WOMEN AS CASHIERS.—The movement in favor of employing women
in all kinds of work that was formerly done by men only is one that
should be carried on with caution; for women and girls have sometimes
been put into situations for which their sex is unfit—the Government
clerkships in America for instance—and the result has been a reaction
against their employment in capacities where they are really useful.
But of all the posts to which women’s aptitudes are the least open to
question, that of cashier must be cited first. Women are excellent
money-keepers. While male cashiers form a grievously large percentage
among the prisoners brought to trial for embezzlement, women and girls
being seldom exposed to the same temptations as men in the matter of
dissipation, betting, gambling, or speculation, have very rarely been
known to misappropriate moneys entrusted to them. An honest woman
is very honest; “an honest man is too often,” as Lord Palmerston
bitterly said, “one who has never been tempted.” A man once applied
to an Italian banker for a cashiership, and was asked to state his
qualifications. “I have been ten years in prison,” he said, “and so
shall not mind being locked up in a room by myself, and having my
pockets searched when I go out and come in.” The banker admired his
impudence, took him at his word and used to say that he made a splendid
cashier. We are not affirming that antecedents like this rogue’s are
required to fit a man for a post of trust; but we do maintain that it
is very difficult to find a thoroughly trustworthy male cashier, even
among applicants provided with a mass of testimonials; whereas careful,
honest, and well-educated women, in whom full confidence can be placed,
exist in great numbers.—_Graphic._
THE HOUSE OF LORDS: CAN IT BE REFORMED?—We look to a second
Chamber to improve the work of the first, not simply to foil it. We
do not expect to have to do the work over again, as has been the case
with nearly every measure submitted to the ordeal of passing the House
of Lords. Why is this? How comes it to happen with a House in which,
without doubt, there are men of acknowledged capacity—men fully coming
up to the idea of what an assembly of notables should be—there is this
constantly recurring, mischievous meddling? How is it that beneficent
legislation has almost invariably had to be wrung from them, and that
an inordinate waste of time, coupled with an utterly unnecessary and
irritating friction, has been the result? An answer to these questions
is to be found in the fact that the members of the House of Lords feel
themselves entitled to legislate according to their own sweet will, and
without reference to the wishes or wants of the people of this country.
They look upon all political and social questions from the point of
view of their own order—an order which at the best must be regarded
as exclusive and privileged. This tendency is a perfectly natural one,
and they are to be no more blamed for exhibiting it than any other
class, whether rich or poor, professional or commercial, for looking at
matters from their own point of view. We must condemn the system which
not only enables the Lords to do this, but gives effect to their views
by according to them privileges for which practically the country gets
no return. We have no right to expect a Peer to place himself outside
his surroundings: we have a right to demand that the needs of the many
shall be preferred to the interests of the few. Observe the tendency
of those interests, and note one result, at least, which is in itself
productive of ill. The tendency among the Peers towards the principles
of Conservatism increases every year. Even Peers who in the House of
Commons were apparently sound Liberals rarely maintained their strictly
Liberal attitude; and where the original possessor of the title proves
true to his early faith, it is rarely that his successor walks in
his steps. The consequence is that the Conservative majority in the
House of Lords has for many years gone on steadily increasing, and the
addition of fresh recruits does little to stem the tide; one result
of which is that a Liberal Ministry comes into power very heavily
handicapped; it has this hostile majority always to contend with,
and has to shape its measures, not so much with an eye to the wants
of the people, as to the possibility of mollifying this majority. It
further throws the burden of legislative work on the House of Commons
unduly, because a Liberal Ministry knows full well that it will
require the force of a large majority in the Lower House to induce
the Upper House even to consider its measures. Much of the difficulty
experienced in the House of Commons, by the Government as well as by
private Members, in getting their measures passed, is due to that
House being overworked; the reason of this being that the other House
does not get its fair share of work, owing to its attitude towards
all Liberal legislation. I am far from saying that Conservatives, or
Conservative Peers, have no sympathy with their fellow-countrymen.
But their feeling towards the masses is that of desiring to act for
them rather than of wishing to get them to act for themselves; in
other words they show a tendency to maintain the power of beneficial
legislation in their own hands, and not to entrust it to those who are
likely to feel its effects the most. It is this want of confidence
rather than a lack of sympathy which is so unfortunate. It makes the
Peers anxious to retain power in their own interests; and thus their
action in the House of Lords is taken without the slightest sense of
responsibility, or without the slightest pretence of representing the
views and wishes of the people at large. What, then, is the remedy for
all this? Clearly, to make the second Chamber truly a representative
one—representative of the great interests of the people, of the State,
of the empire.—_British Quarterly._
A REVOLVING LIBRARY.—The idea of applying the principle of
revolution to simplify religious duties seems to have originated in the
feeling that since only the learned could acquire merit by continually
reciting portions of Buddha’s works, the ignorant and hard working were
rather unfairly weighted in life’s heavenward race. Thus it came to be
accounted sufficient that a man should turn over each of the numerous
rolled manuscripts containing the precious precepts, and considering
the multitude of these voluminous writings, the substitution of this
simple process must have been very consolatory. Max Müller has told us
how the original documents of the Buddhist canon were first found
in the monasteries of Nepaul, and soon afterwards further documents
were discovered in Thibet and Mongolia, the Thibetan canon consisting
of two collections, together comprising 333 volumes folio. Another
collection of the Wisdom of Buddha was brought from Ceylon, covering
14,000 palm leaves, and written partly in Singalese and partly in
Burmese characters. Nice light reading! From turning over these
manuscripts by hand, to the simple process of arranging them in a huge
cylindrical bookcase, and turning that bodily, was a very simple and
ingenious transition; and _thus the first circulating library came into
existence_!—_Contemporary Review._
A CHILD’S METAPHORS.—The early use of names by children
seems to illustrate the play of fancy almost as much as the activity
of thought. In sooth, have not thought and imagination this in common,
that they both combine elements of experience in new ways, and both
trace out the similarities of things? The poet’s simile is not so
far removed from the scientific discoverer’s new idea. Goethe the
poet readily became Goethe the morphologist, detecting analogies in
structures which to the common eye were utterly unlike. The sweet
attractiveness of baby-speech is due in no small measure to its highly
pictorial and metaphorical character. Like the primitive language
of the race, that of the child is continually used as a vehicle for
poetical comparison. The child and the poet have this in common, that
their minds are not fettered by all the associations and habits of
mind which lead us prosaic persons to separate things by absolutely
insuperable barriers. In their case imagination darts swiftly, like
a dragon-fly, from object to object, ever discovering beneath a
surface-dissimilarity some unobtrusive likeness. A child is apt to
puzzle its elders by these swift movements of its mind. It requires a
certain poetic element in a parent to follow the lead of the daring
child-fancy, and it is probable that many a fine perception of analogy
by children has been quite thrown away on the dull and prejudiced minds
of their seniors. To give an example of this metaphorical use of words
by the child: C. when eighteen months old was one day watching his
sister as she dipped her crust into her tea. He was evidently surprised
by the rare sight, and after looking a moment or two, exclaimed “Ba!”
(bath), laughing with delight, and trying, as was his wont when deeply
interested in a spectacle, to push his mother’s face round so that
she too might admire it. The boy delighted in such figurative use of
words, now employing them as genuine similes, as when he said of a dog
panting after a run, “Dat bow-wow like puff-puff” and of the first real
ship he saw sailing, “Dat ship go majory daw” (_i.e._ like marjory-daw
in the nursery rhyme). Like many a poet he has had his recurring or
standing metaphors. Thus, as we have seen, “ship” was the figurative
expression for all objects having a pyramidal form. A pretty example
of his love of metaphor was his habit of calling the needle in a small
compass of his father’s “bir” (bird). It needs a baby-mind to detect
the faint resemblance to the bird form and the bird movement here. The
same tendency of the child-mind to view things metaphorically or by
the aid of analogies to what is already familiar, shows itself in the
habit of personifying natural objects. It has been said by a living
philosopher that children do not attribute life, thought, and purpose
to inanimate things; but observation of their use of words is, I think,
decidedly against this view. C. had a way from a very early date of
looking at natural objects as though by their actions they specially
aimed at affecting his well-being. Thus he would show all the signs of
kingly displeasure when his serenity of mind was disturbed by noises.
When, for example, he was taken to the seaside (about when twenty
months old), he greatly disappointed his parent, expectant of childish
wonder in his eyes by merely muttering “Water make noise.” Again, he
happened one day in the last week of his second year to be in the
garden with his father while it was thundering. On hearing the sound he
said with an evident tone of annoyance, “Tonna mâ Ninghi noi,” _i.e._
thunder makes noise for C., and he instantly added, “Notty tonna!”
(naughty thunder). He was falling into that habit of mind against
which philosophers have often warned us, making man the measure of
the universe. The idea that the solemn roar of thunder was specially
designed to disturb the peace of mind of so diminutive a person seems
no doubt absurd enough; yet how many of us are altogether free from
the same narrow, vain, egoistic way of looking out into the vast and
boundless cosmos?—_English Illustrated Magazine._
HAS ENGLAND A SCHOOL OF MUSICAL COMPOSITION?—We suppose the
question must be answered in the affirmative; but with the knowledgment
that the insularity of England reduces the idea to a minimum. Our
insular position is a natural obstacle to the complete development
of our music. We pursue music with all activity, but that of itself
is but the physique, as it were, of vitality. It is an evident truth
that, besides that the artistic and intellectual development of this
great human art necessitates a wide area for its growth, its vital or
emotional being demands a more southern country than England. Central
Europe is the seat of music’s history. Our aspirations, intelligent
activity, and association with the Continent, lead to our reflecting
the workmanship of southern art in our serious compositions; this is
not a struggle, as that to find vitality, but an achievement. This
stage of imitation greatly characterizes modern English music effort.
Even Arthur Sullivan, our modern land Dibdin, shows the intellectual
side of his genius in imitation. The great mass of our modern melody
is too conscious of structure to be true, too sentimental to be real.
These are relative descriptions, but the whole condition of English
music is relative. The musical faculty—the spontaneous creation of
music is national—is natural, yet is not equally developed. Individual
instances of its truthful, vital, genuine (whatever expression
signifies relationship to southern developments) existence in our
history are so rare and isolated, that we might surely wonder how
they came to be, and the influence of their example on us has had
proportionately small consequences. But the typical English activity
and work—which is quite another thing—goes on. We may certainly
allow a national style of English Church music in the past, but must
remember that religion was its _raison d’être_—a wider development of
music was absent. Thus, in asking ourselves if we have or have not a
school of English music—taking “school” to mean the mould of music’s
expression determined by the circumstances and men of the time—we must
acknowledge that, though we doubtless have something of the sort, it is
only in the slightest degree perceptible.—_Musical Opinion._
BOOTY IN WAR.—Charles, as soon as he had finished conquering
Lorraine, gathered his host at Besançon, and marched to Granson on the
Neuchâtel Lake. Here a garrison of 500 Swiss was betrayed to him; he
hanged or drowned every man of them, including the monks who came as
chaplains. Justly enraged, the Federation gathered its whole strength,
and with 24,000 men fell upon Charles unawares and defeated him
utterly. The booty was something fabulous; Burgundy, taking taxes from
all the rich Netherland towns, was then the richest Power in Europe.
The spoil was valued at a quarter of a million. You may calculate what
that would be worth now. The big diamonds—one is now in the Pope’s
tiara, another was long the glory of the French regalia—were among
the valuables. The Duke’s throne was valued at 11,000 gulden; all his
plate, his silver bedstead, his wonderfully illuminated prayer-book,
were taken, besides 1,000,000 gulden in his treasure chest, 10,000
horses, and a proportionate quantity of all kinds of stores. No wonder
the Swiss never recovered Granson; there were long and bitter quarrels
about the division of the booty, and the coming in of so much wealth
amongst a simple people demoralised them sadly, and led the way to
their becoming the chief mercenaries of Europe.—_Good Words._
SIR HENRY BESSEMER.—Among his early contrivances may be
noted a method by which basso-relievos were copied on cardboard, and
also a machine for producing bronze-dust at a low price. Knowing well
the inefficiency of the Patent Laws, Bessemer was careful to conduct
his operations as secretly as possible, and the manufacture of gold
bronze powder is still invested with much of the mystery of mediæval
alchemy. After inventing a system for improving the Government stamps
on deeds and other documents, so as to render forgery impossible,
saving the country several millions (for which he received no reward
or acknowledgment whatever from the Government), he submitted to the
authorities at Woolwich a novel form of projectile. On its rejection
in England he exhibited it to the emperors of France and Austria, who
acknowledged its value, and gave the inventor every assistance for its
improvement. It was incidentally remarked, however, that some stronger
metal than any then in use would be necessary for the construction of
the guns, to enable them to resist so heavy a charge. It is said that
this remark first led Bessemer to turn his attention to the improvement
of the method of smelting iron. He established and maintained at his
own expense a foundry in the north of London, where he continued for
several years to expend nearly the whole of his private fortune. At
length, in 1856, at the Cheltenham meeting of the British Association,
the scientific world was startled, and almost a panic created at
Birmingham, by the announcement of the discovery of the process, since
known as the Bessemer process, which was to effect a revolution in
the metal industry. The invention, however, remained incomplete till
the year 1859, when it first began to be adopted by the Sheffield and
Birmingham manufacturers. Recent improvements—more particularly the
Gilchrist-Thomas process—have since greatly increased its value and
removed, or at least diminished, its earlier defects. Bessemer steel
is now used for every purpose in “hardware,” and has almost entirely
supplanted wrought iron. For rails it has proved invaluable. Then its
extreme tenacity and toughness render it most suitable for the purposes
of ship-building and boiler construction. It has been adopted by Krupp
in Prussia, and Elpstrand in Sweden, for the manufacture of their
celebrated ordnance; and even Sir William Armstrong, in designing his
coiled steel guns, resorted to the Bessemer metal. Mr. W. D. Allen,
of Sheffield, who was the first to adopt the process practically and
commercially, declared recently that he had made every conceivable
article with the metal, from an intermediate crank shaft to a corkscrew
or table-knife. In 1878 a Commission of the Admiralty adopted Bessemer
steel as the most serviceable material for anchors. The inventions of
Sir Henry Bessemer are embodied in no less than 114 patents, and the
drawings of these alone, all from his own pencil, fill seven volumes.
Some of these refer to the casting of printing types, and various
improvements in the management of a type foundry; to railway brakes; to
the improved manufacture of glass; the silvering of glass; to improved
apparatus in sugar refining; and to producing ornamental surfaces on
leather and textile fabrics. In 1875 he invented the _Bessemer_ saloon
steamer for preventing sea-sickness. A company was formed, he himself
subscribing £25,000 towards the capital, but unfortunately it failed.
The institute of Civil Engineers was the first body to recognise
the merits of Mr. Bessemer’s work, and in 1858 conferred upon him
the Telford gold medal. The interposition of the British Government
prevented him receiving from the Emperor Napoleon III. the Grand Cross
of the Legion of Honor. From the Emperor of Austria he received the
Cross of a Knight Commander of Francis Joseph. In 1871, he was elected
President of the Iron and Steel Institute, and in the following year
was awarded the Albert Gold Medal by the Society of Arts. In 1879 he
was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a few months afterwards
was knighted at Windsor.—_Science._
Transcriber’s Notes:
Underscores “_” before and after a word or phrase indicate _italics_
in the original text.
The carat character “^” is used to designate a superscript.
Small capitals have been converted to SOLID capitals.
Old or antiquated spellings have been preserved.
Typographical errors have been silently corrected but other variations
in spelling and punctuation remain unaltered.