Chapter II: ART (4)

Madame de Montagu immediately understood him. Her husband then brought to her bedside the young widow and three orphan girls. Attale's mother wept in silence, at length ejaculating: "Thy decree, O Lord, has thus ordained, and I submit. But strike no more, for I am ready to faint beneath the weight of my cross." But she reproached herself afterward for this.

Often before had she endured the mother's agony; but this was the hardest blow of all. And Madame de Montagu lived on to see many loved ones go before her; father, and husband, and several other relations preceded her to the tomb; for she lingered till 1839. Among them was M. de la Fayette, who died in 1834, having survived his wife twenty-seven years. Madame de Montagu and all the members of her family requested to be buried at Picpus.

This spot was hallowed to them by sacred memories, for there reposed above thirteen hundred victims of the revolution. Its continued existence as a cemetery was due to the pious labors of Madame d'Ayen's daughters. In the days of terror, a pit had been dug outside the Barrière du Trône, and all the persons immolated in that quarter of Paris were promiscuously thrown into it. The savage mode of proceeding has been related. As each head fell from the guillotine, it was cast, together with the body, still dressed, into a large barrel painted red. Each night after the executions were over, these barrels were taken to Picpus, and their contents indiscriminately emptied into the pit. The ground had formerly belonged to an Augustinian convent. There, it could not be doubted, lay the remains of Madame d'Ayen and her daughter. Madame de Montagu and Madame de la Fayette, on their return to France, ardently wished to raise a monument to their memory; but on discovering the immense number of victims interred together, it seemed more desirable that the undertaking should be of a less private nature. By their joint efforts, many families of other victims were attracted to the pious enterprise; souls devoted to prayer gathered round; the old convent and church of Picpus rose from their ruins. A cemetery was constructed round that gloomy pit, where not even a name had been scrawled to recall the memory of those who slept below. Madame d'Ayen's three daughters could at least enjoy the sad consolation of praying near their mother's tomb.

All the sisters had bitterly, keenly, felt the cruel stroke that deprived them of three such near relatives, and in such a painful manner; but none suffered more enduringly than Madame de Montagu. She was staying with Madame de Tessé, in Switzerland. News had reached her of the execution of her grand-aunt and uncle, M. and Madame de Monchy; but she was completely ignorant of what had become of her mother and sister. Fears, however, were rife. One day she set out to meet her father, whom she had not seen for some time; and he was so changed, that, perceiving him on the way, she only recognized him from his voice. Each alighted, and his first question was to ask whether she had heard the news; but, seeing her excessive emotion, he hastened to assure her of his own perfect ignorance. She felt a calamity impending, but dared not press for information in the presence of a third person. They drove to an inn; and when father and daughter were alone together, he, after some preparation, informed her that he had just lost his mother. {265} A deadly paleness overspread her countenance; confused and dizzy, she exclaimed with clasped hands, "And I--," "I am uneasy about your mother and sister," answered M. d'Ayen, cautiously. But she was not to be deceived. His looks belied his words. That was the hour of bitterest anguish in Madame de Montagu's life. Cries and tears gave no relief. Again and again she saw the scene re-enacted. Reason trembled, but still she strove to pray and be resigned. Remembering her mother's pious practice in times of sorrow, she also recited the magnificat; then, with beautiful feeling, in the midst of her own anguish, she knelt down and prayed, all shuddering, for those that made them suffer. But nature struggled still; and days passed ere she recovered sufficient composure to be left alone. When all the details reached her, strong religious feeling transformed the dungeon, the cart, the scaffold into so many steps by which the martyrs had ascended up to heaven. The love unceasingly manifested by the three sisters for their martyred relatives is very touching. They were first reunited at Vianen, near Utrecht, in 1799. The ostensible object was to settle the division of property rendered necessary by their mother's death; but in reality they were much more occupied in calling up sweet memories of her and of their beloved sister. Madame de la Fayette was then about forty years of age; Madame de Montagu had reached her thirty-second year; and Madame de Grammont was rather more than a twelvemonth younger. They remained a month together, their husbands and families being also on the spot. Not a little suffering was caused by cold and hunger, for their united purses could still only produce insufficient means; fuel was wanting, and they had scanty fare. The three, however, would sit up at night to enjoy each other's society, wrapping their mantles round them to keep out the cold, and sharing one wretched _chaufferette_. They spoke very low, so as not to disturbed husbands and children sleeping in the adjoining rooms. One great subject of conversation was to point out their mutual defects--a Christian habit acquired under Madame d'Ayen's training, and surprisingly brought into play again under such circumstances.

Madame de Grammont remarked that events were graven in letters of fire in Madame de Montagu's countenance, and characteristically advised her to become more calm. She also took the opportunity of teaching her how to meditate--a service which the elder sister gratefully acknowledges in her diary. Madame de Montagu observed with admiration Madame de Grammont's recollected demeanor at mass, which they attended almost daily, saying she looked like an angel, absolutely annihilated in the presence of God. "As for me, I feel overwhelmed at my poverty beside her." Indeed, the two sisters vied in humility with each other. Madame de Grammont having once said, "You excite me to virtue and attract me to prayer," Madame de Montagu quickly replied, "Then I am like the horses in this country; for one sees wretched-looking animals along the canals drawing large boats after them."

But the chief theme at night was ever their mother. Madame de Montagu was accustomed to unite herself with the dear victims in special prayer every day at the "sorrowful hour," and the other two now undertook the same practice. They also composed beautiful litanies in remembrance of them during their stay at Vianen. Madame de Grammont held the pen, writing sometimes her own inspiration, and sometimes what her sisters dictated. They called these prayers "Litany of our Mothers."

One of the most interesting episodes in the life of Madame de Montagu was her intimacy with the celebrated Count Stolberg, whose conversion to Catholicism seems to have been mainly attributable to the influence of her character. She came across him during her residence at Ploen and Wittmold. {266} He was at that time at the head of the government of the Duke of Oldenburg; and he assisted her with all his power in her charitable labors for the relief of the French emigrants. The acquaintance between them sprung up in 1796. Count Stolberg, with his wife and sister,--the only one of the three who did not afterward become Catholic,--had already begun to see something of the inconsistencies and deficiencies of Lutheranism. They were calm, thoughtful, upright souls; grave, severe, and simple, after the best type of the German character. They often conversed on and discussed religious matters among themselves; but they were very ignorant about the Catholic Church and its doctrines. Madame de Montagu taught them more about Catholicism, without speaking on the subject directly, than a whole library of controversial theology. Fragile in health, sensitive to excess, overflowing with sympathy and tenderness, tried by long and varied suffering, and strengthened, elevated, and spiritualized by the cross, without having been hardened or made impassible,--her whole character showed a force and power and greatness that was obviously not its own. Such persons have an irresistible attractiveness; and they speak with a strange silent eloquence to intelligent hearts in favor of the religion which can produce and sustain them. Madame de Montagu was not a person to introduce controversial topics; but she won upon her new friends gradually, and at last they could not help telling her so, after listening to the account they had begged her to give of her own and her sisters' sufferings. After a time their hearts strongly turned to Catholicism; but intellectual difficulties remained on the mind of Stolberg, which were not set at rest till 1800, after he had been engaged in a correspondence with M. de la Luzerne and M. Asseline, to whom Madame de Montagu and her sisters had introduced him. The French prelates did their part; but the illustrious convert must ever be considered as in truth the spiritual child of Madame de Montagu.

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From All the Year Round

A FEW SATURNINE OBSERVATIONS.

Here is a gentleman at our doors, Mr. R. A. Proctor, who has written a book upon that planet Saturn, and he asks us to stroll out in his company, and have a look at the old gentleman. It is a long journey to Saturn, for his little place is nine and a half times further from the sun than ours, and his is not a little place in comparison with our own tenement, because Saturn House is seven hundred and thirty-five times bigger than Earth Lodge.

The people of Earth Lodge made Saturn's acquaintance very long ago; nobody remembers how long. Venus and Jupiter being brilliant in company, may have obtruded themselves first upon attention in the evening parties of the stars, and Mars, with his red face and his quick movement, couldn't remain long unobserved. Saturn, dull, slow, yellow-faced, might crawl over the floor of heaven like a gouty and bilious nabob, and be overlooked for a very little while, but somebody would soon ask, Who is that sad-faced fellow with the leaden complexion, who sometimes seems to be standing still or going backward?

He was the more noticeable, because {267} those evening parties in the sky differ from like parties on earth in one very remarkable respect as to the behavior of the company. We hear talk of dancing stars, and the music of the spheres, but, in fact, except a few, all keep their places, with groups as unchanging as those of the guests in the old fabled banquet, whom the sight of the head of Medusa turned to stone. Only they wink, as the stone guests probably could not. In and out among this company of fixtures move but a few privileged stars, as our sister the moon and our neighbors the planets. These alone thread the maze of the company of statues, dancing round their sun, who happens to be one of the fixed company, to the old tune of Sun in the middle and can't get out. Some of the planets run close, and some run in a wide round, some dance round briskly, and some slip slowly along. Once round is a year, and Saturn, dancing in a wide round outside ours, so that in each round he has about nine times as far to go, moves at a pace about three times slower than ours. His year, therefore, is some twenty-seven times longer; in fact, a year in the House of Saturn is as much as twenty-nine years five months and sixteen days in our part of the world. What, therefore, we should consider to be an old man of eighty-eight would pass with Saturn for a three-year-old.

A hundred and fifty years ago, Bishop Wilkins did not see why some of his posterity should not find out a conveyance to the moon, and, if there be inhabitants, have commerce with them. The first twenty miles, he said, is all the difficulty; and why, he asked, writing before balloons had been discovered, may we not get over that? No doubt there are difficulties. The journey, if made at the rate of a thousand miles a day, would take half a year; and there would be much trouble from the want of inns upon the road. Nevertheless, heaviness being a condition of closeness and gravitation to the earth, if one lose but the first twenty miles, that difficulty of our weight would soon begin to vanish, and a man--clear of the influence of gravitation--might presently stand as firmly in the open air as he now does upon the ground. If stand, why not go? With our weight gone from us, walking will be light exercise, cause little fatigue, and need little nourishment. As to nourishment, perhaps none may be needed, as none is needed by those creatures who, in a long sleep, withdraw themselves from the heavy wear and tear of life. "To this purpose," says Bishop Wilkins, "Mendoca reckons up divers strange relations. As that of Epimenides, who is storied to have slept seventy-five years. And another of a rustic in Germany, who, being accidentally covered with a hayrick, slept there for all autumn and the winter following, without any nourishment." Though, to be sure, the condition of a man free of all weight is imperfectly suggested by the man who had a hayrick laid atop of him. But what then? Why may not smells nourish us as we walk moonward upon space, after escape from all the friction and the sense of burden gravitation brings? Plutarch and Pliny, and divers other ancients, tell us of a nation in India that lived only upon pleasing odors; and Democritus was able for divers days together to feed himself with the mere smell of hot bread. Or, if our stomachs must be filled, may there not be truth in the old Platonic principle, that there is in some part of the world a place where men might be plentifully nourished by the air they breathe, which cannot be so likely to be true of any other place as of the ethereal air above this? We have heard of some creatures, and of the serpent, that they feed only upon one element, namely, earth. Albertus Magnus speaks of a man who lived seven weeks together upon the mere drinking of water. Rondoletius affirms that his wife did keep a fish in a glass of water without any food for three years, in which space it was constantly augmented, till at first it could {268} not come out of the place at which it was put in, and at length was too big for the glass itself, though that were of large capacity. So may it be with man in the ethereal air. Onions will shoot out and grow as they hang in common air. Birds of paradise, having no legs, live constantly in and upon air, laying their eggs on one another's backs, and sitting on each other while they hatch them. And, if none of these possibilities be admitted, why, we can take our provision with us. Once up the twenty miles, we could carry any quantity of it the rest of the way, for a ship-load would be lighter than a feather. Sleep, probably, with nothing to fatigue us, we should no longer require; but if we did, we cannot desire a softer bed than the air, where we may repose ourselves firmly and safely as in our chambers.

As for that difficulty of the first twenty miles, it is not impossible to make a flying chariot and give it motion through the air. If possible, it can be made large enough to carry men and stores, for size is nothing if the motive faculty be answerable thereto--the great ship swims as well as the small cork, and an eagle flies in the air as well as a little gnat. Indeed, we might have regular Great Eastern packets plying between London and No Gravitation Point, to which they might take up houses, cattle, and all stores found necessary to the gradual construction of a town upon the borders of the over-ether route to any of the planets. Stations could be established, if necessary, along the routes to the moon, Mars, Venus, Saturn, and the rest of the new places of resort; some London society could create and endow a new Bishop of Jupiter; and daring travellers would bring us home their journals of a Day in Saturn, or Ten Weeks in Mars, while sportsmen might make parties for the hippogriff shooting in Mercury, or bag chimeras on the mountains of the moon.

Well, in whatever way we may get there, we are off now for a stroll to Saturn, with Mr. R. A. Proctor for comrade and cicerone, but turning a deaf ear to him whenever, as often occurs, he is too learned for us, and asks us to "let N P' P" N' represent the northern half of Saturn's orbit (viewed in perspective), _n_ E n' E' the earth's orbit, and N p p' p" N' the projection of Saturn's orbit on the plane of the earth's orbit. Let N S N' be the line of Saturn's nodes on this plane, and let S P' be at right angles to N S, N', so that when at P' Saturn is at his greatest distance from the ecliptic on the northern side." When of such things we are asked to let them be, we let them be, and are, in the denseness of our ignorance, only too glad to be allowed, not to say asked, to do so. We attend only, like most of our neighbors, to what is easy to us. Sun is gold, and moon is silver; Mars is iron. Mercury quicksilver, which we, in fact, rather like still to call Mercury, thinking nothing at all of the imprisoned god with the winged heels when we ask how is the mercury in the thermometer. Jove is tin; yes, by Jove, tin is the chief among the gods, says little Swizzles, who, by a miracle, remembers one thing that he learnt at school--Jove's chieftainship among the heathen deities. Venus is copper, for the Cyprian is Cuprian; and as for Saturn, he is lead. A miserable old fellow they made Saturn out in the days of the star-decipherers. Mine, Chaucer makes Saturn say, is the drowning in wan waters, the dark prison, the strangling and hanging, murmur of discontent, and the rebellion of churls. I am the poisoner and the house-breaker, I topple down the high halls, and make towers fall upon their builders, earth upon its miners. I sent the temple roof down upon Samson. I give you all your treasons, and your cold diseases, and your pestilences. This is the sort of estimation in which our forefathers held the respectable old gentleman we are now going out to see.

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When Galileo's eyes went out toward Saturn through his largest telescope--which, great as were the discoveries it made, was clumsier and weaker than the sort of telescope now to be got for a few shillings at any optician's shop--he noticed a peculiarity in the appearance of Saturn which caused him to suppose that Saturn consisted of three stars in contact with one another. A year and a half later he looked again, and there was the planet round and single as the disc of Mars or Jupiter. He cleaned his glasses, looked to his telescope, and looked again to the perplexing planet. Triform it was not. "Is it possible," he asked, "that some mocking demon has deluded me?" Afterward the perplexity increased. The two lesser orbs reappeared, and grew and varied in form strangely: finally they lost their globular appearance altogether, and seemed each to have two mighty arms stretched toward and encompassing the planet. A drawing in one of his manuscripts would suggest that Galileo discovered the key to the mystery, for it shows Saturn as a globe resting upon a ring. But this drawing is thought to be a later addition to the manuscript. It was only after many perplexities of others, about half a century later, that Huygens, in the year sixteen fifty-nine, announced to his contemporaries that Saturn is girdled about by a thin, flat ring, inclined to the ecliptic, and not touching the body of the planet. He showed that all variations in the appearance of the ring are due to the varying inclinations of its plane toward us, and that, being very thin, it becomes invisible when its edge is turned to the spectator or the sun. He found the diameter of the ring to be as nine to four to the diameter of Saturn's body, and its breadth about equal to the breadth of vacant space between it and the surface of the planet.

The same observer, Huygens, four years earlier, discovered one of Saturn's satellites. Had he looked for more, he could have found them. But six was the number of known planets, five had been the number of known satellites, our moon and the four moons of Jupiter, which Galileo had discovered; one moon more made the number of the planets and of the satellites to be alike, six, and this arrangement was assumed to be exact and final. But in sixteen seventy-one another satellite of Saturn was discovered by Cassini, who observed that it disappears regularly during one-half of its seventy-nine days' journey round its principal. Whence it is inferred that this moon has one of its sides less capable than the other of reflecting light, and that it turns round on its own axis once during its seventy-nine days' journey; Saturn itself spinning once round on its axis in as short a time as ten hours and a half. Cassini afterward discovered three more satellites, and called his four the Sideria Lodoicea, Ludovickian Stars, in honor of his patron, Louis the Fourteenth. Huygens had discovered, also, belts on Saturn's disc. Various lesser observations on rings, belts, and moons of Saturn continued to be made until the time of the elder Herschel, who, at the close of the last century, discovered two more satellites, established the relation of the belts to the rotation of the planet, and developed, after ten years' careful watching, his faith in the double character of its ring. "There is not, perhaps," said this great and sound astronomer, "another object in the heavens that presents us with such a variety of extraordinary phenomena as the planet Saturn: a magnificent globe encompassed by a stupendous double ring; attended by seven satellites; ornamented with equatorial belts; compressed at the poles; turning on its axis; mutually eclipsing its rings and satellites, and eclipsed by them; the most distant of the rings also turning on its axis, and the same taking place with the furthest of the satellites; all the parts of the system of Saturn occasionally reflecting light to each other--the rings and moons {270} illuminating the nights of the Saturnian, the globe and moons enlightening the dark parts of the rings, and the planet and rings throwing back the sun's beams upon the moons when they are deprived of them at the time of their conjunctions." During the present century, other observers have detected more divisions of the ring, one separating the outer ring into two rings of equal breadth seems to be permanent. It is to be seen only by the best telescopes, under the most favorable conditions. Many other and lesser indications of division have also at different times been observed. Seventeen years ago an eighth satellite of Saturn was discovered by Mr. Bond in America, and by Mr. Lassell in England. Two years later, that is to say, in November, eighteen fifty, a third ring of singular appearance was discovered inside the two others by Mr. Bond, and, a few days later, but independently, by Mr. Dawes and by Mr. Lassell in England. It is not bright like the others, but dusky, almost purple, and it is transparent, not even distorting the outline of the body of the planet seen through it. This ring was very easily seen by good telescopes, and presently became visible through telescopes of only four-inch aperture. In Herschel's time it was so dim that it was figured as a belt upon the body of the planet. Now it is not only distinct, but it has been increasing in width since the time of its discovery.

These were not all the marvels. One of the chief of the wonders since discovered was a faint overlapping light, differing much in color from the ordinary light of the ring, which light, a year and a half ago, Mr. Wray saw distinctly stretched on either side from the dark shade on the ball overlapping the fine line of light by the edge of the ring to the extent of about one-third of its length, and so as to give the impression that it was the dusky ring, very much thicker than the bright rings, and, seen edgewise, projected on the sky. Well may we be told by our guide, Mr. Proctor, that no object in the heavens presents so beautiful an appearance as Saturn, viewed with an instrument of adequate power. The golden disc, faintly striped with silver-tinted belts; the circling rings, with their various shades of brilliancy and color; and the perfect symmetry of the system as it sweeps across the dark background of the field of view, combine to form a picture as charming as it is sublime and impressive.

But what does it all mean? What is the use of this strange furniture in the House of Saturn, which is like nothing else among the known things of the universe? Maupertuis thought that Saturn's ring was a comet's tail cut off by the attraction of the planet as it passed, and compelled to circle round it thenceforth and for ever. Buffon thought the ring was the equatorial region of the planet which had been thrown off and left revolving while the globe to which it had belonged contracted to its present size. Other theories also went upon the assumption that the rings are solid. But if they are solid, how is it that they exhibit traces of varying division and reunion, and what are we to think of certain mottled or dusky stripes concentric with the rings, which stripes, appearing, to indicate that the ring where they occur is semi-transparent, also are not permanent? Then, again, what are we to think of the growth within the last seventy years of the transparent dark ring which does not, as even air would, refract the image of that which is seen through it, and that is becoming more opaque every year? Then, again, how is it that the immense width of the rings has been steadily increasing by the approach of their inner edge to the body of the planet? The bright ring, once twenty-three thousand miles wide, was five thousand miles wider in Herschel's time, and has now a width of twenty-eight thousand three hundred on a surface of more than twelve thousand millions of {271} square miles, while the thickness is only a hundred miles or less. Eight years ago, Mr. J. Clerk Maxwell obtained the Adams prize of the University of Cambridge for an essay upon Saturn's rings, which showed that if they were solid there would be necessary to stability an appearance altogether different from that of the actual system. But if not solid, are they fluid, are they a great isolated ocean poised in the Saturnian mid air? If there were such an ocean, it is shown that it would be exposed to influences forming waves that would be broken up into fluid satellites.

But possibly the rings are formed of flights of disconnected satellites, so small and so closely packed that, at the immense distance to which Saturn is removed, they appear to form a continuous mass, while the dark inner mass may have been recently formed of satellites drawn by disturbing attractions or collisions out of the bright outer ring, and so thinly scattered that they give to us only a sense of darkness without obscuring, and of course without refracting, the surface before which they spin. This is, in our guide's opinion, the true solution of the problem, and to the bulging of Saturn's equator, which determines the line of superior attraction, he ascribes the thinness of the system of satellites, in which each is compelled to travel near the plane of the great planet's equator.

Whatever be the truth about these vast provisions for the wants of Saturn, surely there must be living inhabitants there to whose needs they are wisely adapted. Travel among the other planets would have its inconveniences to us of the earth. Light walking as it might be across the fields of ether, we should have half our weight given to us again in Mars or Mercury, while in Jupiter our weight would be doubled, and we should drag our limbs with pain. In Saturn, owing to the compression of the vast light globe and its rapid rotation, a man who weighs twelve stone at the equator weighs fourteen stone at the pole. Though vast in size, the density of the planet is small, for which reason we should not find ourselves very much heavier by change of ground from earth to Saturn. We should be cold, for Saturn gets only a ninetieth part of the earth's allowance of light and heat. But then there is no lack of blanket in the House of Saturn, for there is a thick atmosphere to keep the warmth in the old gentleman's body and to lengthen the Saturnian twilights. As for the abatement of light, we know how much light yet remains to us when less than a ninetieth part of the sun escapes eclipse. We see in its brightness, as a star, though a pale one, the reflection of the sunshine Saturn gets, which if but a ninetieth part of our share, yet leaves the sun of Saturn able to give five hundred and sixty times more light than our own brightest moonshine. And then what long summers! The day in Saturn is only ten and a half hours long, so that the nights are short, and there are twenty-four thousand six hundred and eighteen and a half of its own days to the Saturnian year. But the long winters! And the Saturnian winter has its gloom increased by eclipses of the sun's light by the rings. At Saturn's equator these eclipses occur near the equinoxes and last but a little while, but in the regions corresponding to our temperate zone they are of long duration. Apart from eclipse, the rings lighten for Saturn the short summer nights, and lie perhaps as a halo under the sun during the short winter days.

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{272}

From Chamber's Journal.

SLIPS OF THE PEN.

When Mrs. Caxton innocently made her wiser-half the father of an anachronism, that worthy scholar was much troubled in consequence. His anachronism was a living one, or he might have comforted himself by reflecting that greater authors than he had stood in the same paternal predicament. Our old English dramatists took tremendous liberties this way, never allowing considerations of time and place to stand in the way of any allusion likely to tell with their audience. Shakespeare would have been slow to appreciate a modern manager's anxiety for archaeological fidelity. His Greeks and Romans talk about cannons and pistols, and his Italian clowns are thorough cockneys, familiar with every nook and corner of London. And so it is with other caterers for the stage. Nat Lee talks about cards in his tragedy of "Hannibal;" Otway makes Spartan notables carouse and drink deep; Mrs. Cowley's Lacedaemonian king speaks of the _night's still Sabbath_; D'Urfey's ancient Britons are familiar with Puritans and packet-boats; and Rymer (though he set himself up for a critic) supplies a stage direction for the representative of his Saxon heroine to pull off her patches, when her lover desires her to lay aside her ornaments.

When Colman read "Inkle and Yarico" to Dr. Moseley, the latter exclaimed: "It won't do. Stuff! Nonsense!"--"Why?" asked the alarmed dramatist.--"Why, you say in the finale:

'Come let us dance and sing.
While all Barbadoes' bells shall ring!'

It won't do; there is but one bell in the island!" This mistake was excusable enough; but when Milton described

"A green mantling vine,
That crawls along the side of yon small hill,"

he must certainly have forgotten he had laid the scene of "Comus" in North Wales. Ernest Jones, describing a battle in his poem, "The Lost Army," says:

"Delay and doubt did more that hour
Than bayonet-charge or carnage shower;"

and some lines further on pictures his hero

"All worn with wounds, when day was low.
With severed sword and shattered shield;"

thus making his battle rather a trial of the respective powers of ancient and modern weapons than a conflict between equally-armed foes. Mr. Thackeray perpetrates a nice little anachronism in "The Newcomes," when he makes Clive, in a letter dated 183-, quoting an Academy exhibition critique, ask: "Why have we no picture of the sovereign and her august consort from Smee's brush?"--the author, in his anxiety to compliment the artist, forgetting that there was no consort till 1840.

A bull in a china-shop is scarcely more out of place than a bull in a serious poem, but accidents will happen to the most regular of writers. Thus Milton's pen slipped when he wrote:

"The sea-girt isles
That like to rich and various gems _inlay_
The _unadorned_ bosom of the deep;"

a quotation reminding us that the favorite citation,

"Beauty when unadorned, adorned the most,"

is but a splendid bull, beautiful for its {273} boldness. Thomson was an adept at making pretty bulls; here is another:

"He saw her charming, but he saw not half
The charms her downcast modesty concealed;"

as if it were possible to see some of them, although they were concealed. Pope, correct Pope, actually tell us:

"Young Mars in his boundless mind.
A work t' _outlast immortal_ Rome designed."

The author of "The Spanish Rogue" makes "a silent noise" invade the ear of his hero. General Taylor immortalized himself by perpetrating one of the grandest bulls on record, in which he attained what a certain literary professor calls "a _perfection_ hardly to be surpassed." In his presidential address he announced to the American Congress that the United States were at peace _with all the world_, and continued to cherish relations of amity with the _rest_ of mankind. Much simpler was the blunder of an English officer, during the Indian mutiny, who informed the public, through the _Times_, that, thanks to the prompt measures of Colonel Edwardes, the Sepoys at Fort Machison "were all unarmed and taken aback, and, being called upon, laid down their arms." There was nothing very astonishing in an Irish newspaper stating that Robespierre "left no children behind him, except a brother, who was killed at the same time;" but it was startling to have an English journal assure us that her majesty Queen Victoria was "the last person to wear _another man's_ crown."

A single ill-chosen word often suffices, by the suggestion of incongruous ideas, to render what should be sublime utterly ridiculous. One can hardly believe that a poet like Dryden could write:

"My soul is packing up, and just on wing,"

Such a line would have come with better grace from the author of "The Courageous Turk," a play containing the following curious passage:

"How now, ye heavens! grow you
So proud, that you must needs put on curled locks,
And clothe yourself in perwigs of fire."

Nearly equalled in absurdity by this from Nat Lee's "OEdipus:"

"Each trembling ghost shall rise,
And leave their grisly king without a waiter."

When the news of Captain Cook's death at Owhyhee came to England, the poetasters, of course, hastened to improve the occasion, and one of the results of their enthusiasm was a monody commencing:

"Minerva in heaven disconsolate mourned
The loss of her Cook;"

an opening sufficient to upset the gravity of the great navigator's dearest friend.

Addison lays it down as a maxim, that when a nation abounds in physicians it grows thin of people. Fillibuster Henninpen seems to have agreed with the essayist, or he would hardly have informed General Walker, in one of his dispatches, that "Doctors Rice and Wolfe died of the cholera, and Dr. Lindley sickened, _after which the health of the camp visibly improved._" Intentionally or not, the stout-hearted soldier suggests that the best way of getting rid of the cholera is to make short work of the doctors. Among the obituary notices in a weekly paper, not many months ago, there appeared the name of a certain publican, with the following eulogium appended to it: "He was greatly esteemed for his strict probity and steady conduct through life, he having been a subscriber to the 'Sunday Times' from its first number." This is a worthy pendant to Miss Hawkins's story of the undertaker writing to the corporation of London, "I am desired to inform the Court of Aldermen, Mr. Alderman Gill died last night, by order of Mrs. Gill;" and not far short, in point of absurdity, is Madame Tussand's announcement of the exhibition of the effigy of the notorious Palmer, "who was executed at Stafford with two hundred other celebrities." {274} The modern fashion of naming florists' flowers must be held responsible for the very dubious paragraph we extract from a gardening paper: "Mrs. Legge will be looked after; she may not be so certain as some, but she was nevertheless very fine in the early part of the season. Lady Popham is useful, one of the old-fashioned build, not quite round in the outline, but makes up well."

Thackeray seems to have had an intense dislike to the trouble of revision, for his popular works, especially those published periodically, abound in trivial mistakes, arising from haste, forgetfulness, and want of care. The novelist mortally wounds an old lady with a candle instead of a candlestick, and afterwards attributes her death to a stone staircase. Newcome senior is colonel and major at one and the same time; Jack Belsize is Jack on one page and Charles on another; Mrs. Raymond Gray, introduced as Emily, is suddenly rechristencd Fanny; and Philip Fermor on one occasion becomes transformed into the author's old hero, Clive. With respect to the last-mentioned gentleman, author and artist seem to have differed, for while Mr. Thackeray jests about Clive's beautiful whiskers and handsome moustaches, Mr. Doyle persists to the end in denying young Newcome's possession of those tokens of manhood.

It is not often that an author is satirical upon his own productions; but Charles Dickens has contrived to be so. Describing the old inns of the Borough, in his "Pickwick Papers," he says they are queer places, with galleries, passages, and staircases wide enough and antiquated enough "to furnish materials for a hundred ghost-stories, _supposing we should ever be reduced to the lamentable necessity of inventing any_." How little could Boz have anticipated certain charming Christmas books witching the world a few years later! So, also, "American Notes," Mr. Jefferson Brick, and the transatlantic Eden lay unsuspected in the future, when he made Old Wellor suggest Mr. Pickwick's absconding to America till Dodson & Fogg were hung, and then returning to his native land and writing "a book about the 'Merrikens as 'ill pay all his expenses and more, if he blows 'em up enough!"

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From The Month.

SAINTS OF THE DESERT.

BY THE REV. J. H. NEWMAN, D.D.

1. Abbot Antony said: The days are coming when men will go mad; and, when they meet a man who has kept his senses, they will rise up against him, saying, "You are mad, because you are not like us."

2. While Arsenius was still employed in the imperial court, he asked of God to lead him in the way by which he might be saved.

Then a voice came to him: "Arsenius, flee the company of men, and thou art in that saving way."

3. Abbot Agatho said: Unless a man begin with the observance of the Precepts, he will not make progress in any one virtue.

{275}

4. Abbot Ammonas said: Such be thy thought as that of malefactors in prison. For they are ever asking, "Where is the judge? and when is he coming?" and they bewail themselves at the prospect.

5. Holy Epiphanius said: To sinners who repent God remits even the principal; but from the just he exacts interest.

6. Abbot Sylvanus had an ecstacy: and, coming to himself, he wept bitterly. "What is it, my father?" said a novice to him.

He made answer: Because I was carried up to the judgment, O my son, and I saw many of our kind going off to punishment, and many a secular passing into the kingdom.

7. An old man said: If you see a youngster mounting up to heaven at his own will, catch him by the foot, and fling him to the earth; for such a flight doth not profit.

8. Abbot Antony fell on a time into weariness and gloom of spirit; and he cried out, "Lord, I wish to be saved; but my searchings of mind will not let me."

And, looking round, he saw some one like himself, sitting and working, then rising and praying, then sitting and rope-making again. And he heard the angel say: "Work and pray; pray and work; and thou shalt be saved."

9. Arsenius, when he was now in solitude, prayed as before: "Lord, lead me along, the way of salvation." And again he heard a voice, which said: "Flight, silence, quiet; these are the three sources of sinlessness."

10. "Which of all our duties," asked the brethren, "is the greatest labor?" Agatho answered: "Prayer; for as soon as we begin, the devils try to stop us, since it is their great enemy. Rest comes after every other toil, but prayer is a struggle up to the last breath."

11. Abbot Theodore said: "Other virtue there is none like this, to make naught of no one."

12. Abbot Sylvanus said: "Woe to the man whose reputation is greater than his work."

13. Holy Epiphanius said: "A great safeguard against sin is the reading of the Scriptures; and it is a precipice and deep gulf to be ignorant of the Scriptures."

14. Once a monk was told, "Thy father is dead." He answered: "Blaspheme not; my Father is immortal."

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MISCELLANY.

_The Dead Sea_.--The level of the Dead Sea is at last finally settled by the party of Royal Engineers, under Captain Wilson, who were sent by the Ordance Survey for the purpose of surveying Jerusalem and levelling the Dead Sea. The results of the survey are being prepared for publication. The levelling from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea was performed with the greatest possible accuracy. The depression of the surface of the Dead Sea on the 12th of March, 1865, was found to be 1,292 feet, but from the line of drift-wood observed along the border of the Dead Sea it was found that the level of the water at some periods of the year stands two feet six inches higher, which would make the least depression 1,289.5 feet. Captain Wilson also learnt from inquiry among the Bedouins, and from European residents in Palestine, that during the early summer the level of the Dead Sea is lower by at least six feet; this would make the greatest depression to be as near as possible 1,298 feet. Most of the previous observations for determining the relative level of the two seas gave most discordant results. The Dead Sea was found by one to be 710 feet above the level of the Mediterranean, by another to be on the same level, by another to be 710 feet lower, and by another to be 1,446 feet lower; but the most recent before that now given, by the Duc de Luynes and Lieutenant Vignes of the French navy, agrees with the present result in a very remarkable manner.

_Eozoon in Ireland_,--The fossil Rhizopod is not confined to the Canadian rocks. Mr. W. A. Sanford has discovered Eozoon in the green marble rocks of Connemara in Ireland. His assertion that it is to be found in these deposits at first excited very grave doubts as to the accuracy of his observations. Since his first announcement of the discovery, his specimens have been examined by the distinguished co-editor of the "Geological Magazine" (Mr. H. Woodward), and this gentleman fully confirms Mr. Sanford's opinion. In the specimens prepared from Connemara marble, "the various-formed chambers--the shell of varying thickness--either very thin, and traversed by fine tubuli, the silicate filling which resembles white velvet-pile, or thick, and traversed by brush-like threads, are both present. Although the specimens were not so carefully prepared as those mounted for Dr. Carpenter, still the structure was so plainly perceptible as to render the diagnosis incontrovertible."

_The Mont Cenis Tunnel_.--The following particulars of the state of the works at Mont Cenis will be read with interest. We owe them to a recent report of M. Sommeiller, the engineer in charge. The length of the tunnel from Bardonnêche to Modena is 12,220 metres, and, at the end of 1804, 2,322 metres had been pierced on the Bardonnêche side, whilst the work had advanced 1,763 metres from the Modena end, making in all 4,085 metres--nearly a third of the whole distance. From the 1st of January to the 10th of June of the present year the progress of the work has been considerably augmented, upwards of 654 metres having been accomplished. The excavation is now, however, retarded by a mass of granite, which lessens the work of the machinery by one-third. The presence of this impediment was almost exactly predicted by MM. Elie de Beaumont and Sismonda, who stated, as a result of their survey, that granitic rocks would be met with at a distance of 1,500 or 2,000 metres from the mouth of the tunnel on the Italian side.

_Lightning._--M. Boudin has recently laid before the Academy of Sciences a return of the deaths which have been caused by the action of lightning in France during the period 1835-63. During these thirty years 2,238 persons were struck dead. Among 880 victims during 1854-63, there were but 248 of the female sex; and in several instances the lightning, falling among groups of persons of both sexes, especially struck those of the male sex, and more or less spared the females. In a great number of cases flocks of more than 100 animals, {277} cattle, hogs, or sheep, have been killed, while the shepherds or herdsmen in their midst have remained uninjured. In 1853, of 34 persons killed in the fields, 15, or nearly half, were struck under trees; and of 107 killed between 1841-53, 21 had taken shelter under trees. Reckoning, then, at only 25 per cent, the proportion struck under trees, we find that of 6,714 struck in France nearly 1,700 might have escaped the accidents which occurred to them by avoiding trees during storms.

_More about the Nile_--Another source of the Nile has been discovered by the adventurous Mr. Baker, whose name has been frequently mentioned of late among geographers. But this so-called source is a lake only, the Luta Nzige, about two hundred and sixty miles long, and of proportionate breadth, which lies between the lake discovered by Captain Speke and the heretofore explored course of the Nile. The great river flows from one to the other, forming on the way the Karuma waterfall, one hundred and twenty feet in height, in which particular it represents the Niagara Fall between lakes Erie and Ontario. But it seems right to remark that the true source of the Nile has not yet been discovered, and that it must be looked for at the head of one of the streams which flow into the upper lake--the Victoria Nyanza of Speke. That the two lakes are reservoirs which keep the Nile always flowing, may be accepted as fact; but to describe them as sources is a misuse of terms. If Dr. Livingstone, in his new exploration, should get into the hill-country above the Victoria Nyanza, we might hope to hear that the real source, the fountain-head, of the Nile had been discovered. It is worthy of remark that these lakes of the Nile are laid down and described in old books on the geography of Africa. Ptolemy mentions them; and they are represented in some of the oldest Arabian and Portuguese maps. It is well known to scholars that the Emperor Nero sent two officers expressly to search for the head of the Nile. "I myself" writes Seneca, "have heard the two centurions narrate that after they had accomplished a long journey, being furnished with assistance by the king of Ethiopia, and being recommended by him to the neighboring kings, they penetrated into far distant regions, and came to immense lakes, the termination of which neither the inhabitants knew nor could any one hope to do so, because aquatic plants were so densely interwoven in the waters." This description holds good to the present day; and it is thought that certain rocks seen by the centurions mark the site of the Karuma Falls. Mr. Baker describes his voyage down the Luta Nzige as "extremely beautiful, the mountains frequently rising abruptly from the water, while numerous cataracts rush down their furrowed sides. . . . . . The water is deep, sweet, and transparent," and, except at the outlet of the river, the shores are free from reeds. "Mallegga, on the west coast of the lake, is a large and powerful country, governed by a king named Kajoro, who possesses boats sufficiently large to cross the lake." "About ten miles from the junction," he writes, "the channel contracted to about two hundred and fifty yards in width, with little perceptible stream, very deep, and banked as usual with high reeds, the country on either side undulating and wooded. At about twenty miles from Magungo, my voyage suddenly terminated; a stupendous waterfall, of about one hundred and twenty feet perpendicular height, stopped all further progress. Above the great fall, the river is suddenly confined between rocky hills, and it races through a gap, contracted from a grand stream of perhaps two hundred yards width to a channel not exceeding fifty yards. Through this gap it rushes with amazing rapidity, and plunges at one leap into a deep basin below."

_The Burning Well at Broseley_.--Mr. John Randall, F.G.S., writes to the "Geological Magazine" anent this extinct petroleum spring. The so-called burning well has ceased to exist for nearly a century. It was fed by a spring, and petroleum and naphtha also found their way from rents in the rock into the water of the well. Springs of petroleum on a much larger scale are met with in the neighborhood, and the yield of them was formerly much greater than at present. Many hogsheads from one of these were exported some years ago under the name of "Betton's British Oil," The rocks were tapped by driving a level through one of the sandstone rocks of the coal {278} measures; but these are now drained; and very little is found to flow from them.

_The Origin of the Salt in the Dead Sea_.--One of our most distinguished explorers of the Holy Land attributes the intensely saline character of the Dead Sea to the hill of Jebell Usdum. This is a huge ridge of salt, about a mile wide, and running N.E. and S.W. for a distance of three miles and a half, then due N. and S. for four miles further. It is situated near the southern extremity of the Dead Sea, and renders that portion of it much more salt than the northern portion. Further, Mr. Tristram thinks that it is the proximate cause of the saltness of the Dead Sea, the drainage to which has been dissolving away portions of salt, and carrying it to the Dead Sea, ever since the elevation of the ridge of Akabah separated the latter from the Red Sea, or since the desiccation of the ocean, which existed to the Eocene period, presuming (which seems most probable) that the fissures of the Ghor were of submarine origin, and that the valley itself was during the Tertiary period the northernmost of a series of African lakes, of which the Red Sea was the next.--Geological Magazine.