that a harper were present at the hay, corn, and potato harvests—if we recollected how he might make the men whom he gathered around him observant of that which recurs to them as ordinary and familiar; if, by his manner of regarding it, by his poetical expression, he elevated the common, and heightened the enjoyment of every gift of God and nature by his dignified representation of it, we may truly say he would be a real benefactor to his country. For the first stage of a true enlightenment is, that man should reflect upon his condition and circumstances, and be brought to regard them in the most agreeable light.

But scarcely are all these bounties brought under man’s notice, when autumn glides in, and our poet takes an affecting leave of nature, decaying, at least in outward appearance. Yet he abandons not his beloved vegetation wholly to the unkind winter. The elegant vase receives many a plant, many a bulb, wherewith to create a mimic summer in the home seclusion of winter, and, even at that season, to leave no festival without its flowers and wreaths. Care is taken that even the household birds belonging to the family should not want a green fresh roof to their bowery cage.

Now is the loveliest time for short rambles—for friendly converse in the chilly evening. Every domestic feeling becomes active; longings for social pleasures increase; the want of music is more sensibly felt; and now, even the sick man willingly joins the friendly circle, and a departing friend seems to clothe himself in the colors of the departing year.

For as certainly as spring will return after the lapse of winter, so certainly will friends, lovers, kindred meet again; they will meet again in the presence of the all-loving Father; and then first will they form a whole with each other, and with everything good, after which they sought and strove in vain in this piece-meal world. And thus does the felicity of the poet, even here, rest on the persuasion that all have to rejoice in the care of a wise God, whose power extends unto all, and whose light lightens upon all. Thus does the adoration of such a being create in the poet the highest clearness and reasonableness; and, at the same time, an assurance that the thoughts, the words, with which he comprehends and describes infinite qualities, are not empty dreams and sounds, and thence arises a rapturous feeling of his own and others’ happiness, in which everything conflicting, peculiar, discordant, is resolved and dissipated.

Faustus.

Faustus. Oh, he, indeed, is happy, who still feels,

And cherishes within himself, the hope

To lift himself above this sea of errors!

Of things we know not, each day do we find

The want of knowledge—all we know is useless:

But ’tis not wise to sadden with such thoughts

This hour of beauty and benignity:

Look yonder, with delighted heart and eye,

On those low cottages that shine so bright

(Each with its garden plot of smiling green),

Robed in the glory of the setting sun!

But he is parting—fading—day is over—

Yonder he hastens to diffuse new life.

Oh, for a wing to raise me up from earth,

Nearer, and yet more near, to the bright orb,

That unrestrained I still might follow him!

Then should I see, in one unvarying glow

Of deathless evening, the reposing world

Beneath me—the hills kindling—the sweet vales,

Beyond the hills, asleep in the soft beams

The silver streamlet, at the silent touch

Of heavenly light, transfigured into gold,

Flowing in brightness inexpressible!

Nothing to stop or stay my godlike motion!

The rugged hill, with its wild cliffs, in vain

Would rise to hide the sun; in vain would strive

To check my glorious course; the sea already,

With its illumined bays, that burn beneath

The lord of day, before the astonished eyes

Opens its bosom—and he seems at last

Just sinking—no—a power unfelt before—

An impulse indescribable succeeds!

Onward, entranced, I haste to drink the beams

Of the unfading light—before me day—

And night left still behind—and overhead

Wide heaven—and under me the spreading sea!—

A glorious vision, while the setting sun

Is lingering! Oh, to the spirit’s flight,

How faint and feeble are material wings!

Yet such our nature is, that when the lark,

High over us, unseen in the blue sky

Thrills his heart-piercing song, we feel ourselves

Press up from earth, as ’twere in rivalry;—

And when above the savage hill of pines,

The eagle sweeps with outspread wings—and when

The crane pursues, high off, his homeward path,

Flying o’er watery moors and wide lakes lonely!

Flying o’er watery moors and wide lakes lonely!

Wagner. I, too, have had my hours of reverie;

But impulse such as this I never felt.

Of wood and fields the eye will soon grow weary;

I’d never envy the wild birds their wings.

How different are the pleasures of the mind;

Leading from book to book, from leaf to leaf,

They make the nights of winter bright and cheerful;

They spread a sense of pleasure through the frame,

And when you see some old and treasured parchments,

All heaven descends to your delighted senses!

FRIEDRICH SCHLEGEL.

His most important work is his “History of Ancient and Modern Literature.” Throughout his exposition he is a propagandist of his special ideas; but the book is of lasting importance as the earliest attempt to present a systematic view of literary development as a whole.—Sime.

Extracts from History of Literature.

Literary Influence of the Bible.—On attentively considering the influence exercised by the Bible over mediæval as well as more modern literature and poetry, and the effects of the Scriptures, viewed as a mere literary composition on language, art, and representation, two important elements engage our observation. The first of these is complete simplicity of expression or the absence of all artifice. Almost exclusively treating of God and the moral nature of man, the language of the Scriptures is throughout living and forcible, devoid of metaphysical subtleties and of those dead ideas and empty abstractions which mark the philosophy of all nations—from the Indians and Greeks down to modern Europeans—whenever they undertake to represent those exalted objects of contemplation, God and man, by the light of unassisted reason.... Corresponding simplicity or absence of affectation also mark the poetical portions of Holy Writ, notwithstanding the copiousness of noble and sublime passages with which they abound.... The second distinctive quality of the Bible, in reference to external form and mode of representation, exerting an immense influence over modern diction and poesy, is the all pervading typical and symbolic element—not only of its poetical but of the didactic and historical books. In the case of the Hebrews this peculiarity may be partially regarded as a national peculiarity, in which the Arabs, their nearest of kin, participated. It is not impossible that the prohibition concerning graven images of the Divinity contributed to cherish this propensity; the imagination restricted on one side sought an outlet in another. The same results flowed from similar causes among the followers of Mahomet. In those portions of Holy Writ in which oriental imagery is less dominant, as for instance in the books of the New Testament, symbolism nevertheless prevails. This spirit has, to a great extent, influenced the intellectual development of all Christian races.

Mediæval Gothic Architecture.—The real mediæval is nowhere so thoroughly expressed as in the memorials of the architectural style erroneously called gothic, the origin of which, as also its progressive features, may, to this day, be said to be lost in obscurity and doubt. The misnomer is now generally admitted, and it is commonly understood that this mediæval style did not originate with the Goths, but sprung up at a later date, and speedily attained its full maturity without exhibiting various gradations of formation. I allude to that style of Christian art which is distinguished by its lofty vaults and arches, its pillars which resemble bundles of reeds, and general profusion of ornament modeled after leaf and flower.... Whoever the originators, it is evident that their intention was not merely to pile up huge stone edifices, but to embody certain ideas. How excellent soever the style of a building may be, if it convey no meaning, express no sentiment, it can not strictly be considered a creation of art; for it must be remembered that this, at once the most ancient and sublime of creative arts, can not directly stimulate the feelings by means of actual appeal or faculty of representation. Hence architecture generally bears a symbolical hidden meaning, whilst the Christian architecture of mediæval Germany does so in an eminent and especial degree. First and foremost there is the expression of devotional thought towering boldly aloft from this lowly earth toward the azure skies and an omnipotent God.... The whole plan is replete with symbols of deep significance, traced and illustrated in a remarkable manner in the records of the period. The altar pointed eastward; the three principal entrances expressed the conflux of worshipers gathered together from all quarters of the globe. The three steeples corresponded to the Christian Trinity. The quire arose like a temple within a temple on an increased scale of elevation. The form of the cross had been of early establishment in the Christian church, not accidentally, as has been conjectured by some, but with a view to completeness, a constituent part of the whole. The rose will be found to constitute the radical element of all decoration in this architectural style; from it the peculiar shape of window, door and steeple is mainly derived in their manifold variety of foliated tracery. The cross and the rose are, then, the chief symbols of this mystic art. On the whole, what is sought to be conveyed is the stupendous idea of eternity, the earnest thought of death, the death of this world, wreathed in the lovely fullness of an endless blooming life in the world that is to come.

READINGS IN PHYSICAL SCIENCE.[H]

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.]

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

[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.]

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.]

By COLEMAN E. BISHOP.

III.—THE MORBID STATESMAN.

A study in morbid anatomy! John Randolph, of Roanoke, might have said, with Mrs. Gummidge, “everything goes contrary with me;” for not only every quality of his nature, but all the circumstances of his life conspired to create in him a sum of unhappiness not often concentrated upon one individual; and this, notwithstanding his opportunities for usefulness were exceptionally good, his career brilliant, his abilities of the highest order, and his motives in the main praiseworthy. To understand such untoward results flowing from such conditions we must as well know his surroundings as study his character.

John Randolph was born, near Petersburg, Va., June 2, 1773,—a subject of George III. He was descended on his father’s side from an old English family; on the other side from an older American family—a royal line, too, viz: that of Pocahontas, the Indian princess, by Captain Rolfe. In this fusion and confusion of blood can probably be found the cause of much disease in him, and of that decay of his family which brought such disappointment and disaster to his most cherished hopes. Indian blood showed itself in his swarthy complexion and straight black hair, in his placing one foot straight before the other in walking, and in his vengeful temper. The Randolphs led in the effort of Virginia planters to transplant the manners and institutions of the English aristocracy to the new country, with the very important difference that the American aristocracy was to be rooted in African slavery. This solecism was adhered to by the Randolphs after most of the other first families of Virginia had learned theories of government more American and more democratic. Such dreamers desired to have the English laws of entail and primogeniture reënacted by the Virginia legislature; defended slavery after it had become a burden and a loss to them, and had sunk Virginia from the first to the eighth rank among the states; and they advocated state-sovereignty to the last. Their conservatism became obstruction against all changes. Randolph condensed their theory of government into the famous aphorism, “a wise and masterly inactivity,” which his sympathetic biographer, as late as 1850, declared “embraces the whole duty of American statesmen.” So they were forced along with the progress of the country, backward—as the cattle went into the cave of Cacus—and with despairing gaze turned toward the receding past. “The country is ruined past redemption; it is ruined in the spirit and character of the people,” cried Randolph, when he found that the United States would not turn back, and he said he would leave the country if he could sell out and knew where to go. Hence, we find Randolph going through his varied political career, protesting like Hamlet:

“The times are out of joint. O, cursed spite,

That ever I was born to set them right.”

He was the last man to set anything right, having been born wrong himself. A more delicate, high-strung, untuned human instrument was never set up; it was, moreover, set in a frame out of order in every part. A skin as thin and delicate as a girl’s; nerves all on the surface; a remarkably precocious intellect of poetic cast; proud and affectionate in disposition, and “a spice of the devil in his temper,” as he said. “A spice!” This was a mild term (a thing Randolph was not often chargeable with using) to apply to a person who at the age of four years would fly into such a passion as to swoon away and remain for some time unconscious. Every function of his organism seemed to be influenced by his mood; his mood responded like a thermometer to his environment; disappointment or mental disturbance would upset the whole machine. Thus natural poetry, sweetness and affection were “like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;” and body and mind became in harmony morbid—almost the only harmony in his organization.

Life, at its best, jars harshly on such natures; but it dealt with the unfortunate Randolph with a severity that might have appalled and broken down a strong and healthy nature. Nothing but physical and moral courage as extraordinary as the rest of his qualities could have carried him through sixty years of pent-up purgatory. While an infant he lost his father; and his mother (“the only human being who ever knew me”) was taken away when he was fifteen. The sensitive, irritable, delicate child was left to “rough it” alone.

A succession of blows destroyed the dearest object of his life—the transmission of the family name and estates. One brother, Theodorick, died three years after his mother (1791), and three years later the eldest brother, Richard, the pride and hope of the family. The perpetuation of the line rested then on John and Richard’s two infant sons. John Randolph nursed these carefully to manhood, only to see one of them become a hopeless madman from disappointment in love, and the other sicken and die with consumption.

Meanwhile Randolph had himself received a wound which at once blasted his own happiness, and cut off the last hope of succession through himself. He loved; something, we know not what, came between him and his affianced and she married another. Undoubtedly a man of his intense and self-repressed nature threw into this passion extraordinary abandon. At least he never recovered from the disappointment and never married—though, be it said to his credit, cynical as he was, he retained through life the most profound respect for women, and found in their society the only alleviation of his lot. Late in life he wrote: “There was a volcano under my ice, but it is burnt out. The necessity of loving and being beloved was never felt by the imaginary beings of Rousseau’s and Byron’s creation more imperiously than by myself.” Randolph erected a cabin for himself among those of his slaves and there, when not in Congress or traveling abroad he spent his life in solitude, brooding over his misery and ruin, as wretched a recluse and misanthrope as ever breathed out a painful, hopeless existence.

To complete the sad picture, give the hapless victim of himself and circumstances a deeply religious nature and take away the consolations of hope and faith. This last drop was added to the cup and he sipped its dregs all his life. He brought his wonderful intellectual powers to bear on this subject; read, studied, thought, brooded, agonized over it in pursuit of spiritual peace; went through all the variations of skepticism, contrition, hope, despair, conversion, and relapse. Such an analytical mind coupled with a quick and self-depreciating conscience, a high ideal of religious experience, and a downright honesty of purpose could not compromise with its own extreme demands, could accept of no doubtful convictions or half-conversion. The very desire for salvation might seem selfish and unworthy to an unhealthy nature; the failure to feel, to live all that others profess (often without feeling) becomes to it conclusive evidence of the hopeless, forever-lost condition of self. Doubt brought self-condemnation for doubting; self-condemnation in turn brought new doubts. So, in a fog, he traveled perpetually in a circle.

But, through all these years of struggle and misery John Randolph was a just, a pure, a benevolent man, and he discharged his private and public duties with a fidelity and devotedness that they of sound mind and body might well emulate. The contrasts of mood and act of such a man were many and strong; they got him the credit of being crazy, and of being most so when he was most himself—such is the world’s usual perception of eccentricity.

The personal appearance of the man, however, encouraged this idea: Tawny complexion, tall thin form, spindle shanks, long hair in a queue, large, black, glowing eyes, pointed chin, beardless face, small effeminate hands, long tapering fingers, and, above all, a voice shrill, piercing, sonorous and magnetic as a woman’s. He dressed in drab or buck-skin breeches, with blue coat and white top-boots, or large buckled shoes. His manner was courteous and attractive to the few whom he regarded as his equals; to the rest of mankind he was dignified and reserved; to no one did he permit familiarity. A man introduced himself to Randolph as Mr. Blunt. “Blunt?” said he with a piercing and repellant glance; “Blunt! Ah, I should say so!”

Another stranger addressed him in Washington: “Mr. Randolph, I am just from Virginia; I passed your house a few days ago?” “Thank you, I hope you always will,” was the only encouragement the advance received.

Yet, in England, Randolph was thought very approachable and genial. An introduction was not necessary to an acquaintance at all. Perhaps the difference was largely in his health, which was better abroad.

John Randolph first came into prominence in politics in 1798, by the daring act of opposing on the stump the idol of Virginia, the venerable Patrick Henry. Henry took grounds against the State upon its nullification of the laws of the United States, although he had always been an extreme States-rights man. Young Randolph—then aged twenty-five—astounded everybody by daring to meet such a champion; but he had Henry’s former record in his favor, and he made a speech of such power that it carried him into the House of Representatives. Referring to these two men, the happy expression was used, “The Rising and the Setting Sun.” Henry died soon after.

