Chapter IX (4)

There are few questions upon which there exists a greater variety of opinion, and with regard to which such contradictory statements are published, as upon the increase of Roman Catholicism in the metropolis. There are those on one hand who believe that it has made no progress at all, and that the rumors of "conversions," and even those Roman Catholic buildings which have of late years sprung up in such abundance around us, are not to be taken as proofs of such an increase in the numbers of Roman Catholics as the latter at least seem to indicate. Others believe without doubting that the Catholic Church is silently and energetically spreading its ramifications over the metropolis, and that there is hardly a household of any respectability in which its agents, in some form or other, have not contrived to get a footing; while there are persons who go so far as to assert that many of the Protestant clergy themselves are the direct emissaries of Rome, doing her work, and doing it consciously--nay, doing it under compact--while receiving the pay of the National Church. We believe that the truth will be found to lie between these extreme views. Not only has the Church of Rome gained ground in London, but it is steadily progressing, even at the present time, though by no means at such a rate, except in certain parishes, as to occasion the slightest danger to the Protestant cause, if only a moderate amount of energy and good will is shown by the Reformed denominations in securing their flocks within their own folds. We have already stated our belief that the fact of a clergyman holding High or Low Church views is not in any manner whatever necessarily connected with the increase of Catholicism among his congregation, but that such increase is owing either to the lack of a sufficient staff of the Protestant clergy to {704} repel its advances, or to the apathy or inefficiency of the incumbent, or, as may be especially shown in some wealthy districts, to that mysterious want of power in the clergy of the Church of England over the minds of the rich and influential of their parishioners. And that this view is not without some basis in fact, will be seen when we have described the present relative position of the Catholic and Anglican Churches in the wealthy, aristocratic, and populous parish of Kensington, comprising as it does the three wards of Notting-hill, Kensington, and Brompton.

Formerly, for the accommodation of the whole of the Roman Catholics of the parish of Kensington, there was but one small chapel near the High street, which appeared amply sufficient for the members of that creed. But ten or twelve years ago a Roman Catholic builder purchased, at an enormous price, a plot of ground about three acres in extent beside the church of the Holy Trinity, Brompton. For a time considerable mystery prevailed as to the uses it was to be applied to; but, shortly after the buildings were commenced, they were discovered to be for the future residence and church of the Oratorian fathers, then established in King William street, Strand. As soon as a portion of the building was finished, the fathers removed to it from their former dwelling; and the chapel, a small and commodious erection, was opened for divine service. At first the congregation was of the scantiest description; even on Sundays at high mass, small as the chapel was, it was frequently only half filled, while, on week days, at many of the services, it was no uncommon circumstance to find the attendances scarcely more numerous than the number of priests serving at the altar. By degrees the congregation increased, till the chapel was found too small for their accommodation, and extensive additions were made to it; but these, again, were soon filled to overflowing, and further alterations had to be made, till at last the building was capable of holding without difficulty from 2,000 to 2,500 persons. It is now frequently so crowded at high mass that it is difficult for an individual entering it after the commencement of the service to find even standing room. In the meantime the monastery itself, if that is the proper term, was completed--a splendid appearance it presents-- and we believe is now fully occupied.

The Roman Catholic population in the parish, or mission, under the spiritual direction of the fathers of the Oratory, now comprises between 7,000 and 8,000 souls. The average attendance at mass on Sundays is about 5,000, and the average number of communions for the last two years has been about 45,000 annually. But in addition to this church, Kensington has three others, St. Mary's, Upper Holland street, St. Simon Stock, belonging to the Carmelite Friars, and the church of St. Francis Assissi in Notting Hill. Of monasteries, or religious communities of men, it has the Oratorians before mentioned, and the Discalced Carmelites, in Vicarage place. Of convents of ladies, it has the Assumption in Kensington square, the Poor Clares Convent in Edmond terrace, the Franciscan Convent in Portobello road, the Sisters of Misericorde, 195 Brompton road, and the Sisters of Jesus, 4 Holland villas. Of schools, the Roman Catholics possess, in the parish of Kensingtion, the Orphanage in the Fulham road, the Industrial School of St. Vincent de Paul, as well as the large Industrial Schools for girls in the southern ward. All these schools are very numerously attended, the gross number of pupils amounting to 1,200, those of the Oratory alone being 1,000. The kindness and consideration shown by the Roman Catholic teachers to the children of the poor is above all praise, not only in Kensington, but in all localities where they are under their charge.

It might be imagined from this account of the Roman Catholic institutions in Kensington, that a general {705} rush had been made upon that parish, and that the surrounding districts were comparatively free from Roman Catholics. Such, however, is very far from being the case. In the union of Fulham and Hammersmith we have the Roman Catholic church of St. Thomas of Canterbury, the church of the Holy Trinity, Brook-green, and the church of Our Lady of Grace, Turnham-green. Of monasteries there are the St. Mary's Training College and the Brothers of Mercy, and for ladies there is the order of the Good Shepherd. Of charities and schools they have the Holy Trinity alms-houses on Brook-green, a home for aged females, a refuge for female penitents, most admirably managed and producing a most beneficial effect, an excellent reformatory for criminal boys, the large industrial schools of St. Vincent de Paul, and a home, St. Joseph's, for destitute boys. In Bays-water there is the cathedral of St. Mary's of the Angels (of which the celebrated Dr. Manning is the superior) and the convent of Notre Dame de Sion. In Chelsea there is the church of St. Mary's, Cadogan terrace, a convent for the Sisters of Mercy, another for the Third Order of Servites, as well as two well conducted and numerously attended schools.

In the united parishes of St. Margaret's and St. John's, Westminster, a few years since, the priests opened their campaign with considerable energy. In addition to their church in the Horsferry road, which was opened in 1813, they erected those of St. Peter's and St. Edmond's in Palace street, the superior priest of the latter being the celebrated Father Roberts, a man not only respected for the energy he shows in the cause of his religion, but beloved by all classes for his philanthropy. To these some schools and convents were added, the most celebrated of the latter being that of the Sisters of Charity in Victoria street. At first the priests seemed to be sanguine of success in the parish; but their advance was met by men of as much ability, courage, and energy as themselves.

On the Surrey side of the water the Catholic Church has the magnificent cathedral dedicated to St. George, in St. George's Fields; the church of the Most Holy Trinity, Parker's road, Dockhead, Bermondsey; the church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, Trinity road, Rotherithe; that of Our Lady of La Salette and St. Joseph, Melior street, Southwark; and the church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Windham street, Camberwell; beside several others in Peckham, Clapham, Lambeth, and the surrounding districts. Of communities of men there are the Capuchines at Peckham and at Clapham, the Redemptorists, and the Brothers of the Christian Schools. Of convents they have the Religious of the Faithful Virgin at Norwood, which also comprises an orphanage; the order of the Sisters of Mercy in Bermondsey; the order of the Sisters of the Christian Retreat, St. Joseph's, Kennington; the Little Sisters of the Poor, Fentiman road, Lambeth; beside one or two others of minor importance. It should also be remarked that all these establishments, with one or two exceptions, have sprung up within the last ten or twenty years. Of the numbers of the congregations of the different churches it would be difficult to form a just idea, but they are certainly very great; that properly attached to St. George's cathedral alone we have been assured, on most reliable Roman Catholic authority, amounting to 12,000 or 13,000. The number of children attending the schools is doubtless proportionably great.

In the north-eastern portion of the metropolis, we find the Roman Catholics, although they have lately built several new churches, are fully occupied in holding their own ground without exerting themselves to make converts. And here, opposed as we are to their creed on doctrinal points, it would be unjust to withhold our meed of praise to the exertions of the priests in relieving the temporal miseries of {706} their poor. It would be difficult to imagine charitable efforts carried on more indefatigably or nobly. Few who have not visited and personally inspected the different courts and alleys in the neighborhood of Spitalfields, Bethnal-green, St. George's-in-the-East, and Ratcliffe Highway, inhabited as they are by the poor Irish, can have an idea of the abject poverty which reigns in them, or the amount of patience, courage, and Christian feeling necessary to relieve it. Yet all this is cheerfully performed by the Roman Catholic priesthood, their energies appearing to increase in proportion as the difficulties and dangers before them become greater. It would perhaps be an injustice to their body in this district to select any for notice in preference to the rest; but we cannot refrain from making special mention of the labors of the Rev. Father Kelley, of Ratcliffe Highway, and the Rev. Father Chaurain, of Spitalfields, into the results of whose exertions we have made personal investigation.

In the northern districts of the metropolis, especially in Islington and its surrounding neighborhoods, the Roman Catholics appear to have made considerable progress. They have lately built several new churches as well as houses for religious communities, both for men and women. That their progress in the metropolis is not solely the result of the High-Church practices in the establishment may be presumed from the fact that, although the inhabitants of Islington and its vicinity are particularly noted for their attachment to Low-Church principles, Catholicism has gained more ground there than in localities where Puseyism is dominant. In the north-western districts it does not appear to have increased, though the churches are well attended, and the congregations apparently very numerous. That of one of the largest, Our Lady's church, in St. John's Wood, is 6,000, and the children in the schools 600. In the central districts of London Roman Catholic churches are very numerous and proportionately well attended; those in Moorfields, and those in the neighborhood of Covent Garden and Piccadilly, being particularly so.

One of the most effective means employed by the Roman Catholics to make the conversions is the opening of schools for the education of children of the poor; nor do they hesitate to admit that these schools are not only open to the children of their own persuasion, but to all who may choose to avail themselves of them. This is clear from the speech of the late Cardinal Wiseman at the Roman Catholic Congress held at Malines in the autumn of 1863. Speaking of the hundreds of ragged children, scarcely knowing their parents, he had been accustomed to meet in the different lanes and alleys of the poorer London localities, he says: "We are doing all we can to gather these poor little outcasts together, and to give them Christian training. The schools in which they are taught, and to which I am at present alluding, are themselves situated in a truly fearful spot, Charles street, Drury lane. We owe them in a great measure to the great zeal of the fathers of the Oratory. Their cost has been no less than L12,000. The Religious Sisters from Tournay, with a devotion truly heroic, have undertaken the care of the girls' school. For some time past we have had the consolation of seeing increased, by 1,000 a year, the number of children attending our schools for the poor; there still remain 17,000 poor children who attend no school."

The Catholic Church judges rightly that a few years hence the children under its care will not only augment the number of adult members of its faith, but will proportionately swell their ranks in the next generation. Nor is this danger to the Protestant cause to be despised. All their schools are admirably managed, and the children in them are treated with the greatest kindness and consideration. We have visited several, and in all we remarked a great affection and {707} respect existing in the minds of the pupils for their teachers, the latter not considering that their duties are over when the classes are dismissed, but afterward entering into their amusements and occupations with great patience and good humor. We lately visited unexpectedly the school alluded to by Cardinal Wiseman, and although lessons were over we found one of the masters in the large play-room busily employed in instructing a dozen of the most ragged urchins it would be possible to find in that squalid and impoverished locality in the mysteries of spinning peg-tops. Such acts of kindness to children are not forgotten when they grow up, and a better means of binding them to their faith when adults it would be impossible to imagine.

In Gate street, Lincoln's Inn-fields, is another school of the same description. We have watched its progress since its establishment, and marked the great increase in the number of its scholars. It commenced with very few, but must now number several hundreds. Those in Drury-lane have more than four hundred children, among whom, perhaps, not ten before the buildings were erected were receiving any instruction whatever. All the Roman Catholic charities appear to be admirably managed; their orphanages especially so. Those of the Sisters of Charity in Victoria street, Westminster, and Norwood, considering the comparatively small means at the disposal of their priesthood, are perfect models of what institutions of the kind ought to be; at the same time, it must not be imagined that the Roman Catholic charities in London are solely of a description calculated to obtain converts to their creed. Their reformatories for fallen women and their exertions for the relief of the sick are worthy of the highest praise. An hospital, with a church attached, solely for chronic and incurable diseases, has for some time been established in Great Ormond street, at the expense of a gentleman of wealth. The hospital is under the care of the prioress and sisters of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, and we never saw an infirmary of the kind better managed. A large staff of nuns nurse the sick; and not only are their numbers greater in proportion to those of the patients than in any of our metropolitan hospitals, but their attention and kindness to those under their charge might serve as a model to many of our Protestant institutions of a similar character.

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{708}

From Chambers's Journal.

A VANISHING RACE.

The residence of Captain C. F. Hall in the arctic regions, and his explorations among the solemn and majestic wastes surrounded by the "hyperborean seas," have invested the Esquimaux with a degree of interest which they had never previously excited. The savage inhabitants of the more beautiful and fertile regions of the earth have been observed by travellers with close and careful attention, which leads to hopeful efforts for their civilization. As the map of the world is opened up to our comprehension, new schemes and prospects for the advance of the human race are opened with it; savans, artists, missionaries, merchants, gird themselves to the contest with the material and moral conditions of the peoples yet, though the world's day has lasted so long, in their infancy, whose unknown future may contain histories as brilliant as those of the civilizations of the present and the past. But there is a race who have not excited such hopes, who have not given rise to such exertions--a race whose life of unimaginable hardship gives them a mysterious resemblance to the phantoms of mythological belief, and places them beyond the reach of the sympathies of civilization by its physical conditions, the amelioration of which is impossible. Beyond the stern barrier which nature has set in the northernmost part of her awful realm, behind the terrible rampart of snow and ice, and storm and darkness, these creatures of her wrath, rather than of her bounty, dwell. To reach their land, the traveller must leave behind him every familiar object, and abandon every habit or need of ordinary life. He must bid farewell to green trees, to fertile fields, to the crops which give food to man and beast, to the domestic animals, to every mode of conveyance, to every implement of common use, to food and clothing such as even the poorest and roughest sons of a less terrible clime may command; to the thousand voices of nature, even in its secluded nooks, It is a mockery to speak of the arctic regions as the land of the Esquimaux, for nowhere on the earth is man less sovereign. Here nature is indeed grand beyond conception, but also terrible, implacable, and impenetrable. She sets man aside in her awful scorn; he is a thing of no moment, a cumberer of the ice-fields, learning the simple lessons whereby he supports his squalid existence from the brutes, which are lordlier than he, inasmuch as the ice-slavery is no chain of servitude to them; and heedless of him, of his terrible hunger and destitution, of his hopeless isolation, she builds her ice-palaces upon the seas, and locks the land in her glittering ice-chains, and flings her terrific banners of flame wide against the northern sky; and sends her voice abroad, without a tone of pity in its vibrations, sounding through the troubled depths of the waters and the rent masses of the many-tinted icebergs. Nature is indeed beautiful in her northern strongholds, but her beauty shows only its terrible aspects, its dread grandeur. The face of the mighty mother does not soften into a smile for the feebleness of her youngest-born offspring, but is fixed in its awful sublimity. There is no point of contact between this ice-kingdon and European civilization, and men of our race and tongue shrink from it with an appalled sadness, for has it now been the tomb of many of our brave and beloved? Three centuries ago it earned that evil reputation, which, in the then elementary state of geographical knowledge, and the general prevalence of superstition, assumed a weird and baleful form. It has but increased {709} in degree, though differing in kind, in our days, and we think of the arctic regions as the sepulchre of the beloved dead, the land toward which the heart of England yearned, and which kept pitiless silence through long years of hope deferred. But of its people we do not think; we are satisfied to have but a vague notion of them; to wonder, amid the many marvels of that mighty problem--the distribution of the human race--how human beings ever found their way to those dreadful fastnesses, more cruel in their exaction of human suffering than the desert and the forest. This indifference gives way when we learn what manner of people these are whom we call Esquimaux, a word which signifies "eaters of raw food," but who call themselves _Innuit_, or "the people," and explain their own origin by a story which is a pleasing testimony to the common possession of self-conceit by all nations. They say that the Creator made white men first, but was dissatisfied with them, regarded them as worthless unfinished creatures, and straightway set about making the Innuit people, who proved perfectly satisfactory.

Captain Hall lived among this strange race for two years and a half, and he is about to return and prosecute his researches in Boothia and King William's Land. This time, his object is to trace the remnants of the Franklin expedition, which--as he finds the history of the few events which have ever marked the progress of time in that distant land handed down by oral tradition with extraordinary distinctness--he has no doubt of being able to do. His first journey was in search of relics of the Frobisher expedition, and was as successful as it was daring, patient, and persevering. His experiences were strange in all respects, and in many most revolting; but we owe much to this cheerful, courageous, simple-hearted American gentleman, who has revealed the Esquimaux to us as Captain Grant has revealed the African tribes, and oriental tourists the dwellers in the deserts. There is poetical harmony in the stern conditions of life among the Innuits; there is the impress of sadness and of sterility upon them all. Time itself changes its meaning in a land where

"The sun starts redly up
To shine for half a year,"

and dim wintry twilight lasts throughout the other half, and hunger is the normal state of the people. The traveller's route is to be traced on the map, which is mere guess-work hitherto, up the western side of Davis's Strait; and once away from Holsteinborg, the journey assumes all its savage features. The terrible icebergs rear their menacing masses in the track of the ship; the sun pours its beams upon them, and bathes them in golden light; they appear in fantastic shapes of Gothic cathedral, of battlemented tower, of clear single-pierced spire, of strong fenced city, of jewel-mountain, of vast crystal hills; and so, as the voyager leaves art and civilization behind, their most supreme forms flash a mirage-like reminiscence upon him, intensifying the contrast of the prospect, and luring him to a frantic and futile regret.

A grand and terrible confusion reigns around; the voyager shrinks from the overwhelming scene, where ranges of mountains, islands, rocks, castles, huge formless masses, and gorgeous prismatic lights, surround that laboring speck upon the mystic sea, of whose littleness he is so small an atom; and a strange sense, which is not fear, but awe, comes to him with the knowledge that nothing of this sublime confusion is real, on the horizon or beyond it. For all the time of his stay in the arctic regions he is to be surrounded by contradictions, by the sublimest manifestations of nature, by the lowest conditions of humanity, by gorgeous and majestic optical delusions, and by the hardest and most grovelling facts of daily existence; he must share, to their fullest extent, the relentless physical needs of the {710} people, and live, if he would live at all, in close contact with them--and yet his solitude must be inwardly profound and unapproachable; his purposes unintelligible to his associates; and their language, elementary in itself, dimly and scantily comprehended by him even in its most sparing forms. All this without any of the alleviations of life among savages in southern countries--without the warmth, which, if sometimes oppressive, is ordinarily grateful--without the rich and genial beauties of nature--without the resources of sport without the natural fruits of the earth--without the intellectual occupation of speculating upon development, of ascertaining capabilities, or of investigating sources of wealth. The civilized dweller in arctic regions has none of these. He beholds, with admiration so solemn as to be painful, the unapproachable dignity and hard implacable stillness of nature; but he never dreams of treasure to be wrested from the cells of the ice-prison; he seeks the dead--the dead of centuries ago--the dead of a decade since, to be found, it may be, incorporated with their frozen resting place; for the fiat of nature arrests decay in these terrible regions, where death and life are always at close gripes with one another. While the mind is ceaselessly impressed with sadness and solemnity, the body asserts its claim to superiority; it will not be forgotten or neglected, for cold encompasses it with unrelaxing menace of death, and hunger preys upon the vitals, whose heat wanes rapidly in the pitiless climate, and which crave for the nutriment so hard to procure, so repulsive when procured.

Toil is the law of the ice-clad land--toil, not to wrest from the bosom of the earth her children's sustenance, but to tear from the amphibious creatures, from whom they have learned how to shelter themselves from the cold, and whose skins cover them, the unctuous flesh, which they devour raw in enormous quantities. The Innuit are, on the whole, a gentle people, driven by the relentless need and severity of their lives into close and peaceful companionship. They have no king, no government, no law, no defined religion, no property; they have, for all these, custom--the oldest law; they are animated by the same spirit that dictated the reply once made to one who sat by Jacob's well: "Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and we worship." As "the old Innuits" did, so do their successors. They have no bread, no medicine, no household furniture; they are poor human waifs upon the wide white bosom of the frozen seas; and they have, no help or resource but in the seal, the walrus, the white bear, the rein-deer, and the wonderful Esquimaux dogs, which are by far the noblest living creatures in all those sterile wastes. From the seal they have learned to make the _igloo_, which is the house of the Innuit. They eat the flesh of this animal, and drink its fresh warm blood; they kill its young, and eagerly swallow the milk of the mother, found in the stomach of the baby seal. When the sudden summer comes, and the snow melts, and leaves the surface of the ice bare, they are houseless; the igloo melts away; their home is but of frozen water, and suddenly it disappears. Then they have recourse to the _tupic_, which is a huge sheet of skins hung across a horizontal pole, supported at either end. Their bed is a snow platform, strewn with the moss which is the rein-deer's food, and covered with skins. Their choicest dainties are the fat of the _tuktoo_, or rein-deer, the marrow procured by mashing the bones of the legs, and the thick, white, unctuous lining of the whale-hide.

The interior of an igloo presents a picture more repulsive than that of any African hut or Indian wigwam, more distressing to human feelings and degrading to human pride. The igloo is a dome-shaped building, made of ice-blocks, with an aperture in the roof, and a rude doorway at one side, closed {711} with ice-blocks, when the inmates are assembled. The snow platform which forms the bed is occupied by the women and the stranger. Men and women are clad in skins, put together with neatness and ingenuity. The dress of the sexes differs only in two particulars; that of the women is furnished with a long tail, depending from the jacket, and has a sort of hood, in which loads and children are carried. The life of the infant is preserved by its naked body being kept in contact with that of the mother. One household implement they possess--it is a stone lamp; something like a trough, with a deep groove in it, in which the dried moss, used as a wick, floats in the seal oil, expressed by the teeth of the women from lumps of blubber, which they patiently "mill" until the precious unguent is all procured. But this lamp too often fails them, and darkness and hunger take up frequent abode with the Innuit. Days and nights are passed by the men, sitting singly, in death-like stillness and silence, by the hole which they have found, far under the snow, at which the seal will "blow." It is strange and terrible to think of those watches, in the midst of the desolation, under that arctic sky, with the cold dense fog now swooping, now lifting, in the enforced stillness, with famine gnawing the watcher, and famine at home in the igloo, and the chance of food depending on the sureness of one instantaneous stroke, down through the snow, through the narrow orifice in the ice, into the throat of the animal with the sleek skin, and the mournful human eyes, which vainly implore mercy from raging hunger.

When the Innuit brings the seal to the igloo, a crowd invades the narrow space, for the simplest hospitality prevails, and the long watch, the skilful stroke, do not constitute sole ownership of the prize. The skin is stripped off the huge unsightly carcass, and a horrible scene ensues. The flesh is torn or cut with the stone knives in large lumps, and having been first licked by the women, to remove any hairs or other adhesive matter, is distributed to the party, and devoured raw; the blood is drunk, the bones are mashed, the entrails are greedily eaten, the dogs sharing in all; and the blubber is made to yield its oil by the disgusting process already described. One turns silenced from the picture; from the sights, and sounds, and scents; from the vision of dark faces, eager with gluttonous longing, gathered round the red, flaring light; from the skin-clothed bodies, reeking with grease and filth, and the foul exhalations of the mutilated animal; from the lumps of flesh torn by savage hands, and crammed dripping into distended mouths; from the steaming blood, and the human creatures who rapturously quaff it in the presence of the white man, who sits among them and feeds with them, whose heart yearns with dumb compassion for them, who has wonderful scientific instruments in his pockets, and his Bible in his breast. As the seal teaches the Innuits the art of housing themselves, so the white bear teaches them how to kill the walrus, their most plentiful and frequent food, when the ice is drifting, and the unwieldy creatures lie upon the blocks close inshore; then the bear climbs the overhanging precipice, and taking a heavy block in his deft forepaws, he hurls it with rare skill and nicety of aim upon the basking monster below. So brutes train men in those dreadful regions, and not men brutes. The life of the Innuits is full of such contradictions. And their deaths? From the contemplation of these one turns away appalled, for they die in utter solitude.

When Captain Hall first heard of this horrible custom, he started off at once to see its truth; and having removed the blocks with which the doorway had been built up, entered an igloo, and found a woman who had yet many days to linger thus fastened up in her living tomb. Again, hearing that a woman had been abandoned to die, at a great distance, he set forth, {712} and having reached the spot with immense difficulty and danger, he managed to remove the snow and the block which closed the hole in the top of the igloo, lowered himself into it, and found the woman dead, and frozen as hard as her bier and her tomb, with a sweet serene smile upon the marble face. So this is the close of a life of toil and privation--the withdrawal of every kindred face, the fearful solitude of the ice-walls, the terrible arctic darkness and silence, and the frozen corpse lying unshrouded, naked, beneath the frozen skins, until the resurrection. Surely the angel of death is an angel of mercy there, and does his errand gently, bearing away the lonely, terrified spirit to the city of gold, the gates of pearl, the jasper sea, the land where there is no darkness, physical or mental, for evermore. The earth, always pitiless to them, which never feeds them from her bosom, does not suffer her dead children of the Innuit people to sleep their last sleep in her lap. Their graves are only blocks of ice piled around and above the corpses, which remain unharmed, unless when the blocks melt, as they sometimes do, and the wolves, dogs, or bears gain access to the frozen remains. The Innuits are dying out; disease is making havoc among them; consumption, formerly unknown, is thinning their numbers by its slow, furtive, murderous advance; their children are few, and fewer still are reared; and the long story of awful desolation draws to a close. Who can regret it? Who can do aught but desire that the giant wastes of the arctic regions should be left to the soulless creatures of God; that the great discord between them and human life has ceased to trouble the harmony of creation; that the mystery of such an existence is quietly laid at rest, among the things which "we know not now, but which we shall know hereafter?"

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MISCELLANY.

SCIENCE.

_A New Kind of Mirror.--The Chemical News_ states that M. Dode, a French chemist, has introduced platinum mirrors, which are greatly admired, and which present this advantage, that the reflecting metal is deposited on the outer surface of the glass, and thus any defect in the latter is concealed. The process, which is patented in Paris, is described as follows: Chloride of platinum is dissolved in water, and a certain quantity of oil of lavender is added to the solution. The platinum immediately leaves the aqueous solution and passes to the oil, which holds it in suspension in a finely divided state. To the oil so charged the author adds litharge and borate of lead, and paints a thin coat of this mixture over the surface of the glass, which is then carried to a proper furnace. At a red heat the litharge and borate of lead are fused, and cause the adhesion of the platinum to the softened glass. The process is very expeditious. A single baking, M. Dode says, will furnish 200 metres of glass ready for commerce. It would take fifteen days, he says, to coat the same extent with mercury by the ordinary plan.

_African Silkworm_.--A silkworm before unknown in Europe has been introduced into France from Senegal, and without suffering from change of climate. It yields a richer silk than that of any other worm known to naturalists, and its cocoons are twice the ordinary weight. It is to be tried in Algiers, and if successful there, this new and rich silk may become in time an important article of commerce.

_Science in a Balloon_.--Mr. Glaisher has {713} given, in a lecture at the Royal Institution, a _resume_ of his scientific experiments in balloons. Tables recording the decline of temperature with elevation, show that when the sky was clear a more rapid decline took place than when the sky was cloudy. Under a clear sky, a fall of 1 deg. takes place within 100 feet of the earth, but at heights exceeding 25,000 feet it is necessary to pass through 1,000 feet of vertical height to obtain a fall of 1 deg. in temperature. At extreme elevations, in both states of the sky, the air became very dry, but as far as his experiments went, was never quite free from water. From ascents made before and after sunset, Mr. Glaisher concludes that the laws which hold good by day do not hold good by night; indeed, it seemed probable that at night, for some little distance, the temperature may increase with elevation, instead of decreasing. From experiments made on solar radiation with a blackened bulb thermometer, and with Herschel's actinometer, it was inferred that the heat rays from the sun pass through space without loss, and become effective in proportion to the density or the amount of water present in the atmosphere through which they pass. If this be so, the proportion of heat received at Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn may be the same as that received at the earth, if the constituents of their atmospheres be the same as that of the earth, and greater if the amount of aqueous vapor be greater, so that the effective solar heat at Jupiter and Saturn may be greater than at either the inferior planets, Mercury or Venus, notwithstanding their far greater distances from the sun. This conclusion is most important as corroborating Professor Tyndall's experiments on aqueous vapor. Experiments on the wind showed that the velocity of the air at the earth's surface was very much less than at a high elevation. A comparison of the temperature of the dew point, as shown by different instruments, gave results proving that the temperatures of the dew point, as found by the use of the dry and wet bulb thermometers, and Daniell's hygrometer, are worthy of full confidence as far as the experiments went.

_The Eruption of Mount Etna_.--At a recent meeting of the Paris Academy of Sciences, an important letter was read from M. Fouque to M. Saint-Claire Deville on the eruption of Etna, which has presented several phenomena of great scientific interest.

The eruption commenced at half-past ten on the evening of January 31. On the previous day two successive shakings of the earth had been noticed. Just before the eruption began a violent earthquake was felt, the wave travelling to the north-east; after this, slight oscillations continued until about 4 A.M. Large flames now rose from a point on the north-east side of Etna 5,500 feet above the snow line, and lava began to flow rapidly. In two or three days the lava traversed a space of 19,000 feet, with a width of from 10,000 to 12,000, and a variable thickness, but often reaching to the depth of 30 or 60 feet. After destroying for some distance everything in its passage, the current of lava struck one of the old craters, and then bifurcated. The stream on the west side moved very slowly, and, becoming subdivided, it nearly ceased to move; the stream on the east side fell over a deep and precipitous valley, which it soon filled, being then able to continue its progress, until finally it was stopped by a lava mound of a previous eruption.

The number of the craters is seven; of these five form a vast elliptical enclosure, the major axis of which is directed toward the north-east. A deep fissure, 1,500 feet in length, opened from the base of a former crater, Frumento, to the nearest of the present cones. This chasm, M. Fouque shows, was probably formed by the shock at the commencement of the eruption. This fissure, and also a depression of the crater Frumento, is in a right line with the major axis of the ellipse formed by the craters. The same general fact has been several times noticed in previous eruptions.

The vapors attending an eruption have been divided into the dry, containing chiefly chloride of sodium and no water, the acid, which contain a large amount of watery vapor, the alkaline, and the carbonic. The first indicates the maximum, and the last the minimum of volcanic action. Each of these varieties of vapor, succeeding in their order, were noticed at this eruption. M. Fouque found the dry vapor upon the still incandescent lava; the acid vapor in those parts where the temperature was over {714} 400 deg.; the alkaline, where the temperature was lower, but generally over 100 deg.; and finally, carbonic acid has been detected in one of the adjacent old craters, which was at the ordinary temperature. The first three varieties of vapor were thus found upon the same transverse section of the lava, less than 150 feet distant from each other. In all these vapors the atmospheric air which accompanied them was deprived of part of its oxygen, generally containing only from 18 to 19 per cent., and in some alkaline vapors the proportion was still less.

In this eruption there was a remarkable absence of sulphur and its compounds; chemical tests as well as the sense of smell could detect no trace of them. The eruption indeed was characterized by the absence of the compounds of sulphur and the abundance of the compounds of chlorine. Hydro-chlorate of ammonia, which was found in abundance, has generally been regarded as exclusively belonging to the alkaline vapors; but here it has been discovered among the other varieties, whilst the alkaline vapors were distinguished by the carbonate rather than by the hydrochlorate of ammonia.

At the present time, M. Fouque writes, the eruption is most active in the four lowest craters; these throw liquid lava into the air, and emit a nearly colorless smoke; the three superior craters eject solidified lava and black stones, at the same time pouring out a dense smoke charged with aqueous vapor and brown-colored ashes.

The three higher craters produce every two or three minutes a very loud report resembling the rolling of thunder; the four lower craters, on the contrary, send forth a rapid succession of ringing sounds, which it is impossible to count. These sounds follow each other without any cessation, and are only to be compared to the noise produced by a series of blows from a hammer falling on an anvil. If the ancients heard these noises in former eruptions, it is easily conceivable how they imagined a forge to exist in the centre of the volcano, with Cyclops for the master workman. The lava is black, rich in pyroxene, and strongly attracted by a magnet. Since the commencement of the eruption, the central crater of Etna has emitted white vapors, which continually cover its summit. Several good photographs of the eruption have been taken by M. Berthier, who accompanied M. Fouque in his explorations, which were by no means unattended with danger.

M. Saint-Claire Deville then made some observations on this paper. He explained the almost entire absence of sulphur by the fact that M. Fouque only examined the vapors from the lava. These nearly always contain chlorine for their electro-negative element, and scarcely show, and that not until later, sulphuretted and carbonic vapors. After the eruption of Vesuvius in 1861, very light deposits of sulphur were found covering the hydrochlorate of ammonia, which shows that the former body is not absent from the lava. The existence of hydrochlorate of ammonia in the emanations does not necessarily exclude that of the vapors of hydrochloric and sulphuric acids.

_Magnetism of Iron-clad Ships_.--Staff-Commander Evans, of the British navy, and Mr. Archibald Smith, who have devoted themselves for several years to investigations into the character of the magnetism of iron-built and armor-plated ships, have embodied the results of their studies in an interesting paper read at a recent meeting of the Royal Society. It is well known that iron ships have been very difficult to navigate because of the disturbing effect of the iron upon the compass, and serious accidents have happened in consequence. But underwriters, and the whole naval profession, will be glad to hear that the difficulty and risk are now greatly lessened, if not entirely removed. For the results established by the paper in question are--That it is no longer necessary to swing a ship in order to ascertain the compass deviation, or error, seeing that it is possible to determine the various forms of error by mathematics; that an iron ship should always be built with her head to the south; if built head north, there is such a confused amount of magnetism concentrated in the stern as to have a violent disturbing effect on the compass; that if, after building, a ship is to be armor-plated, the head, during the fixing of the plates, should be turned in the opposite direction-- that is, to the north; and that especial pains should be taken while building an iron ship to provide a {715} suitable place for the standard-compass. Beside these particulars, the shot and shell stowed in the vessel, the iron water-tanks, and, indeed, all the iron used in her interior fittings, are to be taken into account; and it is satisfactory to know that the influence exerted on the compass by any one or all of these conditions can be ascertained, and allowed for, as in the other cases above mentioned.

_"Gyges" Explained_.--The London _Reader_ gives the following explanation of a curious experiment in optics which has been performed at one of the London theatres under the name of "Eidos AEides," and reproduced in New York under the appellation of "Gyges." It consists in causing an actor or an inanimate object which is in full view of the audience at one moment to disappear instantly, and then to reappear with the same rapidity. The means by which this is accomplished are very simple, and are to some extent similar to those used in exhibiting "Pepper's Ghost." A sheet of plain unsilvered glass is placed upon the stage, either upright or inclined at a suitable angle, at the place where the actor or object is to disappear. This glass is not perceived by the audience, and it does not interfere with their view of the scenery, etc., behind the plate. A duplicate scene representing that part of the back of the stage covered by the glass is placed at the wing, out of sight of the spectators. With the ordinary lighting of the stage the reflection of this counterfeit scene in the glass is too faint to be observed; but when a strong light is thrown upon the scene, the stage lights being lowered at the same time, the image becomes visible. This duplicate scene being an exact _fac-simile_ of the background of the stage, the change is not noticed by the audience, the only difference being that they now see by reflection that which they saw a moment previously by direct vision. The actor, standing a sufficient distance behind the glass, is completely hidden from view, and he is again rendered visible by turning down the light on the false scene and allowing the stage lights to predominate. When "Eidos AEides" was being performed at Her Majesty's Theatre, it was, however, possible, with a good opera-glass, to distinguish the outline of the figure behind the plate. The effects produced may of course be modified. An actor may be made to appear walking or flying in the air, or dancing on a tight-rope, by eclipsing or obscuring a raised platform on which he may be placed.

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NEW PUBLICATIONS.

HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM THE FALL OF WOLSEY TO THE DEATH OF ELIZABETH. By James Anthony Froude, M.A., late fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. Volumes I. and II. 8vo., pp. 447 and 501. New York: Charles Scribner & Company.

In these two luxurious volumes we have the first instalment of an important work upon the most important period of English history. Six other volumes are to follow. Mr. Froude is a thorough good Protestant. His main purpose in this history seems to have been the glorification of the English reformers. For the worst sovereigns of the house of Tudor he displays an enthusiastic admiration which, one is tempted to believe, is half genuine sentiment, and half love of paradox. Catholics, of course, he could not have expected to satisfy; but he has gone too far to please even the members of his own Church. Of Henry VIII., whose apologist he has appropriately been called, he draws a flattering portrait:

"If Henry VIII.," he says, "had died previous to the first agitation of the divorce, his loss would have been deplored as one of the heaviest misfortunes which had ever befallen the country; and he would have left a name which would have taken its place in history by the side of that of the Black {716} Prince or of the conqueror of Agincourt. Left at the most trying age, with his character unformed, with the means at his disposal of gratifying every inclination, and married by his ministers when a boy to an unattractive woman far his senior, he had lived for thirty-six years almost without blame, and bore through England the reputation of an upright and virtuous king. Nature had been prodigal to him of her rarest gifts. In person he is said to have resembled his grandfather, Edward IV., who was the handsomest man in Europe. His form and bearing were princely; and amidst the easy freedom of his address, his manner remained majestic. No knight in England could match him in the tournament except the Duke of Suffolk; he drew with ease as strong a bow as was borne by any yeoman of his guard; and these powers were sustained in unfailing vigor by a temperate habit and by constant exercise." His state papers and letters lose nothing by comparison with those of Wolsey and Cromwell. He was an accomplished musician; he wrote and spoke in four languages; he was one of the best physicians of his age, an engineer, and a theologian. "He was 'attentive,' as it is called, 'to his religious duties,' being present at the services in the chapel two or three times a day with unfailing regularity, and showing to outward appearance a real sense of religious obligation in the energy and purity of his life." In private he was good-humored and good-natured. But "like all princes of the Plantageuet blood, he was a person of a most intense and imperious will. His impulses, in general nobly directed, had never known contradiction; and late in life, when his character was formed, he was forced into collision with difficulties with which the experience of discipline had not fitted him to contend." "He had capacity, if his training had been equal to it, to be one of the greatest of men. With all his faults about him he was perhaps the greatest of his contemporaries."

Mr. Froude does not believe that the king's scruples respecting the validity of his marriage with Catharine of Aragon were inspired by his affection for Anne Boleyn. "They had arisen to their worst dimensions before he had ever seen Anne Boleyn." But Mr. Froude's narrative of the king's early intercourse with Anne is extremely unsatisfactory, not to say disingenuous. How long Henry may have cherished his scruples in secret, our author affords us no means of guessing; but the earliest intimation which he finds of an intended divorce was in June, 1527. It was in 1525, he says, that Anne came back from France and appeared at the English court. This is an error, and is inconsistent with other statements in the same chapter; the date was 1522; and almost immediately afterward the king began to pay Anne marked attention. Her celebrated love-passage with Lord Percy took place in 1523. Mr. Froude speaks of it as follows: "Lord Percy, eldest son of Lord Northumberland, as we all know, was said to have been engaged to her. He was in the household of Cardinal Wolsey; and Cavendish, who was with him there, tells a long romantic story of the affair, which, if his account be true, was ultimately interrupted by Lord Northumberland himself." Now what will be thought of our author's honesty when we say that Cavendish repeats again and again that the match was broken off _by command of the king?_ Lord Northumberland did not appear in the matter at all until Wolsey, by his majesty's orders, had remonstrated with the young nobleman, and threatened him with dire consequences if he should persist in a pursuit which was displeasing to his sovereign. Mr. Froude carefully suppresses all allusion to intercourse between the king and his fair favorite, until the project of the divorce was well advanced,--not discussing or discrediting the statements of other historians respecting Henry's early passion for Anne Boleyn; but simply putting them behind his back, as matters of which it did not suit his purpose to take notice. This fashion of writing may do for romance, but not for history.

In demanding a divorce from his first queen, Henry has, as we might suppose, Mr. Froude's full approval: