Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

afforded by the life of fiction. Among men and women of the actual world the phase seldom survives early youth, and even while it lasts is likely to be rather roughly dealt with. The young gentleman who believes that life is too bitter for endurance succeeds fairly well with the young lady who has just left school. She is duly alarmed at the condition into which his mind has fallen, and is properly anxious to remove his doubts in the sincerity of his fellowcreatures. But grown men and women are apt to regard the symptoms as being troublesome rather than dangerous, and are content to wait till the patient shall be more fit for human companionship. In fiction and the drama the cynic has a better career. The labors of lady novelists have done much to perpetuate the type, and the cynical temperament is also found of service in the creation of stage heroes. We frequently meet with specimens of this latter class verging towards absolute despair in their outlook over the universe. They generalize from the minutest particulars, assuming an attitude of utter scepticism if they happen to be disappointed in love. The whole of life is judged to be false because the young ladies of the day wear false hair, and the only possible escape from the deadening conventions of the actual world is generally thought to consist in an ill assorted union with an actress or a bar-maid. In feminine fiction the cynical hero is not so easily reconciled to existence. He is more wicked than the pit and gallery would allow a stage hero to be. His opinions become altogether shocking, and his irregular ways of life are sympathetically accepted by the authoress as the manifestations of a sceptical state of mind.

It is interesting to compare this modern cynicism-itself neither very profound nor very beautiful with the forms given to the same quality at an earlier date. Shakespeare's plays are rich in varied expressions of the cynical character, but in none of them do we recognize anything at all resembling the cynic hero of modern drama and modern fiction. The sentiments of the time were both too sincere and too robust to admit of such a creation. Personal feelings and disappointments were not then allowed to react upon the philosophy of the world, and individual passion was either too serious or too trivial to serve as the starting point for foolish generalizations upon the social fabric. There was indeed no such halting-place between the love-sickness of Romeo and Mercutio's lightheartedness as the morbid youth of modern days has found out. The character which by a superficial resemblance most nearly approaches to the inventions of our dramatists and novelists of the present time is that of the melancholy Jaques. His cynicism has about it a distinct tinge of modern feeling. It is deliberate and aimless, begotten out of no wrong, but maintaining itself from a sort of morbid pleasure in the exercise. His invitations to Orlando to sit down and "rail against our mistress the world and all our misery" is certainly characteristic of the cynic of the present day, and it is not improbable that Shakespeare here intended to expose the habit of affected melancholy. But the distinctive element in Jaques's character which separates him altogether from his modern representative, rests in the keen observation and delicate philosophy which serve as the basis of his cynicism. He says himself of his own melancholy that it is "compounded of many simples extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness."

There is no element of contemplation in modern cynicism, unless a morbid self-examination can be said to deserve the name. Jaques's melancholy has a more objective character. It is a delicate essence drawn from the things of his observation; a subtle reflection of the sadness of the external world. His philosophy is precisely of the right depth of sadness to suit the needs of comedy; any deeper mood would suggest problems too grave to be controlled or solved by a successful climax. But the temporary misfortunes of comedy need an exponent, and Jaques's humor is in sympathy with that of the banished Duke till the final happiness arrives. When the supreme moment of comedy approaches, Jaques looks out for new fields of melancholy.

He cannot follow the recovered fortunes of the banished Duke, for his sadness and his cynicism would then fall out of tune. Thus we have a test of the sincerity of his cynical humor which very few of the heroes of modern novels would be able to stand. These gentlemen, though they are of a more violent despair in the early stages of their career, generally seize upon the first opportunity of casting off the mask, and proceed to make themselves comfortable with the things of this world. They have no such persistency in sadness as belonged to the melancholy philosopher in the Forest of Arden.

But the strength of Shakespeare's grasp of the cynical character, as compared with that of modern authors, may be best seen in the more serious plays. Edmund in "King Lear" is a creation without any parallel in later literature. It is strange that, although the subjects of free thought and unrestrained speculation stand now in greater prominence, no writer of fiction has embodied with any force the kind of audacious scepticism exemplified in Gloucester's natural son. Shakespeare was always fond, as in Faulconbridge, of showing the freer and more adventurous disposition granted to bastard children, but nowhere else has the notion received so grand an expression. Edmund is the personification of cool, cynical logic. He has a reason for every act of villainy; every thought is strictly controlled by a precise and selfish philosophy. There is no passion in his criminal purpose, and no fear of retribution in carrying it into effect. He thus stands in the play in direct antithesis to its central figure; for, as Lear is governed by emotions divorced from sober reason, so in the case of Edmund all emotion is subdued to the entire control of a relentless logic of villainy. His cynicism is the most comprehensive that can be imagined; he consistently scoffs at gods and men, and acts in literal obedience to his own understanding of personal advantage. In this way he serves as an idol and as a model of conduct to Lear's ungrateful daughters. His bold cynical generalizations upon life serve to support and strengthen their narrower selfishness, and it is with definite artistic intention that Shakespeare has represented both Goneril and Regan as being passionately attracted to Edmund, who stands as the ideal of their own less splendid but equally heartless careers. Cynicism of this profound order which has its fruit in villainous action does not find its way into modern literature. It is partly excluded by the presence of a more amiable but less vigorous philosophy of human nature, which seeks to represent wickedness as being rather a thing of circumstance than of individual bent. Our authors nowadays endeavor to explain their villains in a way which is completely repugnant to the spirit of the Elizabethan drama. Evil is there recognized as a substantive force for which there was no need to find adequate motive. Herein, indeed, lies the peculiar influence of Iago's character. The motives suggested for his treachery serve merely to put into action a great motiveless force of evil which, attached to a single individual, stands as the supreme embodiment of human wickedness. Iago is the profoundest cynic we can conceive of. Edmund has a touch of repentance at the last, but Iago passes from the stage with sealed lips, still self-possessed, and with all the secrets of evil unrevealed. It is the most cynical portrait ever painted, more devilish than Mephistopheles because of its humanity, and not yielding even to him in the appetite for evil. There is something more than the individual genius of its creator which puts such a character out of the range of modern literature. Not only in degree, but in kind, it lies beyond the reach of any novelist or dramatist of the present day. The modern conception of evil takes the form either of coarse brutality or of petty meanness. Types of splendid wickedness cool and cynical of purpose, have dropped out of literature. Shakespeare's great villains possess supreme intellectual gifts; they forecast their careers of evil, and exhibit even towards their victims a rare and impartial judgment. Both Edmund and Iago appreciate to the full the nobility of the men they are betraying. There is no suggestion of obscured or imperfect intelligence in their acts, no blind passion of crime to be repented of in a calmer moment. On the whole, it may be

said that within the range of Shakespeare's drama there are no characters so consistently calm and self-possessed as these two profoundest cynics, Edmund and Iago. There is one noteworthy instance in which a modern author has attempted to carve out an image of equal terror and power. Shelley's portrait of Count Francesco Cenci is drawn after Elizabethan models, but it is drawn with an animus and with an intensity of disgust that render it grotesque. The Count's avowed delight in cruelty, his fierce and merely animal plans of evil, are depicted in a style such as does not even find a parallel in the terrible drama of Webster. Bosola in the "Duchess of Malfi" is familiar and human compared with this monster of Shelley's brain. His villainy is cool without intellectual refinement. It is a record of evil which the artist has not made humanly credible to us. And the reason of this failure on Shelley's part is probably to be found in the fact that his own nature gave him no help towards the understanding of so profound a type of cynical wickedness. He had no real conviction of its possibility, and the portrait is therefore rather a cold intellectual embodiment of certain evil qualities than a genuinely imaginative product stamped with dramatic probability. This inability to lay hold of great embodiments of evil is characteristic of the literature of the day. The villainies of modern fiction lack all grandeur of conception. They do not spring from a deep-rooted cynicism of character, such as forms the only discoverable motive of the great individual villains of an earlier stage of art.

SEVEN METALS.

In the discovery of the metals men first asserted their mastery over nature; yet the discovery is still progressing. Before the fifteenth century only seven were positively known. They were each held sacred, among the ancients, to some ruling deity. Gold indestructible, malleable, the richest in coloring, the most precious of decorations - was consecrated to Jupiter, or the sun, and had already assumed the supremacy which it has never lost. It was coined into the heavy darics of Persia and the aureus of imperial Rome. It was used to gild temples and statues, was wrought into rich jewelry, and woven in delicate threads that enlivened the flowered stuffs of Babylon.

Gold mines and gold-bearing streams were found in Arabia, Syria, Greece, Italy, and Spain, and the pursuit of the precious metal was carried on with various success by countless throngs of miners. The richest mines, at least in later ages, were those of Spain; and the enormous productiveness of the Spanish soil was slowly exhausted by the successive labors of the Carthaginians and the Romans. So successful was their industry, that but little gold or silver can now be found in a territory where the precious metal once lay scattered in boundless profusion on the surface of the earth.

Silver ranked next to gold, and was named from the soft light of the moon. The richest silver mines were those of Spain. It was wrought into cups, vases, lamps; adorned the helmets and shields of warriors; and formed the costly mirrors with which the Roman ladies shocked the austerity of Lactantius or Jerome. The beautiful silver coins of the Greek and Roman cities fill modern collections. Five other metals — iron, copper, mercury, lead, and tin — were employed by the ancients for various purposes; they made steel by a rude process, and brass without discovering zinc.

-a memo

For many ages no addition was made to the sacred seven. Three thousand years passed away before it was suspected that the number could be increased, rable example of the slowness of human apprehension. At length, in 1490, antimony was added to the metallic family; and not far off from the period of the discovery of a new world, the chemists were about to enter upon fresh fields of science, scarcely less boundless or inviting.

A second metal, bismuth, came in almost with the Reformation. Zinc, perhaps the most important of the new

family, may have preceded the others; it was certainly described long before. It is, indeed, quite curious to notice how the bright metal had been constantly forcing itself upon the attention of careful observers, and had yet been wholly overlooked; had been used by the ancients, in the form of an earth, to color copper into brass, and give it a shining surface like gold; was seen dropping from the furnaces of the Middle Ages, or melted in rich flakes from their walls.

Two magicians, or philosophers, at last detected the error of ages; and Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus, probably both discovered that zinc was as indestructible and as free from foreign substances as gold. It seemed a pure element. Paracelsus, who was fond of penetrating to the source of things, admits that he could not tell how the bright metal grew; nor in the height of their magic renown was it ever foreseen that the rare substance the sorcerers had discovered would one day shed knowledge, in tongues of fire, from London to Japan.

Two centuries followed, during which no metallic substance was discovered. Paracelsus found no successor; Albertus, almost the first man of science in Europe, was remembered only as a sorcerer. It was not until 1733, that the vast field of metallic discovery began to open upon man. Two valuable and well-known metals — platinum and nickel- among several others, first appeared about the middle of the eighteenth century. The number of the metals now rapidly enlarged; galvanism lent its aid to dissolve the hardest earths; and at length, in the opening of the nineteenth century, a cluster of brilliant discoveries aroused the curiosity of science.

Each eminent philosopher seemed to produce new metals. Berzelius discovered three; Davy, the Paracelsus of his age, is the scientific parent of five-potassium, sodium, barium, strontium, calcium. The numbers advanced, until already more than fifty metals, of various importance, have been given to the arts. The new experiments in light have added cæsium and rubidium; and no limit can now be fixed for the metallic family, which for so many ages embraced only seven members, the emblems of the ruling gods.

A GREAT ROBBERY IN THE OLDEN TIMES.

It is a warm and pleasant afternoon this 17th of April, 1874, as we saunter down Whitehall on our way to Westminster Abbey. Past Downing Street, whose meagre proportions and secluded position are strangely unworthy of its historic fame; by the new Government offices, which make us wonder that King Street could have been endured so long; and we linger in the Sanctuary at the foot of Westminster Hospital. Assuredly, nowhere else in London is there such a marvellous variety of architectural beauty as may be witnessed here. On our left, the Houses of Parliament, conspicuous for their ornate grace, contrasting not unpleasantly with the castellated outlines of Westminster Hall; on our right, the massive edifices of Victoria Street; before us, the elegant column raised by Westminster School to the memory of their comrades who fell in the Crimean War; and, towering in serene contempt above the stunted and ugly west front of St. Margaret's Church, like a monarch surrounded by ignoble courtiers, the Abbey itself, in hoary and majestic age.

The geologist studying the features of this or that formation, will not unfrequently alight upon some monolith, brought there by glacial action ages ago, having nothing in common with the strata around it, an isolated memento of different climates and remote shores. And, contemplating this fragment, he may perchance be reminded of deposits more prolific in interest, and more responsive to research; and so, forgetting the immediate object of his study, may find himself absorbed in the dearer associations evoked by this relic of a far-distant past.

Similar effects are produced by Westminster Abbey. Around it are all the developments of nineteenth-century

civilization - the babbling Parliament, attempting always more than it can achieve, and doing indifferently well most of what it attempts; the hospital, worthy type of a benevolence at once sagacious and tender, fitted with every modern appliance for the amelioration of human suffering; the police court, insuring, without military interference, the maintenance of order and security, without which the complicated machinery of daily existence could not go on; and, surrounding and pervading all, the hum and bustle of active, practical, commercial life. And yet to our minds, it seems that all these features of the scene lose their charm in presence of the associations which the Abbey recalls.

We turn gladly from contemplation of the present to the past; to those days when the piety of kings reared this venerable shrine, when the space on which we stand was indeed a Sanctuary, a place of asylum to criminals and vagrants. But, above all, our mind reverts to the long array of soldiers, statesmen, patriots, and

"bards sublime,

Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of time,"

while their ashes rest in the Abbey.

And now, quitting Broad Sanctuary, and winding round Dean's Yard, we enter the Cloisters. How vividly these black and crusted walls-in fit keeping with the chill and gloom which pervade the precinct-recall the austerities of that old monastic life! On these very stone benches, covered perchance with mats, did the novices con their lessons, under the eyes of the prior, or even of the abbot himself; on this very pavement, over which a few rushes were sprinkled, were the monks shaved and washed. Their dormitory extended over the eastern, and their refectory over the southern cloister. In this inclosure, in the centre of the quadrangle, they were buried. These windows were never glazed, and thus in a comfortless and often inclement atmosphere, the life of the ascetic brotherhood was passed. In this the eastern cloister, we stop beneath an archway blacker and more hoary even than the surrounding walls. Through this passage, the stones of which are worn with the penances of many a penitent, we pass to the Chapterhouse. Here, in old days, sat the abbot and other high officials of the Abbey. Here the business of the Chapter was conducted. At this pillar in the centre, which branches out to form an elegant roof, were the monks assembled to make confession of their sins, and to receive flagellation! Here too, for many a long year, met the House of Commons; and these walls have often resounded with the clamor of secular, as well as of religious debate. And thus were curiously linked, in their earlier history, two streams of life so diverse in their character, and so marvellously different in their destinies: the monastic life, inflexible and torpid, looking ever on the past, clinging to tradition, and destined to decay; the constitutional life, meagre at its commencement, but ever hopeful of the future, and vanquishing slowly but surely the pretensions alike of priest and king.

And now the afternoon service is concluded, and the clergy are passing from the Abbey into the Cloisters. With all the potent associations of the Cloisters clinging to us, we enter the nave. A crowd is gathered round a newlydug grave. And to-morrow shall they lay there one who united in himself an unselfishness as great as any that the annals of monasticism have ever recorded, together with a practical sagacity which monasticism often lacked. And when David Livingstone shall have been buried here, there will be none here nobler than he none who have done more to "wake this greedy age to noble deeds."

In this nave, too, his epitaph is even now written. To his right, near the west front, sleeps Zachary Macaulay; and the felicitous sentences which tell of the "intense but quiet perseverance which no success could relax, and no reverse could subdue, with which he too followed up the great aim of his life. the freedom of the slave - form a fitting inscription for the great missionary. Very clearly, as we stand by the grave, comes up the scene of this heroic and lonely death in that far-off land, the quiet good

66

morning" to his attendant, and then the fearless and resigned last sleep

"Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him And lies down to pleasant dreams."

But we hasten to the scene of associations of a totally different kind to memories in no way in harmony with the sacred nature of the edifice, or with the solemn repose that pervades the Cloisters. Passing up the nave, by Poets' Corner, through St. Faith's Chapel, we find ourselves once again in the vestibule of the Chapter-house. In front of us is a door of great age, bound with iron clamps. There are two other doors, also of massive thickness, in the cloister with which the vestibule communicates; and these three doors all open into a chamber, vaulted and dark, and supported by pillars of great solidity. This chamber, oldest probably of any of the Abbey precints, is second to none in the wealth of the memories it evokes. Originally the private chapel of Edward the Confessor, it is now known as the Pyx Chapel, the most notable "treasure-house of mighty kings" in the realm — the old Treasury of England. Within, nowadays, are kept the standard weights and measures.

But no stranger may lightly enter this gloomy chapel. That double door in the Cloisters, through which only admittance can be obtained, opens but to seven keys, some of them of great bulk, and all of portentous history. Hither, once a year, come the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Warden of the Standards, and other high officials, to carry out the Trial of the Pyx-in other words, the testing of the current coin of the realm by government, as already described in a former number of this magazine.

Here, formerly, were kept all the king's jewels, his wardrobes, and other valuables. Here, too, was deposited the royal revenue. The proceeds of aids and subsidies, of feu dal rights and exactions of all sorts the produce, in short, of the taxation of the kingdom- found their way ultimately into the Pyx Chamber. And what receptacle could be more secure than the Cloisters of the Abbey? What better plan could be devised than to entrust the monarch's revenue to the custody of men whose holy calling attested their superiority to temptation, and the permanence of whose abode insured ceaseless supervision? Moreover, the Abbey was a consecrated building, and, as such, possessed in the sacredness of its character and design, defences of quite as much value as the material bolts and bars which builder or smith might furnish. To plunder the king's money anywhere was bad enough; to plunder it from an abbey was a crime of no less gravity than sacrilege.

We

The Pyx Chamber, then, has played an important part in the financial history of this country. The solitude and gloom which surround it now, form a striking contrast to the bustle which pervaded its precincts when it was in daily use as the depository of the national revenue. will, in imagination, let the centuries roll back as we stand in the Cloisters, till we reach the spring of the year 1303. Edward the First is king, and is engaged in war with Scotland.

King Edward's necessities have compelled him to resort to all sorts of modes, lawful and unlawful, to raise money. He has made his iron hand felt throughout the length and breadth of the realm. He has wrung from the clergy half their entire incomes; and when they have protested, he has outlawed them wholesale. In some parishes, bishop, priest, abbot, and monk have neither bed to lie on nor food to eat. He has seized all the wool and hides ready for shipping at the various ports; and when merchant and burgher and noble have made common cause against his rapacity, he has appealed to the patriotism of the mob. Standing on a platform in front of Westminister Hall, he has addressed the people. He grieves much, he says, for the heavy taxes he has had to levy on his dear subjects, but they were essential if he was to preserve them from the ravages of Wales, and France, and Scotland. And then tears steal down the royal visage, and he points affectionately towards his son; and the Archbishop of Canterbury weeps right loyally; and the assembled multitude

rend the air with shouts of devotion. True, it turned out that those who had shouted most were not taxpayers; and the king had been obliged to confirm the Charter, and promise not to tax the nation without the sanction of Parliament. But the promise proved often a dead letter. And now (1303) a tax of the ninth lamb and the ninth fleece has been imposed. Every townsman must contribute a ninth part of the value of his movables.

The tax is being collected with great sternness. Each town has to contribute a specified sum, according to a valuation of property made some fifteen years before by Edward's orders. The sheriffs and their subordinates are bringing the proceeds of their collections day by day to the Exchequer. And then, after being counted on the chequered cloth from which the Exchequer derives its name, a tally is prepared and cleft, and the money passes into the custody of the Exchequer officials; and, at length, is brought by the Chamberlain, and placed in the coffers of the Pyx Chamber.

Now if any arrangements whatever of human devising could insure complete security against fraud, it would have been those in force in the old Exchequer. A long_array of officials, a perfect catalogue of oaths, a most elaborate system of check and counter-check, a minute record of every transaction, a staid and decorous mode of conducting business, which despised haste, and forbade error, these were the characteristics of the Exchequer routine. But in this instance they failed lamentably.

The extraordinary wealth which was now in store in the Pyx Chamber, excited the cupidity of some of the monks. During the winter of the year 1302-3, a plot was matured for breaking into this chamber and plundering its contents. The ringleaders of the conspiracy were Richard de Pudlicote, a monk; Adam de Warefield, the sacristan; and Alexander de Pershore, the sub prior of the Abbey.

Their plans were laid with most remarkable care and forethought. Knowing that many of the valuables contained in the Pyx Chamber were bulky, and would not admit of removal to a great distance, they hit upon an ingenious expedient for concealing them near at hand. The inclosure inside the Cloisters, now grass-grown, was then used as a burial-ground. This inclosure they sowed with hemp, which could in a few months attain such a height as to hide their booty. They introduced into the conspiracy one William le Feuere, porter of the King's Palace at Westminster, who was keeper of a house in the Fleet Prison, at which they met to concoct their schemes. Finally, they gained over the mason and the carpenter of the Abbey, so that they might have skilled assistance in the burglary.

Upwards of four months were spent in completing all necessary details. At length, in the first week of May, 1303, the attempt was carried into execution. In the dead of night, John the mason, and Adam the carpenter, broke through the wall of the crypt under the Chapterhouse, which abuts on the Pyx Chamber. Richard de Pudlicote and several accomplices entered, and forced the chests and other receptacles in which the jewels and money were stored. But the very magnitude of their booty perplexed the plunderers. Some of the more weighty were concealed in the hemp, others were secreted in the fields then surrounding the Abbey, or in a ditch which then ran round it, and on which there stood a mill (whence the Millbank of to-day); while the smaller valuables, such as precious stones and rings, were hidden about the persons of the thieves. But although the robbery appears to have been free from interruption, still many articles of much worth, including the king's great crown and three other crowns, were left untouched.

On the whole, however, the plunder amounted in value to nearly two millions of money of the pre-ent day- -a theft in those days of literally unrivalled magnitude.

The king was in Scotland when news of the robbery reached him. His indignation and chagrin knew no bounds. And indeed, in the circumstances wherein Edward was situated, the contempt for his authority which the crime indicated was only a degree less galling than the actual loss of the money. In order to raise the funds

he required, he had had to humiliate himself before his subjects to an extent almost unheard of, and this robbery would render his humiliation useless. The Exchequer was simply beggared. However, no time was lost in tracing the culprits. Commissioners were forthwith appointed under Letters Patent, dated 6th June, 1303, with power to inquire into all the facts of the case, and to arrest and imprison all persons implicated.

The researches of the Commissioners rapidly produced fruit. The truth is, De Pudlicote and his fellow-conspirators, in order to dispose of the enormous mass of plunder, had been compelled to open up negotiations with nearly every goldsmith in the city of London. Hence, when once an investigation was set on foot, evidence was forthcoming on every side. In seventeen out of the eighteen wards into which the city was divided, some of the stolen property was found.

Witnesses came forward who had watched the mysterious meetings of the monks at Le Feuere's house; others had seen the furtive removal of large baskets by night from the Abbey to the King's Bridge, now Westminster Bridge; while Geryn le Lyndraper was proved to have received a share of the spoils from the monks, and to have hidden it in Saint Pancras Fields. All the evidence criminated De Pudlicote and Warefield, and these, with a large number of monks and their friends, were committed to the Tower or to Newgate. At one time, it seems to have been thought that personages of higher rank were concerned in the robbery, for the abbot himself and forty-eight of his brethren were included in the indictment. Ultimately, Richard de Pudlicote and one of his confederates made a full confession of guilt.

Unfortunately, we have no information of the punishment of the thieves. They had, be it remembered, been guilty of sacrilege, a crime almost always punished with death. On this point it may be that the door of the Pyx Chapel, dumb and insensate though it be, can yet afford grim and ghastly testimony. In those good old times, it was customary to make a stern example of persons who had been found guilty of sacrilege. Pour encourager les autres, it used to be the practice to skin the culprit, and then, having tanned the skin, to nail it over the door of the building which had been the scene of his unholy plunder. Now on the door of the Pyx Chapel, which communicates with the vestibule of the Chapter-house, there are, as we have stated, broad iron clamps. We pass our finger along the edge of the iron, and it encounters projecting fragments of a horny parchment-like substance.

These fragments have been carefully examined, and are found to consist of human skin- the skin, too, of a fair-haired, ruddy-complexioned man.

On other doors in the Abbey precincts, similar fragments have been discovered. They have been said to be the skins of Danes, who were thus repaid some of the tortures they themselves inflicted.

But it may be that in this instance tradition is at fault, and that these fragments constitute the mortal remains of de Pudlicote, or some of his monkish confederates, who thus paid the stern penalty for the first and greatest robbery to which the British Exchequer was ever subjected.

FOREIGN NOTES.

ONE of the Rothschilds, the Baroness Solomon, is about to build a splendid house in Paris, in the style of Louis XVI.

MR. MOTLEY, the historian, is now once more in Holland. He is greatly patronized by Queen Sophie, the most literary crowned head in Europe. She also greatly patronized Mr. Lecky, and some little time ago found him a wife among her maids of honor.

THE London Athenæum says: "The first volume of the "History of Coöperation in England,' by Mr. George Jacob Holyoake, is now ready for the press. It will be

dedicated to Mr. Wendell Phillips, of America. We may mention that the United Congress Board, the official representatives of the organized coöperative societies of England, including several hundred associations of workingmen, have sent an invitation, through their general secretary, Mr. Vansittart Neale, to Mr. Wendell Phillips, of Boston, United States, to visit England, and be their guest at their Seventh General Congress, to be held in London, 1875."

A WRITER in the Constitutionnel gives some interesting particulars about the library at Val Richer, where M. Guizot has just died. The library, he says, contains not less than 30,000 volumes. There are scarcely any rare editions, nor are there any books remarkable for rich binding. It is a collection made for work, in which little attention has been paid to mere artistic matters, but much to utility and the means of facilitating study. The library of M. Guizot is, in that point of view, an incomparable mine, and offers all the resources that can be desired for labor and study. It possesses, besides, for the history of Germany and Great Britain, the most precious documents in the language of those countries, such as probably no other collection in France can rival at this moment.

AMONG odds and ends may be mentioned a new ink brought out in Paris: the base is carbon and glycerine, and the ink thereby is said to be unalterable, and harmless for steel pens- A means to hook on wagons to a train without exposing the man who does the hooking-on to injury A method invented by a spinner at Lille to produce thread or yarn of flax and hemp at a lower price than cotton yarn An automatic electro-whistle to give information to guards and drivers of railway trains. Many attempts have been made to apply a whistle that should blow by the pressure of the locomotive in passing; but the difficulty of producing the requisite effect by an instantaneous touch on a hard surface has proved too great. In this new automatic whistle, contact is made by means of an electric brush, which, under all circumstances, insures the passage of the electric current Pruning-shears with blades adapted to all circumstances: to cut flowers, to prune flowering shrubs, to clip away ground shoots in copses, or to cut large branches from trees overhead.

WHEN the Swedish polar expedition was on its way to the north in 1870, the explorers discovered at Ovifak, on the south shore of Disko Island, large masses of native iron, of various sizes, up to twenty tons, lying in a small space among boulders of granite and gneiss. Specimens were brought home, and distributed among the mineralogists of Europe, and the result of their analyses and investigations is, that opinions are divided as to whether those blocks of iron came from the sky or the earth. Some argue that they fell; others, that they were upheaved from below. It is somewhat remarkable that in the milder climate of Europe the specimens sweat a yellowish brown liquid, consisting chiefly of a salt of iron. One effect of the scientific discussion above adverted to may be to direct more attention to Greenland, a country worth attention, for its mineral resources, including lignite and graphite, are abundant. An Arctic Committee, comprising Fellows of the Royal and Royal Geographical Societies, have tried to persuade Chancellors of the Exchequer to find money for another north polar expedition. They may perhaps make the mineral wealth of Greenland a weighty argument in their favor.

MY LOSS.

BY AUGUSTA WEBSTER.

In the world was one green nook I knew,
Full of roses, roses red and white,
Reddest roses summer ever grew,
Whitest roses ever pearled with dew;

And their sweetness was beyond delight,
Was all love's delight.

Wheresoever in the world I went

Roses were, for in my heart I took Blow and blossom and bewildering scent, Roses never with the summer spent,

Roses always ripening in that nook,
Love's far summer nook.

In the world a soddened plot I know,
Blackening in this chill and misty air,
Set with shivering bushes in a row,
One by one the last leaves letting go:
Wheresoe'er I turn I shall be there,
Always sighing there.

Ah, my folly! Ah, my loss, my pain!

Dead, my roses that can blow no more! Wherefore looked I on our nook again? Wherefore went I after autumn's rain

Where the summer roses bloomed before,
Bloomed so sweet before?

WINTER.

HAIL! monarch of the leafless crown,
Rare seen save with a gloomy frown,
With ice for sceptre, robes of snow,
Thy throne; te stream's arrested flow;
Stern tyrant! whom the hastening sun
Doth loathe to serve, by vapors dun
Begirt, a melancholy train,

O'er Nature holding saddest reign.
Lo! of thy rigor birds make plaint,
And all things 'neath thy burden faint,
Nor cheered are they by message cold,
In answer by the north wind told,
The envoy of thy grievous sway,
When thou wouldst drive all hope away
From Nature, yearning to restore
To earth the bliss it knew before,
When Summer ruled with empire mild,
And Autumn, still a ruddy child,
Lay cradled 'mong the greenery
Of whispering grove and laden tree.
The brook that prattled to the air
Of golden harvests, scenes as fair
As poet rapt in fancy's maze
Could scarce enshrine in mortal lays,
Now rude and angry hurls along
The hearers of his summer song-
The branch and leaf that once repaid
His music with their tender shade,
And catching Zephyr's honeyed tone,
To his sweet tuning joined their own.
Or bound, perchance, in durance slow,
Full faint he wends, and moaning low,
Fit dirge he makes o'er freedom lost,
In joy of which he wanton tossed
The falling blossoms on his wave,
For water-nymps to catch and save.
Now stript of his green bravery,
In piteous plight the weary tree
Is blown upon by mocking winds,
Whom changed now he sighing finds
From those gay playmates welcomed erst
In glee by his young leaves when first
They wove their merry breeze-taught dance,
And broke their feathered lodgers' trance,
What time the eastern wave did gleam
'Neath fore-feet of the golden team.
Not busy now with tender care,
For coming brood the birds prepare
Their airy cradle, rocked unseen
By Dryad hands behind the screen
Of leafy curtains, where no eye
Of mischief curious may pry.

The thrush that erst with welling voice
Made all the tangled brake rejoice
In echoes of his mellowed strain,
To mope in silence now is fain:
Nor ever pipes from straining throat
The varied wonders of his note.
So bleak the scene, so sad the day,
Too harsh, O Winter, is thy sway!

« ПредишнаНапред »