Randolph took his seat in December, 1799. When he advanced to the Speaker’s desk to take the oath, the clerk, moved by his youthful and singular appearance, asked, “Are you old enough to be eligible?” “Ask my constituents,” was the only reply his State pride allowed him to make. In one month Randolph had become one of the best marked men of the nation. He broke with the administration of his party under Jefferson on “the Yazoo business”—a bit of early official corruption that rivals anything disclosed in later times. His opposition to the anti-English measures of Madison’s administration, and to the war of 1812, cost him his re-election, and he was retired. Henry Clay’s star was rising, and a new era was dawning. “The American system” of internal improvements, protection, manufactures, and Federal supremacy was taking shape. The irrepressible conflict of State versus Federal powers, had begun under Clay and Randolph—a conflict destined to lead to the duel between these two leaders, and ultimately to be appealed to the arbitrament of civil war.

Defeat cut John Randolph more deeply than it did David Crockett under similar circumstances. Randolph retired to his cabin and brooded; misanthropy gnawed like the vulture at the vitals of Prometheus bound. He longed for human sympathy, and was too proud to accept of it when proffered. It was during this season of disappointment and isolation that his severest religious discipline and the hope of conversion came; then also came the last sundering of his hopes of a lineal successor. “This business of living,” he said, “is dull work. I possess so little of pagan philosophy or of Christian patience as to be frequently driven to despair. * * I look forward without hope. * * I have been living in a world [in Washington] without souls, until my heart is dry as a chip, and cold as a dog’s nose.”

In 1815 Randolph rode into Congress again on the wave of reaction against the war and its burdens, and remained in the House until 1826, when he was elected to the Senate to fill a vacancy. His antagonism against Henry Clay reached a dangerous point in the struggle over the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

Randolph went to England in 1822. He took with him large quantities of books and magazines to be bound, as he would not “patronize our Yankee task-masters, who have caused such a heavy duty to be imposed on foreign books. I shall employ John Bull to bind my books until the time arrives when they can be properly done south of Mason and Dixon’s line.” He was received with much honor by all classes in England, where his stout championship of English ideas was well known. His singular appearance was heightened by his very great emaciation, and by a big fur cap with a long fore-piece which he wore. But the splendid intellect, fine manners, and brilliant conversational powers which shone out of this grotesqueness, made him even more noted.

The issue of the Presidential election of 1825 was the occasion of the Randolph-Clay duel. There had been no choice by the people, and the election went to the House of Representatives. Adams, Crawford, Clay and Jackson were the candidates. Clay’s friends threw the election to John Quincy Adams. When the latter made up his cabinet, Clay’s name appeared at the head, as Secretary of State. The disappointed friends of Jackson and Crawford immediately made charges of a bargain between Adams and Clay, but no one dwelt on it with such persistence and bitterness of invective as Randolph. In a speech in the Senate in 1826, he referred to Adams and Clay as “the coalition of Blifil and Black George—the combination, unheard of till then, of the Puritan with the blackleg.” He also charged Clay with forging or falsifying certain state documents which had been furnished the Senate. A challenge from Clay promptly followed, and was as promptly accepted, Randolph refusing to disclaim any personal meaning as to Clay.

“The night before the duel,” says General James Hamilton, of South Carolina, “Mr. Randolph sent for me. I found him calm, but in a singularly kind and confiding mood. He told me he had something on his mind to tell me. He then remarked, ‘Hamilton, I have determined to receive, without returning, Clay’s fire; nothing shall induce me to harm a hair of his head; I will not make his wife a widow, or his children orphans. Their tears would be shed over his grave; but when the sod of Virginia rests on my bosom, there is not in this wide world one individual to pay tribute upon mine.’ His eyes filled, and resting his head upon his hand, we remained some moments silent.”

All efforts to dissuade him from sacrificing himself were unavailing; but he appeared on the “field of honor” in a huge dressing-gown, in which the locale of his attenuated form was as well hidden as it would have been in a hogshead. Clay fired, and the ball passed through the gown where it was reasonable to suppose its wearer to be, but in fact was not. Randolph fired his shot in air, and then approaching Clay he vehemently called out in his shrill voice, “Mr. Clay, you owe me a cloak, sir, you owe me a cloak!” at the same time pointing to the hole in that wrap. Clay replied with much feeling, pointing to Randolph’s breast, “I am glad I am under no deeper obligation. I would not have harmed you for a thousand worlds.” This ended the encounter, but not the enmity, at least on Randolph’s part, as it was a matter of patriotic principle with him.

In 1827 he was again elected to the House, and immediately became the leader of the opposition, then called the Republican party. His speeches were numerous, and furnish some of the finest specimens of American eloquence. Many of his startling phrases became permanent additions to the list of Americanisms, as “bear-garden” (applied to the House of Representatives), and “dough-faces” (truckling Northern politicians). He was remarkable for eclecticism of words and careful accuracy of pronunciation.

When Jackson issued his famous proclamation against the South Carolina nullifiers, Randolph arose from his sick bed and actively canvassed the district, making inflammatory speeches from his carriage to arouse a public sentiment against the proclamation and its author—as if a skeleton, uttering a voice from the grave, had come back to awaken the living. Then we hear of him at the Petersburg races, making a speech and betting on the horses. It was probably on this occasion that he made the retort to a sporting man. Randolph excitedly offered a certain wager on one of the horses. A stranger proposed to take the bet, saying, “My friend Thompson here will hold the stakes.” “Yes,” squealed the skeleton statesman, suspiciously, “and who will hold Thompson?”

But the end was drawing on. Ill as he was, he made preparations to go abroad again, and in May, 1833, started for Philadelphia to take passage.

On the boat thence to Philadelphia the dying man—for such now he was—ate heartily of fried clams, asked an acquaintance to read for him and criticised every incorrect accent or pronunciation, and talked freely about men, measures, and especially about his horses, which were very fast. The closing scene took place in Philadelphia, in a hotel, among strangers,—fit finale of his desolate, homeless life.

He lingered several days, during which time he took, with great care, the necessary legal steps to confirm his will for the manumission of his slaves. This finally done, he seemed to feel easier in mind and body. The account of the strange end of the eventful history proceeds:

He now made his preparations to die. He directed John to bring him his father’s breast button; he then directed him to place it in the bosom of his shirt. It was an old-fashioned, large-sized gold stud. John placed it in the button hole of the shirt bosom—but to fix it completely required another hole on the other side. “Get a knife,” said he, “and cut one.” A napkin was called for, and placed by John, over his breast. For a short time he lay perfectly quiet, with his eyes closed. He suddenly roused up and exclaimed:

“Remorse! Remorse!”

It was thrice repeated—the last time, at the top of his voice, with great agitation. He cried out, “Let me see the word. Get a dictionary! Let me see the word!”

“There is none in the room, sir.”

“Write it down then—let me see the word.”

The Doctor picked up one of his cards, “Randolph, of Roanoke.” “Shall I write on this?”

“Yes; nothing more proper.”

The word remorse was then written in pencil. He took the card in a hurried manner, and fastened his eyes on it with great intensity. “Write it on the back,” he exclaimed. It was so done and handed him again. He was extremely agitated.

“Remorse! you have no idea what it is; you can form no idea of it whatever; it has contributed to bring me to my present situation. But I have looked to the Lord Jesus Christ, and hope I have obtained pardon. Now let John take your pencil and draw a line under the word,” which was accordingly done.

“What am I to do with the card,” inquired the Doctor.

“Put it in your pocket, take care of it, and when I am dead, look at it.”

