And having made these speculations, and having gone quite round the

garden, I begin--in addition to my speculations--to make some rather

wild suppositions. As, suppose that, for a mere experiment, there were

a greater spirit of charity of speech introduced into our dealings

with this country. Suppose that we gave the people time and reasonable

allowance--looked on with encouragement where there was any good

attempt made, and with indulgence where there was failure. Suppose

that some of our journals gave over writing "slashing" articles, and

some men desisted from speeches and bitter epigrams on the "mere

Irish," which, being copied in every cheap print, and brought to every

cabin door, do incalculable mischief, fatally widening the breach, and

causing England and Englishmen to be sometimes almost hated. Suppose

that there were _some_ little restraint on the traditional stock

ridicule of Irish matters. Suppose that the Englishmen who visited the

country carried themselves with a little less of William the Conqueror

and Strongbow air, and suppose that--

But here are the umbrellas, and the sticks, and the gate.

------

From Chambers's Journal.

SPEECH.

Be choice and frugal of thy speech alway:

The arrow from the engine of the thoughts

Once shot, is past recall; for scorn is barbed,

And will not out, but rankles in the wound;

And calumny doth leave a darkening spot

On wounded fame, which, as it would infect,

Marks its sad victim in the eyes of men,

Till no one dare approach and know the truth.

------

{830}

From The Lamp.

A VISIT TO THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE.

Our pilgrimage to La Grande Chartreuse was an event in our lives worth

remembering. At about half-past five on the morning of the 22d of June

we left Lyons. Nothing could have been more auspicious than the

brilliant sun and balmy air of that early morning. The birds sang

cheerily as we walked from St. Irenee down to the railway station,

where our kind friends took leave of us. The country in the

neighborhood of Lyons was exceedingly pretty; but as we drew nearer to

Grenoble, it became more and more attractive. The railway passes

through two ranges of mountains, whose snow-capped summits stood out

in beautiful contrast to the azure sky. Our only fellow-traveller was

a priest, who for a long time had been intent on his breviary. Amused

perhaps at our exclamations of delight, he entered into conversation

with us; and we were soon very good friends. He expressed particular

interest in the condition of the Catholic Church in England, having

heard that there were many conversions in consequence of the hard work

doing in our missions. He spoke very highly in favor of a visit to La

Grande Chartreuse. He kindly promised always to pray for us, and the

conversion of those we had left behind, and to remember us in the mass

he was about to offer. We reached Grenoble at about twenty minutes to

ten. It will not do to stop to describe the magnificent situation of

this old city, completely surrounded as it is with mountains, between

the rivers Isere and Drac. Until recently it was a frontier town; a

very strong one too, judging from the appearance of the citadel, piled

fortress after fortress up the steep mountain side. The cathedral is

interesting, as having belonged to St. Hugo, the friend of the great

founder of the Grande Chartreuse.

We made an agreement with the driver of a carriage to take us to the

Grande Chartreuse; and he promised to take us there in about five

hours, and put us down at the door of the convent; so, at least, we

understood him. We returned to the hotel, got some refreshment, and

started in an open carriage at about twelve o'clock. The road for

several miles runs through a richly cultivated valley, with wooded

mountains on either side. Everywhere the vine was trained in graceful

festoons, and stately walnut and chestnut trees grew along the

roadside, shading us from the mid-day sun with their rich foliage.

Every now and then we caught beautiful glimpses of the distant Alps,

abruptly rising from the green level of the valley, beyond the hills

clad with the dark verdure of the pine forests, piled curiously one

over another, which run the whole length of the plain, forming the

first steps, as it were, of those mighty Alpine mountains which rear

their magnificent heights, shrouded in eternal glaciers, behind these

graduated ranges. Just before reaching St. Laurent du Pont, what was

our astonishment to hear our driver proclaim we should shortly reach

our destination! We could not conceive how that could be, for we were

evidently approaching a small town. How different it looked from all

we had read and heard of La Grande Chartreuse! Our amazement increased

when the carriage was driven up in front of a small inn; the driver,

getting down, opened the door, and said, with evident satisfaction,

_"Nous voila."_ We demanded an explanation, and his reply was that

this was St. Laurent du Pont, and as far as he could take us. Here we

{831} could either procure another carriage or mules to carry us up

the mountain to the monastery, which we might reach in about two

hours.

It was difficult to suppress all the indignation one felt at being so

completely taken in; and we threatened the unfortunate driver with all

kinds of complaints on our return to Grenoble. There was nothing to be

done, so we agreed we had better make the best of it. It was five

o'clock, and we could not afford to waste our time in words; so we

ordered another carriage, and in a few minutes a most rickety,

uninviting conveyance was brought to the door. St. Laurent du Pont is

situated at the opening of the narrow gorge leading to the wild

solitude where the monastery is built. The scenery was grand and

beautiful as we gradually began the ascent about a mile from St.

Laurent du Pont, where the mountains closed upon our road, and the

rocky stream of the Guiers Mort brawling beneath us. Tall pines and

stately trees overshadowed us, rising from the almost naked rocks

themselves. One of the great peculiarities of the Chartreuse mountain

is the extreme luxuriance of the vegetation, mingled as it is with the

huge blocks of limestone, which sometimes formed walls on either side

of our way. We had a miserable horse, which stoutly refused to go

beyond a sleepy walk, the driver and the horse being of the same

dreamy nature. We lost all patience, and got out. No language can

adequately describe the enjoyment of that walk. The scenery, so

sublimely wild; the sound of the rushing torrent, now far below our

road, filled us with awe. The pines, rising like weird giants by the

mountain side, mile after mile; the scene changing and becoming more

majestic with every curve of the road. Every now and then we crossed a

handsomely built stone bridge, erected by the good monks, across the

torrent, and passed under several tunnels cut through the rock. The

sun was declining, and nothing could exceed the beauty of the evening;

we had walked for nearly two hours in almost uninterrupted silence,

for there was that in the solemnity of the scene, as we penetrated

further into the heart of the desert, which filled one's mind with

thoughts and one's soul with feelings which could not be uttered. At

length, on a sudden turn in the road, the breeze wafted toward us the

sound of the chapel-bell, ringing, we supposed, for vespers. This was

truly a most grateful sound to our ears, for we were weary with our

walk and the excitement of the scene, and longed for our journey's

end. A few steps further, and the vast monastery lay before us. How

solemn and silent it looked! The tones of the bell, how sweetly

musical they were! To listen to them, to gaze on that gray pile, and,

high above it, on the lofty snow-capped peaks of the mountains, was an

indescribable rest. How wonderfully grand was that mountain top! and

far beyond the forests of pine rose still more distant mountain peaks,

ascending until they reached the very skies, now gilded with all the

glories of a setting sun. It filled one with peace the thought of all

the centuries that that vast pile had lasted; of the long ages the

voices of the monks had mingled with the varied voices of nature in

one hymn of praise to the almighty Creator of all. We waited until the

arrival of our carriage interrupted our musings. It could go no

further; so, followed by the driver carrying our baggage, we walked up

to the door of the convent of the Soeurs de la Providence, where we

were most hospitably received. A friendly sister took us to our cells,

and said supper would shortly be ready. The blazing logs of pine in a

huge fireplace in the refectory were most cheering, for the evening

air was quite cold in these high regions even at the close of a hot

June day. A maigre supper was served at half-past seven. We were

amused to hear that it had all been cooked by the monks, and sent to

us from the monastery, {832} where nothing but maigre is ever allowed.

From eight to nine we walked round the monastery, following a path

close to the dark pine forest, which forms the background to the

building. We could look down from this height upon the cells, church,

and little gardens of the monks. Returning toward the hospice, we met

the reverend mother and a sister; they took us into the little chapel

where we were to hear mass the following morning. It was very plain

and small; there was a grille in front of the altar, on which the

blessed sacrament was not reserved. What a trial this must be to the

good sisters!

At half-past nine, rev. mother advised our retiring to our cells, as

we were to be up early the next morning, and _en route_ for St.

Bruno's chapel by half-past four. A very intelligent young guide was

provided us; he told us he had spent his life with the fathers, and

hoped to live there to the end. He was extremely communicative and

willing to answer all our questions.

There are about forty monks in this monastery, beside several lay

brothers. The monks live each in his cell, which has a little garden

attached to it. They maintain silence, excepting on Sundays and great

festivals, and during their Monday walk together through the desert

for four hours. They eat alone in their cells, excepting on Sundays;

each one's maigre meal is passed by a lay brother from the cloister

through a little turn into his cell. On Sundays they go to the choir

at all the hours except complin; on other days they only go to sing

matins and lauds at midnight; for high mass and vespers; the other

hours are recited in their cells. Women are not only excluded their

enclosure, but even their church, under pain of excommunication. It

was very tantalizing to hear of their solemn midnight office, sung as

it is in darkness; each monk takes with him into choir a dark lantern,

and for each antiphon he does not know opens a slide which throws the

light on it. It must have a wonderful effect these sudden flashes of

light, lighting up the Chartreux, clothed in their white woollen

habits, with their patriarchal beards and hooded heads. Beside the

divine office, they say the office of our Blessed Lady, and, almost

every day, the office of the dead. Their library was plundered by the

revolutionists, and now forms the public library at Grenoble, one of

the finest small collections of books in France. Nearly all this we

learnt from our guide while walking up to the chapel of St. Bruno.

Before we reached it, far into the midst of a dark forest, we came to

the chapel called De Casalibus, erected upon the very spot where the

first convent stood, which was destroyed by an avalanche. The chapel

of St. Bruno is built over the same rock under which he dwelt, beside

a gushing spring, his only beverage, which supplies the monastery to

this day.

The chapel is about an hour's walk above the present monastery. It is

very plain, but adorned with frescoes, representing some of the early

fathers of the order. A most beautiful altar stands at one end of it,

of exquisitely carved Italian marbles, on which has been placed the

same altar-stone on which St. Bruno celebrated the holy mysteries;

behind this is a basso-relievo of St. Bruno, with our Blessed Lady

appearing to him, beautifully executed. We lingered here awhile, loth

to leave so holy a spot. The guide told us that there are frequently

as many as sixty masses said in the Chartreuse church in one morning.

Many hundred priests make their annual retreat here. What place,

indeed, could they find more fitting for the repose their souls thirst

for! Here truly they might die to the world and all its allurements,

and meditate in peace on the deep mysteries of God and eternity. We

descended the mountain to assist at the offering of the holy sacrifice

at seven o'clock in the little chapel we had {833} visited on the

previous evening, It was a great joy to make our communion in this

vast mountain solitude, where all combined to elevate the soul to God.

We had hoped a Carthusian would say mass, but in this were

disappointed, for a secular priest had been requested to do so by the

ladies of his party.

At the _Homo factus est_ of the Credo, the fathers prostrate

themselves on the ground, and the mode of celebrating mass is strange,

and differs in many points from the ordinary mass of seculars. As the

blessed sacrament was not reserved in the chapel, we preferred

finishing our thanksgiving beneath the blue sky on the skirts of the

forest of pines. After breakfast we tasted the celebrated liqueur made

by the monks from the wild mountain flowers. It was very good; there

was a certain charm in taking it on the spot where it was made. We had

a talk with the reverend mother, and left with her a long list of

intentions to be given to the fathers, asking especially their prayers

for the conversion of England. This, we were thankful to hear, was

frequently an object of their devotions. Before leaving, our curiosity

to see some of the fathers was gratified; for two came out to give

instructions to some workmen. We began to descend the mountain at

about half-past eight, arrived at St. Laurent du Pont about ten, and

as soon as our carriage of the previous day was ready started for

Grenoble. Once the horse came to a dead stop, and we fancied the

driver wished to prolong our journey as long as he could, that we

might have no time for making the threatened complaints on reaching

Grenoble. As it was, we arrived there five minutes before the time

fixed for our departure at half past-one. There was hardly a minute to

get anything to eat beyond some fruit and bread which we took with us.

So the driver escaped his punishment, after all.

------

From The Reader.

DEATH BY LIGHTNING.

People in general imagine, if they think at all about the matter, that

an impression upon the nerves--a blow, for example, or the prick of a

pin--is felt the moment it is inflicted. But this is not the case. The

nerves are not the repositories of sensation; they are but the

conductors of the motion which produces sensation. The seat of

sensation is the brain, and to it the intelligence of any injury done

to the nerves has to be transmitted, before that injury becomes

manifest in consciousness. The transmission, moreover, requires

_time_, and the consequence is, that a wound inflicted at a portion of

the body distant from the brain is more tardily appreciated than one

inflicted adjacent to the brain. By an extremely ingenious

experimental arrangement, Helmholtz has determined the velocity of

nervous transmission both in warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals. In

a frog, he found the velocity to be about eighty feet a second, or

less than one-thirteenth of the velocity of sound in air. If this

holds good, which it probably does, in the case of a whale, then a

creature of this class, eighty feet long, if wounded in the tail,

would not, as Helmholtz has remarked, be conscious of the injury till

a second after the wound had been inflicted. But this is not the only

ingredient in the delay that occurs between the impression on {834}

the nerves and the consciousness of the impression. There can scarcely

be a doubt that to every act of consciousness belongs a determinate

molecular arrangement of the brain--that every thought or feeling has

its physical correlative in that organ; and nothing can be more

certain than that every physical change, whether molecular or

mechanical, requires time for its accomplishment. So that, even after

the intelligence of an impression, made upon a distant portion of the

body, has reached the brain, a still further time is necessary for the

brain itself to put its house in order--for its molecules to take up

the position necessary to the completion of consciousness. Helmholtz

considers one-tenth of a second necessary for this purpose. Thus, in

the case of the whale above supposed, we have first one second

consumed in the transmission of intelligence through the sensor nerves

from the tail to the head; one-tenth of a second is required by the

brain to become conscious of the intelligence it has received; and, if

the velocity of transmission through the motor be the same as that

through the sensor nerves, a second would be consumed in sending a

command to the tail to defend itself. Thus more than two seconds would

elapse before an impression made upon its caudal nerves could be

responded to by a whale eighty feet long.

Now, it is quite conceivable that an injury might be inflicted which

would render the nerves unfit to be the conductors of the motion which

results in sensation; and if such a thing occurred, no matter how

severe the injury might be, we should not be conscious of it. Or it

may be, that long before the time required for the brain itself to

complete the arrangement necessary for the act of consciousness, its

power of arrangement might be wholly suspended. In such case also,

though the injury might be of such a nature as to cause death, this

would occur not only without pain, but absolutely without feeling of

any kind.

Death, in this case, would be simply the sudden negation of life,

accomplished without any intervention of consciousness. Doubtless,

there are many kinds of death of this character. The passage of a

musket bullet through the brain is a case in point; and the placid

aspect of a man thus killed is in perfect accordance with the

conclusion which might be drawn _a priori_ from the experiments of

Helmholtz. Cases of insensibility, moreover, are not uncommon, which

do not result in death, and after which the person affected has been

able to testify that no pain was felt prior to the loss of

consciousness.

The time required for a rifle-bullet to pass clean through a man's

head may be roughly estimated at one-thousandth of a second. Here,

therefore, we should have no room for sensation, and death would be

painless. But there are other actions which far transcend in rapidity

that of the rifle-bullet. A flash of lightning cleaves a cloud,

appearing and disappearing in less than one-hundred-thousandth of a

second, and the velocity of electricity is such as would carry it over

a distance equal to that which separates the earth and moon in a

single second. It is well known that a luminous impression once made

upon the retina endures for about one-sixth of a second, and that this

is the reason why we see a ribbon of light when a glowing coal is

caused to pass rapidly through the air. A body illuminated by an

instantaneous flash continues to be seen for the sixth of a second

after the flash has become extinct; and if the body thus illuminated

be in motion, it appears at rest at the place which it occupied when

the flash fell upon it. The color-top is familiar to most of us. By

this instrument a disk with differently colored sectors is caused to

rotate rapidly; the colors blend together, and if they are chosen in

the proportions necessary to form white light, the disk appears white

when the motion is sufficiently rapid. Such a top, rotating {835} in a

dark room, and illuminated by an electric spark, appears motionless,

each distinct color being clearly seen. Professor Dove has found that

a flash of lightning produces the same effect. During a thunder-storm

he put a color-top in exceedingly rapid motion, and found that every

flash revealed the top as a motionless object with colors distinct. If

illuminated solely by a flash of lightning, the motion of all bodies

on the earth's surface would, as Dove has remarked, appear suspended.

A cannon-ball, for example, would have its flight apparently arrested,

and would seem to hang motionless in space as long as the luminous

impression which revealed the ball remained upon the eye.

If, then, a rifle-bullet move with sufficient rapidity to destroy life

without the interposition of sensation, much more is a flash of

lightning competent to produce this effect. Accordingly, we have well

authenticated cases of people being struck senseless by lightning who,

on recovery, had no memory of pain. The following circumstantial case

is described by Hemmer: On the 30th of June, 1788, a soldier in the

neighborhood of Manheim, being overtaken by rain, placed himself under

a tree, beneath which a woman had previously taken shelter. He looked

upward to see whether the branches were thick enough to afford the

required protection, and, in doing so, was struck by lightning, and

fell senseless to the earth. The woman at his side experienced the

shock in her foot, but was not struck down. Some hours afterward the

man revived, but knew nothing about what had occurred, save the fact

of his looking up at the branches. This was his last act of

consciousness, and he passed from the conscious to the unconscious

condition without pain. The visible marks of a lightning stroke are

usually insignificant: the hair is sometimes burnt; slight wounds are

observed; while, in some instances, a red streak marks the track of

the discharge over the skin.

The effects of a shock of artificial lightning on a gentleman of our

acquaintance, who is very sensitive to the electric discharge, may be

here described. Under ordinary circumstances the discharge from a

small Leyden jar is exceedingly unpleasant to him. Some time ago he

happened to stand in the presence of a numerous audience, with a

battery of fifteen large Leyden jars charged beside him. Through some

awkwardness on his part, he touched a wire which he had no right to

touch, and the discharge of the battery went through his body. Here

life was absolutely blotted out for a very sensible interval, without

a trace of pain. In a second or two consciousness returned; the

recipient of the shock saw himself in the presence of his audience and

apparatus, and by the help of these external facts immediately

concluded that he had received the battery discharge. His

_intellectual_ consciousness of his position was restored with

exceeding rapidity, but not so his _optical_ consciousness. To prevent

the audience from being alarmed, he observed that it had often been

his desire to receive accidentally such a shock, and that his wish had

at length been fulfilled. But while making this remark, the appearance

which his body presented to him was that of a number of separate

pieces. The arms, for example, were detached from the trunk, and

seemed suspended in the air. In fact, memory, and the power of

reasoning, appeared to be complete long before the optic nerve was

restored to healthy action. But what we wish chiefly to dwell upon

here is, the absolute painlessness of the shock; and there cannot be a

doubt, to a person struck dead by lightning, the passage from life to

death occurs without consciousness being in the least degree

implicated. It is an abrupt stoppage of sensation, unaccompanied by a

pang.

------

{836}

From The Dublin University Magazine

LONDON.

A Dublin saunterer of antiquarian propensities pacing the flags in

front of Christ church, or elbowing his troublesome way down the

narrow defile called Castle street, can scarcely escape a certain

sense of awe as he looks on the houses and the passengers, and darts a

thought back through dim and troubled time till he strives to arrive

at an idea of' the first inhabitants and the scene in which they

played out their short parts.

Passing over the mysterious and weak race that preceded the Gaels, he

fancies these last in their quaint garb going about their ordinary

occupations, or rushing to their earth mounds and dykes to repel the

fierce Northmen. Then pass before his mind's eye the successive races

of different speech, and different garb, and different interests--the

Danes, Dano-Celts, and the Anglo Normans, employed in fierce struggles

with each other, and each looking on the events of his own times as

paramount to all that ever agitated society till then. All now quiet

and silent in the dust. The shopkeeper attending to his customers, the

tippler stepping into the corner shop for a dram, and the carman

smoking his pipe, and giving his beast a mouthful of hay, are as

unconscious of any personal connection with the dead generations as if

they had sprung full grown and furnished with clothing from the fat

glebe of the neighboring Phoenix Park.

So would feel still more intensely an archaeologist on Tower Hill, or

by the Fleet Ditch, or on London Bridge, if the ever hurrying and

feverish crowd would allow him to concentrate his thoughts on

anything.

How it should make the feelings of the most dried up anatomy of an

archaeologist glow, when, throwing his thoughts nearly nineteen

centuries back, he sees the mighty robber conducting his band, guarded

by strong defences of bronze, and leather, and wood, to the bank of

the then clear river, and preparing to invest and destroy that

ill-armed but heroic body of brave men on the other side, who, in

defence of their weak children, and loving and high-souled wives and

daughters, will soon send many an armed and ruthless Roman soldier to

shiver on the cold banks of Styx.

And what was the profit of all the plotting, and all the unjust

warfare, waged by men single or in masses against those they

considered their foemen? They shortened the career of their opponents,

they shortened their own lives. They preferred a short and turbulent

existence to the longer and quieter span intended for them, they

passed away, and were either speedily forgotten, or remembered but to

be cursed.

It is a bewildering occupation to a stranger to contemplate a map of

London in order to acquire some distinct notion of the number and

arrangement of the streets (an idea of the inhabitants is out of the

question), to ponder how the countless multitude can be fed and

clothed, and to reflect that if old mother earth should lose her

fruit-bearing qualities for one year, how little would avail the

beauty, the bravery, the wit, the ingenuity, the industry, and the

intelligence of the three million inhabitants, to prevent the circuit

of famed London from becoming a vast charnel-house.

Our earliest historians were the poets, these were succeeded by the

romancers. Geoffry of Monmouth, translating the "Chronicle of Kings"

brought from Brittany, informed the {837} people of the twelfth

century that Brutus, great-grandson of Eneas, after many voyages and

adventures, founded a town about where the Tower has long stood, and

called it New Troy. This was afterward changed to Trinobantum. Lud,

brother to Cassibelan, again gave it his own name--_Caer Lud_. Hence

Ludstown softened to London. Other derivations for the city's name are

not at all rare. From the Celtic words _Leana_, marsh or meadow;

_Linn_, a pool; _Lung_, or _Long_, a ship; and _Dunn_, a fort, it is

easy to make out the fort among the meadows, the fort of the pool, or

the fort of the ships. The sister city, Dublin, is simply black pool.

As ancient Dublin occupied at first only the hill of which the castle

occupies the south-eastern spur, so Tower Hill, Ludgate Hill,

Cornhill, and Holborn Hill, formed the site of the original British

Dun or Duns. Hence the most interesting portion of London to an

antiquary must include those places of strength. But as the more

easterly eminences have much longer ceased to be fashionable than our

Fishamble and Essex streets, and the traditions of London literary

characters from the time of Elizabeth date from regions further west,

most writers choose to expatiate on the buildings that lie between

Whitehall and Temple Bar, and on the remarkable personages and

incidents connected with them. Charles Knight was unable to say his

say concerning the modern Babylon in fewer than six royal octavo

volumes, and the portly octavo lately put forth by Mr. Thornbury is

concerned with a very small area of the city, Temple Bar being at its

south-east angle, and the Strand, St. Martin's lane, Holborn, and

Chancery lane its boundaries.

THE STRAND.

Temple Bar, that narrow neck through which the struggling sands find

their way with difficulty from the Strand and the Fleet portions of

the great hour-glass, and which is looked on by shallow readers as a

relic of hoar antiquity, dates only from 1670, four years after the

great fire. It forms the point of junction between the cities of

London and Westminster, and in early times was only provided with

posts, rails, and a chain. These were succeeded by a wooden house with

a narrow gate-way and a passage on one side. The present structure is

incumbered with the statues of Elizabeth, James I., Charles I., and

Charles II., all distinguished, according to Mr. Thornbury, by feeble

heads, crimped drapery, and feet and hands kept whitish by the rain,

the non-projecting portions of the bodies rejoicing in more than a

century of dark atmospheric deposits.

Mr. Thornbury's selection includes the long line of palaces that once

adorned the Strand or River-bank street, the haunts of artists in St.

Martin's lane, the traditions of Long Acre, the reminiscences

connected with Drury lane, and the old houses of the nobility in

Lincoln's-Inn Fields.

One of the most remarkable of the fine buildings of the Strand is that

which bears the name of the ambitious brother of Jane Seymour, the

Duke of Somerset, who boasted that he could muster retainers to the

number of 10,000. To erect his palace, which, by the way, was

unfinished at his death, he demolished the parish church of St. Mary,

and pulled down the houses of the bishops of Worcester, Llandaff, and

Lichfield. He would also have appropriated St. Margaret's at

Westminster, but the mob would not sanction the sacrilege. "Moreover,

he destroyed a chapel in St. Paul's Church-yard, with a cloister

containing the Dance of Death, and a charnel-house (burying the bones

in unconsecrated ground)." To crown his acts of rapine he stole the

stone of a church of St. John near Smithfield. It is not worth

mentioning the carrying away of the stone of the Strand Inn, it being

the property of the lawyers, who could afford to be robbed.

{838}

The Danish consort of our Solomon I. here delighted all who had no

objection to spectacles, in which the handsome queen and her ladies

masqueraded to their own and their admirers' content. Rare Ben Jonson

was surely elated by the lists of royal and noble personages who

presented his masques. From this same noble residence Charles I. had

some trouble in dislodging the Gallic followers of his sturdy queen,

with whom his hard-headed and wooden-shoe-abhorring subjects had come

to be at deadly feud. As they were rather too tedious in "shifting the

halter, and traversing the cart," the poor king was obliged to write

thus to Buckingham:

"STEENIE,--I have received your letter by Dick Greame. This is my

answer. I command you to send all the French away to-morrow out of

the town, if you can by fair means (but stick not long in

disputing), otherwise force them away, driving them away like so

many wild beasts until you have shipped them, and the--go with them!

Let me hear no answer but of the performance of my command. So I rest,

"Your faithful, constant, loving friend, C. R.

"Oaking, the seventh of August, 1626."

"The French inventing all sorts of vexatious delays, the yeomen of

the guard at last jostled them out, carting them off in nearly forty

coaches. They arrived at Dover after four days' tedious travelling,

wrangling and bewailing."

Queen Henrietta taking part in a masque at Christmas in 1632-3, and

Prynne's _Histriomastix_ happening to be published the next day, the

poor man lost his ears for an uncomplimentary remark on women-actors,

which was found in the margin, though it could not possibly have been

written with any reference to the queen's appearance on that occasion.

To Somerset House returned Henrietta Maria after the restoration, and

there the garrulous Pepys paid his respects to her as well as to

Madame Castlemaine. "By-and-by, in came the king and Duke and Duchess

of York. The conversation was not a very decorous one, and the young

queen (Catherine of Braganza) said to Charles, 'you lie,' which made

good sport, as the chuckling and delighted Pepys remarks, those being

the first English words he had heard her say; and the king then tried

to make her reply, 'confess and be hanged.'"

The most striking object in the old days of the Strand was the new

Maypole which replaced the old one taken down by Oliver's Parliament.

It was of cedar wood, 134 feet high, and stood in front of the church

of St. Mary. It was brought in two pieces from below Bridge, the

splicing made secure by iron bands, three crowns fastened toward its

top, and then the tall article was raised by twelve sailors to a

vertical position, and firmly imbedded. The operation was happily

accomplished under the superintendence of the Duke of York in four

hours. Then sounded trumpets and drums; and morris-dancers in motley

attire, and enlivened by the music of pipe and tabor, danced in glee

around it, while thousands of throats became hoarse with loyal

shouting. James would have found little enjoyment in the general glee,

if he could at the moment have had a prophetic glimpse of his wife,

with her infant son folded to her breast, pacing along the river bank

in doubt and fear, and watching for the friendly boat that was to

convey her from the unfriendly city.

When the pole that succeeded this was obliged to abdicate, it was

presented to Sir Isaac Newton, who again presented it to the rector of

Wanstead, and in Wanstead park it helped to support the largest

telescope then known.

From this memorable if unedifying goal, Pope started the racers in the

Dunciad:

{839}

"Amidst the area wide they took their stand,

Where the tall maypole once o'erlooked the Strand;

But now, as Anne and piety ordain,

A church collects the saints of Drury lane."

In the old palace of the Savoy once lived John of Gaunt; John, King of

France, the Black Prince's captive, died there; George Wither, the

poet, is buried there; and there also was Geoffry Chaucer married.

Simon, earl of Montfort, once lived within its precincts; but where

kings, archbishops, and high nobles once walked and held high council,

pickles are now sold, printing types set up, and glass rolled out and

spun.

Wat Tyler's mob being forbidden to plunder, and supposing a couple of

barrels to contain money, flung them into a great fire. The money,

alas, was gunpowder, as in the Dunleary ballad, and blew up the great

hall, shook down the neighboring houses, killed sundry of the social

reformers, and reduced the palace to ruins.

Henry VII. instituted within its precincts a house of refuge for every

indigent person passing down the River-side-road, and by a natural

process of abuse the poor wayfarers derived little advantages from it.

Loiterers, sham cripples, and vagabonds of both sexes begged abroad

all day, and came in the evening to the Savoy to sup and sleep. Edward

VI. transferred a good portion of its revenue to Bridewell Prison and

Christ's Hospital. Mary replaced the charity on its old footing, much

to the enjoyment of inveterate beggars; but Elizabeth in her turn

disagreeably surprised the lazy inmates and the corrupt governor, and

they had to look out for victims in other quarters.

The building had not lost its privilege of sheltering imposture and

knavery in the last century, having served as an asylum for fraudulent

debtors in Queen Anne's time; it became the darling haunt of such

chaplains as Mr. Lever's Reverend Paul; and in 1754 we find in the

_Public Advertiser_ this precious document put forth by them:

"BY AUTHORITY.--Marriages performed with the utmost privacy,

secrecy, and regularity, at the ancient royal chapel of St. John the

Baptist in the Savoy, where regular and authentic registers have

been kept from the time of the reformation (being two hundred years

and upward) to this day, the expense not being more than one guinea,

the five-shilling stamp included. There are five private ways to

this chapel by land, and two by water."

Wither, the Cromwellian poet, who had a hard time of it after the

restoration, lies in the Savoy. Denman, petitioning for his life, used

this ingenious device: "As long as Wither lives, I shall not be

considered the worst poet in England."

It is not easy to a passenger sauntering or hurrying down the Strand

at this day, admiring the facade of Somerset House, glancing into the

windows of rich shops, elbowing his way through an eager and bustling

crowd, and having his ears stunned by the thundering rumble of cabs,

busses, and wagons, to fancy it once a sandy and marshy road, and the

footpath very disagreeable to the feet, and interfered with by bushes

and thickets. Three water-courses from the northern fields found their

way across it to the river, and these were spanned by three bridges.

The building of Westminster Abbey encouraged the erection of the first

houses along the River-side-way, but the bad state of the road made a

subject for a petition so late as the reign of Edward II.

PUBLISHING IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

Of the coffee-houses in the neighborhood of the Strand and Fleet

street frequented by the witty and the learned from the restoration to

the close of last century, we shall gladly speak if our limits permit.

Meanwhile, being on a literary subject, we must not omit to mention

that the father of {840} Mudie's and all other circulating libraries

in London, was established at 132 Strand, in 1740, by a bookseller

named Bathoe.

Had there been such establishments in Pepys' time, they would have

saved him some money and some trouble. Witness his disappointment

about "Hudibras:"

"26th of September, 1662. To the Wardrobe. Hither come Mr.

Battersby, and we falling into discourse of a new book of drollery

in use, called 'Hudibras,' I would needs go find it out, and met

with it at the Temple; cost me 2_s_. 6_d_. But when I come to read

it, it is so silly an abuse of the presbyter-knight going to the

wars, that I am ashamed at it, and meeting at Mr. Townsend's at

dinner, I sold it him for 18_d_." (The new book of drollery

continuing to be the rage), "February 6th, 1663. To a bookseller's

in the Strand, and there bought 'Hudibras' again. I am resolved once

more to read him, and see whether I can find him an example of wit

or no." (Success very doubtful.) "28th November. To Paul's

Church-yard, and there looked upon the second part of 'Hudibras,'

which I buy not, but borrow to read." (He bought it a few days

after, however.) "The world hath mightily cried up this book, though

it hath not a good liking in me, though I had tried but (by?) two or

three times reading to bring myself to think it witty."

We find him a few days after these researches purchasing "Fuller's

Worthies," the "Cabbala, or Collection of Letters of State," "Les

Delices de Holland," and "Hudibras" again, "now in great fashion for

drollery, though I cannot, I confess, see enough where the wit lies."

Pepys' great acquaintances seem to have discovered this sore spot in

his mental configuration, and to have angered it oftentimes by quoting

"Hudibras" at him, and chuckling over the fun, which, alas, was the

reverse of fun to him.

It was long after the introduction of printing into the country that

bookseller's shops became an institution. At and before the time of

the great fire, St. Paul's Church-yard was the chief bookselling mart.

On the 31st November, 1660, Pepys bought a copy of the play of Henry

IV. in that place, "and so went to the new theatre, and saw it acted,

but my expectation being too great, it did not please me as otherwise

I believe it would, and my having a book did, I believe, spoil it a

little."

Poor Pepys! A leaf out of the scandalous chronicle of the court would

have interested him more than all the wit and wisdom of Shakespeare.

He tells us in his diary how his wife and he laughed a whole evening

over a pamphlet written about the queen.

The fire destroyed thousands of fine works in the Church-yard; and so

much was the value of books increased, that Ricaut's "Turkey," 8_s_.

before the fire, could not be got under 55_s._ after it.

Later in time, Little Britain, from Duck-lane to the Pump, became a

literary quarter. When Benjamin Franklin first visited London he took

lodgings in Little Britain at 3_s_. 6_d_, per week, next door to a

bookseller's, from whom, as circulating libraries were not in vogue,

he purchased volumes, read them, sold them again to the same man, and

bought others.

A great deal of information on bookselling and other subjects that

interested the people near 200 years since, may be obtained from the

perusal of the "Life and Errors of John Dunton," bookseller, an

autobiography. The son of a clergyman in Huntingdonshire, he says he

learned Latin so as to speak it pretty well extempore, but he could

not get on well with the Greek; and this, coupled with an affection

entertained for a "virgin in his father's house," such passion

carefully concealed from its object, completely unhinged the classical

and clerical designs of his father on him. He became a bookseller's

apprentice, and in {841} 1685 a bookseller in his own person. He

speaks very disparagingly of the mere men of letters of his day. He

says, good simple-minded man, that what they got per sheet interested

them more than zeal for the advancement of literature. Very little we

blame the poor fellows, but they were really inexcusable for

pretending to have ransacked the whole Bodleian Library, to have gone

through the fathers, and to have read and digested all human and

ecclesiastical history, while they had never mastered a single page in

"St. Cyprian," nor could tell whether the fathers lived before or

after our Saviour.

That was the golden age of sermons and pamphlets, the latter occupying

the place of our monthlies. Mr. John Dunton's first essay in the

publishing line was "The Sufferings of Christ," by the Rev. Mr.

Doolittle. All the trade took copies in exchange for their own books,

a feature peculiar to the business 160 years since. John throve and

took a helpmate to himself, not Mrs. Mary Saunders, the virgin before

mentioned. The beautiful Rachel Seaton, the innocent Sarah Day, the

religious Sarah Briscow, had successively paled the image of the

preceding lady in the mirror of his rather susceptible heart, and at

the end he became the fond husband of Miss Annesley, daughter of a

nonconformist divine. The happy pair always called each other by the

endearing and poetic names of _Iris_ and _Philaret_, but this tender

attachment did not prevent Philaret from leaving Iris alone, and

making excursions to Ireland, to America, and to Holland, and delaying

in those regions for long periods. These separations and distant

wanderings did not tend to make our bookseller's old age comfortable

and independent.

Dunton has left an interesting account of most of the then eminent

booksellers in the three kingdoms. He says that in general they were

not much better than knaves and atheists. He also gave information of

the writers he employed, the licensers of the press, etc. It would

appear that the publishing business of the time was in a very vigorous

condition. The shoals of pamphlets satisfied the literary hunger of

those to whom, if they lived in the nineteenth century, _Athenaeums_

and _Examiners_, _Chambers's Journals_ and _All the Year Rounds_,

would be as necessary as atmospheric air. The chief booksellers of

that day, if not to be compared with continental Alduses or Stephenses

or Elzevirs, were men of good literary taste and much information. Of

the booksellers amber-preserved in the "Dunciad," Dunton mentions only

Lintot and Tonson. The disreputable Curll was not known in his day.

This genius, embalmed in the hearts of the rascally paper-men of

Holywell street, being once condemned for a vile publication, and

promoted to the pillory, cunningly averted the wrath of the mob by a

plentiful distribution of handbills, in which he stated his offence to

be a pamphlet complimentary to the memory of good Queen Anne. Edward

Cave, in starting the _Gentleman's Magazine_, 31st January, 1731, gave

healthy employment to many a pamphleteer, though he diminished the

number of separate pamphlets.

BEN JONSON AND LINCOLN'S INN.

Our fancy to speak of books, and their writers and sellers, has led us

aside from the area marked out by Mr. Thornbury for his own

explorations, so we must return to bounds, within which we find

Lincoln's-Inn Fields. These inns were originally established as places

of entertainment, where pilgrims and other travellers were hospitably

attended by the monks. The town houses of noblemen were also called

inns, just as in Paris they were styled hostels. The inn in question

derives its name from the Earl of Lincoln, Henry de Lacy, to whom it

was granted by Edward I. Many eminent men have used chambers in

Lincoln's Inn, since it became the resort {842} of legal students. Sir

Thomas More had chambers there, and there Dr. Donne, the poetical

divine, attempted to study law in his seventeenth year. Dr. Tillotson

preached to the lawyers (with what effect is not told) in 1663, our

own Archbishop Ussher in 1647. Sir Mathew Hale was at first a wild

student of Lincoln's Inn, till reclaimed by the sight of a drunkard

seized by a fit. Shaftesbury; Ashmole, the antiquary; Prynne, of

pillory notoriety; Secretary Thurloe; Sir John Denham; George Wither,

omitting mention of modern celebrities, all endeavored to penetrate

the mysteries of law and equity in this long-enduring institution.

One of the most remarkable, though not the most reputable, of lawyers

connected with Lincoln's Inn was Sir Edmund Saunders, who gave his aid

to the crown while endeavoring, in 1683, to overthrow the charter of

London. The following extract concerning him is taken from Granger:

"Sir Edmund Saunders was originally a strolling beggar about the

streets, without known parents or relations. He came often to beg

scraps at Clement's Inn, where he was taken notice of for his uncommon

sprightliness; and as he expressed a strong inclination to learn to

write, one of the attorney's clerks taught him, and soon qualified him

for a hackney writer. He took all opportunities of improving himself

by reading such books as he borrowed from his friends; and in the

course of a few years became an able attorney and a very eminent

counsel. His practice in the Court of King's Bench was exceeded by

none. His art and cunning was equal to his knowledge, and he gained

many a cause by laying snares. If he was detected he was never put out

of countenance, but evaded the matter with a jest, which he had always

at hand. He was much employed by the king (Charles II.) against the

city of London in the business of the _Quo Warranto_. His person was

as heavy and _ungain_ as his wit was alert and sprightly. He is said

to have been a mere lump of morbid flesh. The smell from him was so

offensive that people held their noses when he came into court. One of

his jests on such occasions was, 'That none could say he wanted issue,

for he had no less than nine on his back.'"

The literary students of the inn, as they sit in their lonely

chambers, or converse with their comrades, Arthur Pendennis and Mr.

Warrington, in the pleasant grounds, delight to fancy brave old Ben

Jonson helping to raise the wall on the Chancery lane side, and

reciting a passage from Homer. Whether Sutton or Camden sent him back

to college to pursue his studies is not so certain. His fighting

single-handed in Flanders in the sight of the two armies, and the

subsequent carrying away of the _"Spolia Opima"_ of his foeman, were

in strict accordance with the practice of the heroes of his studies.

His college life and his deeds in foreign fields were all over in his

twenty-third year, 1597, when we find him a player and writer for the

stage in London; his critics asserting that he walked the boards as if

he were treading mortar. Poor Ben, with a countenance compared to a

rotten russet apple, and described by himself as remarkable for a

"mountain belly and a rocky face," was equally ragged in temper.

Quarreling with a brother actor, he killed him in a duel in Hogsden

Fields, and was brought very near the gallows-foot for his non-command

of temper. He had not the gentle character nor the expansive intellect

of his friend, the "Gentle Shakespeare," nor did his characters

embrace entire humanity, nor did he possess the soaring and

far-seizing imagination of his brother poet and player, but he more

closely pictured the modes of society in which they moved, the social

and politic features of the locality and the era; all those outward

manifestations, in fact, that distinguish the intercourse, and the

morals, and the character of this or that locality or time, from those

of {843} its neighbors. Hence a better idea can be had of the scenic

features of Old London, and the costumes, the idioms, and usages of

its people at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the

seventeenth century, from the literary remains of Ben Jonson than from

those of William Shakespeare. Aubrey remarked that "Shakespeare's

comedies would remain wit as long as the English tongue is understood;

while our present writers reflect so much upon particular persons and

coxcombeties, that twenty years hence they will not be understood."

London was Ben Jonson's world; its people, such as they appeared to

him, the whole human race. The humorists that he knew were reproduced

with the utmost truth--and the class-modes and manners that came under

his observation were sketched from and to the life. There was local

truth of costume and character, but little generalization.

Illustrative instances abound in all his plays and poems. In

Elizabeth's time, Finsbury Fields were covered with trees and

windmills. So we find Master Stephen ("Every Man in his Humor"), who

dwells at Hogsden (Hoxton), despising the archers of Finsbury and the

citizens that come a-ducking to Islington Ponds. "The Strand was the

chief road for ladies to pass through in their coaches, and there

_Lafoole_ in the 'Silent Woman' has a lodging to watch when ladies are

gone to the china houses or the exchange, that he may meet them by

chance, and give them presents. The general character of the streets

before the fire is not forgotten. In 'The Devil is an Ass' the lady

and her lover speak closely and gently from the windows of two

contiguous buildings. Such are a few of the examples of the local

proprieties which constantly turn up in Jonson's dramas."

To those who accuse rare Ben of intemperate habits it is useless to

object that he lashed intemperance and the other vices of his time as

severely as the most rigid moralist could; there are too many

instances extant of the sons of Satan correcting sin in their speeches

and writings. However, the club at the Mermaid in Friday street to

which he belonged, consisted of such men as we cannot suppose to be of

intemperate habits, nor willing to cherish a noted drunkard. For Sir

Walter Raleigh, Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden, Cotton,

Carew, Martin, Donne, flashes of wit, and sallies of imagination, and

touches of genial humor, had more charms then beastly wallowing in

liquor. Hear what Jonson himself says in his invitation to a friend to

supper where canary, his darling liquor, was to flow:

"Of this we will sup free but moderately,

Nor shall our cups make any guilty men,

But at our parting we will be as when

We innocently met. No simple word

That shall be uttered at our mirthful board

Shall make us sad next morning, or affright

The liberty that we'll enjoy to-night."

It was to the middle aisle of the old cathedral of St. Paul's that

Jonson and others like him resorted to obtain such wayward and

grotesque characters as would take the attention of an audience. It

was the favorite lounge at the time of coxcombs, bullies, adventurers,

and cut-purses. Here a new man, wishing to be in the height of

fashion, would bring his tailor, and set him to mark the garb of the

foremost gallant in vogue. Country squires anxious for a varnishing of

courtly polish, would be found there observing the dress and demeanor

of the people of fashion, and afterward flinging away the produce of

their good lands in entertainments shared with these envied darlings

of the courtly goddess. _Captain Bobadil_, we may be certain, was met

among the crowd at Paul's. Here it was that all those niceties of the

mode which crop up through his plays were observed. In the "Midas" of

Lily, quoted by Charles Knight in his "London," are found collected

several of these distinctive marks of the courtier _comme il faut:_

"How will you be trimmed, sir? Will you have your beard like a spade

{844} or a bodkin? A pent-house on your upper lip, or an alley on your

chin? A low curl on your head like a bull, or dangling locks like a

spaniel? Your mustachioes sharp at the end like shoemakers' awls, or

hanging down to your mouth like goat's flakes? Your love-locks

wreathed like a silken twist, or shaggy, to fall on your shoulder?"

Few dramatists in his or our days would venture to speak so fearlessly

to his audience as honest Ben Jonson:

"If any here chance to behold himself,

Let him not dare to challenge me of wrong;

For if he shame to have his follies known,

First he should shame to act 'em. My strict hand

Was made to seize on vice, and with a gripe,

Squeeze out the humor of such spongy souls

As lick up every idle vanity."

Our bard was not left to struggle with the hardships of an ordinary

theatrical career. He was employed to compose the plots and verses of

the stately and splendid masques in which Elizabeth, and Anne of

Denmark, and her "Royal Doggie" delighted. Had space permitted, we

should gladly have quoted some of the verses and stage directions of

these court shows. Among the rest is an Irish masque in which Dennish,

Donnell, Dermott, and Patrick come in their long glibbs and shaggy

mantles to present their compliments to King _Yamish_, and

congratulate him on the marriage of some lord or other. Having been

roughly received by the janitors, they sounded their grievance aloud:

"_Don_.--Ish it te fashion to beate te imbashaters here? and knock

'hem o' te head phit te phoite stick?"

"_Der_.--Ant make ter meshage run out a ter mouthsh before tey shpeake

vit te king?"

They announce their intention to dance as well as that of their

masters, who as yet stand outside:

"_Don_.--But tey musht eene come, and daunch i' teyr mantles, and show

tee how teye can foot te _fading_ and te _fadow_, and te phip a

dunboyne I trow."

"_Der_.--Tey will fight for tee, King Yamish, and for my mishtress

tere." [Footnote: 203]

[Footnote 203: As out of all late or still living writers, not

natives of Ireland, there are not three who quote our

peasant-pronunciation correctly, so it is more than probable that

Jonson, acute as his observation was, mistook the pronunciation of

his own day.]

After much soft-sawder about their love and their loyalty to Shamus,

six men and boys danced to bagpipes and other rude music. Then the

Irish gentlemen danced in their mantles to the sound of harps; and one

of them called on a bard to celebrate the fame of him who was to make

Erin the world's wonder for peace and plenty:

"Advance, immortal bard; come up and view

The gladdening face of that great king, in whom

So many prophecies of thine are knit.

This is that James, of which long since thou sungst,

Should end our country's most unnatural broils."

Would he had done so! Ben was not so blind but that he could spy out

some little defects in Solomon and his queen. As he could not apply

his talents to their correction, he recompensed himself in unmerciful

handling of court vices. Toward the end of James's reign he enjoyed a

competent fortune, and owned an extensive library. Distress and

illness succeeded; but Charles I. being made aware of his forlorn

condition, granted him an additional pension, and that tierce of

canary, whose successors have been drained by all poet-laureates since

his day. A blue marble stone lies over his remains in the north aisle

of Westminster Abbey. The epitaph, RARE BEN JONSON, was cut in the

flag at the order and charge of Jack Young (afterward knighted).

Eighteen-pence requited the sculptor.

Whether we have improved on the feats of artists of another kind, in

Queen Anne's reign, is questionable. At Bartholomew Fair, in the reign

of that good-natured sovereign, a girl, of ten years, walked backward

up a sloping rope, driving a wheelbarrow behind her. {845} Scaramouch

danced on the rope with two children, and a dog, in a wheelbarrow, and

a duck on his head. Our authority leaves us in some doubt as to the

relative positions of man, children, dog, duck, and wheel-barrow, and

whether the duck took position on head of dog or man. The eighteenth

century was inaugurated by an intelligent tiger picking the feathers

from a fowl in such style as to elicit the hearty applause of a

discerning public. Continental sovereigns of our own time prefer the

stirring spectacle of men and horses gored by sharp horned bulls. The

tiger merely removed the feathers from the skin of the dead fowl; the

viscera of the living quadruped follow the thrust of the bull's horn.

------

Translated from Etudes Religieuses, Historiques, et Litteraires, par

des Peres de la Compagnie de Jesus.

THE ORIGIN AND MUTABILITY OF SPECIES.

_Origines et Transformations de l'homme et des autres etres. lre

partie. Par_ TREMAUX. Paris: Hachette. 1865.

Anthropology is a recent science, and yet its votaries have produced

numerous treatises. The delicate questions which it raises have given

birth to various and contradictory opinions. The most important

problem of this science is that which relates to the origin of man. At

what epoch did man for the first time tread the surface of our globe?

How did he appear? What cause produced him? Two first class scholars,

Humboldt and Bompland, said, not long ago, "The general question of

the origin of the inhabitants of a continent is beyond the limits

prescribed to history, perhaps it is not even a philosophical

question." Bolder than they, the anthropologists put a question a

thousand times more complex, as to the origin of the whole human race,

and they do not hesitate to believe that, sooner or later, science

will be able to answer it with certainty. As to the present, we may

say, _Quot capita, tot sensus;_ the most opposite ideas divide the

world, and _it is the main discord which pervades science._ These last

words are those of M. Tremaux. To remedy this confusion, the learned

traveller puts forth a new idea, which in his opinion should, in

throwing light on all the aspects of the question, cause the discord

to vanish; trace the way we ought to follow; and at no very distant

day arrive at a complete solution. It remains to be seen whether these

happy auguries will be realized, or if, on the contrary, the theory of

M. Tremaux, added to the others, will not have the fatal effect of

increasing the confusion it would abolish.

The opinions relating to the origin of man may be reduced to three. In

the first place, we will state that of the monogenists, who behold in

all the human types scattered over the world only races and varieties

of the same species, and regard mankind as descending, or at least as

capable of descending, from a single couple primitively sprung from

the hands of the Creator. This opinion is evidently conformable to the

Bible narrative; this reflection will not escape the sincere

Christian, and we must make it at the risk of exciting the pity or

indignation of certain positivists, who reproach us with bringing into

scientific questions prejudices and arguments which are

extra-scientific.

{846}

The opinion of the polygenists is diametrically opposed to the

preceding. According to them, the typical differences which exist

between the races of men are so decided, so profound, that they could

not be the result of the conditions of existence; these differences

are then original; men, instead of belonging to a single zoological

species, form a genera or even a family, the bimanous family;

community of origin is then impossible, and the account in Genesis

must be considered as legendary.

Lastly, a third school separates itself entirely from the preceding,

and considers the question under discussion as a phase of the general

question--the stability of the species. The naturalists connected with

this school regard the species as something essentially changeable.

They deduce this opinion from the examples of the endless varieties of

forms which our domestic animals above all others present. It is

possible, by known processes, to obtain, after several generations,

products so different from the primitive type, that to judge them by

the form only we should believe in the existence of a new species; the

continued fecundity between the two varieties alone attesting the

specific unity of both types. Would it not be possible, by new

methods, or by a better employment of the means already known, to

arrive at such a complete transformation that the fecundity between

the new and the primitive species should cease to exist, or at least

cease to be unlimited? We should have thus obtained a novel species by

a simple transformation due to the forces of nature. The result which

man might obtain at the end of several generations, nature, left to

itself, would inevitably arrive at, after a longer or shorter time,

according as circumstances should be more or less favorable. This is

admitted by Lamark, and the two Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire; it is admitted

also by the English naturalist Darwin. The latter regards all animals

actually existing as descending from four or five progenitors; an

equal number would suffice for plants. He even adds that, guided by

analogy, he would willingly admit that, all organized beings, plants

and animals, descend from one single primordial type, and that man

should constitute no exception to the general laws; he springs from

the ape or some extinct type, and thence from the primitive.

It is to this last school that M. Tremaux belongs: the title of his

book sufficiently shows it. He concedes the variability and the

transformation of the species; but separates himself distinctly from

Darwin relative to the causes which produce this variation.

M. Tremaux' book may be summed up entirely in the statement of the

great law of the improvement of beings which is printed in large

letters on the front page of the first part: "The improvement of

creatures is or becomes proportionate to the degree of elaboration of

the soil on which they live! And the soil is in general elaborated in

proportion as it belongs to a more recent geological formation." To

prove this law, and to deduce from it every possible consequence, is

the object of the book.

The first requisite in judging a work is to understand its aim or end.

Thus we have endeavored to seize the sense and the bearing which the

author attaches to the great law he thinks he has discovered. Such a

soil gives such a product, we are told. We understand this when the

direct fruits of the earth are in question that is, of the vegetables

which draw directly from the earth the principles which should

assimilate them. But as to animals, what influence can the soil

exercise over them? This is what M. Tremaux should have explained, and

what he has forgotten to tell us. Must we understand that the land, by

virtue of its chemical and mineralogical composition, possesses a

mysterious action of an unknown nature, determining according to the

case the improvement or degeneracy of the species of {847} animals?

Such is in fact the meaning which many passages seem to attribute to

this law. Thus, after having shown that the causes generally assigned

cannot explain those typical changes which nature presents, the author

adds: "By the action of cross-breeding, food, and climate alone, we

shall meet with contradictions at every step. With the action of the

sun, the whole globe exhibits the same effects." Since it is neither

through food nor by climate that the sun acts, it is by some

mysterious agency; and behold us thus, in the nineteenth century,

thrown back upon occult causes. May we be permitted to observe that

this is not scientific?

Entirely engaged in proving by facts the law which must serve as a

oasis to his system, M. Tremaux seems never to have thought of

explaining to himself the manner of the earth's action. Thus, beside

numerous places which clearly imply an immediate action, others could

be quoted which only attribute to the soil an indirect action due to

the aliments drawn from it. For example, _apropos_ of cretinism, we

read: "This scourge is above all endemical, because in fact those

persons who can profit by the _products_ of another soil feel in a

lesser degree the unfavorable results of that condition." And further

on: "To avoid living permanently on a soil which produces cretinism is

the sole remedy, or rather the only palliative, against its pernicious

effects on man. It is best to abandon it completely, or at least _to

make use of products other than those destined to feed its

inhabitants._" In brief, what is necessary to bring humanity to

perfection? "Firstly, To choose carefully those lands whose products

are more directly intended for man. Secondly, To have recourse to

every proper means of improving the land. Thirdly, Planting with

suitable trees those lands which are unfavorable to the growth of

human food. Fourthly, To subject to agriculture those forest lands

which occupy a favorable soil."

These passages appear clear that it is not of itself, but by its

productions, and also doubtless through its climate, the soil acts on

man and on the animals. This explanation is more philosophical than

novel.

Between the monogenists and the polygenists, the question reduces

itself very nearly to this: Can beings differing so much as the

Europeans and the Bushmen, the Hottentot and the Australian, descend

from the same ancestors? No, reply the polygenists; for the

differences are greater than those which characterize certain species.

In order to meet this objection, the monogenists have had recourse to

what is called the middle theory, and to that of the cross-breeds. The

whole of the external circumstances under which the representatives of

a species exist, constitute what is called the middle or medium, to

which monogenists, supporting themselves on undoubted facts, attribute

the power of gradually changing the medium type of a species. The

crossing of many types thus modified will give birth to new forms,

all, however, belonging to one common kind.

Where do we find the difference between this middle theory and the law

of M. Tremaux? In nothing but a greater or less importance attributed

to the influence of soil; and even this difference is more apparent

than real. The _fundamental law_ so understood--and it appears to us

hard to understand it otherwise--constitutes no novel idea or theory;

it is nothing more than a variation of the classic theory of the

influence of media.

How is this law proved? It is impossible for us to follow the author

in the development of his arguments. He gives proof in them of rare

learning, and of profound and varied knowledge of ethnography. We

observe the marked predilection of M. Tremaux for the soil of Africa,

which he has ably described in special works. But when we have

finished reading him, and would give an account of his arguments and

of their value, we do {848} not find in them all the elements of

conviction. We know that many writers have expressed an opinion very

different from ours, but even should we be deemed too exacting, we

must acknowledge that an attentive perusal has not convinced us. There

are no doubt remarkable coincidences in the work; but they are not of

a sufficiently trenchant character, and, moreover, most of the facts

may be explained otherwise than by the influence of soil. Let us give

some examples. "We cannot meet with a single instance of a

civilization which has developed itself, nor even been maintained in

cases of emigration, under adverse geological conditions." Nothing is

more natural, in fact. Why should emigrants on the way of civilization

settle preferentially in unfertile countries? For it must not be

forgotten that what are here called geological conditions refer simply

to the fertility of the soil.

Another argument extensively developed is drawn from the persistence

of the same types in the same countries. After having examined Africa

and Europe from this point of view, the author concludes thus: "In

short, what have the migrations from the East peopling the West

produced? They have created Hellenes in Greece, Romans in Rome, Gauls

in France, and children of Albion in England." Must we conclude, from

this persistence, that the conquering races have in each generation

felt the influence of the soil, so as to resemble after some centuries

the former populations? Such is the reasoning of M. Tremaux. But the

same fact is appealed to by polygenists, who interpret it in a

different manner. According to them, this persistence proves that the

conquering race has always been absorbed by the indigenous; and they

do not fail to conclude from it that between these two races

illimitable fecundity, the specific character of unity, is hardly ever

realized.

We read at the same page: "If we pass over other continents, the same

results strike us on all sides. On certain points of Australia and

America, the English type is attached from the very first generation."

This fact is stated by some naturalists, but it is denied by others.

We can say as much of the pretended transformation of negroes. Messrs.

Reiset, Lyell, and E. Reclus tell us that they are transformed in

about one hundred and fifty years to approach the white type by one

quarter of the distance which separated them from it. But American

anthropologists, who are nearly all polygenists, resolutely affirm the

contrary.

Thus we see the facts are difficult to ascertain, and still more

difficult to interpret. It is one of the grand difficulties of

anthropology. We rarely succeed in agreeing about the facts

themselves, which only happens in some exceptional cases supported by

perfectly exact statistics; and many facts are not of a nature to be

consigned to the columns of an official register. Even in a case where

the facts are placed beyond doubt, they are generally of a nature to

be variously interpreted, and every one with preconceived ideas

tortures them at his pleasure, and does not fail to find in them a

confirmation of his theories. M. Tremaux is so filled with his idea

that he finds proofs in support of it even in politics; and

reciprocally, does not hesitate, in the name of geology, to counsel

princes on the manner of governing their subjects. For example, we

remember the war carried on in 1848 by Hungary against Austria. At

that time Transylvania withdrew from the common cause and rallied to

the Austrian government. The emperor Francis Joseph rejoiced at this

result, hoping to easily propitiate the Croats; but he experienced

from them an unexpected resistance, and their assembly of notables

declared that Croatia should continue to share the fate of Hungary.

Upon this M. Tremaux says: "This would appear paradoxical if we

considered only geographical positions, but consult {849} geology and

all this will appear perfectly rational, since Transylvania reposes

like Austria upon a great surface of old ground; whilst Hungary,

Croatia, and Dalmatia stand upon more recent layers." We leave our

readers to appreciate this.

The author adds: "As to Venetia, not only is its soil of recent

formation, but it possesses a distinct and very different nationality;

thus each one recognizes its unalterable tendencies."

What caused the sanguinary war which has just desolated America? Why,

because the Southerns, dwelling on virgin soil, fought for their

independence and would not be governed by men from old lands. And

reflecting that the new lands of the South are more fitted to improve

the races which cultivate them, M. Tremaux fears not to predict,

notwithstanding the unforeseen victory of the North, that "in the

future the South will govern the North, if it be not separated from

it."

As to Ireland and Poland, it is again in the name of geology that our

author defends their independence. Not hoping to obtain this result,

he at least gives the princes who govern them wise counsels for their

guidance.

Let us come to the scientific conclusions which the author pretends to

draw from his principle in favor of natural history in general and of

anthropology in particular. Since the soil acts so energetically in

the modification of types, it is evident that the species ought to be

essentially variable. Let a race be found isolated on a favorable

ground, without any communication with the rest of mankind, and the

modifications will be produced, transmitted, and increased in every

generation; and, after a longer or shorter time, the new type will be

so different from the old one, that illimitable fecundity will no

longer exist between them; there will only be one species the more.

Transformations in reality are not made as rapidly as might be

believed, because the isolation which we have supposed never exists.

It thence follows that the crossings with the primitive race, or even

with a race on the road to degeneracy on an imperfect soil, constantly

check the effect of the superior soil. At length there is an

equilibrium between these two causes, and then there appears a medium

type, which preserves its identity so long as the circumstances remain

the same. This necessarily happens in a period of several thousand

years, like our historic period. But if we take in at a glance several

thousand ages, we shall understand that the geological changes

effected by time on the surface of the world will cause the action of

the soil to prevail over the influence of crossings, in such a manner

as to modify slowly but progressively the types and the species.

Starting from these principles, what does M. Tremaux require in order

to explain the actual state of creation? A simple _primordial cell_ or

_utricle_, the most simply organized being, whether animal or

vegetable matters little. If this being so simple existed at the epoch

which geologists term the _Silurian period_, it is many millions of

ages past. Since then the surface of the globe has been constantly

modified and ameliorated, life has been constantly developed, and form

been brought nearer to perfection. It is thus that even in the most

elementary beings nature has arrived at the numerous and complicated

forms which we know. In this manner man at his appointed hour appeared

on earth, where he strove to improve himself and is striving in that

direction still. M. Tremaux does not exactly admit that we are

descended from apes. No; but he contends that both man and ape sprang

from one common source, which has now disappeared; and that whilst the

quadruman, placed under unfavorable geological conditions, has

suffered from its inevitable influence and been degraded, man has on

the contrary, under happier influences, developed himself, and is

become able, by {850} his intelligent activity, to combat those

external influences. Hence his actual superiority--hence his future

progress.

A serious objection here presents itself. Does the influence of the

soil perfect the _instinct_ of animals as well as their bodies? Has _it_

given man that intelligence which, better than all zoological

characters, especially distinguishes him from the brute creation? M.

Tremaux meets this difficulty with a reply which might have been taken

from Nysten's dictionary. In his comparison "of man with the ape," he

tells us "that M. Gratiolet divides the subject into two sections, the

one referring to organization, the other to faculties. He concedes the

resemblances of the first, he refuses to acknowledge those of the

second, without observing that _these differences in faculties_ are

only the consequence of a greater or less degree of organic

development." This philosophical heresy does not slip by chance from

the writer's pen; we find it repeated in several places, nearly in the

same terms. Moreover, in refuting another passage from Gratiolet, he

says: "I am astonished that Gratiolet does not recognize in instinct a

rudiment of intelligence; in the constructions of the beaver, in the

nests of birds, in the cells of bees, elements of sculpture and of

design, etc."

M. Tremaux divides the opinions of Gratiolet into two; the first part

is serious, and is that of the learned anatomist; the second is that

of sentiment, wherein he speaks by the same title as the philosophers

_who develop the void of their entities_. This contempt for philosophy

well explains the strange ideas of our author about the intelligence

of man and the souls of brutes. To see nothing between both but a

difference of organization is not philosophical. A little metaphysics

would spoil nothing, and it really does not require a strong dose to

behold the abyss which separates human intelligence, capable of

seizing the abstract and the absolute as well as the concrete and the

continent, from that of brutes, acting by instinct, able only at the

most to combine some sensations, without ever having any general

ideas.

We think we have now given a pretty exact epitome of M. Tremaux'

ideas. The whole work rests upon an ill defined principle, which, in

the sense in which we have understood it, the only one which appears

to us to be feasible, cannot be considered new. This principle,

although true in a certain sense and within certain limits, is not to

be proved irrefragable, as the basis of any theory should be. The

consequences which are sought to be drawn from the premises are not

necessarily contained in them, and many bear not the seal of a

wholesome philosophy. We shall perhaps be thought a little too severe

upon this work. We think we should be so, especially as the author is

in many respects recommendable. _Apropos_ of the question of species,

M. Tremaux writes: "M. Kourens has his merits, but they lie elsewhere;

it is in his researches on the periosteum and on the vital cord that

he acquires them." We may be allowed to use the same expressions and

to say: "M. Tremaux deserves well, but not herein; his actual labors

on ethnography and archaeology are very good. Read the account of his

travels to Soudan and into Asia Minor, and you will acknowledge him a

man of talent and undoubted science. But as to his theoretical ideas

on the question of the species, he must not reckon upon them to

support his reputation." Some journals may waste their incense upon

him; the _Constitutional_ may exclaim: "The veil has been lifted... a

new law is about to unite all disputants. . the arguments of M.

Tremaux abound, and we feel only an embarrassment in choosing."_

L'Independance Beige_ will join the chorus. Even the _Moniteur_ will

grant its approval. But all this is no set-off against the opinions of

the learned, and M. Tremaux knows very well that our great naturalists

do not {851} look upon his ideas as acceptable, or his arguments as

conclusive.

It will be observed that we have not spoken of the Bible, although its

narrative appears compromised by the transformation theory. We believe

it to be useless to mix up theology with scientific debates, at least,

when it is not directly attacked. Now, M. Tremaux is far from

attacking revelation; he does not believe his ideas reconcileable with

Genesis; he never speaks of the Bible narrative but with the greatest

respect. Hence we believe it advisable to show great tolerance toward

sciences which are still in their infancy, which require their elbows

free for development, and which must wander a little in unknown

countries, free to make a false step from time to time. It is thus

they will progress and arrive at the truth.

We will add one last remark on the address of the anthropologists. The

origin of man concerns historians as much as naturalists; for this

reason we should not, in works of this character, neglect historic

monuments. Of all those monuments, books are the surest. Even in

abstracting the special value which the Bible possesses as an inspired

volume, it is not the less true that it is a document which must be

considered, and which as a written document has an incontestably safer

meaning than all the fossils in the world.

For a higher reason we should beware of all theories or hypotheses

which do not agree with the sacred text. The Bible no doubt is not

intended to instruct us in the secrets of the natural order, and it is

perhaps for that that we find in it so little relating to these

subjects; but the Holy Ghost, who inspired the sacred writers, could

not have dictated to them errors, and every assertion which would be

contrary to the _clear_ and _certain_ sense of a passage in it should,

for this reason, be rejected as untrue. When the sense is obscure or

doubtful, which is nearly always the case in passages relating to

physics, we should, we think, be very cautious, and it is prudent for

the learned to be on their guard, for fear of falling into very

numerous and grave errors.

------

From The Victoria Magazine.

WISDOM BY EXPERIENCE.

What a shame! What abominable interference! What cruelty! What

tyranny! These and many other strong expressions of the same kind

proceeded from a collection of rose-stocks planted ready for budding.

They were all fiercely angry and indignant, and first one and then

another uttered some exclamation of disgust, and then all joined in a

chorus of maledictions on the gardener who had done them so much

injury. It was in the month of June that their feelings were so much

excited, just when the sap was most active, and they were throwing out

their most luxuriant shoots. I don't know how they went on when the

gardener first dug them up out of the hedges, and cut away all their

side branches and left only a single straight stem. If they did not

make a fight for it then, it must have been because their sap was all

dried up, and their leaves had fallen off, and they were in low

spirits, and did not much care what became of them. But even then I

don't think they yielded without a struggle, and I have no doubt there

was a good deal of scratching and dragging back, {852} and a great

show of independence and sullenness. But they had not the spirits to

keep up resistance, and the gardener did not give them much chance,

for he pruned them close, and planted them in rows just far enough

apart to prevent the possibility of their having much intercourse, or

of the evil disposed corrupting the more docile. But it was different

in June, when, as I said, the sap was active, and their branches began

to grow out on all sides, so that they could reach each other and even

take a sly pinch at the gardener or any of his friends who happened to

come near. And the particular irritation now was because the gardener

had discovered how wild they were becoming, and set resolutely about

restraining them. First of all he cut off all the suckers that grew

from the roots, and the lower shoots, leaving only those that grew at

the crown of the stock, and then he put them all straight up, and

would not let them loll about or hang over the path--a habit they had

got into which was very disagreeable to those who passed by. And if

they would not stand upright without, he fastened them to pieces of

board let into the ground. This was a great grievance, but I think

they most rebelled at having their lower boughs cut off, for if left

to themselves they would have spread and puffed themselves out in a

most ridiculous way.

Now it so happened that Madame Boll, a stock of a former year which

had been budded, but left in its place and not removed with the rest

into the flower-garden, heard their exclamations of anger and

impatience, and having perhaps gone through some such phase of feeling

herself, and thus gained wisdom by experience, she thought she would

try if she could put their case to them in a better light; so she took

advantage of a little lull in the storm, and said in a gentle,

ladylike tone,

"My young friends, I am very sorry to see you so unhappy; but perhaps

if you will hear what I have got to say, you might think better of

your present position."

"Well," said Miss Strong, who was tossing her long arms about in a

very excited way, only luckily she was out of reach, "if you are going

to take the gardener's part, and preach patience and submission, and

that sort of thing, I can tell you you had better keep your remarks to

yourself, or if I can get at you, I'll spoil that neat head-dress of

yours, which, let me tell you, is not half as pretty as hundreds in

the hedgerows, or as ours would have been, if we had been left to our

own devices as we were last year;" which tirade she ended with a

scornful laugh in which many of the others joined.

But little Miss Wild-Rose, who was nearer, said quietly,

"Perhaps it would be as well to hear what is said on the other side;

particularly as, it is too hot to go on screaming and abusing people

who don't seem to care about it;" and as several of the others were of

the same opinion, Madame Boll took courage, and said what was in her

mind.

"Perhaps it may give you more confidence in me to know, that when I

was first placed here I had many of the same thoughts and feelings

that you appear to have. I did not know why I was taken out of the

hedgerow, and trimmed and restrained, and not allowed to have my own

way; and I confess I thought it very hard. Particularly I was

indignant, as no doubt you will be when the time comes (for you have

still a good deal to undergo which you know nothing about at

present),--I was, I say, very indignant when the gardener cut a slit

in the only shoot which he had left me, and which was growing very

luxuriant, and I was quite proud of it; and introduced a meagre little

bud from another tree, and made me nourish and strengthen it, though I

knew that my own shoot would suffer by it; and so it turned out; for

after a while, when the bud began to grow, he cut away {853} my

natural shoot altogether, and left only that which had been inserted."

Here Miss Strong broke in.

"You were very tame to submit to it. I would have banged and twisted

about till I had got rid of it some way or other."

"Ah!" said Madame Boll, "we shall see; you are stronger and more

resolute than I was. All I know is, I could not help myself."

"Cowardly creature!" muttered Miss Strong, scornfully. But Madame Boll

resumed:

"I soon got used to the change, and gradually began to take an

interest in the bud I had adopted; and though of course Miss Strong

may affect to despise its beauty, I can assure you that most people

have a different opinion."

Whereupon, Madame Boll gave herself airs, and coquettishly moved aside

a leaf or two, and displayed a most perfect and symmetrical rose.

"But," said Miss Wild-Rose and her party all in a breath, "do you mean

that we shall all bear roses like that?"

"Not all, certainly, possibly none of you exactly like, for there are

hundreds of varieties, and many of them much more beautiful. It will

be just as the gardener fancies, though he is generally guided in his

selection by the habit and vigor of the stock, I daresay he will give

Miss Strong, who is so energetic, a bud of Gloire de Dijon, or Anna de

Diesbach, and you, being weaker, will have Devoniensis, or Niphetos."

Miss Strong gave a scornful toss at this, but did not vouchsafe any

remark, though I think she felt rather complimented, and the others

began to muse, since it must be so, what rose they would be likely to

have, and which would become them best.

A little time after this it turned out just as Madame Boll had

said--the gardener came one morning and began to bud the stocks, and

just as he was preparing Miss Wild-Rose for the operation, a young

lady came by, and asked what bud he intended for that one, for, she

said, "I want a Devoniensis, and I think it would just suit it."

"I have got a Devoniensis bud here," he said, "and will put it in."

"And that tall one I think I should like for Gloire de Dijon."

"I will try," he said, "but somehow I am half afraid I shall have some

trouble with it, for though vigorous it is rather awkward, and the

thorns are very spiteful. To say the truth, I am half afraid of it,

and have been leaving it till the last."

"But what," said the lady, "is this in the corner? Surely it is Madame

Boll; and such a beauty! What is it doing here?"

"To say the truth, ma'am, I overlooked it when I planted the others

out, and now it must remain where it is for another year."

"Well," she said, "I hope the others will take pattern from it and do

as well."

"So," said Madame Boll, after they were gone, "that accounts for my

being left here: I must confess I was a little mortified, for I

thought it was a slight; but I generally find, if we wait awhile,

everything comes right in the end, and possibly my being here has done

you some good, or given you comfort; and if so, instead of regret, I

ought to feel pleasure. But now, my young friends, I will tell you a

conversation I overheard one day, between the young lady who was here

just now and another, which your foolish behavior a short time ago

brought to my mind. They were talking about the children in the

school, and how difficult it was to make them feel the advantage of

being submissive and conforming to their rules. They said they were so

anxious to have their own way, and seemed to think it was a pleasure

to their teachers to thwart them, or make them do what they did not

wish, and not that it was intended for their good; and if their

teachers thought they paid too much attention to their dress, {854}

and wished to be smart, and wear flowers and feathers, when they ought

rather to be adorning their minds, and beautifying their tempers, and

enriching their understanding, they were ready to cry out, as you did

just now, 'What tyranny!' 'How interfering!' 'Why can't they let us

dress as we like?' But what they were particularly complaining about

on that occasion, was that the children would persist in wearing hoops

which stuck out their clothes, and made them take up twice as much

room as they otherwise would have done. For, it seems, the benches

where they sat were only large enough for them if they sat close

together, which they could not do with hoops on, so they were obliged

to tell them they could not take them into the school if they did not

lay aside their hoops, and some of them were foolish enough to say

that they would not come to school if they were not allowed to wear

hoops. Now, it struck me, this was just like your folly in wishing to

keep your wild-growing suckers and lower branches, when you know very

well that they would take away all the nourishment which is needed to

bring the beautiful rose-buds to perfection; the bud, in your place,

answering to the knowledge and other excellences which it is the

object of education to impart to their ignorant and lawless natures,

and which, in after years, when they are able to appreciate them, they

prize highly, and can hardly understand what it was that made them so

averse to go through the process necessary for their acquirement."

A year or two afterward I saw the young lady and the gardener looking

at a bed of beautiful roses on the lawn, and heard the young lady ask

what had become of the Devoniensis she had asked him to bud.

"Don't you see it, ma'am," he said, "growing against the wall? I think

it is almost the gem of the whole garden."

"Oh, what a beauty!" she exclaimed; "and how well it has grown!"

"Yes, ma'am," he said; "it has always done well; it seemed to take to

it kindly from the very first, and has never gone back at all. But I

had a good deal of trouble with this one; perhaps you may remember my

saying I thought it likely I should. It is that strong growing one you

remarked at the same time when you told me to bud the Devoniensis. It

won't make much show this year. It wasted so much energy in putting

out side-shoots and suckers. But I think it has got out of its bad

ways, and next year I hope it will make quite a grand tree."

"Oh!" she said, "and here is my old friend Madame Boll, I see. I am

glad you put it here, it is well worth a good place."

"You hear," said Madame Boll, after they were gone, to her neighbor

Gloire de Dijon, "what they say of us, and I hope you have become

reconciled to the change, and will let the good that is in you show

itself."

Whereupon there seemed to come rather a lachrymose murmur from the

dwarfed shoot of Gloire de Dijon. "But am I not to flower at all this

year?"

"Well, my dear," said Madame Boll, tenderly, "I do not wish to be

severe or say anything to hurt your feelings, but you must know that

your present disappointment is the natural result of your past

conduct. You were so determined to indulge in perverse and self-willed

suckers, and you never let the gardener touch you without trying to

prick his fingers or tear his clothes. And now all you want is a

little patience. Who knows but you may be allowed to bloom in the

autumn, and perhaps win the prize at the last flower show? But if not,

why it will be all right next year. Do you think it was no

mortification to me to be neglected and almost unnoticed last year,

and that, as it appears, entirely owing to the carelessness of others,

and not from any fault of mine? Well, you see, I have got over it; and

very likely next year {855} you will have the gratification of hearing

the lady praise you as she did me just now. Be thankful that

experience with you has not come too late."

When Madame Boll ended, I could see on the edge of one of her delicate

leaves a drop of dew, and I said to myself, "How very like a tear!"

------

From The Month.

LABORERS GONE TO THEIR REWARD.

In the days in which we live, more perhaps than at any other time,

education, the school, and the college are made the positions of vital

importance in the battle-field of contending principles. Services

rendered and losses sustained on such points are, therefore, worthy of

special notice, of particular gratitude, or of sorrow. In the month of

May of this year two souls went to their rest, both of whom had

labored long, signally, and successfully in the cause of Catholic

education--especially for the higher classes; both of whom have left

behind them institutions in which their spirit is enshrined: destined,

we trust, to continue through centuries yet to come the work, the

beginnings of which were committed to those whose loss we are now

lamenting. On the 14th of May Monsignor de Ram, the restorer of

Catholic university education in the countries over which the French

revolution had swept, died peacefully, but almost without warning; and

a few days later, his decease was followed by that of the reverend

mother Madeline Sophie Barat, the foundress and first

superioress-general of the congregation of the nuns of the Sacred

Heart. Let us devote a few lines to each.

Monsignor de Ram was born at Louvain, of parents distinguished for

piety and noble descent, September 2, 1804. He early devoted himself

to the service of the Church; was ordained priest, March 19,1827; and

became at once professor in the ecclesiastical seminary of his native

diocese, Mechlin. He had no sooner grown up than he was struck by

observing that his native language, the Flemish, which of all European

tongues most nearly resembles our own, was almost wholly without books

of a good tendency. The reason was evident. The population by which it

is spoken is comparatively small, and is hemmed in by others which

speak French, Dutch, or German. Hence it has almost sunk into a

_patois_. Men who speak Flemish to their servants and laborers read

and write in French. The first labors of Mons. de Ram were devoted to

meet this want, by publishing several very useful books in Flemish. He

was only thirty when the bishops of Belgium resolved to erect a

Catholic university. The attempt could never before have been made;

for in Belgium, almost more than anywhere else, education had for two

hundred years been seized by the state, and used to an irreligious

purpose. The revolution of 1830, though not made by the Church nor in

its interests, had given it a freedom which it never possessed before.

The first use made of this freedom by the bishops of Belgium was to

erect a Catholic university, and the young and zealous priest de Ram

was set over it by their deliberate choice. To its service he devoted

the rest of his life. Beneath his care were trained during thirty

years a continual succession of young men, who are at this day the

strength of the Church in Belgium, and to a considerable degree in

France. {856} England also has sent students there. Those who have had

the happiness of attending the meetings of the Catholic congress in

Belgium must, we think, have been struck by the high Catholic tone of

a number of young men of the middle and higher classes, and by their

intelligence. For those men Belgium and the Church are indebted to the

Catholic university of Louvain, and of that university Monsignor de

Ram has, until his death, been the soul. On Friday, May 12, he

returned from attending a meeting of the academy of Brussels. On the

evening of Sunday, 14th, he had entered into the unseen world. His age

was only sixty; and as he was willing, so it might have been expected

that he would be able, to continue for years to come the labors in

which his life had been spent. Such was not the will of his Lord,

whose call he was at once ready to obey.

At Paris, on the morning of Monday, May 22, only seven whole days

later, the superioress of the Society of the Sacred Heart had attended

the mass of the community. She had completed in the preceding December

her eighty-fifth year. Her day of labor was at last over. She was

seized with apoplexy, and never recovered the power of speech. She

gave, however, clear signs of intelligence, and received the viaticum,

as well as the last unction. On the 24th the blessing of the Holy

Father reached her by a telegraphic message. On the 25th she slept the

sleep of the just.

She was born in December, 1779. She had an elder brother, who before

1800 was a priest, and had joined himself to a society which was

formed at Vienna in the latter part of the French revolution, under

the title of the "Fathers of the Sacred Heart." The first superior of

this society, Father Tournely, had been a pupil of the illustrious

Father Emery at St. Sulpice. His object seems to have been to continue

under another name the spirit and practices of the Society of Jesus,

which had been swept away twenty years before by the insane union of

the monarchs of Europe with the revolutionary infidels, until times

should allow of its re-establishment. This, however, he did not live

to see. His successor, Father Varin, joined it at its restoration. He

relates that the great desire of Father Tournely was the foundation of

a congregation of nuns devoted, under the protection of the Sacred

Heart, to the education of young persons of their own sex. At one time

he had hoped to see this project carried into execution by the

Princess Louisa of Bourbon-Conde, who actually came from Switzerland,

where she was in exile, to Vienna, to confer with him on the subject.

But God called her to the contemplative life, and she became a

Benedictine. Father Tournely, however, never doubted its execution.

Walking one day on the fortifications now destroyed, but then

surrounding Vienna, he said to Father Varin, alluding to this

disappointment, "Dear friend, I thought this had been the work of God,

and if it is not, I confess I do not know how to discern between the

spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood." Then, after remaining

silent awhile in recollection, he turned to his friend, with something

of fire more than natural in his expression, and added: "It is the

will of God. As to the occasion and the instrument, I may have been

deceived; but, sooner or later, this society will be founded." His

friend used to say that the impression left by these words, and the

manner in which they were spoken, never faded from his mind. They

impressed him with the same conviction; and he added, that when he

repeated them to his brethren, it took possession of all their minds.

"In truth," said Fr. Varin, "God had not chosen for the commencement

of this work instruments great in this world. That the glory might be

his alone, he was pleased that the foundation of the building should

be simplicity, littleness, nothingness."

Fr. Tournely died soon afterward, {857} in the flower of his age. Fr.

Varin succeeded him, and the conclusion of the revolution enabled him

and his brethren to return to Paris. To Paris they went in the year

1800. It was exactly the moment when to human eyes the night seemed

darkest, but when the morning was ready to spring. Pius VI. died a

prisoner in the hands of the infidel French revolutionists, August 29,

1799. "At this moment," says Macaulay, "it is not strange that even

sagacious observers should have thought that at length the hour of the

Church of Rome was come. An infidel power in the ascendant, the pope

dying in captivity, the most illustrious prelates of France living in

a foreign country on Protestant alms, the noblest edifices which the

munificence of former ages had consecrated to the worship of God

turned into temples of victory, or into banqueting-houses for

political societies, or into theophilanthropic chapels; such signs

might well be supposed to indicate the approaching end of that long

domination. But the end was not yet. Again doomed to death, the

milk-white hind was still fated not to die. Even before the funeral

rites had been performed over the ashes of Pius VI., a great reaction

had commenced, which after the lapse of [sixty-five] years appears to

be still in progress." As yet, however, no human foresight would have

observed the tokens of that reaction. Paris was no longer the city

where the eldest son of the Church was enthroned, and where the great

of this world were rejoiced to heap their wealth upon any new plan

which promised to promote the glory of God. Still, Napoleon Bonaparte

had just seized the reins as first consul, and there was at least

toleration to priests. The community lived in a single mean room,

which served them as dormitory, refectory, kitchen, and study. Here

Fr. Varin was sitting upon the edge of a very shabby bed, and by his

side sat one of his community, Fr. Barat. "I asked him what relations

he had. He said, one _little sister_. The words made a strong

impression upon me. I asked how old she was, and what were her powers.

He said she was eighteen or nineteen; that she had learned Latin and

Greek, and translated Virgil and Homer with ease; that she had

qualities to make a good teacher; but that for the present she had

gone to pass some time in her family." Father Barat, good man as he

was, was not above human infirmity, and like other elder brothers,

however proud he might be of his younger sister, could never fancy

that she was really grown up; for when he said she was about eighteen

or nineteen, she was one-and-twenty. Two months later she came to

Paris. "I went to see her, and found a young person of very delicate

appearance, extremely retiring, and very timid. What a

foundation-stone! said I to myself, in reply to the feeling I had had

within me when her brother had mentioned her to me for the first time.

And yet it was upon her that it was the will of God to raise the

building of the Society of His Divine Heart. This was the grain of

mustard-seed which was to produce the tree whose branches have already

spread so wide."

On November 21, 1800, she dedicated herself to the Sacred Heart, under

the patronage of the Blessed Virgin, together with an intimate friend,

Mlle. Octavia Bailly, who shared her aspirations. It was the first

streak on the sky which told of the coming day. The day the society

was formed, in 1802, she became superioress of the first house, which

was at Amiens. In 1806, a second was founded at Grenoble; that year

the first general congregation elected her superioress-general. In

1826 there were seventeen houses, and the rules were approved by Leo

XII. Before her death she had under her rule ninety-seven houses and

3,500 nuns. She had been superioress of the congregation for

sixty-three years; and it is probable that the majority of the French

ladies now living who have received a religious {858} education at all

have received it at the hands of herself or of her children in

religion.

Her body was taken to Conflans, where is the novitiate in the

neighborhood of Paris. During three days her cell was visited by all

whom the rules of the community permitted to enter--the nuns of the

different houses in Paris, pupils present and former of all ages. Not

only these, but many priests were so desirous to have medals,

chaplets, etc., touched by her remains, that two sisters, who were

continually employed, were hardly able to satisfy the general desire.

At the beginning of this short notice we spoke of sorrow and a sense

of loss as feelings natural in those interested in the great works

undertaken by such laborers as Mons. de Ram and Madame Barat on the

occasion of their removal from the scene of action. We need hardly do

more than allude to the other feelings which must at the same time

blend with and qualify these; to the joy and exultation that must

always hail the close of a noble career long persevered in, from the

thought of the rest and the crown that have been so faithfully won;

and to the confidence that the works which those who have been removed

from us have been allowed, while in the flesh, so happily to found,

promote, and guide, will certainly not suffer by the Providence that

has now, as we trust, placed them where they are enabled to see,

without any intervening shadow, the value of the great end for which

these works were undertaken, and where their power to help them on is

to be measured, not by the feeble and inconstant energies of a will

still subject to failure and perversion, but by the mighty intensity

of the intercession of those who are at rest with God.

------

MISCELLANY.

_Mont Cenis Railway_.--Pending the completion of the great Mont Cenis

tunnel, a temporary railway on inclined planes is to be carried along

the present road over the mountain. The French Government, on its

portion of the line, will use locomotives with a peculiar mechanism,

to produce adhesion, on a middle rail placed between the two ordinary

rails. On the Italian side a traction carriage will be employed, which

will wind the carriages up by means of a drum acting on a heavy fixed

cable laid along the line. The mechanism of the traction wagon will be

put in motion by an endless wire rope actuated by water-wheels at the

base of the incline.

_Homes without Hands_.--A new book by Mr. Woods, with the above title,

gives an account of the habitations, "which are never marred by

incompetence or improved by practice," constructed by various animals,

classed according to their principles of construction, and illustrated

by some excellent engravings, from drawings made expressly for the

work. The author first describes the homes of the burrowing mammalia,

and then proceeds to those of the social birds and insects. The mole

appears to take the first place in Mr. Wood's list of mammalia. "This

extraordinary animal does not merely dig tunnels in the ground and sit

at the end of them, but forms a complicated subterranean

dwelling-place, with chambers, passages, and other arrangements of

wonderful completeness. It has regular roads leading to its feeding

grounds; establishes a system of communication as elaborate as that of

a modern railway, or, to be more correct, as that of the subterranean

network of metropolitan sewers." . . . "How it manages to form its

burrows in such admirably straight lines is not an easy problem,

because it is always in {859} black darkness, and we know of nothing

which can act as a guide to the animal." The real abode of the mole is

most extraordinary. "The central apartment is a nearly spherical

chamber, the roof of which is nearly on a level with the earth around

the hill; and, therefore, situated at a considerable depth from the

apex of the heap. Around this heap are driven two circular passages,

or galleries, one just level with the ceiling, and the other at some

height above. The upper circle is much smaller than the lower. Five

short descending passages connect the galleries with each other, but

the only entrance into the keep is from the upper gallery, out of

which three passages lead into the ceiling of the keep. Therefore,

when the mole enters the house from one of his tunnels, he has first

to get into the lower gallery, to ascend thence to the upper gallery,

and so descend into the keep." The mole appears unequalled in

ferocity, activity, and voracity. The fox prefers to avoid the labor

of burrowing, and avails itself of the deserted home of the badger, or

even the rabbit; for, though it needs a larger tunnel than the latter,

the cunning animal finds its labor considerably decreased by only

having to enlarge a ready-made burrow instead of driving a passage

through solid earth.

Of the weasel tribe, the badger is the most powerful and industrious

excavator; there are several chambers in its domicile, one of which is

appropriated as a nursery, and is warmly padded with dry mosses and

grass. The rabbit, like the eider duck, lines her nursery with the

soft fur from her own breast; but Mr. Wood deprecates this being set

forth as an act of self-sacrifice, and held up as an example of such

to human beings, and declares it to be as purely instinctive as the

act of laying eggs.

_The Wealth of Mexico_.--M. Laur, the engineer deputed by the French

government to explore the mineral wealth of Mexico, and who has

already published several reports in the _Moniteur_, has completed his

task. These reports, according to a paragraph in the _Moniteur Belge_,

are shortly to be published in a more extended form, giving the exact

situation, extent, and richness of the principal mineral veins of that

country. It is hoped that under the new administration many of the old

workings, abandoned during the civil wars, will be resumed, and that

they will prove as valuable to the empire as they were during the

early days of the Spanish occupation.

------

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

DIE HEILIGE ELIZABETH. Ein Buch fuer Christen, von Alben Stolz.

Freiburg im Breisgau. 1865. 8vo, pp. 315.

The Life of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary. A book for Christians, by

Alben Stolz.

The author of this new life of Saint Elizabeth is one of the popular

Catholic writers of Germany, if not the foremost. He is the Abraham of

Sancta Clara of this century.

The principal events of the saint's life are narrated in simple and

familiar language. The point treated of in each chapter is concluded

with a practical instruction. These are far from being dry. We would

suggest the translation of this book into English, were it not that it

is, like all this author writes, thoroughly German, and exclusively

adapted to the circumstances and difficulties of the Catholics of

Germany. What our Catholic English reading public needs, is that some

of our writers should take a lesson from this agreeable as well as

edifying writer, and do for them what he is doing with so much zeal

for the good of his countrymen.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. By His Eminence Cardinal Wiseman. 32mo, pp. 64.

Boston: Patrick Donahoe.

This is an American edition of the lecture of the late Cardinal

Wiseman on William Shakespeare, which appeared in THE CATHOLIC WORLD

for July. It contains, in addition to the lecture, an appendix, in

which the eminent author makes suggestions for, and observations on,

"a tercentenary memorial of Shakespeare." {860} The cardinal suggested

a splendid edition of the great poet's works, illustrated, and printed

in the best and most elaborate style possible. His eminence went into

the most minute details in regard to the manner in which such an

edition should be illustrated, printed, bound, etc. The binding and

paper of this little volume are excellent; but the type from which it

is printed is too small. We are sorry Mr. Donahoe did not get it out

in larger type. Were it not for this slight defect, the book would be

faultless.

NATIONAL LYRICS. By John Greenleaf Whittier. Illustrated. 32mo, pp.

104. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

This is another of the cheap volumes of poetry issued by Ticknor &

Fields. It contains several of Mr. Whittier's earlier pieces, as well

as many of his late poems. Among the latter are "Barbara Frietchie,"

and "The Poor Voter on Election Day."

SYBIL: A Tragedy, in Five Acts. By John Savage. 12mo, pp. 105. New

York: J. B. Kirker.

This tragedy was written by Mr. Savage--well known in the literary

world as the author of several excellent poems, and now editor of the

New Orleans _Times_--some years ago, and met with a good reception in

the cities in which it was played. It contains many good passages of

high poetical merit, and is, we should think, well adapted for the

stage. The scene is laid in Kentucky, in the beginning of the present

century, and describes society as it is supposed to have existed at

that time.

A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH,

FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA

UNTIL THE PRESENT TIME.

By M. l'Abbe J. E. Darras. With an Introduction and Notes. By the Most

Rev. M. J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore. New York: P.

O'Shea.

We have received numbers 9, 10, 11, and 12 of this excellent history.

Number 12 brings the work down to the pontificate of Sixtus III., 432.

THE MARTYR'S MONUMENT. Being the patriotism and political wisdom of

Abraham Lincoln, as exhibited in his speeches, messages, orders, and

proclamations from the presidential canvass of 1860 until his

assassination, April 14, 1865. 12mo, pp. 297. New York: The American

News Company.

The title of this handsome volume sufficiently explains its purpose.

The origin of the work is set forth in the following extract from the

preface:

"A few days after the assassination of President Lincoln, the

publishers of the present volume received the following letter from

the distinguished gentleman whose name it bears:

"_Gentlemen_: Collect and publish, in the speediest possible manner,

the inaugural and other addresses of Abraham Lincoln, his

proclamations, messages, and public letters, indeed, all he has

written as President, and you will contribute to the mournful

celebrations of the American people your share of lasting value, and

of far more impressive eloquence than the most fervent orator could

utter. You would thus make the martyr rear his own monument, which

no years, no centuries, could level and cause to mingle again with

the dust.

"Your obedient,

"FRANCIS LIEBER.

"NEW YORK, April 18, 1865."

This book is got out in elegant style, and will be valuable hereafter

on account of the many documents it contains which relate to the late

civil war.

_Received_: PASTORAL LETTER OF THE RT. REV. M. DOMENEC, D.D., BISHOP

OF PITTSBURG TO THE CLERGY AND LAITY OF THE DIOCESE, PROMULGATING THE

JUBILEE: together with the late Encyclical of the Holy Father.

Published at the office of the Pittsburg _Catholic_.

THE STORY OF THE GREAT MARCH, FROM THE DIARY OF A STAFF OFFICER.

By Brevet-major George Ward Nichols, aid-de-camp to General Sherman.

New York: Harper & Brothers.