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so now with the Christian faith, and it is, has lost altogether its initiative, its mouldhardly the sign of an earnest individual ing force, its power of putting a new faith in Dr. Wordsworth himself to teach heart into an old thing, and adapting itso strenuously that it may be so. There self to the changes of the world and the is much superficial and much insincere expansion of human knowledge. The Christian profession, but it is hardly cred- Bishop's dread that some change in the ible that any large number of men would mere outward costume of faith may debe made pagans by the custom of crema-stroy faith is as old as timid hearts and tion, if for sanitary reasons it were ever hesitating minds. St. Peter was half introduced. No doubt, there would be a ashamed of the new practice of eating natural enough shrinking from the new with the Gentiles, and had to be withduty; a feeling that there was a want of stood by his brother Aposties "to the tenderness in thus suddenly and abso- face," before he could get over his dread lutely expunging all trace of the vanished that the discontinuance of Jewish exclulife from the earth. But just such shrink-siveness would endanger the young Chrisings there are already from all kinds of tian Church, So, again, it was supposed, duties, which the spirit of Christianity not at the time of the revival of learning, that only does not forbid, but is usually be- Christianity must collapse before the relieved strictly to enjoin, from war, for newed study of the old pagan thought, instance, in a good cause, from using whereas Christianity won new conquests the sword in defence of civil order, from by her use of the spoils. Again, when submissiveness of behaviour to a civil the new science came into being, and it power really anti-Christian, in all things appeared that the sun and not the earth not positively unlawful. Christianity in was the centre of our system, it was feared all its more solid forms has always shown, that notions so remote from those of the as an Evangelical preacher once said of old prophets and Hebrew chroniclers Providence, "great strength of mind." would subvert the religion with which It has never been tender to small scru- scientific error had been mixed up. But ples. It has never doubted that it had once more the erroneous character of sufficient inherent power in itself to find those faint-hearted anticipations was the means of reversing a mere current of proved, and Christianity found itself more artificial association; nay, more, that it powerful than ever, though it had to alter had the resources to encounter even a its language in relation to the character real moral paradox, like the extremely of Hebrew inspiration. And now we are pacific and apparently "non-resistance" told that mere change of a funeral rite, tendency of much of our Lord's teach- a change which, if it had to be made, ing, without fearing that the paradox would not be accompanied by any change, would be too much for the spirit thus en- however small, in the conceptions of the countering it. To think of the change Church as to the destiny of man, or even from our present customs of burial to as to the dignity of the human body, those which were common in the pagan indeed, the change would be one made world as likely to cause any difficulty of in homage to the dignity of the living this order would be quite absurd. If body, would be fatal to the greatest Christianity is as full of life now as we article in the Christian creed, so far as it believe it to be, it would soon make cre- affects human life and destiny. Surely mation, supposing cremation to be the Bishops need not regard it, as some really recommended by the humane re- of them almost appear to do, as their offispect for human health, —as Christian acial duty to utter such evil auguries for right as inhumation has ever been; and the Church of which they are supposed it would even profit by its courage to in- to be the guides. Surely fainter hearts sist on the sacrifice of a mere sentiment can hardly be conceived than the hearts of of delicacy towards the dead, however those who think that the faith in a life keen and natural, in the cause of the health and happiness of the living. The whole question is one for the science of the country to decide, and nothing can be more derogatory to the vigour of Christianity, than to represent it as identified in any way with the present system of burial.

If it be as Bishop Wordsworth thinks, then, all we can say is that Christianity

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beyond the grave will be dissipated by
any attempts so to deal with the remains
of the dead as to prevent their being a
legacy of evil to the living. We, for
our parts, are not yet satisfied that the
men of science have shown a source of
danger so serious now and so capable of
complete elimination, as to recommend
the change, and to justify the distress
which at first it must cause.
But clearly

it is a question for science. And ecclesiastics who tell us that, if science shows it to be humane and a new security for health and strength, Christianity will sink beneath the shock, only betray their own unconscious fear that the career of Christianity is nearly over, and its vital strength exhausted, or they would never dream of its succumbing to so petty an alarm as this.

COMETS.

From The Spectator.

neighbourhood of the sun, need only be studied thoughtfully to present similarly startling conceptions. No matter what theory of their origin we adopt, we are brought face to face with the thought of time-intervals so enormous that practically they must be viewed as infinite. If we take the assumption that a comet of this order had been travelling on a path of parabolic or hyperbolic nature towards our sun, had been captured by the disturbing attraction of a planet, and compelled thenceforth to circuit on an oval path of greater or less extent, yet according to all laws of probability, how many times must it have flitted from star to Of all the objects with which astrono- star before it was thus captured! For mers have to deal, Comets are the the chances are millions to one against most mysterious. Their eccentric paths, so near an approach to a planet as would their marvellous dimensions, the strange ensure capture. But if, appalled by the changes to which they are subject, have enormous time-intervals thus revealed to long been among the most striking of the us, we turn from that assumption, and wonders of astronomy. There is some- find within the solar system itself the thing specially awe-inspiring, too, in the origin of the periodic comets, how strange thought of the gloomy domains of space are the theories to which we are led ! through which the comet that visits our Those comets which come very near to system for a brief time has for countless the sun may have had a solar origin; ages been travelling. Ordinary modes of and those which approach very near the measuring space and time fail us, indeed, path of one the giant planets may have in speaking of these wonders, or at least been propelled from out of such a planet convey no real meaning to the mind. If when in its sun-like youth. Even then, the comet, for instance, which is now a however, other comets remain which are conspicuous object in our northern skies not thus to be accounted for, unless we be of this order — if, as our comet-tracker regard them as derived from planets outHind begins to suspect, its path in our side Neptune, hitherto undetected, and neighbourhood is parabolic, so that either perhaps detectable in no other way. And it has an enormously long period of revo- when we have taken such theories of lution, or has come to us across the in- cometary origin, not, indeed, for acceptterstellar spaces themselves, how use-ance, but to be weighed amongst possiless is it to set down the array of numbers representing the extension of its path, or the years during which the comet has been voyaging through desert space! The comets indeed which come from the star-depths and observation renders it all but certain that some have done so cannot in any case have pursued a voyage less than twenty billions of miles in length, and cannot have been less than eight million years upon the road. That, too, was but their latest journey. From the last sun they visited to our own sun, such was their voyage; but who shall say how many such voyages they had pursued, or how many they will complete after leaving our sun's neighbourhood, before the time comes when some chance brings them near enough to a disturbing planet to cause their path to become a closed one? And even those comets which are now known to follow a closed path, returning again and again to the

bilities, how stupendous are the conceptions to which we are thus introduced! Suns (for what is true of our sun may be regarded as probable of others) vomiting forth cometic matter, so violently as to communicate velocities capable of bearing such matter to the limits, or beyond the limits of the solar system: planets now passing through later stages of their existence, but presented to us, according to such theories, as once in a sun-like condition, and at that time capable of emulating the comet-expelling feats of the great central sun.

Are these thoughts too wild and fanciful to be entertained? They may appear so; yet where are we to find others less amazing? The comets of the various orders short-period, long-period, and non-periodic

are there. Their existence has to be in some way accounted for; or if such explanation is at present impossible, as seems likely, we may yet

follow the various lines of reasoning that inconceivably distant epoch, comets which present themselves. And we have travelling from sun to sun, and some of very little choice. Take a comet of long them coming from other suns towards period passing near the orbit, let us say, ours, to be captured from time to time by of Uranus, even as Tempel's comet, the resistance of the vaporous masses the parent of the November meteors, is out of which the planets of our system known to do. Either that comet has were one day to be evolved. been gathered in from outer space by the We do not know how the questions sun, and compelled to follow its present raised by such thoughts should be anpath by the disturbing influence of Ura- swered, although, as has been elsewhere nus, or elsewhat? Only two other shown, there is more evidence in favour theories are available. Trace back the of the theory of expulsion than of the comet's path in imagination, round and other two theories just sketched. But round that oval path, which carries it we have reason to feel assured, as we across the paths of Uranus and the earth contemplate a comet like that which now but nowhere else brings it within mil- adorns our skies, that could we learn its lions of miles of any possible disturbing history, a practical infinity of time would influences. Rejecting the earth as insuf- be brought before us as the aggregate of ficient in attractive might (or, at least, so the time-intervals we should have to deal inferior to Uranus as to leave us in no with. Nor is the marvel of the comet doubt in selecting between the two), we diminished by what we have learned from have only during the past of the comet, observation or from mathematical analysis. as so traced, the planet Uranus to which We have found that the tracks of comets we can refer it. We have rejected the are followed by countless millions of meattractive influence of Uranus; but two teoric bodies, and thus the strangest other influences remain. Eruptive ac- thoughts of infinity of space occupied tion in a former sun-like state, an action by infinite numbers of cosmical bodies, corresponding to the eruptive processes aggregating towards multitudinous cenknown to be taking place in the sun, is one possible origin. The mind of man, unapt though it is to deal with time-intervals so enormous as are required to transmute a giant orb from the sun-like to the planetary condition, may yet accept this interpretation, if no other present itself which is not still more appalling. Only one other, as it seems to us, remains, and this compels us to contemplate timeintervals compared with which those required to change Uranus from sun to planet seem insignificant. If, as we are taught by the nebular hypothesis of the solar system, or, in fact, by any theory of its evolution whatever, the planet Uranus was once in a vaporous condition, extending as a mighty rotating disc far beyond its present sphere, and probably far beyond the path of its outermost satellite, we may conceive a comet arriving from outer space to be captured by the resistance of the once vaporous planet, not by its mere attractive force. But to what a result have we thus been led! If we accepted this view, rather than the theory that Uranus had expelled the comet, we should have first to carry our thoughts back almost to the very beginning of our solar system, and then to recognize at

tres during infinity of time-are suggested to us. The telescope has shown us wonderful processes taking place during the comet's approach to the sun, and most wonderful process of all, the repulsion of the vaporous matter in the tail, as though to assure us that the expelling power of suns is even more than matched by the repelling power they exert on portions of cometic matter brought in certain conditions under their influence. Analysis by the spectroscope, that wonderful instrument which astronomy owes to Kirchhoff, has taught us much respecting cometic structure, showing that the light of the nucleus is that of a glowing solid or liquid (or of matter reflecting sunlight), the light of the coma that mainly of glowing vapour, while in the tail these two forms of light are combined. And polariscopic analysis speaks with equal clearness of the composite nature of cometic structure. But when all this has been said, we are little nearer to the solution of the mysterious problems which comets present to us. They still teach us, as they have so long taught, that "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy."

From Chambers' Journal.
DERISIVE PUNISHMENTS.

in high places, at a time when a man could be condemned to lose his ears for calling TIMES are considerably changed since Laud "a little urchin " in a private letter ridicule formed a part of ordinary judicial to a friend. The archbishop and his punishment. Sometimes the suffering satellites did their master very ill service inflicted went beyond a derisive public in giving occasion for the scene in Palace exhibition. It was hard for ladies of a Yard on the 30th of June 1637, thus depolitical turn of mind, as the Countess of scribed in one of Strafford's letters: "In Buchan learned, when, after Bruce's de- the palace yard two pillories were erected, feat at Methven, she fell into the hands of and there the sentence against Burton, the foes of the warrior upon whose head Bastwick, and Prynne was executed. she had placed the Scottish crown. "As They stood two hours in the pillory. The she did not strike with the sword, so she place was full of people, who cried and shall not die with the sword," said King howled terribly, especially when Burton Edward, in his cruel mercy condemning was cropped. Dr. Bastwick was very the patriotic lady to be confined in a merry; his wife, Dr. Poe's daughter, got crown-shaped wooden cage, of strong lat-on a stool and kissed him. His ears betice-work barred with iron, and hung in air from a turret of Berwick Castle, for a spectacle and everlasting reproach." It was poor consolation for the prisoner to know that Bruce's sister and daughter were exhibited in the same manner, one at Roxburgh Castle, and the other in the Tower. When ladies of high degree were treated as though they were wild beasts, we are not surprised to learn that a very A stranger scene still was witnessed at long time ago - so long ago that the date Charing Cross in 1758. Dr. John Shebhas been lost a parson at Broughton-beare was in that year sentenked to three Hackett, Worcestershire, found guilty of aiding a farmer's wife to get rid of her spouse, was put in a strong cage, and suspended on Churchill Big Oak, with a leg of mutton and trimmings within his sight, but beyond his reach, and so starved to death.

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ing cut off, she called for them, put them in a clean handkerchief, and carried them away with her. Bastwick told the people, "the lords had their collar-days at court, but this was his collar-day, rejoicing much in it." Fifty-six years later, Daniel Defoe stood unabashed in the pillory of the Temple, amid a heap of garlands, flung by a crowd of well-wishers.

years' imprisonment, and to stand one hour in the pillory, for writing certain Letters to the People of England, insisting that France owed her grandeur, and England her misfortunes to the undue influence of Hanover in the British councilchambers. Upon the 5th of December, Caging, however, was hardly a recog- a pillory was erected at Charing Cross, to nized form of punishment in England, the which the culprit was brought in one of pillory being the legal instrument of pun- the City stage-coaches by Under-sheriff ishment by exposure. It was simply the Beardmore, who handed him into the Anglo-Saxon stretch neck "—- a folding- pillory, and left him to stand there at his board with a hole in the centre for the ease; neither his head nor his hands were admission of the criminal's neck with inclosed in the pillory holes, and a richly two additional holes for the hands, fas-dressed servant held an umbrella over the tened to the top of a pole fixed upon a doctor's head, to fend off the rain. The stool or platform. No more disagreeable under-sheriff was arraigned for neglecting penalty could have been hit upon for his duty, and although he contended he adulterators, cheating traders, forestallers, had fulfilled the letter of the law, was fined dice-coggers, forgers, fortune-tellers, pub- and imprisoned for his indulgent interlic liars, cut-purses, and vagabonds hav-pretation. The Irishman who acted as ing no claim upon the friendliness of the footman on the occasion was not satisfied multitude, at liberty to pelt the unlucky rogue with mud, garbage, and stones at discretion. Charles I.'s Star Chamber turned the pillory into an engine of political oppression; in their tyrannic shortsightedness, making it a place of honour, rather than of degradation, for, when men like Leighton, Prynne, and Lilburne stood in Palace Yard, the sympathizing crowd hailed them, not as felons, but as heroes, for boldly declaiming against misdoings

with the guinea he received for his trouble, saying to Shebbeare: "Only think of the disgrace, your honour!" and the doctor was obliged to salve the indignity with an extra crown. A greater man than the Devonshire surgeon, Lord Cochrane, of Basque Roads fame, was sentenced in 1814 to be pilloried. Upon Sir Francis Burdett declaring his intention of standing by his colleague's side in the pillory, the government, not caring to risk the

consequences, wisely ignored that part of the sentence, and rested satisfied with degrading, fining, and imprisoning the famous sea-fighter. Exposure in the pillory has sometimes proved fatal. In 1756, the Smithfield drovers pelted two perjured thief-takers so severely that one of them died; in 1763, a man was done to death at Bow in the same way; and in 1780, a coachman, named Read, expired in the pillory before his time was up. In 1816, the punishment was abolished for all offences save perjury, and in 1837 put an end to altogether.

The stocks, which answered the purpose of a pillory, were often made to serve as whipping posts also, by carrying their supporting posts to a convenient height, and affixing iron clasps to hold the offender's wrists. Sometimes a single post fixed in front of a bench answered the double purpose equally well; a pair of iron clasps on the top being used in whipping-cases, and another pair fixed below sufficing for ankle-holders. Every parish had its stocks. "Coming home to-night," writes Pepys, "a drunken boy was carried by our constable to our new pair of stocks, to handsel them." They were generally erected near the churchyard, or by the roadside, a little way out. Driving along the country road, one may often come upon such a relic of the past, nearly hidden by weeds of many years' growth. London, of course, was liberally provided for in this way: writing in 1630, Taylor the Water-poet says:

In London, and within a mile, I ween,
There are of jails or prisons full eighteen;
And sixty whipping-posts and stocks and

cages.

The City stocks stood near the Exchange end of Cheapside, and must have occupied a goodly space of ground, for, when they were pulled down in 1668, Pepys said the clearance made the coming into Cornhill and Lombard Street "mighty noble." Long after the stocks had vanished, their memory was preserved by the Stocks Market, where Sir Robert Viner's transmogrified statue of Sobieski did duty for His Majesty King Charles II. triumphing over a turban-crowned Cromwell, until the market itself was swept away in 1735, to make room for the Mansion-house. Episcopal palaces would appear to have had stocks attached to them. One Sunday, in 1531, Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream was privately performed at the Bishop of Lincoln's house in LonThe consequence of an inquiry into

don.

the matter was, that a Mr. Wilson, as the special plotter and contriver of the business, and the player of the part of Bottom, was condemned to sit from six in the morning to six at night in the stocks at the porter's lodge of the bishop's house, the ass's head on his shoulders, a bottle of hay before him, and a derisive inscription on his breast.

In 1736, the good people of Whitstable were edified by the sight of a doctor and a clergyman sitting side by side in the stocks for swearing at one another. In 1827, a man was placed in the stocks in St. Nicholas's Churchyard, Newcastle, for disturbing the congregation by entering the church during service-time, and shouting: "Bell forever!" Mr. Bell being the popular candidate for the county. A similar piece of misconduct, without the excuse of electioneering excitement, upon the part of one Mark Tuck, led to the revival of the institution at Newbury a year or so ago. Twenty-six years had elapsed since the stocks had been tenanted, and the butter market was thronged with sight-seers anxious to see how the victim would take his punishment. He did not appreciate their kind attentions, and saluted every chiming of the church clock with expressions of thankfulness. After four hours' exposure to the derision of the crowd, Tuck was released, and lost no time in making his way home, without staying to thank those who had revived an old custom for his especial benefit.

A German dame who let her tongue wag too freely about her neighbours, used to be compelled to stand upon a block in the market-place, with a heavy stone dangling from her neck, shaped either like a bottle, a loaf, an oval dish, or representing a woman putting out her tongue; unless she happened to be rich enough to buy permission to exchange the shameful stone for a bag of hops tied round with a red ribbon. In 1637, a woman of Sandwich, in Kent, venturing to take liberties with the good name of "Mrs. Mayoress," had to walk through the streets of the town, preceded by a man tinkling a small bell, bearing an old broom upon her shoulder, from the end of which dangled a wooden mortar. Staffordshire scolds did not get off so easily. They had to follow the bellman until they shewed unmistakable signs of repentance, debarred from giving any one a bit of their mind by the branks, or scolds' bridle, an ingenious arrangement of metal hoops contrived to clasp the head and the neck firmly, while the padlock behind

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