The dying man was propped up in the bed with pillows, nearly erect. Being extremely sensitive to cold, he had a blanket over his head and shoulders; and he directed John to place his hat on over the blanket, which aided in keeping it close to his head.

The scene was soon changed. Having disposed of that subject most deeply impressed on his heart, his keen, penetrating eye lost its expression, his powerful mind gave way, and his fading imagination began to wander amid scenes and with friends that he had left behind. In two hours the spirit took its flight, and all that was mortal of John Randolph of Roanoke was hushed in death. At a quarter before twelve o’clock, on the twenty-fourth day of June, 1833, aged sixty years, he breathed his last, in a chamber of the City Hotel, Philadelphia.

From the very necessities of the nature of an Eccentric, John Randolph could not be in harmony with the time in which he lived. But this difference was intensified into enmity by the irritable nature of his mind and the diseased condition of his body; nay, by his very virtues and genius. To increase the enmity and his own misfortune, he threw himself with ardor upon the losing side of an irrepressible conflict in government. I think posterity is better prepared to do him justice than were his contemporaries, for we have passed a settlement of the political conflict, and from pitying hearts can make full allowance for Randolph’s unhappy nature and unfortunate lot, while recognizing the purity, honesty and heroism of his character. Which of us would have been a better man in his situation?

[THE STORK.]

Translated from the Swedish, for The Chautauquan.[K]

An isle there is in airy distance

Where rise green forests, grim and tall,

Its name eludes one with persistence,

But occupied with genie small;

The dewy air is dawn’s fresh greeting,

And drowsy waves the reeds are beating,

There poppies grow, and lilies rare,

These only really thriving there,

But crimson-booted stork there feedeth,

To earthly mothers children leadeth.

In poppy scent with lilies vieing,

He gently flaps at water’s brink,

To capture chubby genie trying,

And begs them not to fear or shrink.

The bantlings, in whose souls are blended

Fragrance from both flowers expended,

Which makes the tender sense appear

In these both slumbering and clear,

Around the snowy stork would rally,

And ventured not, but wished to dally.

“Come here, come here,” a voice then crying,

The stork soon ruffles up his frill,

He sees two tiny urchins flying

So near as to be touched at will.

But oh, what wings, now waving lightly!

And feathers too, these shifting brightly

In green, as light as young birch leaves

When spring its bath of dew receives,

In red, as pale a hue revealing,

As streak at dawn, the mist concealing!

At night they breast to breast had slumbered,

In moonbeams’ silver veil did lie

On poppy-bed by waves unnumbered,

To angels’ sweetest lullaby.

Now stand they fresh as early morning,

In sprightly mood, all dullness scorning.

One cries, “Come, long-legs, come to me!”

The stork looks round quite loftily,

And straightway to the youngsters striding,

He asks them, “Do ye feel like riding?”

The boy then answers, “I would try it,

So on thy back pray let me sit!

On earth ’tis lovely, none deny it,

But be not ugly—gently flit!”

And up on snowy plumage springing,

A shower of down around him flinging,

Sat firm. The stork asked, “Lassie, thou,

Wilt thou not also travel now

And be a child to some good mother?”

But no—too timid, shy, this other.

They started off. The pleasure craving,

So free and wild on stork he flew,

And to his sister farewell waving,

Until at last was lost to view.

And she whose fear her trip prevented,

Now wished to be along, repented.

She felt so lonely, was not glad,

And when next year the stork she had,

Who late and early came and started,

Her wish to ride next time imparted.

He answered, “Come then, naught detaining!

’Twas stupid to refuse last year;

Not now the same good mother gaining

As he, the boy thou held so dear,

For she beneath the turf is sleeping;

But come, my little dove, now keeping

Most careful hold around my neck,

And scream not till our course we check!”

And round his neck her arms she twineth,

And heaven’s winds his flight assigneth.

On earth they grew up well protected,

The boy to manhood had attained,

A beauteous maiden, she, perfected,

When first they met, as seemed ordained.

Were early memories, reviving,

To draw them soul to soul now striving?

Was it the roguish stork, oh say,

That thus together brought their way?

I think that fate great fondness bore them,

When choosing different mothers for them.

But thou shouldst see the cot so sightly,

The woodland home in which they dwell!

The cause of it I know not rightly

Why storks just there should thrive so well,

And one especially, who hovers

On roof which inner chamber covers,

And goes and flaps with all his might

So crimson-booted, silver-white,

And best she worked, the mother hinted,

When he had sticks and straws unstinted.

Each fall he goes, the habit keeping,

But seen each spring again on roof,

From there o’er house and garden peeping;

And can I judge, or take as proof

The children I have seen there playing,

Full often has the stork been straying

To that fair poppy-covered isle,

And now brings lass with winsome smile,

And now a lovely boy, a treasure;

This must afford him constant pleasure.

As pedagogue he struts hereafter,

And trousers of the boys he pecks

With bill, rewarded then with laughter,

If naughtiness or prank detects;

But yet for their protection striving,

And serpents from the garden driving,

And patiently will he comply

When “Long-legs, come!” the children cry.

Each eve from thatch so closely heeding,

If they the psalms are nicely reading.

The art of reading is to skip judiciously. Whole libraries may be skipped in these days, when we have the results of them in our modern culture without going over the ground again. And even of the books we decide to read, there are almost always large portions which do not concern us, and which we are sure to forget the day after we have read them. The art is to skip all that does not concern us, whilst missing nothing that we really need. No external guidance can teach us this, for nobody but ourselves can guess what the needs of our intellect may be. But let us select with decisive firmness, independently of other people’s advice, independently of the authority of custom. In every newspaper that comes to hand there is a little bit that we ought to read; the art is to find that little bit, and waste no time over the rest.—Philip G. Hamerton.

[GARDENING AMONG THE CHINESE.]

Translated for The Chautauquan, from “Revue des Deux Mondes.”

A French physician, M. Martin, who has for several years been an attaché of the French ambassador at Pekin, calls the Chinese the authors of the art of gardening. Since the earliest times their leaders have had the wisdom to have cultivated not only ornamental plants, but as well those which would increase the resources of the inhabitants. Their vast enclosures have often been the nurseries of the provinces, and to excite the ambition of their subjects, the rulers award prizes on many public occasions to those who present to them new flowers or fruits. Our societies of horticulture do no better. The annals of the Tsing dynasty mention mandarins whose business it was to care for the gardens of the emperor, and especially to look after the bamboos. The taste for flowers increased by the encouragement of the authorities gives an astonishing commercial value to certain plants. The sambac, whose flowers have at once the odor of the rose and of the orange, as blended in the common jasmine, is used to perfume tea, liquors, syrups and preserves; at Pekin a very small branch is worth from ten dollars to twelve dollars and upwards. An asclepias, which gives its perfume only at night, has been sold for twenty and thirty ounces of silver, and each year the viceroy of the province of Tche-kiang sends several cuttings of it to Pekin for the apartments of the emperor. In order to profit by so lucrative a taste, Chinese horticulture has been for the most part spent in trying to make the most of the treasures of their flora. To this flora we owe the chief of our ornamental flowers—the Chinese pink, sent in 1702 to the Abbé Bignon, and first described in 1705; the aster, sent out in 1728, and which received from a committee of amateurs the name of Queen Marguerite; our autumn chrysanthemum, which for a long time figured on the coat of arms of the emperors; the dicentra (or “bleeding heart”), whose rosy spurred cups look like a double shield; the Chinese rose; the Chinese honeysuckle, whose original name signifies “the gold and silver flower,” in reference to its various colors; the begonia, green above and provided with purple veins below; our camellia, which the Chinese call the tea-flower; finally, a flower which we call the isle of Guernsey, because the vessel which brought the bulbs of this elegant amaryllis into England having been shipwrecked in sight of its country, the bulbs, carried by the waves on to the sandy shores of the isle, took root there and were kept alive in the pleasant temperature.

The taste of these Orientals is very different from ours. We are disagreeably affected by the care which they take to diminish the height of all vegetation. The missionaries assure us that they have seen cypresses and pines which were not more than two feet in height, although forty years old, and well proportioned in all their parts. It is one way of obtaining a great number of types in a narrow space, which is precious in a country where the gardens are so elegant and the ownership so divided. It is one of the results of the culture of the family life, and if a stranger is but little pleased by these stunted forms he is, at least, able to extract a moral upon the infinite patience which has produced them. By energy and will they direct as they wish the most obstinate plants, and in their flower-beds imitate lakes, rocks, rivers, and even mountains.

But they have as well their landscape gardens: they are around tombs, and especially the pagodas, those centers of civilization which are at once places of prayer, store-houses for the harvests of the simple, and grazing grounds for the preservation of quadrupeds. It is in these gardens of the extreme East that one sees those avenues of bamboos, whose knots hollowed out leave niches for idols; then there are magnificent specimens of the great thuja of the East, whose sweet-scented imperishable wood is used for making coffins, and reduced to powder is made into aromatic chopsticks, which are burnt before the statues of their divinities; the fir-tree, with long cones, a native of the northeast; the oak, with leaves like the chestnut tree, and which bears the mistletoe in China; the weeping willow and the funeral cypress, whose bright leaves stand out against the black background of the pines; the Pinus bungeana, which grows to an enormous size, and whose trunk becomes so white with age that it might easily pass for limestone. We can not describe the effect of this grand, severe vegetation, intermingled with marble statues and columns, surrounding the lofty conical roofs of the pagodas.

In no country of Europe are the gardeners so skillful in multiplying and cultivating. They have processes of their own. Our gardeners do not know how to use half-rotten planks, which they pierce with holes, fill with earth, and use in the germination of the cutting; when the plant begins to grow they break away the plank. We are far from practicing grafting in their bold style; this horticultural operation is performed among the Chinese in very different ways. They graft successfully the chrysanthemum on the wormwood, the oak on the chestnut, the grape on the jujube tree. These feats, which shock the customs of our horticulturists and even the convictions of our botanists, recall those which the good Pliny relates, and for which he has been charged with ignorance and hyperbole.

Their cleverness in gardening has one outlet of which we are ignorant. We cut our boxwood, and do not save it for the Palm-Sunday festival. The Chinese cultivate plants for holy purposes. The ponds and other bodies of water so numerous in a country where rice is the chief food, gives them opportunity to cultivate in abundance a magnificent water plant, the lotus of the Indus, the sacred plant of the Hindoos. The god Buddha is always represented reposing on the lotus flower, whose root signifies vigor, its great leaves growth, its odor the sovereign spirit, its brilliancy love. Thus it is customary to offer to the idols the beautiful flowers of the lotus; besides, its culture offers a double advantage, its fruitful root and its sweet grains (the beans of Egypt) being used in Chinese cookery. The fruit of one variety of the lemon tree is produced from the separated carpels, which are disjoined at the base of the lemon and developed separately, like the fingers of a hand. This hand is among the Chinese that of their god; Fo-chou-kan, as it is called, signifies the sweet smelling hand of Buddha. A writer assures us that the gardeners aid, by bands which are early fastened on the fruit, in bringing about this paying division; they are capable of it.

This union of two very different feelings, the greed for gain and piety, ought not to astonish us much. The simple affection which they have for plants seems to be a kind of religious sentiment. Each plant inspires them with a kind of mystic love which affects certain of their poems. Their literature represents to us a delight in flowers which we do not easily understand. They are enraptured at the sight of a plant, and seek by continued observation to understand its development. One is not surprised at the degree of skill to which such an exalted taste leads their gardeners.

The emperors have always especially encouraged the production of vegetables and orchards, as well as general agriculture. “I prefer,” said the emperor Kang-hi, “to procure a new kind of fruit or of grain for my subjects rather than to build an hundred porcelain towers.” Two centuries before him one prince published an herbarium containing the plants suitable to cultivate in time of famine, after having consulted with the peasants and farmers.

The Chinese have always displayed the greatest activity in order to assure themselves of their food at the expense of the vegetable world, sometimes from plants which are not cultivated, as from seaweeds, from which they obtain gelatine or a salty condiment, and particularly from those which they can perfect in their gardens. There are to be found in their kitchen gardens not only the most of our common vegetables, as turnips, carrots, radishes, onions, and our salad herbs, but some peculiar vegetables like the Chinese cabbage whose seeds furnish oil; the rapeseed, the young shoots of which are used in pickles, like those of mustard; fruits similar to our melons and cucumbers; enormous egg-plants, etc. If the garden contains a stream of water, as is frequent, they cultivate according to the depth of the water either aquatic grasses, of which they eat the terminal buds, or water plants like the lotus, or the Chinese cock’s-comb, of which all the parts furnish a nourishing fecula, or plants of the melon family, like the watermelon or the peculiar water chestnut, which is at times a scarlet red, and which they gather in the autumn. The picturesque way in which they gather these nuts is well described by M. Fauvel. Men, women and children embark on the canal in tubs, which they push with long bamboos about the floating islets of the chestnut, and which often capsize, to everyone’s great amusement.

In some places one observes a singular culture of mushrooms. These cryptograms are greatly valued in China, and not alone on account of their nutritive properties. One species which takes root upon coming into the open air, and which is edible, has so dry a tissue that it keeps almost as fresh as when one gathers it ripe. Ancient writers took it for a symbol of immortality.

It is particularly interesting to examine the Chinese orchards, distinguishing the productions of the north and south. The fruits of the south are less interesting: dates, cocoanut trees, mangoes, bananas, bread trees, pineapples, all tropical fruits which are not exclusively Chinese. The principal fruits of the north are first the five fruits, that is, the peach, apricot, plum, the chestnut and the jujube. The most important of Chinese fruit trees is the peach, which most probably is a native of the country. Its winter florescence has been taken by Chinese romance writers as the symbol of love and fidelity. Chinese orchards also furnish many other fruits: several kinds of plums, a fine white pear as round as our bergamot, the berries of the myrica, which pass very well for our strawberries, and which are easily mistaken for the arbute berry; but for general use nothing equals the Chinese figs and oranges.

[EIGHT CENTURIES WITH WALTER SCOTT.]

By WALLACE BRUCE.

“The Fair Maid of Perth” is at once a photograph and a drama. The beautiful county of Perthshire, with its wild mountains and picturesque lakes, seems transferred bodily as by a camera to the novelist’s pages, and the historic incidents are so real and rapid in dramatic interest that they seem lifted from the realm of history into a sort of Shaksperean play.

The story opens with a description of Perth from a spot called the Wicks of Baigle, “where the traveler beholds stretching beneath him the valley of the Tay, traversed by its ample and lordly stream; the town of Perth with its two large meadows, its steeples, and its towers; the hills of Moncreiff and Kinnoul faintly rising into picturesque rocks, partly clothed with woods; the rich margin of the river, studded with elegant mansions, and the distant view of the huge Grampian mountains, the northern screen of this exquisite landscape.”

The time of the story is 1402. Almost a century has elapsed since the battle of Bannockburn—a century of turmoil and strife. Its history seems like a great tempest-tossed sea swept by constantly recurring whirlwinds. Three kings and as many regents reign in turn; and at the opening of our story Scotland is under the government of Robert the Third.

David the Second, only son of Robert Bruce, died childless; his sister, Marjory, married Walter, the Lord High Steward of the realm; their son was crowned Robert the Third, King of Scotland. The family took the name of Stewart, which gave by direct descent the Stuart line to the throne of Britain, and their descendants are to-day upon the thrones of England, Italy and Greece. The little skiff, tossed ashore upon the rugged cliffs and cold hospitality of Lorne Castle, as described in our last article, carried therefore the ancestor of a long historic line—a line not always fortunate, not always honest, but presenting for the most part during its record of five hundred years a fair average of manhood and womanhood as kings and queens generally run.

