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The Chautauquan, Vol. 03, May 1883

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Title: The Chautauquan, Vol. 03, May 1883

Author: Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
        Chautauqua Institution

Editor: Theodore L. Flood


        
Release date: June 15, 2015 [eBook #49217]
                Most recently updated: June 15, 2020

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHAUTAUQUAN, VOL. 03, MAY 1883 ***




Produced by Emmy, Juliet Sutherland, Music transcribed by
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[Transcriber's Note: Bold text is surrounded by =equal signs= and
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THE CHAUTAUQUAN.

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

    VOL. III.      MAY, 1883.      NO. 8.


Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.

_President_, Lewis Miller, Akron, Ohio.

_Superintendent of Instruction_, J. H. Vincent, D. D., Plainfield, N. J.

_General Secretary_, Albert M. Martin, Pittsburgh, Pa.

_Office Secretary_, Miss Kate F. Kimball, Plainfield, N. J.

_Counselors_, Lyman Abbott, D. D.; J. M. Gibson, D. D.; Bishop H. W.
Warren, D. D.; W. C. Wilkinson, D. D.




REQUIRED READING

FOR THE

_Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle for 1882-83_.

MAY.


HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

By MRS. MARY S. ROBINSON.

_CHAPTER X._

ALEXANDER NEVSKI—MIKHAIL OF TVER.

We have seen that Mstislaf the Brave defied the tyranny of Andreï
Bogoliubski, in his attempt to intimidate Novgorod the Great.[A] When
Vsevolod, surnamed Big Nest, by reason of his large family, would force
the city to his will, Mstislaf again came to its rescue; and when
Iaroslaf of the Big Nest family, continuing the feud, betook himself
to Torjok near the Volga, where he obstructed the passage of the
merchants and brought famine upon the great city, Mstislaf the Bold,
of Smolensk, son of the Brave, left his powerful capital, one of the
strongest of Russia’s fortified cities, and went to the help of the
distressed people. “Torjok shall not hold herself higher than the Lord
Novgorod,” he swore in princely fashion, “I will deliver his lands,
or leave my bones for his people to bury.” Thus he became champion
and prince of the Republic. Between Iaroslaf and his brothers Iuri of
Vladimir, and Konstantin of Rostof ensued one of the family wrangles
common to the times, that was settled on the field of Lipetsk (1216),
where Konstantin allied with Mstislaf won his cause, and Iaroslaf was
compelled to renounce both his claims and his captives. When the bold
Mstislaf had put the affairs of the principality in order, he took
formal leave of the _vetché_, assembled in the court of Iaroslaf, and
resisting their entreaties to abide with them, went as we have seen
to the aid of Daniel of Galitsch.[B] But according to his wish he
was buried beside his father, the Brave, who, when at the height of
his greatness was borne down with disease, commanded that he should
be carried to Saint Sophia in Novgorod, received there the eucharist
amid the congregated citizens, crossed his once mighty arms upon his
breast, and closed his eyes forever upon the scenes that had witnessed
his achievements. In the cathedral lie the two warriors in mute
company, with the consort of Iaroslaf the Great, his son Vladimir, who
laid its foundations, the archbishop Nikita, whose prayers extinguished
a conflagration, and a goodly company of other illustrious dead.

[Footnote A: _Vid._ THE CHAUTAUQUAN for January, 1883, p. 181, col. 2.]

[Footnote B: _Vid._ THE CHAUTAUQUAN for February, 1883, p. 13, col. 2.]

In course of time the Iaroslaf who had renounced his claim to the
Republic after the defeat at Lipetsk, was elected its prince, he being
also Prince of Suzdal; but he was compelled to make good his claim
before the Grand Khan in Asia, and perished in the desert journey. Of
his two sons, Andreï succeeded him at Vladimir (Suzdal), and Alexander
at Novgorod.

The incoming of the Tatars had left the Russian realm a prey to its
northern neighbors,—the Finnish tribes, the Livonians and Swedes. In
his early years Alexander proved his capacity for leadership by a
battle won against these united forces near one of the affluents of
the Neva—an exploit that gained him his surname Nevski, and that has
been commemorated in the historical ballads of his people. An Ingrian,
a newly Christianized chief in the Russian service, on the eve of the
engagement, beheld Boris and Gleb, the martyred sons Saint Vladimir,
the Castor and Pollux of Russian tradition, standing in a phantom boat,
rowed by phantom oarsmen, toward the camp of their countrymen—going
to the help of their kinsman Alexander. “Row, my men!” said one of
the brothers, “row, for the rescue of the Russian land!” In the hour
of conflict, one of the captains pursued Burger, the Swedish general,
through the water to his ship, but swam back successfully and mixed
again in the fray, when he reached the firm land. The exploits of
another knight are sung who brought in three Swedish galleys. Gabriel,
Skuilaf of Novgorod, tore away Burger’s tent and hewed down its ashen
post, amid the cheers of his men; and Alexander with a stroke of his
lance “imprinted his seal on Burger’s face.” Rough work was this,
in rude times; but thus was the national strength asserted, and the
national honor protected.

Novgorod, like all the republics of medieval times, recognized
the principle of caste distinctions, and hence was subject to the
dissensions consequent upon an enlarged freedom in conflict with these
class divisions. Its tendency was toward oligarchy. As monarchies
adjacent to it increased in size and strength, it was constrained to
form protective alliances now with the one, now with the other; but to
the latest period of its independence it cautiously guarded its civic
rights and laws against the encroachments of princely power. Some
differences between the citizens and Alexander led him to withdraw from
the city; but the incursions of the Sword-Bearers with their train of
northern tribes, made his presence again necessary at the head of the
army. He conducted a campaign characterized by extreme bitterness on
both sides, and ending in a conflict on Lake Peïpus, the Battle of the
Ice, in 1242, when a multitude of the Tchudi were exterminated and the
Livonian Knights were seriously crippled. The Grand Master expected to
see his redoubtable foeman before the walls of Riga; but Alexander
contented himself with reprisals, and a recovery of the lands wrested
from the Republic.

Through a score or more of years, partly by reason of its remote
northern location, and its relations with the western powers, Novgorod
had evaded the imposition of the Tatar yoke, put upon the rest of
the realm. But the time came when the khan at Saraï determined to
bring under his sway the region of the lakes; and Alexander, with his
brother Andreï, was summoned to the Horde for confirmation of their
duties as vassal princes. Batui, the khan, received the hero of the
Neva with consideration, and added to his domains large tracts of
Southern Russia, including the Principality of Kief; but with these
largesses was imposed the humiliating task of raising tribute for
the Mongol court. When the _posadnik_ announced this hard command to
the _vetché_ of Novgorod, the people, paying no heed to his cautious
and qualified phrasing, uttered a terrible cry, and tore him limb
from limb. A rebellion, headed by Alexander’s son, Vasili, gathered
force, till the rumor spread that the Asiatics were moving toward the
city. Yielding for a time to the necessity imposed upon them, the
people again rallied, this time around Saint Sophia, and declared they
would meet their fate, be it what it might, rather than submit to the
unendurable subjugation. Alexander sent them word that he must leave
them to themselves, and go elsewhere. The Mongol emissaries were at
the gates: the people in the acquiescence of despair admitted them
to their streets. During the days that the baskaks, census-takers
and tax-gatherers, went from house to house—and the days were many,
for the city covered an area hardly less than that of London in this
century—its industries were suspended, its stirring, joyous life
extinguished in silence and gloom. The priceless possession of the
state, its freedom and independence, was lost: and though the great
lords and wealthy burghers might still boast of their wealth, the
simple citizens had lost what they had believed to be an enduring
heritage, and what they had cherished as an enduring hope.

Yet a restricted freedom still remained: nor till three centuries
later was this sacrificed to the power of the Muscovite and the unity
of the Russias. Even then the history of the republic belonged to
the Empire. The right of representation, of government by laws, and
by the free consent of the governed, were matters of history not to
be forgotten. The most rigid of Russian despots could not utterly
ignore them, and they have produced an element of unrest that, however
painful in its immediate results, is yet inevitable and healthful and
hopeful. They have been one of the influences at work, bringing to
tens and hundreds of thousands of lips the watch-word uttered since
the reign of Nicholas, on the rivers, on the mountain boundaries, in
the mines, the residence of the noble, the factory, and the hut of the
peasant—_Svobodnaya Rossia_: Free Russia.

Everywhere the collection of the tribute was attended with revolts. One
in Suzdal, sure to bring terrible reprisals upon the people, compelled
Alexander to a second journey to the Horde, where he had also to excuse
himself for failure to send his military contingent. The chronicles
aver that the men were defending their western frontiers at this time.
The khan detained his noble vassal for a year. On his return journey
the prince, whose bravery had endured so sore a conflict with his
sagacity and prudence, and whose health had weakened, died at a town
several days’ journey from Vladimir. When the tidings were brought to
Novgorod, the Metropolitan Kyrill, who was celebrating a religious
service, announced to the congregation: “Learn, my dear children, that
the sun of Russia is set.” “We are lost,” they answered, and sobs were
heard from all parts of the church.

Long will this Alexander, “helper of men,” be revered by his
countrymen. Religion and patriotism with them are one; hence it is
not strange that he is enrolled among the saints of the Church. As
protector of the modern capital, his name is given to its stateliest
promenade. The monastery dedicated to his memory is one of the three
Lauras, or seats of the Metropolitans, filled with treasures and
shrines of the illustrious dead. Thither repair the sovereigns before
the undertaking of momentous enterprises, even as the Nevski bowed
before the Divine Justice in Saint Sophia, ere he went forth upon his
expeditions and journeys. His timely submission saved the realm from
further exhaustion, while his military successes preserved it from
sinking under the hardest subjection that has ever been imposed upon a
European people.

Daniel, a son of this renowned prince, received as part of his appanage
the devastated town of Moscow, which up to this time had been an
obscure place, unnoticed by the annalists, beyond the mention of its
origin. They record that in 1043 the Grand Prince Iuri Dolgoruki,[C]
while on a journey, tarried at the domain of a boyar who for some
reason he caused to be put to death; that having his attention directed
to certain heights washed by the river Moskova, he brought settlers
thither, who built a village on the spot at present covered by the
Kreml. A little church, Our Savior of the Pines, is still preserved,
a relic of these early days. Daniel and his sons increased their
domains by the annexation of several cities; and during the life of
Iuri, the second son, was initiated a feud with the house of Tver,
that endured through eighty years ere it was closed by the merging
of the principality into that of Moscow. The contests of the two
kinsmen at the court of the Horde, illustrate the subserviency of
the princes to their conquerors. With many of them no deceptions or
malice were too base for the forwarding of their purposes. Iuri, by his
representations, contrived to obtain the arrest of the Prince of Tver.
While the khan was enjoying the chase in the region of the Caucasus,
Mikhail was pilloried in the market-place of a town of Daghestan, an
object of wondering comment to the populace. Both there and when held a
prisoner in his tent, he bore his sufferings with fortitude, consoling
himself with prayer and with the Psalms of David. As his hands were
bound, an attendant held the open book before him. His nobles would
have contrived his escape, but he remonstrated: “Escape and leave you
to the anger of my foe? Leave my principality to go down without its
ruler and father? If I can not save it, I can, at least, suffer with
it.” Later, when speaking with his young son, Konstantine, of their
far-off home, tears filled his eyes, and his soul was troubled. He
repeated the words of the Fifty-fifth Psalm: “Fearfulness and trembling
are come upon me, and horror hath overwhelmed me.” An attendant priest
endeavored to console him with the words: “Cast thy burden upon the
Lord and he shall sustain thee. He suffers not the righteous to be
moved.” The prince responded: “O, that I had wings like a dove; then
would I flee away and be at rest.” Iuri had procured a death-warrant
for his cousin, and attended by hired ruffians approached the tent,
from which the boyars and attendants had been ordered away. “I know
his purpose,” said Mikhail, as they took his hand in parting. When
the murder was done, Kavgadi, a Tatar, beholding the torn and naked
body, exclaimed against the indignity, and ordered it to be covered
with a mantle. Long did the Tverians bewail their martyred prince.
His body, incorruptible, it was averred, was recovered and laid to
rest in their cathedral, where the pictured record of his fate is
still vivid on its walls. He, too, is a saint, exalted by suffering,
as Alexander was exalted by heroism. Some years later, when his son,
Dmitri of the Terrible Eyes, met at Saraï the murderer of his father,
“his sword leaped from its scabbard,” and laid him low. He rendered
not unwillingly his own life in its prime as atonement for this act
of filial vengeance. Then, as now, a quick, and, as they say, an
uncontrollable impulse moved many a Russ to similar, sometimes to
inexplicable acts.

[Footnote C: _Vid._ THE CHAUTAUQUAN for January, p. 180, col. 1.]

A third Prince of Tver escaped from the plots of his grasping Muscovite
neighbor, Ivan Kalita, or Alms-bag, (1328) so called from that article
that hung ever at his girdle. Yet as he acquired great wealth by his
prudent management, which increased the commerce and industries of
his realm, he had not repute for self-denying charity. He established
markets and fairs along the Volga, that added to his revenues with many
hundred pounds of silver: probably in the _poltiras_, or half-pounds,
current from the time of Saint Vladimir to the fifteenth century.
About the year 1389 coins of silver and copper were substituted for
the marten skins that had been used as a medium of barter. A hundred
and fifty years later were introduced the rouble and copek,[D] the
coins most in use of the modern currency. Ivan also enriched the
Kreml with several stately churches, among them the Cathedral of the
Assumption—Uspenski Sobor—where for above three hundred years the tsars
have crowned themselves,—the most sacred of all the Russian churches
in the estimation of the people. From one of its interior corners
rises the shrine of the Metropolitan, Saint Peter, who is said to have
prophesied to his sovereign: “If thou wilt comfort my hoary years, wilt
build here a temple worthy of thy estate, and our religion; this thy
city shall be chief of all the cities of Russia. Through many centuries
shall thy race reign here in strength and glory. Their hands shall
prevail against their enemies, and the saints shall dwell in their
borders.”

Kalita is regarded as the first of the Muscovite princes.

    [To be continued.]

[Footnote D: Rouble signifies a piece broken off. Copek is thought to
be derived from the Russian word for lance, referring to the weapon of
Saint George stamped upon the coin.]




A GLANCE AT THE HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF SCANDINAVIA.

By L.A. SHERMAN, PH.D.


VII.—ESAIAS TEGNÉR: JOHANN LUDVIG RUNEBERG.

Now that we have finished our Carolinian romance, shall we hear
something of the author? He is certainly a brilliant poet, for
his story which we have been reading is no deep-planned and long
worked-over effort, but was written in the few days after a severe
sickness when the author could not yet leave his couch. He wrote
it to occupy his mind, and beguile the time. How is he esteemed in
Sweden? Will it be thought incredible when I say no old hero, not even
Charles XII., is reverenced there more deeply, no name is cherished so
fondly,—that no man so nearly seems worthy to be called the father of
his country, as this same poet-bishop, Esaias Tegnér?

All this is hard to explain, so many-sided was the life he led. We need
to realize that he was more active as a bishop and party-leader than a
poet. Then to appreciate him in the last capacity we must go among the
Swedes themselves. We shall find in him the bond of unity of a whole
nation, in that he has sung best the ancient glory of the race, and
discovered to the world the heroic integrity of the Northern character.
We shall note that it is he whose words are most, next to the Bible, on
the lips of every Swede. If we go into a peasant’s cottage, far from
railways and culture, we shall be sure to find some one who has not
only heard of the great poet, but can even repeat for us whole cantos
from his “Frithiof’s Saga,”—perhaps all of “Axel” itself. And nobody
even sets about learning these poems by heart: they cling to the memory
in spite of the reader.

But we must begin our history. Who were Tegnér’s parents? What was
their rank in life? C. W. Böttiger, Tegnér’s son-in-law, who wrote a
short life of the poet, shall answer for us:—

“A few years ago north of the church in Tegnaby, there was seen a
gray cottage fallen into ruins, with moss-grown walls and two little
windows of which one, according to the ancient custom of the province,
was in the roof. The people regarded it with a kind of reverence; and
if one asked the reason, the hat was raised with the answer: ‘The
Bishop’s grandfather once lived there.’ His name was Lucas Esai´asson,
his wife’s Ingeborg Mänsdotter. According to testimony handed down
traditionally in the parish, this Lucas Esaiasson was a poor but
exceedingly industrious and pious man. A peasant during a greater part
of the time when Charles XII. was king, he continued yet twenty years
after the ‘shot,’ a Carolinian at the plow. This and his Bible were his
dearest treasures, and all he had to leave to fourteen children, for
whom he procured bread with the plow after he had given them names from
the Scriptures. There was one called Paul, another John, a third Enoch,
and so on. A whole temple-progeny was growing up under his lowly roof:
the Old and New Testaments were embracing each other in his cottage.
The youngest son, born on the day of King Charles’s death, was named
Esaias. The older brothers inherited their father’s plow, and became
peasants; Esaias inherited his father’s Bible and became a minister.”

We wish we could continue to quote Mr. Böttiger, but his story proceeds
too slowly. This Esaias was the father of our poet. Showing unusual
aptitude for books, he was taken from the farm where he had gone out
to service, and placed in the school of Wexiö. Coming from the _by_
or village of Tegn, and having but one name, he was entered in the
school register, kept after the manner of the time in Latin, as Esaias
Tegnérus. The latter, the Latin suffix _us_ being omitted, became
afterward the family name.

In due time this Esaias Tegnér passed to the university, and after
graduation was ordained as we have seen, a minister. He is remembered
as a talented preacher, and merry man of society. He married a pastor’s
daughter whose mother was celebrated for wit, force of character,
and poetic gifts. Like qualities reappear in a marked degree in our
poet, who was the fifth son of this marriage. He was born in Kykerud
[Chikerood], November 13, 1782, and took his father’s name.

Ten years later the minister’s family was broken up by the death of
the father. Two daughters and four sons were thus left in a measure
to the charity of the world. The young Esaias was soon taken into the
counting-room of one Jacob Branting, a crown-bailiff of the province
and friend of the deceased pastor. Here he learned to keep accounts
and developed rapidly into a valuable clerk. All the leisure he could
command was given steadily to books. He read everything he could find,
particularly the old Norse sagas, and amused himself by turning some
of the driest themes of history and biography into poetical form. The
crisis in his life came early. He had been in Branting’s office four
years, and so won the respect and love of his employer as to be thought
of already as the future son-in-law and successor to the office of
bailiff. But Branting had observed the lad’s genius for books, and was
beginning to think him fitted for something higher. One night, as they
were riding together, Esaias astonished him by rehearsing with some
minuteness the principles of astronomy, which he had gathered from his
reading. Branting’s decision was at once made. “You shall study,” said
he. “As for the means, God will supply the sacrifice, and _I_ will not
forget you.”

Young Esaias commenced at once to study Latin, Greek, and French.
So remarkable was his memory that he was able, after glancing a few
times over a list of fifty or sixty words, to repeat them with their
meanings. To his other tasks he added later, the study of English,
which he learned by the aid of a translation of Ossian. A change soon
follows. Lars Gustaf, his oldest brother, not yet graduated from the
university, had been asked to serve as tutor in the family of a rich
manufacturer and owner of mines in Rämen. Lars consented on condition
that he might bring with him Esaias; for during his temporary absence
from the university he had undertaken to guide his brother’s work. The
rich proprietor into whose house they were to enter was Christopher
Myhrman, a name prominent in the history of Swedish manufactures.
He had himself built up the foundries and mills of Rämen, turning
the wilderness into a large and flourishing town. Amid his multifold
business cares he always found time to read his favorite Latin authors,
and enjoy the society of his family, whose circle at that time
comprised eight vigorous sons and two blooming daughters.

“To this place, and to this circle it was,” says Mr. Böttiger, “that
Lars Gustaf and Esaias Tegnér betook themselves one beautiful summer
afternoon in July, 1797. They had traveled in a carriage over the road
on which the owner of the mills had been obliged, twenty years before,
to bring his wife home upon a pack-saddle; but they left the coach
behind them and now came on foot at their leisure through the forest.
Suddenly there burst upon their gaze the loveliest prospect. On a point
of land, extending out into the water thickly set with islands, and
encircled with birch and fir, lay like a beautiful promise the pleasant
garden sloping in terraces to the sea, girded with the setting sun and
covered with shady trees. ‘Who knows what dwells under their branches,’
perhaps the poet-stripling was already asking, with quickened pulses.
_We_ know what dwelt beneath them. It was his good fortune he was
coming here to meet; it was amidst this smiling and magnificent nature
that his talents were destined to develop, his powers to be confirmed,
his wit to grow; it was over the threshold of this patriarchic
tabernacle that his knowledge was to be brought to ripeness, and his
heart find a companion for life.

“What here in the first room attracted his attention was the big
book-cases. He found them richly supplied not only with Swedish,
English, and French works, but also Greek and Roman authors of every
sort. With greedy eyes he fixed himself especially by the side of a
folio, on whose leathern back he read: _Homerus_. It was Castalio’s
edition, printed in Basel in 1561. Here was an acquaintance to make. He
made it immediately, and in a manner of which his own account is worthy
of being told:—

“‘So without any grammatical foundation, I resolved to attempt
the task immediately. At the outset it naturally proceeded slowly
and tediously. The many dialectic forms of which I had no idea at
all, laid me under great difficulties, which would probably have
discouraged any less energetic will. The Greek grammar I had used was
adapted to prose writers: of the poetic dialects nothing was said.
I was therefore compelled just here to devise a system for myself,
and further, to make notes from that time, which now show that among
many mistakes I sometimes was right. To give way before any sort of
difficulty was not at all my disposition; and the farther I went, the
easier my understanding of the poet became. With the prose writers
Xenophon and Lucian, I also made at this time a flying acquaintance;
but they interested me little, and my principal work continued to be
with Homer, and also Horace in Latin, whom I had not known before.
French literature was richly represented in this library; Rousseau’s,
Voltaire’s, and Racine’s works were complete, and were not neglected
either. Of Shakspere there was only Hamlet, which strangely enough
interested me very little. In German literature there was not a single
poet. That language I was compelled to learn from the usual instruction
books, and thus conceived a repugnance to it which lasted for a long
time.’”

Thus in his first sojourn of seven months in Rämen, the future poet
read the Iliad through three times, the Odyssey twice, and from the
same book-shelves Horace, Virgil, and Ovid’s Metamórphoses. He was
almost insane in his application to study; yet his constitutional
vigor, strange to say, remained unimpaired. In 1799 he entered the
university of Lund, whither his father and two brothers had preceded
him. We will not linger for details of his industry there. It will not
surprise us to learn that on the “promotion” (graduation) of his class
in 1803, Esaias Tegnér was given the _primus_, or first place.

Immediately after the ceremony of graduation, Tegnér hastened to greet
his friends and especially Jacob Branting and Christopher Myhrman,
whose liberality had in part sustained him at the university. “At Rämen
he was met with open arms by the older members of the family, and with
secret trembling by a beating heart of sixteen years, where his image
stood concealed behind the memories of childhood. His summer became an
idyl,—the first happiness of love.... The traveler who approaches Rämen
finds in the pine woods beside the way a narrow stone, bearing the
letters _E. T._, and _A. M._ By this, one August evening, two hearts
swore to each other eternal fidelity.”

The university of Lund hastened to appropriate to itself its brilliant
alumnus, as private instructor in Æsthetics. Three years later occurred
his marriage with Anna Myhrman. For several years his lyre was silent.
He believed success for him lay in the line of scholarship, and only
for solace or merriment he tuned its chords. In 1808 appears the first
truly national and characteristic poem of this skald, “To the Defenders
of Sweden.” “This warlike dithyramb sounded like an alarm-bell through
every national breast. Tones at once so defiant and so beautiful
had not been heard before. These double services as instructor and
poet attracted the attention of the throne. It was manifested by a
commission investing Tegnér with the name, rank and honor of professor.”

It was during this period that Tegnér’s literary reputation neared
its radiant meridian. Poems of various sort came forth with strange
rapidity,—as yet, however, none of much extent. There were at this time
two schools of poetry in Sweden,—the mystical, or “phosphoristic,”
and the Gothic. The former inclined toward foreign, especially
German, models, the latter maintained the sufficiency of national
models and subjects. Tegnér, though an ardent disciple of the Gothic
school, disdained discussion, and maintained that the best argument
was example. Such example he was himself destined soon to furnish.
In 1820 appeared his “sacredly sweet Whitsun Idyl,” “The Children of
the Lord’s Supper,” which has been so well rendered into English by
Mr. Longfellow. Though clear and simple as the brooks and sunshine
this poem lacks the stir and vigor which it was so easy for Tegnér to
impart. In the next year this lack was supplied in the poem of “Axel,”
and almost at the same time by the publication of his “Frithiof’s
Saga,”—“the apples,” says Geijer [Yeiyer], “through which the gods yet
show their power to make immortal.” This is an old Norse legend which
Tegnér has rewritten and modernized, and at the same time charged full
with the fervor of his mighty soul. “It would be superfluous to recount
here the applause with which this master poem of Northern poetic genius
was vociferously greeted by all the educated world; how Goethe from
his throne of poetical eminence bowed his laurel-crowned gray locks
in homage to it; how all the languages of Europe, even the Russian,
Polish and modern Greek, hastened to appropriate to themselves greater
or less portions of the same; how in the poet’s own country it soon
became a living joy upon the lips of the people, a treasure in the
day-laborer’s cot as in the prince’s halls. Its author’s name has gone
abroad together with that of Linnæus, and wherever one goes one hears
it mentioned with respect and admiration.”

Of this “Frithiof’s Saga” our space forbids us to speak at greater
length. Mr. Longfellow has given an excellent analysis of the poem
(_North American Review_ for July, 1837), and it has been rendered into
English, entirely or in part, no less than nineteen times. We have
but to record that this example of the clear treatment of a Gothic
or Northern subject was the necessary and final argument against the
school of Phosphorists. From the day when the “Frithiof” appeared, we
hear of no other model or standard of poetic excellence in Sweden.

With the publication of these longer poems Tegnér’s career as a poet
virtually terminates. He never estimated his gifts at their real value,
and gave to the practice of his art only leisure moments. To the end
of his life the success of his “Frithiof” was a standing surprise to
him. His chief fondness was for Greek,—the department in which twelve
years before he had been made a university professor. But his life
henceforth was to be little with his beloved Greek authors, little with
his muse. Not long after graduation he had been ordained and placed
for a time in charge of two parishes in the neighborhood of Lund.
Now, in January, 1824, came the intelligence that he had been elected
to the vacant bishopric of Wexiö. The spirit which breathed from his
“Nattvardsbarnen” (Children of the Lord’s Supper) had won the hearts
of the clergy, and this was their tribute of love and confidence. He
accepted with reluctance, removing to the scene of his future labors
in May of the same year. He threw himself into his new duties with all
energy. The various interests of his diocese, particularly the schools,
received his unremitting care. In the fourteen years that follow he
became the acknowledged head of the Swedish Church. In the National
Diet he was also an active member. But now we approach the end of this
remarkable career. There was a trace of insanity in the family, and
Tegnér had long feared he might become a victim. In his poetic facility
he saw only a mental intensity emanating from that source; and he was
doubtless right. Overwork had also aggravated the danger. Ere long he
grew full of great and impossible schemes. He wrote to Mr. Longfellow
that he was about to issue a new edition of his writings in a _hundred
volumes_! Finally, in 1838, he was sent to the insane hospital at
Schleswig. After a short stay he seemed to mend, and returned to his
labors, as all thought, restored. But his vital energy was slowly
waning. In 1845 he was obliged to seek release from public duty, and in
the year following was stricken with paralysis. It was not the first
attack of this kind that had come upon him, but it was the last. “His
head now possessed its old-time soundness; his voice had recovered its
usual clearness. Only the evening before his death he was attacked by
a slight delirium, which was betrayed by his speaking often of Goethe
as his countryman. Resigned and peaceful he neared his end. Water and
light were still his refreshments. When the autumn sun one day shone
brightly into his sick chamber, he broke forth with the words, ‘I lift
up my hands to God’s house and mountain,’ which he often afterward
repeated. They were his last Sun-song. To his absent children he sent
his farewell greeting; to his oldest son a ring with Luther’s picture,
which he had worn on his hand for thirty years. Shortly before midnight
on the second of November, 1846,—the most beautiful aurora borealis
lighted up the sky—the spirit of the skald gently broke its fetters.
Scarcely a sigh betrayed the separation to his kneeling wife, who read
upon his face, lit up at once by the moon and death, ‘blessed peace and
heavenly rapture.’”

Tegnér’s successor in Swedish belles-lettres was Rúneberg, of whom we
shall now give a brief sketch. Tegnér belongs to the romantic era of
European literature, and, as we know, it would be hard to find a more
purely romantic poet. Runeberg was destined to found in Sweden the
modern or realistic school. He was the son of a “merchant-captain,”
and born in 1804 in Finland. He was sent to college, became professor
of Latin, and finally of Greek. He caught in some way the spirit of
the coming change, unlearned the old methods in which he had begun to
write, and in 1832 published his “Elk Hunters.” This was the beginning
of nature-writing in Sweden. It was followed by the delicate idyl of
“Hanna,” the brilliant “Christmas Eve,” and finally “Nadeschda” and
“King Fjalar.” These bear favorable comparison with anything in modern
literature. In his shorter pieces, and notably the “Ensign Stal’s
Stories,” Runeberg has earned perhaps greater fame. His death occurred
in 1877. The school he founded is continued by the living pens of
Wirsén, Carl Snoilsky, and Viktor Rydberg.

We will translate, to close our sketch, a random morsel of Runeberg,
not as an example of his genius and skill, but rather of his simplicity
and love of nature. The meter is already familiar to us in “Hiawatha,”
and was borrowed by both Runeberg and Longfellow from the national epic
of Finland, the “Kalevála.”

    Poor I hear they call thy mother,
      Poor, my gentle child, they call thee.
      _Art_ thou poor, thou little maiden,
      Art thou poor as people think thee?

    Out before thy mother’s cottage
      Blossom meadows, flourish forests;
      Every mead has brooks of silver,
      Every wood its broad lake-mirror,
      Over all the sun is smiling,
      Pouring forth its golden glory.

    Art thou poor, thou little maiden,
      Art thou poor as people think thee?

    When thou hear’st thy mother singing,
      Softly close thy tender eyelids,—
      Lids which hide thy soul’s pearl-treasures;
      Straight thereafter cometh slumber,
      Slumber followed by dream’s angel,
      Soft and still dream’s angel takes thee,
      Lifts thee on his wings so gently,
      Bears thee forth among the meadows,
      There to bloom among the flowers,
      Bears thee to the birds and forests,
      There to fill thy breast with singing,—
      Leaves thy soul in purest waters,
      Bathes thee in the joyous sunshine.

    _Art_ thou poor, thou little maiden,
      Art thou poor as people think thee?

    When again thy eyelids open,
      Thou art on thy mother’s bosom,
      Feelest in thy tender senses,
      Thinkest in thy darksome thinking:
      Sweet it was upon the meadows,
      Blithe it was with birds and woodlands,
      Good beside the lake’s clear waters,
      Warm that bathing in the sunlight,—
      Yet best is it on this bosom.

    [To be continued.]




PICTURES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY.

By C. E. BISHOP.


VIII.—THE LAST GREAT INVADER OF FRANCE.

You remember Franklin’s story of the speckled axe; how he turned the
grindstone to polish it up nice, and, tiring of the revolutions,
concluded he “liked a speckled axe best.” There was a king of England
who had a very speckled character and the people of England (who turned
the grindstone for him) long liked their king’s speckled character best
of all the kings that they had known.

When Prince of Wales he “cut up” so that he got the name of “Madcap
Harry,” some of the most amusing of his pranks being highway robbery
and burglary, for all which he was admired in his day and immortalized,
along with Jack Falstaff, by Shakspere. One of the light spots on
this character is his obedience to the commitment by Chief Justice
Gascoigne; and although it belongs to the realm of tradition, it is
so pleasant to believe and is so quaintly told by Lord Campbell that
we’ll e’en accept it: One of the Prince’s gang of cut purses had
been captured and imprisoned by Gascoigne, and the Prince came into
court and demanded his release, which was denied. The Prince, says
the chronicle, “being set all in a fury, all chafed and in a terrible
maner, came up to the place of jugement, men thinking that he would
have slain the juge, or have done to him some damage; but the juge
sitting still without moving, declaring the majestie of the king’s
place of jugement, and with an assured and bolde countenance, had to
the Prince these words following: ‘Sir, remember yourself. I kepe here
the place of the kinge, your soveraine lorde and father, to whom ye owe
double obedience: wherefore eftsoones in his name I charge you desiste
of your wilfulness and unlawfull enterprise, and from hensforth give
good example to those whiche hereafter shall be your propre subjectes.
And nowe, for your contempte and disobedience, go you to the prison
of the Kinge’s Benche, whereunto I committe you, and remain ye there
prisoner untill the pleasure of the kinge, your father, be further
knowen.’”

The prince’s better nature, and a sense of his family’s precarious
situation before the law perhaps, induced him to accept the sentence
and go to jail. On hearing this the king is recorded as saying: “O
merciful God, how much am I bound to your infinite goodness, especially
for that you have given me a juge who feareth not to minister justice,
and also a sonne, who can suffre semblably and obeye justice.”

In keeping with this wonderful “spasm of good behavior” is the sudden
change that came over the Madcap as soon as he became King Henry V.
He became as remarkable for his austere piety as he had been for his
wickedness. Unfortunately, his piety took the shape of burning Lollards
(the shouting Methodists of that day), and he signed the warrant under
which the brave and innocent Sir John Oldcastle, his old friend and
boon companion, was hung up in chains over a slow fire.

There could be but two outlets in those days for such a degree of
piety as Henry had achieved: as whatever he undertook must be bloody
and cruel, the choice lay between a crusade or an invasion of France.
As the latter promised the most booty and least risk he seemed to
have a call in that direction. The attempt seemed about equal to an
able bodied man attacking a paralytic patient in bed. The king of
France was insane: his heir was worthless and lazy; the queen regent
was an unfaithful wife and an unnatural mother, who took sides with
the faction that was trying to dethrone the king and destroy his and
her son. The kingdom was torn to pieces by civil strife between the
Orleanists and the Burgundians, each vying with the other in cruelty,
treachery, violence and plundering the government and outraging the
people. There was an awful state of affairs—just the chance for a
valiant English king.

Henry put up a demand for the French crown, under the pseudo claim of
Edward III., whose house his father had deposed. A usurper claiming a
neighbor’s crown by virtue of the usurped title of an overturned and
disinherited dynasty; as if one stealing a crown got all the reversions
of that crown by right. Henry would have made a good claim agent in
our day! And the English people, with the remembrance of Cressy and
Poictiers, of the Black Prince, and the captive King of France, and
all the booty and cheap glory that made England so rich and vain sixty
years before, fell in with Henry’s amiable designs on France. It was
perfectly clear to the whole nation, from the chief justice down to the
clodhopper, that Henry’s claim to the crown of France was a clear and
indefeasible one; that the war would be for a high and holy right—and
could not fail to pay.

And this was the main object of Henry after all: to divert the
kingdom’s attention from his own usurped title by a foreign war; to
fortify usurpation at home by attempted usurpation abroad. His father
had enjoined upon him this policy, in Shakspere’s words—

    “Be it thy course to busy giddy minds
     With foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out,
     May waste the memory of the former days.
     How I came by the crown, O God, forgive;
     And grant it may with thee in true peace live.”

So in July, 1415, Henry and 30,000 more patriots, sailed across the
channel on 1,500 ships and landed unopposed at the mouth of the Seine.
It took them six weeks and cost half the army to reduce the Castle of
Harfleur, surrounded by a swamp, and then his generals advised him to
abandon the campaign. But he dare not go back to his insecure throne
with failure written on his very first attempt at glory; the expedition
had cost too much money and he must have something to show for it. So
boldly enough he struck for the heart of France.

This whole campaign was a close copy after the invasion by Edward III.
in 1346. There was the same unopposed march to the walls of Paris,
almost over the same ground; the retreat before a tardy French host;
the lucky crossing of the river Somme, over the identical Blanchetacque
Ford, and the bringing to bay of the English by many times their own
number of French, were all faithfully repeated; while the battle of
Agincourt took place only a short distance from the field of Cressy,
and in its main features was a repetition of that engagement. But in
one respect, honorable to him, Henry did _not_ copy after Edward and
the Black Prince. He forbade all plundering and destruction; a soldier
who stole the pix from a church at Corby was instantly executed.

The description of the scenes before the battle, when,

    “Proud of their number and secure in soul,
     The confident and over-lusty French
     Do the low-rated English play at dice;”

the contrary despondency of the English, the lofty, heroic tone of
Henry with his men, when he declared gaily he was glad there were no
more of them to share the honor of whipping ten to one of the French;
and his proclamation that any man who had no stomach for this fight
might depart; we “could not die in that man’s company that fears his
fellowship to die with us.” But his humble prostration in the solitude
of his own tent when he prayed piteously,—

    “O, God of battles! steel my soldiers’ hearts;
     Possess them not with fear; take from them now
     The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers
     Pluck their hearts from them. Not to-day, O Lord,
     O, not to-day, think not upon the fault
     My father made in compassing the crown!”

All this makes up one of Shakspere’s most moving scenes. The action
and the result of this battle are as inexplicable as those of Cressy
and Poictiers. We know that now, as then, the sturdy English archers
did their fearful execution on the massed French. France had learned
nothing in seventy years of defeats and adversity; she had no infantry,
entrusted no peasantry with arms: still depended on gentlemen alone to
defend France—and again the gentlemen failed her. Sixty thousand were
packed in a narrow passage between two dense forests. On this mass the
bowmen fired their shafts until these were exhausted. Then throwing
away their bows, swinging their axes and long knives, and planting
firmly in the earth in front of them their steel-pointed pikes, they
waited the charge of the French chivalry. The mud was girth-deep. The
horses stumbled under their heavily-armored riders. Such as reached
the English line struck the horrid pikes and were hewn down by the
stalwart axmen. They break and retreat, carrying dismay and confusion
to the main body. The pikes are pulled up, and the line advanced. A
charge of English knights is hurled upon the broken mass of French,
and their return is covered by the axmen, who advance and form another
line of pikes to meet the countercharge of French. So it goes on, until
the French host is a mob, and the English are everywhere among them,
hewing, stabbing, and thrusting. “So great grew the mass of the slain,”
said an eye-witness, “and of those who were overthrown among them, that
our people ascended the very heaps, which had increased higher than
a man, and butchered their adversaries below with swords and other
weapons.” It all lasted three hours before the French could be called
defeated, for they were so numerous and were packed so closely that
even retreat was long impossible. Before the battle had been decided,
every Englishman had four or five prisoners on his hands, whom he was
holding for ransoms. This was the grand chance to recoup all their
losses and sufferings and grievous denial of plunder. This was a
predicament for a victorious army, and if a small force of the French
had made a rally they might then have reversed their defeat on the
scattered English. Henry tried to avert such a catastrophe by sounding
the order for every man to put all his prisoners to death: but cupidity
saved many, nevertheless.

The flower of the chivalry of France perished on this field, greatly
to the relief and benefit of France. Seven of the princes of the blood
royal, the heads of one hundred and twenty of the noble families of
France, and eight thousand gentlemen were counted among the 30,000
slain. The feudal nobility never recovered from the blow,—but France
did, all the sooner for lack of them.

The victorious army made its way to Calais, and Henry returned to
England, “covered with glory and loaded with debt.” But there was
unlimited exultation when Henry came marching home, into London, under
fifteen grand triumphal arches, insomuch that an eye-witness says, “A
greater assembly or a nobler spectacle was not recollected to have been
ever before in London.”

Campaign after campaign into France followed; she being plunged deeper
and deeper into civil war, anarchy, and mob-rule. Rouen fell in 1419,
and the two kings arranged a peace and a marriage between Henry and
the princess Catherine. (The courtship in Shakspere is racy.) In 1420
the two kings, side by side, made a triumphant entry into Paris, and
Henry was acknowledged as successor to the French crown after Charles
VI. should die. Another great demonstration was seen in London when
the French Catherine was crowned Queen of England (1421). Ah! there
was a fearful Nemesis awaiting this newly-married pair in the insanity
of their son, inherited from Catherine’s father. And England was to
pay dearly for her French glory in the miseries of the reign of Henry
VI. and the dreadful Wars of the Roses. Indeed, she was already paying
dearly in the load of taxation and the loss of life those wars had
entailed, insomuch that even now there was a scarcity of “worthy and
sufficient persons” to manage government affairs in the boroughs and
parishes.

The English army in France met with a sudden reverse, the commandant,
the Duke of Clarence, being slain. More troops had to be raised and
taken to France, and in the effort to keep his grasp on the prostrate
kingdom, Henry himself was prostrated in the grasp of an enemy he
could not resist. So, on the 31st of August, 1422, in the midst of his
campaign, Henry died.

The priests came to his bedside and recited the penitential psalm:
when they came to “Thou shalt build up the walls of Jerusalem,” the
dying man said: “Ah, if I had finished this war I would have gone to
Palestine to restore the Holy City.” He was the last of the crusade
dreamers, and the last of the great invaders of France among English
kings. In a few years all that he had won, and all that the greatest
English generals and the prowess of her archers could avail were
scattered by a mere girl creating and leading to victory new French
armies.

And this bauble of war was all there was of Henry Fifth’s reign,
the pride of the House of Lancaster. So we can hardly join in the
lamentation of the Duke of Bedford:

    “Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night,
     Comets, importing change of time and states,
     Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,
     And with them scourge the bad revolting stars
     That have consented unto Henry’s death!
     King Henry the Fifth, too famous to live long!
     England ne’er lost a king of so much worth.”

The historian, White, pretty well sums up this “speckled character:”

“His personal ambition had been hurtful to his people. In the first
glare of his achievements, some parts of his character were obscured
which calm reflection has pointed out for the reprobation of succeeding
times. He was harsh and cruel beyond even the limits of the harsh and
cruel code under which he professed to act. He bought over the church
by giving up innovators to its vengeance; he compelled his prisoner,
James I. of Scotland, to accompany him in his last expedition to France
to avenge a great defeat his arms sustained at Beaugé at the hands of
the Scotch auxiliaries, and availed himself of this royal sanction
to execute as traitors all the Scottish prisoners who fell into his
hands. His massacre of the French captives has already been related,
and we shall see how injuriously the temporary glory of so atrocious a
career acted on the moral feelings of his people when it blunted their
perception of those great and manifest crimes and inspired the nobles
with a spirit of war and conquest which cost innumerable lives and
retarded the progress of the country in wealth and freedom for many
years.”

    [To be continued.]

       *       *       *       *       *

It is hard in this world to win virtue, freedom, and happiness,
but still harder to diffuse them. The wise man gets everything
from himself, the fool from others. The freeman must release the
slave—the philosopher think for the fool—the happy man labor for the
unhappy.—_Jean Paul F. Richter._




PHYSIOLOGY.[E]


Our last article gave us a complete description of the human
organization. In the present number we will inquire how we move this
complex system of bones, nerves, flesh, and tissues.

We will take a particular motion and see if we can understand that. For
instance, you bend your arm. You know that when your arm is lying on
the table you can bend the forearm on the upper arm (or part above the
elbow) until your fingers touch your shoulder. How is this done?

Look at the arm in a skeleton; you will see that the upper part is
composed of one large bone, called the humerus, the fore part of two
bones, the radius and ulna. If you look carefully you will see that
the end of the humerus, at the elbow, is curiously rounded, and the
end of the ulna, at the elbow, is scooped out in such a way that one
fits loosely into the other. If you try to move them about, one on the
other, you will find that you can easily double the ulna very closely
on the humerus, without their ends coming apart; and as you move the
ulna you will notice that its end and the end of the humerus slide over
each other. But they will slide only one way—up and down. If you try
to slide them from side to side they get locked. At the elbows, then,
we have two bones fitting into each other, so that they will move in a
certain direction; their ends are smoothed with cartilage, kept moist
with a fluid and held in place by ligaments, and this is all called a
joint.

In order that this arm may be bent some force must be used. The radius
and ulna (the two move together) must be pushed or pulled toward the
humerus, or the humerus toward the radius and ulna. How is this done
in your arm? Imagine that a piece of string were fastened to either
the radius or ulna, near the top: let the string be carried through
a little groove, which there is at the upper end of the humerus, and
fastened to the shoulder-blade. Let the string be just long enough to
allow the arm to be straightened out, so that when the arm is straight
the string will be just about tight. Now draw your string up into a
loop and you will bend the fore-arm on the humerus. If this string
could be so made that every time you willed it so, it would shorten
itself, it would pull the ulna up and would bend the arm; every time it
slackened the arm would fall back into a straight position.

In the living body there is not a string, but a band of tissues
placed very much as our string is placed, and which has the power
of shortening itself when required. Every time it shortens the arm
is bent, every time it lengthens again the arm falls back into its
straight position. This body, which can thus lengthen and shorten
itself, is called a muscle. If you put your hand on the front of your
upper arm, half way between your shoulder and elbow, and then bend your
arm, you will feel something rising up under your hand: this is the
muscle shortening or, as we shall now call it, contracting.

But what makes the muscle contract? You willed to move your arm,
and moved it by making the muscle contract; but how did your will
accomplish this? If you should examine, you would find running through
the muscle soft white threads, or cords, which you have already learned
to recognize as nerves. These nerves seem to grow into and be lost in
the muscle. If you trace them in the other direction you would find
that they soon join with other similar nerves, and the several cords
joining together form stouter nerve-cords. These again join others, and
so we should proceed until we came to quite stout white nerve-trunks,
as they are called, which pass between the vertebræ of the neck into
the vertebral column, where they mix in the mass of the spinal cord.
What have these nerves to do with the bending of the arm? Simply this:
If you should cut through the delicate nerves entering the muscle, what
would happen? You would find that you had lost all power of bending
your arm. However much you willed it, the muscle would not contract.
What does this show? It proves that when you will to move, something
passes along the nerves to the muscle, which something causes the
muscle to contract. The nerve, then, is a bridge between your will and
the muscle—so that when the bridge is broken the will can not get to
the muscle.

[Footnote E: Abridged from Foster’s Science Primer of Physiology.]

If, anywhere between the muscle and the spinal cord, you cut the nerve,
you destroy communication between the will and the muscle. If you
injure the spinal cord in your neck you might live, but you would be
paralyzed; you might will to bend your arm, but could not.

In short, the whole process is this: by the exercise of your will a
something is started in your brain. That something passes from the
brain to the spinal cord, leaves the spinal cord and travels along
certain nerves, picking its way along the bundles of nervous threads
which run from the upper part of the spinal cord, until it reaches the
muscle. The muscle immediately contracts and grows thick. The tendon
pulls at the radius, the radius with the ulna moves on the fulcrum of
the humerus at the elbow-joint, and the arm is bent.

Why does the muscle contract when that something reaches it? We must
be content to say that it is the property of the muscle. But it does
not always possess this property. Suppose you were to tie a cord very
tightly around the top of the arm close to the shoulder. If you tied it
tight enough the arm would become pale, and would very soon begin to
grow cold. It would get numb, and would seem to be heavy and clumsy.
Your feeling in it would be blunted, and soon altogether lost. You
would find great difficulty in bending it, and soon it would lose all
power. If you untied the cord, little by little the cold and clumsiness
would pass away, the power and warmth would come back, and you would
be able to bend it as you did before. What did the cord do to the arm?
The chief thing was to press on the blood-vessels, and so stop the
blood from moving in them. We have seen that all parts of the body are
supplied with blood-vessels, veins and arteries. In the arm there is a
very large artery, branches from which go into all parts of the muscle.
If, instead of tying the cord about the arm, these branches alone were
tied, the arm, as a whole, would not grow cold or limp, but if you
tried to bend it, you would find it impossible. All this teaches that
the power which a muscle has of contracting may be lost and regained as
the blood is stopped in its circulation, or allowed to circulate freely.

Our next question is, What is there in the blood that thus gives to
the muscle the power of contracting, or that keeps the muscle alive?
The answer is easy. What is the name given to this power of a muscle
to contract? We call it _strength_. Straighten out your arm upon the
table and put a heavy weight in your hand; then bend your arm. Find
the heaviest weight that you can raise in this way, and try it some
morning after your breakfast, when you are in good condition. Go
without dinner, and in the evening when tired and hungry, try to raise
the same weight in the same way. You will not be able to do so. Your
muscle is weaker than it was in the morning, and you say that the want
of food makes you weak; and that is so, because the food becomes blood.
The things which we eat are changed into other things which form part
of the blood, and this blood going to the muscle gives it strength.
What is true of the relations of the blood to the muscles is true of
all other parts of the body. The brain and nerves and spinal cord have
a more pressing need of pure blood. The faintness which we feel from
want of food is quite as much weakness of the brain and of the nerves
as of the muscles, perhaps even more so.

The whole history of our daily life is, briefly told, this: The food we
eat becomes blood; the blood is carried all over the body, round and
round, in the torrent of the circulation; as it sweeps past them or
through them, the brain, nerves, muscles and skin pick out new food for
their work, and give back the things they have used or no longer want;
as they all have different work, some pick up what others have thrown
away. There are also scavengers and cleansers to take up things which
are wanted no longer, and to throw them out of the body.

Thus the blood is kept pure as well as fresh. Thus it is through the
blood brought to them, that each part does its work.

But what is blood? It is a fluid. It runs about like water, but while
water is transparent, blood is opaque. Under a microscope you will see
a number of little round bodies—the blood-discs, or blood-corpuscles.
All the redness there is in blood belongs to these. These red
corpuscles are not hard, solid things, but delicate and soft, yet made
to bear all the squeezing they get as they drive around the body.
Besides these red corpuscles, are other little bodies, just a little
larger than the red, not colored at all, and quite round. These are
all that one can see in blood, but it has a strange property which we
will study. Whenever blood is shed from a living body, within a short
time it becomes solid. This change is called coagulation. If a dish
be filled with blood, and you were to take a bunch of twigs and keep
slowly stirring, you would naturally think it would soon begin to
coagulate; but it does not, and if you keep on stirring you find that
this never takes place. Take out your bundle of twigs, and you will
find it coated all over with a thick, fleshy mass of soft substance.
If you rinse this with water you will soon have left nothing but a
quantity of soft, stringy material matted among the twigs. This stringy
material is, in reality, made up of fine, delicate, elastic threads,
and is called fibrin; by stirring you have taken it out. If the blood
had been left in the dish for a few hours, or a day, you would find a
firm mould of coagulated blood floating in a colorless liquid. This
jelly would continue shrinking, and the fluid would remain; this fluid
is called serum, and it is the blood out of which the corpuscles have
been strained by the coagulation. All these various things, fibrin,
serum, corpuscles, etc., make up the blood. This blood must move, and
how does it move? You have had the different organs which assist in its
circulation described, but let us illustrate.

All over the body there are, though you can not see them, networks of
capillaries. All the arteries end in capillaries, and in them begin all
veins. Supposing a little blood-corpuscle be squeezed in the narrow
pathway of a capillary in the muscle of the arm. Let it start in motion
backward. Going along the narrow capillary it would hardly have room to
move. It will pass on the right and left other capillary channels, as
small as the one in which it moves; advancing, it will soon find the
passage widening and the walls growing thicker. This continues until
the corpuscle is almost lost in the great artery of the arm; thence it
will pass but few openings, and these will be large, until it passes
into the aorta, or great artery, and then into the heart. Suppose the
corpuscle retrace its journey and go ahead instead of backward. It will
go through passages similar to the other, and it would learn these
passages to be veins. At last the corpuscle would float into the vena
cava, thence to the right auricle, from there to the right ventricle,
by the pulmonary artery to the lungs; there it, with its attendant
white corpuscles, serum and other substances, would be purified, then
sent by pulmonary vein to the left auricle and ventricle, and then
pumped over the body again. Some one may ask, What is the force that
drives or pumps the blood? Suppose you had a long, thin muscle fastened
at one end to something firm, and a weight attached to it. Every time
the muscle contracted it would pull on the weight and draw it up. But
instead of hanging a weight to the muscle, wrap it around a bladder
of water. If the muscle contract now, evidently the water will be
squeezed through any opening in the bladder. This is just what takes
place in the heart. Each cavity there, each auricle and ventricle is,
so to speak, a thin bag with a number of muscles wrapped about it. In
an ordinary muscle of the body the fibers are placed regularly side by
side, but in the heart, the bundles are interlaced in a very wonderful
fashion, so that it is difficult to make out the grain. They are so
arranged that the muscular fibers may squeeze all parts of each bag
at the same time. But here is the most wonderful fact of all. These
muscles of the auricles and ventricles are always at work contracting
and relaxing of their own accord as long as the heart is alive. The
muscle of your arm contracts only at your will. But the heart is never
quiet. Awake or asleep, whatever you are doing or not doing, it keeps
steadily on.

Each time the heart contracts what happens? Let us begin with the right
ventricle full of blood. It contracts; the pressure comes on all sides,
and were it not for the flaps that close and shut the way, some of the
blood would be forced back into the right auricle. As it is, there is
but one way,—through the pulmonary artery. This is already full of
blood, but, because of its wonderful elasticity, it stretches so that
it holds the extra fluid. The valve at its mouth closes, and the blood
is safely shut in, but the artery so stretched contracts and forces
the blood along into the veins and capillaries of the lungs, in turn
stretching them so that they must force ahead the blood which they
already contain. This blood is forced into the pulmonary vein, thence
to the left auricle; the auricle forces it into the ventricle, and the
latter pumps it into the aorta; the aorta overflows as the pulmonary
artery did, and the blood goes through every capillary of the body into
the great venæ cavæ, which forces it into the right auricle; thence
to the ventricle where we started. In this passage every fragment of
the body has been bathed in blood. This stream rushing through the
capillaries contains the material from which bone, muscle, and brain
are made, and carries away all the waste material which must be thrown
off.

The actual work of making bone or muscle is performed outside of the
blood in the tissues. You say, the capillaries are closed, and how
can the blood get to the tissues? It will be necessary here to speak
of a certain property of membranes in order that you understand how
the tissues are built up by the blood apparently closed within the
veins. If a solution of sugar or salt be placed in a bladder with the
neck tied tightly, and this placed in a basin of pure water, you will
find that the water in the basin will soon taste of sugar or salt and
after a time will taste as strong as the water in the bladder. If you
substitute solid particles, or things that will not dissolve, you will
find no change. This property which membranes, such as a bladder, have,
is called osmosis. It is by osmosis chiefly that the raw, nourishing
material in the blood gets into the flesh lying about the capillaries.
It is by osmosis chiefly that food gets out of the stomach into the
blood. It is by this property that the worn-out materials are drained
away from the blood, and so cast out of the body. By osmosis the blood
nourishes and purifies the flesh. By osmosis the blood is itself
nourished and kept pure.

We must now understand how we live on this food we eat. Food passing
into the alimentary canal is there digested. The nourishing food-stuffs
are dissolved out of the innutritious and pass into the blood. The
blood thus kept supplied with combustible materials, draws oxygen from
the lungs, and thus carries to every part of the body stuff to burn and
oxygen to burn it with. Everywhere this oxidation is going on, changing
the arterial blood to venous.

From most places where there is oxidation, the venous blood comes away
hotter than the arterial, and all the hot venous blood mingling, keeps
the whole body warm. Much heat is given up, however, to whatever is
touching the skin, and much is used in turning liquid perspiration into
vapor. Thus, as long as we are in health, we never get hotter than a
certain degree.

Everywhere this oxidation is going on. Little by little, every part of
the body is continually burning away and continually being made anew by
the blood. Though it is the same blood, it makes very different things:
in the nerves it makes nerve; in the muscle, muscle. It gives different
qualities to different parts: out of one gland it makes saliva, another
gastric juice; out of it the bone gets strength and the muscle power to
contract. But the far greater part of the power of the blood is spent
in heat, or goes to keep us warm.

One thing more we have to note before we answer the question, why we
move. We have seen that we move by reason of our muscles contracting,
and that, in a general way, a muscle contracts because a something
started in our brain by our will, passes through the spinal cord,
through certain nerves, until it reaches the muscle, and this something
we may call a nervous impulse. But what starts this?

All the nerves do not end in the muscles, but many in the skin. These
nerves can not be used to carry nervous impulses from the brain to
the skin. By no effort of yours can you make the skin contract. For
what purpose then are these nerves? If you prick your finger, you feel
the touch, or say that you have sensation in your finger. If you were
to cut the nerve leading to the finger you would lose this power of
feeling. These nerves, then, ending in the fingers have a different use
from those ending in the muscles. The latter carry an impulse from the
brain to the muscles, and are called motor nerves. The former carry
impulses from the skin to the brain, and are called sensory nerves, or
those which bring about sensations. Motor nerves are of but one kind,
but there are several kinds of sensory nerves, each kind having a
special work to do. The several works which these nerves do are called
the senses. By means of these sensory nerves we receive impressions
from the external world, sensations of heat, cold, roughness, good
and bad odors, taste, sound, and the color and form of things. Thus
impressions of the external world are made upon the brain, and it is
these impressions that stimulate the brain to action. The brain worked
on by them, through ways that we know not of, governs the muscles,
sends commands by the motor nerves, and rules the body as a conscious,
intelligent will.




TO THE NIGHTINGALE.

By DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN.


    Sweet bird, that sing’st away the early hours,
    Of winters past or coming void of care,
    Well pleased with delights which present are,
    Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers;
    To rocks, to springs, to rills, from leafy bowers
    Thou thy Creator’s goodness dost declare,
    And what dear gifts on thee he did not spare,
    A stain to human sense in sin that lowers.
    What soul can be so sick which by thy songs,
    Attir’d in sweetness, sweetly is not driven
    Quite to forget earth’s turmoils, spites, and wrongs,
    And lift a reverent eye and thought to heaven?
      Sweet artless songster, thou my mind dost raise
      To airs of spheres, yes, and to angels’ lays.




SUNDAY READINGS.

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


[_May 6._]


FILTHY LUCRE.[F]

By REV. WILLIAM ARNOT.

These “ways,” as described by Solomon in the preceding verses, are
certainly some of the very worst. We have here literally the picture of
a robber’s den. The persons described are of the baser sort: the crimes
enumerated are gross and rank: they would be outrageously disreputable
in any society, of any age. Yet when these apples of Sodom are traced
to their sustaining root, it turns out to be _greed of gain_. The love
of money can bear all these.

This scripture is not out of date in our day, or out of place in our
community. The word of God is not left behind obsolete by the progress
of events. “All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the
flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth
away; but the word of the Lord endureth for ever” (1 Peter, i: 24, 25).
The Scripture traces sin to its fountain, and deposits the sentence of
condemnation there,—a sentence that follows actual evil through all
its diverging paths. A spring of poisonous water may in one part of
its course run over a rough, rocky bed, and in another glide silent
and smooth through a verdant meadow; but, alike when chafed into foam
by obstructing rocks, and when reflecting the flowers from its glassy
breast, it is the same lethal stream. So from greed of gain—from
covetousness which is idolatry, the issue is evil, whether it run
riot in murder and rapine in Solomon’s days, or crawl sleek and slimy
through cunning tricks of trade in our own. God seeth not as man seeth.
He judges by the character of the life stream that flows from the
fountain of thought, and not by the form of the channel which accident
may have hollowed out to receive it.

When this greed of gain is generated, like a thirst in the soul, it
imperiously demands satisfaction: and it takes satisfaction wherever
it can be most readily found. In some countries of the world still it
retains the old-fashioned form of iniquity which Solomon has described:
it turns free-booter, and leagues with a band of kindred spirits, for
the prosecution of the business on a larger scale. In our country,
though the same passion domineer in a man’s heart, it will not adopt
the same method, because it has cunning enough to know that by this
method it could not succeed. Dishonesty is diluted, and colored,
and moulded into shapes of respectability, to suit the taste of the
times. We are not hazarding an estimate whether there be as much of
dishonesty under all our privileges as prevailed in a darker day: we
affirm only that wherever dishonesty is, its nature remains the same,
although its form may be more refined. He who will judge both mean men
and merchant princes requires truth in the inward parts. There is no
respect of persons with him. Fashions do not change about the throne
of the Eternal. With him a thousand years are as one day. The ancient
and modern evil-doers are reckoned brethren in iniquity, despite the
difference in the costume of their crimes. Two men are alike greedy of
gain. One of them being expert in accounts, defrauds his creditors, and
thereafter drives his carriage; the other, being robust of limb, robs
a traveler on the highway, and then holds midnight revel on the spoil.
Found fellow-sinners, they will be left fellow-sufferers. Refined
dishonesty is as displeasing to God, as hurtful to society, and as
unfit for heaven, as the coarsest crime.

[Footnote F: “So are the ways of every one that is greedy of gain;
which taketh away the life of the owners thereof.”—Prov. i:19.]

This greed, when full grown, is coarse and cruel. It is not restrained
by any delicate sense of what is right or seemly. It has no bowels.
It marches right to its mark, treading on everything that lies in the
way. If necessary, in order to clutch the coveted gain, “it takes away
the life of the owners thereof.” Covetousness is idolatry. The idol
delights in blood. He demands and gets a hecatomb of human sacrifices.

Among the laborers employed in a certain district to construct a
railway, was one thick-necked, bushy, sensual, ignorant, brutalized
man, who lodged in the cottage of a lone old woman. This woman was in
the habit of laying up her weekly earnings in a certain chest, of which
she carefully kept the key. The lodger observed where the money lay.
After the works were completed and the workmen dispersed, this man was
seen in the gray dawn of a Sabbath morning stealthily approaching the
cottage. That day, for a wonder among the neighbors, the dame did not
appear at church. They went to her house, and learned the cause. Her
dead body lay on the cottage floor: the treasure-chest was robbed of
its few pounds and odd shillings, and the murderer had fled. Afterward
they caught and hanged him.

Shocking crime!—to murder a helpless woman in her own house in order
to reach and rifle her little hoard, laid up against the winter and
the rent! The criminal is of a low, gross, bestial nature. Be it so.
He was a pest to society, and society flung the troubler off the
earth. But what of those who are far above him in education and social
position, and as far beyond him in the measure of their guilt? How many
human lives is the greed of gain even now taking away in the various
processes of slavery? Men who hold a high place, and bear a good name
in the world, have in this form taken away the life of thousands for
filthy lucre’s sake. Murder on a large scale has been and is done upon
the African tribes by civilized men for money.

The opium traffic, forced upon China by the military power of Britain,
and maintained by her merchants in India, is murder done for money on a
mighty scale. Opium spreads immorality, imbecility, and death through
the teeming ranks of the Chinese populations. The quantity of opium
cultivated on their own soil is comparatively small. The government
prohibited the introduction of the deadly drug until England compelled
them to legalize the traffic. British merchants brought it to their
shores in ship-loads notwithstanding, and the thunder of British cannon
opened a way for its entrance through the feeble ranks that lined the
shore. Every law of political economy, and every sentiment of Christian
charity, cries aloud against nurturing on our soil, and letting loose
among our neighbors, that grim angel of death. The greed of gain alone
suggests, commands, compels it. How can we expect the Chinese to accept
the Bible from us while we bring opium to them in return? British
Christians might bear to China that life for which the Chinese seem to
be thirsting, were it not that British merchants are bearing to China
that death which the best of her people loathe.

A bloated, filthy, half-naked laborer, hanging on at the harbor, has
gotten a shilling for a stray job. As soon as he has wiped his brow,
and fingered the coin, he walks into a shop and asks for whisky. The
shopkeeper knows the man—knows that his mind and body are damaged
by strong drink—knows that his family are starved by the father’s
drunkenness. The shopkeeper eyes the squalid wretch. The shilling
tinkles on the counter. With one hand the dealer supplies the glass,
and with the other mechanically rakes the shilling into the till
among the rest. It is the price of blood. Life is taken there for
money. The gain is filthy. Feeling its stain eating like rust into his
conscience, the man who takes it reasons eagerly with himself thus:
“He was determined to have it; and if I won’t, another will.” So he
settles the case that occurred in the market-place on earth, but he has
not done with it yet. How will that argument sound as an answer to the
question, “Where is thy brother?” when it comes in thunder from the
judgment-seat of God?

Oh that men’s eyes were opened to know this sin beneath all its
coverings, and loathe it in all its disguises! Other people may do
the same, and we may never have thought seriously of the matter; but
these reasons, and a thousand others, will not cover sin. All men
should think of the character and consequences of their actions. God
will weigh our deeds; we should ourselves weigh them beforehand in
his balances. It is not what that man has said, or this man has done;
but what Christ is, and his members should be. The question for every
man through life is, not what is the practice of earth, but what is
preparation for heaven. There would not be much difficulty in judging
what gain is right and what is wrong if we would take Christ into our
counsels. If people look unto Jesus when they think of being saved,
and look hard away from him when they are planning how to make money,
they will miss their mark for both worlds. When a man gives his heart
to gain, he is an idolater. Money has become his god. He would rather
that the Omniscient should not be the witness of his worship. While
he is sacrificing in this idol’s temple, he would prefer that Christ
should reside high in heaven, out of sight and out of mind. He would
like Christ to be in heaven, ready to open its gates to him, when death
at last drives him off the earth; but he will not open for Christ
now that other dwelling-place which he loves—a humble and contrite
heart. “_Christ in you_, the hope of glory;” there is the cure of
covetousness! That blessed Indweller, when he enters, will drive
out—with a scourge, if need be—such buyers and sellers as defiled his
temple. His still small voice within would flow forth, and print itself
on all your traffic,—“Love one another, as I have loved you.”

On this point the Christian Church is very low. The living child has
lain so close to the world’s bosom that she has overlaid it in the
night, and stifled its troublesome cry. After all our familiarity with
the Catechism, we need yet to learn “what is the _chief_ end of man,”
and what should be compelled to stand aside as a secondary thing. We
need from all who fear the Lord, a long, loud testimony against the
practice of heartlessly subordinating human bodies and souls to the
accumulation of material wealth.


[_May 13._]


A CHRISTIAN DESCRIBED.[G]

By the REV. W. JAY.

Who are they that principally occupy the pen of biographers, and
allure the attention of readers? Travelers, painters, poets, scholars,
writers, philosophers, statesmen, princes. All these have their
respective and comparative claims, which we by no means wish to
undervalue. But, my brethren, we are going to bring forward this
evening a character often, indeed, like the original, “despised and
rejected of men,” but superior to them all, and great where they are
nothing,—great in the sight of the Lord,—great in the desolation of the
universe, great in the annals of eternity: a Christian.

1. Let us consider the _commonness of the appellation_. We may take
_three_ views of the commonness of this name.

[Footnote G: “A Christian.”—1 Peter iv: 16. A sermon.]

In one respect _the commonness is astonishing and should be
convincing_. We may say to an infidel, Pray how came this name to be
so common as it now is? The founder (we now refer to his humanity; and
the argument requires such a reference)—the founder was a poor man,
a mechanic in a village. “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air
have nests; but the son of man hath not where to lay his head.” He
had received no university education; he was trained up at the feet of
no Gamaliel; the people therefore said, “How knoweth this man letters,
never having learned?” It was said of him, not only that “the common
people heard him gladly,” but that “many of the rulers believed on
him.” The chief ministers in his new empire were a company of fishermen
in the Lake of Galilee; and the kingdom itself was established on
the overthrow of every worldly opinion and fashion. When we consider
the nature of the doctrines they preached—the difficulties they had
to overcome, in the profligacy of the multitude, in the subtlety of
philosophers, in the covetousness of priests, in the opposition and
edicts of magistrates and emperors,—and when we consider their natural
resourcelessness in themselves, what can be more astonishing than that
this name should be spread so rapidly from province to province, and
from country to country, till before the termination of three centuries
it had reached the boundaries of the unwieldy Roman empire. It has
since far surpassed them, and is now advancing toward the ends of the
earth.... “His name shall endure forever: his name shall be continued
as long as the sun: and men shall be blessed in him: all nations shall
call him blessed. Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only
doeth wondrous things. And blessed be his holy name for ever and ever,
and let the whole earth be filled with his glory!” Amen and amen!

In another view, _this commonness is reasonable_: we wish it were
more common; we wish it prevailed exclusively above every other; we
wish no other ever obtained in the world; we wish that the Church
could, even _now_, fling off the world; and we hope that this _will_
be the case by and by, when the pristine glory of Christianity shall
revive, and the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord,
as the waters cover the sea; and we shall see eye to eye. They pay an
idolatrous homage to any man who name themselves religiously after him;
as Calvinists, after Calvin; Arminians, after Arminius; Baxterians,
from Baxter. If I _must_ have a human appellation, I will go back at
once to the apostolic times; I will call myself a Johnite, after John,
or a Paulite, after Paul. But, no; “who is Paul, and who is Apollos?
was Paul crucified for you? or were you baptised in the name of Paul?”
No; I will be called by no human name, not even if it be an inspired
one: my name shall not be derived from the servant, but from the Master
himself. I will remember his command: “Call no man Master, on earth;
for one is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren.”

In another view, _the commonness of the name is lamentable_. Let
me explain: The word _Christian_ was once very significant and
distinguishing. But, alas! in numberless instances now, it is not
distinguishable at all. Whom does it now comprehend? All the world,
with the exception of pagans, Turks, Jews, and infidels: all others it
takes in: it is now a kind of geographical distinction, rather than
religious. France is a _Christian_ country—Portugal is a _Christian_
country—Spain is a _Christian_ country—Italy is a _Christian_
country—England is a _Christian_ country; and _this_, after all, _is_
a Christian country, comparatively. But a Christian country is not
a country of Christians; and, therefore, the term, even amongst us,
includes numbers who are swearers, drunkards, and Sabbath-breakers,
revilers, and multitudes who, though not distinguished by any grossness
of life, yet are entirely opposite to the spirit and commands of
Christianity in their principles and tendencies. Often, therefore, now
it means nothing—yea, it is _worse_ than nothing—it is even _injurious_
by its indiscrimination. Men are easily deluded in their own opinions;
they easily imagine that they _are_ what they are _called_; and having
_the name_, they imagine that they have _the thing_, especially when
there is no one to dispute their title. Multitudes of these would be
offended if you were to withhold from them the name of a Christian; and
yet if you were to call them _saints_, or _the sanctified_, they would
be still more surprised and mortified: and yet _the saint_ and _the
Christian_ are the same person, according to the language of the New
Testament; and the apostle assures us that “without holiness, no man
shall see the Lord.”

Let us consider,

2. THE REAL IMPORT OF THIS TITLE—A CHRISTIAN.

A Christian is _one who has a relation to Christ_; not a professed, but
a _real_ relation—not a nominal, but a _vital_ relation—yea, a very
peculiar and pre-eminent relation, arising above every other you can
mention; spiritual in its nature, and never-ending in its duration; and
deriving the possession and continuance of every enjoyment from Christ.
_Beware of a Christianity without Christ_: it is a stream without a
fountain—a branch without a living root—a body without a soul. “Beware
lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the
tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after
Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the godhead bodily. And
ye are complete in him which is the head of all principality and power.”

A Christian is _a lover of Christ’s doctrine_. In all systems there
are some common principles; but my receiving what is _common_ in
the system of a master does not entitle me to be named after him.
My believing with a Socinian that there is a God, and that there
will be a resurrection from the dead, does not render me a Socinian;
but my believing what is _peculiar_ in his creed—that Christ was a
mere man, that he was born in the ordinary way of generation, that
he died only as a witness of the truth, and not as a sacrifice for
sin. Deism has _some_ principles in common with our Christianity:
now my believing these will not constitute me a Christian, but my
holding those _peculiar_ to Christianity. These are to be found only
in the Scriptures; _there_ a Christian searches for them; _there_ he
kneels before the oracle of divine truth; _there_ he takes up these
principles, and says, these, however mysterious they may be to my
reason, however humiliating they may be to the pride of my heart—these
I take up on the authority of him who has revealed them. I sit with
Mary at Jesus’ feet; I pray to be led by his spirit into all truth, and
to be able to say with John, “We have an unction from the holy one, and
we know all things.”

A Christian is _a lover of Christ’s person_. This attachment is
deserved and demanded, by all that he has done and suffered for us.
Paul describes the subjects of divine grace as those “who love the Lord
Jesus Christ in sincerity:” and so far was he from supposing that a man
can be a Christian without this love to Christ, that he says, “If any
man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema maranatha.”
Jesus himself was the essence of humility, and yet he had such a
consciousness of his dignity, and of his claims to the supremacy of the
human heart, that he made no scruple to say, “He that loveth father or
mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he that forsaketh not all
that he hath and followeth me can not be my disciple.”

The Christian is _a copier of Christ’s example_. Without this in vain
you contend for his truth, and talk of your regard to him. “He that
saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he
walked.” In all things, indeed, he has the preëminence. But Christians
are said to be predestinated _to be conformed to his image_, that he
may be the first-born among many brethren. They are described now as
“Beholding in a glass his glory,” and as being “Changed into the same
image from glory to glory, as by the spirit of the Lord.” He indeed had
the spirit _without_ measure; but the Christian possesses the _same_
spirit; for “If any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of
his.” We must, therefore, if we are Christians, resemble him who
went about doing good,—who said, “The zeal of thine house hath eaten
me up,”—who pleased not himself,—who, “Though a man of sorrows and
acquainted with grief,” in the midst of the church sang praises to God.
We are no further Christians than as we are like him, and have the same
mind in us which was also in him.

A Christian is _a dependent on Christ’s mediation_. He rejoices in
Christ Jesus, and has no confidence in the flesh. He says with the
Church, “In the Lord have I righteousness and strength.”

    “The best obedience of my hands
      Dares not appear before thy throne;
     But Faith can answer thy demands
      By pleading what my Lord has done.”

He therefore comes to God only by _him_; and he looks for acceptance
as to his person and service _in_ him; and while he makes mention of
_his_ righteousness only, he also goes forth in his strength. He feels
that without him he can do nothing—that he can not stand longer than
he holds him; that he can not walk further than he leads him; but then
he sees that there is an all-sufficiency in him, and he believes that
while without him he can do _nothing_, he equally believes that through
his strengthening him he can do _all_ things. As he begins his course
in this way, so he carries it on; and, however advanced he may be in
the divine life, yet he acknowledges himself an unprofitable servant,
and “looks for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.”

The Christian is _an expectant of Christ’s coming_. Jesus said to his
disciples, when he was withdrawing from them, “If I go away, I will
come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may
be also.” This spake he; therefore they are described as now looking
for him; “to them that look for him will he appear without sin unto
salvation.” This produces a marvelous difference between him and all
other men. Others are now _at home_—the Christian is now _from_ home.
The Christian views his present possessions and enjoyments, whatever
they may be, as only the accommodation of the passing time; he feels
and acknowledges himself to be a stranger and a pilgrim upon earth; all
his treasure is in heaven; therefore he can not be happy, unless he be
there too. “Where the treasure is, there will the heart be also.” And
Jesus knew this disposition; therefore he said, “Father, I will that
they whom thou hast given me be with me, that they may behold my glory.”

This, in brief, is A CHRISTIAN; a _learner of Christ’s doctrine—a lover
of Christ’s person—a copier of Christ’s example—a dependent on Christ’s
mediation; and an expectant of Christ’s coming_.


[_May 20._]


THE UNITY OF THE DIVINE BEING.[H]

By REV. JOHN WESLEY.

And as there is one God, so there is one religion, and one happiness
for all men. God never intended there should be any more; and it
is not possible there should. Indeed, in another sense, as the
apostle observes, “There are gods many, and lords many.” All the
heathen nations had their gods, and many whole shoals of them. And
generally, the more polished they were, the more gods they heaped up
to themselves; but to us, to all that are favored with the Christian
revelation, “There is but one God;” who declares of himself, “Is there
any God, beside me? There is none; I know not any.”

[Footnote H: “There is one God.”—Mark xii:32.]

But who can search out this God to perfection? None of the creatures
that he has made. Only some of his attributes he hath been pleased
to reveal to us in his Word. Hence we learn that God is an eternal
being. “His goings forth are from everlasting,” and will continue
to everlasting. As he ever was, so he ever will be; as there was
no beginning of his existence, so there will be no end. This is
universally allowed to be contained in his very name, Jehovah; which
the Apostle John accordingly renders, “He that was, and that is, and
that is to come.” Perhaps it would be as proper to say, “He is from
everlasting to everlasting.”

Nearly allied to the eternity of God is his omnipresence. As he exists
through infinite duration, so he can not but exist through infinite
space; according to his own question, equivalent to the strongest
assertion; “Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord” (heaven
and earth, in the Hebrew idiom, implying the whole universe) which,
therefore, according to his own declaration, is filled with his
presence.

This one, eternal, omnipresent being is likewise all perfect. He has
from eternity to eternity, all the perfections and infinitely more
than it ever did, or ever can enter into the heart of man to conceive;
yea, infinitely more than the angels in heaven can conceive: these
perfections we usually term the attributes of God.

And he is omnipotent, as well as omnipresent: there can be no more
bounds to his power than to his presence. He “hath a mighty arm: strong
is his hand, and high is his right hand.” He doeth whatsoever pleaseth
him, in the heavens, the earth, the sea, and in all deep places. With
men, we know, many things are impossible; “but not with God: with him
all things are possible.” Whensoever he willeth, to do is present with
him.

The omniscience of God is a clear and necessary consequence of his
omnipresence. If he is present in every part of the universe, he can
not but know whatever is, or is done there: according to the word of
St. James, “Known unto God are all his works,” and the works of every
creature, “from the beginning” of the world; or rather, as the phrase
literally implies, “from eternity.” His eyes are not only “over all
the earth, beholding the evil and the good,” but likewise over the
whole creation; yea, and the paths of uncreated night. Is there any
difference between his knowledge and his wisdom? If there be, is not
his knowledge the more general term, (at least according to our weak
conceptions), and his wisdom a particular branch of it? namely, the
knowing the end of everything that exists, and the means of applying it
to that end?

Holiness is another of the attributes of the Almighty, All-wise God.
He is infinitely distant from every touch of evil. He “is light; and
in him is no darkness at all.” He is a God of unblemished justice and
truth: but above all is his mercy. This we may easily learn from that
beautiful passage in the thirty-third and thirty-fourth chapters of
Exodus: “And Moses said, I beseech thee, show me thy glory. And the
Lord descended in the cloud, and proclaimed the name of the Lord, the
Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant
in goodness and truth; keeping mercy for thousands, and forgiving
iniquity, and transgression, and sin.”

This God is a spirit; not having such a body, such parts, or passions,
as men have. It was the opinion both of the ancient Jews and the
ancient Christians, that he alone is a pure spirit, totally separate
from all matter: whereas, they supposed all other spirits, even the
highest angels, even cherubim and seraphim, to dwell in material
vehicles, though of an exceeding light and subtile substance. At
that point of duration, which the infinite wisdom of God saw to
be most proper, for reasons which lie hid in the abyss of his own
understanding, not to be fathomed by any finite mind, God “called into
being all that is;” created the heavens and the earth, together with
all that they contain. “All things were created by him, and without him
was not anything made that was made.” He created man, in particular,
after his own image, to be “a picture of his own eternity.” When he had
raised man from the dust of the earth, he breathed into him an immortal
spirit. Hence he is peculiarly called, “The Father of our spirits;”
yea, “The Father of the spirits of all flesh.”

“He made all things,” as the wise man observes, “for himself.” “For his
glory they were created.” Not “as if he needed anything,” seeing “He
giveth to all life, and breath, and all things.” He made all things
to be happy. He made man to be happy in himself. He is the proper
center of spirits; for whom every created spirit was made. So true is
that well-known saying of the ancient fathers: _fecisti nos ad te: et
irrequietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te_. “Thou hast made
us for thyself; and our heart can not rest till it resteth in thee.”

This observation gives us a clear answer to that question in the
Assembly’s catechism: “For what end did God create man?” The answer is,
“to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” This is undoubtedly true:
but is it quite clear, especially to men of ordinary capacities? Do the
generality of common people understand that expression,—“to glorify
God?” No; no more than they understand Greek. And it is altogether
above the capacity of children; to whom we can scarce ever speak plain
enough. Now is not this the very principle that should be inculcated
upon every human creature,—“you are made to be happy in God,” as soon
as ever reason dawns? Should not every parent, as soon as a child
begins to talk, or to run alone, say something of this kind; “see! what
is that which shines so over your head? that we call the sun. See, how
bright it is! feel how it warms you! it makes the grass to spring, and
everything to grow. But God made the sun. The sun could not shine,
nor warm, nor do any good without him.” In this plain and familiar
way a wise parent might, many times in a day, say something of God;
particularly insisting, “he made you; and he made you to be happy in
him; and nothing else can make you happy.” We cannot press this too
soon. If you say, “nay, but they can not understand you when they are
so young,” I answer, no, nor when they are fifty years old, unless God
opens their understanding. And can he not do this at any age?

Indeed this should be pressed on every human creature, young and old,
the more earnestly and diligently, because so exceedingly few, even of
those that are called Christians, seem to know anything about it. Many
indeed think of being happy with God in heaven; but the being happy in
God on earth never entered into their thoughts.

Let all that desire to please God, condescend to be taught of God,
and take care to walk in that path which God hath himself appointed.
Beware of taking half of this religion for the whole, but take both
parts of it together. And see that you begin where God himself begins:
“Thou shalt have no other God before me.” Is not this the first, our
Lord himself being the judge, as well as the great commandment? First,
therefore, see that ye love God! next, your neighbor, every child
of man. From this fountain let every temper, every affection, every
passion flow. So shall that “mind be in you, which was also in Christ
Jesus.” Let all your thoughts, words, and actions, spring from this! So
shall you “inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of
the world.”


[_May 27._]


READINGS FROM THOMAS À KEMPIS.

OF BEARING WITH THE DEFECTS OF OTHERS.

Those things that a man can not amend in himself, or in others, he
ought to suffer patiently until God orders things otherwise.

Think that perhaps it is better so for thy trial and patience.

2. If one that is once or twice warned will not give over, contend not
with him; but commit all to God, that his will may be done, and his
name honored in all his servants, who well knoweth how to turn evil
into good.

Study to be patient in bearing with the defects and infirmities of
others, of what sort soever they be: for that thou thyself also hast
many, which must be suffered by others.

If thou canst not make thyself such a one as thou wouldst, how canst
thou expect to have another in all things to thy liking?

We would willingly have others perfect, and yet we amend not our own
faults.

We would have others exactly corrected, and will not be corrected
ourselves.

The liberty of others displeaseth us, and yet we will not have our
desires denied.

Thus it appears how seldom we weigh our neighbors in the same balance
with ourselves.

3. If all men were perfect, what should we have to suffer of our
neighbor for God?

But now God hath thus ordained it, that we may learn to bear one
another’s burdens; for no man is without fault; no man but hath
his burden; no man is self-sufficient; no man has wisdom enough
for himself; but we ought to bear with one another, comfort, help,
instruct, and admonish one another.

Occasions of adversity best discover how great virtue each one hath:

For occasions make not a man frail, but show what he is

OF AVOIDING RASH JUDGMENT.

Turn thine eyes unto thyself, and beware thou judge not the deeds of
other men.

In judging others a man laboreth in vain, often erreth, and easily
sinneth; but in judging and examining himself, he always laboreth
fruitfully.

We often judge of things according as we fancy them: for affection
bereaves us easily of a right judgment.

If God were always our desire, we should not be so much troubled when
our inclinations are opposed.

2. But oftentimes something lurks within, which draweth us after it.

Many secretly seek themselves in their actions, but know it not.

They live in peace of mind when things are done according to their
will: but if things succeed otherwise than they desire, they are
straightway troubled.

Diversity of inclinations and opinions often causes dissensions between
religious persons, between friends and countrymen.

3. An old custom is hardly broken, and no man is willing to be led
farther than himself can see.

If thou dost more rely upon thine own reason, than upon Jesus Christ,
late, if ever, shalt thou become illuminated.

OF WORKS DONE OUT OF CHARITY.

The outward work, without charity, profiteth nothing; but whatsoever is
done out of charity, be it ever so little and contemptible in the sight
of the world, is wholly fruitful.

For God weigheth more with how much love one worketh, than how much he
doeth.

He doth much that loveth much.

2. He doth much that doth a thing well.

He doth well that serveth his neighbor, and not his own will.

Often it seemeth to be charity, and it is rather carnality; because
natural inclinations, self-will, hope of reward, and desire of our own
interest, are motives that men are rarely free from.

3. He that hath true and perfect charity seeketh himself in nothing,
but only desireth in all things that God should be exalted.

He envieth none, because he seeketh not his own satisfaction: neither
rejoiceth in himself, but chooses God only for his portion.

He attributes nothing that is good to any man, but wholly referreth it
unto God, from whom, as from the fountain, all things proceed: in whom
finally all the saints rest.

O that he had but one spark of true charity, he would certainly discern
that all earthly things are full of vanity!

    [_End of Required Reading for May._]




THE ROMANCE OF ASTRONOMY—ASTROLOGY.

By R. K. MILLER.


A very interesting portion in the study of planetary astronomy is
the mysterious influence which these bodies were supposed to have
had on the affairs of men. Astrology comprehended the other heavenly
bodies as well as the planets, but the simple regularity of their
movements rendered them far less interesting than the “wanderers.”
The seemingly arbitrary and irregular course of these bodies caused
them to be selected to represent the varying turns of fortune’s wheel.
The father of the written science of astrology was Ptolemy, who seems
to have studied astronomy for astrological purposes. According to
him, the planet in the ascendant at the time of birth was the chief
ruler of the character and fortune of the “native,” as the person was
technically called. Mercury presided over the mental faculties and
literary and scientific pursuits; he caused a desire of change. Venus
was called the Lesser Fortune. She produced a mild disposition, with
an inclination to pleasure, and brought good fortune to the native in
his or her relations to the other sex. Mars was the Lesser Infortune:
his influence was decidedly risky, and needed to be well aspected by
the other planets to lead to good. He, of course, presided over war
and over trades connected with iron and steel. Jupiter was regarded
as by far the most propitious of the heavenly orbs. He ruled all high
offices. The mortal born under him would be high-minded, liberal, just
and devout. Happy the kingdom ruled by a sovereign on whose birth he
shone. English astrologers tell with pride that Queen Victoria was born
when Jupiter rode high in the heavens. Next to him we have the grim
and ill-omened Saturn, the Greater Infortune. Those born under him are
gloomy and reserved—faithful in friendship but bitter toward an enemy.
Failure, disease, disgrace and death beset the steps of the child of
Saturn. Uranus causes abruptness of manners and general eccentricity,
while astrologers have not made up their minds about Neptune. The signs
of the Zodiac were supposed to have a good deal to do with personal
appearance. Thus Pisces produced a short person, with round face
and slow gait; Taurus, a well-set person, with broad face and thick
neck. Different parts of the human life were allotted to different
luminaries, as infancy to the Moon, youth to Venus, and so on. Lastly
the visible firmament was divided into twelve equal portions. The
first was the house of health; the second, that of wealth; the third,
brothers and sisters; the fourth, parents; the fifth, children and
amusements; the sixth, sickness; and so on up to the twelfth. The
connection is, of course, obvious, as $1 in the fifth house foretells
misfortune with one’s children.

Probably few persons have their horoscopes erected now-a-days, but we
have before us that of the Prince of Wales, calculated at the time of
his birth of Zadkiel, according to the rules of Ptolemy. The sign in
ascendant was Sagittarius, which produces “a tall, upright body, an
oval face, ruddy complexion and chestnut hair, good eye, courteous,
just, a lover of horses, accomplished and deserving of respect.” The
Sun, being well aspected, foretold honors, and as he was in Cancer, in
sextile with Mars, the Prince was to be partial to maritime affairs,
and win naval glory. The house of wealth was held by Jupiter, and this
betokened great wealth through inheritance—a prognostication which,
in spite of republican shoemakers and baronets, is not unlikely to
come true. The house of marriage was inhabited by Venus, Mars and
Saturn, but fortunately the first was to predominate, and the Prince,
“after some trouble in his matrimonial speculations,” was to marry a
princess of high birth. A few particulars of history are given, but
we are overwhelmed with information about his character, over fifty
characteristics actually being enumerated, and the horoscope ends, “All
things considered, though firm and sometimes decided in opinion, this
royal native, if he lives to mount the throne, will sway the scepter of
these realms in moderation and justice, and be a pious and benevolent
man and a merciful sovereign.”




AMUSEMENTS—TENNIS.

By ROBERT MACGREGGOR.


It was in France that what its devotees call “the king of games,”
tennis, was originated; but the ground-work is found in the simple old
hand ball play that figured so conspicuously in the every-day life of
the classical world. It is of little use to speculate in which of the
varieties of ball-play mentioned by ancient writers is to be found the
progenitor of this pastime. At any rate, a game very like tennis, in
which the ball was driven to and fro by a racket, was played in 1380,
and soon after we find Richard II. including this game among those
unlawful for laboring people. The name “tennis” first occurs in Gower’s
“Ballade” in 1400. There is an old story of historical interest told in
connection with our game. When Henry V. was meditating war against the
King of France, the old “Chronicle” tells us that “The Dolphyn thynkyng
Henry to be still given to such plaies and follies as he exercised
before the tyme that he was exalted to the croune, sent hym a tunne of
tennis balles to plaie with, as he saied that he had better skill of
tennis than of warre.” Shakspere makes Henry reply to the ambassador
who brought the gift and message:

    “We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us;
     His present and your pains we thank you for;
     When we have matched our rackets to these balls,
     We will, in France, by God’s grace, play a set
     Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard.”

While Henry received the ambassadors, James I. of Scotland lost his
life, it may be said, through his devotion to tennis. While holding the
Yuletide festival at Perth, conspirators attacked the castle. The king
tore up a plank in the flooring of the room where he was, and dropped
into a vault below the apartment, where it was thought escape would be
easy. There had been an opening by which he might have escaped, but
this had, a few days earlier, been closed by his own orders, because
the balls by which he played at tennis were apt to drop into it.

When we reach the reigns of the fourth and fifth Jameses of Scotland,
we find from the accounts of the lord high treasurer many evidences of
the kings’ fondness for this game and the considerable sums they lost
at it.

Henry VII., as the register of his expenditures shows, was a tennis
player.

The fifth Scottish James was so devoted to pastimes of all sorts that
all his leisure was devoted to amusements, and naturally his people
followed his example, especially his fondness for tennis: even the
friars caught the fever, for Lyndesay draws us a picture, probably
common in that age:

    “Though I preich nocht, I can play at the caiche [tennis].
     I wat thair is nocht ane amang you all
     Mair ferilie can play at the fute ball.”

The game is traced in English history to Henry VIII., who was very
fond of it. It is said by a historian: “His propensity being perceived
by certayne craftie persons, they brought in Frenchmen and Lombards
to make wagers with hym; and so he lost muche money, but when he
perceyved theyr crafte he escheued their company and let them go.”
Though devoted to the game, the bluff old king passed a stringent act
against the keeping of any tennis-court, and against the enjoyment of
several games by apprentices, mariners, artificers, and many others.
This was only repealed in 1863. The Reformation gave the game a shock,
especially in Scotland. During the Commonwealth the exiled court played
the game abroad. At the Restoration Charles reintroduced the game, and
probably the next few years were the palmy days of tennis in England.
In 1664, we learn from Pepys’ diary, that the gossipy secretary had
been watching the king at tennis, but was disgusted with the flattery
bestowed upon him. He says: “I went to the tennis-court and there saw
the king play at tennis. To see how the king’s play was extolled,
without any excuse at all, was a loathsome sight, though sometimes he
did indeed play very well, but such open flattery is beastly.”

During the last century the records of tennis are meagre: it seems to
have been played in only one or two places. Even in England it may be
said that tennis as a popular game went out with the Stuarts. Of course
the pastime has never actually died out, and in recent years it has had
increased attention paid to it, but even now the number of courts does
not appear to exceed a score. “Tennis,” says the _Edinburgh Review_,
“the most perfect of games, because with the most continuous certainty
it exercises and rewards all the faculties of the player, has only
been prevented hitherto from becoming as popular as it deserves from
its being, under its original conditions, so expensive, so difficult
to learn, and so puzzling to count, as to discourage those who are not
‘to the manner born,’ from touching it.” The first objection of expense
seemed almost insuperable, the cost of a tennis-court being from
fifteen to twenty thousand dollars, until the recent revival turned
the game out to grass, and introduced its rudiments to our lawns.
Lawn-tennis, however, like the croquet, which it drove off the lawn, is
not a new form of tennis. It is at least three centuries old.




CELIA SINGING.

By THOMAS STANLEY.


        Roses in breathing forth their scent,
        Or stars their borrowed ornament,
        Nymphs in the watery sphere that move,
        Or angels in their orbs above,
        The wingèd chariot of the light,
        Or the slow silent wheels of night,
        The shade which from the swifter sun
        Doth in a circular motion run,
    Or souls that their eternal rest do keep,
    Make far less noise than Celia’s breath in sleep.

        But if the Angel, which inspires
        This subtle flame with active fires,
        Should mould this breath to words, and those
        Into a harmony dispose,
        The music of this heavenly sphere
        Would steal each soul out at the ear,
        And into plants and stones infuse
        A life that Cherubim would choose,
    And with new powers invert the laws of fate,
    Kill those that live, and dead things animate.




GERMAN-AMERICAN HOUSE-KEEPING.

By the Author of “Home Life in Germany,” etc.


I received a letter from Germany the other day, written by a young
American woman who was recently married to a German officer. They
live in a city with about the population of Rochester, N. Y., only
distinguished from other places of its size in possessing an old
cathedral, a water-cure (_Bade Anstalt_), and being a military post.
These distinguishing features have nothing to do, however, with the
part of her letter which I desire to reflect upon. She writes:

“I am so fortunately situated in domestic matters; I have really no
care, the _mädchen_ is so competent, and so willing, it is a real
pleasure to keep house.”

Just before the arrival of this letter I had patiently listened for two
hours to the just and lamentable complaints of an American house-keeper
about “the impossibility of procuring a good servant!” The latter
resides in a university town, and if a university is worse than a
garrison, or students than military men, in destroying the tone of the
laboring women and girls, then let the fact have its weight against
the statement that the relation between mistress and maid in Europe
is better regulated and understood than in America. The two cases I
have presented seem to me to have about equal accessories, and it is a
curious search to find the reasons for the difference in them.

    “Six years ago the Empress of Germany announced that
    she would henceforth decorate with a golden cross
    every female servant who had passed forty years of her
    life in the same family. The Empress has been called
    upon to bestow this mark of her royal favor 893 times.
    Can any other country make such a remarkable showing?
    In America house-maids are apt to reckon their terms
    of continuous service by weeks and months instead of
    by years. The beginning of reform in this matter is
    anxiously awaited by millions of worried households.
    The heavy emigration from Germany to this country ought
    to bring to our shores some of these steady-going
    maids. Possibly there is something in the atmosphere of
    America, in the restless movement of our people that
    puts the devil of change into the heads of Gretchens
    and Bridgets.”

It is the “devil of change,” as the writer expresses it, which gets
into the heads of the Gretchens and Katherinas when they come to this
country. I think I have discovered a still better reason, which I
shall timidly reveal later on, for, in doing so, I must encroach upon
national taste and education.

First of all, we should consider that especially the uneducated German
man, or woman, girl, or boy, loves the _Vaterland_. The _heimath_,
with its low ceilings and plastered walls, its sanded floors and
wooden bench outside the door, where the father smokes his pipe in
the evening, while the mother knits, is all enshrined in the hearts
of the children, and the recollection of the _festtage_, when the
father and mother put on their best clothes and take all the children
to the neighboring beer-garden to hear music, is always joyous. It is
only by rumors of “higher wages” that such people are ever induced to
bundle up the feather beds, and lock the wooden chest, and start as
poor steerage passengers across the great Atlantic. After the horrors
of the voyage, and the strange and confusing days of Castle Garden,
what do they find in place of the old home and the familiar ways of
the _Vaterland_? The daughters hire out probably for cooks. First of
all, they are expected to cook a heavy breakfast by 8 o’clock, and
nothing seems so hard to a foreigner as this. Their traditions are at
once set at naught. They begin to grind on a differently constructed
wheel. Just as John Chinaman has to learn that we even turn the screw
the opposite way to the way in which he has been drilled, so the poor
Germans have to learn that if Americans offer higher wages, they also
expect things done in their own way. The dull gray kitchen is perhaps
a previous disappointment to the heavy breakfast. No white tiles
around the oven; no brassware to see her face in! No open market with
benches where she can sit and talk with the market women under their
red umbrellas, and watch the lads go by: covered, dull grey places are
our American markets compared with the bazar appearance of the meat
and vegetable markets of Europe. No concert in the evening for five
cents. Nothing—but a long day and a longer evening in an uninteresting
kitchen, with different food and different duties. Finding a young,
fresh-looking girl with her white cap on her head, in the kitchen of a
friend of mine, recently, where I chanced to be visiting, I asked her
in German if she was contented in this country, remarking at the same
time that she was fortunate to live with a lady who could speak German,
and who was so kind. “O yes,” said she; “but then I think I can do
better. If I can’t, it were happier for me in the _Vaterland_.”

One of our distinguished politicians and scholars, who served in
Germany as United States minister, brought back with him a German
_diener_, or butler. Karl did well for a season; maintained his
respectful bearing toward the _herrschaften_ and their guests until
finally he announced he was “discontented,” and the reason for his
desire to change places was that the _herrschaften_ did not entertain
as grandly in this country as they did in Germany, and that the guests
were not such fine ladies and gentlemen—they did not give _trink-gelt_
(civility money). But the most heartfelt reason was, he was lonely.
He missed music, he missed beer, he missed _gemüthlichkeit_, and fine
and high titles by which to call the ladies and gentlemen. And then
the _festtage_—no days in America for the poor working classes to be
relieved from care and have a good time. This did not please Karl.

On these _festtage_ in Germany a servant man or woman has as good
a chance to go to a picture gallery, or a pottery, or a museum, or
a concert, as gentlefolks; and does not the knowledge and pleasure
gained at such places make the servant more cheerful, and intelligent,
and competent to look at work not as drudgery, but as something in
which the whole human family is engaged in one way or another? Said an
observing servant to me after an afternoon in a picture gallery: “How
can those poor artists sit all day long with their feet on the stone
floor and copy pictures? They look so tired I was glad I was not one
of them!” After a visit to the _Königliche Porzellan Manufactur_, in
Charlottenburg, I remember once having asked a servant if she knew how
much labor it required to manufacture a cup and saucer; and I proceeded
to tell her how the feldspar found in the vicinity of Berlin was ground
to powder, cleaned through various tanks of water, each time running
through a sieve, then how they pass it between heavy weights so that it
came out in great sheets of pliable putty, which are laid over moulds,
just as a piece of dough is laid over a pie-pan. When these forms are
taken off, they are carefully finished in every indentation by skilful
workmen, who have delicate tools for the purpose. Afterward they take
these forms, cups, saucers, plates, vegetable dishes, as they may be,
and bake them in ovens for sixteen hours the first time, and after they
are taken out they are glazed and baked again, and then if the ware is
to be painted it must be baked again; and if gilded, still again. I
ended this elaborate description all out of breath, for it required as
much command of the German language as I at that time thought I had.
The attentive girl, however, relieved my excitement by saying: “Yes; I
have been out there, _gnädige frau_, and seen it all, and this is why
I try to be so careful with china.” In the five years this good girl
had lived with me she had rarely broken a piece. I could but think how
unlike the answer “Biddy” would have given, that “the kitchen floor
is very hard on china.” I have known servant girls as much interested
in the collections of laces in the museums, especially the specimens
made by poor peasant women in different centuries, as any high-born
lady, and much more capable of reproducing specimens of this industry.
The costumes of the peasants and the costumes of the kings and queens,
and the furniture used by the latter, will attract crowds of ignorant
people by the hour in European museums. But who ever sees any but the
intelligent and rich walking about in the Metropolitan Museum of New
York, or the Academy in Boston. We do not care to interest the working
classes in this country; only care to see that they work well and as
many hours as possible. “There remains,” says a writer on duties of
contract, “outside of their actual service, or of any assumption of
authority on our side, really limitless fields for the exercise of
our natural influence as their immediate superiors and friends.” I
think, in the matter of lodging—the rooms the Americans give their
servants to sleep in—they fare infinitely better than in any foreign
country; but the food is not so well adapted to their physical wants.
Delicate dishes and highly seasoned food are sent into the kitchen for
the servants by our American housekeepers, and you hear them say: “O,
we would not think of denying our servants all the dainties of our
own table.” Do they ever think that a working man or woman, no matter
of what nationality, prefers boiled beef and turnips, or bacon and
cabbage, to sweet breads and peas, or venison and cauliflower. But this
is an inexhaustible theme, and one I must defer yet again before I
venture to say what I think about the genuine American table.

In the town of Delitzsch, in the province of Posen, resides a man—Herr
Schulze-Delitzsch—who has devoted himself almost exclusively for
years to the study of the labor question and the elevation of the
working classes. He is a great reformer, but escapes being known as
a revolutionist. More practical and perhaps more methodical than
Lasalle, he relies not upon the state for aid, but upon the sympathy
and help of the working classes themselves. He organized workingmen’s
associations, union stores, etc. France, Belgium, Italy, and even
England, became awakened, and looked with interest upon his work, and
inquiries were made by authority of the English government into the
real manner and methods adopted. As a writer on the subject remarks:
“Schulze’s methods are economical and reformatory; Lasalle’s were
political and revolutionary.” The _Credit und Vorschuss Verein_,
which is a species of savings bank, was practically his work. The
members contributed of their savings to this fund, and when old age,
sickness, or misfortune overtook them, and they were obliged to give
up laboring by the day, they were in turn helped. The _Vereins_ were
entirely under the management of the members. The investment of the
capital was entirely under their control, the surplus being divided
annually, and the “sick funds” and “funeral funds” were distributed
by them. The first institution was founded in 1850, and in 1869 the
number reached 1,750. The permanent capital was then 12,000,000
thalers. The hired laborers form a tenth of the membership of the
unions, and they are on the increase; the farmers something more
than a fifth; the tradesmen a tenth, and the mechanics a third. The
farmer’s aim is, in part, the procuring, in common, seed, implements,
etc.; in part, the sale in common of milk, butter, cheese, hops,
wine, and other products. Thus, through moderate and just ideas and
management, much has been accomplished. Working people must not be
fed on incendiary ideas. Ruskin’s lectures to working men savor of
_dilettante_ ideas. A man who has never been poor rarely knows how
to appeal to the poor or guide them. Schulze-Delitzsch’s philosophy
has been learned from actual experience. There is nothing of the
factious orator about him, but he is calm and persuasive. He is not a
social-democrat, but belongs to the progressive party, which stands
for the most advanced form of liberalism. He organizes the poor to
teach them to resist their own worst faults. He was burgomaster of
Delitzsch at one time, after leaving political life in the capital,
because of differences which arose. He was assisted by his mother to
go on lecturing tours, and when this was no longer practicable—as she
had also small means—there was a purse raised by the citizens, which
reached the sum of 50,000 thalers; the greater part being given by
the poor working people in paltry sums. Thus he was saved for higher
work, and gave up the position of burgomaster. He accepted this money
only in trust—investing part in a home at Potsdam and the rest in
such a way that the interest only accrues to him. If it was worth
England’s time to inquire into the economic methods of the _Credit und
Vorschuss Verein_, perhaps America could utilize some ideas on this
subject. Germany is finding out many of our ways and means, which she
considers superior to her own conservative methods. Dr. Max Zering,
of Berlin, was recently commissioned by the government of Prussia
to investigate and report upon the agricultural and transportation
interests and methods of the United States. He will visit the different
cities, make the acquaintance of their boards of trade, chambers of
commerce, and railroad managers. It seems that the day has come when
nations are becoming very liberal toward one another. The exclusive
spirit which prevails in China, more than in any other country, is fast
being eradicated, and all people are exclaiming, “If you know anything
better, or accomplish anything in an easier way than we do, pray let us
have a lesson of you.”

Perhaps different nations show their identity more in regard to
preparing and eating food than in any other particular. The roots from
which their different languages spring are more easily discerned by a
philologist, than the common-sense basis which has suggested to each
people its separate ideas on food and the preparation of it, is found
out by any scientific chemist. I have been asked so often how the
German markets and groceries compare with ours in variety and price,
that it occurs to me to insert here an extract from an account book of
my butcher and grocer of the _preis courant_ for the years 1876, 1877,
1878, etc.:

                                         Price per pound.
                                       Marks Pf.     $ cts.
    Filet (Beef)                           1 20      .28½
    Schmorfleisch (Stewing Meat)           1 00      .238
    Schabefleisch (Hashed Meat)              90      .21
    Rindfleisch-Braten (Roast Beef)          95      .22½
    Suppenfleisch (Meat for Soup)            80      .19
    Kalbskeule (Veal)                        90      .21
    Kalbsbrust (Breast of Veal)              75      .18
    Kalbs-Cotelette (Veal Cutlets)         1 20      .28½
    Hammelkeule (Shoulder of Mutton)         80      .19
    Hammel-Cotelettes (Mutton Chops)         75      .18
    Hammelbrust (Breast of Mutton)           75      .18
    Schweinefleisch (Pork)                   90      .21

This was taken from a printed circular which every butcher of standing
in a large German city presents to his customers once a year. The
market list below is not complete, of course, but the great American
turkey, it will be observed, brings a high price in Germany, as well as
American hams.

                          Marks. Pf. $ cts.
    One Goose,                3  00   .71
    One Turkey,              10  00  2.38
    Fish,                     —   —    ——
    Oysters,                  —   —    ——
    Ham per lb.               1  80   .428
    Corn Beef per lb.         2  00   .47½
    Cheese per lb.               50   .12
    Butter per lb.            1  80   .428
    Lard per lb.                 90   .21
    Candles per lb.           1  00   .238
    Salt per lb.              1  00   .238
    Sugar per lb.                60   .14
    Coffee per lb.            1  50   .35½
    Rice per lb.                 40   .10
    Chocolate per lb.            80   .19
      One dozen Vienna rolls or cakes of bread for 30 days cost $2.50.

Some of these prices will show that Germany is no longer a cheap
country to live in, but the way in which articles of food are used and
managed is where the French and Germans excel in economy. For instance,
American housekeepers say in the winter and fall and spring, “It is
so difficult to keep a good table, because there is so little variety
in our markets.” And when they say this there will oftentimes be ten
different meats and as many vegetables to be had. Now why does this
complaint go on from year to year? Men and women are both to blame
for it, and to show how they are is an easy task. If these ten meats
and corresponding number of vegetable are judiciously managed, both
health and economy can be forwarded. I will enumerate the meats and
vegetables, that no housekeeper may say this is random talk: Beef
(1), mutton (2), veal (3), pork (4), ham (5), corn beef (6), turkey
(7), chicken (8), fish (9), game (10); kidneys, sweet-breads, and
the like, not to be mentioned here, for fear our American taste will
falter. Vegetables: Potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips, carrots, onions,
cabbage, beets, beans, squash, celery. Here you have ten without all
the fine canned peas and tomatoes and corn on your shelves. Now, I am
laughing because every delicately-minded woman in America exclaims
at once, “But you have enumerated vegetables that our husbands and
we ourselves would not touch!” Well, neither would a Frenchman, if
they came on his table with the combinations of meat, etc., that you
serve them with. A Frenchman knows (and the highest toned German has
learned from him) that there are chemical affinities in food, and he
selects his meat to correspond with his vegetable, or _vice versa_,
as carefully as he would combine chemical properties in a laboratory;
or as discreetly as he would choose guests for his drawing-room or
dinner-table; or as daintily as his wife would select gloves to match
her bonnet. Food assorted with bad taste and judgment on his table is
as distasteful as a delicate watercolor framed in a moulding which
belongs to a heavy old historical oil painting is to his eye. The
subject may seem to many unworthy such attention. There are those who
boast that “they do not care what they eat, so they get enough! or
how the table is set, or whether everything comes on at once or not!”
Well, this is the way Frederick the Great’s father felt; the ruder and
rougher, the better for his children; whether they took bread with a
fork, or ate with their knives, or mixed cabbage and eggs, it didn’t
matter to him, so the exchequer was sound. But what effect did all this
boorish home-life have upon young Frederick? It made him eschew every
German custom, every Teutonic idea, and give himself up entirely to the
French, to be ruled by his French cooks, and dressed by French tailors,
and entertained by French wits. Now the Germans have established
their own reputation for combinations which they consider good, and
it appears that the wife of our honored poet, who died as United
States Minister in Berlin (a German woman by birth), is not ashamed
to write on German cookery, although a woman of high and unquestioned
literary attainments, who could help her husband in the arduous task of
translating Faust. We Americans do not study this matter, or if we do,
and make an effort to improve, it is simply an imitation, and a poor
one at that, of some European ways. As health and happiness depend so
much upon whether our dinner “sets well,” the knowledge of instituting
such a mode of living as is best calculated to preserve health, is
a most desirable acquisition. And if errors are committed in this
respect, our injured system must suffer the bad consequences.

Now let us make a practical résumé of the subject: There are ten meats
and ten vegetables in the market and twenty-one meals in the week to
provide for. Let us first think of Sunday, for every man wants a good
dinner on Sunday, especially if he has done his duty at church, and
contributed his rightful portion to the Lord’s kingdom. If a woman
has but one girl, or servant, it seems only right for her to take
Sunday about with that servant, or propose to do so, that the poor
girl may also know occasionally the pleasure of putting on her good
clothes early Sunday morning and walking with a quiet conscience to
the house of God. And then it gives the lady of the house a good two
hours to reflect upon the drudgery that the hired laborer does for the
household—and if she be an inexperienced woman, she should learn to
cook one dinner a week. Perhaps these are rigid rules, but they bring
good results to a woman’s heart and home. Suppose you have purchased
some game for Sunday dinner: see that it is prepared for cooking on
Saturday, so that the mere roasting of it will cause you little trouble
on Sunday; and if, in addition to this, you and your husband have
determined, instead of having six vegetables, as most American tables
present, to have but one and a salad, let it be in this instance mashed
Irish potatoes and celery, or lettuce, or even fine-chopped cabbage,
if no other acid can be had. If you have not had soup, manage to
compensate by beautiful desserts, which are easily arranged on Saturday
also. Blanc mange or custards are better by being cold. Then you can
have fresh fruits, and after dinner coffee. Does this seem a meagre
and miserably arranged dinner, or does the following combination,
which I not long ago found on an American table, seem better? Fish,
beef, onions, eggs, cabbage, dried peaches, and pickles, before one’s
eyes all at once! There is as much difference to an æsthetical taste
between the simple but harmonious dinner, described above, and the
incongruous, distasteful dinner just mentioned, as there is between a
well-selected costume on a pretty woman, and an ugly mixture of color
and cut, covered by laces and jewelry, on an ugly woman; or, between
a tastefully arranged drawing-room and a hodge-podge of furniture and
drapery, which have no one element of similitude.

As the legend goes, Monday is the “tug of war” for housekeepers. Admit
that the dinner is the secondary thing and that it must be late in
starting. But if you have an understanding with your butcher to send
a piece of beef for boiling and you put it on at 10 o’clock with a
few carrots and an onion to flavor it, you will have some deliciously
tender stuff at 12 o’clock, with enough _bouillon_ to set away for
to-morrow, and if you have horse-radish to eat your beef with, and some
macaroni _a la creme_, or baked tomatoes or sweet potatoes (one, not
all three), with a good salad (an indispensable article), your Monday
dinner will not be so dreadful, although it has cost little or no time
in the preparation. See that your husband makes the salad dressing if
he is well disposed to do his part, at the table. A woman has enough to
look after of such details. Dispense with the dessert on Monday, but
let fresh fruit never be absent from your table if you can afford it.
Oranges, bananas, apples, grapes, pears, peaches; how lavish Nature is
in this direction!

For our Tuesday dinner we have the _bouillon_ set away from
yesterday—so that a roast is essential—always alternating between
boiling and roasting, and never letting a dinner be roasted throughout,
or _vice versa_. A roast of lamb or mutton with mint sauce, and turnips
boiled, and apple jelly, will perhaps answer, as we have had the soup
to begin with. A good plum pudding would taste well after this and some
acid fruit, with your coffee to finish with. Of course, Europeans begin
every dinner with soup, and their recipes are innumerable. But we are
here endeavoring to get up inexpensive meals that almost any family can
indulge in.

Wednesday: Chickens or squirrel fricasseed, or boiled with rice and
seasoned with East India curry, makes a very inviting dish, if the rice
is laid around the chicken and garnished with parsley. Give us peas,
or lima beans, or Saratoga potatoes with this meat. Saratoga potatoes
served when the chicken is brought on, and later a course of tongue
and peas—if the gentleman of the house complains that chicken is too
delicate a fowl for him to make a dinner from. Dessert, a lemon pie or
pudding, etc., etc.

Thursday: To-day the washing and ironing are all through with, and
the best dinner of the week can be prepared. What shall it be? An
Englishman would say, roast beef; a German, a goose; an Italian, veal,
tomatoes, and macaroni; a Frenchman, wild pigeons, or sweet-breads,
or deviled crabs, or some dainty combinations. What does the great
American heart cry out for? Turkey and oysters! turkey and oysters! and
six vegetables; everything the season affords, reserving nothing for
the morrow. Have your own way about this Thursday dinner. I shall not
interfere with economic ideas or European combinations, but promise to
tell me when it is over if your purse is not lighter and your stomach
heavier than you anticipated? If so, Friday, I shall take you under
instruction again, and to restore your over-taxed stomach we will have,
first, a good beef soup, and, to invigorate you mentally, after the
soup, we will have a beautiful salmon, or any large fish, stuffed and
baked; served with potatoes and barley bread, which will also give
phosphorus. Stewed cherries for dessert, and cheese and crackers will
supply other needs.

By Saturday you will have recovered from that heavy dinner of Thursday,
and from Friday’s dinner the cook will possibly have saved enough fish
to make some nice little fish patties to serve before the good, rare
roast of beef, which for our Saturday dinner is accompanied by spinach,
made very fine, mashed to the consistency of mashed potatoes, and
served with a plateful of bread-dice, (in form of cubes), which have
been fried as one fries doughnuts; roasted potatoes and a fresh salad;
a cardinal, or transparent, or cream pudding, and your fresh fruit, and
after dinner coffee.

You will feel, as Sunday approaches again, that you have at least had
variety from day to day, and not eaten something of everything the
market affords every day, until you are utterly tired of everything!
From the beef of Saturday can be prepared for Sunday breakfast what the
French call a _râgout_, which is more savory than hash, because the
pieces of meat are left about two inches in size, and flavored with a
bit of bacon, potatoes, carrots, and onions.

In this enumeration I have left beefsteak, liver, kidneys,
sweet-breads, and ham untouched. All of these I presumed you would
claim for your breakfasts and teas. Sardines, and dried beef and
tongue, and many other things the market also gives you, and in
exercising some ingenuity you will not have to repeat the same dish day
after day, nor confine yourself to roasting and frying everything, when
things are often better boiled, or stewed, or smothered. And now I will
not intrude upon another Sunday dinner. I can only hope, in parting
from the subject and from you, that the kitchen and dining-room have
grown more interesting.

I think of but one other habit and one custom in which the Germans
differ from us. Instead of sitting in their bed-rooms, as so many
Americans do, they invariably have a sitting-room attached to the
bed-room, and the bed-room is used merely as a place for repose.

They pay their physicians so much a year, whether there be need for
their services or not. Some years it happens there will be many members
of the household sick, but the doctor is not expected to ask more that
year than he did the year before, when he was only called once or
twice. Fifty thalers is the usual amount for a small family, or about
forty dollars of our money. Professional nurses are to be found even in
small provincial towns, and neighbors are not called upon, as among us,
to serve this purpose.

       *       *       *       *       *

“Slander,” says Saint Bernard, “is a poison which extinguishes charity,
both in the slanderer and in the person who listens to it; so that a
single calumny may prove fatal to an infinite number of souls, since it
kills not only those who circulate it, but also all those who do not
reject it.”—_Pascal._




CHANGES IN FASHIONS.

From the French of M. A. CHALLAMEL.


Fashion is the expositor of our habits and our social relations, from
the standpoint of costume. It is a much more serious subject than it
may seem at first; far from serving only as a source of frivolous talk,
even when it is specially concerned with our dress and ornamentation,
the subject of fashion, it has been wisely said, has its value as a
moral sign-post, and supplies the historian, the philosopher, and the
novelist with a guide to the prevailing ideas of the time.

It is of the French fashions we speak here; for in France, the land
of classic fancy, the empire of fashion, has assuredly been more
deeply felt than elsewhere. Even in primitive Gaul were the fashions
fixed, but their common sense is to be commended. The Gallic woman was
demanded by fashion to follow a strict course of bathing. In every
locality baths were established, and they were to her a delight, a
duty, and a necessity. At Marseilles young girls were forbidden by
custom the use of wine, lest it should injure the ivory whiteness of
their complexion. To guard against excess in dress, the law required
that the highest marriage portion of a woman should not exceed one
hundred golden crowns. The history of political events has had more
influence on fashion than may be generally supposed. Upon the conquest
of the country by Cæsar, Roman manners were introduced into primitive
Gaul, and the Gallic women, declining to be beaten in the art of
pleasing, as their husbands had in arms, adopted the fashions of
Rome. Extravagance in dress became boundless. We have in this early
period the beginning of two modern fashions. Some ladies chose to wear
garments which, on account of their breadth, were called by Horace
_palissades_. From these the crinoline appears to have been derived.
Ovid observes that to equalize the shoulders, if one were slightly
higher than the other, it was customary to drape lightly the lower of
the two. Thus originated padding. These Gallo-Roman ladies were elegant
in all their surroundings, and the Frenchwoman of to-day has not a
better sorted wardrobe. Parasols, mirrors, fans, perfumes, pomatums,
and cosmetics—all these things were known to the Gallo-Roman period.

It was not until about the tenth century that dress in France became
original. The women of the provinces adopted costumes of their
own, and, at their will, added details. Indeed, if the history of
fashion is studied, it will be seen that the original type of dress
has not changed. It is the subordinate parts that undergo continual
alteration. The skirt, the tunic (or overskirts), the mantle, the cap
and reticule have always existed since the time of our Gallic mothers.
One modification of the skirt produced a great furore in religious
circles—it was the trail to the gown. A disgusted prior said: “The tail
gives a woman the look of a serpent,” and the council of Montpellier
forbade the appendix in question on penalty of excommunication.
No fashion ever brought down more anathemas on the fair sex than
the “_hennins_.” It was introduced, too, in a period when it would
naturally be supposed that the very terror of the time would have
destroyed all passion for dress and capricious fashions—the melancholy
time of the Hundred Years’ War. This hennin was a kind of two-horned
head-dress, made of muslin, stiffly starched and kept in place by fine
wire, and of most exaggerated size. Paradin says: “It was peaked like a
steeple, or with tall horns; from these horns hang flags, capes, fringe
and other material. Such head-dresses were naturally very expensive,
and husbands were loud in complaint.” Confessors and monks added their
curses. They considered the hennin as an invention of the evil one,
and organized a deadly warfare against the obnoxious article; but this
uproar availed nothing, the women only gave up their hennins from a
caprice similar to that which had invented them.

One strange fashion of the whole Middle Ages related to the color of
the hair. Fair hair alone was considered beautiful. On this point the
French and the Greeks were of one mind. In Shakspere’s play of “As
You Like It” we find Rosalind as she hoots at Phœbe, laughing at her
“black silk-hair” as a mark of her plainness. The word “fashion” seems
to convey an almost absolute sense of novelty, but that which is new
to-day may be but a revival of what is old. “There is nothing new under
the sun,” applies with special force to fashion. The pretty trifles
worn by women of to-day are nothing but the reproduction of similar
ornaments worn by the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, or the Gauls,
and all our novelties find their origin many centuries in the past.




THE HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION.

By W. T. HARRIS.


VI.—GREECE AND ITS RELATION TO THE EAST.

In previous chapters we have studied the nations of Western Asia
and Africa in regard to internal appliances for education, but more
especially in regard to external educational influence upon other
peoples.

At this important point in our discussions, when we are passing into a
new region—that of Europe, or “the West,” as contrasted with Asia as
“the East”—we may sum up briefly the chief results before considering
the special theme of this chapter.

Education in Egypt consisted, on the part of the common people, in
learning to read and write the script alphabet derived from the
hieroglyphics, the elements of arithmetic, and one’s trade or vocation.
A higher system of education was reserved for the candidates for the
priestly caste, including the branches of language, mathematics,
astronomy, natural science, music and religion. There was also a secret
doctrine taught to the illuminated ones who entered on the duties of
the priestly caste.

In Egypt the State was as thoroughly subordinated to the priestly class
as in Persia to the military caste, or in Phœnicia and Carthage to the
mercantile caste. The aim of life was there to prepare for death, and
the earthly hull of the body was to be carefully preserved as the soul
would need its body again after 3,000 years; it was carefully embalmed
and laid to rest in the tombs of the hills, or if royal was placed in a
pyramid. The court in which the dead were tried and judgment pronounced
upon their lives, decreeing the honors of burial or denying this
privilege was the great national educational institution.

With the old Persians education according to Herodotus consisted
chiefly in training its youth to bear arms and to tell the truth. To
use the bow and arrow skilfully and to ride on horseback fitted him for
duties in his warlike nation.

Theoretical education included the arts of reading, writing, and polite
behavior, and was in the hands of the eighty thousand Magi, a carefully
educated class, who divided their members into three grades: (_a_) the
apprentices, or first initiated; (_b_) journeymen, those who had passed
the second degree, and (_c_) masters, those who had reached the highest
degree. The Persian mind set up the principles of light and darkness,
which he further defined as good and evil. It was a point upon which
great stress was laid by their teachers, to inculcate a practice of
good and an abhorrence of evil. The public education lasted from the
age of seven to that of twenty-four. Before the fifth year the child
was not to be told “this is bad,” or “this is good,” but only told
“do not do it again,” when he committed a fault. Before the age of
seven years he was never to be whipped. The virtues of self-denial in
matters of eating and drinking, of conquest over one’s appetites, and
of obedience to what is prescribed, were especially inculcated.

Of the Phœnician education we know only that it laid great stress upon
what is useful in the arts and trades. The Carthaginian colony taught
their youth reading, writing, arithmetic, and religious duties, besides
a special trade and the use of arms. Their moral instruction was of a
questionable character, useful in their commerce perhaps, but admitting
of deceit and violence. “Punic faith” became a by-word in surrounding
nations for treachery. In Phœnicia we find a marked departure from the
family training that formed so large a part of the instruction in other
Oriental nations. Indifference toward family and one’s native land,
and a passionate love for adventure and commercial gain were fostered
necessarily in its system of education, because the State depended upon
these qualities for its prosperity.

In Judea the education wore an oriental stamp. Religious history
perhaps was the foremost of the branches of study. The arts of reading
and writing were required in order that the youth might learn to read
the written law which had been especially delivered to his nation from
the most high to Moses on Mount Sinai. The law was impressed upon the
memory of the child. Song and music were taught but gymnastics was
neglected. The girls learned household employments—spinning, weaving,
sewing, painting, cooking, dancing, and cymbal-playing. They were
educated by their mothers in piety, cleanliness, and morality. A school
of prophets seems to have been established by Samuel when music and
religious poetry were cultivated. After the Babylonian exile rabbinical
lore was prominent in the higher education.

The Mediterranean Sea is the center of all progressive civilization
in modern history. Upon its shores the Orient and Occident have met
and mingled. Phœnicia, Judea, Greece, Rome, Carthage,—these have
played their parts in its history. The European states trace the
first impulses of their culture to Asia. But Europe borrowed nothing
without assimilating it to a new principle radically different from the
Oriental principle. It is the principle of individuality—of personal
development, of personal achievement, of personal freedom,—that we meet
upon the shores of Europe, and education assumes at once a new interest
to us when we come to Greece and Rome.

A wide chasm separates the European education from the Asiatic. The
East celebrates the infinite as something not only without bounds and
limits, but as something devoid of all distinction, and hence devoid of
conscious personality; God is in his essence not revealable to man, is
their doctrine. Europe, on the other hand, celebrates the distinctions
within the personality. In Western Asia, and particularly in Egypt,
there was an approach toward the recognition of personality in God, and
in the Hebrew religion there was the complete attainment of this idea.
The Hebrew idea finds its beginnings in Asia, but its development looks
to Europe, whose peoples find in the religion derived from Judea their
ideal.

Greece and Rome develop the idea of individuality in a very different
manner from Persia and Egypt, and do not know anything of the Hebrew
idea until their national career has been run. Greece does not reach
the idea of one God as Jehovah, but it conceives the divine as
beautiful individuality—the gods of Olympus, serene and graceful, but
having the special character of human beings.

It was a great step to recognize this human character in the
divine,—and the Greek mind rejoiced in the consciousness that his gods
were so nearly of his own nature that they could and did dwell in human
bodies.

This idea furnishes us the first phase of Greek education—the education
of the body by gymnastic games, so as to make it perfectly beautiful
and graceful. Cultivation of the body was a religious exercise, for
it was a celebration of the divine by realizing it in the form of the
beautiful. The East Indian ascetic sought by all means to mortify and
deform the body. The Greek sought to perfect it.

There were games for all the Greek States—the Olympian, the Pythian,
the Nemæan, and Isthmian—international expositions of strength and
beauty.

When the ideal of beauty had been fixed, there came the sculptor who
conceived the forms and expressions of the gods of Olympus, taking
his hints from human models that he saw all around him. The national
culture in gymnastics first, the plastic arts second, these conspired
to produce the ideals of beauty which educated the Greek people, and
furnish an essential element in the education of all subsequent time.
Preceding all plastic art was the poetry of Homer, out of which the
Greek civilization seems to have been breathed.

The second book of the _Iliad_ furnished the staple of school
education, giving the history and geography of ancient Greece with the
most wonderful of literary forms. The _Odyssey_ extended the education
in the same direction, and gave under a thin veil of allegory, the
Greek moral code.

The general character of Greek education may be said to be æsthetic—a
cultivation of the sense of the beautiful, and a training of the body
into symmetry and grace. Gymnastics, music, and grammatical art were
the staples of their pedagogy. By music they meant not only a sense
of rhythm and measure, but spiritual culture in general—including the
several branches over which the Nine Muses presided—whence its name
“music.” Poetry and music and mathematics were all included under
this designation. Grammatical training included reading, writing, and
language studies.

In the development of individuality, the mutual independence of the
Greek States and difference in their races or stocks were both causes
and results. The Æolian, Dorian, and Ionian stocks manifested different
tendencies, the Æolians preferring ear-culture, or music; the Dorians,
bodily culture; the Ionians, poetry. The Dorians at Sparta educated
boys and girls in the same way, although in separate institutions.
There was, indeed, in Sparta, a tendency toward the Persian form of
education, with important differences in regard to truth-speaking and
honesty. The child was educated solely for the needs of the State,
being trained to endure heat and cold and fatigue, and every year being
obliged to conform to a more severe discipline, until at thirty years
he had become a complete Spartan veteran soldier. Nevertheless the
Spartan preserved his Greek individuality even under his Oriental forms
of despotism.

The Spartans, though agreeing with the Athenians in certain general
characteristics, were in sharp contrast to the latter in the spirit of
their education. It was their aim to produce able warriors that led
them to train their youth carefully in bodily strength and agility,
capacity of endurance, personal bravery, and patriotism. Up to the
seventh year the boy was educated in the family; after that time in
public, and fed at the common table, and trained with other youth in
the disciplines above mentioned, as well as in the art of skillful
theft. Every year there was a general public flogging in order to test
their strength of endurance and sense of honor. He who bore all the
pain without uttering a cry was crowned with garlands. Spartan youth
sometimes died under these tortures without uttering a sound. From year
to year the discipline became more and more severe. The Spartan girls
were trained to be companions of heroes, and had their own gymnasia
wherein they learned to run, to wrestle, to jump, and ride the chariot.

At Athens, the chief seat of the Ionian stock, we find the purest type
of Greek nationality.

The education of Spartans was designed, as has been said, to fit youth
for citizens that could defend the State. That of Athens was for free
individuality. The laws of Solon enjoined upon each father in Athens to
teach his son a trade, whereby he could earn his living. If the father
neglected this the son was absolved from the duty of supporting him
in old age. The law of Solon decreed that the boy, before all else,
should learn how to read and how to swim. It was a maritime State, and
the Greek lived much upon the water. The son of poor parents should be
taught music, horsemanship, and gymnastics, hunting and philosophy. It
was left to the father to decide whether these higher studies should
be undertaken or not. But public opinion was so strong that no father
dared to refuse a higher education to his son if his means allowed it.
For the first seven years the Athenian boy was under the care of the
women. During this period he played with rattles, balls, wooden horses,
dice and tops, the skipping of stones in the water, etc. The games and
plays of Greek children are interesting, when we study the development
of his individuality,—interesting also in hints as to the modern
experiment of the kindergarten.

At seven years began the school time of the Athenian boy. An old
superannuated slave was assigned to the work, and called in the Greek
language _pædagogos_, pedagogue, (_boy-driver_) who accompanied him
everywhere as supervisor. In the _pedagogium_ the boy learned to read
and write. Later came the music teacher, who taught him to play the
Cithæra and sing. At last he took up gymnastics and continued it till
his eighteenth year. Then he took up his trade selected by the father,
and at the age of twenty his education was considered complete.

In the famous funeral oration which Thucydides puts into the mouth
of Pericles he congratulates the Athenians on the fact that their
fatherland was a great educational center, a sort of school for all
Greece. Their temples and works of art were objects of study to all
enterprising strangers. Their artists, and poets, and philosophers were
sought for the education of all who aspired to culture. The Sophists
formed a guild of professional teachers. After Plato and Aristotle,
Athens remained a university for many hundred years, or until Justinian
closed her schools because of their hostility to the State religion.

The period of the Sophists is of great interest. As teachers of
dialectic and rhetoric, they endeavored to fit the Athenian youth for
skillful and effective pleas in the courts or persuasive harangues
before the people. They taught how to debate and how to make the
worse appear the better reason. They pushed their speculations
beyond rhetorical forms into the realms of philosophy, and in the
end questioned all principles of conviction, and even the bases of
morality. All faith was undermined. At this juncture rose Socrates,
the greatest character of his age, who showed up by a keener dialectic
the firm foundations of virtue and truth, under the shifting sands of
opinion and prejudice. Plato has preserved for us in his dialogues the
beautiful picture of Socrates in his knight-errant exploits against the
Sophists, and finally his tragic but heroic end. Plato’s works have
been for more than two thousand years a liberal education into sound
and deep philosophy, and, with the works of Aristotle, his pupil and
successor, form the canonical books of philosophy. They have furnished
the philosophical forms used by the Christian fathers in building up
the great structure of Christian theology.

The Greek people have given to the world the two great elements of art
and science—the æsthetic and theoretic forms of culture. Their defect
is found in their exclusive devotion to those two phases. We must find
in the Roman civilization the forms of the will which civilization has
needed in order to form political and social institutions—the Greeks
were weak on this side.

Above all, the deep spirituality, the communion with God as the one
Infinite Person, creator of heaven and earth, is not to be found
in Greek education, although it is the most important, nay, the
all-essential point in our modern education.

After the time of Aristotle the Greek intellect dissipated itself in
Stoicism and skepticism, and a cloud of darkness settled down gradually
over the country, when Rome conquered its last armies, and reduced it
to obedience to an alien principle. At a few centers like Alexandria
and Athens, art and science were cultivated to a very high degree,
but Greece had nothing new to contribute to the world, and its labors
henceforth were for Roman hire, or frequently the work of bondmen. The
wealthy Roman owned Greek slaves, who acted as tutors to his children
and producers of art for his amusement. But as nurses and tutors the
Greek soon spread his Greek education over the mighty nation that had
conquered the world.




DAFFODILS AT SEA.

By J. S. HOWSON.


    Fair daffodils I took across the western sea away,
      To cheer my lonely cabin and to talk to me of home.
      Not double daffodils I took, but single—freshly come
    From wintry village fields. I hate the dowager display,
      That spoils sweet nature’s manner, and with bold and stately stare
      Arrays in artificial pomp the fashionable square.

    Not for me only were those gifts. I marked where children clung,
      Warm and close-pressed, around a mother seeking distant lands.
      One flower I chose apart and placed in tiny baby hands,
    When soon it lay in fragments, on the wet deck torn and flung.
      Dear child! she only broke her latest toy. What should she know
      Of hopes and memories that in those yellow petals grow?

    Another to a woman lone, with sorrow worn and spent,
      I gave: she took it tearfully; and when I next passed by,
      She held it tenderly, and watched it with a serious eye,
    As loth that it should fade. Perchance her quickened fancy went,
      Where once her footsteps strayed, by mountain stream and copse and glen,
      And neighbor-cottages, which now she will not see again.

    Fair daffodils, what power lives for us in your gentle mood!
      Sure promise of bright spring beyond the changeful stormy ways;
      Lessons of quiet love, that bind our last and earliest days;
    Of patience, and of humble hope to be not great but good.
      Then let me learn what ye would calmly teach, here by my side,
      In pensive dignity and grace and modest queenly pride.

       *       *       *       *       *

There is no uprightness of intention that can justify calumny; nor
even though the question were the conversion of the whole earth to
the belief of revealed truth, would it be allowable to blacken the
innocent, because we must not do the least evil even to bring about the
greatest good, for “the truth of God requires not the assistance of our
untruths,” as the Scripture says (Job xiii:7).—_Pascal._




THE WORTH OF FRESH AIR.

    [Concluded.]


A very large quantity of fresh air is spoiled and rendered foul by the
act of breathing. You, yourself, spoil not less than a gallon every
minute. In eight hours’ breathing a full-grown man spoils as much fresh
air as seventeen three-bushel sacks could hold! If you were shut up
in a room seven feet broad, seven feet long, and seven feet high, the
door and windows fitting so tightly that no air could pass through,
you would die, poisoned by your own breath, in a very few hours; in
twenty-four hours you would have spoiled all the air contained in the
room, and have converted it into poison, provided you could have lived
therein so long.

One hundred years ago the English were allowed by the Great Mogul or
Emperor of India, to build warehouses and dwellings in certain parts
of his Empire. One of these mercantile settlements or factories, as
they were called, was planted on the bank of a large river just where
Calcutta, the capital city of Bengal, now stands.

In the year 1756, the nabob, or tributary king of the province of
Bengal died, and was succeeded by a very young man, who bore the
outlandish looking title of Surajah Dowlah. This young barbarian cast
a covetous eye on the neighboring British factory, and one summer day
attacked the place suddenly with a large army. The small party of
English who were in the factory, despairing of their ability to effect
any successful defense, tried to make their escape to some ships which
were lying in the river.

Several of the fugitives reached the vessels in safety. But in the
confusion of the flight, one hundred and forty-six individuals fell
into the hands of the victorious nabob. These, his officers thrust
for the night into a small cell, which was used as the prison of the
fortress, and was known under the dismal name of the Black Hole of
Calcutta. This cell had but two small square holes for windows, and
was only eighteen feet long and fourteen feet wide, so that the last
person of the one hundred and forty-six had to be crushed in upon the
rest with violence, as the door was closed and locked. The anguish of
the crowded captives soon became so great, in this vile hole, that the
neighborhood resounded with the noise of their struggles and cries. As
the night wore on, these sounds, however, gradually sunk into silence.
When the morning came, and the door of the prison was opened, the
reason of this silence became sadly apparent. In the place of the one
hundred and forty-six prisoners who were shut up on the previous day,
they took out one hundred and twenty-three corpses, and, twenty-three
miserable beings, who looked more like ghastly spectres than men, and
who could hardly be said to be alive. This occurrence furnished one
remarkable instance of the deadly power of the poison vapors which are
poured out from the inside of living beings. Now I will tell you about
another case of a similar kind.

A few years ago, a vessel started from Cork in Ireland, to take a large
number of emigrants to a ship just about to sail from Liverpool. A
violent storm sprung up in the night, as the vessel was crossing the
Irish Channel, and the captain, fearing that the alarmed passengers
would interfere with the sailors, and render it difficult to work the
ship, sent them all below into the hold, and covered them closely down
with the hatches. The imprisoned passengers soon found that they were
suffocating, and called and knocked loudly for help, but their cries
either were unheard or disregarded. In the morning the hatches were
removed, and to the horror of the captain and his crew, the hold was
found half full of dead bodies and dying people, instead of containing
living men and women. Such are the fearful consequences which follow,
when human beings are forced to breathe the same air over and over
again.

You are very much shocked, both at the savage cruelty of the Indian
tyrant, and at the carelessness and ignorance of the Irish captain. But
what will you think of yourself if I now show that you do, in a small
degree, every night, what they did on so large a scale? What was it
that caused the closeness of this room before we opened the window? It
was the presence of precisely the same kind of poison, as that which
killed the prisoners at Calcutta, and the passengers in the hold of the
ship. That poison did not destroy you in a single night, only because
it had not gathered in sufficient strength to do so. Your room was not
more than half as large as the Black Hole of Calcutta, but there were
only two of you shut up in it instead of one hundred and forty-six. The
air of your room was merely hurtful instead of being deadly. But the
fact still remains. _When you rose in the morning, that air was not fit
for a human creature to breathe._

When you rise to-morrow morning, just go out of doors for five minutes,
and observe carefully the freshness of the air. That air is in the
state in which God keeps it for breathing. Then come back suddenly into
your close room, and your own senses will at once make you feel how
very far the air of your chamber is from being in the same wholesome
and serviceable condition.

This is one way, then, in which people produce derangement in their
bodies, and cause their works, or organs, to get choked up and clogged.
They are not careful always to keep fresh air immediately around them.
They suffocate themselves slowly; taking, perhaps, a long time to
complete their task, but, nevertheless, accomplishing it none the less
surely. Individuals who dwell in crowded towns, and, therefore, have to
live by day as well as by night in close, impure apartments, go down to
their graves, even before they have reached their prime; and their thin
pale faces, dull sunk eyes, and languid movements, tell they are doing
so, with painful clearness. It is well known that people who dwell in
towns and work in close rooms, as a rule, die seventeen years earlier
than men who dwell in the country, and work in the fields by day.

Country folks escape this severe penalty, because even when they half
smother themselves by night, the thoroughly fresh air in which they
spend the day goes a great way toward the removal of the mischief.
Still they are by no means free from all penalty. You yourself have
suffered from breathing bad air. Do you remember last autumn, when I
came to see you sick in bed with the fever? Do you recollect how your
limbs ached, and your skin burned then, and how you tossed restlessly
from side to side, without being able to sleep, your mouth and tongue
being brown and parched with dryness which water could not moisten? You
could not raise your head from the pillow; and once when I asked you
how you felt, you answered me by telling me something about the corn
stacks and the last harvest, being quite unconscious of what you were
saying. What do you think was the matter with you then? Your body and
blood were full of poisonous vapor. And what do you think had made them
so? Why, fresh air had not done its work of purification as it ought.
You had been breathing a great deal of impure air, and were paying the
penalty for having done so. If you had seen the prisoners in the Black
Hole of Calcutta an hour or two before they died, you would have found
them exactly in the same state.

The term “fever” is taken from a Latin word which signifies “to burn.”
The skin and the body feel burning hot in fever, because impure
poisonous blood is flowing everywhere through their vessels, in the
place of pure blood, and the blood is poisonous because it has not
been freed from its poison-vapors as fast as they have been bred in,
or thrown into its streams. In the worst forms of fever the blood gets
so impure that it steams out, through the breath, vapors which are
able to produce the same kind of disease in other people, and which
are, under these circumstances, termed _infection_. The infectious
poison-vapors of fever get so strong when they are received into close
rooms, and are not allowed to be blown away, that they often kill
persons who breathe them in that state, very quickly.

But you want me to explain how all the mischief, which results from
breathing foul air, may be prevented. Come down with me into the
garden, and creatures that you believe to be of far inferior powers to
yourself, shall give you a lesson.

You keep bees. Here is a hive, I see, crowded with the busy insects. By
the numbers that I observe clustering about the low arched door, and
bustling out and in so incessantly, I learn that the industrious little
fellows must be very closely packed together in their straw house.
There must be many thousands of them dwelling together in a place that
can not, at the most, equal more than a couple of square feet; and
there is not a single window in the straw wall; no opening of any kind
but the low, and half-choked entrance. Really, if those bees need to
breathe, you who have furnished them with their dwelling must be nearly
as bad as the cruel nabob, who shut up his prisoners in the Indian
Black Hole!

Those bees certainly do need to breathe every bit as much as men and
women; and what is more, they manage to breathe ten times better than
you do at night. Notwithstanding all the crowding there is within their
close dwelling, the air never gets there into the poisonous state in
which the air of your sleeping room is by the morning. The bees take
care that it shall not do so. Just bend down your ear and listen near
the hive for a minute. Do you hear that incessant low humming? That is
the bees hard at work, making an artificial wind. It is the sound of a
couple of score of broad, stiff fans, flapping to and fro with great
rapidity. Look, I drop this piece of light thistle-down near the door
of the hive, and you see it is at once blown away from it by a steady
draught. If you could see through the straw walls, you would notice
twenty little sturdy fellows holding on to the floor of the hive with
their feet, just within the door, and flapping their wings backwards
and forwards without a moment’s pause. Now and then one or two tired
insects drop out from the line of the fanners, but their places are
immediately filled by fresh recruits, who lay hold of the floor and
fall vigorously to work with their wings. This is the appointed band
of air-purifiers, plying their business for the good of the entire
community, and wafting a fresh breeze continuously through the hive.
The bees take it by turns to carry on this necessary labor, and some
of them are always at it. The humming caused by the rapid vibrations
of their fans, scarcely ever ceases. It has been ascertained that air
taken from the inside of a hive, is quite as pure as the fresh air that
floats in the open space around; so perfectly do these little earnest
workmen perform their purifying task.

The industrious bees, then, are an example to mankind. If people dwell
in close rooms, they must cause an artificial breeze of fresh air to
blow through them. Having shut out the great wind, that it may not
chill too much by its uncontrollable currents, they must introduce such
a little wind as they can keep thoroughly under control, but which
nevertheless is sufficient to perform the office of purification as far
as it is required. This process of causing an artificial wind to blow
through the inside of a dwelling is called _ventilation_, from a Latin
word which signifies “to blow” or fan with the wind.

In very hot climates where dwellings need to be ventilated for the
sake of coolness, as well as for purification, men follow precisely
the example set by the bees. They hang up broad and stiff canvas fans,
which they call _punkas_, near the ceiling, and cause these to flap
backwards and forwards constantly, by pulling them to and fro with
ropes. In more temperate climates, it is rarely found necessary to take
all this trouble, for the air readily makes currents of its own accord
inside of rooms, if only allowed to do so. All that is necessary is the
furnishing of a free passage into the room, and a free passage out, and
it will then make a clear march through. One opening will not do, when
fans are not kept going, because then the entering and departing air
would meet face to face and obstruct each other. There must be “in” and
“out” doors, just as one sees in much frequented offices and banks, in
great towns.

A very effectual plan for securing the ventilation of a dwelling room
consists in carrying a pipe of perforated zinc across the house, from
outside wall to outside wall, just beneath the ceiling, allowing the
ends to pass through the walls quite into the open air; then whichever
end of the pipe chances to be most towards the quarter of the heavens
from which the wind is blowing, should be closed with a plug, a free
passage being left for the escape of the heated air through the
opposite end. A number of holes should also be made through the door,
near its bottom, until altogether they afford as much room to passing
air as the inside bore of the zinc pipe. If you cannot manage to fix
such a zinc pipe across the ceiling, why take out one or two of the
panes of the window, and put into their place, plates of what is called
_perforated zinc_ (zinc plates pierced full of holes), such as you may
buy for a trifle at any ironmongers. That is the next best thing you
can do.

As soon as some arrangement of this kind has been completed, you will
find that the air begins to move gently through the room, cold fresh
air coming in through the holes in the door, and warm impure air being
pressed out before it through the perforated zinc tubes or plates. This
takes place partly because the external wind rushes, in its hasty way,
against the openings through which the air is intended to enter, and
forces itself in; but also, and more particularly, because the inside
air gets warmer than the outside, and is then compelled to shift its
quarters on that account.

The air contained inside of inhabited rooms gets warmed by the bodies
and breaths of the persons living there. Then it is lighter, bulk for
bulk, than the colder air outside, for warmth stretches and lightens
everything. But as heavy things fall or press down to the earth more
strongly than light ones, the cold air always squeezes into the room
through the lower openings, and pushes the warm impure air out before
it, through the upper ones.

When you light a fire in your room during cold weather, it makes a
quick and strong draught through the room, for the same reason. Fires,
indeed, are among the most powerful ventilators that can be brought
into play. Let your fire out, and go on sitting in the room with two
or three of your neighbors, and you will find the air of the room will
be close and foul in half-an-hour, although it was quite fresh before.
While the fire is burning, the chimney takes upon itself the office of
the holes in the zinc tube or zinc plate fixed in the window, and the
heated air of the room is pushed up through it by the fresh cold air
which rushes in through all other openings and crevices. It is only
in rooms where no fires are burning—as for instance, in your sleeping
room—that holes through the walls and windows can serve as outlets for
impure air.

But if you live with several companions, in small rooms, as some
workpeople are compelled to do by their occupation, those rooms cannot
get properly ventilated, even although fires are burning. Some of the
poison-vapors, poured out from your living bodies with the breath, are
so light that they are at once driven up to the top of the room, and
collect there gradually, spreading lower and lower as they become more
abundant. They can not get out through holes made in the walls or
windows because, as we have seen, the fire causes streams of cold air
to press in there.

A plan has been contrived, however, to ensure perfect ventilation
even in small and crowded rooms, provided fires be burning. This plan
consists in making an opening into the inside of the chimney, near
to the ceiling, and fixing a balanced valve in it in such a way that
the valve-plate is opened by outward draughts, but immediately closed
by inward ones. Then the impure vapors lurking near the ceiling are
continually being swept away, into the current of the chimney, through
this valve.

You are sure you have no money to spare to buy valves, and zinc tubes
and plates, or to pay to workmen for making holes in your walls,
and in your doors and windows. I admit that properly these trifling
things should be done at the expense of the landlord to whom the house
belongs. It should be as much his duty to make a house fit to live in,
so far as due ventilation is concerned, as it is to keep it dry by
covering it with a roof of tiles or slate. As landlords, however, are
commonly themselves ignorant about these matters, you must learn to
look to the affair for yourself. You will be the sufferer if the right
thing be not done, therefore it is alike your interest and your duty to
see that it is done.

Suppose then that you have a hard landlord who will do nothing for
you, and that you are so poor you can not spare a shilling or two for
the purchase of metal tubes or plates. Then I will tell you what I
would do, if I were in your shoes. I would borrow a large gimlet of
the carpenter, and I would bore a row of holes through the upper part
of the window frame in my bedroom, just above the glass, sloping them
downwards a little, so that the rain may not be able to run in; next I
would never quite shut the door of the chamber, and I would bore other
holes through the frames of the windows down stairs, to act as channels
of inlet. A few rough pegs of wood would serve to close some of the
holes, if at any time too much air entered the room in consequence of
a strong wind blowing outside. This is what I would do, rather than I
would submit to be poisoned at night because I was poor.

A single round hole, a little more than half an inch across, would
allow as much air to pass through it, as would be sufficient to supply
the breathing of one person, provided the air were driven along by
the movements of a fan, or by other mechanical contrivance, with the
force of a very gentle breeze. Generally, however, it does not move so
fast as this through rooms, when only caused to do so by the greater
pressure of external colder air. It is, therefore, better that the
ventilating openings, both for inlet and departure, should altogether
make up much more than a hole half an inch across.

It is not possible to have too much fresh air in a room, provided only
an uncomfortable and chilling draught is not allowed to blow upon
the body of the inhabitant. You may easily prevent any discomfort or
mischief from draught, even where a great abundance of air is admitted,
by hanging a curtain to catch it and turn it aside. You will find,
however, that there is very little chance of any troublesome draught
when no fire is burning in the room, to make the air rush in with
increased power, for it is fires, as you will remember, which cause
quick and strong currents.

The warmer and stiller the external air is, the more difficult it
becomes to secure free ventilation through the inside of rooms. In the
calm hot nights of summer, the windows of sleeping rooms should on this
account be left partly open all night long. It is better to breathe air
moistened with night dew than it is to breathe air laden with poison
vapors.

But if it be important when people are well that they shall have an
abundance of fresh air moving through their dwellings, it is of far
greater consequence that there shall be a thorough ventilation kept
up in rooms where there is sickness. In all kinds of fevers the blood
is overloaded with poison vapors, and these can not get out of the
body unless they are blown away by pure air. The sick person can not
be freed from the poison vapors that are clogging up his vital organs
until fresh air is supplied abundantly. Do you remember what it was
that first made you better, when you had the fever last year? Can you
not recall to mind how all the doors and windows of your room were kept
constantly open, and how angry I was whenever I came to your chamber
and found them fast closed! Have you forgotten how delicious the fresh
air felt to your parched and poisoned frame, and what luxury there was
in the clean linen when supplied to your body and to the bed, and in
the cold water when it was sponged over your skin?

If ever you are called upon to attend a neighbor or a relation who
has to suffer from infectious fever, as you then did, be sure you
furnish to that sick person the same comfort and alleviation which were
provided for yourself.

Let this be your plan for nursing the sick: Open wide the doors and
windows of your chamber. Keep the body of the patient and the room very
clean. Change the linen both of the person and the bed very often.
Allow only the very simplest kinds of food and drink to be given, and
that in small quantities at a time. Prevent all noise and confusion
around the bed. There are very few persons indeed who will not recover
speedily from attacks of even the worst kinds of fever, if this simple
and prudent plan of treatment is steadily pursued.

The poison-vapors of fever and other infectious diseases are very
deadly when in their greatest strength, but remain so for a very
short time when left to the influences and operations of nature. They
can not bear the presence of fresh air. If they are mixed with a
great abundance of it as they come out of the mouths of sick people,
they directly cease to be dangerous poisons. All that is necessary
to prevent infectious fevers from being communicated from person to
person, by means of the breath, is to take care that fresh air is
continually passing through the sick room. Attendants and visitors may
remain with perfect safety in rooms where even the worst kinds of fever
are prevailing, if they keep all the doors and windows of the chamber
open, and are careful not to catch the breath of the patients until it
has passed through some two yards of space, where there is perfectly
pure air.

Such, then, is the “worth of fresh air.” It keeps the body healthy and
strong. It blows away and destroys the invisible and dangerous poisons
which are steamed forth from putrid and decaying matters, and which are
to the delicate organs of the living frame much worse than dust and
dirt are to clock-work. In disease it is nature’s chief remedy; the
best medicine of the best Physician, furnished gratis, because he is
full of bounty, as well as of great skill. Never let it any longer be a
reproach to you, that you ungraciously turn away such a precious gift
and priceless boon from your doors. Rather open wide your windows, as
well as your doors, and welcome it with all your heart. Go to the bee,
consider its ways, and be wise!

       *       *       *       *       *

Flattering pleasures, fountain of delights, fertile in miseries, what
do you wish with me? Shameful lusts of the flesh and of the world, why
do you not quit me when I have quitted you? Begone honors, pleasures,
which war against me; all your happiness, subject to change, falls to
the ground in a moment of time; and as it has the brilliancy of glass,
it has also its brittleness.—_Corneille._

    But pleasures are like poppies spread,
    You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;
    Or, like the snow-fall in the river,
    A moment white, then melts forever.—_Burns._




STREET MANNERS.


The knowledge of being able to do exactly what is done in good society
puts its possessor entirely at ease in whatever sphere he may happen
to move. Tact and innate refinement do much to assist one unused to
society, but do not suffice; a thorough acquaintance with the social
observances in force is necessary. If the etiquette of walking and
driving contains few rules, they are none the less important; indeed we
are very prone to form our opinions of the breeding of persons by their
bearing and manners on the street. One of the first rules for everyone
in walking is quietness. Loud talking and laughing are never less in
good form than on the street. When and where to walk must be decided
by the customs of the locality where one lives. In general it may be
said that ladies should not walk unattended after nightfall in city
or village, and it is not considered good taste for a lady to appear
alone, in daylight, in crowded thoroughfares, fashionable promenades,
or in parks and other public resorts. In short, a public place is no
place for a lady if unaccompanied.

As regards the recognition of friends and acquaintances, it is the
privilege of a lady to take the initiative by being the first to bow; a
gentleman would not, as a rule, raise his hat to a lady until she had
accorded him this mark of recognition, although the act of bowing is a
simultaneous action on the part of both lady and gentleman, as a lady
would hardly bestow a bow on a gentleman not prepared to return it.
It has lately become the fashion for ladies to nod rather than bow to
their male acquaintances; making a short decisive movement of the head
only, instead of bending the neck. The nod is not in such good taste as
the bow. To bow well, cordially, yet with dignity, kindly yet quietly,
is a real accomplishment. Some one says, “The salutation is the
touchstone of good breeding.” The bow which is perfect in welcome, and
bears just enough dignity and just enough ease, is certainly effective.
It is a compliment to you. You feel happy at meeting the person so
accomplished.

A not uncommon rudeness is the failing to speak to people whom one has
met, because they are lower in social position or, perhaps, working
people. It is well, then, for us to remember the example of George
Washington and George IV., who took off their hats to their servants.
Bow to everyone whom you know, is the rule.

A gentleman returning the bow of a lady with whom he is but slightly
acquainted, would do so with a deferential air, but slightly raising
his hat from his head; but if he were an intimate acquaintance or
friend, he would raise his hat with far more freedom of action, thus
consequently raising his hat considerably higher; for a gentleman to
bow otherwise would appear too distant. In France and on the Continent,
the rule of bowing is reversed, and the gentleman is the first to bow
to the lady.

Between ladies but slightly acquainted, the lady of the higher rank
would bow first.

Gentlemen do not raise their hats in recognition of each other, but
simply nod. When a gentleman meets an acquaintance walking with ladies,
he would then, in compliment to the ladies, raise his hat to his
friend instead of simply nodding. Introductions on the street are not
imperative, but rather a matter of inclination. For instance: a lady
walking with a friend whom she was visiting, would introduce any person
whom she might happen to meet, to her hostess; and her hostess would
do likewise to her guest, unless there should be some reason for not
making the introduction—if so, explanations could be offered afterward.

In public promenades and watering places it is usual for gentlemen
to join ladies with whom they are acquainted, and walk with them. If
a lady stop a gentleman on the street he should turn and walk with
her. In no case should they stand for any length of time. An important
point, not always observed, is keeping to the right hand of the passer.
It is never allowable to take the left unless a gentleman be guiding a
lady through a crowd, when, to save her from being jostled, he may turn
to the left, but under ordinary circumstances this is not “good form.”

Ladies and gentlemen, whether related or not, never walk arm in arm
in promenades or public places unless the lady be an elderly one, or
require support. In driving in an open or close carriage, no particular
place is reserved for the owner of the carriage. When accompanied by
friends, guests always enter the carriage before the host or hostess.
Were there two guests, and one of them a young lady, she would
naturally seat herself with her back to the horses, leaving the other
seat for the married ladies. This, however, is a matter of courtesy
on her part. A gentleman takes the forward seat, if two ladies are
present, and a gentleman should dismount first with a view of assisting
the ladies out. As a rule the hostess should descend after her guest
and not before her; if necessary to do so, she should make some polite
remark in excuse. If a lady were merely calling on an acquaintance to
take her for a drive she would not descend from her carriage for the
purpose of allowing her to enter it before her.

These are the rules, but rules of etiquette, unless seasoned with
common sense, are dangerously stiff and unbecoming. It is wrong to
suppose that they form the basis of good manners. Principles, not
rules, do that, and the principles of high breeding may be reduced
to two: consideration for others’ feelings, and familiarity with the
fitness and beauty of things.




SATISFIED.

By J. C. A.


    Day of softest, fairest beauty,
      Summer’s breath o’er land and sea,
    While the sunshine’s golden quiver,
    Falls on hill, and wood, and river,
      Far as the eye can see,

    Every wandering breeze comes laden
      With the scent of dewy flowers,
    And all Nature’s heart rejoices,
    With her sweet and heaven-taught voices,
      Throughout the glowing hours.

    In this grey old world not often
      Such a day to us is sent,
    Yet amidst its purest gladness
    Comes a thrill of yearning sadness
      To mar our sweet content.

    And when life’s full cup o’erflowing
      With the love which makes our gain,
    And the rapture surely given
    As a foretaste of God’s heaven,—
      ’Tis bliss akin to pain.

    So in hours of love and sunshine,
      As in days when storms beat high,
    We have still a sure voice teaching,
    Far beyond earth’s wisest preaching,
      Our immortality.

    Not until we reach that city
      Where our loved and lost abide,
    When Christ greets us at the portal,
    And we taste the life immortal,
      We shall be satisfied.




TALES FROM SHAKSPERE.

By CHARLES LAMB.


AS YOU LIKE IT.

During the time that France was divided into provinces (or dukedoms, as
they were called), there reigned in one of these provinces an usurper,
who had deposed and banished his elder brother, the lawful duke.

The duke, who was thus driven from his dominions, retired with a few
faithful followers to the forest of Arden; and here the good duke
lived with his loving friends, who had put themselves into a voluntary
exile for his sake, while their lands and revenues enriched the false
usurper. And custom soon made the life of careless ease they led here
more sweet to them than the pomp and uneasy splendor of a courtier’s
life. Here they lived like the old Robin Hood of England, and to this
forest many noble youths daily resorted from the court, and did fleet
the time carelessly, as they did who lived in the golden age. In the
summer they lay along under the fine shade of the large forest trees,
marking the playful sports of the wild deer; and so fond were they of
these poor dappled fools, who seemed to be the native inhabitants of
the forest, that it grieved them to be forced to kill them to supply
themselves with venison for their food. When the cold winds of winter
made the duke feel the change of his adverse fortune, he would endure
it patiently, and say, “These chilling winds which blow upon my body,
are true counselors; they do not flatter, but represent truly to me my
condition; and though they bite sharply, their tooth is nothing like so
keen as that of unkindness and ingratitude. I find that, however men
speak against adversity, yet some sweet uses are to be extracted from
it, like the jewel, precious for medicine, which is taken from the head
of the venomous and despised toad.” In this manner did the patient duke
draw an useful moral from everything that he saw; and by the help of
this moralizing turn in that life of his, remote from public haunts, he
could find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in
stones, and good in everything.

The banished duke had an only daughter, named Rosalind, whom the
usurper, Duke Frederick, when he banished her father, still retained
in his court as a companion for his own daughter Celia. A strict
friendship subsisted between these ladies, which the disagreement
between their fathers did not in the least interrupt, Celia striving
by every kindness in her power to make amends to Rosalind for the
injustice of her own father in deposing the father of Rosalind;
and whenever the thoughts of her father’s banishment, and her own
dependence on the false usurper, made Rosalind melancholy, Celia’s
whole care was to comfort and console her.

One day when Celia was talking in her usual kind manner to Rosalind,
saying, “I pray you, Rosalind, my sweet cousin, be merry,” a messenger
entered from the duke, to tell them that if they wished to see a
wrestling match, which was just going to begin, they must come
instantly to the court before the palace; and Celia, thinking it would
amuse Rosalind, agreed to go and see it. In those times wrestling was
a favorite sport even in the courts of princes, and before fair ladies
and princesses. To this wrestling match therefore Celia and Rosalind
went. They found that it was likely to prove a very tragical sight;
for a large and powerful man who had long been practiced in the art of
wrestling, and had slain many men in contests of this kind, was just
going to wrestle with a very young man

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