The Chautauquan, March 1884

[315]

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

Vol. IV. MARCH, 1884. No. 6.

Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.

President—Lewis Miller, Akron, Ohio.

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

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

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

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

Contents

REQUIRED READING
FOR THE
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle for 1883-4.
MARCH.

READINGS FROM FRENCH HISTORY.

By Rev. J. H. VINCENT, D.D.

I.—AN OUTLINE OF FRENCH HISTORY.

From “The People’s Commentary”—and paragraphed.

1. Gallia was the name under which France was designated by the Romans, who knew little of the country till the time of Cæsar, when it was occupied by the Aquitani, Celtæ, and Belgæ.

2. Under Augustus, Gaul was divided into four provinces, which, under subsequent emperors, were dismembered, and subdivided into seventeen.

3. In the fifth century it fell completely under the power of the Visigoths, Burgundians, and Franks.

4. In 486 A. D., Clovis, a chief of the Salian Franks, raised himself to supreme power in the north. His dynasty, known as the Merovingian, ended in the person of Childeric III., who was deposed 752 A. D.

5. The accession of Pepin gave new vigor to the monarchy, which, under his son and successor, Charlemagne,[A] crowned Emperor in the west in 800 (768-814), rose to the rank of the most powerful empire of the west. With him, however, this vast fabric of power crumbled to pieces, and his weak descendants completed the ruin of the Frankish Empire by the dismemberment of its various parts among the younger branches of the Carlovingian family.

6. On the death of Louis V. the Carlovingian dynasty was replaced by that of Hugues, Count of Paris, whose son, Hugues Capet, was elected king by the army, and consecrated at Rheims 987 A. D.

7. At this period the greater part of France was held by almost independent lords. Louis Le Gros (1108-1137) was the first ruler who succeeded in combining the whole under his scepter. He promoted the establishment of the feudal system, abolished serfdom on his own estates, secured corporate rights to the cities under his jurisdiction, gave efficiency to the central authority of the Crown, carried on a war against Henry I., of England; and when the latter allied himself with the Emperor Henry V., of Germany, against France, he brought into the field an army of 200,000 men.

MAP OF FRANCE

8. The Oriflamme is said to have been borne aloft for the first time on this occasion as the national standard.

9. Louis VII. (1137-’80) was almost incessantly engaged in war with Henry II., of England.

10. His son and successor, Philippe Auguste (1180-1223), recovered Normandy, Maine, Touraine, and Poitou from John of England. He took an active personal share in the crusades. Philippe was the first to levy a tax for the maintenance of the standing army.

11. Many noble institutions date their origin from this reign, as the University of Paris, the Louvre, etc.

12. Louis IX. effected many modifications in the fiscal department, and, before his departure for the crusades, secured the rights of the Gallican church by special statute, in order to counteract the constantly increasing assumptions of the Papal power.

13. Philippe IV. (1285-1314), surnamed Le Bel, acquired Navarre, Champagne, and Brie by marriage.

14. Charles IV. (Le Bel, 1321-’28) was the last direct descendant of the Capetian line.

15. Philippe VI., the first of the House of Valois (1328-’50), succeeded in right of the Salic law. His reign, and those of[316] his successors, Jean (1350-’64) and Charles V. (Le Sage, 1364-’80), were disturbed by constant wars with Edward III., of England. Hostilities began in 1339; in 1346 the Battle of Crécy was fought; at the battle of Poitiers (1356) Jean was made captive; and before the final close, after the death of Edward (1377), the state was reduced to bankruptcy.

16. During the regency for the minor, Charles VI. (Le Bien Aime, 1380-1422), the war was renewed with increased vigor on the part of the English nation.

17. The signal victory won by the English at Agincourt in 1415 aided Henry in his attempts upon the throne. But the extraordinary influence exercised over her countrymen by Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans, aided in bringing about a thorough reaction, and, after a period of murder, rapine and anarchy, Charles VII. (Le Victorieux, 1422-’61) was crowned at Rheims.

18. His successor, Louis XI. (1461-’83), succeeded in recovering for the Crown the territories of Maine, Anjou and Provence, while he made himself master of some portions of the territories of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy.

19. Charles VIII. (1483-’98), by his marriage with Anne of Brittany, secured that powerful state. With him ended the direct male succession of the House of Valois.

20. Louis XII. (1498-1515), Le Père Du Peuple, was the only representative of the Valois-Orleans family; his successor, Francis I. (1547), was of the Valois-Angoulême branch.

21. The defeat of Francis at the battle of Pavia, in 1525, and his subsequent imprisonment at Madrid, threw the affairs of the nation into the greatest disorder.

22. In the reign of Henri II. began the persecutions of the Protestants. Henri III. (1574-’89) was the last of this branch of the Valois. The massacre of St. Bartholomew (1572) was perpetrated under the direction of the Queen-mother, Catherine de’ Medici, and the confederation of the league, at the head of which were the Guises. The wars of the league, which were carried by the latter against the Bourbon branches of the princes of the blood-royal, involved the whole nation in their vortex.

23. The succession of Henri IV., of Navarre (1589-1610), a Bourbon prince, descended from a younger son of St. Louis, allayed the fury of these religious wars, but his recantation of Protestantism in favor of Catholicism disappointed his own party.

24. During the minority of his son, Louis XIII. (1610-’43), Cardinal Richelieu, under the nominal regency of Marie de’ Medici, the Queen-mother, ruled with a firm hand. Cardinal Mazarin, under the regency of the Queen-mother, Anne of Austria, exerted nearly equal power for some time during the minority of Louis XIV. (1643-1715).

25. The wars of the Fronde, the misconduct of the Parliament, and the humbling of the nobility, gave rise to another civil war, but with the assumption of power by young Louis a new era commenced, and till near the close of his long reign the military successes of the French were most brilliant.

26. Louis XV. (1715-’75) succeeded to a heritage whose glory was tarnished, and whose stability was shaken to its very foundations during his reign.

27. The peace of Paris (1763), by which the greater portion of the colonial possessions of France were given up to England, terminated an inglorious war, in which the French had expended 1350 millions of francs.

28. In 1774 Louis XVI., a well-meaning, weak prince, succeeded to the throne. The American war of freedom had disseminated Republican ideas among the lower orders, while the Assembly of the notables had discussed and made known to all classes the incapacity of the government and the wanton prodigality of the court. The nobles and the tiers état were alike clamorous for a meeting of the states; the former wishing to impose new taxes on the nation, and the latter determined to inaugurate a thorough and systematic reform.

29. After much opposition on the part of the king and court, the États Généraux, which had not met since 1614, assembled at Versailles on the 25th of May, 1789. The resistance made by Louis and his advisers to the reasonable demands of the deputies on the 17th of June, 1789, led to the constitution of the National Assembly. The consequence was the outbreak of insurrectionary movements at Paris, where blood was shed on the 12th of July. On the following day the National Guard was convoked; and on the fourteenth the people took possession of the Bastille. The royal princes and all the nobles who could escape, sought safety in flight.

30. The royal family, having attempted in vain to follow their example, tried to conciliate the people by the feigned assumption of Republican sentiment; but on the 5th of October the rabble, followed by numbers of the National Guard, attacked Versailles, and compelled the king and his family to remove to Paris, whither the Assembly also moved.

31. A war with Austria was begun in April, 1792, and the defeat of the French was visited on Louis, who was confined in August with his family in the temple. In December the king was brought to trial. On the 20th of January, 1793, sentence of death was passed on him, and on the following day he was beheaded.

32. Marie Antoinette, the widowed Queen, was guillotined; the Dauphin and his surviving relatives suffered every indignity that malignity could devise. A reign of blood and terror succeeded.

33. The brilliant exploits of the young general, Napoleon Bonaparte, in Italy, turned men’s thoughts to other channels.

34. In 1795 a general amnesty was declared, peace was concluded with Prussia and Spain, and the war was carried on with double vigor against Austria.

35. The revolution had reached a turning point. A Directory was formed to administer the government, which was now conducted in a spirit of order and conciliation.

36. In 1797 Bonaparte and his brother-commanders were omnipotent in Italy. Austria was compelled to give up Belgium, accede to peace on any terms, and recognize the Cis-Alpine republic.

37. Under the pretext of attacking England, a fleet of 400 ships and an army of 36,000 picked men were equipped; their destination proved, however, to be Egypt, whither the Directory sent Bonaparte; but the young general resigned the command to Kleber, landed in France in 1799, and at once succeeded in supplanting the Directory, and securing his own nomination as Consul.

38. In 1800 a new constitution was promulgated, which vested the sole executive power in Bonaparte. Having resumed his military duties, he marched an army over the Alps, attacked the Austrians unawares, and decided the fate of Italy by his victory at Marengo.

39. In 1804, on an appeal of universal suffrage to the nation, Bonaparte was proclaimed Emperor. By his marriage with the archduchess Maria Louisa, daughter of the emperor of Germany, Napoleon seemed to have given to his throne the prestige of birth, which alone it had lacked. The disastrous Russian campaign, in which his noble army was lost amid the rigors of a northern winter, was soon followed by the falling away of his allies and feudatories.

40. Napoleon himself was still victorious wherever he appeared in person, but his generals were beaten in numerous engagements; and the great defeat of Leipsic compelled the French to retreat beyond the Rhine. The Swedes brought reinforcements to swell the ranks of his enemies on the east frontier, while the English pressed on from the west; Paris, in the absence of the emperor, capitulated after a short resistance, March 30, 1814. Napoleon retired to the island of Elba.

41. On the 2d of May, Louis XVIII. (the brother of Louis XVI.) made his entry into Paris.

42. On the 1st of March, 1815, Napoleon left Elba, and landed[317] in France. Crowds followed him; the soldiers flocked around his standard; the Bourbons fled, and he took possession of their lately deserted palaces. The news of his landing spread terror through Europe; and on the 25th of March a treaty of alliance was signed at Vienna between Austria, Russia, Prussia and England, and preparations at once made to put down the movement in his favor, and restore the Bourbon dynasty.

43. At first, the old prestige of success seemed to attend Napoleon; but on the 18th of June he was thoroughly defeated at Waterloo; and, having placed himself under the safeguard of the English, he was sent to the island of St. Helena.

44. In 1821 Napoleon breathed his last at St. Helena; and in 1824 Louis XVIII. died without direct heirs, and his brother, the duc d’Artois, succeeded as Charles X. The same ministerial incapacity, want of good faith, general discontent, and excessive priestly influence characterized his reign, which was abruptly brought to a close by the revolution of 1830, and the election to the throne of Louis Philippe, duke of Orleans, as king, by the will of the people.

45. Louis Philippe having abdicated (February 24, 1848), a republic was proclaimed, under a provisional government. Louis Napoleon was elected president of the Republic in December, 1848, but by the famous coup d’état of December 2, 1851, he violently set aside the Constitution, and assumed dictatorial powers; and a year after was raised, by the almost unanimous voice of the nation, to the dignity of Emperor, as Napoleon III.

46. The result of the appeal made to the nation in 1870, on the plea of securing their sanction for his policy, was not what he had anticipated. The course of events in the short but terrible Franco-German war of 1870-’71, electrified Europe by its unexpected character.

47. On September 2, 1870, Napoleon, with his army of 90,000 men, surrendered at Sedan. With the concurrence of Prussia the French nation next proceeded, by a general election of representatives, to provide for the exigencies of the country.

48. A republic was proclaimed, and the first national assembly met at Bordeaux in February, 1871. After receiving from the provisional government of defense the resignation of the powers confided to them in September, 1870, the Assembly undertook to organize the republican government, and nominated M. Thiers chief of the executive power of the state, with the title of President of the French Republic, but with the condition of responsibility to the National Assembly.

49. The ex-Emperor Napoleon died in 1872, at Chiselhurst, England, where he had resided with his family since his liberation in March, 1871.

50. In 1873 M. Thiers resigned the office of President of the French Republic, and was succeeded by Marshal MacMahon, who resigned in 1879, and was succeeded by M. Grèvy.

II.—THE FRENCH PEOPLE.

From their Celtic ancestry, the Gauls, the French people inherited a certain heedlessness of character, or want of foresight as to consequences. The Romans communicated to them their language; the Franks, a teutonic people, by whom they were captured in the fifth century, gave them a national designation; but to neither the Romans nor Franks were they materially indebted for those qualities which ordinarily stamp the national or individual character. We have therefore to keep in mind that, through all the vicissitudes of modern history, the French people have remained essentially Celtic. With many good qualities—bold, tasteful, quick-witted, ingenious—they have some less to be admired—impulsive, restless, vain, bombastic, fond of display, and, as Cæsar described them, “lovers of novelty.” They have ever boasted of being at the head of civilization; but with all their acknowledged advancement in literature and science, they have at every stage in their political career demonstrated a singular and absolutely pitiable want of common sense.—Chambers’ Miscellany.

III.—CHARLEMAGNE.

From the accession, in 768, of Charlemagne, eldest son of Pepin le Bref may be dated the establishment of clerical power, the rise of chivalry, and the foundation of learning in the Empire of France. He was a man of extraordinary foresight and strength of character, and possessed not only the valor of a hero and the skill of a general, but the calm wisdom of a statesman, and the qualities of a judicious sovereign. Ambitious of conquest as Alexander or Darius, he nevertheless provided as conscientiously for the welfare of his subjects and the advancement of letters, as did Alfred the Great of England about a century afterwards. He founded schools and libraries—convoked national assemblies—revised laws—superintended the administration of justice—encouraged scientific men and professors of the fine arts—and, during a reign of forty-six years, extended his frontiers beyond the Danube, imposed tribute upon the barbarians of the Vistula, made his name a terror to the Saracen tribes, and added Northern Italy to the dependencies of France. Notwithstanding these successes, it appears that the conquest and conversion of the Saxons (a nation of German idolaters, whose territories bordered closely upon his chosen capital of Aix-la-Chapelle) formed the darling enterprise of this powerful monarch. From 770 to 804, his arms were constantly directed against them; and in Wittikind, their heroic leader, he encountered a warrior as fearless, if not as fortunate, as himself. The brave Saxons were, however, no match for one whose triumphs procured him the splendid title of Emperor of the West, and who gathered his daring hosts from dominions which comprised the whole of France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, and Prussia, and were only bounded on the east by the Carpathian mountains, and on the west by the Ebro and the ocean. Year after year he wasted their country with fire and sword, overthrew their idols, leveled their temples to the ground, erected fortresses amid the ruins of their villages, and carried away vast numbers of captives to the interior of Gaul. To this forced emigration succeeded a conversion equally unwelcome. Thousands of reluctant Saxons were compelled to subscribe to the ceremony of baptism; their principalities were portioned off among abbots and bishops; and Wittikind did homage to Charlemagne in the Champs-de-Mars.

It was about this period that the Danes and Normans first began to harass the northern coasts of Europe. Confident of their naval strength, they attacked the possessions of Charlemagne with as little hesitation as those of his less formidable neighbor, Egbert of Wessex; descended upon Friesland as boldly as upon Teignmouth or Hengesdown; and even ventured with their galleys into the port of a city of Narbonnese Gaul at a time when the emperor himself was sojourning within its walls. Springing up, as they did, toward the close of so prosperous a reign, these new invaders proved more dangerous than Charlemagne had anticipated. He caused war barks to be stationed at the mouths of his great rivers, and in 808 marched an army to the defense of Friesland. On this occasion, however, he was glad to make terms of peace; and it is said that the increasing power of the Baltic tribes embittered his later days with presentiments of that decay which shortly afterward befell his gigantic empire. From the conclusion of this peace to the date of his death in the year 814, no event of historical importance occurred; and the great emperor was buried at Aix-la-Chapelle, in that famous cathedral of which he was the founder.

The race of Carlovingian kings took their name, and only their name, from this, their magnificent ancestor. Weak of purpose as the descendants of Clovis, and endued, perhaps, with even a less share of animal courage, they suffered their mighty inheritance to be wrested from them, divided, subdivided, pillaged and impoverished. No portion of French history is so disastrous, so unsatisfactory, and so obscure as that which relates to this epoch. Indeed, toward the commencement of the tenth century, an utter blank occurs, and[318] we are left for many years without any record whatever.—A. B. E.

IV.—THE BATTLE OF CRECY AND SIEGE OF CALAIS.

Although Edward III., by supporting with troops and officers, and sometimes even in person, the cause of the countess of Montfort—and Philip of Valois, by assisting in the same way Charles of Blois and Joan of Penthièvre, took a very active, if indirect, share in the war in Brittany, the two kings persisted in not calling themselves at war; and when either of them proceeded to acts of unquestionable hostility, they eluded the consequences of them by hastily concluding truces incessantly violated and as incessantly renewed. They had made use of this expedient in 1340; and they had recourse to it again in 1342, 1343, and 1344. The last of these truces was to have lasted up to 1346; but in the spring of 1345, Edward resolved to put an end to this equivocal position, and to openly recommence war. He announced his intention to Pope Clement IV., to his own lieutenants in Brittany, and to all the cities and corporations of his kingdom. The tragic death of Van Artevelde, however (1345), proved a great loss to the king of England. He was so much affected by it that he required a whole year before he could resume with any confidence his projects of war; and it was not until the 2nd of July, 1346, that he embarked at Southampton, taking with him, beside his son, the prince of Wales, hardly sixteen years of age, an army which comprised, according to Froissart, seven earls, more than thirty-five barons, a great number of knights, four thousand men-at-arms, ten thousand English archers, six thousand Irish and twelve thousand Welsh infantry, in all something more than thirty-two thousand men. By the advice of Godfrey d’Harcourt, he marched his army over Normandy; he took and plundered on his way Harfleur, Cherbourg, Valognes, Carentan, St. Lô, and Caen; then, continuing his march, he occupied Louviers, Vernon, Verneuil, Nantes, Meulan, and Poissy, where he took up his quarters in the old residence of King Robert; and thence his troops advanced and spread themselves as far as Ruel, Neuilly, Boulogne, St. Cloud, Bourg-la-Reine and almost to the gates of Paris, whence could be seen “the fire and smoke from burning villages.” Philip recalled in all haste his troops from Aquitaine, commanded the burgher forces to assemble, and gave them, as he had given all his allies, St. Denis for the rallying point. At sight of so many great lords and all sorts of men of war flocking together from all points the Parisians took fresh courage. “For many a long day there had not been at St. Denis a king of France in arms and fully prepared for battle.”

Edward began to be afraid of having pushed too far forward, and of finding himself endangered in the heart of France, confronted by an army which would soon be stronger than his own. He, accordingly, marched northward, where he flattered himself he would find partisans, counting especially on the help of the Flemings, who, in fulfillment of their promise, had already advanced as far as Béthune to support him. Philip moved with all his army into Picardy in pursuit of the English army, which was in a hurry to reach and cross the Somme, and so continue its march northward.

When Edward, after passing the Somme, had arrived near Crécy, five leagues from Abbeville, in the countship of Ponthieu, which had formed part of his mother Isabel’s dowry, “Halt we here,” said he to his marshals; “I will go no farther till I have seen the enemy; I am on my mother’s rightful inheritance, which was given her on her marriage; I will defend it against mine adversary, Philip of Valois;” and he rested in the open fields, he and all his men, and made his marshals mark well the ground where they would set their battle in array. Philip, on his side, had moved to Abbeville, where all his men came and joined him, and whence he sent out scouts to learn the truth about the English. When he knew that they were resting in the open fields near Crécy and showed that they were awaiting their enemies, the king of France was very joyful, and said that, please God, they should fight him on the morrow [the day after Friday, August 25, 1346].

On Saturday, the 26th of August, after having heard mass, Philip started from Abbeville with all his barons. The battle began with an attack by fifteen thousand Genoese bowmen, who marched forward, and leaped thrice with a great cry; their arrows did little execution, as the strings of their bows had been relaxed by the damp; the English archers now taking their bows from their cases, poured forth a shower of arrows upon this multitude, and soon threw them into confusion; the Genoese falling back upon the French cavalry, were by them cut to pieces, and being allowed no passage, were thus prevented from again forming in the rear; this absurd inhumanity lost the battle, as the young Prince of Wales, taking advantage of the irretrievable disorder, led on his line at once to the charge. “No one can describe or imagine,” says Froissart, “the bad management and disorder of the French army, though their troops were out of number.” Philip was led from the field by John of Hainault, and he rode till he came to the walls of the castle of Broye, where he found the gates shut; ordering the governor to be summoned, when the latter inquired, it being dark, who it was that called at so late an hour, he answered; “Open, open, governor; it is the fortune of France;” and accompanied by five barons only he entered the castle.

Whilst Philip, with all speed, was on the road back to Paris with his army, as disheartened as its king, and more disorderly in retreat than it had been in battle, Edward was hastening, with ardor and intelligence, to reap the fruits of his victory. In the difficult war of conquest he had undertaken, what was clearly of most importance to him was to possess on the coast of France, as near as possible to England, a place which he might make, in his operations by land and sea, a point of arrival and departure, of occupancy, of provisioning, and of secure refuge. Calais exactly fulfilled these conditions. On arriving before the place, September 3rd, 1346, Edward “immediately had built all round it,” says Froissart, “houses and dwelling places of solid carpentry, and arranged in streets, as if he were to remain there for ten or twelve years, for his intention was not to leave it winter or summer, whatever time and whatever trouble he must spend and take. He called this new town Villeneuve la Hardie; and he had therein all things necessary for an army, and more too, as a place appointed for the holding of a market on Wednesday and Saturday; and therein were mercers’ shops and butchers’ shops, and stores for the sale of cloth and bread and all other necessaries. King Edward did not have the city of Calais assaulted by his men, well knowing that he would lose his pains, but said he would starve it out, however long a time it might cost him, if King Philip of France did not come to fight him again, and raise the siege.”

Calais had for its governor John de Vienne, a valiant and faithful Burgundian knight, “the which seeing,” says Froissart, “that the king of England was making every sacrifice to keep up the siege, ordered that all sorts of small folk, who had no provisions, should quit the city without further notice.” The Calaisians endured for eleven months all the sufferings arising from isolation and famine. The King of France made two attempts to relieve them. On the 20th of May, 1347, he assembled his troops at Amiens; but they were not ready to march till about the middle of July, and as long before as the 23rd of June, a French fleet of ten galleys and thirty-five transports had been driven off by the English.

When the people of Calais saw that all hope of a rescue had slipped from them, they held a council, resigned themselves to offer submission to the king of England, rather than die of hunger, and begged their governor, John de Vienne, to enter into negotiations for that purpose with the besiegers. Walter de Manny, instructed by Edward to reply to these overtures, said to John de Vienne, “The king’s intent is that ye put yourselves[319] at his free will to ransom or put to death, such as it shall please him; the people of Calais have caused him so great displeasure, cost him so much money and lost him so many men, that it is not astonishing if that weighs heavily upon him.” In his final answer to the petition of the unfortunate inhabitants, Edward said: “Go, Walter, to them of Calais, and tell the governor that the greatest grace they can find in my sight is that six of the most notable burghers come forth from their town bareheaded, barefooted, with ropes round their necks and with the keys of the town and castle in their hands. With them I will do according to my will and the rest I will receive to mercy.” It is well known how the king would have put to death Eustace de St. Pierre and his companions, and how their lives were spared at the intercession of Queen Philippa.

Eustace, more concerned for the interests of his own town than for those of France, and being more of a Calaisian burgher than a national patriot, showed no hesitation, for all that appears, in serving, as a subject of the king of England, his native city, for which he had shown himself so ready to die. At his death, which happened in 1351, his heirs declared themselves faithful subjects of the king of France, and Edward confiscated away from them the possessions he had restored to their predecessor. Eustace de St. Pierre’s cousin and comrade in devotion to their native town, John d’Aire, would not enter Calais again; his property was confiscated, and his house, the finest, it is said, in the town, was given by King Edward to Queen Philippa, who showed no more hesitation in accepting it than Eustace in serving his new king. Long-lived delicacy of sentiment and conduct was rarer in those rough and rude times than heroic bursts of courage and devotion.

The battle of Crécy and the loss of Calais were reverses from which Philip of Valois never even made a serious attempt to recover; he hastily concluded with Edward a truce, twice renewed, which served only to consolidate the victor’s successes.

V.—JOAN OF ARC.

On the 6th of January, 1428, at Domremy, a little village in the valley of the Meuse, between Neufchâtel and Vaucouleurs, on the edge of the frontier from Champagne to Lorraine, the young daughter of simple tillers-of-the-soil “of good life and repute, herself a good, simple, gentle girl, no idler, occupied hitherto in sewing or spinning with her mother or driving afield her parent’s sheep and sometimes even, when her father’s turn came round, keeping for him the whole flock of the commune,” was fulfilling her sixteenth year. It was Joan of Arc, whom all her neighbors called Joannette. Her early childhood was passed amidst the pursuits characteristic of a country life; her behavior was irreproachable, and she was robust, active, and intrepid. Her imagination becoming inflamed by the distressed situation of France, she dreamed that she had interviews with St. Margaret, St. Catherine, and St. Michael, who commanded her, in the name of God, to go and raise the siege of Orleans, and conduct Charles to be crowned at Rheims. Accordingly she applied to Robert de Baudricourt, captain of the neighboring town of Vaucouleurs, revealing to him her inspiration, and conjuring him not to neglect the voice of God, which spoke through her. This officer for some time treated her with neglect; but at length, prevailed on by repeated importunities, he sent her to the king at Chinon, to whom, when introduced, she said: “Gentle Dauphin, my name is Joan the Maid, the King of Heaven hath sent me to your assistance; if you please to give me troops, by the grace of God and the force of arms, I will raise the siege of Orleans, and conduct you to be crowned at Rheims, in spite of your enemies.” Her requests were now granted; she was armed cap-a-pie, mounted on horseback, and provided with a suitable retinue. Previous to her attempting any exploit, she wrote a long letter to the young English monarch, commanding him to withdraw his forces from France, and threatening his destruction in case of refusal. She concluded with “hear this advice from God and la Pucelle.”

But, side by side with these friends, she had an adversary in the king’s favorite, George de la Trémoille, an ambitious courtier, jealous of any one who seemed within the range of the king’s good graces, and opposed to a vigorous prosecution of the war, since it hampered him in the policy he wished to keep up toward the duke of Burgundy. To the ill-will of La Trémoille was added that of the majority of courtiers enlisted in the following of the powerful favorite, and that of warriors irritated at the importance acquired at their expense by a rustic and fantastic little adventuress. Here was the source of the enmities and intrigues which stood in the way of all Joan’s demands, rendered her successes more tardy, difficult, and incomplete, and were one day to cost her more dearly still.

At the end of about five weeks the expedition was in readiness. It was a heavy convoy of revictualment protected by a body of ten or twelve thousand men commanded by Marshal de Boussac, and numbering amongst them Xaintrailles and La Hire. The march began on the 27th of April, 1429. Joan had caused the removal of all women of bad character, and had recommended her comrades to confess. She took the communion in the open air, before their eyes; and a company of priests, headed by her chaplain, Pasquerel, led the way whilst chanting sacred hymns. Great was the surprise amongst the men-at-arms. Many had words of mockery on their lips. It was the time when La Hire used to say, “If God were a soldier, he would turn robber.” Nevertheless, respect got the better of habit; the most honorable were really touched; the coarsest considered themselves bound to show restraint. On the 29th of April they arrived before Orleans. But, in consequence of the road they had followed, the Loire was between the army and the town; the expeditionary corps had to be split in two; the troops were obliged to go and feel for the bridge of Blois in order to cross the river; and Joan was vexed and surprised. Dunois, arrived from Orleans in a little boat, urged her to enter the town that same evening. “Are you the bastard of Orleans?” asked she, when he accosted her. “Yes; and I am rejoiced at your coming.” “Was it you who gave counsel for making me come hither by this side of the river and not the direct way, over yonder where Talbot and the English were?” “Yes; such was the opinion of the wisest captains.”

Joan’s first undertaking was against Orleans, which she entered without opposition on the 29th of April, 1429, on horseback, completely armed, preceded by her own banner, and having beside her Dunois, and behind her the captains of the garrison and several of the most distinguished burgesses of Orleans, who had gone out to meet her. The population, one and all, rushed thronging round her, carrying torches, and greeting her arrival “with joy as great as if they had seen God come down amongst them.” With admirable good sense, discovering the superior merits of Dunois, the bastard of Orleans, a celebrated captain, she wisely adhered to his instructions; and by constantly harassing the English, and beating up their intrenchments in various desperate attacks, in all of which she displayed the most heroic courage, Joan in a few weeks compelled the earl of Suffolk and his army to raise the siege, having sustained the loss of six thousand men. The proposal of crowning Charles at Rheims would formerly have appeared like madness, but the Maid of Orleans now insisted on its fulfillment. She accordingly recommenced the campaign on the 10th of June; to complete the deliverance of Orleans an attack was begun upon the neighboring places, Jargeau, Meung, and Beaugency; thousands of the late dispirited subjects of Charles now flocked to his standard, many towns immediately declared for him; and the English, who had suffered in various actions, at that of Jargeau, when the earl of Suffolk was taken prisoner, and at that of Patay, when Sir John Fastolfe fled without striking a blow, seemed now to be totally dispirited. On the 16th[320] of July King Charles entered Rheims, and the ceremony of his coronation was fixed for the morrow.

It was solemn and emotional as are all old national traditions which recur after a forced suspension. Joan rode between Dunois and the archbishop of Rheims, chancellor of France. The air resounded with the Te Deum sung with all their hearts by clergy and crowd. “In God’s name,” said Joan to Dunois, “here is a good people and a devout; when I die, I should much like it to be in these parts.” “Joan,” inquired Dunois, “know you when you will die and in what place?” “I know not,” said she, “for I am at the will of God.” Then she added, “I have accomplished that which my Lord commanded me, to raise the siege of Orleans and have the gentle king crowned. I would like it well if it should please Him to send me back to my father and mother, to keep their sheep and their cattle and do that which was my wont.” “When the said lords,” says the chronicler, an eye-witness, “heard these words of Joan, who, with eyes toward heaven, gave thanks to God, they the more believed that it was somewhat sent from God and not otherwise.”

Historians and even contemporaries have given much discussion to the question whether Joan of Arc, according to her first ideas, had really limited her design to the raising of the siege of Orleans and the coronation of Charles VII. at Rheims. However that may be, when Orleans was relieved and Charles VII. crowned, the situation, posture, and part of Joan underwent a change. She no longer manifested the same confidence in herself and her designs. She no longer exercised over those in whose midst she lived the same authority. She continued to carry on war, but at hap-hazard, sometimes with and sometimes without success, just like La Hire and Dunois; never discouraged, never satisfied, and never looking upon herself as triumphant. After the coronation, her advice was to march at once upon Paris, in order to take up a fixed position in it, as being the political center of the realm of which Rheims was the religious. Nothing of the sort was done. She threw herself into Compiègne, then besieged by the duke of Burgundy. The next day (May 25, 1430), heading a sally upon the enemy, she was repulsed and compelled to retreat after exerting the utmost valor; when, having nearly reached the gate of the town, an English archer pursued her and pulled her from her horse. The joy of the English at this capture was as great as if they had obtained a complete victory. Joan was committed to the care of John of Luxembourg, count of Ligny, from whom the duke of Bedford purchased the captive for ten thousand pounds, and a pension of three hundred pounds a year to the bastard of Vendôme, to whom she surrendered. Joan was now conducted to Rouen, where, loaded with irons, she was thrown into a dungeon, preparatory to appear before a court assembled to judge her.

The trial lasted from the 21st of February to the 30th of May, 1431. The court held forty sittings, mostly in the chapel of the castle, some in Joan’s very prison. On her arrival there, she had been put in an iron cage; afterward she was kept “no longer in the cage, but in a dark room in a tower of the castle, wearing irons upon her feet, fastened by a chain to a large piece of wood, and guarded night and day by four or five soldiers of low grade.” She complained of being thus chained; but the bishop told her that her former attempts at escape demanded this precaution. “It is true,” said Joan, as truthful as heroic, “I did wish and I still wish to escape from prison, as is the right of every prisoner.” At her examination, the bishop required her to take “an oath to tell the truth about everything as to which she should be questioned.” “I know not what you mean to question me about; perchance you may ask me things I would not tell you; touching my revelations, for instance, you might ask me to tell something I have sworn not to tell; thus I should be perjured, which you ought not to desire.” The bishop insisted upon an oath absolute and without condition. “You are too hard on me,” said Joan; “I do not like to take an oath to tell the truth save as to matters which concern the faith.” The bishop called upon her to swear on pain of being held guilty of the things imputed to her. “Go on to something else,” said she. And this was the answer she made to all questions which seemed to her to be a violation of her right to be silent. Wearied and hurt at these imperious demands, she one day said, “I come on God’s business, and I have naught to do here; send me back to God from whom I come.” “Are you sure you are in God’s grace?” asked the bishop. “If I be not,” answered Joan, “please God to bring me to it; and if I be, please God to keep me in it!” The bishop himself remained dumbfounded.

There is no object in following through all its sittings and all its twistings this odious and shameful trial, in which the judges’ prejudiced servility and scientific subtlety were employed for three months to wear out the courage or overreach the understanding of a young girl of nineteen, who refused at one time to lie, and at another to enter into discussion with them, and made no defence beyond holding her tongue or appealing to God who had spoken to her and dictated to her that which she had done. In the end she was condemned for all the crimes of which she had been accused, aggravated by that of heresy, and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, to be fed during life on bread and water. The English were enraged that she was not condemned to death. “Wait but a little,” said one of the judges, “we shall soon find the means to ensnare her.” And this was effected by a grievous accusation, which, though somewhat countenanced by the Levitical law, has been seldom urged in modern times, the wearing of man’s attire. Joan had been charged with this offense, but she promised not to repeat it. A suit of man’s apparel was designedly placed in her chamber, and her own garments, as some authors say, being removed, she clothed herself in the forbidden garb, and her keepers surprising her in that dress, she was adjudged to death as a relapsed heretic, and was condemned to be burnt in the marketplace at Rouen (1431).

VI.—HENRY OF NAVARRE.

Henry IV. perfectly understood and steadily took the measure of the situation in which he was placed. He was in a great minority throughout the country as well as the army, and he would have to deal with public passions, worked by his foes for their own ends, and with the personal pretensions of his partisans. He made no mistake about these two facts, and he allowed them great weight; but he did not take for the ruling principle of his policy and for his first rule of conduct the plan of alternate concessions to the different parties and of continually humoring personal interests; he set his thoughts higher, upon the general and natural interests of France as he found her and saw her. They resolved themselves, in his eyes, into the following great points: Maintenance of the hereditary rights of monarchy, preponderance of Catholics in the government, peace between Catholics and Protestants, and religious liberty for Protestants. With him these points became the law of his policy and his kingly duty as well as the nation’s right. He proclaimed them the first words that he addressed to the lords and principal personages of state assembled around him. On the 4th of August, 1589, in the camp at St. Cloud, the majority of the princes, dukes, lords, and gentlemen present in the camp expressed their full adhesion to the accession and the manifesto of the king, promising him “service and obedience against rebels and enemies who would usurp the kingdom.” Two notable leaders, the duke of Épernon amongst the Catholics and the duke of La Trémoille amongst the Protestants, refused to join in this adhesion; the former saying that his conscience would not permit him to serve a heretic king, the latter alleging that his conscience forbade him to serve a prince who engaged to protect Catholic idolatry. They withdrew, D’Épernon into Angoumois and Saintonge, taking with him six thousand foot and twelve thousand horse; and La Trémoille[321] into Poitou, with nine battalions of reformers. They had an idea of attempting, both of them, to set up for themselves independent principalities. Three contemporaries, Sully, La Force, and the bastard of Angoulême, bear witness that Henry IV. was deserted by as many Huguenots as Catholics. The French royal army was reduced, it is said, to one half. As a make-weight, Sancy prevailed upon the Swiss, to the number of twelve thousand, and two thousand German auxiliaries, not only to continue in the service of the new king but to wait six months for their pay, as he was at the moment unable to pay them. From the 14th to the 20th of August, in Ile-de-France, in Picardy, in Normandy, in Auvergne, in Champagne, in Burgundy, in Anjou, in Poitou, in Languedoc, in Orleanness, and in Touraine, a great number of towns and districts joined in the determination of the royal army.

As the government of Henry IV. went on growing in strength and extent, the moderate Catholics were beginning, not as yet to make approaches toward him, but to see a glimmering possibility of treating with him, and obtaining from him such concessions as they considered necessary, at the same time that they in their turn made to him such as he might consider sufficient for his party and himself.

Unhappily, the new pope, Gregory XIV., elected on the 5th of December, 1590, was humbly devoted to the Spanish policy, meekly subservient to Philip II.; that is, to the cause of religious persecution and of absolute power, without regard for anything else. The relations of France with the Holy See at once felt the effects of this; Cardinal Gaetani received from Rome all the instructions that the most ardent Leaguers could desire; and he gave his approval to a resolution of the Sorbonne to the effect that Henry de Bourbon, heretic and relapsed, was forever excluded from the crown, whether he became a Catholic or not. Henry IV. had convoked the states-general at Tours for the month of March, and had summoned to that city the archbishops and bishops to form a national council, and to deliberate as to the means of restoring the king to the bosom of the Catholic Church. The legate prohibited this council, declaring, beforehand, the excommunication and deposition of any bishops who should be present at it. The Leaguer parliament of Paris forbade, on pain of death and confiscation, any connection, any correspondence with Henry de Bourbon and his partisans. A solemn procession of the League took place at Paris on the 14th of March, and, a few days afterwards, the union was sworn afresh by all the municipal chiefs of the population. In view of such passionate hostility, Henry IV., a stranger to any sort of illusion, at the same time that he was always full of hope, saw that his successes at Arques were insufficient for him, and that, if he were to occupy the throne in peace, he must win more victories. He recommenced the campaign by the siege of Dreux, one of the towns which it was most important for him to possess, in order to put pressure on Paris and cause her to feel, even at a distance, the perils and evils of war.

On Wednesday, the 14th of March, 1590, the two armies met on the plains of Ivry, a village six leagues from Evreux, on the left bank of the Eure. A battle ensued in which, although the resources of modern warfare were brought into operation, the decisive force consisted, as of old, in the cavalry. It appeared as if Henry IV. must succumb to the superior force of the enemy; further and further backward was his white banner seen to retire, and the great mass appeared as if they designed to follow it. At length Henry cried out that those who did not wish to fight against the enemy might at least turn and see him die, and immediately plunged into the thickest of the battle. It appeared as if the royalist gentry had felt the old martial fire of their ancestry enkindled by these words, and by the glance that accompanied them. Raising one mighty shout to God, they threw themselves upon the enemy, following their king, whose plume was now their banner. In this there might have been some dim principle of religious zeal, but that devotion to personal authority, which is so powerful an element in war and in policy, was wanting. The royalist and religious energy of Henry’s troops conquered the Leaguers. The cavalry was broken, scattered, and swept from the field, and the confused manner of their retreat so puzzled the infantry that they were not able to maintain their ground; the German and French were cut down; the Swiss surrendered. It was a complete victory for Henry IV.

It was not only as able captain and valiant soldier that Henry IV. distinguished himself at Ivry; there the man was conspicuous for the strength of his better feelings, as generous and as affectionate as the king was far-sighted and bold. When the word was given to march from Dreux, Count Schomberg, colonel of the German auxiliaries called Reiters, had asked for the pay of his troops, letting it be understood that they would not fight, if their claims were not satisfied. Henry had replied harshly, “People don’t ask for money on the eve of a battle.” At Ivry, just as the battle was on the point of beginning, he went up to Schomberg: “Colonel,” said he, “I hurt your feelings. This may be the last day of my life. I can’t bear to take away the honor of a brave and honest gentleman like you. Pray forgive me and embrace me.” “Sir,” answered Schomberg, “the other day your majesty wounded me, to-day you kill me.” He gave up the command of the Reiters in order to fight in the king’s own squadron, and was killed in action.

The victory of Ivry had a great effect in France and in Europe, though not immediately, and as regarded the campaign of 1690. The victorious king moved on Paris and made himself master of the little towns in the neighborhood with a view of besieging the capital. The investment became more strict; it was kept up for more than three months, from the end of May to the beginning of September, 1590; and the city was reduced to a severe state of famine, which would have been still more severe if Henry IV. had not several times over permitted the entry of some convoys of provisions and the exit of the old men, the women, the children, in fact, the poorest and weakest part of the population. “Paris must not be a cemetery,” he said: “I do not wish to reign over the dead.” In the meantime, Duke Alexander of Parma, in accordance with express orders from Philip II., went from the Low Countries, with his army, to join Mayenne at Meaux, and threaten Henry IV. with their united forces if he did not retire from the walls of the capital. Henry IV. offered the two dukes battle, if they really wished to put a stop to the investment; but “I am not come so far,” answered the duke of Parma, “to take counsel of my enemy; if my manner of warfare does not please the king of Navarre, let him force me to change it instead of giving me advice that nobody asked him for.” Henry in vain attempted to make the duke of Parma accept battle. The able Italian established himself in a strongly entrenched camp, surprised Lagny and opened to Paris the navigation of the Marne, by which provisions were speedily brought up. Henry decided upon retreating; he dispersed the different divisions of his army into Touraine, Normandy, Picardy, Champagne, Burgundy, and himself took up his quarters at Senlis, at Compiègne, in the towns on the banks of the Oise. The duke of Mayenne arrived on the 18th of September at Paris; the duke of Parma entered it himself with a few officers and left it on the 13th of November, with his army on his way back to the Low Countries, being a little harassed in his retreat by the royal cavalry, but easy, for the moment, as to the fate of Paris and the issue of the war, which continued during the first six months of the year 1591, but languidly and disconnectedly, with successes and reverses see-sawing between the two parties and without any important results.

Then began to appear the consequences of the victory of Ivry and the progress made by Henry IV., in spite of the check he received before Paris and at some other points in the kingdom. Not only did many moderate Catholics make advances[322] to him, struck with his sympathetic ability and his valor, and hoping that he would end by becoming a Catholic, but patriotic wrath was kindling in France against Philip II. and the Spaniards, those fomenters of civil war in the mere interest of foreign ambition.

The League was split up into two parties, the Spanish League and the French League. The committee of Sixteen labored incessantly for the formation and triumph of the Spanish League; and its principal leaders wrote, on the 2nd of September, 1591, a letter to Philip II., offering him the crown of France and pledging their allegiance to him as his subjects: “We can positively assure your Majesty,” they said, “that the wishes of all Catholics are to see your Catholic Majesty holding the scepter of this kingdom and reigning over us, even as we do throw ourselves right willingly into your arms as in to those of our father, or at any rate establishing one of your posterity upon the throne.” These ringleaders of the Spanish League had for their army the blindly fanatical and demagogic populace of Paris, and were, further, supported by 4,000 Spanish troops whom Philip II. had succeeded in getting almost surreptitiously into Paris. They created a council of ten, the sixteenth century’s committee of public safety; they proscribed the policists; they, on the 15th of November, had the president, Brisson, and two councilors of the Leaguer parliament arrested, hanged them to a beam and dragged the corpses to the Place de Grève, where they strung them up to a gibbet with inscriptions setting forth that they were heretics, traitors to the city and enemies of the Catholic princes. Whilst the Spanish League was thus reigning at Paris, the duke of Mayenne was at Laon, preparing to lead his army, consisting partly of Spaniards, to the relief of Rouen, the siege of which Henry IV. was commencing. Being summoned to Paris by messengers who succeeded one another every hour, he arrived there on the 28th of November, 1591, with 2,000 French troops; he armed the guard of burgesses, seized and hanged, in a ground-floor room of the Louvre, four of the chief leaders of the Sixteen, suppressed their committee, reëstablished the parliament in full authority and, finally, restored the security and preponderance of the French League, whilst taking the reins once more into his own hands.

Whilst these two Leagues, the one Spanish and the other French, were conspiring thus persistently, sometimes together and sometimes one against the other, to promote personal ambition and interests, at the same time national instinct, respect for traditional rights, weariness of civil war, and the good sense which is born of long experience, were bringing France more and more over to the cause and name of Henry IV. In all the provinces, throughout all ranks of society, the population non-enrolled amongst the factions were turning their eyes toward him as the only means of putting an end to war at home and abroad, the only pledge of national unity, public prosperity, and even freedom of trade, a hazy idea as yet, but even now prevalent in the great ports of France and in Paris. Would Henry turn Catholic? That was the question asked everywhere, amongst Protestants with anxiety, but with keen desire and not without hope amongst the mass of the population. The rumor ran that, on this point, negotiations were half opened even in the midst of the League itself, even at the court of Spain, even at Rome where Pope Clement VIII., a more moderate man than his predecessor, Gregory XIV., “had no desire,” says Sully, “to foment the troubles of France, and still less that the king of Spain should possibly become its undisputed king, rightly judging that this would be laying open to him the road to the monarchy of Christendom, and, consequently, reducing the Roman pontiffs to the position, if it were his good pleasure, of his mere chaplains” [Œconomies royales, t. ii. p. 106]. Such being the existing state of facts and minds, it was impossible that Henry IV. should not ask himself roundly the same question and feel that he had no time to lose in answering it.

In spite of the breadth and independence of his mind, Henry IV. was sincerely puzzled. He was of those who, far from clinging to a single fact and confining themselves to a single duty, take account of the complication of the facts amidst which they live, and of the variety of the duties which the general situation or their own imposes upon them. Born in the reformed faith, and on the steps of the throne, he was struggling to defend his political rights whilst keeping his religious creed; but his religious creed was not the fruit of very mature or very deep conviction; it was a question of first claims and of honor rather than a matter of conscience; and, on the other hand, the peace of France, her prosperity, perhaps her territorial integrity, were dependent upon the triumph of the political rights of the Béarnese. Even for his brethren in creed his triumph was a benefit secured, for it was an end of persecution and a first step toward liberty. There is no measuring accurately how far ambition, personal interest, a king’s egotism had to do with Henry IV.’s abjuration of his religion; none would deny that those human infirmities were present; but all this does not prevent the conviction that patriotism was uppermost in Henry’s soul, and that the idea of his duty as king toward France, a prey to all the evils of civil and foreign war, was the determining motive of his resolution. It cost him a great deal. On the 26th of April, 1593, he wrote to the grand duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand de Medici, that he had decided to turn Catholic “two months after that the duke of Mayenne should have come to an agreement with him on just and suitable terms;” and, foreseeing the expense that would be occasioned to him by “this great change in his affairs,” he felicitated himself upon knowing that the grand duke was disposed to second his efforts toward a levy of 4000 Swiss and advance a year’s pay for them. On the 28th of April he begged the bishop of Chartres, Nicholas de Thou, to be one of the Catholic prelates whose instructions he would be happy to receive on the 15th of July, and he sent the same invitation to several other prelates. On the 16th of May he declared to his council his resolve to become a convert. This news, everywhere spread abroad, produced a lively burst of national and Bourbonic feeling even where it was scarcely to be expected; at the states-general of the League, especially in the chamber of the noblesse, many members protested “that they would not treat with foreigners, or promote the election of a woman, or give their suffrages to any one unknown to them, and at the choice of his Catholic Majesty of Spain.” At Paris, a part of the clergy, the incumbents of St. Eustache, St. Merri, and St. Sulpice, and even some of the popular preachers, violent Leaguers but lately, and notably Guincestre, boldly preached peace and submission to the king if he turned Catholic. The principal of the French League, in matters of policy and negotiation, and Mayenne’s adviser since 1589, Villeroi, declared “that he would not bide in a place where the laws, the honor of the nation and the independence of the kingdom were held so cheap;” and he left Paris on the 28th of June.

Four months after the conclusion of the treaty of Vervins, on the 13th of September, 1598, Philip II. died at the Escurial, and on the 3rd of April, 1603, a second great royal personage, Queen Elizabeth, disappeared from the scene. She had been, as regards the Protestantism of Europe, what Philip II. had been, as regards Catholicism, a powerful and able patron; but what Philip II. did from fanatical conviction, Elizabeth did from patriotic feeling; she had small faith in Calvinistic doctrines and no liking for Puritanic sects; the Catholic Church, the power of the pope excepted, was more to her mind than the Anglican Church, and her private preferences differed greatly from her public practices. Thus at the beginning of the seventeenth century Henry IV. was the only one remaining of the three great sovereigns who, during the sixteenth, had disputed, as regarded religion and politics, the preponderance in Europe. He had succeeded in all his kingly enterprises; he had become[323] a Catholic in France without ceasing to be the prop of the Protestants in Europe; he had made peace with Spain without embroiling himself with England, Holland and Lutheran Germany. He had shot up, as regarded ability and influence, in the eyes of all Europe. It was just then that he gave the strongest proof of his great judgment and political sagacity; he was not intoxicated with success; he did not abuse his power; he did not aspire to distant conquests or brilliant achievements; he concerned himself chiefly with the establishment of public order in his kingdom and with his people’s prosperity. His well-known saying, “I want all my peasantry to have a fowl in the pot every Sunday,” was a desire worthy of Louis XII. Henry IV. had a sympathetic nature; his grandeur did not lead him to forget the nameless multitudes whose fate depended upon his government. He had, besides, the rich, productive, varied, inquiring mind of one who took an interest not only in the welfare of the French peasantry, but in the progress of the whole French community, progress agricultural, industrial, commercial, scientific, and literary.

On the 6th of January, 1600, Henry IV. gave his ambassador, Brulart de Sillery, powers to conclude at Florence his marriage with Mary de’ Medici, daughter of Francis I. de’ Medici, grand duke of Tuscany, and Joan, archduchess of Austria and niece of the grand duke Ferdinand I. de’ Medici, who had often rendered Henry IV. pecuniary services dearly paid for. As early as the year 1592 there had been something said about this project of alliance; it was resumed and carried out on the 5th of October, 1600, at Florence, with lavish magnificence. Mary embarked at Leghorn on the 17th, with a fleet of seventeen galleys; that of which she was aboard, the General, was all covered over with jewels, inside and out; she arrived at Marseilles on the 3d of November, and at Lyons on the 2nd of December, where she waited till the 9th for the king, who was detained by the war with Savoy. He entered her chamber in the middle of the night, booted and armed, and next day, in the cathedral church of St. John, re-celebrated his marriage, more rich in wealth than it was destined to be in happiness.

Henry IV. seemed to have attained in his public and in his domestic life the pinnacle of earthly fortune and ambition. He was, at one and the same time, Catholic king and the head of the Protestant polity in Europe, accepted by the Catholics as the best, the only possible, king for them in France. He was at peace with all Europe, except one petty prince, the duke of Savoy, Charles Emmanuel I., from whom he demanded back the Marquisate of Saluzzo or a territorial compensation in France itself on the French side of the Alps. After a short campaign, and thanks to Rosny’s ordnance, he obtained what he desired, and by a treaty of January 17, 1601, he added to French territory La Bresse, Le Bugey, the district of Gex and the citadel of Bourg, which still held out after the capture of the town. He was more and more dear to France, to which he had restored peace at home as well as abroad, and industrial, commercial, financial, monumental, and scientific prosperity, until lately unknown. Sully covered the country with roads, bridges, canals, buildings and works of public utility. The conspiracy of his old companion in arms, Gontaut de Biron, proved to him, however, that he was not at the end of his political dangers, and the letters he caused to be issued (September, 1603) for the return of the Jesuits did not save him from the attacks of religious fanaticism.

The queen’s coronation had been proclaimed on the 12th of May, 1610; she was to be crowned next day, the 13th, at St. Denis, and Sunday the 16th had been appointed for her to make her entry into Paris. On Friday, the 14th, the king had an idea of going to the Arsenal to see Sully, who was ill; we have the account of this visit and of the assassination given by Malherbe, at that time attached to the service of Henry IV., in a letter written on the 19th of May, from the reports of eye witnesses, and it is here reproduced, word for word:

“The king set out soon after dinner to go to the Arsenal. He deliberated a long while whether he should go out, and several times said to the queen, ‘My dear, shall I go or not?’ He even went out two or three times and then all on a sudden returned, and said to the queen, ‘My dear, shall I really go?’ and again he had doubts about going or remaining. At last he made up his mind to go, and having kissed the queen several times, bade her adieu. Amongst other things that were remarked he said to her, ‘I shall only go there and back; I shall be here again almost directly.’ When he got to the bottom of the steps where his carriage was waiting for him, M. de Praslin, his captain of the guard, would have attended him, but he said to him, ‘Get you gone; I want nobody; go about your business.’

“Thus, having about him only a few gentlemen and some footmen, he got into his carriage, took his place on the back seat, at the left hand side, and made M. d’Épernon sit at the right. Next to him, by the door, were M. de Montbazon and M. de la Force; and by the door on M. d’Épernon’s side were Marshal de Lavardin and M. de Créqui; on the front seat the marquis of Mirabeau and the first equerry. When he came to the Croix-du-Tiroir he was asked whither it was his pleasure to go; he gave orders to go toward St. Innocent. On arriving at Rue de la Ferronnerie, which is at the end of that of St. Honoré on the way to that of St. Denis, opposite the Salamandre he met a cart which obliged the king’s carriage to go nearer to the ironmonger’s shops, which are on the St. Innocent side, and even to proceed somewhat more slowly, without stopping, however, though somebody, who was in a hurry to get the gossip printed, has written to that effect. Here it was that an abominable assassin, who had posted himself against the nearest shop, which is that with the Cœur couronné percé d’une flèche, darted upon the king and dealt him, one after the other, two blows with a knife in the left side, one, catching him between the arm-pit and the nipple, went upward without doing more than graze; the other catches him between the fifth and sixth ribs, and, taking a downward direction, cuts a large artery of those called venous. The king, by mishap, and as if to further tempt this monster, had his left hand on the shoulder of M. de Montbazon, and with the other was leaning on d’Épernon, to whom he was speaking. He uttered a low cry and made a few movements. M. de Montbazon having asked, ‘What is the matter, sir?’ he answered, ‘It is nothing,’ twice; but the second time so low that there was no making sure. These are the only words he spoke after he was wounded.

“In a moment the carriage turned toward the Louvre. When he was at the steps where he had got into the carriage, which are those of the queen’s rooms, some wine was given him. Of course some one had already run forward to bear the news. Sieur de Cérisy, lieutenant of M. de Praslin’s company, having raised his head, he made a few movements with his eyes, then closed them immediately, without opening them again any more. He was carried up stairs by M. de Montbazon and Count de Curzon en Quercy and laid on the bed in his closet and at two o’clock carried to the bed in his chamber, where he was all the next day and Sunday. Somebody went and gave him holy water. I tell you nothing about the queen’s tears; all that must be imagined. As for the people of Paris, I think they never wept so much as on this occasion.”

On the king’s death—and at the imperious instance of the duke of Épernon, who at once introduced the queen, and said in open session, as he exhibited his sword, “It is as yet in the scabbard, but it will have to leap therefrom unless this moment there be granted to the queen a title which is her due according to the order of nature and of justice”—the Parliament forthwith declared Mary regent of the kingdom. Thanks to Sully’s firm administration, there were, after the ordinary annual expenses were paid, at that time in the vaults of the Bastile, or in securities easily realizable, forty-one million three hundred and forty-five thousand livres, and there was nothing to suggest that extraordinary and urgent expenses would come[324] to curtail this substantial reserve. The army was disbanded and reduced to from twelve to fifteen thousand men, French or Swiss. For a long time past no power in France had, at its accession, possessed so much material strength and so much moral authority.—Guizot.

VII.—THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV.

Louis XIV. ruled everywhere, over his people, over his age, often over Europe; but nowhere did he reign so completely as over his court. Never were the wishes, the defects and the vices of a man so completely a law to other men as to the court of Louis XIV. during the whole period of his long life. When near to him, in the palace of Versailles, men lived and hoped and trembled; everywhere else in France, even at Paris, men vegetated. The existence of the great lords was concentrated in the court, about the person of the king. Scarcely could the most important duties bring them to absent themselves for any time. They returned quickly, with alacrity, with ardor; only poverty or a certain rustic pride kept gentlemen in their provinces. “The court does not make one happy,” says La Bruyère, “it prevents one from being so anywhere else.”

The principle of absolute power, firmly fixed in the young king’s mind, began to pervade his court from the time that he disgraced Fouquet and ceased to dissemble his affection for Mdlle. de La Vallière. She was young, charming and modest. Of all the king’s favorites she alone loved him sincerely. “What a pity he is a king!” she would say. Louis XIV. made her a duchess; but all she cared about was to see him and please him. When Madame de Montespan began to supplant her in the king’s favor, the grief of Madame de La Vallière was so great that she thought she should die of it. Then she turned to God, in penitence and despair; and, later on, it was at her side that Madame de Montespan, in her turn forced to quit the court, went to seek advice and pious consolation. “This soul will be a miracle of grace,” Bossuet had said.

Madame de Montespan was haughty, passionate, “with hair dressed in a thousand ringlets, a majestic beauty to show off to the ambassadors;” she openly paraded the favor she was in, accepting and angling for the graces the king was pleased to do her and hers, having the superintendence of the household of the queen, whom she insulted without disguise, to the extent of wounding the king himself: “Pray consider that she is your mistress,” he said one day to his favorite. The scandal was great; Bossuet attempted the task of stopping it. It was the time of the Jubilee; neither the king nor Madame de Montespan had lost all religious feeling; the wrath of God and the refusal of the sacraments had terrors for them still.

Bossuet had acted in vain, “like a pontiff of the earliest times, with a freedom worthy of the earliest ages and the earliest bishops of the Church,” says St. Simon. He saw the inutility of his efforts; henceforth prudence and courtly behavior put a seal upon his lips. It was the time of the great king’s omnipotence and highest splendor, the time when nobody withstood his wishes. The great Mademoiselle had just attempted to show her independence; tired of not being married, she had made up her mind to a love-match; she did not espouse Lauzun just then, the king broke off the marriage. “I will make you so great,” he said to Lauzun, “that you shall have no cause to regret what I am taking from you; meanwhile, I make you duke and peer and marshal of France.” “Sir,” broke in Lauzun insolently, “you have made so many dukes that it is no longer an honor to be one, and, as for the bâton of marshal of France, your Majesty can give it me when I have earned it by my services.” He was before long sent to Pignerol, where he passed ten years. There he met Fouquet and that mysterious personage called the Iron Mask, whose name has not yet been discovered to a certainty by means of all the most ingenious conjectures. It was only by settling all her property on the duke of Maine after herself that Mademoiselle purchased Lauzun’s release. The king had given his posts to the prince of Marcillac, son of La Rochefoucauld.

Louis XIV. entered benevolently into the affairs of a marshal of France; he paid his debts, and the marshal was his domestic; all the court had come to that; the duties which brought servants in proximity to the king’s person were eagerly sought after by the greatest lords. Bontemps, his chief valet, and Fagon, his physician, as well as his surgeon Maréchal, very excellent men too, were all-powerful amongst the courtiers. Louis XIV. possessed the art of making his slightest favors prized; to hold the candlestick at bed-time (au petit coucher), to appear in the trips to Marly, to play in the king’s own game, such was the ambition of the most distinguished; the possessors of grand historic castles, of fine houses at Paris, crowded together in attics at Versailles, too happy to obtain a lodging in the palace. The whole mind of the greatest personages, his favorites at the head, was set upon devising means of pleasing the king; Madame de Montespan had pictures painted in miniature of all the towns he had taken in Holland; they were made into a book which was worth four thousand pistoles, and of which Racine and Boileau wrote the text; people of tact, like M. de Langlée, paid court to the master through those whom he loved.

All the style of living at court was in accordance with the magnificence of the king and his courtiers; Colbert was beside himself at the sums the queen lavished on play. Madame de Montespan lost and won back four millions in one night at bassette; Mdlle. de Fontanges gave away twenty thousand crowns’ worth of New Year’s gifts. A new power, however, was beginning to appear on the horizon, with such modesty and backwardness that none could as yet discern it, least of all could the king. Madame de Montespan had looked out for some one to take care of and educate her children. She had thought of Madame Scarron; she considered her clever; she was so herself, “in that unique style which was peculiar to the Mortemarts,” said the duke of St. Simon; she was fond of conversation; Madame Scarron had a reputation for being rather a blue-stocking; this the king did not like; Madame de Montespan had her way; Madame Scarron took charge of the children secretly and in an isolated house. She was attentive, careful, sensible. The king was struck with her devotion to the children entrusted to her. “She can love,” he said; “it would be a pleasure to be loved by her.” This expression plainly indicated what was to happen; and Madame de Montespan saw herself supplanted by Madame Scarron. The widow of the deformed poet had bought the estate of Maintenon out of the king’s bounty. He made her take the title. The recollection of Scarron was displeasing to him.

The queen had died on the 30th of July, 1683, piously and gently as she had lived. “This is the first sorrow she ever caused me,” said the king, thus rendering homage, in his superb and unconscious egotism, to the patient virtue of the wife he had put to such cruel trials. Madame de Maintenon was agitated but resolute. “Madame de Montespan has plunged into the deepest devoutness,” she wrote, two months after the queen’s death: “It is quite time she edified us; as for me, I no longer think of retiring.” Her strong common-sense and her far-sighted ambition, far more than her virtue, had secured her against rocks ahead; henceforth she saw the goal, she was close upon it, she moved toward it with an even step. The date has never been ascertained exactly of the king’s private marriage with Madame de Maintenon. It took place probably eighteen months or two years after the queen’s death; the king was forty-seven, Madame de Maintenon fifty. “She had great remains of beauty, bright and sprightly eyes, an incomparable grace,” says St. Simon, who detested her, “an air of ease and yet of restraint and respect, a great deal of cleverness with a speech that was sweet, correct, in good terms and naturally eloquent and brief.”

Madame de La Vallière had held sway over the young and[325] passionate heart of the prince, Madame de Montespan over the court, Madame de Maintenon alone established her empire over the man and the king. Alone she had any part in affairs, a smaller part than has frequently been made out, but important, nevertheless, and sometimes decisive. Ministers went occasionally to do their work in her presence with the king, who would turn to her when the questions were embarrassing, and ask, “What does your Solidity think?” The opinions she gave were generally moderate and discreet. Whatever the apparent reserve and modesty with which it was cloaked, the real power of Madame de Maintenon over the king’s mind peeped out more and more into broad daylight. She promoted it dexterously by her extreme anxiety to please him as well as by her natural and sincere attachment to the children whom she had brought up and who had a place near the heart of Louis XIV.

The chief ornament of the Court of Versailles was the duchess of Burgundy. For the king and for Madame de Maintenon, the great and inexhaustible attraction of this young lady was her gaiety and unconstrained ease, tempered by the most delicate respect, which, on coming as quite a child to France from the court of Savoy, she had tact enough to introduce and always maintain amidst the most intimate familiarity. “In public, demure, respectful with the king, and on terms of timid propriety with Madame de Maintenon, whom she never called anything but aunt, thus prettily blending rank and affection. In private, chattering, frisking, fluttering around them, at one time perched on the arm of one or the other’s chairs, at another playfully sitting on their knee, she would throw herself upon their necks, embrace them, kiss them, fondle them, pull them to pieces, chuck them under the chin, tease them, rummage their tables, their papers, their letters, reading them sometimes against their will, according as she saw that they were in the humor to laugh at it, and occasionally speaking thereon. Admitted to everything, even at the reception of couriers bringing the most important news, going in to the king at any hour, even at the time the council was sitting, useful and also fatal to ministers themselves, but always inclined to help, to excuse, to benefit, unless she were violently set against any body. The king could not do without her; when, rarely, she was absent from his supper in public, it was plainly shown by a cloud of more than usual gravity and taciturnity over the king’s whole person; and so, when it happened that some ball in winter or some party in summer made her break into the night, she arranged matters so well that she was there to kiss the king the moment he was awake and to amuse him with an account of the affair” [Mémoires de St. Simon].

The dauphiness had died in 1690; the duchess of Burgundy was, therefore, almost from childhood queen of the court, and before long the idol of the courtiers; it was around her that pleasure sprang up; it was for her that the king gave the entertainments to which he had habituated Versailles, not that for her sake or to take care of her health he would ever consent to modify his habits or make the least change in his plans. “Thank God, it is over,” he exclaimed one day, after an accident to the princess; “I shall no longer be thwarted in my trips, and in all I desire to do, by the representations of physicians. I shall come and go as I fancy; and I shall be left in peace.” Even in his court and amongst his most devoted servants, this monstrous egotism astounded and scandalized everybody.

Flattery, at Versailles, ran a risk of becoming hypocrisy. On returning to a regular life, the king was for imposing the same upon his whole court; the instinct of order and regularity, smothered for a while in the hey-day of passion, had resumed all its sway over the naturally proper and steady mind of Louis XIV. His dignity and his authority were equally involved in the cause of propriety and regularity at his court; he imposed this yoke as well as all the others; there appeared to be entire obedience; only some princes or princesses escaped it sometimes, getting about them a few free-thinkers or boon-companions; good, honest folks showed ingenuous joy; the virtuous and far-sighted were secretly uneasy at the falsehood and deplored the pressure put on so many consciences and so many lives. The king was sincere in his repentance for the past, many persons in his court were as sincere as he; others, who were not, affected, in order to please him, the externals of austerity; absolute power oppressed all spirits, extorting from them that hypocritical complaisance which it is liable to engender; corruption was already brooding beneath appearances of piety; the reign of Louis XV. was to see its deplorable fruits displayed with a haste and a scandal which are to be explained only by the oppression exercised in the last years of King Louis XIV.

Madame de Maintenon was like the genius of this reaction toward regularity, propriety, order; all the responsibility for it has been thrown upon her; the good she did has disappeared beneath the evil she allowed or encouraged; the regard lavished upon her by the king has caused illusions as to the discreet care she was continually taking to please him. She was faithful to her friends, so long as they were in favor with the king; if they had the misfortune to displease him, she, at the very least, gave up seeing them; without courage or hardihood to withstand the caprices and wishes of Louis XIV., she had gained and preserved her empire by dint of dexterity and far-sighted suppleness beneath the externals of dignity.

It was through Madame de Maintenon and her correspondence with the princess des Ursins that the private business between the two courts of France and Spain was often carried on. At Madrid far more than at Versailles, the influence of women was all powerful. The queen ruled her husband, who was honest and courageous, but without wit or daring; and the princess des Ursins ruled the queen, as intelligent and as amiable as her sister the duchess of Burgundy, but more ambitious and more haughty. Louis XIV. had several times conceived some misgiving of the camarera major’s influence over his grandson; she had been disgraced and then recalled; she had finally established her sway by her fidelity, ability, dexterity, and indomitable courage. She served France habitually, Spain and her own influence in Spain always; she had been charming, with an air of nobility, grace, elegance and majesty all together, and accustomed to the highest society and the most delicate intrigues, during her sojourn at Rome and Madrid; she was full of foresight and calculation, but impassioned, ambitious, implacable, pushing to extremes her amity as well as her hatred, faithful to her master and mistress in their most cruel trials, and then hampering and retarding peace for the sake of securing for herself a principality in the Low Countries.

But the time came for Madame des Ursins to make definitive trial of fortune’s inconstancy. After having enjoyed unlimited power and influence, with great difficulty she obtained an asylum at Rome, where she lived seven years longer, preserving all her health, strength, mind and easy grace until she died, in 1722, at more than eighty-four years of age, in obscurity and sadness, notwithstanding her opulence, but avenged of her Spanish foes, Cardinals della Giudice and Alberoni, whom she met again at Rome, disgraced and fugitive like herself. “I do not know where I may die,” she wrote to Madame de Maintenon, at that time in retirement at St. Cyr. Both had survived their power; the princess des Ursins had not long since wanted to secure for herself a dominion; Madame de Maintenon, more far-sighted and more modest, had aspired to no more than repose in the convent which she had founded and endowed. Discreet in her retirement as well as in her life, she had not left to chance the selection of a place where she might die.

“One has no more luck at our age,” Louis XIV. had said to his old friend, Marshal Villars, returning from his most disastrous campaign. It was a bitter reflection upon himself which[326] had put these words into the king’s mouth. After the most brilliant, the most continually and invariably triumphant of reigns, he began to see fortune slipping away from him and the grievous consequences of his errors successively overwhelming the state. “God is punishing me, I have richly deserved it,” he said to Marshal Villars, who was on the point of setting out for the battle of Denain. The aged king, dispirited and beaten, could not set down to men his misfortunes and reverses; the hand of God himself was raised against his house; death was knocking double knocks all round him. The grand-dauphin had for some days past been ill of small-pox; he died in April, 1711; the duchess of Burgundy was carried off by an attack of malignant fever in February, 1712; her husband followed her within a week, and their eldest child, the duke of Brittany, about a month afterward.

There was universal and sincere mourning in France and in Europe. The most sinister rumors circulated darkly; a base intrigue caused the duke of Orleans to be accused; people called to mind his taste for chemistry and even magic, his flagrant impiety, his scandalous debauchery; beside himself with grief and anger, he demanded of the king to be sent to the Bastile; the king refused curtly, coldly, not unmoved in his secret heart by the perfidious insinuations which made their way even to him, but too just and too sensible to entertain a hateful lie, which, nevertheless, lay heavy on the duke of Orleans to the end of his days.

Darkly, but to more effect, the same rumors were renewed before long. The duke of Berry died at the age of twenty-seven, on the 4th of May, 1714, of a disease which presented the same features as the scarlet fever (rougeole pourpréc), to which his brother and sister-in-law had succumbed. The king was old and sad; the state of his kingdom preyed upon his mind; he was surrounded by influences hostile to his nephew, whom he himself called “a vaunter of crimes.” A child who was not five years old remained sole heir to the throne. Madame de Maintenon, as sad as the king, “naturally mistrustful, addicted to jealousies, susceptibilities, suspicions, aversions, spites, and woman’s wiles” [Lettres de Fénelon au duc de Chevreuse], being, moreover, sincerely attached to the king’s natural children, was constantly active on their behalf. On the 19th of July, 1714, the king announced to the premier president and the attorney-general of the parliament of Paris that it was his pleasure to grant to the duke of Maine and to the count of Toulouse, for themselves and their descendants, the rank of princes of the blood, in its full extent, and that he desired that the deed should be enregistered in the parliament. Soon after, still under the same influence, he made a will which was kept a profound secret, and which he sent to be deposited in the strong-room (greffe) of the parliament, committing the guardianship of the future king to the duke of Maine, and placing him, as well as his brother, on the council of regency, with close restrictions as to the duke of Orleans, who would be naturally called to the government of the kingdom during the minority. The will was darkly talked about; the effect of the elevation of bastards to the rank of princes of the blood had been terrible. “There was no longer any son of France; the Spanish branch had renounced; the duke of Orleans had been carefully placed in such a position as not to dare say a word or show the least dissatisfaction; his only son was a child; neither the duke (of Berry), his brothers, nor the prince of Conti, were of an age, or of standing, in the king’s eyes, to make the least trouble in the world about it. The bombshell dropped all at once when nobody could have expected it, and everybody fell on his stomach, as is done when a shell drops; everybody was gloomy and almost wild; the king himself appeared as if exhausted by so great an effort of will and power.” He had only just signed his will, when he met, at Madame de Maintenon’s, the ex-queen of England. “I have made my will, Madame,” said he; “I have purchased repose; I know the impotence and uselessness of it; we can do all we please as long as we are here; after we are gone, we can do less than private persons; we have only to look at what became of my father’s, and immediately after his death too, and of those of so many other kings. I am quite aware of that; but, in spite of all that it was desired; and so, Madame, you see it has been done; come of it what may, at any rate I shall not be worried about it any more.” It was the old man yielding to the entreaties and intrigues of the domestic circle; the judgment of the king remained steady and true, without illusions and without prejudices.

Death was coming, however, after a reign which had been so long, and had occupied so much room in the world, that it caused mistakes as to the very age of the king. He was seventy-seven, he continued to work with his ministers; the order so long and so firmly established was not disturbed by illness any more than it had been by the reverses and sorrows of late. He said to Madame de Maintenon once, “What consoles me for leaving you, is that it will not be long before we meet again.” She made no reply. “What will become of you?” he added: “you have nothing.” “Do not think of me,” said she: “I am nobody; think only of God.” He said farewell to her; she still remained a little while in his room, and went out when he was no longer conscious. She had given away here and there the few movables that belonged to her, and now took the road to St. Cyr. On the steps she met Marshal Villeroy: “Good bye, marshal,” she said curtly and covered up her face in her coifs. He it was who sent her news of the king to the last moment. The duke of Orleans, on becoming regent, went to see her and took her the patent (brevet) for a pension of sixty thousand livres, “which her disinterestedness had made necessary for her,” said the preamble. It was paid her up to the last day of her life. History makes no further mention of her name; she never left St. Cyr. Thither the czar Peter the Great, when he visited Paris and France, went to see her; she was confined to her bed; he sat a little while beside her. “What is your malady?” he asked her through his interpreter. “A great age,” answered Madame de Maintenon, smiling. He looked at her a moment in silence; then, closing the curtains, he went out abruptly. The memory he would have called up had vanished. The woman on whom the great king had, for thirty years, heaped confidence and affection was old, forgotten, dying; she expired at St. Cyr on the 15th of April, 1719, at the age of eighty-three.

She had left the king to die alone. He was in the agonies; the prayers in extremity were being repeated around him; the ceremonial recalled him to consciousness. He joined his voice with the voices of those present, repeating the prayers with them. Already the court was hurrying to the duke of Orleans; some of the more confident had repaired to the duke of Maine’s; the king’s servants were left almost alone around his bed; the tones of the dying man were distinctly heard above the great number of priests. He several times repeated: “Nunc et in hora mortis.” Then he said quite loud: “O my God, come thou to help me, haste thee to succor me.” Those were his last words. He expired on Sunday, the 1st of September, 1715, at eight a. m. Next day he would have been seventy-seven years of age, and he had reigned seventy-two of them.

In spite of his faults and his numerous and culpable errors, Louis XIV. had lived and died like a king. The slow and grievous agony of olden France was about to begin.

VIII.—FRENCH LITERATURE.

For volume and merit taken together the product of these eight centuries of literature excels that of any European nation, though for individual works of the supremest excellence, they may perhaps be asked in vain. No French writer is lifted by the suffrages of other nations—the only criterion when sufficient time has elapsed—to the level of Homer, of Shakspere, or of[327] Dante, who reign alone. Of those of the authors of France who are indeed of the thirty, but attain not to the first three, Rabelais and Molière alone unite the general suffrage, and this fact roughly but surely points to the real excellence of the literature which these men are chosen to represent. It is great in all ways, but it is greatest on the lighter side. The house of mirth is more suited to it than the house of mourning. To the latter, indeed, the language of the unknown marvel who told Roland’s death, of him who gave utterance to Camilla’s wrath and despair, and of the living poet who sings how the mountain wind makes mad the lover who can not forget, has amply made good its title of entrance. But for one Frenchman who can write admirably in this strain, there are a hundred who can tell the most admirable story, formulate the most pregnant reflection, point the acutest jest. There is thus no really great epic in French, few great tragedies, and those imperfect and in a faulty kind, little prose like Milton’s, or like Jeremy Taylor’s, little verse (though more than is generally thought) like Shelley’s, or like Spenser’s. But there are the most delightful short tales, both in prose and in verse, that the world has ever seen, the most polished jewelry of reflection that has ever been wrought, songs of incomparable grace, comedies that must make men laugh as long as they are laughing animals, and above all, such a body of narrative fiction, old and new, prose and verse, as no other nation can show for art and for originality, for grace of workmanship in him who fashions, and for certainty of delight to him who reads.—Encyclopædia Britannica.

[To be continued.]

COMMERCIAL LAW.

By EDWARD C. REYNOLDS, Esq.

II.—NOTES AND BILLS.

Although unpleasant papers to have outstanding with one’s name attached to them, at all events when that indicates, by its position, personal liability, yet a knowledge of their leading characteristics is so convenient in a time of a necessity which forces us, or some with whom we may have mercantile engagements, to have recourse to them, that we think best to insert proper forms here.

If John Roe accepts of the conditions of the bill he will write his name across its face together with the date on which it is done, prefixing same with the word “accepted.”

In the outline analysis given below our readers will readily discover all the essential elements of a contract, which is of course the foundation principle of commercial paper.

ANALYSIS.

After acceptance of the bill by John Roe, the drawee, he is placed in the same position, as regards it, that John J. Roe is in, as regards the note, that is, each becomes primarily liable for its payment.

Now, in actual business, notes and bills similar to those here given become important factors as a medium of exchange, being recognized as such by virtue of their negotiability, and proving acceptable as such when the parties thereto are of unquestioned financial ability.

What is the ear-mark of negotiability?

A note or bill payable to John Ray, “simply this and nothing more,” is not negotiable, but payable to a certain person, with no power to transfer the same, at least not to make it negotiable. To make it a negotiable instrument we should place after John Ray’s name the words (as found included in parenthesis in forms given), either “or bearer” or “or order.” This done, the note or bill would be of transferable quality, or negotiable, that is, would be payable to John Ray, or to him who should by chance gain its possession, if the words used be “or bearer:” if “or order” then payable to John Ray or to any holder, providing John Ray had so ordered it paid, by indorsement. Thus it is clearly evident that these evidences of debt, which is really the significance of commercial paper, answer the requirements, in a restricted sense, of money, and serve as the consideration for settlement in a great many of the transactions involving sale and exchange, incident to business enterprises. We must utter here a word of caution in regard to receiving negotiable paper; which is, not to accept of it after maturity, since notes and bills are presumably paid at the time when they become due, and one taking them after that time, must remember he takes them subject to this possibility, or possible existing equities between or among the original parties.

Negotiability, the outgrowth of indorsement, makes it necessary to give some explanation regarding the character of an indorser, or what his position and liabilities are.

An indorser is one who writes his name on the back of a note or bill, either for the purpose of transfer, or of assuming liability thereon, and frequently for both.

We shall mention three kinds of indorsement. Special indorsement, indorsement in blank, and, as applicable to both, indorsement without assuming liability, or without recourse. And first, if John Ray, payee named in bill or note, delivers possession of the same to John Smith, at the same time writing on the back of it, “Pay to John Smith or order, John Ray,” he thereby transfers by special indorsement. After transfer made in this manner, John Smith, or any one to whom he may give the power by indorsement, may collect of the original promisor, i. e., the maker of note or acceptor of bill, the amount due by clear evidence of the paper itself. Not only does this indorsement secure transfer of ownership, but also creates liability, for John Ray by it, without the addition of a restricting or denying clause (which we shall refer to later), agrees to personally attend to the payment, if the parties primarily liable fail to do so.

Again, an indorsement in blank is the simple writing of the name, in this instance, John Ray’s, by him of course, on the back of the note or bill, which, there being deducible from such indorsement no special directions, would make it payable to any one into whose possession it might come. Either of these indorsements accomplishes a transfer, and at the same time attaches to John Ray the liability of an indorser. Now, if John Ray sought to avoid such liability, he would write over his signature, “Without recourse to me.” This would secure transfer simply. An indorsement made by one not mentioned in the note or bill would be for additional security of payee, and would generally be in blank, placing the indorser in same responsibilities as assumed by John Ray in the two instances above mentioned and grouped. So much for the parties, which we now leave to consider briefly the time element, which is the hope of the payee, the specter, ever the cause of unpleasant forebodings to the promisor.

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In computing time it should be remembered that the words of the note or bill are to be strictly followed; as, when it reads a certain number of months, then the time is to be computed in months; for example, omitting days of grace, a note bearing date July 1st, on two months’ time, will be due September 1st. To say that two months are equivalent to sixty days, and then add sixty days to July 1st, we shall have our note due August 30th, which would be erroneous. The same would be true of the reverse of the proposition stated; that is, if time be stated days, it would as certainly lead to error, to compute by months.

When does the time commence to run? If a note, from its date; if a bill, from its date, if it read payable a certain length of time “from date;” but if it reads, as for instance, “at thirty days’ sight,” then it commences on the date of its acceptance by the drawee.

Days of grace, the use of which has sprung from custom into full fledged law in the course of time, must not be forgotten.

Notes and bills, unless in the body thereof it is expressly stated to the contrary, have, added to the time for which they are written, three days, known as days of grace; so that a note given for one month, and dated July 1st, would not fall due August 1st, but August 4th.

Originally these days were intended to inure to the benefit of the maker of the note, but such is not the practice or law now; and that period of three days constitutes a part of the time for which all interests and discounts are computed, the same as the time expressly mentioned. This is one of the characteristics of bills and notes, which commercial students and business apprentices are more apt to carelessly forget than any other in the category.

We have thus far omitted mention of bank checks, a very important business medium. The element of time thrown aside, and the most that we have said regarding notes and bills, may be applied to checks, which in reality are bills or drafts payable at sight without grace.

In case of non-acceptance of a bill when presented, or non-payment of the same, or of note, when due, that the drawer in the first instance and indorsers, if any, in the latter may be holden to its payment, resort is ordinarily had to “protest,” which signifies that acceptance or payment having been legally demanded of parties primarily liable, and refused, notice is given the other parties to the paper, of such refusal, by a notary public, who attaches a certificate to the bill or note, stating fact of such demand and refusal.

This may be avoided in the case of indorsers by their “waiving demand and notice” at the time of indorsement.

In writing commercial paper remember:

That the three days of grace allowed are not included in the time written;

That, unless otherwise specified, tender of payment must be made at payee’s place of business;

That interest is not collectible, unless specified, until after maturity;

That the amount written and in figures should be the same;

That commercial paper without a date falls due never.

Interest.

A common and very acceptable definition of interest is, “a compensation paid for the use of money.” Like other transactions this may be subject to contract agreement, to an extent however, varying in the different states. In most of the states the ability of parties to contract in the matter of interest rates, has been placed under some restraint; that is, most of the states have adopted a “legal rate,” declaring thereby what amount of money shall be paid for the use of money. The reason why the states have assumed to dictate to parties the conditions of their interest contracts is to relieve the borrowers of the hardship of excessive rates, which, sometimes by reason of pecuniary embarrassments they would be, and are, notwithstanding inhibitions on statute books, forced to pay; and further to have a recognized standard rate for contracts where there is no agreement, which last is a very salutary provision.

Upon what is interest payable? It is payable on loans, secured or unsecured, as per individual contracts, secured as loans on mortgage security; unsecured, represented partly by notes. Again, running accounts between merchants are adjusted on the basis of an interest account, he paying interest against whom the balance is found; simple indebtedness, past due, creates a legitimate interest claim; sales of merchandise, from time of sale, if no credits are given, if there are credits then from time of their expiration; also debts on which court judgment has been secured.

Time notes, as has been already observed, do not begin to draw interest until maturity, unless it be especially mentioned; demand notes not until after demand.

Interest when exacted in excess of legal rates becomes usury, which, as already hinted, is, in the states generally, a statutory offence.

We indicate here some of the statute provisions in relation to this matter, viz: “Permissible by agreement subjects the lender to a penalty of from three to six times the amount of usury taken; subject simply to have excess recovered; to lose the whole interest; an avoidance of whole contract; forfeiture of the whole debt,” etc.

These provisions are of little avail really, for they are continually in conflict with the law of supply and demand; and the ingenuity of man settles this conflict in individual cases by cunningly conceived and evasive conditions.

Where partial payments have been made, interest may be computed in the following manner, which has received the sanction of recognized authority: “Compute interest due on principal sum to the time when a payment, either alone or in conjunction with preceding payments, with interest cast on them, shall equal or exceed interest due on the principal. Deduct this sum, and upon the balance cast interest as before, until a payment or payments equal the interest due; then deduct again, and so on.”

SUNDAY READINGS.

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

FROM GOULBURN’S “THOUGHTS ON PERSONAL RELIGION.”
[March 2.]

There is no interruption in the world, however futile and apparently perverse, which we may not address ourselves to meet with a spirit of patience and condescension borrowed from our Master; and to have made a step in advance in conforming to the mind of Christ will be quite as great a gain (probably a far greater) than if we had been engaged in our pursuit. For, after all, we may be too intent upon our business, or rather intent in a wrong way. The radical fault of our nature, be it remembered, is self-will; and we little suspect how largely self-will and self-pleasing may be at the bottom of plans and pursuits, which still have God’s glory and the furtherance of his service for their professed end.

Reader, the path which we have indicated is the path not of sanctity only, but of peace also. We shall never serve God with a quiet mind, unless we more or less tread in this path. It is a miserable thing to be the sport and prey of interruptions; it wastes the energies of the human spirit, and excites fretfulness, and so leads us into temptation, as it is written, “Fret not thyself, else thou shalt be moved to do evil.” But suppose the mind to be well grounded in the truth that God’s foresight and fore-arrangement embrace all which seems to us an interruption—that in this interruption lies awaiting us a good work in which it is part of his eternal counsel that we should walk, or a good frame of mind which he wishes us to cultivate; then we are forearmed against surprises and contradictions; we have formed an alchemy which converts each unforeseen and[329] untoward occurrence into gold; and the balm of peace distills upon our heart, even though we be disappointed of the end which we had proposed to ourselves. For which is better, safer, sweeter—to walk in the works which God hath before ordained, or to walk in the way of our own hearts and in the sight of our eyes?

Ah, reader! let us seek to grasp the true notion of Providence, for in it there is peace and deep repose of soul. Life has often been compared to a drama. Now, in a good drama there is one plot, variously evolved by incidents of different kinds, which until the last act present entanglement and confusion. Vice has its temporary triumphs, virtue its temporary depressions. What of that? You know it will come right in the end. You know there is an organizing mind which unfolds the story, and that the poet will certainly bring the whole to a climax by the ultimate indication of righteousness and the doing of poetical justice upon malefactors. To this end every shifting of the scene, every movement of the actors, every by-plot and underplot is made to contribute. Wheel within wheel is working together toward this result. Well, life is God’s great drama. It was thought out and composed in the Eternal Mind before the mountains were brought forth, or even the earth and the world were made. In time God made a theater for it, called the earth; and now the great drama is being acted thereon. It is on a gigantic scale—this drama. The scenes are shifting every hour. One set of characters drops off the stage, and new ones come on to play much the same part as the first, only in new dresses. There seem to be entanglements, perplexities, interruptions, confusions, contradictions without end; but you may be sure there is one ruling thought, one master design, to which all these are subordinate. Every incident, every character, however apparently adverse, contributes to work out that ruling thought. Think you that the Divine Dramatist will leave anything out of the scope of his plot? Nay, the circumference of that plot embraces within its vast sweep every incident which time ever brought to birth.

Thou knowest that the mind which organized this drama is Wisdom. Thou knowest more; thou knowest that it is Love. Then of its ending grandly, wisely, nobly, lovingly, infinitely well for them who love God, there can be no doubt. But remember you are an actor in it; not a puppet worked by wires, but an actor. It is yours to study the plot as it unfolds itself, to throw yourself into it intelligently, warmly, zealously. Be sure to learn your part well, and to recite it manfully. Be not clamorous for another or more dignified character than that which is allotted you—be it your sole aim to conspire with the Author, and to subserve his grand and wise conception.

Thus shall you cease from your own wisdom. Thus shall you find peace in submitting yourself to the wisdom which is of God, and thus, finally, shall he pronounce you a good and faithful servant, and summon you to enter into the joy of your Lord.

[March 9.]

Now here comes out another point of holy policy in the combat with temptations. It is wise, especially when they are at their height, never to look them full in the face. To consider their suggestions, to debate with them, to fight it out with them inch by inch in a listed field, is, generally speaking, a sure way to fail. Turn the mind to Christ at the first assault, and keep it fixed there with pertinacity, until this tyranny be overpast. Consider him, if thou wilt, after the picture here presented to us. Think of him as one who walked amidst temptations without ever being submerged by them, as of one who by his grace can enable his followers to do the same. Think of him as calm, serene, firm, majestic, amidst the most furious agitations and turbulences of nature, and as one who can endue thy heart with a similar steadfastness. Think of him as interceding for his Church on the Mount of Glory, as watching them while they toil in rowing against the adverse influences which beset them round about upon the sea of life, as descending on the wings of love to their relief. Think of him as standing close by thee in thy immediate neighborhood, with a hand outstretched for thy support as soon as ever thou lookest toward him. Remember that it is not you who are to conquer, but he who is to conquer in you; and accordingly, “even as the eyes of servants wait upon the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of the maiden upon the hand of her mistress, even so let your eyes wait upon him, until he have mercy upon you.” No man ever fell in this attitude of expectant faith; he falls because he allows himself to look at the temptation, to be fascinated by its attractiveness, or terrified by its strength. One of the greatest sermons in our language is on the expulsive power of a new affection, and the principle laid down in that sermon admits of application to the circumstances of which we are speaking. There can be, of course, no temptation without a certain correspondence of the inner man with the immediate occasion of the trial. Now, do you desire to weaken this correspondence, to cut it off and make it cease? Fill the mind and heart with another affection, and let it be the affection for Christ crucified. Thus will the energies of the soul, which will not suffice for two strong actions at the same time, be drawn off into another quarter; and beside, the great enemy, seeing that his assaults only provoke you to a continuous exercise of faith, will soon lay down his arms, and you shall know experimentally the truth of those words, “Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.” There can be no doubt that this counsel of looking only upon Christ in the hour of temptation will be most needed (if our conscience and mind be spared us to the end), in the critical hour when flesh and heart are failing, and when Satan for the last time is permitted to assault our faith. We can well imagine that in that hour doubts will be busily instilled of Christ’s love and power, suggestions of our own unfaithfulness to him in times past and questions as to whether he will now receive us. The soul will then possibly be scared by terrors, as the disciples in the boat were scared with the thoughts of a phantom, and will tremble in apprehension of being thrust out from the frail bark of the body into the darkness, uncertainty, insecurity of the new and untried element. If such should be the experience of any one who reads these pages, let him take with him this one counsel of safety, to look only to Christ, and to perish, if he perishes, at his feet; let us refuse to look in any other quarter, let us steadily turn away our eyes from the doubts, the painful recollection, the alarming anticipations which the enemy is instilling. We are not proposing to be saved on the ground of any righteousness in ourselves, or in any other way than by free grace, as undone sinners; then let these words be the motto of the tempest-tossed soul: “My soul hangeth upon thee; thy right hand hath upholden me;” ay, and let it be the motto now, in hours when lesser trials assault us. Let us make proof even now of the invincibility of the shield of faith, that we may bring it forth in that hour with greater confidence in its power to shield us. And the hand of an infinite love shall uphold us in the last, as it has done in previous ordeals, and the prayer shall be answered, which we have offered so often over the grave of departed friends:

“Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts; shut not thy merciful ears to our prayer; but spare us, Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and merciful Savior, thou most worthy Judge eternal, suffer us not, at our last hour, for any pains of death to fall from thee.” “My flesh and my heart faileth; but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?”

[March 16.]

Never lower your principles to the world’s standard. Never let sin, however popular it may be, have any sanction or countenance from you, even by a smile. The manly confession of Christ, when his cause is unpopular, is made by himself the[330] condition of his confessing us before men. If people find out that we are earnestly religious, as they soon will, if the light is shining, let us make them heartily welcome to the intelligence, and allow them to talk and criticise as much as they please. And then, again, in order that the lights may shine without obstruction, in order that it may easily transpire what we are, we must be simple, and study simplicity. This is by no means so easy as it at first sight appears; for in this highly artificial and pretentious age all society is overlaid with numerous affectations. Detest affectation, as the contrary of truth, and as hypocrisy on a small scale; and allow yourself freely to be seen by those around you in your true colors. There is an affectation of indifference to all things, and of a lack of general sensibility, which is becoming very prevalent in this age, and which is the sworn foe to all simplicity of character. The persons who labor under this moral disorder pretend to have lost their freshness of interest in every thing; for them, as they would have it believed, there is no surprise and no enthusiasm. Without assuming that they are really the unimpressionable creatures which they would make themselves out to be, we may warn them that the wilful dissembling of a generous emotion is the way to suppress it. As Christians, we must eschew untruth in every form; we must labor to seem just what we are, neither better nor worse. To be true to God and to the thought of his presence all day long, and to let self occupy as little as possible of our thoughts; to care much for his approval, and comparatively little for the impression we are making on others; to feed the inward light with oil, and then freely to allow it to shine; this is the great secret of edification. May he indoctrinate us into it, and dispose and enable us to illustrate it in our practice.

[March 23.]

See now, tempted soul, whether this consideration, applied to your own case, may not somewhat lighten thy burden. You are beset by distractions in prayer and meditation. Well, distractions are no sin; nay, if struggled against patiently and cheerfully, they shall be a jewel in thy crown. Did you go through with the religious exercise as well as you could, not willingly harboring the distraction or consenting to it? In this case the prayer was quite as acceptable as if it had been accompanied with those high-flown feelings of fervor and sensible delight which God sometimes gives and sometimes, for our better discipline and humiliation, withholds. Nay, may we not say, that it was much more acceptable? Do not the Scriptures give us reason to think that prayer, persevering amidst difficulties and humiliations, prayer clinging close to Christ, despite his rebuffs, is more acceptable than the prayer which has its way smooth before it, and whose wings are filled by the favoring gale? What else are we to learn from the acceptance of Bartimæus’s petition, who cried so much the more when the multitude rebuked him that he should hold his peace? What else from the commendation and recompense of the Syro-Phœnician’s faith? Wouldst thou know the avenue to the Savior’s heart, when thou art driven from his footstool by manifold discouragements, by deadness, numbness, insensibility—and he himself seems to cover himself with a cloud, so that thy prayer may not pass through? Confess thyself a dog, and plead for such crumbs as are the dog’s allowed and recognized portion. Call to mind the many times when thou hast turned a deaf ear to Christ’s expostulations with thee through thy conscience. Reflect that thou hast deserved nothing but repulses, and to have thy drafts upon him dishonored; and yet cling to his sacred feet, while thou sinkest low before him, resolving not to let him go except he bless thee; and this act of humility and perseverance shall make thy lame and halting prayer far more acceptable to the Divine Majesty than if it sailed to heaven with all the fluency of conscious inspiration, like Balaam’s prophecy of old, which was prefaced, unhappy soul, by the assertion of his gifts.

[March 30.]

The remedy, and under God’s grace the only remedy, whether in solitude or in company, is to “watch”—to “guard,” as far as in us lies, “the first springs of thought and will.” Let us pray and strive for the habit of challenging our sentiments, and making them give up their passport; eyeing them wistfully when they apply for admittance, and seeking to unmask those which have a questionable appearance.…

It will be found that all the more grievous falls of the tempted soul come from this—that the keeping of the heart has been neglected, that the evil has not been nipped in the bud. We have allowed matters to advance to a question of conduct—“shall I say this, or not say it?” “Do this, or not do it?” Whereas the stand should be made higher up and the ground disputed in the inner man. As if the mere restraint upon outward conduct, without the homage of the heart to God’s law, could avail us aught, or be anything else than an offensive hypocrisy in the eyes of the Heart-searcher! As if Balaam’s refraining from the malediction of the lips, while his heart was going after his covetousness, could be acceptable to the Almighty! Balaam, being an inspired and divinely-commissioned man, dared not disobey; for he knew too well what would be the result of such an abuse of his supernatural gifts. But we, if, like Balaam, we have allowed to evil a free range over our hearts, are sure to disobey when it comes to a question of conduct, not being restrained by the fear of miraculous punishment, which alone held him back. There is therefore no safety for us except in taking our stand at the avenues of the will, and rejecting at once every questionable impulse. And this, it is obvious, can not be done without watchfulness and self-recollection—without a continual bearing in mind where, and what we are, and that we have a treasure in our keeping, of which our foes seek to rob us. Endeavor to make your heart a little sanctuary, in which you may continually realize the presence of God, and from which unhallowed thoughts, and even vain thoughts must carefully be excluded.

READINGS IN ART.

GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.[B]

We do not know just when this term Gothic was first applied to the kind of architecture it is used to designate. It was probably intended to indicate something rude or barbaric in its features, but not that the Goths themselves invented or practiced it. That uncultured, warlike race knew little or nothing of architecture; but when, in the twelfth century, there arose in the north countries of Europe a new style of the art, those in the east and south, meaning to charge it with want of refinement, called it Gothic. There is not now the slightest reproach in the term, but rather the contrary. It won high, and for a time almost universal appreciation among all lovers of art. If, as compared with what went before, it is in a sense rude and wild, these very qualities command respect and admiration. It became the favorite architecture of the fourteenth century, reaching its highest state of development about the first of the fifteenth.

We can but imperfectly note the changes that took place in this style during its prevalence in England and other countries, for it had nearly the same phases in many lands, though not quite simultaneously. Changes were constantly made, both in language and architecture, that were not radical or destructive. As the change from the rude Anglo-Saxon forms of speech to the polished periods of Addison did not destroy the language, neither did the progress and improvement of this style of architecture change its identity.

[331]

Its characteristic features were maintained throughout. Some or all of these, “boldness, naturalness, grotesqueness and redundancy,” are evident in every stage, quite enough to vindicate its claim to be Gothic. Many years before the Roman emperors had introduced into Europe something like a universal architecture. The buildings of every Roman colony bore a strong resemblance to those of every other colony and of the metropolis. They were, in general, heavy in appearance, simple in structure, and had all their arches semi-circular.

Just what led to a change so marked and general it is perhaps impossible to tell. It was an age of much religious zeal; not always according to knowledge. In England, France, Germany, Lombardy, and South Italy many costly churches were demanded. A keen rivalry existed among the builders of these churches; each must be larger and finer than previous examples; and the details grew more elaborate. Architects of ability applied themselves diligently. Difficulties of construction that had seemed insuperable were overcome. The pointed arch was adopted, not only as more beautiful, but because it could be successfully used in important situations where the other was found impracticable. Whatever was lacking in religious society of the age, grand and liberal ideas were entertained as to the size and cost of churches; and architects had ample encouragement to do their best. And they did, both in designing new, and remodeling old buildings.

Mr. Smith says: “At the beginning of the twelfth century many local peculiarities—some due to accident, some to the quality of the building materials, and some to other causes, began to make their appearance in the buildings in various parts of Europe; and through the whole Gothic period they were met with; still the points of similarity were greater and more numerous than the differences. So, when we have gone through the course which the style ran in one country where it prevailed, we have a general outline of the whole, and may omit to speak particularly of them all without serious loss. On some grounds France would be the most suitable to select for the purpose, as the new order appeared earlier and had a more brilliant course in that country than in any other. But the balance of advantage lies in selection of Great Britain. The various phases the art has passed through in that country are well marked; and even the American student, who can not visit the country, may acquire some helpful information through engravings and photographs, that are happily quite common.”

By far the most important specimens of Gothic architecture are the cathedrals and large churches. They are more complete as works of art than any other structures, and in all respects fit examples of pointed architecture.

The ground plan of the Peterborough Cathedral is especially simple; give a competent builder the order he is to follow, and he will need no picture, the plan tells him the whole.

Cathedrals are all similarly located as to the points of compass, and the principal entrance is in the west end. The one mentioned is about five times as long as it is wide. The wall is relieved by a large transept, the east wall of which begins about one third the distance from the east end. This gives the building the form of a cross. The part from the west end to the crossing of the transept is called the nave. The ends of the transept extend about one-third of the width of the building. The nave is flanked by avenues on each side, narrower and lower than itself, called aisles. They are separated from it by a row of columns or piers, connected by arches. Thus the nave has an arcade on each side, and each aisle has an arcade on one side, and the outer wall pierced by windows on the other. The strong arches of the arcade carry the walls that rise above the roofs of the aisles. These walls are usually divided internally into two stories. The lower story consists of a series of smaller arches, forming a second arcade, called the triforium, that opens into the dark space above the ceiling of the aisles, and is hence called the blind story.

The upper story has a range of windows, giving light to the nave, and is called the clere-story. Thus a spectator standing in the nave and looking toward either side, will see before him the main arcade and side windows, above the arcade the triforium, and above this the clere-story, beautifully illuminated and crowned with the nave, vault or roof. The great size and height give sublimity to the sight. The east arm of a cathedral is that to which most importance is attached, and has greater richness and more elaborate finish.

When the termination is semi-circular or polygonal it is called an apse or apsidal east end. Attached to some of the side walls it is usual to have a series of chapels, partially shut off from the main building, yet of easy access.

Tombs and enclosures connected with them, called chantry chapels, are met in various positions, especially in the eastern arm. Below the raised floor of the choir there is a subterranean vaulted structure called the crypt.

Passing to the exterior, the principal doorway is in the west front, deeply recessed, and elaborate in design. There are also doors in both ends of the transept, and one or more side entrances. In a complete cathedral the grand architectural effect is principally due to the towers with which it is adorned, the most massive standing at the crossing of the transept.

To cathedrals and abbey-churches a group of monastic buildings was attached; sometimes very expensive and in the best style of the art. The most important of these is the Chapter House, which is frequently lofty and highly ornamented. The extent and arrangement of the monastic buildings adjoining the cloister vary with the needs of the different order of monks. The monk’s dormitory was on the east side of the great cloister, the refectory and kitchen on the south, and on the west the great cellar, and a hospitum for the entertainment of guests.

The house for the abbot, the infirmary, the school building for novices, with its chapel, and more remotely the granaries, mills, bake-houses, offices, garden, cemetery—taken all together, a monastery shows an extensive group of buildings well arranged for the purposes intended.

Some military and domestic buildings are also of great interest. In those centuries dwellings of much consequence were all more or less fortified. Some were built with a lofty square tower, called a “keep,” and capable of standing an assault or a siege. The number and character of the buildings in the enclosure around the keep of course depended on the ability of the proprietor. The outer buildings of the Tower of London, though much modernized, give a good idea of what a first-class castle grew, by successive additions, to be. In those erected near the close of the thirteenth century, the square tower was abandoned, and better provision made for the comfort and convenience of the occupants.

Warwick Castle might be cited as a good example of an English castelated mansion, of the time of Richard II. But still more interesting is Haddon Hall, the residence of the Duke of Rutland, in Derbyshire. It consists of two internal quadrangles separated by the great hall, with its dais, its minstrel’s gallery, its vast open fire-place, and its traceried windows. Probably nowhere in England can the growth of domestic architecture be better studied, whether we look to the alterations which took place in arrangement, or to changes in the treatment of windows, battlements, doorways, and other features, than at Haddon Hall.

English Gothic architecture has generally been divided into three periods: The Early, the Decorated, and the Perpendicular. The following condensed list of the peculiarities of each period will be found useful for reference. Early English: General proportions more slender, and height of walls and columns greater; arches pointed, generally lancet, often richly moulded; triforium and arcades often with trifoiled heads. Piers were more slender, composed of a central shaft surrounded by several smaller ones almost or quite detached; capitals concave in outline, moulded or carved with conventional[332] foliage, delicately executed. The windows were at first long, narrow, and deeply splayed internally, the glass being within a few inches of the outer face of the wall; later in style more acute, divided by mullions, enriched with cuspated circles in the head, and often with three or more lights—the center lights being the highest. Doorways were deeply recessed, enriched with slender shafts and elaborate mouldings. Buttresses were about equal in projection to their width, with but one set off, or without any. The mouldings were bold and deeply undercut.

In the Decorative style the proportions were less lofty, the arches mostly enclosing an equilateral triangle; mouldings bold, finely proportioned, and often ornamented with ball, flower, foliage of ivy, oak, and vine leaves, the execution being natural and beautiful.

The Perpendicular or Tudor style had walls profusely decorated with paintings, parapets embattled, and paneled; open timber roofs of moderate pitch, but of elaborate construction, having hammer beams, the moulded timbers often richly ornamented with pierced tracery, and carved figures of angels.

Ornamental materials of all kinds, such as mosaic, enamel, metal-work, and inlays were freely employed; but the crowning invention of Gothic artists, which contributed largely to the architectural effect of their finest buildings, was stained glass. So much of the old glass has perished, and so much of the new is not even passable, that this praise may seem extravagant to those who have never seen any of the best specimens that still exist. In the choir at Canterbury there is a remnant of the best glass in England, and some good fragments remain at Westminster, but to judge of glass at its best, the student must visit La Sainte Chapelle, of Paris, or the cathedrals at Chartres, Bourges or Rheims, when effects in colors are gorgeous in their richness, brilliancy and harmony. Fresco painting may claim a sort of brightness, and mosaics, when executed in polished materials, have some brilliancy, but in stained glass the light which comes streaming through the window itself gives evidence, while the quality of the glass determines the colors, and we thus obtain a glowing luster which can only be compared to the beauty of the richest gems.

Color was freely introduced both by the employment of colored materials and by painting the interior with colored pigments. Painted decorations were constantly made use of with the happiest effect.

Sculpture is the noblest ornament, and the Gothic architects, of a later day, seem to have been alive to its use, as in all their best works statues abounded. If sometimes uncouth, they always contributed to the effect intended. Whether rising to grace and grandeur or sinking to grotesque ugliness, they had a picturesque power, and added life to the whole. Monsters gaped and grinned from waterspouts; little figures of strange animals twisted in and out of the foliage at angles and corbels; stately effigies occupied dignified niches, and in the head of a doorway there was often carved a whole host of figures representing heaven, earth, and hell, with a rude force and eloquence that, to the present day, has not lost its power.

RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE.

Toward the close of the fifteenth century men’s minds and tastes were ripening for a change. The beautiful Gothic, in its most improved characteristics, did not satisfy. The change first took place in Italy, and was closely connected with the revival of letters. There all the characteristics of the middle ages were rapidly thrown off. The old Roman blood in the Italians asserted itself, and almost at a bound literature and the arts put on the old forms they had displayed fifteen hundred years before. In the schools there was a rage for classic Greek and Latin; and among architects old Roman or Græco-Roman forms were applied to buildings with much freedom and spirit.

The revival of classic taste in art was appropriately called the Renaissance.

In other countries the change came slowly, and people were not prepared to welcome it unreservedly. In France and England there was a transition period, during which most buildings were designed in a mixed style. This in England lasted almost through the century. It was indeed a picturesque and telling style, in its earlier stages called Tudor, and later Elizabethan. In its mixture of classic and Gothic forms there are often incongruities, and even monstrosities; but it allowed unrestrained play for the fancy. Some of the best mansions of the time, such as Hatfield, Hardwick, and Audley End are unsurpassed in their pleasing picturesqueness. The wide oak staircase, with its carved balusters, ornamented newel-post, and heavy hand-rails, the old wainscoted parlor, with its magnificent chimney piece reaching to the ceiling, are all essentially English features, and full of vigor and life, as the work of every transition period is likely to prove. The period in France produced exquisite works, more refined and elegantly treated than those in England, but not so vigorous. No modern buildings are so finely ornamented and yet not spoiled.

In Italy Renaissance churches, magnificent secular buildings, and palaces of wealthy families abound, as in Naples, Rome, Florence, Genoa, Venice, and indeed in every great city.

The plan of Renaissance buildings was uniform and symmetrical; not widely different from those in Italy before the revival of classic art; but it will be remembered that they were by no means so picturesque or irregular, at any time, as were the plans of French and English churches.

The mediæval use of small materials for external walls, involving many joints, has disappeared, and they are universally faced with stone or plaster, and consequently smooth. The principal feature to note is the great use made of that elaborate sort of masonry, in which the joints of the stones are carefully channeled or otherwise marked, and which is known by the singularly inappropriate name of rustic work. The basements of most Italian and French palaces are thus built, and in many cases, as the Pitti Palace, Florence, the rustic work covers the whole façade.

Towers are less frequently employed. In churches they sometimes occur; none more picturesque than those designed by Sir Christopher Wren for many of his parish churches. But in this style the dome takes the place of the tower, both in churches and secular buildings.

The dome is the glory of Renaissance architecture, as it had been of the old Roman. It is the one feature by which Renaissance architects had a clear and defined advantage over those of the preceding century, who had, strange to say, almost abandoned the dome. The mouldings and all other ornaments of this order are much the same as those of the Roman. The sculptures and mural decorations were all originally drawn from classic sources. But these attained very great excellence—the decorative painting of Raphael and his scholars at Rome, Genoa, and elsewhere, probably far exceeding anything which the old Roman decorative artists ever executed.

ROME.

In the capital of the country is St. Peter’s, the most magnificent building of fully developed Renaissance. Beamanti, a Florentine, was the architect, to whom the task of designing a cathedral to surpass any thing existing in Europe, was committed by Pope Julius II. The project had been entertained, and architects worked at it fifty years before; but nothing satisfactory was done. A new design was now made, and the first stone laid by the pope in 1506. Beamanti died in seven years, and six architects, in succession, of whom Raphael was one, proceeded with the work, without advancing it rapidly, for nearly half a century, during which the design was again and again modified.

In 1646 Michael Angelo was appointed architect, and the last eighteen years of his life were spent in carrying on the great work. He completed the magnificent dome in all its essential parts, and left the church in plan a Greek cross, i. e., one in[333] which all the four arms are equal, and the dome at the crossing. The boast is attributed to him that he would “Take the dome of the Pantheon and hang it in the air.” And this he virtually accomplished in the dome of St. Peter’s; a work of the greatest beauty of design and boldness of construction. Unfortunately for the symmetry of the structure, the nave was subsequently lengthened, the existing portico built, and Bernini added the vast fore-court, lined by colonnades, which now forms the approach, and sadly obstructs the view. The exterior, seen from the front, is disappointing. The façade is so lofty, and advances so far in front as to quite hide the lower part of the dome.

To have an idea of the building, as Michael Angelo designed it, it is necessary to go round to the back; and there, with the height and contour of the dome fully seen, all its lines of living force carrying the eye with them up to the elegant stone lantern that crowns the summit, some conception of the hugeness and symmetry of this mountain of art seems to dawn on the mind. But, from the best point of view, it is with the utmost difficulty one can apply any scale of measurement to what, by its vastness and perfection, is bewildering. The interior is most impressive. The arrangements are simple. Passing the vast vestibule, there is the nave of four bays, with two side aisles, and an immense central space, over which hangs the great dome. There are transepts and a choir, each with one bay, and an apse; and there are two side chapels.

Since this largest church in the world is divided into so few parts, all of these must be of colossal dimensions. The piers are wonderful masses of masonry, while the spaces spanned by the lofty arches and vaults are prodigious. There is no sense of mystery felt about the interior. The eye at once grasps it as a whole, but hours must be spent before an adequate idea of its gigantic size is at all possible. The beauty of coloring adds wonderfully to the effect. The interior of the dome especially, and the drum on which it rests, are decorated in color throughout, in excellent taste. The designs are simple, the light to show them is ample; and though so rich, there is no impression of excessive decoration. The connection between the dome and the rest of the building seems admirable; and the spectator standing under its soaring vault has an impression of vastness made by no other work of art.

In England the new order was introduced with a longer transition period. For a generation or more the style was mixed. In many instances the main lines are Gothic, while the details are partly Gothic and partly modified Renaissance. This is true of such buildings as Knowle, Penshurst, Hardwick, Hatfield, and many others.

England has churches that take rank among the best in Europe, especially St. Paul’s, London, which has a world-wide celebrity as second only to St. Peter’s. It falls short of its great rival in size and internal effect; being almost wholly devoid of the artistic decoration, in which St. Peter’s is so rich. But the exterior is far finer, and the building is consistent with itself throughout. The plan of St. Paul’s is a Latin cross, with well marked transepts, a large portico, and two towers at the west entrance. An apse of small size forms the end of the eastern arm, and of each of the transepts; a great dome covers the crossing. The cathedral has a crypt raising the main floor considerably, and its side walls are carried high above the aisle roofs, so as to hide the clere-story windows from sight. A great dome, planted on eight piers, covers the crossing. The skill with which the dome is made the central feature of a pyramidal composition, whatever be the point of view; the great beauty of the circular colonnade immediately below the dome; the elegant outline of the western towers, and the unusual but successful distribution of the great porticos, are among the most noteworthy elements which give a charm to this very successful exterior. But no verbal description can adequately present its excellence; nor will the reader be fully satisfied with the meager account here given.

SELECTIONS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE.

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.

Extract from “Rise of the Dutch Republic.”

After giving a vivid description of the three great rivers—the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Scheld—which for ages had deposited their slime among the sand banks around their mouths, the historian continues: Such were the rivers which, with their numerous tributaries, coursed through the spongy land. Their frequent overflow, when forced back upon their currents by the stormy sea, rendered the country almost uninhabitable. Here, within a half-submerged territory, a race of wretched ichthyophagi dwelt upon terpen, or mounds, which they had raised, like beavers, above the almost fluid soil. Here, at a later day, the same race chained the tyrant Ocean and his mighty streams into subserviency, forcing them to fertilize, to render commodious, to cover with a beneficent network of veins and arteries, and to bind by watery highways with the furthest ends of the world, a country disinherited by nature of its rights. A region, outcast of ocean and earth, wrested at last from both domains their richest treasures. A race, engaged for generations in stubborn conflict with the angry elements, was unconsciously educating itself for its great struggle with the still more savage despotism of man.

The whole territory of the Netherlands was girt with forests. An extensive belt of woodland skirted the sea-coast, reaching beyond the mouths of the Rhine. Along the outer edge of this barrier, the dunes cast up by the sea were prevented by the close tangle of thickets from drifting further inward, and thus formed a breastwork which time and art were to strengthen. The groves of Haarlem and the Hague are relics of this ancient forest. The Badahuenna wood, horrid with Druidic sacrifices, extended along the eastern line of the vanished lake of Flevo. The vast Hercynian forest, nine days’ journey in breadth, closed in the country on the German side, stretching from the banks of the Rhine to the remote regions of the Dacians, in such vague immensity (says the conqueror of the whole country) that no German, after traveling sixty days, had ever reached, or even heard of, its commencement. On the south, the famous groves of Ardennes, haunted by faun and satyr, embowered the country, and separated it from Celtic Gaul.

Thus inundated by mighty rivers, quaking beneath the level of the ocean, belted about by hirsute forests, this low land, nether land, hollow land, or Holland, seemed hardly deserving the arms of the all-accomplished Roman. Yet, foreign tyranny, from the earliest ages, has coveted this meager territory as lustfully as it has sought to wrest from their native possessors those lands with the fatal gift of beauty for their dower; while the genius of liberty has inspired as noble a resistance to oppression here as it ever aroused in Grecian or Italian breasts.

Antwerp Cathedral.

The Church of Our Lady, which Philip had so recently converted into a cathedral, dated from the year 1124, although it may be more fairly considered a work of the fourteenth century. Its college of canons had been founded in another[334] locality by Godfrey of Bouillon. The Brabantine hero, who so romantically incarnated the religious poetry of his age, who first mounted the walls of redeemed Jerusalem, and was its first Christian monarch, but who refused to accept a golden diadem on the spot where the Savior had been crowned with thorns; the Fleming who lived and was the epic which the great Italian, centuries afterward, translated into immortal verse, is thus fitly associated with the beautiful architectural poem which was to grace his ancestral realms. The body of the church—the interior and graceful perspectives of which were not liable to the reproach brought against many Netherland churches, of assimilating themselves already to the municipal palaces which they were to suggest, was completed in the fourteenth century. The beautiful façade, with its tower, was not completed till the year 1518. The exquisite and daring spire, the gigantic stem upon which the consummate flower of this architectural creation was to be at last unfolded, was a plant of a whole century’s growth. Rising to a height of nearly five hundred feet, over a church of as many feet in length, it worthily represented the upward tendency of Gothic architecture. Externally and internally the cathedral was a true expression of the Christian principle of devotion. Amid its vast accumulations of imagery, its endless ornaments, its multiplicity of episodes, its infinite variety of details, the central, material principle was ever visible. Every thing pointed upward, from the spire in the clouds to the arch which enshrined the smallest sculptured saint in the chapels below. It was a sanctuary, not like pagan temples, to enclose a visible deity, but an edifice where mortals might worship an unseen being in the realms above.

The church, placed in the center of the city, with the noisy streets of the busiest metropolis in Europe eddying around its walls, was a sacred island in the tumultuous main. Through the perpetual twilight, tall columnar trunks in thick profusion grew from a floor chequered with prismatic lights and sepulchral shadows. Each shaft of the petrified forest rose to a preternatural height, their many branches intermingling in the space above, to form an impenetrable canopy. Foliage, flowers and fruit of colossal luxuriance, strange birds, beasts, griffins and chimeras in endless multitudes, the rank vegetation and the fantastic zoölogy of a fresher or fabulous world, seemed to decorate and to animate the serried trunks and pendant branches, while the shattering symphonies or dying murmurs of the organ suggested the rushing of the wind through the forest—now the full diapason of the storm, and now the gentle cadence of the evening breeze.

GEORGE BANCROFT.

William Penn.

Penn, despairing of relief in Europe, bent the whole energy of his mind to accomplish the establishment of a free government in the New World. For that “heavenly end” he was prepared by the severe discipline of life, and the love, without dissimulation, which formed the basis of his character. The sentiment of cheerful humanity was irrepressibly strong in his bosom. As with John Eliot and Roger Williams, benevolence gushed prodigally from his ever-flowing heart, and when, in his late old age, his intellect was impaired, and his reason prostrated by apoplexy, his sweetness of disposition rose serenely over the clouds of disease. Possessing an extraordinary greatness of mind, vast conceptions, remarkable for their universality and precision, and surpassing in speculative endowments, conversant with men, with books, and governments, with various languages, and the forms of political combinations as they existed in England and France, in Holland, and the principalities and free cities of Germany, he yet sought the source of wisdom in his own soul. Humane by nature and suffering, familiar with the royal family, intimate with Sunderland and Sydney, acquainted with Russel, Halifax, Shaftesbury and Buckingham, as a member of the Royal Society, the peer of Newton, and the great scholars of his age—he valued the promptings of a free mind more than the awards of the learned, and reverenced the simple minded sincerity of the Nottingham shepherd more than the authority of colleges and the wisdom of philosophers. And now, being in the meridian of life, but a year older than was Locke, when, twelve years before, he had framed a constitution for Carolina, the Quaker legislator was come to the New World to lay the foundation of states. Would he imitate the vaunted system of the great philosopher?

Locke, like William Penn, was tolerant; both loved freedom; both cherished truth in sincerity. But Locke kindled the torch of liberty at the fires of tradition; Penn at the living light in the soul. Locke sought truth through the senses and the outward world; Penn looked inward to the divine revelations in every mind. Locke compared the soul to a sheet of white paper, just as Hobbs had compared it to a slate, on which time and chance might scrawl their experience; to Penn the soul was an organ which of itself instinctively breathes divine harmonies, like those musical instruments which are so curiously and perfectly framed, that, when once set in motion they of themselves give forth all the melodies designed by the artist who made them.

To Locke, “Conscience is nothing else than our own opinion of our own actions;” to Penn it is the image of God, and his oracle in the soul. Locke, who was never a father, esteemed “the duty of parents to preserve their children to not be understood without reward and punishment;” Penn loved his children, with not a thought for the consequences. Locke, who was never married, declares marriage an affair of the senses; Penn reverenced woman as the object of fervent, inward affection, made, not for lust, but for love. In studying the understanding Locke begins with the sources of knowledge; Penn with an inventory of our intellectual treasures. Locke deduces government from Noah and Adam, rests it upon contract, and announces its end to be the security of property; Penn, far from going back to Adam, or even to Noah, declares that there must be a people before a government, and, deducing the right to institute the government from man’s moral nature, seeks its fundamental rules in the immutable dictates of universal reason, its end in freedom and happiness. The system of Locke lends itself to contending factions of the most opposite interests and purposes; the doctrine of Fox and Penn being but the common creed of humanity, forbids division, and insures the highest moral unity. To Locke, happiness is pleasure; things are good and evil only in reference to pleasure and pain; and to inquire after the highest good is as absurd as to dispute whether the best relish be in apples, plums or nuts; Penn esteemed happiness to be in the subjection of the baser instincts to the instinct of Deity in the breast, good and evil to be eternally and always as unlike as truth and falsehood, and the inquiry after the highest good to involve the purpose of existence. Locke says plainly that, but for rewards and punishments beyond the grave it is certainly right to eat and drink, and enjoy what we delight in; Penn, like Plato and Fénelon, maintained the doctrine so terrible to despots, that God is to be loved for his own sake, and virtue to be practiced for its intrinsic loveliness. Locke derives the idea of infinity from the senses, describes it as purely negative, and attributes[335] it to nothing but space, duration and number; Penn derived the idea from the soul, and ascribed it to truth and virtue, and to God. Locke declares immortality a matter with which reason has nothing to do, and that revealed truth must be sustained by outward signs and visible acts of power; Penn saw truth by its own light, and summoned the soul to bear witness to its own glory. Locke believed “not so many men in wrong opinions as is commonly supposed, because the greatest part have no opinions at all, and do not know what they contend for;” Penn likewise vindicated the many, but it was because truth is the common inheritance of the race. Locke, in his love of tolerance, inveighed against the methods of persecution as “Popish practices;” Penn censured no sect, but condemned bigotry of all sorts as inhuman. Locke, as an American lawgiver dreaded a too numerous democracy; Penn believed that God is in every conscience, his light in every soul; and therefore, stretching out his arms, he built—such are his own words—“a free colony for all mankind.” This is the praise of William Penn, that, in an age which had seen a popular revolution shipwreck popular liberty among selfish factions, which had seen Hugh Peters and Henry Vane perish by the hangman’s cord and the ax; in an age when Sydney nourished the pride of patriotism rather than the sentiment of philanthropy, when Russel stood for the liberties of his order, and not for new enfranchisements, when Harrington and Shaftesbury and Locke thought government should rest on property—Penn did not despair of humanity, and, though all his history and experience denied the sovereignty of the people, dared to cherish the noble idea of man’s capacity for self-government. Conscious that there was no room for its exercise in England, the pure enthusiast, like Calvin and Descartes, a voluntary exile, was to come to the banks of the Delaware to institute the “Holy Experiment.”

WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT.

Isabella of Spain and Elizabeth of England.

It is in the amiable qualities of her sex that Isabella’s superiority becomes most apparent over her illustrious namesake, Elizabeth of England, whose history presents some features parallel to her own. Both were disciplined in early life by the teachings of that stern nurse of wisdom, adversity. Both were made to experience the deepest humiliation at the hands of their nearest relative, who should have cherished and protected them. Both succeeded in establishing themselves on the throne after the most precarious vicissitudes. Each conducted her kingdom through a long and triumphant reign, to a height of glory which it had never before reached. Both lived to see the vanity of all earthly grandeur, and to fall the victims of an inconsolable melancholy; and both left behind an illustrious name, unrivaled in the subsequent annals of the country.

But with these few circumstances of their history, the resemblance ceases. Their characters afford scarcely a point of contact. Elizabeth, inheriting a large share of the bold and bluff King Harry’s temperament, was haughty, arrogant, coarse, irascible; while with these fiercer qualities she mingled deep dissimulation and strange irresolution. Isabella, on the other hand, tempered the dignity of royal station with the most bland and courteous manners. Once resolved, she was constant in her purposes; and her conduct in public and private life was characterized by candor and integrity. Both may be said to have shown that magnanimity which is implied by the accomplishment of great objects in the face of great obstacles. But Elizabeth was desperately selfish; she was incapable of forgiving, not merely a real injury, but the slightest affront to her vanity; and she was merciless in exacting retribution. Isabella, on the other hand, lived only for others—was ready at all times to sacrifice self to considerations of public duty; and far from personal resentments, showed the greatest condescension and kindness to those who had most sensibly injured her; while her benevolent heart sought every means to mitigate the authorized severities of the law, even toward the guilty.

Both possessed rare fortitude. Isabella, indeed, was placed in situations which demanded more frequent and higher displays of it than her rival; but no one will doubt a full measure of this quality in the daughter of Henry the Eighth. Elizabeth was better educated, and every way more accomplished than Isabella. But the latter knew enough to maintain her station with dignity; and she encouraged learning by a munificent patronage. The masculine powers and passions of Elizabeth seemed to divorce her in a great measure from the peculiar attributes of her sex; at least from those which constitute its peculiar charm; for she had abundance of its foibles—a coquetry and love of admiration which age could not chill; a levity most careless, if not criminal; and a fondness for dress and tawdry magnificence of ornament which was ridiculous, or disgusting, according to the different periods of life in which it was indulged. Isabella, on the other hand, distinguished through life for decorum of manners and purity beyond the breath of calumny, was content with the legitimate affection which she could inspire within the range of her domestic circle. Far from a frivolous affectation of ornament or dress, she was most simple in her own attire, and seemed to set no value on her jewels, but as they could serve the necessities of the state; when they could be no longer useful in this way, she gave them away to her friends. Both were uncommonly sagacious in the selection of their ministers, though Elizabeth was drawn into some errors in this particular by her levity, as was Isabella by religious feeling. It was this, combined with her excessive humility, which led to the only grave errors in the administration of the latter. Her rival fell into no such errors, and she was a stranger to the amiable qualities which led to them.

The circumstances of their deaths, which were somewhat similar, displayed the great dissimilarity of their characters. Both pined amidst their royal state, a prey to incurable despondency rather than any marked bodily distemper. In Elizabeth it sprung from wounded vanity, a sullen conviction that she had outlived the admiration on which she had so long fed—and even the solace of friendship and the attachment of her subjects. Nor did she seek consolation, where alone it was to be found in that sad hour. Isabella, on the other hand, sunk under a too acute sensibility to the sufferings of others. But amidst the gloom which gathered around her, she looked with the eye of faith to the brighter prospects which unfolded of the future; and when she resigned her last breath, it was amidst the tears and universal lamentations of her people.

The Character of Cortés.

His character is marked with the most opposite traits, embracing qualities apparently the most incompatible. He was avaricious, yet liberal; bold to desperation, yet cautious and calculating in his plans; magnanimous, yet very cunning; courteous and affable in his deportment, yet inexorably stern; lax in his notions of morality, yet (not uncommon) a sad bigot. The great feature in his character was constancy of purpose; a[336] constancy not to be daunted by danger, nor baffled by disappointment, nor wearied out by impediments and delays.

He was a knight-errant, in the literal sense of the word. Of all the band of adventurous cavaliers whom Spain, in the sixteenth century, sent forth on the career of discovery and conquest, there was none more deeply filled with the spirit of romantic enterprise than Hernando Cortés. Dangers and difficulties, instead of deterring, seemed to have a charm in his eyes. They were necessary to rouse him to a full consciousness of his powers. He grappled with them at the outset, and, if I may so express myself, seemed to prefer to take his enterprises by the most difficult side. He conceived, at the first moment of his landing in Mexico, the design of its conquest. When he saw the strength of its civilization, he was not turned from his purpose. When he was assailed by the superior force of Narvaez, he still persisted in it; and, when he was driven in ruin from the capital, he still cherished his original idea. After the few years of repose which succeeded the conquest, his adventurous spirit impelled him to that dreary march across the marshes of Chiapa; and, after another interval, to seek his fortunes on the stormy Californian Gulf. When he found that no other continent remained for him to conquer, he made serious proposals to the emperor to equip a fleet at his own expense, with which he would sail to the Moluccas, and subdue the Spice Islands for the Crown of Castile!

This spirit of knight-errantry might lead us to undervalue his talents as a general, and to regard him merely in the light of a lucky adventurer. But this would be doing him injustice, for Cortés was certainly a great general, if that man be one, who performs great achievements with the resources which his own genius has created. There is probably no instance in history where so vast an enterprise has been achieved by means apparently so inadequate.

UNITED STATES HISTORY.

ENGLISH DISCOVERIES AND SETTLEMENTS.

In 1496 John Cabot, a merchant of Venice, but of English birth, under the patronage of Henry VII., made a voyage of discovery, accompanied by his son Sebastian, who became eminent as a bold, skilful navigator. They sailed into Hudson’s Bay, exploring the shore line for some hundreds of miles, and returned. This was really the first discovery of America, and some months before Columbus reached the main land. No important results followed immediately.

Two years later Sebastian Cabot sailed for the new continent in command of a squadron of well manned vessels. The northwest passage to India was doubtless the objective point of the voyage; but, failing in that, he gained much valuable knowledge of the country.

The whole coast of New England, and of the Middle States, was now, for the first time since the days of the Erricksons, traced by Europeans. In 1498 a fruitless attempt was made to colonize the country he had discovered. Some three hundred men were left on the coast of Labrador for this purpose, many of whom perished, and all who survived were a year after carried back to England.

For reasons that do not fully appear Cabot was during most of his active life in the service of Spain, having been appointed chief pilot, and honored beyond all others who then sailed the seas. When seventy years old he again visited his native country; was received with much favor, and remained some years the active patron of English enterprise.

Though for almost a century there was no actual possession of the lands thus made known, Cabot’s work proved of inestimable importance to the British crown. He traced the eastern coast of North America through more than twenty degrees of latitude, and established the claim of England to the best portion of the New World.

Others of like adventurous spirit followed in the work of discovery. Frobisher, Drake, Gilbert and Grenville, all men of influence, successively came to America, but failed to establish permanent settlements. In a few months the colonists either returned in disappointment or perished. The last voyage made by the English before their permanent occupancy of the country was in 1605. George Waymouth, under the patronage of the Earl of Southampton, came to anchor off the coast of Maine. He explored the harbor, sailed some distance up the river, and opened a profitable trade with the Indians, some of whom learned to speak English, and accompanied Waymouth on his homeward voyage. Efforts that continued at intervals through a century, though for the most part barren of the immediate results that were sought, were not altogether in vain, and they served to keep secure the partial knowledge that had been gained, and to sustain the hopes that were often dashed with disappointment.

In April, 1606, King James I. issued two patents, one to an association of noble gentlemen and merchants, called the “London Company,” the other to an association organized in the southwest part of England, called the “Plymouth Company.” The grants were alike liberal, but only the London Company succeeded under its charter, in planting an American colony. The other company lost their first ship that was sent out, captured by a Spanish man-of-war. The year following they sent out a company of one hundred colonists, and began a settlement on the Kennebec river under what seemed favorable circumstances. But the winter of 1607-’8 proved very severe. Some were starved, some frozen, their storehouse burned, and when summer came the survivors, as in other unfortunate attempts, escaped to England.

The London Company’s fleet of three vessels, under command of Christopher Newport, carried one hundred and five colonists, reached the American coast in April, intending to land in the neighborhood of Roanoke Island, but a storm carried them into the Chesapeake. Coasting along the southern shore of the magnificent bay, they entered the mouth of a broad, beautiful river that they called James, in honor of the King. Proceeding up the river about fifty miles they founded Jamestown, the first English settlement in America. This was more than a hundred years after the discovery of the continent by Cabot, so long a time did it take for the English to get any permanent possession of the country discovered. For all these long years they seemed to reap nothing but loss and misfortune from their enterprise. Not a single spot on the vast continent, now mostly peopled by their children, was as yet the settled habitation of an Englishman; while Spain and France had wonderful successes in the first century of their career of conquest and colonization. But their prosperity was not enduring. The invaders who treated the native inhabitants with murderous cruelty, were in turn oppressed by the home government, and, struggling for relief, plunged into the most deplorable anarchy. By injustice, mismanagement and tyranny, Spain alienated her once numerous dependencies. France too, whose subjects planted many flourishing colonies, lost them, not because of her oppression, but from want of ability to afford them sufficient protection.

England, the last to commence settling the western hemisphere, but finally bringing to the task a spirit of progress and strength unknown to her predecessors, has founded an empire mightier and more enduring than any of its compeers; now lost indeed to her private aggrandizement, but not to the honor of her name, or the best interest of mankind; an empire already prosperous beyond all example in history, and destined, it is probable, to yet unite under its genial protection every league of the vast continent, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the tropical forests of Darien to the eternal snows of the Arctic circle.[C]

[337]

Among the gentlemen in the colony on James river there were those of better culture and higher position, but none equaled, in intrepid courage, force of character and practical wisdom, Captain John Smith. There were none who contributed so much to the success of the enterprise. He had been, from his early life, an adventurer, inured to hardships, and fearless in danger. He returned to England from the war with the Turks, in which he became distinguished for prowess and valor, in time to join the colonists, and was appointed by King James a member of the council. As the appointments were, very unwisely, under seal, and made known only after they reached their destination, there was no legitimate authority during the voyage, and a state of almost anarchy prevailed. Though no one of the number possessed a truer manhood, Smith was accused of plotting the massacre of the council, and for a time deprived of his liberty, but when tried, fully acquitted.

Many of the colonists being gentlemen unused to labor or hardships of any kind, were sadly unfit for the difficult enterprise. Exposure and want brought on malignant diseases. The fort, built for defense, was filled with the sick, and in a few months half their number perished. Bad management and dishonesty added to the calamities that were suffered. The first two Governors were found guilty of embezzlement and of attempting to desert in the company’s ship. The third had neither talents nor courage, and gave up the office, for which he was incompetent. In their distress Smith was chosen Governor, and did much to avert the calamities which all, at length, saw impending. Unable, at first, to induce the colonists to labor, or to seek the needed supplies by cultivating the soil, he obtained corn and other provisions from the Indians by trading, making some quite extensive trips for the purpose, and, by his courage and address, acquired great influence over the savages. In one of his excursions up the Chickahominy three of his company were killed, and he, after a terrible struggle, taken captive, and came near losing his life. When condemned to die, bound and placed in position to be slain by the war-club of a stalwart, painted savage, ready for the bloody tragedy, the stern chief yielded to the entreaties of his favorite daughter, Pocahontas, released his captive, and made a covenant of peace with him. This was not only a most touching event, but of great historical importance. The loss of their Governor at that critical juncture would have taken away all hope of continuing the settlement at Jamestown. His influence with the colonists was great, and greater with the natives of the country. He seemed to them without fear, while the natural dignity, kindness and manliness of his bearing awed and conciliated the most hostile tribes. Soon after his departure from the colony a most trying crisis came, and they were saved only by the timely arrival of men and supplies from the mother country. Other Governors succeeded, some of whom did wisely. The lands first held in common were divided, and the owners required to cultivate them.

In 1619 a Dutch trader brought some negroes from Africa, which were sold to the richer planters. Thus slavery began, and its blighting influence was long felt both there and in the other colonies. It was at first found profitable, and the population increased so rapidly that in less than forty years from the date of the first charter the little band in Virginia had grown to over twenty thousand.

In the meantime some settlements were made in Carolina by Virginians, and also by Puritans from New England, without chartered rights, and with alternations of success and disaster.

In 1663 liberal grants were issued by Charles II., and colonization advanced more rapidly. But the colonial government, adopted not by the people but by the proprietors, was a kind of landed aristocracy, that was distasteful, and the arrogant demands of the ruling class were met with rebellion.

An attempt was made at self-government, which succeeded so far as to show that aristocratic institutions and customs were not suited to the wilderness; and the famous constitution, framed with much labor by Lord Shaftsbury and the justly celebrated Dr. Locke, was abandoned, as its provisions were found oppressive and impracticable. The Indians, once numerous in the Carolinas, for a time gave much trouble, but through pestilence, wars and drunkenness their power was broken, and they rapidly faded away.

SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND.

In 1607 the Plymouth Company made an unsuccessful attempt on the Kennebec; but, though baffled and hindered, the purpose of colonization was not abandoned. In 1609 Captain Smith, injured by an accident, and disheartened by the unhappy state of the colony at Jamestown, returned to London to interest others in the settlement of America. Time was needed to make the preparation; and in 1614 he came in command of two ships to the coast of lower Maine, explored the country, and drew maps of the whole coast line from the Penobscot to Cape Cod, and called the region New England.

No colony was then planted. Months and years were consumed fruitlessly in making and unmaking plans that proved impracticable, or at best failed in the execution; till in 1617 the Plymouth Company was superseded by the Council of Plymouth, consisting of forty of the most wealthy and influential men of the kingdom. They planned magnificently, and made many fair promises; but the spirit of the enterprise was intensely secular if not selfish, and the hopes cherished were again disappointed. The actual settlement of New England was begun by men of more earnest spirit and loftier aim, to whom conscience and the love of liberty were a higher law.

The Pilgrims, a class of deeply conscientious non-conformists, who, because of the persecutions endured, had in the land of their birth no certain abiding place, and many of whom for ten years found an asylum in Holland, had now, by some mysterious influence, turned their thoughts and hopes to the New World. They had known the bitterness of leaving home and country for conscience sake, had in their voluntary exile cultivated habits of industry, gained strength of character by the things they suffered, and were now ready to encounter any difficulty to find a home, though in the far-off American wilderness.

With no charter or grant of land from the king they could only obtain consent of the Company to occupy some uninhabited part of that vast and rather indefinite tract then known as Virginia, and between 34° and 45° north latitude. After much difficulty they obtained two vessels, the “Speedwell” and “May-Flower.” The former, being found unseaworthy, returned to Plymouth, and the “May-Flower” proceeded with one hundred and one colonists. Encountering fierce storms it was a long, perilous passage of sixty-three days; and being compelled to land outside the limits of the Virginia Company’s jurisdiction, and so without any government, they proceeded at once to form one. All the men of the company, forty-one in number, signed the constitution before leaving the ship. It was brief but comprehensive, and, with an honest avowal of allegiance to the crown, democratic in the most explicit sense. On Monday, the 11th of December, 1620, the Pilgrims landed on the Rock of Plymouth, on the western shore of Cape Cod. It was late in the season, and though all possible efforts were made to provide themselves shelter, and some means of defense in case of attack, there was much sickness, suffering and death during the winter. An early spring brought relief to those who survived; and, from year to year, their decimated ranks were recruited by new arrivals. Treaties of peace were made with the Indians; the fields and forests furnished food, and in a short time the colony numbered thousands. Other settlements were made, and in ten years spread over the country from Cape Ann to Plymouth. Before the end of the next decade some fifty towns and villages dotted the country, and the signs of thrift were most encouraging. W. Stevens, a ship[338] builder, had already launched an American vessel of four hundred tons burden; and two hundred and ninety-three immigrant ships had anchored in Massachusetts Bay, and more than 20,000 Europeans had found homes as the outcome of the humble beginning at Plymouth. But the good men who had suffered much for conscience’ sake, and that they might enjoy liberty, were not themselves free from the bigotry they spurned and became cruelly intolerant of those who dared differ from them.

But that narrowness was soon overcome, and measures unworthy of them overruled for good. The banishment of the eloquent Roger Williams and others who pleaded for complete religious toleration, and declared that the consciences of men are in no way bound by the authority of the magistrate, so far from quenching the spirit of freedom that burned in his manly words, gave it wider scope and richer fruitage. The exile, finding favor with the Indians, whose rights he had so nobly defended, soon became, by purchase, the owner of Rhode Island. He founded the city of Providence and established a little republic, in whose constitution freedom of conscience was guaranteed, and persecution for opinion’s sake forbidden. Moreover, his influence in Massachusetts was scarcely less than it would have been had he remained.

The seed was sown, and the fruit very soon appeared. The aristocracy that was growing up in spite of all disclaimers was overthrown, a representative government established, and the good Puritans, without compromising their orthodoxy, became more tolerant toward such as “followed not with them.”

The colonies of Rhode Island, Maryland and Pennsylvania were the first civil communities in which free toleration in religion was granted, but the leaven was working. A nation was fast growing up in the wilderness, whose resources were rapidly developing. But the scattered communities were much exposed, and, for mutual defense, the colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut and New Haven united in 1643, forming the “United Colonies of New England.” The union lasted forty years, and foreshadowed the union of the United States. In union they found strength, and increased still more rapidly in all the resources of a prosperous community. They had council chambers, churches, school houses, and printing presses, with probably as large a proportion of educated and highly cultured people as are found in any new settlement. That many were strangely superstitious, bigoted and intolerant; that lives, otherwise noble and praiseworthy, were stained with acts of injustice and cruelty, is confessed with sorrow; but it only proves them men with the weaknesses and faults that belong to our common humanity. Their virtues alone are worthy of imitation.

While rapid progress was made in the east, and popular government was becoming securely established, the work of colonization was pushed vigorously in other sections, and, in less than fifty years, there had been planted fifteen colonies, most of which prospered greatly. In 1636 Providence united with Rhode Island, in 1677 Maine with Massachusetts, and in 1682 New Haven with Connecticut. Of those eventually forming the “Empire” and “Keystone” states mention will be made hereafter.

[End of Required Reading for March.]

A correspondent asks: “What is the meaning of ‘Creole?’ To whom is it applied, and why?” The word is French—the Spanish being nearly the same. It means primarily to create, but also to nourish, educate, bring up. It was first applied to children of French and Spanish parentage born in the West Indies or in Louisiana, because they were brought up in the country to which their parents came as colonists. The name is honorable. The influence of climate and other circumstances made these children of European parentage differ somewhat in appearance from their ancestors. They were less hardy and robust, but more beautiful. The term “Creoles” is sometimes applied to all born in tropical climates, as they have some common characteristics.

HELEN’S TOWER.

By CHARLES BLATHERWICK.

Halfway up Belfast Lough, on the high ground to the left you may see a remarkable landmark. This is Helen’s Tower, built by the present Earl of Dufferin as a tribute of filial affection to his mother, the late Countess of Gifford, and formally named after her on attaining his majority.

Looking across from the grey old walls of Carrickfergus, it may be seen crowning the highest hill on the Claudeboye estate. Clear cut against the sky, there it stands, lashed by the winds or touched by the sun, ever firm and enduring—a fitting memorial of one of the best and noblest of women.

Lady Gifford was a Sheridan, one to whom wit and beauty came as natural gifts, yet one who dipped deeply into the font of human knowledge, and by pure sympathy with all that was good and beautiful in life, exerted a lasting influence on all those whose privilege it was to know her.

A short drive from Bangor, or, still better, a pleasant two-mile stretch across the turf from Claudeboye House, will bring you to the foot of the hill. Here, glimmering amid ferns, sedges, birches, and firs, very calm and peaceful on a golden autumn day, with Helen’s Tower reflected on its face, is a quiet lake. Then a smart climb through a fir wood, and the tower—a veritable Scotch tower, with “corbie stairs” and jutting turrets all complete—is before you.

At the basement lives the old keeper with his wife; and here, after inscribing your name in the visitors’ book, you follow him up the stone steps.

The sleeping chamber first. A cosy little room, remarkable for the fine specimen of French embroidery which decorates the bedstead, with the quaint inscription on the tester—

From here you are taken to the top.

Looking east on a clear day the view is superb. From Claudeboye woods and lakes, Belfast Lough and the Antrim hills on the left, the eye sweeps round to Cantire and the Scotch coast, till distance is lost in the dim range of Cumberland hills.

Descending again, we enter the principal chamber—octagonal, oak-paneled, with groined pointed ceiling and stained-glass windows. On these are numerous quaint designs, intermixed with the signs of the zodiac, showing the pursuits of mankind during the progress of the seasons—from the sturdy sower of spring to the shrivelled old man warming his toes by the winter fire. Over the fire-place is a niche for a silver lamp, and flanking the west window are two poetical inscriptions—that on the left, printed in gold and having reference to the lamp, is by Lord Dufferin’s mother; and that on the right, printed in bold black type, is by the poet-laureate.

On reading Lady Gifford’s graceful verses, we are pathetically reminded that she was not spared to see her son’s brilliant career. I give them here, and the laureate’s sonorous lines stand at the head of this paper.

[339]

TO MY DEAR SON ON HIS TWENTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY.

[With a Silver Lamp.—“Fiat Lux.”]

Mr. Robert Browning has also written lines upon this “Tower,” and has consented to their publication in a late issue of the Pall Mall Gazette. In an introduction to the poem, the Gazette remarks: “The difference in treatment of the same subject by the two poets will, we are sure, interest our readers. Mr. Browning’s tribute to the love-inducing qualities of the late Lady Gifford was no mere compliment, as all who knew her will bear witness.”

“HELEN’S TOWER.”

The traces of human deeds fade swiftly away from the sun-lighted earth, as the transient shade of thought from the brow, but nothing is lost and dissipated, which the rolling hours, replete with secrets, have received into their dark creative bosom. Time is a blooming field; nature is ever teeming with life, and all is seed, and all is fruit.—Schiller.

MENDELSSOHN’S GRAVE AND HUMBOLDT’S HOME.

By the Author of “German-American Housekeeping,” etc.

I wish this article could be accompanied by a pen and ink sketch made on the spot of Mendelssohn’s grave and that of his sister Fanny. The simplicity of it would surprise you, as it astonished me, on one Sunday afternoon when, in company with a friend, I wandered in search of the resting place of him whose songs need no words. We had both imagined some lofty monument would mark the spot, and that in order to find it, it would only be necessary to inquire of some one in the vicinity. Pursuing this plan, to our utter amazement we only received an ignorant stare from plebeian and patrician. Finally being told by an old gentleman, “if we would go beyond the Canal-strasse in the direction of the Belle-alliance Platz down the Schöneberger Ufer through a narrow street,” we would come to a gate opening into a cemetery, which we must pass through, before reaching a smaller cemetery, in which Mendelssohn was buried. After many efforts we roused the old porter who kept the key to the latter gate. We walked rapidly in, expecting to see something in monumental art worthy of the name, but the artless old porter pointed to a grave in the corner and there, overshadowed by some trees, stood the plain slabs with the names of Felix, Fanny and August Mendelssohn.

A curious sense of the incongruous came over us while standing by the simple stones and recalling the solemn and appropriate demonstration at the time of Felix Mendelssohn’s death, made in every city and town where his genius had been known. Was it true that here in this small, unknown grave-yard they had left him? Was it to yonder small gate the four horses in black accoutrements drew the carriage containing the coffin covered with palm-branches, laurel-wreaths and flowers? And did the great choirs and orchestras of the city pass through with the grand choral, “Jesus my trust,” preceded by all Germany’s musicians, the clergy, civil officers, professors, officers of the army, and the immense throng of admirers? Perplexed by such thought we followed the old porter, who had started with a watering pot to the grave beyond, and asked if a monument was to be erected to Mendelssohn’s memory. “Ach, nein, er war einer Jude, und deshalb ist er vernachlässigt.” A Jew, therefore is his grave neglected.

When Paul and Barnabas turned to the Gentiles it was because the Jews “had judged themselves unworthy of everlasting life.” But we are never told that a penitent Jew was treated differently from any one else in the days of the Apostles. Although a Jew by birth, Felix Mendelssohn’s character wanted no principle of the genuine Christian. Never was feeling more sacred and profound, expressed in harmonious strain than he expressed in his great oratorio of “St. Paul” and “Elijah,” nor can the praise of God be more grandly heard on earth than in the double chorus of his XLII. Psalm, when well rendered, or again, when with his pious heart he wished to show the triumph at the creation of light over darkness, which ends with a beautiful duet, “Therefore I sing thy everlasting praise, thou faithful God.”

We are told that Mendelssohn spent his last days laboring over a new oratorio—“Christ.” It was commenced during his stay in Italy, and while rambling among the mountains of Switzerland he is said to have been inspired with the theme for his work, which he hoped to make his best. Never was wealth used more wisely and religiously than his. Not only did he clothe the naked and feed the hungry, but every one who came near him with aspirations for an ennobling life he advanced. He undertook a tremendous amount of labor in giving concerts in Leipzig, the proceeds of which were devoted to the statue of Bach. At first he undertook to erect such a monument[340] out of his own means, saying “that it was only right that John Sebastian Bach, who had labored so usefully and with such distinguished honor as cantor at the Thomas school at Leipzig, should have a monument in the streets of the city in which he had lived, as an immortal spirit of harmony.” At these concerts he allowed only Bach’s music to be produced, intending in this way, he said, to make the rising generations of musicians more familiar with the works of one to whom he felt under the greatest weight of obligation, and whom he is said to have resembled in the severity of his studies as well as the loftiness of his aims. But this is the expression of Mendelssohn’s best friends; adverse criticism has much to say, and while his motives were pure and his compositions genuine and vivacious, yet in sublime combinations and serious themes Bach and Beethoven can alone be compared.

Every winter in Berlin the oratorios of “Elijah” and “St. Paul” are given in the Sing-Academy. This old music hall is a place of memorial scenes, the directorship of which Mendelssohn once applied for, at the earnest solicitation of his friends, and was refused. The enthusiastic audiences which now assemble there to hear his music seem to be as forgetful of this as they are ignorant of the little secluded grave-yard in the outskirts of the city where his immense throng of friends and admirers left him twenty years ago.

In beautiful imitation of his noble efforts for Bach’s monument could an appropriation of the money secured by the rendering of his great oratorio be made—an idea which occurs to the mind of strangers in Berlin, but unfortunately not to the citizens, who are less disposed in this case than the Greeks to honor their dead, and who more readily ridicule in Mendelssohn’s death than praise such sentiment as the following:

It had never occurred to the Berliners to raise a monument to Goethe until two years ago, and Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt have just been recognized in this way. “Tegel,” the grand old home of Alexander, is seldom seen by visitors, that is to say, it is not frequented by the traveler as Potsdam and Charlottenburg. An interesting place, and an interesting master it had, “who had trod many lands, known many deeds, probed many hearts, beginning with his own, and was far in readiness for God.” His grave is just beyond the house, at the end of an avenue. His home has been inherited by a niece, and is kept up in all the elegance of former years. The grounds are very handsome, so densely covered in places with magnificent old trees along avenues stretching beyond the house and grave. These forest trees are very rare in this low sandy region. After driving for miles through barren land with only occasional forests of stiff pines, to come suddenly upon trees which somewhat resemble our American oak, bestows a happy home-like feeling to the American who has wandered from her primeval forests.

The house at “Tegel” is built in the most rigid style, relieved on the outside by niches filled with good pieces of statuary. Within every room is painfully neat—the formality with which the furniture is placed shows evidence that the owner had no wife and no children. It is an attempt at an Italian villa, but seems too cold and formal for such a climate as Berlin. There is certainly taste displayed and cultivation evinced in the selection of many things. The library is filled with books, principally works of Humboldt and Voltaire. On the tables are large portfolios containing maps and cartoons. The desk with the pen and inkstand remain just as he left them. Indeed, there is only a suggestion here and there, that the niece is living and owning the place—it seems as if she were a ghost and her life a myth—so still and so orderly are the rooms, and so undisturbed hang the red apples by the house. Indeed, the house seems as silent as the stately avenue of oaks that leads to the grave. Humboldt left a handsome fortune to this niece, for he lived and died a bachelor.

He owned many valuable pieces of statuary. The original of Thorwaldsen’s Venus was purchased by Humboldt with much pride, it is said, and placed in his collection with other rare pieces found at various places in his travels. Among other curious possessions a mutilated old fountain from Pompeii stands in the hall. The floors are tiles, as one generally finds in Germany, and the saloon which contains the finest statuary suggests Goethe’s lines in “Mignon:”

What is there in the make up of literary men which prompts them almost invariably to isolate themselves in some far removed country place? The explanation which is generally given by themselves is, that their time being so precious they can not be interrupted; their ideas will not grow and flourish in the midst of the talkative world. Emerson tells of the literary man who declared “the solitary river was not solitary enough; the sun and moon put him out. When he bought a house the first thing he did was to plant trees. He could not enough conceal himself.” ’Tis worse, and tragic Emerson goes on to remark that no man is fit for society who has fine traits. “At a distance he is admired, but bring him hand to hand, he is a cripple.” He affects to be a good companion; but is he entitled to marry? But happily for our love of Emerson, in the same essay he observes, “A man must be clothed with society or we shall feel a certain bareness and poverty.” “For behavior, men learn it as they take diseases, one of another.” “But people are to be taken in small doses.” “Solitude is impracticable and society fatal.” Whoever talked more to the point than this wise philosopher? Carlyle talked more wisely, because his spiritual sky was less nebulous, perhaps—but who shall judge of this? All men who have written have subjected themselves to criticism, and criticism is desirable, provided it originates with good and honest intentions. Madame d’Staël wanted to hear it, not to read it! and if more authors and literary people would live as Goethe, as Macaulay, as Madame d’Staël, as the recent German novelist, Berthold Auerbach, in the midst of their friends or foes as they may chance to be, hearing the arguments for and against them, would they not have fewer words and paragraphs to regret at the end of their career? Goethe wanted to hear all that could be said of him, that he might the more cleverly understand what he was, what he was writing for, and where his lessons were to be honored.

Berthold Auerbach was in hearty sympathy with all about him—always living in the heart of the city, seeing his friends once a week through special invitation, as well as whenever they called, and observing his birthdays with a childish interest. One day, finding him sitting on a sofa, back of a table covered with flowers and fruits and presents of various kinds, we at once knew it was his birthday, and expressed a regret that we had not come in with an offering. “Oh, that does not matter, so you bring yourselves; the presents are only from those who did not come; they can not take the place of the absent ones, but they signify love! and love is what we live for!” How much more admirable than the rigid solitary scholar who sits far removed from the voice of the people! Franz Liszt is another German who, although so old, and one would think so exhausted with the voice of praise and adoration from the world, retains an intense longing for his friends and society, and they for him. When he reaches Weimar in the summer, after his winter in Pesth, every one knows or feels his presence. The Berliners even rejoice that he is the nearer to them. We are glad that Longfellow and Buchanan Read and Healy, and a host of Americans have felt his magic friendship, and[341] watched his Saturn fingers so full of knots. His Sixth Rhapsodie, “Les Cloches de Geneve”—“etûdes d’exécution transcendante”—tell how great is his heart, and have most lasting influence upon the mind and feelings. Wagner, Liszt, Auerbach, Knaus and many other artists, musicians and writers of Germany, show that it is possible to live for one’s friends, while living also for fame. But, alas! in America reputation and success are coupled with such secluded habits and such insatiable work that the personal influence of our literary and scientific men can not be known or estimated. Either overwork or small means keeps most of them tied down to a most prosaic life. The wife of one of our distinguished poets, in speaking of the state of society in New York City, said there had not been for years what one could call a literary coterie; that Bryant during his lifetime could have had such a salon, but he was personally too cold and indifferent to devote his leisure hours to the light and easy-going talk of the salon; but she went on to say that had one lamented one lived, he with his warm and generous nature, his wide and untiring interest in others, could have been the center, the heart and soul of such a circle. Alas! in the last few years how are the great about us fallen—Longfellow, Emerson, Bayard, Taylor, Bryant, Ticknor, Motley. Bancroft, who came in with the beginning of the century, may be spared us until its end.

FLOTSAM! (1492.)

By J. LOGIE ROBERTSON.

The periods of our lives which give us the most joy at the moment, and which are most exquisite in memory, are those when we have gone most wholly out of ourselves, and lived for others. She who seeks excellence and not reputation alone, rises highest in her pursuits; and she who foregoes her own pleasures—ignoring, it may be, her own rights—and forgets herself, in her genuine interest for others, attains to the surest and most satisfactory enjoyment. The secret of many low and miserable lives is the complete absorption of the man and the woman in their own pleasures and wants, cares, character and prospect.—Mary A. Livermore, in “What shall we do with our Daughters?”

THE SEA AS AN AQUARIUM.

A lecture delivered at the Monterey Assembly, Pacific Grove Retreat, California, 1883.

By C. L. ANDERSON, M.D.

[Concluded.]

Whilst these “rivers in the ocean” are flowing more or less rapidly toward the Arctic regions, there are undercurrents moving slowly but irresistibly toward the equator, or at least in a direction to restore the equilibrium of waters. That these undercurrents come from the poles is already demonstrated by the thermometer. At certain depths under the equator the temperature is as low as 35° or 36° F. This low temperature could not be maintained unless supplied from the Polar regions. Fresh water freezes at 32° and salt water, that is sea water, at about 27°, according to the density. In many places north of England, Dr. Carpenter found the lower depths at a temperature of about 29°. He speaks of an ocean river 2,000 feet deep, colder than the freezing point of fresh water. Why could not this low temperature be maintained without supposing a supply from the Polar regions? The temperature of the earth’s crust twenty or thirty feet from the surface is quite uniform at 50° to 55° all over the temperate zones. At that depth—say thirty feet—it is not deep enough to be influenced by “the internal heat” of the earth, which we experience in going down into mines, or which shows itself in the hot water from very deep springs, and yet it is sufficiently covered so as not to be influenced by seasonable changes. The water would naturally take the temperature of the earth’s crust. This has been proven in the case of the Mediterranean Sea. This body of water is shut off from the general circulatory system by the Strait of Gibraltar, which is so shallow at its outlet that no communication between the deep water of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic can possibly take place. This great “middle earth sea” is at some places 11,000 to 12,000 feet deep. And yet Dr. Carpenter found the temperature in August and September 78° at the surface; and by going down with the thermometer the heat gradually diminished, until at the depth of 600 feet the temperature was 55°. From this point, curious as it may appear, there was no change in heat until the bottom was reached. Whatever was the temperature at 600 feet it was the same all the way down. He then ascertained that the temperature of the earth’s crust in that region was 54° and 55°.

This shows pretty clearly that depth of water alone does not produce the coldness found in the seas having connection with the Polar regions.

But there are other ways of demonstrating this lower cold current. At a meeting of the Geographical Society Dr. Carpenter exhibited in a simple and minute way these warm and cold currents. He had a trough constructed with plate glass sides, about six feet long, a foot deep, and the sides not more than one inch from each other. At one end of this trough a piece of ice was wedged in between the two sides. That represented the Polar area. At the other end heat was applied by a bar of metal laid on the upper surface of the water, and the end carried over the trough and heated with a spirit lamp—to represent the equatorial area. Then some coloring matter was put in the water; red at the warm end, and blue at the cold end. Now what took place? The water tinged with blue, put in at the surface of the Polar area, being subject to a cold atmospheric temperature immediately fell to the bottom. It then crept slowly along the bottom of the trough, and at the warm end it gradually rose toward the surface, and gradually returned along the surface to the point from which it started. The red followed the same course as the blue, but started from a different point. It crept along the surface from the Equatorial to the Polar end, and there fell to the bottom, just as the blue[342] had done, and formed another stratum, creeping along the bottom and coming again to the surface. Each color made a distinct circulation during the half hour that the experiment was under observation.

Now this is an experiment that can be repeated in our parlors without going down to the Equator or up to the North pole; an additional proof that we often have the very thing at our doors that we travel thousands of miles to find.

Until the last four or five years the opinion prevailed that the ocean was barren of life at great depths. Continued researches, however, find that many forms and great profusion of life exists at a depth of two and three miles. This deep water life seems to be adapted to the low temperature near the freezing point of fresh water—and the forms are usually very small, requiring thousands to weigh a grain. There is an exuberance of that small animal known as globagerina—the little animal that secretes carbonate of lime for a covering, and makes pretty much all our chalk beds. The well known “White Cliffs of England” were made by this little animal, and in the deeper portions of the Atlantic it is still at work. Some day when the ocean’s bed is raised a few thousand feet these beds of chalk will appear and be exactly like the chalk of the cretaceous period, so much talked of and written about by geologists. Again, there are other animals dredged lately in larger quantities at a great depth, 3,000 and 4,000 feet, belonging to the sponges. These are busy in making flints—or such material as flints are composed of.

So we find in this large aquarium, the great sea, the same processes going on—the same material manufactured that took place in what is termed the older geological formation. Can we say that creation is complete? That the earth is finished, and, like a ship we read about the other day, to be disposed of for the old iron it contains? Not long since I visited a marble quarry, from which very curious and beautiful marble, resembling the onyx, was being taken. There were thick strata cropping out; and the air, and rain, and frost had disintegrated the exposed parts, so they looked as old as the earth. But just beneath, and in various places, were little springs of warm water, and as these bubbled out of the earth they deposited on cooling and exposure to the air, the same kind of marble—and there I saw going on the process of marble making that had continued doubtless for thousands of years.

On the shores, in the tide, pools and lagoons of Monterey bay we often gather little plants classed with the Algæ, or sea-moss, which we call diatoms. They are exceedingly small—some of them—so that we have to magnify them with the microscope several hundred diameters, in order to see how they are formed. Some kinds grow on the larger sea weeds, some on the rocks, and some appear to be free in the water, coming ashore in large quantities with the foam of the surf, and giving a greenish brown color to the sand of the shore. These diatoms are composed mainly of silex—flint. If we examine the rocks of our highest ridges and mountains and the cliffs of our shores in places, with the microscope, we shall find them largely composed of fragments of diatoms and spiculæ of sponges. And these are chiefly of the same species that we find alive to-day. Thus while the “chalk rocks” on our shores, the sand stones and harder rocks are melting away under the pounding waves of the sea, and being carried to the lower bottoms, fresh supplies of diatoms and sponges are mixed therewith, and we have a continuation, under our eyes, of what was begun thousands of years ago.

Let us for a moment consider this fluid we call water, especially sea water. Chemically speaking, pure water is one of the rarest things—that is, water absolutely free from all foreign matter, divested of everything save hydrogen and oxygen in the combining proportions, by weight one part of hydrogen to eight of oxygen; by volume, two of hydrogen to one of oxygen, we have pure water—an oxide of hydrogen. But absolutely pure water must be prepared in a vacuum, and it must never have contact with air of any kind. Pure water would be instantly fatal to any animal that had to breathe it with gills, as a fish, simply because it contains no oxygen in solution, which the animal can use to oxydize the blood in the gills. We in breathing air get oxygen by decomposing the air, but animals that breathe in water do not decompose the water, but take from it the free oxygen that is found mechanically mixed with the water. Pure water, being the standard of measurement of liquors and solids, is taken as one or one thousand. Sea water is 1,020, or near, whilst the water of the Dead Sea, or of lakes and seas with no outlet go as high as 1,225, or even to a point where they are saturated, or can not dissolve any more. Such is the case with the Great Salt Lake of Utah, and Mono Lake, of California. Water of this kind is not usually inhabited by any kind of gill breathing animals.

How did the sea become salt? By the washings out of the land, and the disintegration of the rocks by the elements, such as ice, wind, heat, rain, etc. The sun causes evaporation; so that the sea is being constantly lifted into the air and carried in the shape of clouds to the land, where it is drawn down and flows again into the sea. The solid matter carried down to the sea does not return. It remains in solution, or is deposited on the bottom. The clouds contain almost pure water. They distribute the visible ocean throughout the invisible air. The rocks and the trees, the animals and the air all receive their respective shares of water; and in the course of time it is returned to the sea. Were evaporation to continue at the present rate, it would require about 1,600 years before the ocean beds would become dry land. But in one way and another there is just as much water returned to the sea each year as is taken out. Not one drop is lost. The seas may change their beds—they may flow where the forest now stands, and their waters may cover our highest mountains, and their bottoms may rise many hundred feet above their present level, and still there will not be one drop more or less of the great body of water that now covers more than two-thirds of the earth’s surface. The sea will still claim its own. The water that floats to-day in the clouds may to-morrow course through some giant tree of the forest, or be taken up in forming a beautiful crystal, or aid in the bloom and fragrance of a flower, or be taken into the lungs of some animal and deprived of the oxygen that it holds in solution, or it may be converted into steam and propel a ship or a railroad train, or it may be buried under the earth in a bed of coal and only be set free some thousands of years hence. But like a wayward child it will return again to its mother—the sea.

The deliberation, the minuteness, the exactness, the patience and the waiting of the grinding sea, and yet the magnificent, sublime result, are most beautifully exemplified to those who have “entered into the springs of the sea,” or have “walked in search of the depth.”

The upper currents of the sea are comparatively shallow. Whilst the depth is often eight or nine miles, these currents in the deepest places do not extend more than 2,000 or 3,000 feet, and usually only a few fathoms. They move, however, when deep, with considerable velocity, say at the rate of four miles an hour. The great body of water lies below, totally undisturbed by any atmospheric agencies, yet moving slowly, invisibly, but sufficient to keep the equilibrium and level of the waters. So quietly does this great mass of the ocean pass over the bottom surface, that the smallest particle of microscopic matter that has fallen down, is not disturbed, and would remain there forever, but for the giant tread of the earthquake, or the volcanic explosion. The dust ground and deposited by the “mills of God,” makes the foundations of islands and continents.

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Although demonstrated that life organisms extend to the bottom at the deepest places, yet in the rapidly flowing current the busy activities of life are to be seen. There are plains and meadows, forests and deserts, hills, mountains and plateaus, in the sea. At some places the bottom teems with life. Take, for instance, what are called the “banks”—the fishing grounds of Norway, Ireland, Newfoundland, etc.; they are submarine plains unquestionably, and must have a high degree of fertility in order to supply food for the billions of fish of a voracious kind—as codfish, halibut, etc. These large fish feed on mollusca and crustacea, and these feed on smaller animals—but principally on Algæ or sea-weed. Feeding on pastures of this kind we sometimes find the most enormous animals. Steller’s sea-cow is an instance. They are described as found by him in 1742, on Behring’s Island, covered with a hide resembling the bark of an old oak tree. They grew to be thirty-five or forty feet long, and to weigh 50,000 pounds. They fed on the abundant Algæ along the coast. They yielded milk in abundance, which with their flesh were said by Steller to be superior to those of the cow.

But if the sea map be considered as an aquarium, (that is, a body of water supporting animal and vegetable life), better expressed by the term aquavivarium—so may it be considered a cemetery, an aquamortuum. The life, so profuse, that takes into itself bodies of endless forms and sizes, finally yields them up to the sea, and they are buried in the bottom. There is no land where the sea has not been, and where “vestiges of creation” may not be found. If we ascend to the highest mountain, or descend to the lowest valley, behold there are diatoms, shells of mollusks, débris of corals, and bones of whales. Whence came they? Science can answer no better than Scripture: “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein. For He hath founded it upon the seas and established it upon the floods.”

Beside the natural course of life and death, there are various ways by which the inhabitants of the sea may be suddenly destroyed. As, for instance: by the influx of fresh water; by volcanic agency; by earthquake waves; by storms; by suffocation when crowded into shoals, weeds, sand, etc.; being driven ashore by fishes of prey; too much or too little heat; diseases and parasites; poisons; lightning; and many other agencies.

Although the sea is immense, it has bounds and limits; thus far and no farther, is the command of Him that made it. I am overpowered with the immensity of the subject. In trying to comprehend the whole it is impossible to see the minutia; or to compass within our limits one fairly developed idea.

I think, however, we have arrived at a point of knowledge where we may answer an oft repeated question: “Why the Almighty has created so many insects, covering the earth, swarming in the air, or teeming in the waters?” They doubtless have many purposes, that in our dim knowledge we do not see, but they serve at least one important end; they are carbon makers, and without carbon no plant can grow, and without the plant what would become of the animal? So, to a certain extent our lives depend on the things which ofttimes only seem to annoy us. We are so ground in the mills of God, so built, linked and woven, so dependent and so cared for by the power that is in us, that the microscope can see nothing too small, that does not concern us in its use and sphere of action; and the telescope can behold no world so grand but it, too, may be considered only an aggregated expression of what we find in the miniature object.

No organism that lives and dies in the sea is lost or wasted, and like the drops of water that are scattered and spread abroad over the universe, and are gathered again to the sea, so do all these forms of life that inhabit the deep serve an important purpose while living, and when the life has departed from their forms they leave their good works behind them in the shape of iron, lime, silica, and carbon, for the use and the convenience of other lives that succeed them.

MY YEARS.

By ADA IDDINGS GALE.

EIGHT CENTURIES WITH WALTER SCOTT.

By WALLACE BRUCE.

“The Monastery,” “The Abbott,” and “Kenilworth,” are related to the most interesting period of Britain’s history. The characters of Queen Elizabeth and Mary, Queen of Scots, stand out in bold relief. Representing, as they do, the Protestant and Catholic religions fiercely struggling for supremacy in Britain, it is not a matter of wonder or surprise that each has been painted, at different times, and by different historians, as angel and as fiend.

After reading a score of histories and essays, the general reader, like the world at large, is undecided, unless he is fortunate, or unfortunate enough to have prejudices. According to one writer, the policy of Elizabeth, alike toward foreign nations and toward her own subjects, was one vast system of chicane and wrong; her life one of mischief and misery; her character below the standard of even the closing years of the sixteenth century. On the other hand she is the incarnation of all that is noble and heroic; she is hailed as the “Gloriana” of Spenser, and as “Fair Vestal throned in the West,” by Shakspere.

In like manner Mary, her queenly cousin, with a French education calculated to prejudice her in the minds of her countrymen, appears in some histories as a second Lady Hamlet, forgetful of her son, with undue haste marrying the alleged murderer of her husband. Again, she appears entirely ignorant of the conspiracy against her husband; nay more, actually compelled by the Nobles of Scotland to take the hand of Bothwell; while the religious feeling was so bitter that her opponents circulated falsehood and forgery in order to poison the minds of her subjects.

Probably no character in history has been the theme of more controversy; and while the English speaking world for the most part glories in the triumph of the Reformation, under the bold leadership of John Knox, in Scotland, and the resolute founders of the Established Church in England, it still turns with sympathy and compassion to the fate of the unfortunate queen, made interesting alike by her wit, her beauty and the mystery which always overhung her history. As Scott says: “Her face, her form, have been so deeply impressed upon the imagination, that, even at the distance of nearly three centuries, it is unnecessary to remind the most ignorant and uninformed reader of the striking traits which characterize that remarkable countenance, which seems at once to combine our ideas of the majestic, the pleasing, and the brilliant, leaving us to doubt whether they express most happily the queen, the beauty, or the accomplished woman. Even those who feel themselves compelled to believe all, or much, of what her enemies[344] laid to her charge, can not think without a sigh, upon a countenance expressive of anything rather than the foul crimes with which she was charged when living, and which still continue to shade, if not to blacken her memory. That brow, so truly open and regal—those eyebrows, so regularly graceful, which yet were saved from the charge of regular insipidity by the beautiful effect of the hazel eyes which they overarched, and which seem to utter a thousand histories—the nose, with all its Grecian precision of outline—the mouth, so well proportioned, so sweetly formed, as if designed to speak nothing but what was delightful to hear—the dimpled chin, the stately swan-like neck form a countenance, the like of which we know not to have existed in any other character moving in that class of life where the actresses as well as the actors command general and undivided attention; and no small instance it is of the power of beauty, that her charms should have remained the subject not merely of admiration, but of warm and chivalrous interest, after the lapse of such a length of time.”

“The Monastery,” which comes first in historic order, serves merely as a threshold to “The Abbot.” The general plan of the story was to closely associate two characters in that contentious age holding different views of the Reformation, both sincere, and both dedicated to the support of their own separate beliefs. The scene is laid in the valley of the Tweed, in the neighborhood of Melrose Abbey, which enjoyed for many years, even in the midst of border and national warfare, the immunities of peace. In the portrait of Julian Avenal we recall the fierce Laird of Black Ormiston, the friend and confidant of Bothwell, and his associate in Darnley’s murder. The White Lady of Avenal—a sort of astral spirit, neither fairy nor Brownie, but made up of many elements more Persian than Gothic—can only be excused as part and parcel of the superstition of the times; and the portrayal of Sir Percy Shafton is in no way edifying, save as a satire upon that dudish portion of humanity, the excrescence of that school of Euphuists which took its rise with Sir John Lilly in the age of Elizabeth, and blossomed out again but yesterday in the full blown sunflower of modern estheticism. It is remarkable how history repeats itself, not only in noble deeds and high daring, but also in the social expression of dress and language.

In “The Abbot” we find the government of Scotland almost entirely in the hands of the Protestant party; the queen a captive in Lochleven Castle; the regent Murray, half brother of the queen, at once governor and dictator. The monasteries are demolished, in some cases through religious zeal, in other cases as an act of jealousy and policy; the bold spirit of Knox, which dared to raise its voice in behalf of individual rights and conscience, permeates Scotland. The pulpit becomes a powerful engine for affecting the masses. The Catholics look to France and to Spain for help, and the Protestants to Holland. The prophecy is literally fulfilled: “Nation divided against nation, brother against brother;” the outgrowth of that uncompromising religion of Right, which came not to “bring peace, but a sword.”

The first pages of “The Abbott” portray life in the feudal castle of Julian Avenal, a retainer of the Protestant regent. In the strict character of Minister Warden we have a sketch of the preacher of the period, thoroughly in earnest, exceedingly austere, who seldom jested, believing that “life was not lent to us to be expended in idle mirth, which resembles the crackling of thorns under the pot.” We see the ruins of costly shrines and sainted springs, and, in the midst of desolation, hear the eloquent lamentations of mourners pouring out their sorrow like the prophets and poets of old over their lost Jerusalem. We come upon a party of mummers, headed by the “Abbot of Unreason,” desecrating the high altar of St. Mary, turning the ritual of the church into ridicule, emphasizing a custom which was not wholly discouraged at stated intervals by the clergy in their day of power; a custom inherited perhaps from the Roman carnival, tolerated alike by the Greek and Romish churches. We are conveyed to Edinburgh, then as now, the most picturesque city of Europe; we see the intrigues of the court; we witness a melée in the streets between the Leslies and the Seytons, and it is not until we are half through the volume that we are introduced to Queen Mary, the Captive, about whom the whole interest of the story gathers. We see her in an island fortress of the Douglas, confronting with haughty eloquence the stern Melville, Ruthven and Lindsey, sent by the regent to obtain her signature to renounce all right to the throne of Scotland. We hear the plea of both sides distinctly stated, and transcribe a passage which throws light upon the question at issue:

We see the queen at last, under compulsion, and with hasty indifference, subscribe the roll of parchment; the boat containing the three envoys turns its bow toward Edinburgh, and the square tower of Lochleven holds a desolate heart, and a queen without a throne. The winter months go by, a long monotony, now and then relieved by sharp encounters of wit and sarcasm between Queen Mary and her keeper, the Lady Douglas, proprietress of the castle. We hear among her attendants whisperings of escape from the hated prison; we see George Douglas, moved by her beauty and gracious art, no longer her jailer, but a friend aiding in the attempt; we see in Scott’s graphic description the most minute and accurate account presented in any narrative or history, of the successful adventure after the first failure. We see her in that disastrous battle at Langside, where her followers were driven back by the regent’s forces, and hear the queen’s sad words, more sad because so literally true, as she pronounced them over the dead body of the young Douglas: “Look—look at him well,” said the queen, “thus has it been with all who loved Mary Stuart!—The royalty of Francis, the wit of Chastelar, the power and gallantry of the gay Gordon, the melody of Rizzio, the portly form and youthful grace of Darnley, the bold address and courtly manners of Bothwell—and now the deep-devoted passion of the noble Douglas—naught could save them—they looked on the wretched Mary, and to have loved her was crime enough to deserve early death! No sooner had the victims formed a kind thought of me, than the poisoned cup, the[345] ax and block, the dagger, the mine, were ready to punish them for casting away affection on such a wretch as I am!”

Defeated at every point the crownless queen turns for deliverance to Queen Elizabeth. In her great extremity it did not occur to her that she might risk her liberty and perhaps imperil her life by asking the hospitality of England. Ere she took the fatal step her friends and counselors kneeled at her feet and entreated her to go anywhere but there; but their entreaties were in vain; she crossed the Solway, gave herself up to the English deputy warden, and was lodged for the time in Carlisle Castle. Elizabeth, as Scott says in his “Tales of a Grandfather,” had two courses in her power, alike just and lawful; to afford her the succor petitioned for, or the liberty to depart from her dominions as she had entered them, voluntarily. But great as she was upon other occasions of her reign, she acted on the present from mean and envious motives. She saw in the fugitive a princess who possessed a right of succession to the crown of England. She remembered that Mary had been her rival in accomplishments; and certainly she did not forget that she was her superior in youth and beauty. Elizabeth treated her not as a sister and friend in distress, but as an enemy over whom circumstances had given her power. She determined upon reducing her to the condition of a captive. It is a question whether Elizabeth had a right to take cognizance of the charges against Mary. As a matter of fact her guilt was not proven when she demanded her first trial, and Elizabeth so states it over her own signature; but Mary was transported from castle to castle until the ax and the block at Fotheringay concluded the tragedy of her life.

As in “The Abbot,” so in “Kenilworth” the principal personage of the story—Queen Elizabeth—is not introduced until the story is well under way. In fact, we are introduced to the characters in the inverse ratio of their prominence. The curtain rises on a swaggering soldier of fortune in a country inn—a fit accomplice and lackey of Sir Richard Varney, perhaps the most despised villain in the pages of fiction. Anthony Foster comes next, a snivelling hypocrite, willing to coin soul and body for money. The stately Earl of Leicester, and his noble rival, the Earl of Essex, with gorgeous retinue pass along the stage before us; and the palace doors open at last upon Queen Elizabeth and her court. In the meantime we have caught glimpses, through the prison doors, of Anthony Foster’s dilapidated mansion, of the poor deluded Amy Robsart—the wedded but not acknowledged wife of the Earl of Leicester; we note the grief and manhood of her former lover, Tressilian, vainly entreating her to return to her home, where her broken-hearted father sits by his lonely fireside, too wretched and broken in spirit to find relief in tears.

The story of “Amy Robsart,” as here presented, is almost literally true to fact, although Scott has introduced dramatic incidents not found in the history. In the introduction Scott quotes at length the foundation of the story, as given in Ashmole’s “Antiquities of Berkshire:”

“Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, a very goodly personage, and singularly well featured, being a great favorite to Queen Elizabeth, it was thought and commonly reported, that had he been a bachelor or widower, the queen would have made him her husband; to this end to free himself of all obstacles, he commands his wife to repose herself at Anthony Foster’s house; and also prescribed to Sir Richard Varney, that he should first attempt to poison her, and if that did not take effect, then by any other way whatsoever to despatch her. The same accusation has been adopted and circulated by the author of Leicester’s Commonwealth, and alluded to in the Yorkshire Tragedy.”

Scott also quotes an old ballad, written by Mickle, called “Cumnor Hall,” in which the fair Amy bewails her fate:

We are introduced to Queen Elizabeth at the palace gate as she takes her royal barge for a morning’s trip upon the Thames: and it is here that Scott introduces with grace the well-known incident of Sir Walter Raleigh placing his mantle upon the ground before the queen to save Her Majesty’s slippers. We see her attempting to reconcile the difference between Leicester and Essex, who bow for the time before her haughty will; and we wonder that her proud spirit, which brooked no opposition, could stop in the midst of state affairs to receive as flattery an allusion to tresses of gold braided in a metaphor of sunbeams; while Leicester, tottering upon the precipice of infamy, by false eloquence brings a blush to her cheek, and conjures her to strip him of all his power, but to leave him the name of her servant. “Take from the poor Dudley,” he exclaimed, “all that your bounty has made him, and bid him be the poor gentleman he was when your grace first shone on him; leave him no more than his cloak and his sword, but led him still boast he has—what in word and deed he never forfeited—the regard of his adored Queen and mistress!”

But it is in the Halls of Kenilworth, where we trace in Scott’s picture at once the greatness and weakness of the woman and the queen. We are introduced to the stately castle which Scott describes with the love of an antiquarian—a lordly structure composed of a huge pile of magnificent castellated buildings, apparently of different ages, revealing in its armorial bearings “the emblems of mighty chiefs who had long passed away and, whose history, could Ambition have lent ear to it, might have read a lesson to the haughty favorite, who had now acquired and was augmenting the fair domain.”

Amid these princely halls, where the clocks for seven days point to the hour of noon as if to indicate one continual banquet, we trace the misery of those who hang on princes’ favors. The picture is a revelation of the frailty of all human aspirations; and we close the volume recalling the words of Burns:

Is there not an evening to every day? Comes not the morning back again after the most terrific night? Sometimes I have thought—the sun can never rise again; and yet it came back again with its early dawn. The time passes cold and indifferent over us—it knows nothing of our sorrows—it knows nothing of our joys; it leads us with ice-cold hand deeper and deeper into the labyrinth; at last allows us to stand still—we look around and can not guess where we are.—Tieck.

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ASTRONOMY OF THE HEAVENS FOR MARCH.

By Prof. M. B. GOFF.

THE SUN.

This month, on the 1st, we can obtain mean or clock time by making our clocks indicate 12:12⅓ p. m. when the sun crosses our meridian; on the 15th, by making our time pieces 12:09 p. m.; and on the 31st, by making them show 12:04 p. m. On the 1st, 15th, and 31st, the sun rises at 6:33, 6:11, and 5:44 a. m., and sets at 5:52, 6:07, and 6:24 p. m., respectively. And on the same dates, daybreak occurs at 4:58, 4:35, and 4:04 a. m., and end of evening twilight at 7:27, 7:43, and 8:03 p. m., respectively. On the 19th, at 36½ minutes after 11:00 p. m. the sun “crosses the line” (that is, on its journey northward, crosses the equator), and we are accustomed to say that it enters the sign Aries, and spring commences. During this month we have also one of the five eclipses of this year. This one occurs on the 27th, and on such a portion of the earth’s surface as to render it invisible to most of our readers, being confined to a region within 42° of the North Pole, and embracing the North Pole, North Sea, Baltic Sea, Gulf of Bothnia, and the Scandinavian Peninsula. In Washington mean time, it begins on the 27th at 10:20.4 a. m., in longitude 9° 28.2′ east, latitude 54° 11.5′ north; greatest eclipse occurs at 11:10.5 a. m., in longitude 7° 50.1′ west, latitude 72° 5′ north; and eclipse ends at six minutes after 12:00 p. m., in longitude 103° 54.3′ west, latitude 87° 12.8′ north. This eclipse will excite little or no interest among astronomers, since the shadow cast by the moon hides only a small portion (about ⅐) of the sun’s disc, and will not afford any opportunity for observing the sun’s corona and the colored prominences (seen till lately only in total eclipses) which have been a source of so much interest and speculation to the scientific world. It may, indeed, not be saying too much to assert that hereafter eclipses of the sun may be looked upon as something to exercise the mathematical ability of students, and not as a means of obtaining a knowledge of the physical properties of that body. For it has already been demonstrated that the colored prominences may be examined at any time when the sun can be seen; and it is believed that Mr. Huggins has accomplished the difficult feat of photographing the corona, so that it too may be scrutinized at leisure. The importance of this discovery can be approximately estimated when we remember that, as Mr. Proctor asserts, “adding together all the minutes of total solar eclipse during an entire century, we obtain a period of about eight days during which the corona can be observed.”

THE MOON

Offers nothing special this month, except as noted, its interference with the sun’s light. Her phases will occur in the following order: 1st quarter, on the 4th, at 8:25 a. m.; full moon on 11th, at 2:32 p. m.; last quarter on 19th, at 6:05 p. m., and new moon on 27th, at 12:39 p. m. In case we have failed to set our clock by the sun, we may do so by the moon, which will cross the meridian on the 1st, at 3:36 p. m.; on the 15th, at 2:37 a. m., and on the 31st, at 4:20 p. m. On the 16th, at 11:18 p. m., she will be furthest from the earth; on the 28th, at 8:18 p. m., nearest the earth; and on the 4th, farthest from the horizon; that is in latitude 41° 30′, the elevation is 67° 19′.

Inferior Planets.

Inferior planets are those whose orbits are inside that of the earth. The first, whose mean distance from the sun may be put down as thirty-five millions of miles, is called

MERCURY.

It has one peculiarity; it twinkles like a star. In this respect it differs from all the other planets. Its nearness to the sun has led some astronomers to believe that the temperature is very uneven, that “every six weeks on an average there is a change of temperature nearly equal to the difference between frozen quicksilver and melted lead.” But later discoveries indicate that temperature dependent on the sun’s rays is influenced much more by the media through which the rays pass, or by which they are absorbed, than the proximity of the sun; and hence Professor Langley argues that Mercury might be a globe on which people like ourselves could have the proper degree of heat to sustain life. Our calendar for Mercury for this month is as follows: On the 1st, it rises at 5:50 a. m.; on 15th, at 5:54 a. m.; and on 31st, at 5:57 a. m. On the same dates it sets as follows: 3:52, 4:52 and 6:25 p. m. On the 30th it will be in superior conjunction with the sun, that is, in a line with the sun and earth, but having the sun between it and the earth. Up to this last date it will be morning star; after that, evening star. On the 26th, at 9:11 p. m., it will be 3° 25′ south of the moon. The only other inferior planet with which we are acquainted is called Venus.

VENUS

Will increase in brilliancy every day this month; but will not shine its brightest till about the third of June. Its time for setting will be as follows: On the 1st, 8:58 p. m.; on the 15th, at 9:28 p. m.; and on the 31st, at 10:03 p. m. Its motion will be direct, and amount to 34° 34′ 37.35″. Its diameter will increase from 14.6″ at the beginning of the month to 17.8″ on the 31st. On the 27th, at 9 p. m., it will be in conjunction with and 3° 34′ north of Neptune.

Superior Planets.

Superior planets are those whose orbits are outside that of the earth, and which are as a consequence, farther from the sun than the earth is. So far as we now know, all the planets except Mercury and Venus, are in the class “superior.” The first of these going outwardly from the sun is called

MARS,

Whose bright ruddy face, growing smaller every day, as it gradually moves away from us and the sun, is still distinctly visible, being above the horizon from 2:19 p. m., on the 1st, to 5:11 a. m., on the 2nd; from 1:21 p. m., on the 15th, to 4:11 a. m., on the 16th; and from 12:30 p. m. on the 31st, to 3:12 a. m. on April 1st. During the month its diameter decreases from 13.2′ to 10″. Up to the 12th, its motion is retrograde 56′ 36.6″. From that date to the end of the month, its motion is 1° 59′ 6.3″ direct. On the 12th it is stationary; or, at least, appears so. On the 22nd, it reaches its farthest point from the sun. It had often been surmised that Mars had a satellite; but it was not until after the 11th of August, 1877, that this supposition gave place to certainty. On the night of the date mentioned, Professor Asaph Hall discovered, a little east of the planet, a small object, which proved on further investigation to be a small body making a revolution in about twenty-nine hours, or as afterward appeared, in thirty hours eighteen minutes. Soon after was seen still closer to Mars an object which proved to be another satellite making a revolution about its primary in seven hours and thirty-nine minutes. These satellites not only make their revolutions in the shortest time, but are the least known heavenly bodies; the diameter of the outer one being estimated by Professor Newcomb at from five to twenty miles, and that of the inner at from ten to forty miles, the entire surface being little if any larger than the “ranches” of some of our western “farmer,” or “cattle kings.”

Between Mars and Jupiter, there was in 1801 discovered a small planet to which was given the name Ceres; in 1802, another named Pallas; in 1804 another named Juno, and in 1807, another named Vesta. From 1807 to 1845, discovery in that region seemed to cease; but since 1845 not less than two hundred and twenty of these bodies have been found and named, and are now called by the general name

[347]

ASTEROIDS, OR PLANETOIDS.

Of these none, except perhaps occasionally Ceres and Vesta, can be seen by the unaided eye. This is on account of their small size, their diameters ranging from fifty to two hundred and twenty-eight miles. The theory respecting these bodies is that they are portions of a larger one that in some manner became disintegrated, and each part obeying the laws of gravitation, formed itself into a separate sphere.

JUPITER,

Like Mars, this month will decrease somewhat in brilliancy, his diameter diminishing in appearance from 41.6″ to 38″. On the 20th he will be stationary. Up to that date he will have a retrograde motion amounting to 34′ 5.85″; and from the 22nd to the end of the month a direct motion of 13′ 37.9″. On the 1st, he rises at 1:48 in the afternoon; sets next morning at 4:26; on the 15th, rises at 12:50 p. m., setting next morning at 3:50, and on the 31st rises at 11:48 a. m., setting at 2:58 a. m., April 1st. On the 7th, at 8:16 p. m., is 5° 54′ north of the moon.

SATURN,

Though still a prominent object in the evening in the west, is fast approaching a time when its beauties will be rendered invisible by a greater luminary. Only temporarily, however; for next year it will emerge and shine with increased splendor. For this month, on the 2nd, it sets at 12:38 a. m., and on the 15th, at 11:47 p. m.; and on the 31st, at 10:50 p. m. Its motion is direct, and amounts to 2° 16′ 58″. Diameter on 1st, 17.2″; on 31st, 16.4″. On 3rd, at 2:08 p. m., it will be 1° 42′ north of the moon; and on the 30th, at 11:57 p. m., 2° 4′ north of the moon.

URANUS,

On the 16th, places itself directly on the other side of the world from the sun; in other words is in “opposition” to, or 180° from, the sun. Its diameter remains constant during the month (3.8″). On the 1st, 15th, and 31st, it rises at 7:00, 6:02, and 5:38 p. m., respectively. It sets on the 2nd, 16th, and April 1st, at 7:14, 6:18, and 5:14 a. m., respectively.

NEPTUNE

Will be evening star during the month, setting at the following times: On the 1st, at 11:22 p. m.; on the 15th, at 10:29 p. m.; and on the 31st, at 9:28 p. m. Its motion is direct, and about 45′. Its diameter, 2.6″. On the 2nd, at 12:30 p. m., 27′ north of moon; on the 29th, at 9:06 p. m., 38′ north of moon, making, as does also Saturn, two conjunctions with the moon in one month. On the 27th, about 9 p. m., it will be in conjunction with and 3° 34′ south of Venus.

THE FIR TREE.

By LUELLA CLARK.

There is a pride which belongs to every rightly-constituted mind, though it is scarcely to be called pride, but rather a proper estimate of self. It is, properly speaking, the elevation of mind which arises when we feel that we have mastered some noble idea and made it our own. Man is proud of the idea only so far as he feels that it has become part of himself.—Von Humboldt.

ARDENT SPIRITS.

By B. W. RICHARDSON, M.D.

It is the business of science to take up the pint and a half of ardent spirit which, split up through fifteen pints, gives all the zest and consequence to the thirteen and a half pints of colored water.

Taking this ardent spirit into one of her crucibles or laboratories, Science compares it with other products on the shelves there, and soon she finds its niche in which it fits truly. On the shelf where it fits she has ranged a number of other spirits. There is chloroform, ether, sweet spirit of nitre, and some other fluids, very useful remedies in the hands of the physician. These, she sees, are the children of the spirit, are made, in fact, from it. On the same shelf she has another set of spirits; there is wood spirit, there is potato spirit, there is a substance which looks like spermaceti; and these she sees are all members of the same family, not children, this time, of the ardent spirit, but brothers or sisters, each one constructed from the same elements, in the same relative proportions and on the same type. Passionless, having no predilection for any one object in the universe except the truth, she writes down the ardent spirit as having its proper place in a group of chemical substances which are distinctly apart from other substances she knows of, on which men and animals live, and which are called by the name of foods or sustainers of life. She says all the members of the spirit family are, unless judiciously and even skilfully used, inimical to life. They produce drowsiness, sleep, death. In the hands of the skilful they may be safe as medicines; in the hands of the unskilful they are unsafe, they are poisons. To this rule there is not one exception amongst them. There can be no demur, no doubt now on this particular point; it may be a blow to poetry of passion; it may make the ancient and modern bacchanalian look foolish to tell him that wine is a chemical substance mixed and diluted with water, and that beer and spirits are all in the same category; but such is the fact. In computing the influence of wine, men have no longer to discuss anything more than the influence of a definite chemical compound, one of a family of chemical compounds called the alcohols—the second of a family group, differing in origin from the first of the series, which is got from wood, in that it is got from grain, and is called ethylic, or common alcohol, pure spirit of wine. But now the world turns properly to ask another question. Admitted all that is said, why, after all, should the practice of mankind in the use of this spirit be bad? Man is not guided solely by reason; passion may lead him sometimes, perchance, in the true path. Tell us then, O Science! why this ardent spirit may not still be drunken; why may it not be a part of the life of man?

To this question the answer of Science is straight and to the point. In the universe of life, she says, man forms but a fractional part. All the sea is full of life; all the woods are full of life; all the air is full of life; on the surface of the earth man possesses, as companions or as enemies, herds and herds of living forms. Of that visible life he forms but a minute speck, and beyond that visible life there is the world invisible to common view, with its myriads of forms unseen, which the most penetrating microscope has not reached. Again, there are other forms of life; plants innumerable, from gigantic Wellingtonias to lichens and mosses, and beneath these myriads more so infinitely minute that the microscope fails to reach them. This is all life, life which goes through its set phases in due form; grows in health and strength and beauty, every part of it, from highest to lowest living grade, without a shade of the use of this strong spirit. What evidence can be more conclusive that alcohol is not included in the scheme of life?

And yet, if you want more evidence, it is yours. You try man by himself. Every child of woman born, if he be not perverted, lives without alcohol, grows up without it; spends—and this[348] is a vital point—spends the very happiest part of its life without it; gains its growing strength and vitality without it; feels no want for it. The course of its life is, at the most, on the average of the best lives, sixty years, of which the first fifteen, in other words, the first fourth, are the most dangerous; yet it goes through that fourth without the use of this agent. But if in the four stages of life it can go through the first and most critical stage without alcohol, why can not it traverse the remaining three? Is Nature so unwise in her doings, so capricious, so uncertain, that she withholds a giver of life from the helpless, and supplies it only to the helpful? Some men, forming whole nations, have never heard of it; some have heard of it and have abjured its use. In England and America, at this time, there are probably near upon six millions of persons who have abjured this agent. Do they fall or fail in value of life from the abjuration? The evidence, as we shall distinctly see by and by, is all the other way. There are, lastly, some who are forced to live without the use of this agent. Do they fall or die in consequence? There is not a single instance in illustration.

On all these points, Science, when she is questioned earnestly, and interpreted justly, is decisive and firm, and if you question her in yet another direction, she is not less certain. You ask her for a comparison of alcohol and of man, in respect to the structure of both, and her evidence is as the sun at noon in its clearness. She has taken the body of man to pieces; she has learned the composition of its every structure—skin, muscle, bone, viscera, brain, nervous cord, organs of sense! She knows of what these parts are formed, and she knows from whence the components came. She finds in the muscles fibrine; it came from the fibrine of flesh, or from the gluten or albumen of the plants on which the man had fed. She finds tendon and cartilage, and earthy matter of the skeleton; they were from the vegetable kingdom. She finds water in the body in such abundance that it makes up seven parts out of eight of the whole, and that she knows the source of readily enough. She finds iron, that she traces from the earth. She finds fat, and that she traces to sugar and starch. In short, she discovers, in whatever structure she searches, the origin of the structure. But as a natural presence, she finds no ardent spirit there in any part or fluid. Nothing made from spirit. Did she find either, she would say the body is diseased, and, it may be, was killed by that which is found.

Sometimes, in the bodies of men, she discovers the evidences of some conditions that are not natural. She compares these bodies with the bodies of other men, or with the bodies of inferior animals, as sheep and oxen, and finds that the unnatural appearances are peculiar to persons who have taken alcohol, and are indications of new structural changes which are not proper, and which she calls disease.

Thus, by two tests, Science tries the comparison between alcohol and man. She finds in the body no structure made from alcohol; she finds in the healthy body no alcohol; she finds in those who have taken alcohol changes of the structure, and those are changes of disease. By all these proofs she declares alcohol to be entirely alien to the structure of man. It does not build up the body; it undermines and destroys the building.

One step more. If you question Science on the comparison which exists between foods and alcohol, she gives you facts on every hand. She shows you a natural and all-sufficient and standard food—she calls it milk. She takes it to pieces; she says it is made up of caseine, for the construction of muscular and other active tissues; of sugar and fat, for supplying fuel to the body for the animal warmth; of salts for the earthy, and of water for the liquid parts. This is a perfect standard. Holds it any comparison with alcohol? Not a jot. The comparison is the same with all other natural foods.

Man, going forth to find food for his wants, discovers it in various substances, but only naturally, in precisely such substances, and in the same proportions of such substances as exist in the standard food on which he first fed. Alcohol, alien to the body of man, is alike alien to the natural food of man.

Some of you will perhaps ask: Is every use of food comprised in the building up of the body? Is not some food used as the fuel of the engine is used, not to produce material, but to generate heat and motion, to burn and to be burned? The answer is as your question suggests. Some food is burned in the body, and by that means the animal fire—the calor vitalis, or vital heat, of the ancients—is kept alive. Then, say you: May not alcohol burn? We take starch, we take sugar into the body, as foods, but there are no structure of starch and sugar, only some products derived from them which show that they have been burned. May not alcohol in like manner be burned and carried away in new form of construction of matter?

What says Science to this inquiry? Her answer is simple. To burn and produce no heat is improbable, if not impossible; and if probable or even possible, is unproductive of service for the purpose of sustaining the animal powers. Test, then, the animal body under the action of alcohol, and see your findings. Your findings shall prove that, under the most favorable conditions, the mean effect of the alcohol will be to reduce the animal temperature through the mass of the body. There will be a glow of warmth on the surface of the body. Truly! but that is cooling of the body. It is from an extra sheet of warm blood brought from the heart into weakened vessels of the surface, to give up its heat and leave the whole body chilled, with the products of combustion lessened, the nervous tone lowered, the muscular power reduced, the quickened heart jaded, the excited brain infirm, and the mind depressed and enfeebled. Alcohol, alien to the structure of man and to the food of man, is alike alien to living strength of man, and to the fires which maintain his life.

ECCENTRIC AMERICANS.

By COLEMAN E. BISHOP.

V.—A METHODIST DON QUIXOTE.

The place of Lorenzo Dow in the American pulpit is peculiar. He might be called “The Great Disowned.” He passed his life a wandering, outcast preacher; did a great work alone, generally unacknowledged by any religious body; opposed by the societies and maligned by many of the clergy, whom he powerfully aided; and in death his name and work would have sunk into undeserved oblivion, but for his own writings in which, with prophetic instinct, he preserved the record of his own sacrifices and successes, and the scant recognition accorded them. He also recorded with impartial fidelity his own “fantastic tricks” and erratic independence, which furnish the only excuse for the treatment he received. He called himself a Methodist, and refused to work inside church lines. A zealous, even bigoted sectarian; he preached in open defiance of all denominational polity. He was a clerical bushwhacker.

The time in which Dow flourished was a remarkable one politically, commercially and religiously. It was the formative age of the Constitution and of the American Republic. It saw the creation of American commerce and the opening up of the continent to settlement. And it has been well called “the heroic age of American Methodism.”

As the sense of dependence on the mother country, and of subjection to royal authority wore off, the people began to grow rapidly in mental and moral stature. The population which had timidly hugged the Atlantic coast, as if afraid to lose sight of the British navy, now turned its eyes inland, its thoughts over the whole world. The pioneer spirit awoke. The “Northwest Territory” was organized for settlement; Louisiana and Florida were purchased and the great Mississippi[349] basin was opened up. Indian nations were subdued and “city lots were staked for sale above old Indian graves.” A second war was fought with Great Britain, to drive her from our path of advance on land or sea. Settlers in a thousand directions ramified the wilderness with the nerves and arteries of civilization. The growth of men’s ideas was to correspond with expansion of territory—for “the spirit grows with its allotted spaces.” It became evident, even in the first generation of the Republic, that a new people had been raised up—almost as Roderick Dhu’s men sprang from the brake—to subjugate a continent and to create sovereign states out of the rudiments of empire which yet lay plastic and warm in the wilderness.

The spirit of unrest, of adventure, of expansion, seized all classes and occupations; and the pioneers of the Cross pressed into the wilderness side by side with the bearers of the ax and rifle.

Not the least remarkable feature of the evolution of this people was the deepening of the religious spirit. Wars, indeed, are generally followed by seasons of revival; but now the sobered thoughts of the American people seemed to increase as they receded from the war period, and realized the burdens of a new nationality, of self-government, and of continental subjugation which they had taken upon themselves. They had not only cut loose from the mother country, but had cut loose from all the ancient traditions of government and the experience of mankind. Responsibility brought seriousness; daily perils inclined men’s thoughts to hear whoever would discourse of eternal things. Thus the movement of the time at once prepared the way for the work of gospel spreading, and raised up strong men to do it.

One of the young men who was “set on fire of freedom” to this work was Lorenzo Dow. Never was more unpromising candidate for the ministry. He was eighteen years of age (1795), thin, angular, ungainly, eccentric in manner, illiterate, diffident, and, worst of all, an invalid, supposed to be a consumptive. No wonder the proposition of this sick, gawky boy to go upon circuit without any preparation met with opposition from his parents and brethren, was discouraged by those who dared not contradict his solemn protestations of an irresistible call, and was rejected by all the authorities of a church most liberal in its requirements of licentiates of any then extant.

“I do not believe God has called you to preach,” bluntly declared the minister in charge after having Dow try to preach, and seeing him faint dead away in the pulpit.

“Why?” demanded the weeping candidate.

“For five reasons.—(1) your health; (2) your gifts; (3) your grace; (4) your learning; (5) sobriety.”

“Enough, enough!” exclaimed the boy, aghast. “Lord, what am I but a poor worm of the dust?”

Just the same, all this did not change his determination one whit. Nay, in a foot-note to this incident in his book he makes this finishing reference to his critic of this time with evident satisfaction: “He is since expelled the connection.”

Those who opposed him little knew of the reckless earnestness of his character—the trait which lay at the bottom of his whole remarkable career, and brought him success in spite of all his disabilities and all the external chances against him. He seemed to have accepted as his all-sufficient credentials the Lord’s charge to his disciples in the tenth chapter of Matthew; accepted it as literally and confidently as if it had been delivered specially to a sickly young convert in Connecticut about the close of the eighteenth century, instead of having been given to certain other illiterates in Judea eighteen centuries before. He always took the whole Bible literally, and acted and talked it in dead earnest. So providing neither gold, silver, brass nor scrip in his purse, nor two coats, nor shoes, nor staff for his journey, he started to “go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” He stood not on the order of his going, but went at once. If any would receive him, well; if not, worse for them, as saith Matthew x:14. He asked no gifts nor collections; rejected most of that which was voluntarily offered—giving frequent offense thereby—taking only what would suffice for the day. Sleeping in woods and under fences was small privation to him, for he never slept in beds, any way; the floor or a bench was his choice, on account of the asthma, he said. He was used to long fasts, and would travel fifty miles and preach half a dozen times without food. Indeed, his defiance of all precautions against sickness, and reversal of all physical conditions gave him rather a grewsome reputation with the simple folk among whom the invalid exploited, and some were afraid to entertain him. What a saint he would have made in those good old times when asceticism, energy, fanaticism, piety and dirt were of the popular odor of sanctity! A modern Peter the Hermit on a crusade!

To talk and to walk were his chief functions, and he rarely intermitted either. At that time the qualifications of a circuit preacher were said to be covered by these points: “Is he converted; is he qualified to preach; has he a horse?” Lorenzo had no need of the last of these qualifications. He was the champion pedestrian of the day. He could out-travel the public conveyances and tire out any horse over such roads. He was known throughout the south as “the walking minister.” But through New England, New York and Canada his quaint figure, queer actions and rude and vehement exhortations soon got him the general sobriquet of “Crazy Dow.” We read in his journal:

Again:

Hardly to be wondered at, one would say. At one time he got an audience into a school house, and planting his back against the door so they could not escape, preached at them two hours, hot and strong. At another time he hired a woman for a dollar to give up one day to seeking her soul’s salvation; and again, following a young woman on the road importuning her to seek God, when she took refuge in a house; he sat on the steps, declaring he would not let her proceed till she had promised to pray. His nervous impatience of rest often impelled him to steal from a hospitable house at dead of night, and at daylight he would be found in another county drumming up a meeting.

These eccentricities, perhaps, brought him as much success as opposition; but the chief source of his troubles came from his independence, and even defiance of his own church. His impatience of limitations, regulations and authority of any kind caused an irrepressible conflict between him and the church from the beginning to the end of his labor. Four times the first year of his ministry did they try in vain to send him home. Though constantly, and with many tears, besieging conferences, bishops and elders for license, as soon as a circuit of appointments was given him, he would fly the track and be found traveling on another minister’s round, as complacent as a hen setting on the wrong nest. Regularity was death to him. Once he had been persuaded to take a circuit, and he says, “I had no sooner consented to try for a year, the Lord being my helper, than an awful distress came over my mind.” He staid the year, with an occasional escapade into other circuits, but says of it: “Scarce any blessing on my labors, and my mind depressed from day to day.” Yet he insisted, to the day of his death, that he was a Methodist preacher, and refused indignantly all propositions of his admirers and converts to organize[350] a following of his own—“Dowites,” as they would call themselves, “Split-off Methodists,” as he dubbed all such schismatics. When his presiding elder, the renowned Jesse Lee, sent him injunctions against irregular traveling, under pain of expulsion, he replied to the messenger: “It does not belong to Jesse Lee or any other man to say whether I shall preach or not, for that is to be determined between God and my own soul. It only belongs to the Methodists to say whether I shall preach in their connection.”

“But,” said his monitor, “What will you call yourself? The Methodists will not own you, and if you take that name you’ll be advertised in the public papers as an impostor.”

“I shall call myself a friend to mankind,” said Dow, expansively.

“Oh,” exclaimed the advocate of regularity, “for the Lord’s sake—don’t! You are not capable of that charge—who is!”

One would think so, for Dow was at this time only eighteen years old, and the callowest fledgeling in all green New England. It was no use. This young eccentric would not work to any line. He obeyed only dreams, impulses and “impressions,” which he accepted as divine guidings. At one time they thought they had laid out for him in Canada a field sufficiently large, wild, unorganized and forbidding to give him “ample scope and verge enough” wherein to wander, preach and organize churches. It did seem that almost the whole boundless continent was his. But a continent has limitations. That thought tormented him. He tramped till he got to the edge, and then was seized with “a call” to carry the gospel into Ireland! and despite all remonstrance, opposition and threats he sailed for Ireland without a government passport, without church credentials of any kind, minus an overcoat and change of linen. Three dollars, a bag of biscuits, and unlimited confidence in his ability to “get through some way,” constituted his missionary outfit. His real reason for going, however, was the hope that a sea-voyage would improve his health, as he admits in his “Journal.”

Thereafter, wherever Dow pushed his peculiar mission he found the reputation of a schismatic and rebel against church authority had preceded him, and turned the Methodist clergy and laity against him, and generally closed their homes and houses of worship to him. This coldness, and sometimes enmity, he had to overcome before he could begin his work in any place. Nevertheless, he prosecuted it vigorously for over forty years with few interruptions, diverting all the converts of his ministry into the Methodist church that he could, and giving not only his services, but much of the proceeds of the sale of his books to that body. To the last he declared, like Wesley, “my parish is the world!” and extended his circuits to all parts of the Union, to Balize, the West Indies, and the United Kingdom. He would lay out routes of three or four thousand miles, covering appointments months or years ahead, and he rarely failed to appear on time or to find an audience awaiting him.

“The camp meeting era,” which began about the commencement of Dow’s ministry, was his great opportunity. These meetings were free, catholic, and welcomed all workers. They were the legitimate outcome of the religious necessities of the time. The land was ablaze from backwoods to sea-beech with that popular excitement which soon got the expressive name of “The Wildfire.” A host of preachers—Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers—went from camp to camp preaching, singing, exhorting. The meetings were going continuously. The country seemed to give up all other pursuits for religion. Twenty thousand often assembled at one place, coming hundreds of miles. One Granada, “the western poet,” wrote many “Pilgrim Songs,” rude but spirited, for camp meeting use, and these traveled, unprinted, on the air. That peculiar psychological phenomenon called “The Jerks,” appeared and spread like an epidemic. Penitents in this death-like trance were laid in long ranks under the trees and the weird torchlights, as if ready for interment. Three thousand fell in one night at Caneridge, Kentucky. It was common practice to prepare the camp meeting grounds by cutting all the saplings about six feet from the ground, leaving the stumps for the infected ones to grasp, to keep them from falling, and Dow records that the ground around them was torn up as if horses had been hitched there. At times a sudden influence would come over the multitude, which would strike preachers, singers, mourners and listeners speechless, so that not a word could be spoken for a period—a hush more awful and inexplicable than the jerks or the shoutings.

Into this work Dow plunged with the abandon of a knight-errant, and with wonderful success. His thin, skeleton frame, pale, sharp face, luminously black eyes, long hair, curling to his waist, sharp, strident voice, fierce, jerky sentences, qualified him to add intensity to the prevalent excitement. And he was fond of appealing to the fears and superstitions of humanity. He was full of dire predictions. The world was in travail for the last day. Napoleon was wading knee-deep in the blood of Europe. The last vial of wrath seemed to have been poured out upon the earth. The prophecies and the apocalypse were drawn on for texts, which he used literally. Any local calamity—and a long list of sudden or accidental deaths within his ken—were worked upon the minds of his hearers, as links in the chain of these awful portents. If there was any “scare” in a man or woman or child, he’d frighten them to their knees. He used the argumentum ad hominem liberally, and if there were a conspicuous atheist reprobate or Calvinist in the audience—all of whom he classed together—the man was sure to be singled out for direct attack. A favorite device was to ask the audience to grant him a favor, and require all who were willing to do so to stand. When up, he would bind them to pray three times a day for a week for salvation, and abjure them not to add the perjury of a broken promise to their many other sins. This he exultantly calls “catching ’em in a covenant,” he expecting to make converts of nine-tenths of those who kept the promise into which they had been thus trapped.

The quality which gave Lorenzo Dow his greatest power with the “lower million”—to whom, after all, his mission went—was his courage. He was as bold as a man seeking martyrdom. His mien was defiant and his language brusque and aggressive. He belonged to the church militant by one of those contrasts which make the tender-hearted and sensitive seem rough and pugnacious. He fought against the wild beasts, on two legs, not at Ephesus, but from Boston to Balize. Rowdies dreaded his tongue more than any physical force, to which he never resorted. At New Kent, Va., a large billet of wood was hurled at him through a window. He immediately leaped through the window and gave chase to the assassins, yelling “Run, run, the Old Sam is after you.” Returning, he took the billet, cut the words “Old Sam” in it, and nailed it to a tree, installing it as “Old Sam’s monument.” He then proceeded logically to this demonstration: “You disturbers of the meeting, your conduct is condemnable—which expression means damnable; hence, to make the best of you, you are nothing but a pack of damned cowards, for not one of you durst show his head.” “Old Sam’s monument” stuck to the tree for years, and Dow records with great satisfaction that one of the ringleaders in this assault, a few months later had his nose bit off in a fight, and another was flung from a horse and had his neck broken—all of which he cited as redounding to the glory of God and the vindication of Lorenzo Dow.

On another occasion, being apprised of the approach of a mob of several hundreds, sworn to take his life, he left the pulpit, took his wife by the hand, and marched out to meet the enemy. When met, he mounted a stump and poured out upon them a tirade of hot reviling, the very boldness of which overawed them. The result was that he led them back to camp, and in a short time had the most of them on the anxious seat.

At times, however, his enemies and opponents were too much[351] for him. Detraction and back-biting hurt him worst, coldness cut him deeper than opposition. At one time, every man’s hand was so against him that he cut his way into the depths of a Mississippi cane swamp, built a hut, and there he and his wife lived recluse for months, surrounded by wolves and snakes, whose society he found less objectionable than that of the best friends he had in the country. One of the chief causes of enmity was jealousy, because he had made a little money by the sale of his writings. I fancy, too, that the popular feeling was mingled with one of contempt for a circuit-rider, who could be so easily beaten in a horse trade—a man who, equipped with a gallant mount on Monday morning, would turn up before the week was gone on a sorry, broken-down “plug,” against which he had paid beside more “boot” than his own horse was worth—could not command the respect of such people as he labored among.

It is hard to realize that the man is an invalid, working without fee or reward, unrecognized, and receiving more curses than coppers, of whose exploits we read such passages as these:

But we can not forget Peggy. Peggy was one of Lorenzo’s earliest converts, and throughout the most of his crusades was his faithful companion, through exposures and trials, through evil report and good report. She was the loveliest trait in his character. The courtship was unique. Let him tell it:

He continues:

When about going away, he remarked that he was going a circuit of a year and a half in the South.

An ardent popping of the question, surely! But she waited, and they were married, and were happy. He was a very devoted husband, subsidiary to his appointments. He was away preaching when both their children were born, and on one occasion left his wife among strangers in England, ill, so that her death was hourly expected, and their infant child also being ill and dying in another place, for a chance to preach. Neither parent attended the child’s funeral. Peggy never murmured. She was as consecrated to his work as he—perhaps more unselfishly so. Minister’s wives often are, I have heard.

Applying to Lorenzo Dow a purely intellectual analysis, I should say he was a man born with a morbidly nervous temperament, which only ceaseless activity could satisfy. Rest was physical and mental poison to him. This helps explain his extraordinary energy. Egotism took the form of conceit for haranguing and influencing masses of people, and of believing himself competent to fill a world-wide field. Consciousness of his own weakness and supersensitiveness led him to shrink from the restraint and criticisms and evade the duties of church affiliation. He wanted the notoriety and gratification of ministerial life, without its responsibilities; he could not take the responsibility of becoming the founder of a sect.

In short, as I read Lorenzo Dow, he had a mania for haranguing people, and he gratified it in the easiest and most popular way then open to an uncultured, lawless, irresponsible nature, with strong natural tendencies toward religious exercises. If Dow had been born seventy-five years later, he would have made a first-rate demagogue and communist, but it is doubtful if he could have got any one to hear him preach in these days. He served the time and purpose well, and reached hundreds whom perhaps no one else could have influenced.

His eccentric behavior was due partly to lack of education and culture, and partly to physical causes, viz.: A morbid, nervous organization, which could only keep keyed up by excitement. His seeming violence and extravagance were probably assumed at first to cover diffidence and sensitiveness, and afterward became habits of pulpit address. He was affectionate, honest, sincere and brave.

HYACINTH BULBS.

By GRANT ALLEN.

If we were not so familiar with the fact, we would think there were few queerer things in nature than the mode of growth followed by this sprouting hyacinth bulb on my mantelpiece here. It is simply stuck in a glass stand, filled with water, and there, with little aid from light or sunshine, it goes through its whole development, like a piece of organic clock-work as it is, running down slowly in its own appointed course. For a bulb does not grow as an ordinary plant grows, solely by means of carbon derived from the air under the influence of sunlight. What we call its growth we ought rather to call its unfolding. It contains within itself everything that is necessary for its own vital processes. Even if I were to cover it up entirely, or put it in a warm, dark room, it would sprout and unfold itself in exactly the same way as it does here in the diffused light of my study. The leaves, it is true, would be blanched and almost colorless, but the flowers would be just as brilliantly blue as these which are now scenting the whole room with their delicious fragrance. The question is, then, how can the hyacinth thus live and grow without the apparent aid of sunlight, on which all vegetation is ultimately based?

Of course, an ordinary plant, as everybody knows, derives all its energy or motive-power from the sun. The green leaf is the organ upon which the rays act. In its cells the waves of light propagated from the sun fall upon the carbonic acid which the leaves drink in from the air, and by their disintegrating power, liberate the oxygen while setting free the carbon,[352] to form the fuel and food-stuff of the plant. Side by side with this operation the plant performs another, by building up the carbon thus obtained into new combinations with the hydrogen obtained from its watery sap. From these two elements the chief constituents of the vegetable tissues are made up. Now the fact that they have been freed from the oxygen with which they are generally combined gives them energy, as the physicists call it, and, when they re-combine with oxygen, this energy is again given out as heat, or motion. In burning a piece of wood or a lump of coal, we are simply causing the oxygen to re-combine with these energetic vegetable substances, and the result is that we get once more the carbonic acid and water with which we started. But we all know that such burning yields not only heat, but also visible motion. This motion is clearly seen even in the draught of an ordinary chimney, and may be much more distinctly recognized in such a machine as the steam-engine.

At first sight, all this seems to have very little connection with hyacinth bulbs. Yet, if we look a little deeper into the question, we shall see that a bulb and an engine have really a great many points in common. Let us glance first at a somewhat simpler case, that of a seed, such as a pea or a grain of wheat. Here we have a little sack of starches and albumen laid up as nutriment for a sprouting plantlet. These rich food-stuffs were elaborated in the leaves of the parent pea, or in the tall haulms of the growing corn. They were carried by the sap into the ripening fruit, and there, through one of those bits of vital mechanism which we do not yet completely understand, they were selected and laid by in the young seed. When the pea or the grain of wheat begins to germinate, under the influence of warmth and moisture, a very slow combustion really takes place. Oxygen from the air combines gradually with the food-stuffs or fuels—call them which you will—contained in the seed. Thus heat is evolved, which in some cases can be easily measured with the thermometer, and felt by the naked hand—as, for example, in the malting of barley. At the same time motion is produced; and this motion, taking place in certain regular directions, results in what we call the growth of a young plant. In different seeds this growth takes different forms, but in all alike the central mechanical principle is the same; certain cells are raised visibly above the surface of the earth, and the motive-power which so raised them is the energy set free by the combination of oxygen with their starches and albumens. Of course, here, too, carbonic acid and water are the final products of the slow combustion. The whole process is closely akin to the hatching of an egg into a living chicken. But, as soon as the young plant has used up all the material laid by for it by its mother, it is compelled to feed itself just as much as the chicken when it emerges from the shell. The plant does this by unfolding its leaves to the sunlight, and so begins to assimilate fresh compounds of hydrogen and carbon on its own account.

Now it makes a great deal of difference to a sprouting seed whether it is well or ill provided with such stored-up food-stuffs. Some very small seeds have hardly any provision to go on upon; and the seedlings of these, of course, must wither up and die if they do not catch the sunlight as soon as they have first unfolded their tiny leaflets; but other wiser plants have learnt by experience to lay by plenty of starches, oils, or other useful materials in their seeds; and wherever such a tendency has once faintly appeared, it has given such an advantage to the species where it occurred, that it has been increased and developed from generation to generation through natural selections. Now what such plants do for their offspring, the hyacinth, and many others like it, do for themselves. The lily family, at least in the temperate regions, seldom grows into a tree-like form; but many of them have acquired a habit which enables them to live on almost as well as trees from season to season, though their leaves die down completely with each recurring winter. If you cut open a hyacinth bulb, or, what is simpler to experiment upon, an onion, you will find that it consists of several short abortive leaves, or thick, fleshy scales. In these subterranean leaves the plant stores up the food-stuffs elaborated by its green portions during the summer; and there they lie the whole winter through, ready to send up a flowering stem early in the succeeding spring. The material in the old bulb is used up in thus producing leaves and blossoms at the beginning of the second or third season; but fresh bulbs grow out anew from its side, and in these the plant once more stores up fresh material for the succeeding year’s growth.

The hyacinths which we keep in glasses on our mantelpieces represent such a reserve of three or four years’ accumulation. They have purposely been prevented from flowering, in order to make them produce finer trusses of bloom when they are at length permitted to follow their own free will. Thus the bulb contains material enough to send up leaves and blossoms from its own resources; and it will do so even if grown entirely in the dark. In that case the leaves will be pale yellow or faintly greenish, because the true green pigment, which is the active agent of digestion, can only be produced under the influence of light; whereas the flowers will retain their proper color, because their pigment is always due to oxidation alone, and is but little dependent upon the rays of sunshine. Even if grown in an ordinary room, away from the window, the leaves seldom assume their proper deep tone of full green; they are mainly dependent on the food-stuffs laid by in the bulb, and do but little active work on their own account. After the hyacinth has flowered, the bulb is reduced to an empty and flaccid mass of watery brown scales.

Among all the lily kind, such devices for storing up useful material, either in bulbs or in the very similar organs known as corms, are extremely common. As a consequence, many of them produce unusually large and showy flowers. Among our lilies we can boast of such beautiful blossoms as the fritillary, the wild hyacinth, the meadow-saffron, and the two pretty squills; while in our gardens the tiger lilies, tulips, tuberoses, and many others belong to the same handsome bulbous group. Closely allied families give us the bulb-bearing narcissus, daffodil, snowdrop, amarylis, and Guernsey lily; the crocus, gladiolus, iris, and corn-flag; while the neighboring tribe of orchids, most of which have tubers, probably produce more ornamental flowers than any other family of plants in the whole world. Among a widely different group we get other herbs which lay by rich stores of starch, or similar nutritious substances, in thickened underground branches, known as tubers; such, for example, are the potato and the Jerusalem artichoke. Sometimes the root itself is the storehouse for the accumulated food-stuffs, as in the dahlia, the carrot, the radish, and the turnip. In all these cases, the plant obviously derives benefit from the habit which it has acquired of hiding away its reserve fund beneath the ground, where it is much less likely to be discovered and eaten by its animal foes.—“Knowledge” Library.

History presents to us the life of nations, and finds nothing to write about except wars and popular tumults: the years of peace appear only as short pauses, interludes, a mark here and there. And just so is the life of individuals a continued course of warfare, not at all in a metaphorical way of speaking, with want or ennui, but in reality too with his fellow men. He finds everywhere adversaries—lives in continual struggles—and dies at last with arms in his hands. Yet, after all, as our bodies must burst asunder if the weight of the atmosphere were to be withdrawn from it, so, too, if the heavy burden of want, misery, calamities, and the non-success of our exertions, were taken away from the life of men, their arrogance would swell out, if not to the length of explosion, at all events to the exhibition of the most unbridled folly—nay, to madness. So that every man at all times requires a certain quantum of cares and sorrow, or necessities, as a ship does ballast, to enable him to go forward steadily and in a direct line.—Schopenhauer.

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MIGRATIONS ON FOOT.

By Rev. J. G. WOOD, M.A.

We have to consider those creatures who are deprived of food by climate, but who are able to pass to other places where food still exists. Travel for this purpose is called migration, and it may be accomplished in two ways, namely, upon the earth by means of feet, or over it by means of wings. We will first take migration on foot.

Again, I put aside man, because his migrations (and we English are the most migratory race on the earth) are the result of reason and not of instinct. Man migrates for a definite purpose. He knows beforehand the object of his travel, and if he should prefer staying in one country he can do so. But these papers do not deal with human reason, but with animal instinct, which is, in fact, Divine wisdom brought into visible action without the exercise of free will on the part of the agent.

In many cases migration has a strong influence on man. To uncivilized man it is mostly an unmixed benefit, as he lives upon the migrators. But to civilized man it is almost invariably an unmixed evil, as the migrators destroy the crops which he is cultivating, in order to supply food for the coming year. We shall see examples with both these influences.

As might naturally be expected, food is more apt to fail toward the poles than in the temperate zones, and so we find many examples of migration in northern Europe. One of them has the curious result that it involves the migration of man. I allude to the annual migration of the vast herds of reindeer possessed by the Lapps. Forced by instinct, the reindeers are obliged to migrate in search of food, and unless their owners wish to lose all their property, they must needs accompany the deer.

Now, to the Lapp the reindeer is what cows are to the Kaffir, or land and funded property to us. A Lapp of moderate wealth must possess at least a thousand reindeer. Half that number are required to make a man recognized as one of the well-to-do middle class, while those who only have forty or fifty are nothing but servants, who are forced to mingle their deer with those of their masters.

From these details the reader can form some idea of the vast herds of tame reindeer possessed by the Lapps alone. The annual incursion of these herds into more civilized countries can at the best be considered only a nuisance, and as the herds increase in numbers year by year their migration becomes an intolerable pest.

For example, the Globe newspaper lately made the following remarks:

“Every year, Tromsoe is the meeting point of upward of a hundred thousand reindeer, the property of the nomads, who follow them from Sweden. The herd is rather ‘nice’ in the selection of pasturage, and the absence of everything save a mere superficial control gives it the most complete freedom of choice.

“Wandering about at their own sweet will, the reindeer do damage indiscriminately in meadow, plowed land, and forest. The farmer may protest, but he is powerless to prevent the destruction of his young wood or the trampling down of his crops.

“If he appeals to the authorities he is baffled by the practical impossibility of fixing responsibility for damage upon the right owner. Only the Lapps know the offender, and a verdict with damages often enough serves no other purpose than that of bringing Scandinavian justice into ridicule, for, before it can be carried into effect, the defendant has gone on another of his annual migrations.”

This pest has at last reached such dimensions that special laws were made about a year ago to meet it. Norway and Sweden have therefore been divided into districts, and if damage be done, and the owners of the offending animals not be given up, the entire district has to make good the damage, each family having to pay in proportion to the number of reindeer which they own.

Now we will take another example of migration from the same country.

As we have seen, the migration of the reindeer occurs at regular intervals, and can be provided against, especially as it is possible to make the owners of the migrators responsible for the damage which they do. But there is one animal of northern Europe which has no special time for migration, against whose approach it is impossible to provide, whom it is almost equally impossible to resist when it is on the march, and for whom no one can be responsible. It is therefore far more baneful to civilized man.

This is the lemming, a little, short-tailed, round-eared rodent, somewhat resembling our common water-rat in shape and size. In its ordinary life it is nothing more than a small, rather voracious, very prolific, and unintellectual rodent. It is too stupid to get out the way of anything, and if met by a cart its only idea would be to bite the wheel. Mr. Metcalfe mentions that two or three lemmings might be indulging in their favorite habit of sitting on a stump. If a traveler accompanied by dogs passed by them, the dogs were sure to fly at the lemmings. Yet the stupid creatures would not think of escaping, though there might be plenty of time to do so, but would merely sit on the stumps and try to bite the dogs’ noses. This remarkable stupidity will account for the way in which the migration invariably ends.

Owing to its fecundity, conjoined with its voracity, it sometimes fails to obtain food in its own district, and migrates southward.

The strangest point about this migration is its exceeding uncertainty. Fortunately, there is seldom an interval of less than seven years between the migrations, and seventeen years have been known to pass before the coming of the lemming. Yet, whatever the interval may be, the whole of the lemmings of vast northern districts begin their march southward through Norway and Sweden in search of food.

They are divided into two vast armies, which are kept apart by the Kiolens range; and it is very curious that they direct their course toward the southwest and southeast. Nothing seems to stop their progress. They only have one idea, namely, to press onward. If a wall or house be in their line of march they will try to climb it rather than go round it, and if they come upon a stack of corn they will eat it and then go forward.

Rivers, and even lakes, are swum by the lemmings, thousands of which are eaten by the fishes. They are admirable swimmers as long as the surface of the water is smooth, but the least ripple is too much for them, so that if the day be windy very few of those which enter the water are seen to leave it alive.

Their ranks are perpetually thinned by birds and beasts of prey which accompany their columns. These parasites are wolves, foxes, wild cats, stoats and other weasels, eagles, hawks and owls. It is said that even the reindeer feed upon them. Man eats them, and so obtains some trifling compensation for the destruction of his crops. But, while its invasion lasts, the lemming is nearly as destructive as the locust itself, not leaving even a blade of grass behind it. Despairing of checking this terrible foe by ordinary means, the people turned to religion, and had a special service of exorcism prepared against the lemmings.

The end of the migration is as unaccountable as its beginning. I have mentioned the instinct which forces the creature to proceed onward on the line which it has taken. Now, Norway and Sweden form a peninsula, toward the apex of which the course of the lemmings is directed. It follows that sooner or later the animals must arrive at the coast. And, having[354] reached the shore, they still must needs go into the sea, where the waves almost immediately drown them.

Now we will turn from cold to heat, and imagine ourselves in South Africa. From the migrants of that country we will take the springbok as our example.

Many travelers in that country have mentioned the “trek-bokken,” as the Boers call these pilgrimages, but none have painted them more vividly than the late Captain Gordon Cumming, whose description I have had the pleasure of hearing as well as seeing.

One morning, as he had been lying awake in his wagon for some two hours before daybreak, he had heard the continual grunting of male springboks, but took no particular notice of the sound.

“On my rising, when it was clear, and looking about me, I beheld the ground to the northward of my camp actually covered with a dense living mass of springboks, marching steadily and slowly along, extending from an opening in a long range of hills on the west, through which they continued pouring like the flood of some great river, to a ridge about half a mile to the east, over which they disappeared. The breadth of the ground which they covered might have been somewhere about half a mile.

“I stood upon the fore-chest of my wagon for nearly two hours, lost in wonder at the novel and beautiful scene which was passing before me; and had some difficulty in convincing myself that it was a reality which I beheld, and not the wild and exaggerated picture of a hunter’s dream. During this time their vast legions continued streaming through the neck in the hills, in one unbroken, compact phalanx.”

It has sometimes happened that a flock of sheep has strayed into the line of march. In such cases the flock has been overlapped, enveloped in the springbok army, and forced to join in the march. A most astonishing example of the united power of the springbok was witnessed by a well known hunter.

Just as the lemming hosts are attended by the birds and beasts of prey of their own country, so it is with the springbok. These parasites do not attack the main body, but watch for the stragglers and pounce upon them. During the passage of one of these springbok armies a lion was seen in the midst of the antelopes, forced to take unwilling part in the march.

He had evidently miscalculated his leap and sprung too far, alighting upon the main body. Those upon whom he alighted must have recoiled sufficiently to allow him to reach the ground, and then the pressure from both flanks and the rear prevented him from escaping from his strange captivity.

As only the front ranks of these armies can put their heads to the ground, we very naturally wonder how those in the middle and rear can feed. The mode which is adopted is equally simple and efficacious.

When the herd arrives at pasturage, those animals which occupy the front feed greedily until they can eat no more. Then, being ruminants, they need rest in order to enable them to chew the cud. So they fall out of the ranks and quietly chew the cud until the column has almost passed them, when they fall in at the rear, and gradually work their way to the front again.

As to water, they do not require it, many of these South African antelopes possessing the singular property of being able to exist for months together without drinking. Dr. Livingstone has offered a very remarkable theory on this subject, but the limited space will not permit me to cite it.

Let us again visit in imagination a different part of the world, and suppose ourselves to be on the prairies of North America. There we find another ruminant, the bison, wrongly called the buffalo.

This creature migrates with tolerable regularity, and not many years ago, when the red men possessed the vast expanses of North America, the native tribes were dependent upon the bison for their very existence. The bison was to the red Indian what the seal tribe is to the Esquimaux.

From the skins were made their tents or “wigwams,” their warm clothing for winter, and their shields; while the bones afforded rude tools, and handles for weapons, the sinews gave strength and toughness to their wonderful little bows, while there was scarcely a portion of the animal that was not put to some useful purpose.

The annual migrations brought the creatures within the reach of the various tribes, who, being in a state of perpetual warfare, did not dare to venture out of their own district in search of the bison.

So utterly dependent, indeed, were they upon the migrations of the bison, that if the coming of the animals was delayed a few weeks beyond the usual period, death from hunger would be an almost certain result. The reader may perhaps remember that several tribes of Esquimaux were lately exterminated by a similar failure, the walrus having deserted its usual haunts, and gone off to some land whither they could not follow it.

In some respects the bison resembles the lemming, being equally stupid, and equally determined to press forward. Nothing will stop the bison herd when it is “on the run.” The animals do not march slowly, like the springbok, but dash forward at full speed, their heads down, their long hair hanging over their eyes, and each only intent on following those which are in front of it.

The hunters, whether native or European, take advantage of this peculiarity. The country in which these creatures live is intersected here and there with ravines many hundreds of feet in depth, having nearly perpendicular sides. At a distance of a hundred yards these ravines are as invisible as the trenches of a modern fortress.

The hunters, however, know every inch of the country, and when they learn that a bison herd is on the run they contrive to frighten the leaders, who compose the front rank, until they are taking a direct course for a ravine.

Then, nothing is needed but to let the bisons alone. When they come within forty yards or so of the ravine, the leaders see the danger, and try to stop; but the pressure from behind is so irresistible that they are forced onward, and pushed over the edge of the precipice. The rest of the herd follow them, scarcely any of them even seeing the ravine until they are falling into it.

In this reckless way thousands of bisons are destroyed in less than an hour. Not one hundredth part of them can be used by the hunters, the remainder being left to feed the vultures, coyotes, and other scavengers. It is no wonder that the animal becomes gradually scarce, and that the hunters are obliged year by year to go farther afield in search of it.—London Sunday Magazine.

Every man must patiently bide his time. He must wait. More particularly in lands like my native land, where the pulse of life beats with such feverish and impatient throbs, is the lesson needful. Our national character wants the dignity of repose. We seem to live in the midst of a battle—there is such a din, such a hurrying to and fro. In the streets of a crowded city it is difficult to walk slowly. You feel the rushing of the crowd, and rush with it onward. In the press of our life it is difficult to be calm. In this stress of wind and tide, all professions seem to drag their anchors, and are swept out into the main. The voices of the present say, “Come!” But the voices of the past say, “Wait!” With calm and solemn footsteps the rising tide bears against the rushing torrent up stream, and pushes back the hurrying waters. With no less calm and solemn footsteps, nor less certainty, does a great mind bear up against public opinion, and push back its hurrying stream. Therefore should every man wait—should bide his time.—Longfellow’s “Hyperion.”

He is not dead who departs this life with high fame; dead is he, though still living, whose brow is branded with infamy.—Tieck.

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C. L. S. C. WORK.

By Rev. J. H. VINCENT, D.D., Superintendent of Instruction.

Readings for March: “Preparatory Latin Course in English,” by Dr. William C. Wilkinson; half of the book. Required Readings in The Chautauquan.

There is no Memorial Day in March.

There are many persons, members of local circles and individual readers, who do not join the central office at Plainfield. The C. L. S. C. is what it is to-day because of the PLAN by which it is conducted. But for the central office at Plainfield, it would never have been. But for the central office at Plainfield, it could not continue. It seems but fair that the slight annual fee required of persons who enjoy the PLAN should be paid to the central office. The Chautauquan, the work of the “Counselors,” the postage, the correspondence and general supervision by the Superintendent of Instruction—all these involve expenses which can be met only by the fee appointed—a fee appointed not by the managers of the C. L. S. C., but unanimously recommended by the members of the C. L. S. C. themselves in 1878, when the Circle was organized. There are also many advantages which accrue from membership in the central circle; valuable communications, memoranda, addresses, cards of membership, calendars, maps, outlines, catechisms, vesper-services, Chautauqua songs, the memorial-day volume, and sundry hints. Pleasant fellowships and alliances, which constitute the charm of the college life as adopted by the C. L. S. C.—all spring from the relation to the central office. The diploma and the seals to be added are enjoyed only by those who join the central circle. Hereafter there will be an official bulletin which will go out from the central office at least bi-monthly, to be entitled “Our Alma Mater,” which will in itself be worth the trifling annual sum of fifty cents. I really think that it is slightly unjust for persons to avail themselves of the benefits of the PLAN of the C. L. S. C. and decline to help support the central office.

Can there be any objection to the simple invocation of the divine blessing in opening a meeting of the local C. L. S. C.? Long and elaborate devotional services may be considered out of place. A simple invocation of the Father, whose word and works we study, and the reading of a choice gem from the great book itself would require two or three minutes; and unless strong opposition is expressed to it, it seems to me well to commend with emphasis such provision in the program of the local circle.

One of these days when our C. L. S. C. books are all published, as we intend they shall be, we shall be able to give greater unity to each year’s course than is now possible. One year’s study, for example, will embrace a good Roman History, the Preparatory Latin and the College Latin. Another year will study Greek History, Old Greek Life, Preparatory Greek and College Greek. Another year will take up English and American History and Literature, and another General, Oriental and European History and Literature. Among the four years will be distributed the readings in art, science, philosophy and mathematics, so that the course will be less fragmentary than now. Stand by the Circle in the formative years.

The local circle is not necessary to the profitable and acceptable reading of the required books. Let this be well understood. Local circle work is exceedingly valuable—but not indispensable. I say this over and over, because I wish members who read alone to be encouraged to read on.

Messrs. D. Lothrop & Co. announce that they have now ready an edition of “The Hall in the Grove,” by Pansy, in paper covers, which will sell at 75 cents per copy to members of the C. L. S. C.

The class of 1887 numbers over fourteen thousand. Is the class of 1886 holding its own? Have you as a member of that class forwarded your fee for the current year to Miss Kimball? And how about ’84 and ’85?

I notice in our little book on “Good Manners,” that putting the knife into the mouth is condemned by the regulations of so-called “society.” A correspondent asks: “Have I not a right to put my knife into my mouth at the table if I choose?” Answer: You have a perfect right to put your knife into your mouth, to pick your teeth with your fork, and to draw back from the table and tilt up your feet on the edge of the table. There are many rights which, as American citizens, we may enjoy in this country. But other people also have rights who are offended by such violations of propriety, and who are tempted to think you a boor, and, although they may say nothing, you lose by your vulgarity and wilfulness far more than you gain in any way by such exercise of what you call “independence.”

All local circles should report promptly to Miss K. F. Kimball, Plainfield, N. J. If there are but two members associated in study, report as a local circle.

OUTLINE OF C. L. S. C. READINGS.

MARCH, 1884.

The Required Readings for March include half of Prof. Wilkinson’s Preparatory Latin Course in English, and the Required Readings in The Chautauquan.

First Week (ending March 8).—1. Preparatory Latin Course from chapter i to chapter iii, on page 45.

2. First half of French History in The Chautauquan.

3. Sunday Readings for March 2, in The Chautauquan.

Second Week (ending March 17).—1. Preparatory Latin Course from page 45 to the middle of page 84.

2. Second half of French History.

3. Sunday Readings for March 9, in The Chautauquan.

Third Week (ending March 24).—1. Preparatory Latin Course from page 84 to page 127.

2. Readings in Commercial Law and in Art in The Chautauquan.

3. Sunday Readings for March 16, in The Chautauquan.

Fourth Week (ending March 31).—1. Preparatory Latin Course in English, from page 127 to “Fifth Book,” page 167.

2. Readings in American Literature and United States History in The Chautauquan.

3. Sunday Readings for March 23, in The Chautauquan.

4. Sunday Readings for March 30, in The Chautauquan.

C. L. S. C. ’84.

NEW ENGLAND AUXILIARY.

Fellow Students and Classmates:

Dr. Vincent tells us that “more than one half of the members of ’84 reside in New England.” But a very small part of them can attend the graduating exercises at Chautauqua, therefore the management of the New England Assembly are to set apart one afternoon of next summer’s Sessions for Services of Recognition of the N. E. members as graduates. We shall then and there be enrolled as members of “The Society of the Hall in the Grove.” The members who were present at Framingham last year, to the number of one hundred and fifty, having great pride in the C. L. S. C., and not a little Class pride, chose a committee to make arrangements suitable for so important and glorious an occasion. The committee decided upon the three following items in the program:

1. An Oration, and a well known College President is to be invited to grace the occasion.

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2. Some prominent band or other musical organization to furnish music for the day.

3. Decoration of the Auditorium.

We therefore make two requests of the New England membership:

1. That as many as possible arrange to be present at the Assembly, which meets in July next year. It will richly repay you to be present through the ten days; but be sure to be present upon C. L. S. C. day.

2. In accordance with the vote of the Auxiliary, as announced in “The Outlook,” we ask each member, whether to be present at Framingham or not, to send the Secretary of the Committee the sum of fifty cents, with as much more as you choose to add. If we carry out the program as arranged, the expenses will be large. In order to make definite our arrangements, we should know as to the amount to be realized from your contributions by the first of February, 1884. We desire that you consider this a personal invitation, and that you will forward your checks, or postal orders, or pledges, as local circles or individuals, on or before the above date. We ask you to do so much for the good of the cause and the honor of the class.

We suggest to the N. E. members that they keep their reading well up, as their memoranda must be in Miss Kimball’s hands by the first of July, that the diplomas may be awarded and forwarded to Framingham.

Yours in behalf of the Committee,

Webster Woodbury.

Committee of Arrangements: Rev. W. N. Richardson, East Saugus, Mass.; D. D. Peabody, Stoneham, Mass.; Hon. J. G. Blaine, Manchester, N. H.; Rev. W. Woodbury, Foxboro, Mass.; J. M. Nye, Crompton, R. I.

Foxboro, Mass., Dec. 30, 1883.

TO THE CLASS OF ’85.

At Chautauqua, during the last Assembly, a class organization was effected and badge adopted as our class colors, after which the following officers were chosen: J. B. Underwood, President, Meriden, Conn.; Mrs. Philomena Downs, Vice President, Burlington, Iowa; Miss Carrie Hart, Treasurer, Aurora, Indiana; Miss N. M. Schenck, Secretary, Osage City, Kansas. It is with regret that I am compelled to say the attendance of the class of ’85 was so small it was deemed most expedient to leave the adoption of a class motto until our next annual gathering, when it is earnestly desired that the then to be seniors will be largely represented.

One local member of the Meriden local circle, removing from the city to an adjacent township, knowing from observation and experience the good that might be accomplished by the organization of a circle, at once set about the task by becoming a regular Chautauquan, and soliciting others to join her, and as a result of these efforts she rejoices over the establishment of an enthusiastic corps of students, and has been honored by being made their president. The same enthusiasm by each ’85 member renders us as invincible as our immediate predecessors of ’84 are irrepressible. Let us one and all rally to the work and be prepared in the summer soon upon us to “Gather a pilgrim band” at our famous and much loved retreat, “The Hall in the Grove.”

J. B. Underwood.

Class stationery and badges may be had by addressing any of the officers of the class.

For a certain equable and continuous mode of life, we require only judgment, and we think of nothing more, so that we no longer discern what extraordinary things each unimportant day requires of us, and if we do discern them, we can find a thousand excuses for not doing them. A man of understanding is of importance to his own interests, but of little value for the general whole.—Goethe.

LOCAL CIRCLES.

In preparing copy for the local circle columns we would caution secretaries not to omit the name of state and town. This has been done, and several valuable reports are on our table, stateless. We can not use them, and will be censured for not doing so. Please bear this in mind when you send your report.

The letter which we publish in the Editor’s Outlook this month deserves careful attention. It is valuable for new plans, but more for the spirit of ingenuity and push which it suggests.

The number of new circles formed this year is astonishing. The reports are all strong and enterprising. From Shelburn, Vermont, the secretary writes:

“About the first of November fourteen persons in this place formed themselves into a literary circle and adopted the Chautauqua course of study. Our method in our circle is simple and effective. We read selections from the week’s work, and then converse familiarly upon what we have read, thus giving the entire circle the benefit of each member’s information upon the subject under consideration. By most of us the course was undertaken with hesitation, for we feared that we should not be able to do the work marked out for us, yet we have been encouraged at every step of our progress. We have found the C. L. S. C. no hard task-master, but a helpful friend.”

Massachusetts reports three new circles this month. One was organized in Braintree, in October, 1883, consisting of eight regular members; others attend, and they hope to enroll a number as local members. The circle meets once in three weeks. The order of exercises varies, two being appointed at each meeting to give the lesson and reading for the next meeting. Seven are members of the class of 1887, one of class of 1884.

A circle, numbering twelve registered Chautauquans, and some twenty local members, has been organised in the factory town of North Brookfield, Mass. The circle starts off with splendid prospects of success, and the only fear is to find rooms to accommodate the meetings as they grow in size.

From Westfield, same state, we learn that the number of the readers in the C. L. S. C. course has been increased each year at the return of members from the Framingham Assembly, but that they have never had a local circle until last fall. The first regular meeting was held September 17, 1883. The circle numbers eighteen, composed of members of three different classes; the original five intend to graduate the coming summer. There is a good regular attendance.

At Canaan, Connecticut, a local circle was organized early in October last, with a membership of fifteen, which has since increased to about forty. It is doing good work, not only in promoting habits of thorough, systematic reading, but in cultivating a better social feeling. An executive committee arranges a program for each meeting in advance, assigning to certain members the most important topics found in the readings. The question box adds much to the interest of the meetings.

Connecticut also boasts another new circle, at Goshen, of which a member writes: “A local circle was organized here the last week in September with a membership of sixteen. We meet once a week at the houses of the members, and have a large average attendance, considering the situation of our hill town, some of us living as much as four miles apart. The program varies according to the taste and inclination of the presiding officer. A favorite way seems to be to choose sides. The leader of each side asking questions which are prepared beforehand for the opposite side to answer.”

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“We have organized in our village (Hannibal, N. Y.) a local circle of the class of ’87, consisting of sixteen regular and ten local members. We hold our meetings weekly, and a lively interest is manifested by all. On our roll we have two clergymen, two teachers, and some college and seminary graduates; although we are as yet freshmen in the course, we all expect to do good solid work and honestly earn our diplomas.”

At Orchard Park, N. Y., there is another new circle. The “Iota Class” of the C. L. S. C. organized last October. “We have twelve interested and enthusiastic members, three having joined since our organization. We meet once in two weeks, at each meeting a committee being appointed to prepare the program of exercises for the second ensuing meeting. By this arrangement our program can be announced two weeks ahead, thus giving ample time for preparation. By appointing a new committee each time we find that it varies our entertainment, nearly every meeting introducing something new. The following is the program for December 29: Opening exercises, responsive service; song No. 12; secretary’s report; paper, American poets; class drill on American Literature; brief oral account of America’s greatest statesman; song No. 13; paper, comparative lives of Wolfe and Montcalm; selected questions to be answered by class; selections from Bret Harte; brief oral account of the present condition of Greece; question drawer; report of orthoepist; closing exercises.”

A new circle organized at Bethlehem, Pa., numbers ten, and reports enthusiastic meetings. Their plan of “quizzes” is especially good. The secretary writes: “In our circle the first half hour is devoted to a quiz in history, the president appointing a new conductor at each meeting. The second half hour is spent in reading from American authors. The president selects the pieces and appoints the readers. We use the third half hour for a quiz in some branch connected with the course. After this we spend the remainder of the evening in an informal way, talking over our studies, and examining pictures of celebrated statuary, which the members bring from different sources. We have been meeting every two weeks, but all enjoy the meetings so much, and find them such a help that we have decided to meet every week. Interest in the C. L. S. C. is spreading, and I have no doubt that next year there will be several circles organized.”

From Ohio three new societies send us greetings. At Painesville a circle was formed in November. They write—“We number only five, but we are enthusiastic readers, and have received much benefit from the work. We all belong to the class of ’87, excepting one member, who has read one year, and with whom our circle originated.”

At Sabina, a circle was organized on September 28, through the instrumentality of an energetic lady who had studied a year alone. It consists of nine members, six of whom are gentlemen, and three ladies. All are regular members of the C. L. S. C. Much interest was manifested, the books were ordered at once, and the reading has progressed finely, all being delighted with the plan. The circle has since been christened “The Philomathean C. L. S. C.” The query box is made use of, and work assigned at each meeting, and a general discussion opened on the readings of the previous interval. They send best wishes to the C. L. S. C.

From Columbus the secretary writes: “We have a growing circle here under the distinctive name of the “Central C. L. S. C. of Columbus.” We began in October with a membership of fourteen, and now number twenty. Our meetings are rendered interesting and profitable by papers on the subjects of the month, interspersed with discussions and music.”

At Ottawa, Illinois, a local circle was organized in October last with seventeen members, seven regular and ten local. They follow the course of study laid out in The Chautauquan, and the reading for the week is discussed, generally some one being appointed to question the class, and occasionally an essay or address is read. A great deal of interest is felt, and all are working very enthusiastically.

From Galena, Illinois, the secretary sends an account of a new circle, and gives some very interesting reminiscences: “We have been much interested in the C. L. S. C. for some time, and some of our members are quite advanced in the course; but it was not until October, 1883, that we organized ourselves into a tributary circle. Our meetings are controlled and carried out according to a constitution ratified by the circle. We endeavor to be as parliamentary as possible. We Galena people think that of all others we should be the truest and best Chautauquans. Long years ago, before some of us were old enough to remember, Dr. Vincent was pastor of the M. E. Church of our city. He organized and carried on while here what he called a ‘Palestine Class,’ though there was no ‘Palestine Park’ in connection with it. At the end of this course each successful candidate was presented with a diploma and medal. At present there are three of the original Palestine members in our circle, and if we enter their homes they are pleased to show us the familiar face of our ‘Princely Pericles’ hanging in some safe nook. So, you see, we feel as though we had a right to Chautauqua and its benefits. We number about twenty-two members, and have also one member in St. Louis and one in England. The circle has radiated so far at present, who shall say where the C. L. S. C. contagion will end?”

From Nashville, Tennessee, the secretary of the “Nashville Local Circle,” a new organization of about twenty members, writes: “Our members have taken a deep interest, from the very beginning in the work, and most of us are fully up with the required readings, beside having read several books in connection with those required. We hold our meetings every alternate Monday night in the Y. M. C. A. parlors. Our exercises are always entertaining and instructive, consisting of songs, essays, lectures, readings, questions, etc. Milton’s memorial day was observed in a very appropriate manner. The ‘East Side Circle’ joined with us by invitation of Prof. Hurst. The exercises were opened with a Chautauqua song and prayer. A short but very interesting sketch of Milton’s life and character was read by Mr. E. C. Wells, and a fine selection from Milton was read by Miss E. C. Whitehurst; the exercises were concluded with the ‘vesper service.’ We have adopted the motto of the ’87’s—‘Neglect not the gift that is in thee.’ Nashville already has three circles, and the grand ‘Chautauqua Idea’ is fast spreading throughout the Sunny South.”

Iowa (Lyons).—We organized a circle last October of fifteen members. Of our number nine have become members of the C. L. S. C., and are reading the full course. We have not an elaborate program, but try to take up a few things as thoroughly as possible.

Iowa (Marshalltown).—Our plan of organizing our circle, was first a press notice, then individual effort. Our first meeting found twelve persons anxious to commence the study. The second meeting there were as many more joined our forces. We have divided our circle, one party meeting in the afternoon, the other in the evening, all under one leader. It is probable that by the close of the year we shall have a very large and intelligent circle.

Iowa (Shenandoah).—Our circle was organized in October, 1883. It is composed of busy people.

All are very desirous of doing good work, and are in real earnest as to the success of our circle. All members are freshmen but one, who is a sophomore. All are bound for a battle of four years.

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The last of the new circles reported this month is from Louisburg, Kansas. They say: “We are a little band of ten readers. We organized in October for the purpose of studying the required course of the class of ’89. We feel that the study is a great benefit to us, and recommend it to all.”

The circle at New Gloucester, Maine, has recently closed a lecture course which proved successful beyond expectation. The circle has been flourishing in fine style this year, and the meetings have been of a high literary order. Essays on various subjects have been willingly contributed, while much entertainment and profit has been derived from passing round to the whole company written questions to be immediately answered.

The circle organized at Rockville, Massachusetts, in 1882, is still in fine condition. They meet weekly, and the program consists in answering the questions in The Chautauquan, abstracts from required reading, readings and conversations. In October the circle enjoyed a day at Diamond Hill, R. I., gathering geological specimens.

The local paper of Hudson, Massachusetts, says: Our local circle is doing excellent work. Here is the program of next meeting: 1st, Review of “Ten Reasons why we should know the great outlines of Grecian History and Literature.” 2d, Crayon map of Greece, drawn and explained. 3d, Conversation on “The Art of Healing” as known to the Greeks. 4th, Essay, “The Age of Pericles.” 5th, Conversation; some “Similitudes and Contrasts” in Greek and American Literature. 6th, One Hundred Questions on Biology, class. This means quiet, little by little, but constant and steady work to extend the realm of personal knowledge.

The secretary of the Centerville, Rhode Island, local circle gives the following account of how they made Political Economy interesting: “At the last meeting of the circle a member who formerly gave much time to the study of political science, delivered an informal lecture, in the conversational vein, upon that subject, using the blackboard freely and presenting a synopsis of the topics discussed in Mr. Steele’s articles. The treatment of the subject differed considerably from that of Mr. Steele. This talk was followed by a general discussion, participated in by most of the members, during which questions suggested by the lecture were propounded, answered by the member having the subject in charge, and further discussed by the members. By this means the subject of Political Economy, usually considered so uninteresting, was pronounced by all to be the most entertaining thus far considered.”

We want to commend the following model program of exercises to the attention of all circles. It comes from the splendid society at Troy, New York, and was the program for January 3d: 1. German History—Early Data of German History; Who were the Franks; Give an Account of Clovis; The Achievements of Charlemagne; Character of Charlemagne. 2. Political Economy—Uses of Political Economy; Define Production; Define Consumption; Exchange and its Necessity; Banks; Protection and its Arguments; Free Trade—its Arguments. 3. Physical Science—Air; Circulation of Water on Land; Rivers; Glaciers. 4. Monthly Events—December. 5. Round Table. 6. Conversazione—William Cullen Bryant.

What testimony could be more inspiring than this from Shushan, N. Y.: “Most of our members are hardworking people, with but little time for study, but they all unite in saying that every meeting is better than the last.”

New York State sends us so much and so good reports that we are embarrassed to find room for them all sometimes. We have a trio of remarkably strong reports here which we give in full.

New York (Glen Falls).—We think we are now numerically strong enough and combine enough enthusiasm to deserve a good sized corner in an issue of The Chautauquan. Our Circle, in which we all take pardonable pride, is on a very solid footing, and each succeeding meeting shows an improvement on the one before. The pioneer member was Mrs. Charlotte W. Craig, to whose zeal in pursuing the readings single-handed among us can truthfully be attributed the successful start. In 1880 four ladies commenced the reading independently, and things ran along in this lonesome manner until last year a circle of thirteen was formed, with meetings every two weeks, held in the afternoon. This was a strong nucleus, and ever and anon during the winter and spring of 1883 their work was noticed in reports of their meetings and memorial days which appeared in the local newspapers. At the commencement of the year, 1883-84, in October last, a large number were enrolled as new members. Our circle now is full half a hundred strong, and the meetings which are held at private residences every alternate Tuesday evening are truly enjoyable. The mode of conducting them is very much like that of other circles, and needs no detailed description. Beside the work laid out in The Chautauquan a committee is appointed four weeks prior to each meeting to provide a program of exercises, and as there is a good natured strife as to who shall excel in the attractiveness and excellence of the program furnished, the meetings never lack interest. A question box is quite well utilized, and we also have an appointed critic. We have no glee club as yet, but a movement in that direction has been made. The constraint which of course characterized the first meeting of the new circle is fast wearing away, and each meeting is looked forward to by all with increasing interest. Our membership comprehends part of the best society of the village, and is given a more solid aspect by a representation of one Dartmouth and two Wesleyan graduates, who are very well pleased with their new connection. From the start we have found the local newspaper a valuable and efficient help.

New York (Brooklyn).—The “New York Avenue Circle” holds its meetings in the Chapel of the New York Avenue M. E. Church in Brooklyn. The circle is not connected with the church, and owes its place of meeting to the courtesy of the trustees. There are at present (December) ninety-one members, who come from all parts of the city—one member from New York. They represent about fifteen different churches, of the principal denominations. The members are both old and young gentlemen and ladies; parents and their grown sons and daughters, business men, mothers of young children, and young people just from school. Beside the members there is a large transient attendance. This is the second year in the history of the circle, and has begun with increased interest. Many have expressed themselves as very grateful for the C. L. S. C. in the personal advantage it has been to them. The meetings are fortnightly, on Thursday evenings. There is an able committee of instruction who usually undertake the reviews. Others are sometimes called upon, and frequently the leader assigns essays to selected members. Especially has this been the case with the review of American Literature, when the various authors were distributed through the class for three-minute essays. The music committee provide solos or duets, both vocal and instrumental. The songs from the “Chautauqua Song Book” are used at the opening of the meetings. Occasional lectures have been given; as for instance, last year one on the spectroscope, and two on astronomy. One meeting was devoted to China, when essays on the literature, manners and customs, Confucianism, and the missionary work were read. Another evening was devoted to Scandinavia. There were essays, as on the Chinese evening, and songs, all of which were of Scandinavian composition, one being sung in Swedish. Extra social evenings have been found necessary, in order that the members of so large a circle may become acquainted. The interest continues, and good work is done.

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New York (Cortland).—We, the Alpha C. L. S. C., of Cortland, N. Y., feel ourselves honored in belonging to an organization that is doing such a noble work as is the C. L. S. C. We organized as a circle October, 1882, and have tried to accomplish faithfully the work in the course thus far. We number about twenty members, most of whom are housekeepers, with a sprinkling of clerks, bookkeepers and teachers. We elect our officers twice a year, and have in addition to a president, vice president and secretary, a committee on instruction appointed from month to month, whose duty it is to lay out the work; also a committee on pronunciation. Our circle meets weekly, and in brief, this is our usual program: 1. An hour spent reading aloud from one of the required books by alternate members. 2. Questions from The Chautauquan, covering subject-matter read during the evening. 3. A short review in the form of five questions on each of four subjects passed over in our last year’s work. 4. An oral examination on the Required Reading in The Chautauquan, alternating subjects from week to week. 5. A personation by some member giving first, obscure data, after which more prominent features concerning the life, character and works of the character presented. Circle decide on character. 6. Query box. This is with us quite an important part of the program, as topics are discussed of quite a practical nature, as well as the topics of the day.

Pleasantville, Pennsylvania, a beautiful little village of perhaps six hundred inhabitants, writes us: “We have two circles; one of the graduates, and one composed of those who have not yet had the honor to finish the regular C. L. S. C. course. The classes are composed entirely of ladies—some unusually bright ones and we generally get along very well.”

Pennsylvania (West Philadelphia).—We call ourselves the Quaker City Circle of the C. L. S. C. We have nineteen members. We select parts of the Required Readings each month, and certain members (usually three) are appointed to ask questions, or to write essays for the following meeting. We have had a very enjoyable essay on “Art,” with engravings of the notable works of Grecian and Roman Art and Ruins, from one of our members—also two evenings with the microscope. Our greatest trouble is the evening is so short that we can not get all in.

Among the Society Notes of the Evening Star, Washington, D. C., we find the following: “The ‘Chautauqua Idea’ seems to have taken a firm hold on Washington, and has evidently come to stay. It affords pleasure and means of profit to hundreds who might but for its influence ever remain in want of literary or scientific culture. Of the many circles in the city none are more prosperous than Union Circle, the pioneer organization of the kind in the District, it being now in its third year. Its last weekly gathering, Thursday evening, was one of unusual interest to the members, who had arranged a surprise for their worthy president, Mr. E. S. Wescott. An elegant silver water pitcher, appropriately inscribed, had preceded the members to Mr. Wescott’s pleasant home, where the meetings of the circle are held, and while it was a surprise to the host and his estimable wife, they nevertheless took care not to be outdone entirely. When the members arrived, instead of the usual Chautauqua literary and scientific studies, an entertainment of a different kind was substituted, the program consisting of music and recitations, and short speeches. The program ended, Mrs. Wescott invited the circle to repair to the dining room, where was spread a most inviting feast. This time it was the members of the circle who experienced a surprise, but they fell to with a will, and satisfied the host that their lines had fallen in pleasant places. Each guest was presented with a souvenir of the event, and went home feeling that the ‘Chautauqua Idea’ is a good thing in more ways than one.”

The following list of officers in the circle at Saybrook, Ohio, strikes us as particularly good. They are president, vice president, and secretary, elected annually; also a leader, critic, and question-answerer appointed each month, and certainly the following device is both novel and good: “We pride ourselves on possessing something which is very unique as well as useful. It is a C. L. S. C. lantern, made of wood, in the shape of a Gothic roofed house. It contains a lamp whose rays illuminate the letters C. L. S. C., tastefully curved across the front. We put it in a conspicuous place, by the street door, where it serves the double purpose of guiding our members to the right place, and shows to passers-by that our little town has a C. L. S. C., which is alive, and letting its light shine.”

The year 1884-85 has opened auspiciously for the Cincinnati, Ohio, circles. On November 4, Dr. Vincent was with them, and held a vesper service at St. Paul M. E. Church, and there was used for the first time, the new and beautifully arranged “C. L. S. C. Vesper Service.” On November 15, the circles held a Fall reunion at the Third Presbyterian Church, at which they were favored with the presence of the general Secretary of the C. L. S. C. On December 20, a Round-Table was held by the Cincinnati circles at Christie Chapel, Col. John A. Johnson, president of Christie Circle presiding. The following topics were discussed: 1. The advantage of the C. L. S. C. Course of Reading. 2. The advantages of a local circle. 3. How to conduct a local circle. 4. How to advance the C. L. S. C. interests in Cincinnati. The greatest freedom of expression was desired in the discussion and each of the topics elicited numerous responses. On the first Sabbath of the New Year (January 6) the circles held a union vesper service at Christie. The service was conducted by Rev. A. H. Gillett, who gave many touching incidents of his own personal experience in the C. L. S. C. work which had come to him in his varied travels from the lakes to the gulf. His words of advice and encouragement will long be remembered. Rev. B. F. Dimmick, pastor of Christie Chapel, gave an excellent address.

Ohio (Freedom).—A local circle was organized here in September. There are at present about twenty members, of whom thirteen belong to the general Circle. We meet every two weeks at the houses of the members, our meetings opening with a verse of song, and prayer. Our president questions the members upon the lesson read during the two weeks, and several persons have been assigned topics upon which to write essays. We enjoy our meetings very much.

Ohio (New London).—The first year of a local organization of the C. L. S. C. in our village ended in June. Our membership was about twenty-five. Our mode of conducting the meetings was, no doubt, similar to that of most other circles, following the course laid down for each week in The Chautauquan, and having essays and informal talks upon subjects in connection with the Required Reading. The order of exercises for each meeting was arranged by the committee of instruction at the previous meeting. Our circle gradually increased in numbers, and from the increasing interest in the movement we confidently expect our numbers will be doubled this year.

Ohio (Ravenna).—The “Royal” Circle of Ravenna is one of four within the limits of our miniature city. It is named in honor of its senior member, Colonel Royal Taylor, who has passed his eighty-second milestone in the journey of life. This circle was organized with but few members, in 1880. With the additions since made it now numbers twelve, whose average ages are fifty-two years. We meet every Friday evening, elect a chairman who serves two weeks, each member in turn being eligible to the position. Both the Text-Books and the questions in The Chautauquan are memorized. We have an occasional essay and such appropriate reading as is selected by[360] a committee appointed for that purpose. Although many of our harmonious, working little band are past the meridian of life, they are punctual at the meetings, diligent and thorough in their lessons, enjoy the exercises, and always have a grand good social time.

Ohio (Berlin Heights).—The “Philomathean” Circle has been organized and meets each Tuesday evening. We vary the method of conducting our meetings; sometimes (and we find it very interesting) we have question slips, place them in the center of the table, each one draws a question, and then answers it. The greatest interest is manifested, and although our number is small, we expect quite an increase next year. We expect to spend a part of each evening in preparing the work of the White Seal Course.

This is the second year of the existence of the C. L. S. C. in the Wall Street Methodist Episcopal Church of Jeffersonville, Indiana. Last year it had to contend with many obstacles, which are now removed, but ended the year with success. Two of its members graduated, having read three years at Indianapolis. One of these graduates was Mrs. Mary Curtiss, 72 years of age. She is again enrolled as a candidate for White Seal. The circle this year consists of thirty-three active and forty-five local members. Some of the local members are reading all the books as fully as the active. In the circle are four who have graduated in the Chautauqua course. Having acquired a taste for reading, they read on, to gratify their own tastes, and to encourage others to read. The circle meets twice a month. Its meetings are publicly announced from the pulpit, and everybody is invited to be present. When assembled, the subjects for reading the past two weeks are made the subject of review. The leader, the pastor of the church in this case, commences questioning the circle, who respond in concert or singly, as they remember. When other histories have been consulted new matter is presented by the leader or any other person. The blackboard, charts and maps are largely employed in illustrating and fixing the subject in the mind. The members of the circle are urged to ask questions on the subjects of review, and express their opinions. Short papers are also read by members of the circle on such parts of the reading as may be assigned them. By these means every part of the readings are carefully reviewed. Some of those who commenced the course last year have dropped out this year; a few from necessity, others because they thought the work hard.

A member writing from Logansport, Indiana, says: We have quite an interesting local circle organized here, numbering about twenty-five active members, and five who have already graduated but still continue active in the work, which I take to be a true characteristic of a Chautauquan. Our circle meets at private houses every two weeks. The officers make out a program of work two weeks ahead, which is to occupy the next meeting. We have taken up the work as laid out in The Chautauquan, devoting half the evening to American Literature, and the other half to History of Greece, each member speaking either orally on the topic assigned, or reading what they have written or been appointed to select and read from some of the leading authors that have been mentioned in our course of reading. Our program October 30 was as follows: American Literature—(1) “What are its excellences and defects;” (2) “Growth since 1809;” (3) “The First Book;” (4) “Irving’s place in American Literature;” (5) “How Novelists of our day differ from Cooper;” (6) Reading—Bryant’s “Ode to a Water Fowl.” Greek History—(1) “Civil Government—Greece;” (2) “Greek Religions;” (3) “Greek Battles in History;” (4) “Different Athenians and Spartans;” (5) “Greek Gods;” (6) “Customs of the Greeks.”

Indiana (Fort Wayne).—The local circle of this city is of four years’ growth. We number this year about twenty-five members. Among these we have one graduate of ’82, and two “irrepressibles” of the glorious class of ’84. Since our first organization we have tried numerous experiments; circles of all sizes, and all sorts of programs. We had in our circle one year forty-five members. This failed. Too many different elements. The next year we divided into several small circles of about six or eight each. These frequently met to celebrate a memorial day, or listen to a lecture. This year we have considered our circle a model organization, and feel we are competent to judge, after so varied an experience. We have had no regular programs. Our leader questions us as he would a class, allowing us to have our books, from which to answer. A few of us have always observed most faithfully the five o’clock hour Sabbath afternoon. This we find very helpful, and would recommend it to others. At our last local circle the subject was “Vegetable Biology.” The members were seated about a long table on which were three fine microscopes to illustrate the lesson. Questions and the freest conversation were allowed. The most interesting object examined was that showing the movements of the bioplasm in the cells of a plant. This was considered a rare sight, as so few plants show these movements clearly. Our specimen was the common water weed, Anacharis. It had been secured with great difficulty, but was well worth all the effort expended.

Illinois (Charleston).—On October 1, 1882, a class of the C. L. S. C. was organized here, consisting of nine members. The lessons were gone over carefully and conscientiously, and during vacation Geology was reviewed with the aid of the charts. So earnest was the first year’s class in the work, and so evangelizing was their spirit, that the class of this, the second year, has forty-one members. To accommodate the members, the class was divided, and part now meet in the afternoon, and part in the evening. Each division has its own officers. We call ourselves one class, however, and those who choose may attend both meetings. The attendance is good, and the interest great. Neither cold, heat, nor the “raging elements” affects our attendance, nor abates our zeal. Some of the members meet informally and socially every week, and the lessons are read over, more careful attention being paid the pronunciation and meaning of words. At each meeting we select some poet, from whose writings a short quotation must be selected, and recited by each member at the following meeting. Our question box is also a feature of great interest. Members all have the privilege of writing out a question on any subject pertaining to literature, science or art, and these questions are collected and read. They are answered immediately if it can be done, if not they are reserved for further investigation. The influence exerted by the C. L. S. C. is becoming visible outside of its regular members, and we are sure that here, as well as elsewhere, wherever there is a class of the C. L. S. C., more scientific, historical, and classical books will be bought this year than ever before.

The Vincent Local Circle, of Lafayette, Indiana, was organized in 1881. It numbers fifty-six members, twenty-two of whom have undertaken the four years’ course. It is a live, wide awake circle, the most enthusiastic member being a lady seventy-five years of age, who visited Chautauqua last summer, and by her descriptions of the work there, has succeeded in enthusing all. They have organized a lecture course consisting of lectures and musical entertainments. The course was opened on December 5, by an able lecture on “Ultimate America,” by Joseph Cook.

Michigan (Albion).—An event of unusual importance was the meeting of the Alpha C. L. S. C. of this city, January 11, 1883, it being a farewell to their beloved ex-president, Miss Mary C. Robinson, who has been recently elected by the Northwestern Branch of the W. F. M. S. of the M. E. Church[361] as missionary to China. It was an occasion long to be remembered by those who were so fortunate as to be included in the list of invitations. Miss Robinson held for a year the position as president of our circle, and during that time won all hearts by the faithful and persistent effort in its behalf. During the evening a most tempting collation was served, after which an entertaining program was carried out.

A friend writes from Harlan, Iowa: “Our circle is growing in interest, and makes many of us feel that the good old college days have returned. We have several A. M.’s in our circle, and as the rust begins to rub off we begin to appreciate the magnitude of the blessing that this will be to the young who are deprived of college advantages.”

Iowa (Manchester).—Our circle was reorganized in September. It numbers fifty, beside a class of young people who take the history only. We are divided into three classes. We held our first memorial November 3, Bryant’s day. Between eighty and ninety people were present at the exercises, which consisted of an address on Bryant and selections from his works, interspersed with music. The exercises were short, followed by a social which all seemed to enjoy.

The circle numbering twenty, at Independence, Iowa, reports a very interesting time with German History and Literature. The secretary writes: One evening was confined to the articles on “German History” and “German Literature” in The Chautauquan for November. The first thing on the program was quotations from some of the writers mentioned in the article on “German Literature.” Then followed written questions on the “German History,” and discussion. Then two essays were read, one on “Heinrich Heine,” another on “Goethe.”

The S. H. G. and the C. L. S. C. of Osceola, Iowa, united in celebrating Milton’s day, on the eve of December 10. The first named society has ten members, the latter twenty-one. Each member had the privilege of inviting three friends, so that about one hundred and twenty in all assembled. The president of the C. L. S. C. presided, and a fine program was rendered. The guests were all in sympathy with the Chautauqua movement. Some of the circle, who are members of the S. H. G., scarcely know how life would go without the inspiring influences of the Circle. They have no thought of giving it up either this year, next year, nor the one after that.

Dakota (Sioux Falls).—Our circle at this place numbers but twelve. We thought best to have a small number first year. Next year we shall make an effort to enlarge our number to fifty or seventy-five. We doubt whether you have in the East a more enthusiastic circle. We all enjoy the readings much, and the best people in our city are becoming much interested in C. L. S. C.

The first local circle which we have known to “ring out the old year, ring in the new,” is that at Omaha, Nebraska. From the local paper we learn that the meeting was one of unusual importance. Special preparations were made, as this was the closing meeting of the year, and coming as it did on the last evening of the year. The attendance was exceptionally large. The literary exercises were of a very high order, and were much appreciated by the large and fashionable audience assembled. An elegant banquet was served after the exercises, and speech making followed. In response to the toast “The Chautauqua Club,” a gentleman said that a little while ago he, himself, did not know what Chautauqua meant. It was a dim, indefinable something. He had been told that the meaning of the word in the Indian language is “a foggy place,” and it was a dim, distant, foggy place away off, but how real it came to him now! It meant intellectual study, literature, science and art. It had done more, it had led him into a new life.

A little over one year ago a young lady of Ossawatomie, Kansas, returned from a visit to New York, brim full of enthusiasm for the C. L. S. C., having imbibed the “Chautauqua Idea” at the summer Assembly. She at once went to work and in a short time a local circle of twelve members was organized. About mid-winter the circle gave a supper to its friends—a very enjoyable affair. Again, later in the season, a literary entertainment, given to procure funds with which to buy a telescope, met with fair success. This year all hands took hold of the work with renewed vigor, and the old members were encouraged by an addition of seven new members to the circle. The weekly meetings are conducted on the conversational plan, with now and then a C. L. S. C. song. They are, withal, a very enthusiastic body of Chautauquans.

Missouri (Maryville).—This is the third year of our local circle at Maryville. We have eight regular members enrolled. Others here are reading the course, but do not meet with us for review. We have varied the method of conducting our readings as often as practicable, so as to make them interesting as well as instructive in character. This has been done sometimes by adding questions to be answered, writing short essays, or biographical sketches, and introducing the Chautauqua games. Then again a change was made in the number of officers and teachers, or manner of opening or closing the meetings.

There is a circle of over forty persons at Butte City, Montana. The secretary writes: “The interest is good, in fact beyond our expectation. The C. L. S. C. is the right organization for us western people who are all busy and can only take spare moments for study. We have developed no new plan of instruction. We meet every week. An instructor in each important branch prepares at a week’s notice a ‘quiz,’ which is given to the class for about one half hour. Essays are read upon the most important topics connected with the lessons. Readings from choice literature, music, etc., embraces the remainder of our enjoyable evenings.”

We have received memorials of the death of two members of the C. L. S. C. One from Brooklyn, as a minute adopted at the local circle: “The New York Arc C. L. S. C. learn with sorrow of the death of one of its most esteemed members. Mrs. Anna C. Fredericks died on Sunday, December 30, 1883. She was one of those who were enrolled as members of the circle at its organization, for she was already a Chautauquan student, and had then so nearly completed the prescribed studies that she graduated last summer. Such was her enthusiastic love of our methods of study, and attachment to this circle, that the winning of her degree did not detach her from this association, and she continued, with apparently increased zeal, to attend these meetings until prevented by her late short, though fatal, illness. But this was only one manifestation of a life which was characterized with earnest religious devotion and a loving spirit which endeared her to all who were privileged to be near to her, or in any way subject to her influence. Resolved, That the secretary be requested to enter the foregoing minute in the records of the circle, and to present copies to Mr. Fredericks and to the secretary at Plainfield.”

Another comes from Felicity, Ohio: “Our ‘Pleiades’ circle mourns the loss of Miss Flora Carver, of the class of 1884. She was one of our enthusiastic members, ever trying to keep the spirit of our mottoes. When she became too weak to keep up the Course of Reading, she still read The Chautauquan, and in July, with kindling eye and glowing cheek she spoke of the comfort a perusal of Dr. Townsend’s lecture on the “Employments of Heaven” had given her. Hers was a Christian life, and her last days were spent in patient endurance of severe suffering, and joyful contemplation of a happy future.”

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.

ONE HUNDRED QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON FIRST PART OF PREPARATORY LATIN COURSE IN ENGLISH—FROM COMMENCEMENT OF BOOK TO PAGE 167.

By A. M. MARTIN, General Secretary C. L. S. C.

1. Q. What is the general purpose of the series of four books, of which the present is the second in order of preparation and publication? A. To conduct the readers by means of the English tongue alone, through substantially the same course of discipline in Greek and Latin Literature as is accomplished by students who are graduates from our American colleges.

2. Q. What does this second volume of the series seek to do? A. To go over the ground in Latin literature usually traversed by the student in course of preparing himself to be a college matriculate.

3. Q. What three elements may be said to be in any body of literature? A. A substance, a spirit, and a form, somewhat separate one from another.

4. Q. Of these three elements, what two is it the hope of the author to communicate to his readers? A. The spirit as well as the substance, so far as they are separable one from another.

5. Q. By whom was the literature called Latin produced? A. By a people called Roman, chiefly in a city called Rome.

6. Q. Over what does the name Roman lord it exclusively? A. Over everything pertaining to Rome, except her language and her literature.

7. Q. What may this circumstance be taken to indicate in reference to Rome? A. What is indeed the fact, that literature was for her a subordinate interest.

8. Q. When was the city of Rome founded? A. An unreckoned time before the history of the city began.

9. Q. According to the fable followed by Virgil, by whom was Rome founded? A. By Æneas, escaping with a trusty few from the flames of Troy.

10. Q. According to a second legend, lapping on and piecing out the first, who was the founder of Rome? A. Romulus, whose father was Mars, the Roman god of war.

11. Q. What legendary line of rulers succeeded Romulus? A. A line of legendary kings, followed by a Republic.

12. Q. What may be assumed as the starting-point of Roman history, worthy to be so called? A. The war with Pyrrhus, which broke out two hundred and eighty-one years before Christ.

13. Q. After Rome had absorbed Italy into her empire, with what African city was a prolonged war waged? A. With Carthage.

14. Q. What three names were prominent on the Carthaginian side during this war? A. Hamilcar, Hasdrubal and Hannibal.

15. Q. Give three prominent names on the Roman side? A. Regulus, Fabius and Scipio.

16. Q. After the subjugation of Carthage, what is said of the dominions of Rome? A. Her dominions were rapidly extended in every direction until they embraced almost literally the whole of the then known world.

17. Q. When was the Augustan age of Latin literature? A. During the reign of Augustus Cæsar.

18. Q. What is said on the whole of the fame of ancient Rome? A. It is the most famous city of the world.

19. Q. What is stated in regard to the natural advantages of Rome? A. Its remove from the coast secured it, in its feeble beginning, against pirates, while the navigable stream of the Tiber made it virtually a seaboard town.

20. Q. What was the height of the buildings that covered much of the extent of ground within the limits of the city of ancient Rome? A. Six and eight stories in height.

21. Q. At what has the population of Rome at its maximum been estimated? A. From two to six million souls.

22. Q. For what was a large area reserved, inclosed between the Quirinal hill and the river? A. Exclusively to public buildings, and here there was an almost unparalleled accumulation of costly, solid, and magnificent architecture.

23. Q. What is now one of the chief spectacles in modern Rome to excite the wonder and awe of the tourist? A. The Coliseum, a roofless amphitheater for gladiatorial exhibitions, built of stone, and capable of seating more than eighty thousand spectators.

24. Q. From what people were the Greeks and Romans descended? A. The Aryan or Indo-European, a people having its original home in Central Asia.

25. Q. How did the Romans conquer and govern the world? A. By being conquerors and governors.

26. Q. For what did the Romans all live? A. For the state.

27. Q. What was the one business of the state? A. Conquest, in a two-fold sense: first, subjugation by arms; second, consequent upon subjugation, rule by law.

28. Q. What is said of the cultivation of letters by Rome? A. Letters she almost wholly neglected until her conquest of the world was complete.

29. Q. In what way did the Romans make peace with other nations? A. They never made peace but as conquerors.

30. Q. What course did the Romans take in regard to whatever superior features they found in the military scheme of other nations? A. They did not hesitate to transfer and adopt it into their own.

31. Q. What nations in turn enjoyed the honor of furnishing to the Romans the model for their sword? A. The Spaniards and the Gauls.

32. Q. From whom did Rome learn how to order her encampment? A. From Pyrrhus.

33. Q. From what people did Rome learn to build ships? A. From the Carthaginians.

34. Q. As soon as Rome had conquered a people what did she make that people? A. Her ally.

35. Q. What phrase has Rome made a proverb to all time of false dealing between nations? A. “Punic faith.”

36. Q. At whose expense did Rome do her conquering and her governing? A. At the expense of the conquered and the governed.

37. Q. What effect did war have upon the wealth of Rome? A. She never herself became poorer, but always richer, by war.

38. Q. What was all that enormous accumulation of public and private resources which made Rome rich and great? A. It was pure plunder.

39. Q. What is a momentous fact in regard to the population of the Roman Empire? A. That in the end over one-half the population were slaves.

40. Q. Notwithstanding the injustice of Rome, how did she govern as compared with other ancient nations? A. She governed more beneficently than any other ancient nation.

41. Q. What blessing did she extend to all the countries she conquered? A. The blessing of stable government, of an administration of law at least comparatively just and wise.

42. Q. What effect did Rome have upon the civilization of those she subjugated? A. After her fashion she civilized where she had subjugated.

43. Q. What did Rome do that is to be accounted an immeasurable blessing to mankind? A. She made the world politically one, for the unhindered universal spread of Christianity.

44. Q. Who are some of the historians mentioned as having written works on the history of Rome, that are commended to the reader? A. Creighton, Leighton, Liddell, Mommsen, Merivale, Arnold and Gibbon.

45. Q. What work on the literature of Rome is spoken of as perhaps the best manual of Latin letters? A. Cruttwell’s “History of Roman Literature.”

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46. Q. During what period was Roman literature produced, that is usually termed classic? A. From about 80 B. C. to A. D. 108, covering a space of 188 years.

47. Q. What writer begins, and what one ends this period? A. Cicero begins and Tacitus ends it.

48. Q. Who may be regarded as the beginner of Latin literature? A. Livius Andronicus, a writer of tragedy about twenty-four years before Christ.

49. Q. Who wrote a sort of epic on the first Punic war, esteemed by scholars one of the chief lost things in Roman literature? A. Nævius.

50. Q. What is the next great name in Latin literature, and what is said of his influence and example? A. Ennius, and his influence and example decisively fixed the form of the Latin poetry.

51. Q. Who were two great Roman writers of comedy? A. Plautus and Terence.

52. Q. What form of composition in verse may be said to be original with Rome? A. The satire.

53. Q. What seems to be a general fact in literary history, in regard to the first development of a national literature? A. That verse precedes prose.

54. Q. Who was the creator of the classic Roman satire? A. Lucilius.

55. Q. Who were the great Roman masters of satire? A. Horace and Juvenal.

56. Q. What English writers have written brilliant imitative satires with the essential spirit of Horace and Juvenal? A. Dryden, Pope and Johnson.

57. Q. To whom may be attributed the merit of being the founder or former of Latin prose? A. Cato, the Censor.

58. Q. Who among the Romans, with Demosthenes among Greeks, reigns alone as one of the two undisputedly greatest masters of human speech that have ever appeared on the planet? A. Cicero.

59. Q. Who among Romans were eminent writers of history for Rome? A. Cato, Sallust, Livy and Tacitus.

60. Q. In what age, and by whom, was the great epic of Rome produced? A. The Æneid, in the age of Augustus, by Virgil.

61. Q. Who by eminence was the Roman poet of society and manners? A. Horace.

62. Q. What is any Latin Reader, like any Greek, pretty sure to contain? A. Its share of fables, of anecdotes, of historical fragments, of mythology, and of biography.

63. Q. What revived plan of making up Latin Readers is among the late changes in fashion introduced by classical teachers? A. Of making up Latin Readers that consist exclusively of selections credited to standard Latin authors.

64. Q. What two writers sometimes find a place in these Latin Readers, that are sometimes wholly omitted in the course of Latin literature accomplished by the college graduate? A. Sallust and Ovid.

65. Q. What three historical works did Sallust write? A. The “Conspiracy of Catiline,” the “Jugurthine War,” and a “History of Rome from the death of Sulla to the Mithridatic War.”

66. Q. In the midst of what was the residence Sallust occupied in Rome? A. In the midst of grounds laid out and beautified by him with the most lavish magnificence.

67. Q. What did these grounds subsequently become, and what name do they still bear? A. They subsequently became the chosen resort of the Roman emperors, and they still bear the name of the Gardens of Sallust.

68. Q. With what is Sallust’s “Jugurthine War” commenced? A. With a sort of moral essay, or homily, not having the least particular relations to the subject about to be treated.

69. Q. What is the subject of the “Jugurthine War”? A. The war which the Roman people carried on with Jugurtha, king of the Numidians.

70. Q. What are the names of three Romans who took prominent part in the Jugurthine war? A. Metellus, Marius and Sulla.

71. Q. With what did the war end? A. With the capture of Jugurtha by the Romans through the treachery of Bocchus, his father-in-law.

72. Q. Where and when was Ovid born? A. In northern Italy, in 43 B. C.

73. Q. With what did the youth of Ovid coincide? A. Either with the full maturity, or with the declining age, of the great Augustan writers, Virgil, Livy, Horace and Sallust.

74. Q. By whom was Ovid banished from Rome? A. By Augustus.

75. Q. What may be considered as the chief work of Ovid? A. His “Metamorphoses.”

76. Q. What does this title literally mean? A. Changes of form.

77. Q. What is Ovid’s idea in the poem? A. To tell in his own way such legends of the teeming Greek mythology as deal with the transformations of men and women into animals, plants, or inanimate things.

78. Q. What has this poem been to subsequent poets? A. A great treasury of material.

79. Q. What episode, taken from the second book of “Metamorphoses,” is given by our author? A. Phæton driving the chariot of the sun.

80. Q. In what is the legend of Phæton conceived by many to have had its origin? A. In some meteorological fact—an extraordinary solar heat perhaps, producing drought and conflagration.

81. Q. Of what two other stories from the “Metamorphoses” does our author present a translation? A. The story of Daphne’s transformation into a laurel, and the tragic story of Niobe.

82. Q. What American writer has quite extensively treated Ovidian topics in a way that is at once instructive and delightful? A. Hawthorne.

83. Q. Ovid’s verse in the “Metamorphoses” is the same as what? A. As that of Virgil and Homer, namely, the dactylic hexameter.

84. Q. What has the general agreement of thoughtful minds tended to affirm in regard to Julius Cæsar? A. The sentence of Brutus, as given by Shakspere, that he was “the foremost man of all this world.”

85. Q. What is the principal literary work of Cæsar that remains to us? A. His “Commentaries,” which is an account he wrote of his campaigns in Gaul.

86. Q. With the exception of a few instances, in what person does Cæsar write? A. In the third person.

87. Q. From whom did the ancient patrician family of Cæsar claim derivation? A. From Iulus, son of Trojan Æneas.

88. Q. The word Cæsar was made by Caius Julius a name so illustrious that it came afterward to be adopted by whom? A. By his successors in power at Rome, and finally thence to be transferred to the emperors of Germany, and to the autocrats of Russia, called respectively Kaiser and Czar.

89. Q. With whom was Cæsar associated in the first triumvirate? A. Pompey and Crassus.

90. Q. Out of the eight books comprised in Cæsar’s “Gallic Commentaries,” how many is the preparatory student usually required to read? A. Only four.

91. Q. With what two series of military operations on Cæsar’s part does the first book principally occupy itself? A. One directed against the Helvetians, and one against a body of Germans who had invaded Gaul.

92. Q. Of what is Cæsar’s tenth legion, that became famous in history, still a proverb? A. For loyalty, valor and effectiveness.

93. Q. In the second book Cæsar gives the history of his campaign against whom? A. The Belgians, made up of different tribes.

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94. Q. Who were esteemed the most fierce and warlike of all the Belgian nations? A. The Nervians.

95. Q. After Cæsar’s successful campaign against the Belgian tribes, what was decreed for his victories? A. A thanksgiving of fifteen days, an unprecedented honor.

96. Q. In the third book an account is given of a naval warfare against whom? A. The Veneti.

97. Q. What is the first thing of commanding interest in the fourth book of Cæsar’s “Commentaries?” A. The case of alleged perfidy, with enormous undoubted cruelty, practiced by Cæsar against his German enemies.

98. Q. What famous feat on the part of Cæsar is narrated in the fourth book? A. That of throwing a bridge across the river Rhine.

99. Q. What were the dimensions of this bridge? A. It was fourteen hundred feet long, furnishing a solid roadway thirty or forty feet wide.

100. Q. With the relation of what enterprise does the fourth book close? A. The invasion by Cæsar of Great Britain.

CHAUTAUQUA NORMAL COURSE.

Season of 1884.

LESSON VI.—BIBLE SECTION.

The Land of The Bible.

By Rev. J. L. HURLBUT, D.D., and R. S. HOLMES, A.M.

1. It is an ancient land.—Before Rome was cradled by Tiber—before the storied strifes of the Gods in Hellas, before Troy and the great glory of the Trojans were, even before history was this wonderful land.

2. It is an historic land.—Much of the world’s destiny has been decided in this little strip of coast and mountain land, between the Jordan and the sea. Here armies have camped and battles have been fought. The restless feet of merchant traders have beaten its highways, the white wings of merchant vessels have flitted to and from its ports with the wealth of the world.

3. It is a diminutive land.—A little triangle bounded by the sea, the Jordan and her mountains, and the desert, it seems hardly large enough for all the mighty events that have occurred within it; 180 miles from farthest north to south, and 90 miles for its greatest breadth from west to east, measures the country in all its extent.

4. It is a storied land.—Where such a treasure house of tales as in that old Bible? The land and its book have figured in all the literatures of the Occidental ages. Knights and paladins have trod its vales and mountains; saint and crusader have watched at night beneath its stars.

5. It is a land of famous mountains.—Ebal and Gerizim, Hor and Nebo, Olivet and Tabor, Gilboa and Hermon. What scenes rise to the mind as we name them! Carmel and Quarantania; struggle and victory; Elijah, Immanuel.

6. It is a land of remarkable waters.—A single river—the Jordan, from north to south—rising in the extreme north from springs so hidden as to have long been unknown, loses itself in that sea of desolation, Lake Asphaltites, the Dead Sea. The mid-world sea, the mother sea of great nations, washes the western shores, and Galilee shines like a diadem in her mountain setting.

7. It is a land of many names.—The land of Canaan, the land of the children of Heth, Philistia, Palestine, the Promised Land, the Holy Land, the land of Judah, Immanuel’s Land.

8. It is an impregnable land.—Its hills, rock-ribbed, rise one upon another, covering the whole face of the land, and forcing all travel of army or caravan through the few passes in which the great northern plain terminates. Hence Esdrelon became of necessity the country’s battle ground. A united people made the country a fear to its force.

9. It was a populous land.—Beyond belief almost are the records of the people who lived within these few square miles. Cities and villages laid so close to each other that their environs almost met. The people thronged in them, and in the well tilled country about them, so that centuries of war, foreign and civil, and repeated depletions left them still in their decadence a troublesome foe to the veterans of Rome.

10. It was a productive land.—Shrubs and trees were in abundance. Pine, oak, elder, dogwood, walnut, maple, willow, ash, carob, sycamore, fig, olive and palm. Fruits in great variety were ripened beneath its sun; grapes, apples, pears, apricots, quinces, plums, mulberries, dates, pomegranates, oranges, limes, bananas, almonds, and pistachios. Many kinds of grains were cultivated, such as wheat, barley, rice, sesamum, millet and maize.

11. It was a land of a remarkable climate.—Thirty degrees variation from mountain to plain was its daily range. With the isothermal lines of our Florida and California, it yet had snow and ice as in our northern climates. Heavy rainfalls were characteristic; so were long periods of drought. Heavy dews, fierce siroccos, cloudless skies, oppressive heat, steady sea breezes, burning valleys, cool mountain summits were all characteristics of this land of the Bible.

Under the headings now given let the student give:

1. Ten dates which cover its history, and mark its principal events.

2. Give five events which have occurred in this land, that have direct bearing in the world’s history.

3. Give its geographical dimensions and natural features which mark its boundaries.

4. Give ten events in its history which have made it an enchanted land.

5. Give the event which has made the mountains mentioned memorable.

6. Give the event which makes each of the waters of the Bible memorable; Galilee, Jordan, Kishon, the Salt Sea.

7. Give the origin of the names by which the land is known.

8. Give the principal routes of travel through this land; and name the defensible passes.

9. Give its ten principal cities.

10. Give the Bible references which mention any of the trees, shrubs, fruits or grains here specified.

11. Give reasons why the climate should be as described.

SUNDAY-SCHOOL SECTION.

LESSON VI.—THE TEACHER’S MISTAKES.

That they are possible is assumed. That they are probable is likewise assumed. That they are real is a fact of personal experience. Mistakes anywhere are mischievous. In Sunday-school they are often ruinous. Let us classify them. They are first, mistakes of manner and method; second, mistakes of purpose and expectation; third, mistakes of thought and action. Let us examine our classification:

I. Manner and Method.

It is a mistake (a) to recognize differences in social position or station between members of a class. In the Sunday-school all meet on a common level. There is no rank in the Christian kingdom. All are peers of the realm, and Jesus Christ is the only Lord.

(b) To be in any degree partial to any scholar. All should be favorite scholars in this school.

(c) To seem uninterested in anything pertaining to the general interest of the school. If the teacher is devoid of interest the scholar will be.

(d) To scold or threaten in the class, even under provocations such as do occur in Sunday-school. Scolding always exercises an ill effect, and a threat is but a challenge.

(e) To pretend to be wiser or better versed in Bible lore than one really is. In Bible teaching, real knowledge is real power—but[365] a manner that assumes to know what it does not is only the lion’s skin on the ass’ head.

(f) To neglect thorough study. Wherever there is good teaching there will be at least two students. One will be the teacher. Witness Dr. Arnold, of Rugby.

(g) To neglect private prayer in the teacher’s preparation. Said old Martin Luther, “Bene arâsse est bene studuisse.”

(h) To depend upon lesson-helps in the class. Crutches are not becoming to an able bodied man. But some teachers bring out the lesson crutches on Sunday morning and hobble through Sunday-school on them.

(i) To expect the superintendent to discipline each class. He is no more responsible for class order than a commanding general for the order of a corporal’s guard.

(j) To use the lesson verse by verse, ending each with the Æsopian interrogation, “Hæc fabula docet?”

II. Purpose and Expectation.

It is a mistake (a) to seek only for a scholar’s conversion. If growth does not follow birth, death will. Upbuilding in Christ is one great purpose of the school.

(b) To seek only to create interest in the lesson. There may be deep intellectual interest created, and no spiritual interest.

(c) To teach for the purpose of performing duty. That robs the teacher of one chief essential to success—heartiness.

(d) To teach for the purpose of inculcating one’s own peculiar religious views. Paul’s purpose was the right one—“to know nothing save Christ and him crucified.”

(e) For the teacher to expect the pupil’s interest in the Gospel theme to equal his own. It is contrary to sinful nature.

(f) To expect home work by pupils, unless it has been prepared for by patient effort.

(g) To expect conversion as the immediate result of teaching, and to grow discouraged and abandon the work because the expectation is not at once realized. God’s way and time are his own.

(h) Not to expect conversion as the ultimate result of teaching; and hence to fail to direct every effort to that end.—“In the morning sow thy seed,” etc.

III. Thought and Action.

It is a mistake (a) to think teaching easy. It has taxed the noblest powers of the noblest men.

(b) To think it an insignificant or puerile employment. The two greatest names of the ages, heathen and Christian, were nothing if not teachers: Socrates—Immanuel.

(c) To think the Sunday-school a children’s institution only. The three great Christian institutions are the home, the church, the Sunday-school, and the constituency of each is the same.

(d) To be irregular in attendance at Sunday-school.

(e) To be unpunctual.

(f) To be lax in discipline.

(g) To fail in example, whether in connection with school work or daily life.

EDITOR’S OUTLOOK.

INGENUITY IN LOCAL CIRCLES.

The degree of interest in work depends largely upon the degree of its variety. A class which nods over the same day-in-and-day-out routine of questions and answers, wakes up, smiles, thinks and becomes animated when a new way of doing even familiar work is proposed. Local circle life and strength depends very largely upon wide-awake schemes and novel plans. Unless something fresh is continually arousing interest, a circle will lose ground. There are many workers who are continually developing new enterprises; there are others who never have anything to report but the number of members, the names of officers, and the place and time of meeting. Such societies are dwarfed by their own lack of ingenuity. The kind and variety of work which is to be done in all circles can not be better told than it is in an open letter before us from Newton Highlands, Massachusetts:

“We are a mutual club. Our plan of work is very informal. Our officers have been only a president and secretary. We meet every Monday at the house of one of our number, alternating as we please. We commence precisely on time, viz.: 2:30 o’clock p. m., and continue till 5:30, or later. For the first two years our president was our leader. Since that time we have taken our turn in order, as leaders, and asked questions in order around the circle, on the subject of the former week’s work, taking the lesson up by paragraphs, faithfully examining each, and often incidentally bringing in (for drawing out of the members) much information bearing upon the lesson. Often a subject was allotted to a member, on which she thoroughly prepared herself and contributed the information at the next meeting, either verbally or by reading a paper. The memorial days were faithfully kept, though not always on the identical day; but we selected a day most convenient for the club during the month—for we are all housekeepers.

“For these memorial days great preparation was made. In the first place we all assembled two hours earlier than usual, with the preparations for a banquet, at the home of the lady who had invited us to dine with her.

“Each carried whatever she had previously pledged, or what had been suggested to her; and here the ladies had ample opportunity to exhibit their skill in the culinary line, which they did not fail to improve; so that one of the suggestions, not yet acted upon, was to publish a C. L. S. C. Cook Book.

“We had our post-prandial exercises too, though care was taken to send each member the toast to which she was to respond, that she might not be taken unawares, and having never had any training in that line we were allowed to read our responses, if we chose. Then at the usual time we gathered for our work.

“After having celebrated the birthday of each of those selected by C. L. S. C. for two years, we have since introduced other names to our list, as Walter Scott, George Eliot.

“Once we had a Roman day, and one of our party wrote a description of our imagined entrance into Rome, and locating us at a hotel, took us daily trips to different parts of the city; each member describing one or more interesting objects to be found on the way. A map of Rome hung up before us, so that the imaginary excursion could be easily traced. The members brought in any engravings or illustrations, medallions, etc., which were helpful, and our neighbors who had traveled abroad were happy to aid us by loaning their precious mementoes. Our excursions, too, as a club, have been very enjoyable and profitable.

“While studying geology we made an excursion to Harvard College and spent the day in looking over the buildings and listening to the curator, who kindly explained the articles in the Agassiz Museum, and then delivered a lecture to us on “Ancient Mounds,” etc.

“After completing the History of Art, we made an excursion to the Art Museum in Boston, and examined everything in the rooms which had been referred to in the Art Book, thus fixing[366] the knowledge already acquired by seeing its representation. We also, through the kindness of friends, had the privilege of visiting the State House, and examining the original charters and ancient letters of Washington, Arnold, etc., also the Acts and Resolves in the archives of the state.

“On our return, our president proposed to one of our members, whose father had been in the legislature, and was well acquainted with all the technical terms and methods in use there, to write an article for the club, introducing a bill into the legislature, noting the steps necessary for its passage through both houses, and tracing it even till it became a law.

“This afforded us considerable amusement, as the sister was progressive (?) and recognized in her look into futurity some of our club as members of the different houses! and the bills were such as had an amusing local significance.

“A trip to Wellesley College also was made.

“But time and your patience would fail me to tell of all our doings. One thing more, however, I must not omit, and that is that our club wrote a book. We will not call it a Romance, though it was the ‘Bridal Trip’ of a couple of young Americans. Each chapter, written by a different member, constituted a part of the journey, and included an account of the points of interest in or around some principal city. The couple journeyed through Scotland, England, France, Italy and Germany.

“Of course it was necessary for a committee to act as editors, and write these chapters so that it would read like a continuous story. Then one afternoon we met and had the whole read aloud by the editors.

“We felt the attempt was an exceedingly great undertaking at first, but as each one had a certain part allotted to her, and was allowed to gather all the ideas she pleased from research, and use them in her own way—fearing no accusation of plagiarism—we found it was not so difficult after all.”

IS CRIME INTERESTING?

The newspaper reader, for one or another reason, regards crime as important news because he is full of morbid curiosity regarding whatever is abnormal in human conduct. A crime is something strange and fascinating because passions play through it, and secret places in human life are uncovered by it. It interests us because we are human, with strange forces of evil coming up now and again into consciousness and suggesting our brotherhood to the thief and the murderer. Many a man reads in a story of defalcation, things he has himself done without being found out. Many a woman reads in the story of a murder, passages from her own life where she also might have taken the fatal step beyond the line of safety. Try as much as we may, we cannot divest ourselves of the curiosity and the unconscious sympathy which make us look over the crime record with more interest than we give to any other part of a newspaper.

The newspapers are reproached for publishing all about crimes; but the average reader, perhaps we might say the best reader, peruses even the details with absorbing interest. He may be ashamed of himself for his curiosity, but he has the curiosity. The fact is not complimentary to us, and we lash the press when we know we ought to lash ourselves. For the reason just given, the remedy for the daily feast of passion and blood is not an easy one to find. A newspaper needs great merits to be able to omit the crime record; and though it should be accepted without that record, many a subscriber of it would look for the record elsewhere. The remedy is difficult because the public has to cure itself—the newspaper can not cure it—of the desire to know “the evil that is in the world through lust.” The world, the flesh and the devil take up a commanding position in our anxieties, solicitudes, curiosities, and sympathies. We must be a great deal better as a people before we shall be content to live in ignorance of any badness which breaks through the calm surface of life and rises into a billow of crime. It is true that the curiosity may be educated out of us—not entirely, but in large degree—and yet it is also true that we do not display any serious desire to be so educated. We want this kind of news. We want to know at least the motives of the crimes, how they were committed and whether they were punished or not. The newspaper may give us these outline facts discreetly and briefly, but the mass of us will secretly hunger for more. The moral of the business may be left to the pulpit; it is tolerably plain to the pews.

A DRAWBACK TO SOCIAL LIFE.

To one examining the society notes of the various cities, it is very evident that never before were we, who are in society, living so sumptuously as at present. Our dinners have become banquets, our teas feasts. The magnificence, the notoriety, the cost, are astounding. One involuntarily rubs his eyes and looks to see some gallant dissolving pearls for his liege lady. This elaborate effort to feast one’s guests is not only prevalent among the millionaires and epicureans of our cities, it is a feature of entertaining which prevails even in small communities. In a village of some six hundred people, well known to us, we have had the opportunity to study the effect of extravagant hospitality upon the society. The people almost without exception are well-to-do, well educated, congenial, a set in every way suited to form a pleasant society. Among them are a few wealthy families. In such a town one would expect to find almost ideal social life—full of good will, of pleasant thought, new amusements, not overcrowded, thoroughly enjoyable; but to our surprise we found very little. A few evenings out, a few questions, and we understand the cause. At a small party given by a leading lady, we were astounded to be called out to a table loaded with every conceivable delicacy; meats, salads, cakes, creams, fruits in every variety. The supper was a work of art, a mammoth undertaking, and it had been prepared by the lady herself and her one servant, with such assistance as is to be found in a small village, off the railroad. Further experience taught us that when any one entertained friends there such refreshments were considered necessary. The effects upon the social life of the town were disastrous. Where there was the possibility of most delightful companionships there was an absolute dearth of social gatherings. A lady of culture remarked: “I can not entertain, simply because I can not afford it. If it were possible I should receive weekly, but our customs demand such outlays for all social affairs that I am obliged to deny myself what otherwise would be a pleasure.” Another, a lady of wealth remarked: “I am handicapped in my social life by the extravagant habits of our people. What I would be glad to do, were I in a city where I could obtain efficient help, it is impossible to do with our servants. I can not prepare my own dinners, and our town requires such extensive preparations for even a small company, that I have ceased entertaining.” But even this feature is not the worst. Social life is virtually killed when the table becomes the feature of the evening, when on the merits of pastry and salads depends the social status of the family. The hostess comes to her guest’s room, worn with the care of the thousand details of a great dinner. The possibility of friction or failure destroys the ease, the mirth, the abandon, that makes her charm. Her spirit oftentimes is contagious, and her guests, too, feel the responsibility which oppresses her. It comes to be true that the most elaborate dinner-givers are the poorest entertainers, that instead of new ideas, pleasant memories and the ring of music, all one carries away from the house where they have been feasted is indigestion and their menu card.

This extravagance is a feature of social life which sensible people can not afford to countenance. There is too great danger that by it the truly desirable and helpful features will be injured; that while epicureans will support the elegance, people of simple habits will be driven in a measure from society; that social life will be changed to feasting, and conversation, wit and music placed a step below eating and drinking.

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AN UNJUST COMPLAINT.

It would be a strange thing if the public schools of the country gave entire satisfaction. They are so numerous, they cost so much, such large hopes are built on them, they so pervasively affect the most sensitive social regions—those of the family—that a very large amount of criticism, a huge aggregate of discontent, would be properly and naturally expected. The wonder is that there is so little dissatisfaction. Perhaps the most sensitive spot just now is the pass examinations—or the system of regulating the rise of pupils from one department to another. It is affirmed, for example, that in New York and other cities the teachers are constantly employed in coaching their pupils for examinations. It is declared that there is very little of proper teaching, that most of the work is simply cramming for the sake of passing, and that the pupils really learn very little, and are not in any proper sense being educated. The whole mass of these children are being crowded up a stairway—and the getting up, by whatever means, into the higher grades is the sole object of teachers and pupils.

It is easy to see that there must be much use of the spirit of emulation, and the pride of standing, in teaching great masses of young people. There are owlish philosophers who would have children and young people act from the motives that are supposed to regulate the lives of their grandfathers. A public school boy or a college boy is often, perhaps commonly, spoken of as though he were a companion of Socrates and George Washington. This kind of critic assumes that the lad knows all wisdom and only needs to select some bits of knowledge and chew them with the relish of a Plato. The critic can not put himself in the boy’s place. He can not realize that the boy does not know everything, and does not much care to learn anything. This critic has the practical teacher at a great advantage; knowing boys and girls as saints and philosophers, he can condemn the practical instructor who has never met any such boys and girls. The teacher wants to get work out of his pupils; and he goes about it practically, and does get the work done. At the end of his work, the pupils are doubtless very unsatisfactory. In fact, we are all of us, always more or less unsatisfactory.

In New York, there is no doubt that the pass system has developed some bad features. Perhaps some trace of these features will be found everywhere in graded schools. It would be difficult to secure ambitious and industrious pupils without running some risks. You must awaken the desire to rise, even though the desire to rise dishonestly may develop itself in some pupils.

The gravest charge against the schools is that they kill the pupils with hard work. Every city has its story of a pupil (always a girl) murdered by the severe tasks of the school. The simple truth is that negligent mothers are more guilty than the schools. It is a mother’s business to know all about her children—to know when they are overworked—and it is also the mother’s duty to put a stop to hurtful work. We do not hire teachers to take the place of parents. We could not afford to pay enough teachers for this service. The public school system assumes that mothers attend to their duties, and retain their authority. If school work is hurtful to a young girl, the mother has the right to remove the child from the school. If she does not find out that the work is too hard, how can she expect the teacher to discover it? The general health of public school children proves that the system is not too severe; but it will often happen that young girls are physically unfit for study. It is the business of their mothers—not of their teachers—to know when such disabilities exist.

LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

We love to read the letters of great men, who in letters, art, science, statesmanship, theology, have held a front rank. They discover their personality, and bring us into acquaintance with the men themselves, as nothing else does. We say to the biographer: “Let your subject, as far as may be, tell us of himself; give us any fragments of autobiography or journals which may be in existence; print copiously of his letters.” The wise writer of biography does so; and the most valuable portions of the life of a man of note are those in which he speaks himself. Let Michael Angelo, with candle stuck in his pasteboard cap, teach those who undertake to show us a character in whom there is a public interest; let them keep their own shadows off the canvas. “The Life of Frederick W. Robertson,” by Stopford A. Brooke, and the “Life of Dr. Arnold,” by Dean Stanley, are models of biography. The letters of Robertson and of Arnold are their most prominent feature, and are a priceless treasure, both because of the light they throw upon the personality of the men, and the rich thought with which they sparkle. Mr. Parke Godwin, in his “Life of Bryant,” has done his work well. To have omitted the scrap of autobiography which occupies the first thirty-eight pages of the work would have been a great blunder. It is most charming. And the letters of the great poet and editor are interspersed generously through the two volumes. No one will say that they fill too large a space. Fame came to Bryant early, and he was permitted to live, with his reputation continually widening, and his honors augmenting, until nearly four-score-and-four years had passed over his head; and to die, like Moses, with his eye undimmed and his natural force not abated. It could not have been a difficult matter to secure letters of his in abundance for the purposes of biography; and these the world wants.

We have them here in these volumes of Mr. Godwin; letters written in all periods of life; letters to acquaintances, friends and strangers; letters upon literature, politics, and matters personal; letters to persons well known in letters and public affairs; letters written here and there at home, and from various points in his frequent journeyings in other lands. As might have been expected, we find always, as we read them, the same clear and beautiful style. Bryant could not write, even upon trivial matters, without writing well. It was said of him that “he never said a foolish thing.” No foolish thing is found in these letters, and whatever is said is said clearly and well. The poet was not a humorist; the editor was not. And the element of humor, wanting in his poems and editorials, seldom appears in his letters. They do not sparkle with drollery and wit like those of Dickens. Sometimes, in writing to his old pastor and warm friend, Rev. Dr. Dewey, he unbends and is somewhat playful and jocose; and a letter written to his mother, when a young man, telling her of his marriage, is, for him, rather funny; but as a rule, the letters are of a grave and serious tone. Bryant the litterateur and the politician, appears in his correspondence more prominently than any other character. His interest in politics from early life was evidently very great. Letters are given which he wrote upon state and national affairs, when a boy, to the congressman of the district at Washington; and letters full of wise reflections, written by the mature and sagacious man to President Lincoln and other eminent statesmen. As a matter of course, the man is far more modest, is much less positive, and knows far less than the boy! And numerous and highly interesting are the letters to many associates of his in the field of letters. Richard H. Dana, the senior, gave him valuable aid at the beginning of his literary career, and became his close, life-long friend. Perhaps to him more of the letters of these volumes are addressed than to any other one person. Mr. Bryant’s home-life was beautiful, and his letters to members of his family discover the fact, and his strongly affectionate nature. The death of his wife, for whose recovery to health the climate of different parts of Europe was tried in vain, was keenly felt, and the shadow of the bereavement was upon him the balance of his years. Among the letters, we find that written to Dr. Vincent, in his last years, in which his interest in the C. L. S. C. and its objects was so beautifully expressed, and which has become familiar to all the members of the Circle.

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EDITOR’S NOTE-BOOK.

All inquiries and correspondence relating to the business management of Chautauqua should be addressed to Mr. W. A. Duncan, Secretary, Syracuse, N. Y. Mr. Duncan makes his home in that city, and is in easy communication with Chautauqua. He has entered upon the work of the secretaryship with his usual enterprise and zeal, and the management of Chautauqua is being greatly strengthened by his election.

There is very little of an exciting character in the political world. General W. T. Sherman has been mentioned by his friends for the Presidency, but the newspapers and politicians seem to have dismissed his name from the list of probable candidates. He is too much mixed up with the Romish church in his family relations. President Arthur has made a fine impression by the prudence and statesmanlike bearing of his administration. He has won a high rank as a man, a politician, and a patriot, since he took the oath of office, much higher than he held in the thought of the people before, but he will fail of the nomination for the Presidency. Ohio will not endorse him and his own state did not elect his Secretary of the Treasury governor, and the logic is that New York would not endorse him. All other candidates seem to have gone into private training for the open conflict.

The election of Mr. Payne to the United States Senate by the Democrats of Ohio, does, it is thought, change the attitude of the Democratic party on Civil Service Reform. Senator Pendleton, who is a strong champion of this reform in his party, and one of its earnest advocates in the Senate, was defeated by Mr. Payne, who is not regarded as an advocate of Civil Service.

Ever since our government was founded, there have been, no doubt, many persons who feared that there would eventually grow up a too close intimacy between the executive and legislative departments. This fear has in part prevented the heads of departments from being members of the House of Representatives. And yet they wield a tremendous influence in shaping legislative action as it relates to their departments. The secretaries are consulted by members on the floor of the House and the Senate on all important matters in which they are interested. Why not give them the rights and privileges of membership, that they may represent their departments in person? It might be the means of throwing new light on many vexed questions in the administration of the government.

After sixteen years of neglect and broken treaty stipulations the Congress of the United States is moving to provide Alaska with a simple, inexpensive government and school system. Strangely enough the portion of the bill pertaining to schools is the one that meets with the most opposition in Congress. That it shall not be defeated, and the native population of Alaska be deprived of educational advantages, it is in order for the readers of The Chautauquan to show their interest in education by petitioning Congress to pass this bill.

Every congressional season we have revived for public discussion in one form or another, “Who is first lady at Washington?” At the New Year’s reception, Mrs. Carlisle, the speaker’s wife, stood next the President, while it is maintained that the wife of the Secretary of State should have occupied this position, and that Mrs. Carlisle should have stood “below” the Cabinet. The President settled the dispute by inviting Mrs. Carlisle to stand by his side.

As knowledge increases, the tests applied to men for service grow more severe. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company has been inquiring into the color blindness of their employes, a very important matter, when we think of the relations of signals as they are used on the road to the safety of human life, as well as to the protection of the rolling stock of the company. Dr. William Thompson, the ophthalmologist by whom the work was conducted, discovered that one man in twenty-five is unfit for service where prompt recognition of color signals is required. Some who are color blind do indeed distinguish correctly between danger and safety flags, but, as Dr. Thompson suggests, they are guided by form, not by color. It might be some security, therefore, to make every danger signal peculiarly recognizable by both its form and color.

Shall the government take charge of the telegraph service? is a question that has not come up in any shape for discussion in Congress, and we doubt if it will receive much attention in either House or Senate in the immediate future. There is one objection to the government assuming control of this branch of public service, viz.: As the leading daily newspapers of the country are now conducted, they depend on the telegraph companies for facilities to transmit the Associated Press dispatches, and since this is the only medium the people have for the quick transmission of news, and it is feared that if the general government should get charge of the wires, the administration, if it were Republican or Democratic, would have the power indirectly, if not directly, to shade the news, and we would be in danger of losing what we now have—a free press. While monopolies are to be dreaded, still we believe that the present management of the telegraph system is preferable to anything we would be likely to get from the government; a change would be hazardous. “Better endure the ills we have than fly to those we know not of.”

Wendell Phillips died of heart disease, in Boston, February 5th. Few men become so generally known in a lifetime, without the help of public offices, as Mr. Phillips. He was an orator pure and simple, and, perhaps, when in his prime, the foremost of American orators. He has written nothing that will mark the period of his life among men, but he was a great battle-ax against slavery, and on that issue he found an opportunity to use his powers of denunciation to their maximum. As a lecturer he will be missed, for since the war here he shone the most brilliantly. Dr. Vincent expected him at Chautauqua the coming season to deliver his great lecture—“The Lost Arts.” We shall have more to say concerning him in a future number.

A letter from the wife of a missionary in Madagascar has been published in London. It was written on September 24th. She says: “The mourning for the late queen is ended. It only lasted about two months, and was not of the severe kind of olden times; this time the people were only forbidden to plait their hair, wear hats, carry an umbrella, build much, and to weave cloths, while in former times the mourning lasted at least a year, and everybody’s hair was shaven close to the head, women’s and all; they were not allowed to wear clothes at all, just mats round their waist. The new queen promises to be a worthy successor of her good mother. Her name is Rayafindrahely, but she comes to the throne under the title of Ranavalona III. The Malagasy now publish a newspaper, the Gazety they call it, once a fortnight; it is the first specimen of Malagasy attempt at printing and composing. It is after the style of our own newspapers, and gives the news of everything that happens in every part of the island, and especially of every movement of the queen and prime minister.”

The news from India that Keshub Chunder Sen is dead will occasion profound sorrow. He was in the midst of a great work, and we hoped for much from him in connection with needed reforms in India, to which his life was given. Through his open, manly renunciation of the errors of Brahmanism, and earnest protests against caste, child-marriages, and other social evils of their system, and more by his new theology, Mr.[369] Sen was widely known. In his own land he was reverenced as a religious teacher, orator, and reformer. In this country and in England, where those marvelous outbursts of devout feeling stirred the hearts of all who heard, the chief interest centers in his theology. He, whose words so thrilled other Christian hearts, did not yet confess himself a Christian. He had renounced polytheism, and all forms of idolatrous worship, but attempted to show his countrymen, from their own sacred books, that primitive Hindoos, like himself, were monotheistic. The belief of the Brahmo Somaj, or society of which he became a minister, was a great advance from idolatrous Hindooism, and in most respects seemed like true Christian faith. His work as a reformer seemed full of promise. Who will be his successor to carry it forward, does not yet appear. His early death will be mourned as a great, if not an irreparable, loss. The inchoate creed of the community, so sadly bereaved, is not complete or fixed, and will, we hope, and perhaps now more rapidly, crystallize about the wisest sayings of their great leader. May a divine radiance from the cross of Jesus brighten its every line.

Poverty brings its temptations and makes its demands even on the priests of the church. “The other day a priest in Kerry,” says the St. James Gazette, “went to his Bishop: ‘I want you,’ he said, ‘to give me a general dispensing power for cases of perjury.’ ‘For perjury?’ said his lordship. ‘What do the people want with that?’ ‘Faith!’ answered the good father, ‘they can’t get on without it. For, first of all, the Moonlighters come to them and swear them that they must say that they didn’t know who they were; and then there’s the Arrears Act, and they have to take the oath they’re not worth a farthing; and you know in the Land Court they can’t get a reduction till they say they can’t pay their rent. In fact, my lord, the poor people have to perjure themselves at every turn.’”

Oscar Wilde, in a recent lecture in Dublin, made a remark which deserves more attention than anything which that gentleman has ever said in regard to American customs: “American children seem to be pale and precocious, and that might be owing to the fact that the only national game of America is euchre, which could hardly, if industriously practiced, tend to create and develop a fine or manly physique.” It is undoubtedly too broad a statement to call euchre our national game, but it probably is more universally played than any other. It puts us as a people in a weak light, to say that our leisure is spent in a game that calls for little thought, which gives us no outdoor exercise, and which enervates rather than strengthens, but it is the true light. We are, as a rule, making of ourselves hot-house plants. Vigorous games are shunned; weak ones are adopted. The criticism is just, and worth our attention.

The following item sent us from New York is to the point: “Kings County Wheelmen’s Club, which numbers fifty members, gave its annual reception, recently, in Knickerbocker Hall, Clymer Street, Brooklyn. Several clubs from New York and vicinity attended. The wheelmen gave an exhibition of fancy riding, and there was also a bicycle drill, in which movements were made by single file, and by twos, fours, and eights. At one part of the drill two lines of bicyclers advanced in opposite directions, met each other, came to a standstill, and saluted.” We feel like encouraging the use of the bicycle. As a sport it is an improvement on any of the games on which we have had a craze in late years. Roller skating, or standing to roll on spools, is not the healthiest or best exercise; perhaps it is the best substitute that can be invented for skating, but it is a failure for this purpose. The bicycle is useful and graceful, when in motion, and the wheelman gets genuine exercise out of turning the wheel.

There are many opinions advanced on the Newton case. Rev. Heber Newton, of the Episcopal Church, was silenced from delivering a course of lectures on the Old Testament, in which he advanced some startling and new opinions. As to their weight authorities differ. One remarks that they were “The work of a shallow thinker, with fragmentary knowledge, intent on saying startling things.” Others contend that he thought he could make the Bible a more helpful book. Let him have charity; he certainly acted the part of a moderate and wise man in obeying his bishop without making a hubbub. His attempt is but that of hundreds of other men in orthodox churches who every winter introduce courses of lectures in which they instruct their flocks in speculative philosophy, new theories and scientific teachings. A friend recently remarked to the writer: “The first idea of doubt that ever entered my mind was on hearing one of a series of scientific lectures delivered from a Christian pulpit. Pantheism was presented so invitingly that I went home a pantheist.” If minds are speculative they should enter another realm; the practical truth of the gospel is the work of the pulpit.

Decidedly the most sensible opinion on matters in Sudan is that of “Chinese” Gordon, who says: “That the people were justified in rebelling, nobody who knows the treatment to which they were subjected will attempt to deny. Their cries were absolutely unheeded at Cairo. In despair they had recourse to the only method by which they could make their wrongs known; and, on the same principle that Absalom fired the corn of Joab, so they rallied round the Mahdi, who exhorted them to revolt against the Turkish yoke. I am convinced that it is an entire mistake to regard the Mahdi as in any sense a religious leader; he personifies popular discontent. All the Sudanese are potential Mahdis, just as all the Egyptians are potential Arabis. The movement is not religious, but an outbreak of despair. Three times over I warned the late Khedive that it would be impossible to govern the Sudan on the old system after my appointment to the governor-generalship.”

Charles Scribner’s Sons have decided to begin a new issue of The Book Buyer. It was discontinued in 1877, but the demand for such a concise, readable and reliable “Summary of American and Foreign Literature” has led to republication. The Book Buyer is so cheap (fifty cents per year) that every one can have it; it is so useful and authoritative that no book-lover can afford to be without it.

Public opinion on the question of woman’s rights has so shaped itself that we all feel inclined to smile at the speech of the Solicitor of the Treasury against issuing the license as master of a steamboat on the Mississippi, for which Mrs. Mary A. Miller, of Louisiana, applied. Had it been on the ground of inability to fill the position no one would have commented, but on the ground of its “shocking the sensibilities of humanity,” the world laughs. The truth is, no one is seriously shocked—except fossils. Whatever ideas, pro or con, the public may hold on woman’s suffrage, it does recognize the right of women to earn their living in any employment for which they are fitted. The weight of public sentiment would say of Mrs. Miller: “If she be competent to do the work, let her do it.”

Henry Hart, the designer of the beautiful C. L. S. C. pins advertised in this number of The Chautauquan, has gone to Atlanta, Ga. He reports a fine local circle in that city. Mr. Hart makes C. L. S. C. a very generous offer in promising to devote one-tenth of the proceeds of the “People’s College” badge to the Hall fund. It is to be hoped that very many will take this opportunity of helping themselves and the Hall.

The Manhattan for February contains a finely illustrated article on “Caricature,” by our friend Prof. Frank Beard. We recommend it to our readers as a most entertaining paper.

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C. L. S. C. NOTES ON REQUIRED READINGS FOR MARCH.

PREPARATORY LATIN COURSE IN ENGLISH.

P. 11.—“Matriculate.” The roll or register book in which the Romans recorded names was called matricula, from this we have the verb to matriculate, to admit to a membership in an institution or society, and the noun matriculate, the one admitted.

P. 17.—“Latium,” lāˈshe-ŭm. One of the principal divisions of ancient Italy, lying south of the Tiber. Its boundaries varied at different periods.

P. 18.—The Greeks called themselves Hellenes, their language the Hellenic.

“Æneas,” æ-nēˈas. See the Æneid of Virgil, page 251 of “Preparatory Latin Course.”

“Mars.” For the story of Mars and Romulus, see page 73 of “Preparatory Latin Course.” The date of the founding of the city is given as 753 B. C., and the line of legendary rulers numbered seven.

P. 19.—“Pyrrhus.” For his history see Timayenis, vol. ii.

“Cineas,” cinˈe-as. The friend and prime minister of Pyrrhus. So eloquent was he that Pyrrhus is said to have declared that “the words of Cineas had won him more cities than his own arms.” He went twice to Rome on important embassies for the king, and probably died in Sicily while Pyrrhus was there.

“Cavour,” käˈvoorˌ. (1810-1861.) An Italian statesman. After a varied experience in war and politics, Cavour was called in 1850 to the cabinet of Victor Immanuel, king of Sardinia. Italy was then divided into several states, some under Austria, others under papal rule. Cavour turned all his ability to defeating the Austrian powers and breaking the pope’s authority, in order to unite Italy. In all the struggles he was one of the chief advisers. In 1861 the states were united. It has been said of him, “he was one of the most enlightened, versatile and energetic statesmen of the age.… It is now conceded on all hands that to him more than any other man is owing the achievement of the unity of Italy.”

“Victor Immanuel.” (1820-1878.) Became king of Sardinia in 1849 by his father’s abdication. He took part in the Crimean war with France and England, and was joined by France in the war for Italian independence. In 1861 he assumed the title of King of Italy, having united many of the northern provinces. In 1866 he annexed Venetia, and in 1870 the last of the papal states. In 1871 he transferred his seat of power to Rome.

“Carthage,” carˈthage. The city was situated in the middle and northernmost part of the north coast of Africa. It was founded about one hundred years before Rome, and so rapidly its conquests and influence advanced that it soon became evident that the rulership of the western world lay between these two cities. Jealousy kept each on the alert, and B. C. 264 a dispute about matters in Sicily brought about the first Punic war, which lasted until B. C. 241. The second Punic war (B. C. 218-201) resulted in a complete relinquishment of all power by Carthage. The third (B. C. 149-146) was ended by the complete destruction of Carthage.

P. 20.—“Hamilcar.” A famous leader in the latter part of the first Punic war; the father-in-law of Hasdrubal, and father of Hannibal. After this war and a campaign in Africa, Hamilcar undertook to establish an empire for Carthage in Spain. After nine years he fell in battle there and was succeeded by Hasdrubal, who finished the work and formed a treaty with Rome, regulating the boundaries. After Hasdrubal’s death Hannibal took his place, but breaking the treaty, brought about the second Punic war, where he won several brilliant victories, though finally defeated by Scipio Africanus.

“Regulus.” A Roman leader captured by the Carthaginians in the first Punic war, and held five years. The Carthaginians desiring peace sent him to Rome with an embassy to help negotiate, but he dissuaded his countrymen from accepting the terms. Before leaving Carthage he had given his word to return if peace was not made, and in spite of the protest of Rome, he kept the promise. He is said to have been tortured to death on his return. This story, however, is suspected to be an invention of the Romans.

“Fabius.” Was five times Roman consul. After the first victories of Hannibal in the second Punic war, Fabius was appointed dictator. Here he earned the title of “Master of Delay.” Merivale says: “His tactics were to throw garrisons into the strong places, to carry off the supplies of all the country around the enemy’s camp, wherever he should pitch it, to harass him by constant movement, but to refuse an engagement.”

P. 21.—“Gracchus.” The family name of two brothers, Tiberius and Caius, who soon after the destruction of Carthage (146) tried to relieve the sufferings of the Roman poor. The former was made tribune in 133, and immediately tried to arrange for a fair division of public lands, so that the poor citizens might each obtain a small farm. The opposition was so great that in the attempt to reëlect Tiberius a riot occurred and he was slain. Ten years afterward Caius became tribune; he succeeded in carrying several measures to better the condition of the poor, but through the jealousy of the senate, his power with the people was broken, and finally during a disastrous fight between his party and his opponents he fled and caused a slave to kill him.

“Jugurtha.” See page 82 of “Preparatory Latin Course.”

“Marius.” See page 87 of “Preparatory Latin Course.”

P. 27.—“King William.” See The Chautauquan for February, page 252.

P. 28.—“Mommsen,” mŭmˈzen. A German historian, born in 1817. He has held professorships in jurisprudence or archæology at various universities, and has published several books. His “History of Rome” is the most important. It has run through five editions, and been translated into French and English.

P. 29.—“Curtius.” According to this legend the earth in the Roman forum gave way B. C. 362. The soothsayers declared that the chasm could only be filled by throwing into it Rome’s greatest treasure. Curtius, a young nobleman, declared that Rome possessed no greater treasure than the citizen willing to die for her, and mounting his steed leaped into the abyss, which closed upon him.

P. 31.—“Medusa.” One of the Gorgons, frightful beings, whose heads were covered with hissing serpents; they had wings, brazen claws and enormous teeth. Medusa was fabled to have been a beautiful maiden of whom Athena was jealous, and in consequence turned her into a gorgon. Her head was so fearful that every one who looked at it was changed into stone. See illustration, page 115.

P. 33.—“Roman Mile.” A thousand paces, or 1600 yards.

P. 34.—“Cretan.” From the island of Crete, one of the largest of the Mediterranean Sea. It became a Roman province B. C. 66. The people were celebrated as archers, and were frequently employed as mercenaries by other nations.

“Balearic.” The Balearic Islands, a group east of Spain, were known to both Greeks and Romans by this name, derived from the Greek verb to throw, because of the skill of the inhabitants as slingers. The Romans subdued the islands 123 B. C.

P. 37.—“Longwood.” The largest of the plains on the island of St. Helena.

P. 38.—“Trajectory.” The curve which a body describes.

“Cineas.” It is said that when Cineas (see note above) returned from an embassy at Rome, he told the king that there was no people like that; their city was a temple, their senate an assembly of kings.

P. 45.—“Montesquieu,” mŏnˈ-tĕs-kūˌ. French jurist and philosopher (1689-1755).

P. 46.—“Marcus Aurelius.” Roman Emperor from 161-180, called “The Philosopher.” Smith says of him: “The leading feature in the character of Aurelius was his devotion to literature. We still possess a work by him written in the Greek and entitled ‘Meditations,’ in twelve books. No remains of antiquity present a nobler view of philosophical heathenism.”

“Bœthius.” A Roman statesman and philosopher, said to be “the last Roman of any note who understood the language and studied the literature of Greece.” His most celebrated work was “On the Consolation of Philosophy.”

P. 48.—“Ennius.” (B. C. 239-169.) Called Father Ennius.

“Plautus.” (B. C. 254-184.) “Terence.” (B. C. 195-159.)

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“Menander.” (B. C. 342-291.) A distinguished poet at Athens, in what was called the “New Comedy.”

P. 50.—“Cato.” (B. C. 234-149.) Cato was famous in military affairs in early life; after that he entered on a civil career. In 184 he was elected to the censorship, the great event of his life. Here he tried to turn public opinion against luxury and extravagance. Cato wrote several works; only fragments of his greatest, “A History of Rome,” have been saved.

P. 51.—“Boileau,” bwâˈlō. (1636-1711.) A French poet and critic.

P. 52.—“Æschines.” See Greek history.

“Hortensius,” hor-tenˈsi-us. (B. C. 114-50.) Hortensius was the chief orator of Rome until the time of Cicero, by whom, in the prosecution of Verres, he was completely defeated. He held many civil offices, but in old age retired from public life.

P. 53.—“Livy.” (B. C. 59-A. D. 17.) Livy spent the greater part of his life in Rome, where he was greatly honored by the emperors. His reputation is said to have been very great in all countries. His best known work was a history of Rome, in one hundred and forty-two books, only thirty-five of which are in existence.

“Tacitus,” “Suetonius.” See page 61 of this volume of The Chautauquan.

“Nepos.” A contemporary of Cicero, of whose life nothing is known. The chief works of Nepos were biographies, of which we have only fragments.

“Georgics.” See page 236 of “Preparatory Latin Course.”

P. 54.—“Horace.” (B. C. 65-8.) Horace was the son of a freedman who attempted to educate his son, sending him to Rome and then to Athens. While in the latter place Brutus came to Athens, and Horace joined his army. Returning to Rome he found his father’s estate gone. He lived in poverty until some of his poems were noticed by Virgil. Mæcenas became his patron, and afterward Augustus. His works are The Odes, Satires, Epistles, and The Art of Poetry.

“Ovid.” See page 100 of “Preparatory Latin Course.”

P. 63.—“Historia Sacra.” Sacred history.

P. 65.—“Æsop.” A writer of fables who lived about B. C. 570. He is said to have been born a slave, but was freed. He was thrown from a precipice by the Delphians because of a refusal to pay them money which Crœsus had sent to them. It is uncertain whether Æsop left any written fables, but many bearing his name have been popular for ages.

“Putative,” pūˈta-tive. Reputed; supposed.

P. 66.—“Viri Romæ.” Men of Rome.

“Valerius.” A historian of the time of the Emperor Tiberius. The circumstances of his life are unknown. His work remaining to us is on miscellaneous subjects, sacred rites, civil institutions, social virtues, etc.

P. 69.—“Fra Angelico,” frä-än-gelˈe-cō. At the age of twenty he entered a monastery, where he spent the rest of his life. His paintings of angels were so beautiful that he won the name of Fra Angelico—the Brother Angelic. He was called to Rome to decorate the papal chapel, and offered the position of Archbishop of Florence, but refused it. He painted only sacred subjects, and would never accept money for his pictures.

P. 70.—“Repertories,” rĕpˈer-to-ries. A book or index in which things are so arranged as to be easily found.

“Metellus Pius.” A prominent Roman of the first century B. C. He held various civil offices, was a commander in the Social war, and carried on war against the Samnites, in 87. Afterward he was in arms in Africa, and in 79 went as proconsul to Spain. He died about 60 B. C.

P. 71.—“Dolabella,” dŏl-a-bĕlˈla.

P. 72.—“Caninius,” ca-nĭnˈi-ŭs. One of Cæsar’s legates in Gaul and in the civil war.

“Drusus.” He won successes in the provinces after the death of Augustus, and was pointed out as the successor of Tiberius. Sejanus, the favorite of Tiberius, aspired to the empire. He won the wife of Drusus to his plans, and persuaded her to administer a slow poison to her husband, which finally caused his death.

P. 75.—“Egeria.” She had been worshiped by the people of Latium from the earliest times, as a prophetic divinity. Numa consecrated to her a grove in the environs of the city, where it is said that he used to meet her. The grotto and fountain of Egeria are still pointed out to travelers. It is said that on the death of Numa, Egeria was so inconsolable that she was changed into a fountain.

“Aurora.” In Grecian mythology the goddess of the morning, who sets out before the rising of the sun and heralds his coming.

“Nympholepsy,” nĭm-pho-lĕpˈsy. The state of being caught by the nymphs; ecstasy.

P. 77.—“Numidia,” nu-midˈi-a. A country of Northern Africa, now Algiers.

P. 78.—“Bohn.” An English publisher who has republished in the English language, and in cheap form, most of the rare standard works of the different literatures of Europe. His library now numbers between 600 and 700 volumes.

P. 80.—“Numantine.” This war was waged by the Numantians, a little people of Spain, not numbering more than 8,000 fighting men, against Rome. Their city, Numantia, was taken B. C. 133, after a long siege.

P. 82.—“Cato.” (B. C. 95-46.) Great-grandson of Cato the Censor. His character was stern and stoical, and in his public and military life he was famous for his rigid justice and sternness against abuses. Cato opposed Cæsar throughout his life. When Cæsar entered Africa he tried to persuade Utica to stand a siege, but failing, committed suicide.

P. 103.—“Clymene,” clymˈe-nē. The mother of Phæton.

“Styx.” The chief river of the infernal world, according to Grecian mythology, around which it flows seven times. The name comes from the Greek word to hate. Milton calls it “Abhorred Styx, the flood of burning hate.”

“Hours.” The Hours were the goddesses who presided over the order of nature and over the seasons. They gave fertility to the earth, and furnished various kinds of weather. The course of the season is described as the dance of the Hours. In art they are represented as beautiful maidens, carrying fruits and flowers.

P. 194.—“Tethys,” tĕˈthys. The goddess of the sea. The wife of Oceanus, and mother of the river gods.

P. 105.—“Seven Stars.” By these seven stars are meant the sun, moon, Mars, Mercury, Saturn, Jupiter and Venus.

“Serpent.” The constellation of Draco, which, stretching between Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, nearly encircles the latter.

“Boötes,” bo-oˈtes. The constellation commonly known as Charles’ Wain, or the Wagoner. Boötes is said to have been the inventor of the plow, to which he yoked two oxen. At his death he was taken to heaven and set among the stars.

“Libya.” A name for the continent of Africa, applied here to the Sahara Desert.

“Dirce.” It is fabled that a king of Thebes drove away his wife into the mountains of Bœotia, where she died, leaving two sons. When the boys grew up they returned to Thebes and killed both their father and his wife, Dirce, who had been an assistant in his crime. Dirce was dragged to death by a bull, and her body thrown into a well, which was from that time called the “Well of Dirce.” The celebrated statue of the Farnese bull represents the death of Dirce.

“Pyrene,” pyrˈe-ne.

“Amymone,” amˈy-moˌne. The daughter of Danaus, who had fled with his family from Egypt to Argos. The country was suffering from drought, and he sent out Amymone to bring water. She was attacked by a Satyr but rescued by Neptune, who bade her draw his trident from a rock. Thereupon a threefold spring gushed forth, which was called the river and well of Amymone.

“Tanais,” tanˈa-is. The river Don.

“Caicus,” ca-īˈcus. A river of Asia Minor.

“Lycormas,” ly-corˈmas.

“Xanthus,” zanˈthus. The chief river of Lycia, in Asia Minor.

“Mæander,” mæ-anˈder. A stream of Asia Minor. The greater part of its course is through a wide plain, where it flows in the numerous windings which have made of its name the verb to meander.

“Ismenos,” is-mēˈnos. A small river in Bœotia.

“Phasis,” phāˈsis. A river flowing through Colchis, into the Black Sea.

“Tagus.” One of the chief rivers in Spain.

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P. 106.—“Cayster” or “Caystrus,” ca-ysˈter. A river of Lydia and Ionia, in Asia Minor. It is said that it still abounds in swans, as it did in Homer’s time.

“Pluto.” The god of the infernal world.

“Cyclades,” cycˈlă-des. A group of islands in the Ægean Sea, so called because they lay in a circle around Delos.

“Phocæ,” phōˈcæ. Sea calves, or sea monsters of any description.

“Doris.” The daughter of Oceanus, and wife of her brother Nereus; sometimes her name is given to the sea itself.

P. 107.—“Presto,” prĕsˈtō. Quickly; at once.

P. 108. “Burke,” Edmund. (1730-1797.) An English statesman, writer and orator.

“Lucian,” lūˈci-an. (A. D. 120-200.) A Greek author.

“Molossian,” mo-losˈsian. The Molossi were a people in Epirus, inhabiting a country called Molossis. They were the most powerful tribe in Epirus.

P. 109.—“Daphne,” dăphˈne.

P. 110.—“Peneus,” pe-neˈus. The name of the chief river of Thessaly. As a god Peneus was the son of Oceanus.

“Claros,” claˈros. A small town on the Ionian coast, with a celebrated temple and oracle of Apollo.

“Tenedos,” tĕnˈe-dŏs. A small island of the Ægean, off the coast of Troas, also sacred to Apollo.

“Patarian,” pa-taˈri-an. From Patara, one of the chief cities of Asia Minor, in Lycia. Apollo had an oracle here, and a celebrated temple.

P. 114.—“Narcissus.” A youth who was fabled to be so hard of heart that he never loved. The nymph Echo died of grief because of him. Nemesis caused him to fall in love with his own image as he saw it in a fountain, and Narcissus died because he could not approach the shadow. His corpse was metamorphosed into the flower which has his name.

“Dædalus.” A character of Grecian mythology, fabled to be the inventor of many contrivances, as well as a sculptor and architect. Having incurred the displeasure of the king of Crete, he was obliged to flee from the island. Accordingly he made wings for himself and his son Icarus. Dædalus flew safely to shore, but Icarus went so near the sun that the wax by which his wings were fastened melted, and he was drowned in that part of the Ægean called the Icarian Sea.

“Baucis.” Baucis and Philemon were an aged couple living in Phrygia. Jupiter and Mercury having occasion to visit this part of the world, went in the disguise of flesh and blood. Nobody would receive them until Baucis and Philemon took them into their hut. Jupiter took the couple to a hill near by, while he punished the inhospitable by an inundation; he then rewarded them by making them guardians of his temple, allowing them to die at the same moment, and changing them into trees.

“Lycidas,” lĭsˈi-das. A poetical name under which Milton laments the death of his friend Edward King, who had been drowned.

“Comus.” In the later age of Rome, a god of festive joy and mirth. In Milton’s poem entitled “Comus, a Masque,” he is represented as a base enchanter who endeavors, but in vain, to beguile and entrap the innocent by means of his “brewed enchantments.”—Webster.

P. 123.—“Rhodes.” An island of the Eastern Ægean. It was long celebrated for its schools of Greek art and oratory.

“Pontifex,” ponˈtĭ-fex. A Roman high priest, a pontiff. The pontifices constituted a college of priests, superintended the public worship, and gave information on sacred matters. Their leader was called pontifex maximus.

“Quæstor.” The title of a class of Roman officials, some of whom had charge of the pecuniary affairs of the state, while others superintended certain criminal trials.

“Ædile.” A magistrate of Rome who superintended public buildings, such as temples, theaters, baths, aqueducts, sewers, etc., as well as markets, weights, measures, and the expenses of funerals.

P. 125.—“Proconsul.” The title given to those who, after holding the office of consul, were sent to some province as governor.

P. 126.—“Ascham.” (1515-1568.) The foremost scholar of his time, celebrated for his superior knowledge of Greek and Latin.

P. 127.—“Æduans,” ædˈu-ans. Their country lay between the Loire and the Saone.

P. 126.—“Lingones.” A people living to the east of the source of the Mosa river. (See map.)

P. 137.—“Sequani.” A tribe of Gallia Belgica (see map), taking their name from the river Sequana, near the source of which they lived.

P. 139.—“Soissons,” swäˌsōnˈ, almost swīˌsōnˈ. About fifty miles northeast of Paris.

P. 112.—“Bellovaci.” They dwelt in the north of Gallia, beyond the Sequana river. (See map.)

P. 143.—“Ambian.” These people, with the Nervii and the Aduatuci (p. 147) were all tribes of Gallia Belgica.

NOTES ON REQUIRED READINGS IN “THE CHAUTAUQUAN.”

READINGS FROM FRENCH HISTORY.

P. 215, c. 1.—“Gallia.” For Gallia and the tribes Aquitani, Celtæ and Belgæ, see Professor Wilkinson on Cæsar in “Preparatory Latin Course.”

“Burgundians.” A race of early Germans who in 407 A. D. crossed the Rhine and settled between the Rhone and Saone. In 534 Burgundy was taken possession of by the Franks.

“Franks.” See page 63 of the present volume of The Chautauquan.

“Clovis.” See page 129 of the present volume of The Chautauquan.

“Salian Franks.” There were two tribes of the Franks, one called Salian, from the river Sala or Yssel, upon which they dwelt, the other Ripuarian, from the Latin ripa, bank, the name showing their location on the banks of the Rhine.

“Merovingians.” See notes, page 185 of present volume of The Chautauquan.

“Childeric,” or Hilderik. The race had become so weak that the rulers have been well described as the “shadow kings.” This last ruler of the Merovingians was thrust into a convent, where he soon died.

“Pepin,” pēpˈin. The son of Charles Martel. See page 129 of The Chautauquan. His wars were successful. The most interesting was against the Lombards, who were threatening Rome. He compelled them to give up to the Church of Rome a considerable territory which was, says a writer, “The foundation of that temporal power of the papacy, the end of which we have seen with our own eyes.”

“Charlemagne,” sharˈle-mānˌ. See page 131 of fourth volume of The Chautauquan.

“Hugues.” Hugh, in English; “Capet,” cāˈpet or căpˈet.

“Louis le Gros.” Louis the Great.

“Feudal system.” That system where land is held of superiors, on condition of military service.

P. 215, c. 2.—“Oriflamme.” From the Latin auriflamma, or flame of gold. A flag or banner of red or flame colored cloth, cut into long points at the end and mounted on a gilded lance. It originated in a certain abbey of France, where it was used in religious services.

“Touraine,” tô-rān; “Poitou,” pwä-tôˈ. These provinces had come to England on the accession of Henry II. (1154), to whom they belonged.

“Gallican Church.” The Catholic Church of France, which holds certain doctrines differing from those of the church at large. This church claims that the pope is limited as far as France is concerned, by the decisions of the Gallican Church, that kings and princes are not subject to him, and that he is not infallible. This pragmatic sanction of St. Louis in 1269 was the most important outbreak against Rome that ever took place in the Gallican Church.

“Le Bel.” The Beautiful.

“Navarre,” nă-varˈ. A province of France on the northern slope of the Pyrenees.

“Champagne,” shŏnˌpäñˈ. See map.

“Brie,” bre. A former province of France, lying between the Seine and the Marne.

“Valois,” väl-wäˈ.

“Salic Law.” According to this, “no woman could succeed to Salian soil.” The only descendant of Charles IV. was his infant daughter,[373] and when the lords met to decide on the succession after his death, they followed this law; for as Froissart says, “The twelve peers of France said and say that the crown of France is of such noble estate, that by no succession can it come to a woman nor a woman’s son.”

P. 216, c. 1.—“Le Sage,” the wise; “Crécy,” krĕsˈe; “Poiters,” pwä-terzˈ; “Le Bien Aime,” the Beloved; “Agincourt,” ă-zhan-koor; “Le Victorieux,” the Victor; “Le père du peuple,” the father of his people.

“Valois-Orleans.” Louis XII. was the representative of the line nearest to the Valois family, that is, he was a son of the Duke of Orleans, and a grandson of the younger brother of Charles VI., thus representing both families.

“Valois Angoulême,” ŏnˌgooˌlāmeˈ. Louis XII. dying without heirs, the kingdom fell to the heirs of his uncle, the Count of Angoulême. Francis became a competitor with Charles I., of Spain, for the throne of Spain, but the latter was successful. This led to the war which was ended by Francis being made a prisoner at Pavia.

“St. Bartholomew.” There had been a struggle for many years between the Protestants and Catholics, which finally took the form of a conflict between the houses of Guise and Condé. Henry of Navarre was the successor to the throne—a marriage was arranged between him and the sister of the king, and August 18, 1572, was to be the wedding day. Many of the leading Huguenots were in Paris. It has been said that this wedding was but a scheme to bring them together; at any rate Coligni, a leading Huguenot, was fired upon by an assassin. The Huguenots became excited and threatened revenge. Catherine persuaded her son that they intended massacring the Catholics, and Charles gave an order for a general slaughter of the Protestants. The order was executed in nearly every city and town of France, and nearly 100,000 persons were put to death.

“Confederation of the League.” This holy league, or “Catholic Union,” as it was called, was supported by the pope and Philip II., of Spain. Its head was Duke Henry of Guise, who aimed at the French throne.

“Guise,” gheez.

“Bourbon,” boorˈbon. A French ducal and royal family, different branches of which have ruled Spain, France, Naples and Parma. The civil wars which were carried on between these houses were no less than eight in number.

“Richelieu,” reshˈeh-loo.

“Mazarin,” măz-a-reenˈ.

“Fronde.” A faction which opposed putting all the power of France into the hands of the government, as Richelieu and Mazarin both attempted. The name of frondeurs (slingers) was applied to them because in their sneering and flippant attacks upon Mazarin they were said to resemble boys throwing stones from slings.

“Tiers état.” Third estate. Before the reign of Philip the Fair, the people had had no voice in the government; but in his struggle with the papacy, as he desired to have the whole body of citizens on his side, he convened an assembly of the middle class of citizens, beside the clergy and nobility. The third body was called the third estate.

P. 216, c. 2.—“États Généraux,” States general. An assembly of the nation, which consisted of representatives of the clergy, nobility, and the third estate.

“National Assembly.” Upon the meeting of the states general, the nobles and the clergy insisted that the meetings of the body and its deliberations should be conducted according to class distinctions; this met with the opposition of the third estate, who finally declared themselves the only body having a right to act as the legislature of France, and summoned the clergy and nobles to attend their deliberations. They called themselves the National Assembly.

“Bastille,” bas-teelˈ. The state prison and citadel of Paris. It was begun in 1366; destroyed in 1789.

“Marie Antoinette,” mäˈrēˌ ŏnˌtwäˈnĕtˈ.

“Dauphin.” The title given to the eldest son of the king of France, under the Valois and Bourbon lines. It corresponds to “Prince of Wales” in England. It originally belonged to the counts of Dauphiny.

“Cis-Alpine,” sis-alˈpin. On this side of the Alps, that is, on the south or Roman side.

“Marengo,” ma-rĕnˈgō; “Prestige,” prĕs-tijˈ.

P. 317.—“D’Artois,” darˌtwäˈ; “Louis Phillippe,” loo-ē fe-leep; “Coup d’état,” a stroke of policy in state affairs; “Sedan,” se-dänˈ, a town of France, 130 miles northeast of Paris; “Bordeaux,” bor-dō; “Thiers,” te-êrˈ; “Grèvy,” grā-vē.

P. 317, c. 2.—“Champs-de-Mars,” shân-duh-marce. An extensive parade ground of Paris, on the left bank of the Seine. It has been the scene of many very remarkable historic events, and is now used for great reviews, etc. The buildings of the exposition of 1867 were erected upon it.

“Friesland,” freeceˈland. A province of Holland.

“Teignmouth,” tinˈmuth.

“Hengesdown,” henˈges-down.

“Narbonnese,” narˌbonˌnesˈ. One of the four provinces into which Augustus divided Gaul was named from Narbonne, a city near the Mediterranean, Gallia Narbonensis or Narbonnese Gaul.

P. 318, c. 1.—“Montfort.” The wife of the duke of Brittany, who had succeeded his brother, Jean III. It seems that the latter had left the duchy to his nephew, Charles of Blois, but Montfort took possession. War was declared, and the king of France aided Blois, the king of England, Montfort. The latter was taken prisoner and his wife took the field.

“Blois,” blwä; “Penthièvre,” pĕnˈtĕvrˌ.

“Van Artevelde,” vän arˈta-velt. A citizen and popular leader of Ghent, who for a long time was almost ruler of Flanders. In this war the people, under Artevelde, supported the English, while the nobility were in sympathy with the French.

“Froissart,” froisˈärt. (1337-1410.) A French history writer.

“D’Harcourt,” därˈkōrtˌ.

“Harfleur,” har-flurˈ; “Cherbourg,” sherˈburg; “Valognes,” väˌloñˈ (n like ni in minion). “Carentan,” käˈrŏnˌtŏnˌ; “Caen,” kŏn; “Louviers,” looˌve-āˈ; “Vernon,” vĕrˌnōnˈ; “Verneuil,” vĕrˈnuhl; “Mantes,” mants; “Meulan,” moi-lăn; “Poissy,” pwâ-sē; “Ruel,” roo-äl; “Neuilly,” nuhˌyēˈ; “Boulogne,” bou-lōnˈ; “Bourg-la-reine,” boor-la-rain.

“Béthune,” bā-tün; “Ponthieu,” pŏn-te-ŭh.

P. 318, c. 2.—“Hainault,” ā-nōl; “De Vienne,” deh ve-enˈ; “De Manny,” deh mănˌneˈ.

P. 319, c. 1.—“Eustace de St. Pierre,” eūsˈtace deh sănˌpe-êrˈ; “D’Aire,” d’air; “Domremy,” dôn-rŭh-me; “Neufchâtel,” nushˌäˌtelˈ; “Vancouleurs,” vŏnˌkooˈluhrˌ; “Baudricourt,” bōˈdrēˌkoorˌ; “Chinon,” she-nōng.

“Cap-a-pie,” kăpˌa-peeˈ. From head to foot.

P. 319, c. 2.—“La pucelle,” the maid; “Trémoille,” trāˌ-mooyˈ; “Boussac,” booˈsäkˌ; “Xaintrailles,” zanˈträlˌyeˌ; “La Hire,” läˌērˈ; “Dunois,” düˈnwâˌ; “Jargeau,” zharˌghōˈ; “Meung,” mŭng; “Beaugency,” bōˈgán-cēˌ; “Patay,” pa-tāyˈ.

P. 320, c. 1.—“Compiègne,” kŏmˌpe-ānˈ; “Ligny,” lē-nyē; “Vendôme,” vŏnˌdōmˈ.

P. 320, c. 2.—“Épernon,” āˈpĕrˌnōnˌ; “Angoumois,” ŏnˈgooˌmwäˈ; “Saintonge,” săn-tōnzhˈ.

P. 321.—“Sancy,” sanˈcē; “Ile de France,” eel-deh-frŏnss; “Picardy,” picˈar-dee; “Auvergne,” ō-vĕrnˈ; “Gaetano,” gā-ā-täˈno, usually written Cajetan.

“Sorbonne,” sor-bŭn. The principal school of theology in the ancient university of Paris. Its influence was powerful in many of the civil and religious controversies of the country.

“Arques,” ark; “Dreux,” druh; “Evreux,” ĕvˈruhˌ; “Ivry,” ēvˈrēˌ; “Eure,” yoor.

P. 321, c. 2.—“Reiters,” rīˈters; “Mayenne,” mäˌyenˈ; “Meaux,” mō; “Senlis,” sŏnˌlēsˈ.

P. 322, c. 1.—“Brisson,” brēˌsōnˈ; “Grève,” grāv.

“Sully.” A French statesman, the chief adviser of Henry IV.

P. 322, c. 2.—“Bèarnese,” bāˈarˌnēseˌ. Bèarn, a former southwest province of France, belonged to the kings of Navarre. From this possession Henry IV. received the title of the Bèarnese.

“Eustache,” uhsˌtäshˈ; “Merri,” mā-rē; “Guincestre,” ghinˈcestrˌ; “Villeroi,” vēlˈrwä; “Vervins,” vĕr-vănˈ.

“Escurial,” ĕs-koo-re-älˈ. A palace and mausoleum of the kings of Spain.

P. 323, c. 1.—“Saluzzo,” sâ-lootˈso; “Rosny,” ro-ne; “Gontaut de Biron,” gŏnˈ-toˌ deh beˌ-rōnˈ; “Malherbe,” mälˌêrbˈ.

P. 323, c. 2. “Praslin,” präˌlănˈ; “Montbazon,” mōnˌbäˌzŏnˈ; “Crèqui,” krā-keˈ; “Mirabeau,” meˌräˌbōˈ.

[374]

“Equerry,” e-quĕrˈry. An officer of nobles, charged with the care of their horses.

“Cœur Couronné,” etc. The crowned heart pierced with an arrow.

“Curzon en Quercy,” kür-sōnˈ ĕng kwerˈcēˌ.

P. 324, c. 1.—“Bruyère,” brü-eˌyêrˈ. (1646?-1696.) French author.

“Fouquet,” fooˌkāˈ. (1615-1680.) A French financier, convicted of dishonesty and treason under Louis XIV.

“De la Vallière,” deh lä väˌle-êrˈ; “Montespan,” mŏnˌtes-pănˈ.

“Bossuet,” boˌsü-āˈ (almost bosˌswāˈ). (1627-1704.) French bishop and orator.

“Lauzun,” lōˌzŭnˈ. (1633?-1723.) A French adventurer.

“Pignerol,” pē-nyŭh-rŭl. A city of Piedmont, Italy.

“Iron Mask.” The man in the iron mask was a prisoner who died in the Bastile in 1703. He was brought there in 1698, from the state prison of Marguerite, by the governor who had been changed to the Bastile. His face was covered with a black velvet mask, fastened with steel springs. He was never allowed to remove this, nor to speak to any one except his governor. After his death everything he possessed was burned. There have been many theories as to his identity, but no one has been thoroughly proven.

P. 324, c. 2.—“Marcillac,” mär-ceelˌlakˈ; “Rochefoucauld,” roshˌ-fooˌkōˈ; “Marèchal,” mäˌrāˌshalˈ; “Fontanges,” fōnˌtanzhˈ.

“Scarron,” skărˌrōnˈ. She had been the wife of Paul Scarron, a French author, who died in 1660. “Maintenon,” mănˈtŭhˌnōn.

P. 325, c. 2.—“Della Guidice,” dĕlˈlä gweeˈde-cā; “Alberoni,” ăl-bä-roˈnee.

P. 326, c. 1.—“Lettres de Fénelon,” etc. Letters of Fénelon to the duke of Chevreuse.

P. 326, c. 2.—“Nunc et in,” etc. Now and in the hour of death.

READINGS IN ART.

P. 331, c. 1.—“Transept.” Any part of a church which projects at right angles with the body and is of equal or nearly equal height to this. Transepts are in pairs, that is, the projection southward is accompanied by a corresponding projection northward.

“Nave.” The central portion of a cathedral, distinguished from the choir.

“Arcade.” Ranges of arches supported on piers or columns. “Triforium,” tri-fōˈri-um.

P. 331, c. 2.—“Apse,” ăpse; “Apsidal,” ăpˈsi-dal.

“Chapter-house.” The house where the chapter or assembly of the clergymen, and their dean, belonging to a cathedral, meet.

“Hospitium,” hos-pĭshˈi-ŭm.

“Castellated.” Adorned with turrets and battlements, like a castle.

“Dais,” dāˈis. A raised floor at the upper end of a dining hall.

“Lancet.” High, narrow, and sharp pointed.

“Piers.” A mass of stonework used in supporting an arch; also the part of the wall of a house between the windows or doors.

P. 332, c. 1.—“Cuspated,” cuspˈāt-ed. Ending in a cusp, that is, the projecting point thrown out from foliations in the heads of Gothic windows.

“La Sainte Chapelle.” The holy chapel.

“Chartres,” shartˈr; “Bourges,” boorzh; “Corbel,” a projecting stone or timber supporting, or seeming to support, some weight.

P. 332, c. 2.—“Tudor,” tūˈder. So called from the house on the English throne at the time of the growth of the style.

“Elizabethan,” elĭzˌa-bēthˈan.

“Newel-post.” The stout post at the foot of the staircase, on the top of which the rail rests.

“Wren.” (1632-1723.) An English architect, the designer of St. Paul’s, in London. After the London fire of 1666, he drew the plans for over fifty churches and many important public buildings of the city.

“Mural,” belonging to a wall.

“Beaumanti,” bĕ-ä-mänˈte.

SELECTIONS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE.

P. 333, c. 2.—“Ichthyophagi,” ĭchˌthy-ŏphˈa-gi. A compound word of Greek origin, meaning fish eaters.

“Dunes.” Same as downs, little sand hills piled up near the sea.

“Badahuenna,” bad-a-huenˈna.

“Hercynian,” her-cynˈi-an.

P. 334, c. 1.—“Bouillon,” booˌyŭnˈ.

“Brabantine,” braˈbran-tīne.

P. 335, c. 2.—“Cortés,” kôrˈtez.

P. 336, c. 1.—“Narvaez,” nar-väˈĕth; “Chiapa,” che-āˈpä.

CHAUTAUQUA NORMAL GRADUATES,

Class of 1883.

• John Aiken, Washington, Pennsylvania.
• Mrs. W. C. Armor, Bradford, Pennsylvania.
• Addie M. Benedict, Jamestown, New York.
• Vinola A. Brown, Morning Sun, Ohio.
• Clara J. Brown, Morning Sun, Ohio.
• Martha Buck, Carbondale, Illinois.
• Anna C. Cobb, New York City.
• Kittie E. Carter, Randolph, New York.
• Mary E. Coles, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
• Mrs. Hattie E. Chambers, Bradford, Pennsylvania.
• Sarah I. Dale, Franklin, Pennsylvania.
• Miss H. M. Dawson, Tidioute, Warren Co., Pennsylvania.
• Harriet E. Elder, South Bend, Indiana.
• Will T. Edds, Gerry, New York.
• Rev. W. H. Groves, Fayetteville, Tennessee.
• Mrs. H. M. Graham, Garrettsville, Portage Co., Ohio.
• Ida E. Goodrich, Geneva, Ashtabula Co., Ohio.
• Myrtie C. Hudson, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
• Maria R. Jones, Meriden, Connecticut.
• Eleanor M. Matthews, Gerry, New York.
• Sarah A. Mee, Buffalo, New York.
• Mrs. Rosetta Page, Frewsburgh, New York.
• Mary J. Perrine, Rochester, New York.
• Lucie A. Pooley, Bridgeville, Allegheny Co., Pennsylvania.
• Mrs. P. P. Pinney, Clarion, Clarion Co., Ohio.
• Nellie H. Skidmore, Fredonia, New York.
• Rev. Orange H. Spoor, Charlotte, Eaton Co., Michigan.
• Mary A. Sowers, Carbondale, Illinois.
• Mary Stevenson, Leech’s Corners, Mercer Co., Pennsylvania.
• Will B. Stevenson, Leech’s Corners, Mercer Co., Pennsylvania.
• Kate M. Thorp, Napoli, Cattaraugus Co., New York.
• Mattie R. Weaver, Latrobe, Westmoreland Co., Pennsylvania.

OTTAWA ASSEMBLY.

• Mrs. N. S. Zartman, Kansas City, Missouri.
• Mrs. M. E. Wharton, Ottawa, Kansas.
• Mrs. A. C. Hodge, Ottawa, Kansas.
• B. F. Thayer, Wamego, Kansas.
• N. W. Beauchamp, Kansas, Illinois.
• Cornelia C. Adams, Ottawa, Kansas.
• Mrs. D. Holaday, Ottawa, Kansas.
• Mrs. H. E. M. Pattee, Williamsburg, Kansas.
• Robert Bruce, Ottawa, Kansas.
• L. Ettie Lester, Ottawa, Kansas.
• Jennie Gott, Ottawa, Kansas.
• Emma W. Parker, Ottawa, Kansas.
• Rev. F. L. Walker, Grenola, Kansas.
• Alberlina Wickard, Ottawa, Kansas.
• Mrs. J. F. Drake, Emporia, Kansas.
• Miss Emma J. Short, Ottawa, Kansas.
• Mrs. J. P. Stephenson, Ottawa, Kansas.
• J. K. Mitchell, Osborne, Kansas.
• Emma E. Page, Ottawa, Kansas.
• Rev. C. R. Pattee, Williamsburg, Kansas.
• R. Henry Stone, Kansas City, Missouri.
• Rev. P. P. Wesley, Great Bend, Kansas.
• Mrs. C. W. Holmes, Ottawa, Kansas.
• May L. Parker, Olathe, Kansas.

SUNDAY-SCHOOL PARLIAMENT.

• T. Harry Farrell, Kingston, Ontario.
• Mrs. Sarah W. Hopkins, Madison, New York.
• Nellie Lavelle, Kingston, Ontario.
• Florence E. Kinney, Syracuse, New York.
• Minnie Lavelle, Kingston, Ontario.
• Mrs. Effie Williams, Plainfield, New Jersey.
• James Farrell, Kingston, Ontario.
• [375]Harry A. Lavelle, Kingston, Ontario.
• Mrs. T. W. Skinner, Mexico, New York.
• Avery W. Skinner, Mexico, New York.
• Fannie S. Jaques, Merrickville, Ontario.

FRAMINGHAM CHILDREN’S CLASS.

• Bessie M. Adams, Northboro, Massachusetts.
• James A. Babbitt, Swanton, Vermont.
• Winfield H. Babbitt, Swanton, Vermont.
• Harry R. Barber, Worcester, Massachusetts.
• Laura M. Batchelder, West Medway, Massachusetts.
• Arthur T. Belknap, Framingham, Massachusetts.
• Jesse H. Bourne, Foxboro, Massachusetts.
• Albert C. Comey, South Framingham, Massachusetts.
• Bernia Comey, South Framingham, Massachusetts.
• Willie Desmond, West Medway, Massachusetts.
• Bertha Elliott, Revere, Massachusetts.
• Annie T. Francis, Fitchburg, Massachusetts.
• M. Gracie Full, South Framingham, Massachusetts.
• Maud Grumelle [No address].
• George Hancock, Milford, Massachusetts.
• Lewis K. Hanson, Natick, Massachusetts.
• Lillian R. Hemenway, Framingham, Massachusetts.
• Bertha J. Hopkins, Worcester, Massachusetts.
• Kate E. Lawrence, South Framingham, Massachusetts.
• Stella Mann, Boston Highlands, Massachusetts.
• C. L. Reynolds, Framingham Center, Massachusetts.
• Florence M. Sears, Worcester, Massachusetts.
• Cora E. Thayer, Allston, Massachusetts.
• Fred P. Wheeler, Allston, Massachusetts.
• Ellen M. Works, Southboro, Massachusetts.
• Frank S. Wright, Natick, Massachusetts.

FRAMINGHAM CHILDREN’S CLASS—ADVANCED GRADE.

• Phillips P. Bourne, Foxboro, Massachusetts.
• Mattie P. Cushing, Hudson, Massachusetts.
• William O. Cutler, Natick, Massachusetts.
• Joseph H. Hall, Natick, Massachusetts.
• Mary A. Harriman, Framingham, Massachusetts.
• Lewis K. Hanson, Natick, Massachusetts.
• Howard Mason, Natick, Massachusetts.
• Harry D. Neary, Framingham, Massachusetts.
• Ida M. Neary, Framingham, Massachusetts.
• Edward O. Parker, East Holliston, Massachusetts.
• Bertie M. Stetson, Holliston, Massachusetts.
• G. Adelbert Watkins, South Framingham, Massachusetts.
• Theodore S. Bacon, Natick, Massachusetts.
• Millie S. Bruce, Southville, Massachusetts.
• Harry R. Barber, Worcester, Massachusetts.
• Geo. F. Beard, South Framingham, Massachusetts.
• Albert Comey, South Framingham, Massachusetts.
• John Connelly, Cochituate, Massachusetts.
• Bertha May Cushing, Hudson, Massachusetts.
• Fred L. Francis, Fitchburg, Massachusetts.
• Emeline Hancock, Milford, Massachusetts.
• Emma L. Huse, Somerville, Massachusetts.
• Stella Mann, Boston Highlands, Massachusetts.
• Florence B. Moultrop, Framingham, Massachusetts.
• Ida M. Neary, Framingham, Massachusetts.
• Emma J. Parker, East Somerville, Massachusetts.
• Charles H. Phipps, South Framingham, Massachusetts.
• Cora E. Thayer, Allston, Massachusetts.
• Hattie Stratton, South Framingham, Massachusetts.
• Fred R. Woodward, Natick, Massachusetts.
• Frank S. Wright, Natick, Massachusetts.

FRAMINGHAM PRIMARY TEACHER’S UNION.

• Mrs. Emma D. Daniels, Framingham, Massachusetts.
• Minnie E. Gaskins, Mattapan, Massachusetts.
• Georgie A. Goodnow, Sudbury, Massachusetts.
• Jessie E. Guernsey, Framingham, Massachusetts.
• Minnie L. Jackson, South Gardner, Massachusetts.
• Addie M. Knight, Magnolia, Massachusetts.
• Helen Virginia Ross, Charleston Station, Massachusetts.
• Ellen Letitia Ruggles, Milton, Massachusetts.
• Josie Bell Stuart, Lowell, Massachusetts.
• Mrs. M. D. Thayer, Allston, Massachusetts.
• Mrs. S. Isabella Valentine, Hopkinton, Massachusetts.
• Mrs. I. G. Wheeler, Allston, Massachusetts.

FRAMINGHAM NORMAL UNION.

• S. Addie Alexander, Marlboro, Massachusetts.
• Willis N. Bailey, Buckingham, Connecticut.
• Elsie L. Ball, Milford, Massachusetts.
• Alice Bertha Besse, Lowell, Massachusetts.
• Mrs. Harriet E. Bates, Boston, Massachusetts.
• Mary Amittai Bradford, Mystic Bridge, Connecticut.
• Hannah K. Bradford, Mystic Bridge, Connecticut.
• Mrs. Lizzie E. Bird, Boston, Massachusetts.
• Mrs. L. S. Brooks, Fitchburg, Massachusetts.
• Nellie M. Brown, Lowell, Massachusetts.
• Nellie E. Canfield, South Britain, Connecticut.
• Hattie D. Fuller, Hudson, Massachusetts.
• Rev. A. Gardner, Buckingham, Connecticut.
• Miss M. E. Harrington, North Amherst, Massachusetts.
• F. M. Harrington, Northboro, Massachusetts.
• O. A. Heminway, Framingham, Massachusetts.
• Clara D. Jones, North Abington, Massachusetts.
• Miss Ida A. E. Kenney, Worcester, Massachusetts.
• Addie M. Knight, Magnolia, Massachusetts.
• Caroline M. Lee, Wayland, Massachusetts.
• J. H. O. Lovell, Oakham, Massachusetts.
• Helen M. Locke, Magnolia, Massachusetts.
• Mrs. S. T. McMaster, Watertown, Massachusetts.
• Sarah M. Potter, Providence, Rhode Island.
• Delia Pinney, Ludlow, Vermont.
• Margaret S. Rolfe, Newburyport, Massachusetts.
• Julia A. Robinson, North Cambridge, Massachusetts.
• Luella H. Simonds, Lowell, Massachusetts.
• Mrs. Harriet B. Steele, Reading, Massachusetts.
• Rachel Steere, Greenville, Rhode Island.
• Clara E. Stevens, Newburyport, Massachusetts.
• Ellen K. Stone, Framingham, Massachusetts.
• Anna A. Ware, West Medway, Massachusetts.
• Mrs. William L. Woodcock, Winchendon, Massachusetts.
• L. D. Younkin, Boston, Massachusetts.

ERRATA AND ADDENDA.

LIST OF GRADUATES OF CLASS OF 1883.

ADDENDA.

• Fenner, Harry Benham, N. Y.
• Forsyth, John W., Va.
• Gifford, Martha J., N. Y.
• Grinnell, Mrs. J. B., Iowa.
• Walker, Maria Victoria, Pa.
• Youngs, Sidney M., Pa.

This powder never varies. A marvel of purity, strength and wholesomeness. More economical than the ordinary kinds, and can not be sold in competition with the multitude of low test, short weight, alum or phosphate powders. Sold only in cans. Royal Baking Powder Co., 106 Wall Street, New York.

[376]

The Chautauquan.

1883-1884.

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