Robert the Third found his country torn by civil feuds, and his temper was too mild for those stormy times. His brother, the Duke of Albany, a crafty counselor of the Iago type, provoked strife between father and son. The good king’s heart was broken. “Vengeance followed,” says Scott, “though with a slow pace, the treachery and cruelty of his brother. Robert of Albany’s own grey hairs went, indeed, in peace to the grave, and he transferred the regency, which he had so foully acquired, to his son Murdoch. But nineteen years after the death of the old king, James the First returned to Scotland, and Duke Murdoch of Albany, with his sons, was brought to the scaffold, in expiation of his father’s guilt and his own.”

Such are the main historic features of the story. The inwoven incidents make us acquainted with many of the customs of humble life which pertain to the close of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century. It portrays the ancient observances of St. Valentine’s Day; the fierce conflict of two Highland clans; the bitter jealousy between the Black Douglas and the Earl of March; the trial by Bier-Right in the Church of St. John; the government of Scottish towns and burroughs; the hardihood of the brave burghers who knew their rights, and had the courage to maintain them. It reveals the dissipation of the Court, led on by the much-loved but dissipated son of the king, the Duke of Rothsay, over whom the father mourned, even as David over his son Absalom.

Through this black serge-cloth of history runs a silver thread—the life of Catharine Glover. Her bold and resolute lover, Henry Gow, a smith and armorer by trade, who had the good fortune of being her Valentine, seems too warlike for her gentle and amiable character, or as Harry sums it up briefly in a blunt sentence: “She thinks the whole world is one great minster church, and that all who live in it should behave as if they were at an eternal mass.”

The romance abounds with many eloquent passages and poetic touches; even the bold armorer, with his love for hard blows, reveals here and there a touch of sentiment, as where he returns to Perth from a long journey and says: “When I crossed the Wicks and saw the bonny city lie fairly before me, like a fairy queen in romance, whom the knight finds asleep among a wilderness of flowers, I felt even as a bird, when it folds its weary wings to stoop down on its own nest.”

The description of the burial of the Highland Chief is the sketch of a master. We are transported to the rugged hills of the northern Highlands. Around us rise lofty mountain peaks; below us stretches the silver expanse of Loch Tay; the black-bannered flotilla carrying the dead leader, Mac Ian, with oars moving to wild music, holds its course to the ruined cathedral of the Holy Isle, where still slumbers the daughter of Henry the First of England, wife of Alexander the First of Scotland. “The monks issue from their lowly portal; the bells peal their death-toll over the long lake; a yell bursts from the assembled multitude, in which the deep shout of warriors, and the shrill wail of females join their notes with the tremulous voice of age, and the babbling cry of childhood; the deer start from their glens for miles around and seek the distant recesses of the mountains, even the domestic animals, accustomed to the voice of man, flee from their pastures into morasses and dingles.”

Scott’s power as a poet is seen in passages like this, and his power as a dramatist in words like the following placed in the mouth of the heart-broken king, revealing in one condensed sentence of agony the unfortunate state of his country: “Oh, Scotland, Scotland; if the best blood of thy bravest children could enrich the barren soil, what land on earth would excel thee in fertility? When is it that a white hair is seen on the beard of a Scottish man, unless he be some wretch like thy sovereign, protected from murder by impotence, to witness the scenes of slaughter to which he can not put a period? The demon of strife and slaughter hath possessed the whole land.”

But the clouds and mists upon the mountain-heights of royalty do not always envelop the valley, or affect the happiness of those who live in humble spheres; and we are glad to know that Harry Gow is at last made happy by the hand of Catharine. He promises to hand up his broadsword, never more to draw it unless against the enemies of Scotland. “And should Scotland call for it,” said Catharine, “I will buckle it round you.”

Our next novel, in historic sequence, takes us to the Court of Louis the Eleventh in the year 1468. The reader is introduced to a young Scotchman by the name of Quentin Durward. He is in France seeking employment for his sword; he joins the Scottish archers which form the body-guard of the King; he soon wins the notice and favor of Louis the Eleventh by his courage, address and honesty; he goes as escort for two noble ladies who had fled for refuge from the court of Burgundy to France, and becomes at last as the title of the book would indicate the important personage in the romance, and his honesty is rewarded by the hand of the heroine.

But the great value of this work is the character sketch of Louis the Eleventh, a king who possessed a soul as hardened as that of Mephistopheles, and a brain like that of Machiavelli, whose birth at Florence in 1469 appropriately commemorates the early years of Louis’ reign; he found the throne in a tottering condition; in fact all Europe was unsettled. It was the dark hour preceding the dawn of the Reformation. There was some excuse for caution, and perhaps for craftiness in order to preserve his government, but no excuse and no necessity for the cruelty and treachery that marked every day of his life. He seemed malevolent for the sake of malevolence; or as Scott more briefly puts it, “he seemed an incarnation of the devil himself, permitted to do his utmost to corrupt our ideas of honor to its very source.” He surrounded himself with menials, invited low and obscure men to secret councils, employed his barber as prime minister, not for any special ability displayed, but from his readiness to pander to his lowest wishes. In every way he brought disrespect upon the court of his father, “who tore from the fangs of the English lion the more than half-conquered kingdom of France.”

Scott places the character of Louis the Eleventh in contrast with that of the Duke of Burgundy; “a man who rushed on danger because he loved it, and on difficulties because he despised them.” His rude, chivalrous nature despised his wily cousin, who had his mouth at every man’s ear, and his hand in every man’s palm. As we read the history of Louis XI. he seems like a great spider slowly but surely spinning his web about his enemies until at last there is no escape. By tortuous policy he “rose among the rude sovereigns of the period to the rank of a keeper among wild beasts, who, by superior wisdom, by distribution of food, and some discipline of blows, comes finally to predominate over those, who, if unsubjected by his arts, would by main strength have torn him to pieces.”

Apart from the main thread of history Scott gives us a picture of the Gypsies, or Bohemians, who had just made their appearance in Europe. They claimed an Egyptian descent, and their features attested that they were of eastern origin. Their complexion was positively eastern, approaching to that of the Hindoos. Their manners were as depraved as their appearance was poor and beggarly. The few arts which they studied with success, were of a slight and idle, though ingenious description. Their pretensions to read fortunes, by palmistry and astrology, acquired them sometimes respect, but oftener drew them under the suspicion of sorcerers; and lastly, the universal accusation that they augmented their horde by stealing children, subjected them to doubt and execration. They incurred almost everywhere sentence of banishment, and, where suffered to remain, were rather objects of persecution than of protection from the law. The arrival of the Egyptians as these singular people were called, in various parts of Europe, corresponds with the period in which Tamerlane invaded Hindostan, affording its natives the choice between the Koran and death. There can be little doubt that these wanderers consisted originally of the Hindostanee tribes, who, displaced and flying from the sabers of the Mohammedans, undertook this species of wandering life, without well knowing whither they were going. Scott gives us in the character of Hayraddin a type of this great family, a brief sketch of which taken as above from his notes we thought would be of interest to the general reader.

The interview of Louis the Eleventh with the astrologer not only reveals the superstition of the king but also places in sharp contrast the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries which were cut asunder, as it were, with a sword of light. The old astrologer’s apostrophe to the art of printing, which was then invented, is worthy of a place in these historic references: “Believe me that, in considering the consequences of this invention, I read with as certain augury as by any combination of the heavenly bodies, the most awful and portentous changes. When I reflect with what slow and limited supplies the stream of science hath hitherto descended to us; how difficult to be obtained by those most ardent in its search; how certain to be neglected by all who regard their ease; how liable to be diverted, or altogether dried up, by the invasion of barbarism; can I look forward without wonder and astonishment to the lot of a succeeding generation, on which knowledge will descend like the first and second rain, uninterrupted, unabated, unbounded; fertilizing some grounds, and overflowing others; changing the whole form of social life; establishing and overthrowing religions; erecting and destroying kingdoms.” “Hold,” said Louis, “shall these changes come in our time?” “No, my royal brother,” replied the astrologer, “this invention may be likened to a young tree, which is now newly planted, but shall, in succeeding generations, bear fruit as fatal, yet as precious, as that of the Garden of Eden; the knowledge, namely, of good and evil.”

Anne of Geierstein is to a certain extent a sequel to Quentin Durward. The time of the story is four years later; the scene is laid in the mountains of Switzerland. The romance reveals the power of the Vehmic tribunal of Westphalia, a secret organization, whose bloody executions gave to the east of Germany the name of the Red Land. It portrays faithfully the heroic character of the Swiss people who preferred peace to war, but accepted war when the issue meant liberty or servitude.

Two travelers, apparently English merchants, are benighted near the ruined castle of Geierstein. They are hospitably entertained, and after a few days’ delay, they join a Swiss embassy on its way to the Court of Charles, Duke of Burgundy, the mission of which embassy was to ask redress for injuries done to the Helvetian Cantons. On their journey they meet with a warlike adventure in which the English travelers have opportunity to display their courage and judgment. They are imprisoned and released; the elder has the misfortune of falling into the hands of the Vehmic court, and the rare good fortune of being released; and so the story moves on as it were from one ambuscade to another, until they reach the court and army of the proud Duke of Burgundy.

They meet en route at a Cathedral in Strasburg, Queen Margaret of Anjou, who in the bloody struggle between the House of York and Lancaster had been driven from the English throne. This meeting reveals the fact that the English travelers are no less personages than the Earl of Oxford and his son, who are on their way to persuade, if possible, the Duke of Burgundy to give his support to the House of Lancaster. The duke promises relief; but circumstances combine with his rashness to prevent the proffered aid. He proposes at first to subdue the haughty Swiss. He dismisses their embassy with scorn, and prepares for a fruitless war in spite of the noble plea of the white haired Landamman: “And what can the noble Duke of Burgundy gain by such a strife? Is it wealth and plunder? Alas, my lord, there is more gold and silver on the very bridle-bits of your Highness’ household troops than can be found in the public treasures or private hoards of our whole confederacy. Is it fame and glory you aspire to? There is little honor to be won by a numerous army over a few scattered bands, by men clad in mail over half-armed husbandmen and shepherds—of such conquest small was the glory. But if, as all Christian men believe, and as it is the constant trust of my countrymen, from memory of the times of our fathers—if the Lord of Hosts should cast the balance in behalf of the fewer numbers and worse-armed party, I leave it with your Highness to judge, what in that event would be the diminution of worship and fame. Is it extent of vassalage and dominion your Highness desires, by warring with your mountain neighbors? Know that you may, if it be God’s will, gain our barren and rugged mountains; but, like our ancestors of old, we will seek refuge in wilder and more distant solitudes, and when we have resisted to the last, we will starve in the icy wastes of the glaciers. Ay, men, women and children, we will be frozen into annihilation together, ere one free Switzer will acknowledge a foreign master.”

Well would it have been if the stubborn duke had listened to these words; for Louis the Eleventh was already making peace with the English king, and the balance of power which the duke had held for so many years was slipping from his grasp forever. He attacks the Swiss in their mountain fastnesses, and pays for his rashness with his life. The haughty Queen Margaret dies, and for the time the hope of the House of Lancaster perishes.

But does some fair reader ask: Who is Anne of Geierstein? Is the book all history? Ask the son of the Earl of Oxford, and he will tell you that Anne was the fair maiden who rescued him from a perilous rock the night they were lost near the castle of Geierstein; that she was with the embassy on her way to visit her father; that she again rescued him from imprisonment and death; and after the fall of the House of Lancaster the Swiss maiden becomes his bride.

“And on her lover’s arm she leant,

And round her waist she felt it fold,

And so across the hills they went,

In that new world, which is the old.”

“But the star of Lancaster,” in the language of Scott, “began again to culminate, and called the banished lord and his son from their retirement, to mix once more in politics, and soon thereafter was fought the celebrated battle of Bosworth, in which the arms of Oxford and his son contributed so much to the success of Henry the Seventh. This changed the destinies of young Oxford and his bride; but it is said that the manners and beauty of Anne of Geierstein attracted as much admiration at the English Court as formerly in the Swiss chalet.”

[ASTRONOMY OF THE HEAVENS FOR JANUARY.]

By Prof. M. B. GOFF.

THE SUN,

The source of all our light and heat, although about three millions of miles nearer to us on the 2d of January than it was on the 3d of July last, affords neither the same quantity of light nor heat; and for two reasons: 1. His rays fall on us more obliquely. 2. He does not remain so long above our horizon. On the 1st he rises at 7:24 a. m. and sets at 4:44 p. m., making our day only nine hours and twenty minutes long; and on the 31st rises at 7:11 a. m. and sets at 5:16 p. m., giving us ten hours and five minutes for a day’s length, an increase of forty-five minutes.

THE MOON

Presents the usual phases in order, as follows: First quarter on the 5th, at 4:27 p. m.; full moon on the 12th, at 10:19 a. m.; last quarter on the 20th, at 12:15 a. m.; and new moon on the 27th, at 11:53 p. m., Washington mean time, which is 8 minutes 12.09 seconds slower than “Eastern time,” or the time of the 75th meridian west of Greenwich. The moon is nearest the earth at 11:36 a. m. on the 9th; and most distant from the earth at 6:12 a. m. on the 21st. On the 10th she reaches her greatest elevation, which is 67° 42′ above the horizon in latitude 41° 30′ north.

MERCURY

Will be distinctly visible every evening from the first to the thirteenth of the month, setting at 6:06 p. m. on the evening of the former date, and at very nearly the same hour on the latter date. From the 1st to the 11th its motion is from west to east; on the 11th it is said to be stationary; however, it is actually moving in its orbit about thirty thousand miles per hour; but is approaching us in an almost direct line, and thus seems to be at a stand still. On the same day, it arrives at its greatest distance east of the sun, 19° 16′, and then starts on its journey west, approaching the earth, and coming directly between it and the sun, that is, reaching its inferior conjunction about 3:00 on the afternoon of the 20th. On the 31st it will be so far west as to rise one hour and fourteen minutes earlier than the sun.

VENUS

Will be evening star during the month, setting at 6:38 on the evening of the 1st, and at 7:50 p. m. on the 31st. Her motion is direct, amounting, during the month, to 2 hours, 24 minutes, 38 seconds, equal to 36° 9½′ of arc, her diameter increasing from 11.6′ to 12.8′. This planet will delight the vision of star-gazers, not only during January, but several succeeding months.

MARS

Will continue his retrograde motion during the month, moving a little more than one minute per day, making in all 35 minutes 37 seconds. He will be quite a prominent object during the entire night, on the evening of the 1st, rising at 7:50, and on the following morning setting at 9:58; and on the 31st rising at 5:08 p. m., and setting at 7:44 the next morning. His diameter at the latter date will be 15″. Can be readily found in the constellation Leo, northwest of the bright star Regulus. At 1:29 p. m. on the 14th he will be 9° 18′ north of the moon.

JUPITER

Will commence the month as a morning star, rising on the 1st at 6:19 in the evening, and setting next morning at 8:45; but on the 13th will change to an evening star, being on this date in opposition to the sun, and rising as the latter sets at about 5:00 p. m. On the 13th, at 2:53 a. m., he will be 5° 41′ north of the moon. On the 31st he will rise at 4:00 p. m., and next morning will set at 6:34. His diameter at same date will be 43.8″. Motion during the month, 16 minutes 12.54 seconds retrograde. The eclipses of this planet’s moons, by the body itself, are sometimes used for the purpose of determining longitude. He will be found in the constellation Cancer.

SATURN,

“The father of gods and men,” rises on the 1st at 2:18 p.m.; sets on the 2d at 4:34 a. m., being over 14 hours above the horizon. On the 31st it rises at 12:12 p. m. and sets next morning at 2:32. Has a retrograde motion of 4 minutes 3.61 seconds. On the 9th at 2:14 a. m. it is only 59′ north of the moon. Its diameter is about 18 seconds. Can be found in the constellation Taurus, a little northwest of Aldebaran, the brightest star of the cluster Hyades.

URANUS

Is morning star for the month. On the 1st it rises at 11:08 in the evening; on the 2d at about 10:00 a. m. Although traveling at the rate of over one and one-fourth million miles per hour, it is said to be stationary. As in the case of Mercury, it moves toward us for the time in an almost straight line, and “is not what it seems.” It has from the 2d to the end of the month a retrograde motion of 21 minutes 15 seconds of arc. Its diameter is 3.8 seconds. On the 31st it rises at 9:07 in the evening.

NEPTUNE

Will be evening star during the month, rising at 1:35 p. m. on the 1st and at 11:36 a. m. on the 31st, and setting at 3:09 a. m. on the 2d, and at 1:10 a. m. on the 1st of February. On the 8th, at 1:02 a. m., it is 6′ south of the moon. On the 28th, at 3:00 p. m., it is stationary. From the 1st to the 28th its motion will be 12½ seconds of arc retrograde, and from the latter date to the end of the month 8.7 seconds of arc direct. Its diameter equals 1.6 seconds. Will be found in the constellation Aries. Neptune is so far away that really little is known in regard to it. Its peculiar interest to us centers in the fact developed in its discovery, namely, that notwithstanding comparatively little is definitely settled in astronomical science, a wonderful degree of exactness has been attained in the computation of the places of the heavenly bodies. In 1820, astronomer Bouvard, of Paris, made a new and improved set of tables which formed the basis of the calculations made on the motions of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. In a few years it was found by observations that Uranus failed to occupy the place assigned him by the tables. In twenty-four years the disagreement amounted to two minutes of arc (a slight error, one would think, but not to be overlooked, and easily measured). The discrepancy led Mr. John C. Adams, an English student, in 1843, and M. Leverrier, a Frenchman, in 1845, each without the knowledge of the other, to attempt to reckon the elements of an unknown planet that would cause the disturbance. Adams, in October, 1845, communicated the results of his efforts to Prof. Airy, Astronomer Royal, who, however, for some reason not very clear, failed to make any search in the quarter directed. In 1846, the result of Leverrier’s calculations were published, and bore such a striking similarity to those of Mr. Adams, that Prof. Challis, of Cambridge Observatory, immediately began a very thorough search, and had made considerable progress, when Leverrier in September, 1846, wrote to Dr. Galle, of Berlin Observatory, giving him the elements, and asking him to direct his telescope to a certain portion of the heavens. This the Doctor did, and the result was that on the 23d of September, 1846, the planet afterward called Neptune, was found within a very short distance from the point indicated by both M. Leverrier and Mr. Adams.

[WORK FOR WOMEN.]

It is a well established fact that the women of the nineteenth century are workers. They work not only from necessity, but very many from choice. An Eastern journal recently remarked in regard to the general feeling among women that they ought and desired to do something, “It is getting to be good form to support yourself.” Girls are supporting themselves very generally, but as yet the majority are in the old and over-filled fields of teaching, sewing, and clerking. There is a constant demand among young women for something new. What work is there for them to learn which will be steady, lucrative, and womanly? And what steps must they take to learn it, and to obtain situations? These questions are daily asked. Many plod in ill-paid, uncongenial places, because they see no other avenues open. To show what work there is, and how learned and secured, Messrs. G. P. Putnam’s Sons have recently published, in their “Handy-Volume Series,” a little volume on “Work for Women.” The book is decidedly practical. As the author in his preface claims, it answers accurately the questions: “Is there a good chance to get work? How long will it take me to make myself competent? Are there many in the business? How much do they earn? Are there any objections against entering this employment; if so, what are they?” Exactly the questions which should be asked and satisfactorily answered before entering any work. Among the employments of which the author, Mr. G. P. Manson, speaks, industrial drawing properly holds the foremost place. For women of real taste and originality it is peculiarly suitable; but they must have both qualities. Without either a woman should never run the risk of entering the field; unless, indeed, she can afford to make the experiment. To one familiar with dry goods and house-furnishing, who knows the almost infinite varieties in the patterns of carpets, wall-papers, oil-cloths, calicoes, and the like, there can be no question about the chances for employment for skilled laborers. The work pays, too, and is pleasant. Still more important, there is little danger of one being lowered by it to a mere machine. It is work in which one grows.

Some wise words, worth remembering, are said in regard to phonography. A valuable idea to the learner is that the practical teacher, that is, the bona fide reporter, is worth more than many lessons from one who has learned the art simply to teach it, but has never practiced; and that the constant practice of what one may learn from any one of the books on the subject will be of more service than an extended course in a short-hand school. Most excellent is the advice given to ladies studying phonography that they should add book-keeping and type-writing. With these acquirements a woman can not fail in finding employment.

The art of telegraphy is to be learned in about the same way as phonography—by practice and patience. There are about forty schools in the United States where it is taught. Of these the New York Cooper Union School of Telegraphy is undoubtedly foremost; but before selecting a school it is wise to get the experience of a skilled operator—a most excellent plan to follow, by the way, in any field. Women rarely advance in this business beyond a certain rank, and unless luck favors them with a situation in the private office of a generous employer, they rarely reach positions which pay more than sixty dollars per month.

It is astonishing that work which at first thought seems to require so little skill as feather-curling, should average to expert laborers fifteen to twenty dollars per week, through the entire year, and sometimes reach as high as forty dollars per week. But this is the fact, and the work, too, is less confining than sewing. There is a serious drawback, however—the girls and women are not always moral, and the association is thus dangerous. None of the professions of which Mr. Manson speaks are more suitable for women than that of nursing. The feeling that it is a menial service is entirely wrong. There is no position which a woman can hold which requires more character, skill, self-control and wisdom. Mr. Manson, in his chapter on nursing, gives exactly the information which is needed for a woman about to enter the profession. Indeed, this is true of all that he says on the different branches of work which he takes up, among which are photography, proof-reading, type-setting, book-binding, lecturing, public reading, book selling, dress-making and millinery.

There are several varieties of work on which he has made but brief notes, to which we wish he would give further attention. These are employments at which women may earn their living, and yet be at home. There are many women left with families and little homes who struggle to live by sewing, washing, and the like, because they do not know what else to do. There are several employments suitable to them, and in which women almost invariably succeed; such are bee keeping, poultry raising, market gardening and cultivating flowers. A little capital is necessary, but a very little will start a business which, if well managed, can hardly fail to become prosperous. There are two great considerations in favor of such work: it is healthy, and allows one to remain at home. The considerations which should govern a woman in selecting any one of the employments mentioned in this little volume are satisfactorily discussed, and any one desiring information upon the vexed question, “What shall I do?” will receive valuable suggestions.

[OSTRICH HUNTING.]

By LADY FLORENCE DIXIE.

The following animated description of ostrich hunting in Patagonia is taken from a book by Lady Florence Dixie, published by R. Worthington, New York: