Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

“Whereas, the most considerable persons in the land came to
these parts of America, that they might enjoye Christe, in his
ordinances without disturbance; and whereas, amongst many other
precious meanes, the ordinances have beene and are dispensed
amongst us with much purity and power, they took it into their
serious consideration that a due maintenance might bee provided,
and settled, both for the present and the future, for the
encouragement of the minister’s worke therein; and doe order that
those who are taught in the Word, in the several plantations, bee
called together, that evry man voluntarily sett downe what hee is
willing to allow to that end and use; and if any man refuse to
pay a meete proportion, that then hee bee rated by authority, in
some just and equall way; and if after this any man withhold, or
delay due payment, the civil power bee exercised as in other just
debts.”

The “Capitall Lawes” were severe, and the executive officers a terror to evil-doers. The death penalty was denounced against criminals convicted of either of fourteen different offenses. The burglar for the third offense lost his life.

1. “If any man after legall conviction shall have or worship any
other god but the Lord God, hee shall bee put to death.”—Deut.
13:6, 17:2.

2. “If any man or woman bee a witch, that is, hath or consulteth
with a familliar spiritt, they shall bee put to death.”—Exodus
22:18; Levit. 20:27.

3. “If any person shall blaspheme the name of God, the Father,
Sonne or Holy Ghost, with direct, express, presumptuous or
high-handed blasphemy, or shall curse, in like manner, hee shall
bee put to death.”

4. “If any man shall commit any willful murder—which is
manslaughter commited from hatred, malice or cruelty—not in a
man’s just and necessary defense, nor by mere casualty against
his will, hee shall bee put to death.”

8. “If any person committeth adultery with a married or espoused
wife, the adulterer and adulteress shall surely bee put to death.”

12. “If any man shall conspire or attempt any invasion,
insurrection or rebellion against the Commonwealth hee shall bee
put to death.”

The laws were specially severe against the social evil, and the homes of the colonists guarded not only against the crimes, but against all dalliance with evil, and imprudent conduct that might weaken the family bonds. The purity and bliss of the home might not be endangered with impunity, and the wayward were punished with wholesome severity. Here is a court record: “Martha Malbon, for consenting to goe to the farms with Will Harding at night, to a venison feast, and … for dalliance with said Harding was whiped.” How it fared with Will we are not told, but presume there was safety for him only in exile, as there was no marked discrimination in favor of his sex at that time. As connected with this case it is further recorded that “Goodman Hunt and his wife for keeping the councells of said William Harding, baking him a pastry and plum cakes, and keeping company with him on the Lord’s day, and she suffering Harding to kisse her, they being only admited to sojourn in this plantation on their good behavior, ordered to be sent out of this towne within one month after the date hereof; yea, in a shorter time, if any miscarriage be found in them.—December 3, 1651.” On another page I find it recorded that “Will Harding _was_ sentenced to be _severely_ whipped, fined £10, and presently to depart the plantation, and not retourne under the penalty of severer punishment.”

A REMNANT OF SUMMER.

By E. O. P.

I went out in the dull autumnal day,
Around me fell the rain,
The bare trees shivered ’gainst the ashen sky,
My heart was full of pain.

High in a maple tree, upon a branch,
The tree-trunk close beside,
A little empty bird’s nest, snug and neat,
My tearful eyes espied.

And straightway, for the time, from grief and care
My sad heart was beguiled,
And on this remnant of the summer gone
Through rain and tears I smiled.

Not oft has life so dull and drear a day,
But something bright appears
To speak of sunshine and the spring time flown,
And bring a smile through tears.

THE LIFE OF A PLANET.

By RICHARD PROCTOR.

The material life of a planet is beginning to be recognized as being no less real than the life of a plant or of an animal. It is a different kind of life; there is neither consciousness such as we see in one of those forms of life, nor such systematic progress as we recognize in plant-life. But it is life, all the same. It has had a beginning, like all things which exist; and like them all, it must have an end.

The lifetime of a world like our earth may be truly said to be a lifetime of cooling. Beginning in the glowing vaporous condition which we see in the sun and stars, an orb in space passes gradually to the condition of a cool, non-luminous mass, and thence, with progress depending chiefly on its size (slower for the large masses and quicker for the small ones), it passes steadily onward toward inertness and death. Regarding the state in which we find the earth to be as the stage of a planet’s mid-life—viz., that in which the conditions are such that multitudinous forms of life can exist upon its surface, we may call that stage death in which these conditions have entirely disappeared.

Now, among the conditions necessary for the support of life in general are some which are unfavorable to individual life. Among these may be specially noted the action of those subterranean forces by which the earth’s surface is continually modeled and remodeled. It has been remarked with great justice, by Sir John Herschel, that since the continents of the earth were formed, forces have been at work which would long since have sufficed to have destroyed every trace of land, and to have left the surface of our globe one vast limitless ocean. But against these forces counteracting forces have been at work, constantly disturbing the earth’s crust, and, by keeping it irregular, leaving room for ocean in the depressions, and leaving the higher parts as continents and islands above the ocean’s surface. If these disturbing forces ceased to work, the work of disintegrating, wearing away, and washing off the land would go on unresisted. In periods of time such as to us seem long, no very great effect would be produced; but such periods as belong to the past of our earth, even to that comparatively short part of the past during which she has been the abode of life, would suffice to produce effects utterly inconsistent with the existence of life on land. Only by the action of her vulcanian energies can the earth maintain her position as an abode of life. She is, then, manifesting her fitness to support life in those very throes by which, too often, many lives are lost. The upheavals and downsinkings, the rushing of ocean in great waves over islands and seaports, by which tens of thousands of human beings, and still greater numbers of animals, lose their lives, are part of the evidence which the earth gives that within her frame there still remains enough of vitality for the support of life during hundreds of thousands of years to come.

This vitality is not due, as seems commonly imagined, to the earth’s internal heat. Rather the earth’s internal heat is due to the vitality with which her frame is instinct. The earth’s vitality is in reality due to the power of attraction which resides in every particle of her mass—that wonderful force of gravitation, omnipresent, infinite in extent, the property whose range throughout all space should have taught long since what science is teaching now (and has been foolishly blamed for teaching), the equally infinite range of God’s laws in time also. By virtue of the force of gravity pervading her whole frame, the crust of the earth is continually undergoing changes, as the loss of heat and consequent contraction, or chemical changes beneath the surface, leave room for the movement inward of the rock-substances of the crust, with crushing, grinding action, and the generation of intense heat. If the earth’s energy of gravity were lost, the internal fires would die out—not, indeed, quickly, but in a period of time very short compared with that during which, maintained as they constantly are by the effects of internal movements, they will doubtless continue. They are, in a sense, the cause of earthquakes, volcanoes, and so forth, because they prepare the earth’s interior for the action of her energies of attraction. But it is to these energies and the material which as yet they have on which to work, that the earth’s vitality is due. She will not, indeed, retain her vitality as long as she retains her gravitating power. That power must have something to work on. When the whole frame of the earth has been compressed to a condition of the greatest density which her attractive energies can produce, then terrestrial gravity will have nothing left to work on within the earth, and the earth’s globe will be to all intents and purposes dead. She will continue to exercise her attractive force on bodies outside of her. She will rotate on her axis, revolve around the sun, and reflect his rays of light and heat. But she will have no more life of her own than has the moon, which still discharges all those planetary functions.

But such disturbances as the recent earthquakes, while disastrous in their effects to those living near the shaken regions, assure us that as yet the earth is not near death. She is still full of vitality. Thousands—nay, tens, hundreds of thousands of years will still pass before even the beginning of the end is seen, in the steady disintegration and removal of the land without renovation or renewal by the action of subterranean forces.—_The Contemporary Review._

DISRAELI’S LONDON.

One of Disraeli’s favorite ideas was that London ought to be made the most magnificent city in the world—a real _Kaiserstadt_, or imperial town, a model to all other cities in the character of its public buildings, the sanitary perfection and outer picturesqueness of its private houses, the width of its streets, etc. When Napoleon III. commenced the re-edification of Paris he used to say: “Is it not pitiful that the emperor should be doing by force what we could do so much better of our own free will, if we had a proper pride, to say nothing of good sense in the matter?” Once when he was staying at Knole, he launched out into a parody of Macaulay’s idea of the New Zealander meditating over the ruins of London Bridge. He imagined this personage reconstructing in fancy a row of villas at Brixton: “What picture he would make of it! he would naturally suppose that knowing how to build, and having just awoken to a knowledge of sanitation, we had built according to the best ideas in our heads.” Then he took his New Zealander among the ruins of the stately commercial palaces crowded in narrow lanes all round the Bank, and the Exchange: “He would conclude that there must after all have been some tyrannical laws which prevented our merchants from combining their resources to make their streets spacious and effective, for it would seem absurd to him that intelligent men should, at a great cost, have built palaces for themselves in holes and corners where nobody could admire them properly, when by acting in concert, they might at much less expense have set much finer palaces in noble avenues, courts and squares.” Then Disraeli broke out into an animated description of his regenerate London with Wren’s four grand approaches to St. Paul’s, boulevards transecting the metropolis in all directions; and the palace of Whitehall rebuilt after Inigo Jones’s designs to make new government offices. He would have covered the embankment pedestals with statues of admirals set in colossal groups recalling great naval achievements, and he thought Stepney ought to have its cathedral of St. Peter, and containing memorials to all the humble heroes, sailors or fishermen who lost their lives performing acts of courage on the water. When he had finished speaking somebody observed that his plan would cost £200,000,000, and convert every ratepayer into a porcupine. “We may have to pay £500,000,000 in the end for doing things in the present way,” he answered; “and as to the porcupine, he is manageable enough if you handle him in the right way.”—_Temple Bar._

TEMPERATURE.

By J. MORTIMER-GRANVILLE.

Such expressions as a “cool head,” “hot-headed,” and the like, commonly relate to temperament rather than temperature; but it is essential to a full comprehension of the subject before us that the _rationale_ of animal heat should be stated, and the laws that govern the phenomenon of temperature actual and subjective, at least cursorily, explained.

Heat and the sensation of heat are two widely different states. When, on a chilly day or after washing in cold water, a man rubs his hands until a glow of heat seems to suffuse them, there is a very slight rise of actual temperature caused by the friction; the feeling is principally due to nerve-excitement, produced mechanically by the rubbing. The blood flows more freely into, and through, the parts excited immediately afterward, as shown by the redness, but the first impression of heat is mainly one of sensation. The feeling and the fact are not even constantly related. A person may feel hot when not only the surrounding temperature but that of his body is low; or, he may feel cold when really overheated. These perverted sensations are occasionally morbid—that is to say, form part of a state of disease—or they may arise from individual peculiarities which, perhaps, render perceptions of a particular class especially acute. On the other hand, there are conditions of the body, and special sensibilities, in which the sense of heat is dulled, and even considerable elevations of temperature are not perceived. It is easy to see how impossible it must be to form a correct judgment of the actual state of heat either around or within us by simple sensation.

Throughout the world, whether man be placed in tropical heat or arctic cold, the temperature of his body must, to maintain health, be preserved at the same point—about 98.4 to .6 degrees of Fahrenheit. A very small departure from this universal mean standard constitutes or indicates disease. The external heat is comparatively unimportant, or only of secondary moment, in the economy of nature; we can not rely upon it for the compensation of differences in the heat generated within the body by the organism. Except for the production of a temporary effect, such as to give time for the reëstablishment of the normal temperature in a body chilled, as by submersion, external heat is useless for vital purposes. The only way in which it can act is by preventing the loss of more heat, and giving a slight aid to recovery by warming the surface of the body.

If when a person is cold he goes into a heated apartment, or sits before a large fire, he receives with advantage just as much heat as will bring the skin of his body up to the normal standard; as soon as that point is reached, the organism will begin to labor to get rid of the superfluous caloric, and by sweating the heat must be kept from rising above the standard. All the heat thrust upon the body above 98.6 degrees is waste and mischievous except in so far as it may promote perspiration, which probably helps to work off some of the useless and burdensome, possibly morbid and poisonous, materials that oppress the system. This is how Turkish baths, and “sweatings” generally, do good, by exciting increased activity of the skin, and, as it were, opening up new ways of egress for matters which, if retained, might offend.

So far as the heat of the body is concerned, whether in health or disease, every degree of external heat which is above the complement to form 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit with the heat of the body itself at the time, is useless and may do harm. It follows that in fever the surrounding atmosphere should be kept cool; in depressing disease, when the heat-producing powers of the organism are small, the air around should be warm. These are precisely the conclusions to which experience and observations conduct us; and the facts now briefly stated explain the reason why.

There is no warmth in clothes; the heat comes from the body itself, generated within, or the surrounding atmosphere, or from substances with which the body may be in contact. Of course clothes, like any other materials, can be charged with heat, and will take up as much thermic or heating property as their specific capacity allows. It is this capability of receiving heat which constitutes the first condition of warmth in the comparative value of different materials of dress. The second condition consists in the physical power of any fabric to hold the heat with which the article has been charged. For example, some materials will become warmer in a given time and retain their heat longer than others under the same conditions of exposure, first to heating and then to cooling influences. The principle of clothing should be to protect the body from external conditions which tend to abstract heat, when the surrounding temperature is lower than that of the body; and to strike heat into the organism, when the temperature of the outside air and of the substances with which the skin may be brought into contact is higher than that of the animal body itself.

Local temperature, that is, the heat in the several regions of the body is determined by conditions which control the circulation of the blood, and the function of nutrition or food appropriation. If the circulation is free in a part, its temperature is maintained; if, from any cause, the flow of blood is retarded, the local heat will be reduced. Any one may put this to the test by encasing the hands in somewhat tight gloves when the weather is cold. The pressure prevents the free passage of the blood through the vessels, and the temperature falls. There is no warmth of any kind in the gloves; they act simply as non-conductors of heat, and prevent the heat generated within the body from passing off. For example—if a piece of lint or rag be dipped in cold water and laid on the skin, and a sheet of impervious or non-conducting material, such as india-rubber or thick flannel, is wrapped closely round, the heat of the body will raise the cold water to a temperature at which it will be given off as steam the moment the covering is removed. When the extremities are enclosed in thick or dense coverings, their temperature will depend on the amount of heat generated within them, and if the flow of blood through the vessels is arrested or retarded, nothing is gained, but everything lost, by the measures taken to protect them from the external cold.

This is a matter of the highest practical moment, and needs to be thoroughly understood. The feet can not be kept warm unless the blood circulates freely in the extremities, and that will not be the case if the boot, shoes, or stockings are tight. These last-named articles of clothing are practically the worst offenders. A stocking encircling the foot and leg closely and enveloping every part, with special pressure at the instep, around the ankle, and above or below the knees, must inevitably tend to oppose the circulation and so reduce the natural heat. The arteries which bring the blood to the extremity are set deeper than the veins that carry it back, and, as the latter are provided with valves which open toward the heart, it is too commonly supposed that the “support” afforded by the stocking will favor the return of blood more than it can impede the deeper supply-currents, and so help the circulation; but practically we know this is not the fact, for a tight stocking ensures a cold foot, and the chilliness of which many persons complain is mainly caused by the practice of gartering, and wearing stockings which constrict somewhere or everywhere.

There is a popular notion that if the feet are cold the head must be hot, and by keeping the extremities warm with wraps the “blood is drawn from the head,” and its temperature reduced. Those who have on the one hand studied the phenomenon of fever, and on the other noted the physical condition of races and individuals who habitually leave the extremities unclothed, will know that this theory of the distribution of heat is only partially true. Heat depends on the due supply of nutrient elements to the tissues. It is the expression or result of the process of local feeding. If a part is active it will be heated. When the feet are left bare the complex muscular apparatus of the extremity, which in a stiff shoe scarcely works, is called into vigorous action, the arch of the foot plays with every step, and each toe performs its share in the act of progression. This promotes growth and calls for nutrition, whereby the heat is maintained; whereas if it be simply packed away as a useless piece of organism, no amount of external heat will warm it. Work is the cause and counterpart of heat throughout the body.

The same principle applies to the head. No amount of external cooling will reduce the temperature, no drawing away of the blood by artificial expedients will permanently relieve the sense or obviate the fact of heat if the organ within the cranium is excessively or morbidly active. The brain is a peculiarly delicate and complicated organ, requiring more prompt and constant nutrition than any other part of the body, because the constituent elements of its tissue change more rapidly than those of any other in proportion to the amount of exercise. Moreover, the brain is always acting during consciousness, and even in sleep it is seldom wholly at rest, as we know from the occurrence of dreams. The faculty of nutrition is highly developed in the organ or it could not so continuously, and on the whole healthily, discharge its functions, even when other parts of the body, or the system as a whole, are suffering from disease. When the head is heated there is nearly always a local cause for it, and the remedy must be addressed to the seat of the malady. The temporary expedient of “drawing away the blood” by applying heat to the extremities is useful as far as it goes, and may suffice to enable the organ to rid itself by the contraction of its blood-vessels from a surplus charge of this fluid, but in the absence of special causes the _reason_ of the “heat of head” is undue exercise or disturbance of nutrition in the brain itself. Perhaps the seat of the over-work and consequent heating may have been limited to a particular part of the head; for example, the apparatus of sight, or hearing, as when the head becomes heated by reading too long or in a strong light. The point to understand is that when the head is physically hot it is the seat of too much or disorderly nutrition, and either the amount of brain or sense-power exercised must be reduced or the mode of action changed, and the particular part of the apparatus of perception or thought which has been too severely taxed relieved.

The true condition of health is that in which the temperature of the body as a whole and of its several parts is not disturbed by surroundings either of heat or cold. The preservation of a natural and healthy temperature is mainly to be secured by the maintenance of a regular and well distributed circulation of blood charged with the materials of nutrition.

The first condition of a free and continuous flow of blood is a healthy heart, not hampered by irritants, mental or physical. Sudden grief or fright produces cold by arresting the circulation, and the flow may be permanently retarded by anxiety. The mind has a wondrously direct influence on the heart and blood-vessels—on the latter through the nerves, which increase or reduce the calibre of the minute arteries, as in blushing or blanching at a thought. Instead of loading the body with clothes, the “chilly” should search out the physical cause of their coldness. The blood must not only circulate freely; it must be rich in nourishing materials, and not charged with poison. An excess of any one element may destroy the value of the whole. It is too much the habit of valetudinarians and unhealthy people of all kinds, to charge the blood with substances supposed to be “heating” or “cooling” as they think the system requires them. This is a mistake. The body does not need to be pampered with cordials, or refrigerated with cunningly devised potions. If it be well nourished it will be healthy.

* * * * *

There is something fearful in seeing a man of high character being under an obligation to a fool.—_Goethe._

SKATING AND SKATERS.

By ROBERT MACGREGOR.

Though it appears to be impossible to fix on the time when skating first took root in this country, there can be no doubt that it was introduced to us from more northern climates, where it originated more from the necessities of the inhabitants than as a pastime. When snow covered their land, and ice bound up their rivers, imperious necessity would soon suggest to the Scands or the Germans some ready means of winter locomotion. This first took the form of snow-shoes, with two long runners of wood, like those still used by the inhabitants of the northerly parts of Norway and Sweden in their journeys over the immense snowfields.

When used on ice, one runner would soon have been found more convenient than the widely-separated two, and harder materials used than wood; first bone was substituted; then it, in turn, gave place to iron; and thus the present form of skate was developed in the North at a period set down by Scandinavian archæologists as about A. D. 200.

Frequent allusions occur in the old Northern poetry which prove that proficiency in skating was one of the most highly esteemed accomplishments of the Northern heroes. One of them, named Kolson, boasts that he is master of nine accomplishments, skating being one; while the hero Harold bitterly complains that though he could fight, ride, swim, glide along the ice on skates, dart the lance, and row, “yet a Russian maid disdains me.”

Eight arts are mine: to wield the steel,
To curb the warlike horse,
To swim the lake, or skate on heel
To urge my rapid course.
To hurl, well aimed, the martial spear,
To brush with oar the main—
All these are mine, though doomed to bear
A Russian maid’s disdain.

Specimens of old bone skates are occasionally dug up in fenny parts of the country. There are some in the British Museum, in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, and probably in other collections. There seems to be good evidence that even in London the primitive bone skate was not entirely superseded by implements of steel until the latter part of last century.

Mr. Roach Smith, F.S.A., describing one found about 1839, says that “it is formed of the bone of some animal, made smooth on one side, with a hole at one extremity for a cord to fasten it to the shoe. At the other end a hole is also drilled horizontally to the depth of three inches, which might have received a plug, with another cord to secure it more effectually.”

There is hardly a greater difference between these old bone skates and the “acmés” and club skates of to-day, than there is between the skating of the middle ages and the artistic and graceful movements of good performers of to-day. Indeed, skating as a fine art is entirely a thing of modern growth. So little thought of was the exercise that up to the Restoration days it appears to have been an amusement confined chiefly to the lower classes, among whom it never reached any very high pitch of art. “It was looked upon,” says a writer in the _Saturday Review_ in 1865, “much with the same view that the boys on the Serpentine even now seem to adopt, as an accomplishment, the acmé of which was reached when the performer could succeed in running along quickly on his skates and finishing off with a long and triumphant slide on two feet in a straight line forward. A gentleman would probably then have no more thought of trying to execute different figures on the ice than he would at the present day of dancing in a drawing-room on the tips of his toes.”

During all this time, when skating was struggling into notice in Britain, in its birth-place it continued to be cultivated as the one great winter amusement. In Holland, too, where it is looked upon less as a pastime than a necessity, nothing has so frequently struck travelers as the wonderful change the advent of ice brings about on the bearing of the inhabitants. “Heavy, massive, stiff creatures during the rest of the year,” says Pilati, in his “Letters on Holland,” “become suddenly active, ready and agile, as soon as the canals are frozen,” and they are able to glide along the frozen surface with the speed and endurance for which their skating has been so long renowned, though these very qualities are bought at the expense of the elegance and grace we nowadays look for in the accomplished skater. Thomson thus graphically describes the enlivening effects of frost on the Dutch:

Now in the Netherlands, and where the Rhine
Branched out in many a long canal, extends,
From every province swarming, void of care,
Batavia rushes forth; and as they sweep,
On sounding skates, a thousand different ways
In circling poise, swift as the winds along,
The then gay land is maddened all to joy.
Nor less the northern courts, wide o’er the snow,
Pour a new pomp. Eager on rapid sleds,
Their vigorous youth in bold contention wheel
The long resounding course. Meantime to raise
The manly strife, with highly-blooming charms
Flushed by the season, Scandinavia’s dames
Or Russia’s buxom daughters glow around.

Though the poet of the “Seasons” speaks of Russia here, it is curious to note that skating is not a national amusement of the Russians, but is entirely of foreign and quite recent introduction. It is quite unknown in the interior, and no Russian—except a few who have picked up the art in St. Petersburg—ever thinks of availing himself of the many pieces of water annually frozen hard in so cold a country.

Perhaps it is in Friesland that the skate is most especially a necessary of life. What stilts are to the peasant of the Landes, skates are to the Frisian. The watercourses of the summer are his highways when winter sets in. “He goes to market on skates; he goes to church on skates,” we are told; “he goes love-making on skates.” Indeed, it may be doubted if this province could be inhabited if the art of skating were unknown, for without it the inhabitants would be confined to home for several months of each year. Frisians of both sexes actually skate more than they walk, says M. Depping; no sooner is an infant able to stand upright than the irons are fastened on his feet; his parents lead him on to the ice, and teach him how to move along. At six years most of the young skaters have attained great proficiency, but in Frisian opinion even the best performers improve up to thirty.

Here, as elsewhere in Holland, ice races are of frequent occurrence during the winter. “The races on the ice,” says Pilati, “are the carnivals of the Dutch: they are their fêtes, their operas, their dissipations;” naturally, therefore, the people manifest the greatest interest in them; skate long distances to be present, and cherish the names of distinguished winners in a way we should never expect from such an unemotional people as the Hollanders appear when the ice is gone and when most travelers see them.

The women have races of their own; but most interesting of all the contests are those in which the sturdy dames, whom their own painters delight in depicting as gliding along to market with baskets on their heads and knitting-needles in their busy fingers, are matched against the best of the other sex. Though, as a rule, these “Atalantas of the North” excel the men rather in beauty of style than in speed, yet the prize often enough goes to one of them.

Frequently on the Continent skates have proved themselves excellent engines of war, both in actual fighting—as when a Dutch army on skates once repulsed a force of Frenchmen on the Scheldt—and as a rapid means of communication. During the winter of 1806, Napoleon, after the battle of Jena, wished to send an order with the utmost dispatch, to Marshal Mortier, directing him to make himself master, without delay, of the Hanseatic towns. The officer charged with this order found himself at the mouth of the Elbe at a point where it was seven and a half miles from bank to bank. To cross in a boat was impossible, as the river was coated with a surface of newly-frozen ice; to get over by a bridge would necessitate a detour of more than twenty miles. The officer, knowing how precious time was, determined to skate over the thin ice; and though it was too weak to bear a man walking, he skimmed along so rapidly that he got across in safety, gaining great honor for the ingenuity and boldness that enabled him to deliver his despatch six hours sooner than he possibly could have done by the ordinary route.

In Holland, regiments have regular parades on the ice; but Norway is probably the only country where it has been considered necessary to embody a special corps of skaters. In this regiment, “the men are furnished,” says Mr. Russell, in his translation of Guillaume Depping’s book, “with the skates in ordinary use in the North, that fixed on the right foot being somewhat longer than that on the left. Furnished with these, the soldiers descend steep slopes with incredible rapidity, re-ascend them as quickly, cross rivers and lakes, and halt at the slightest signal, even while moving at the highest speed.”

Skating has had many enthusiastic votaries, but probably none more so than the two illustrious names that continental skaters are so proud to reckon in their guild.

Klopstock, even in his old age, was so ardent a lover of it that, after skimming over the ice of Altona for hours, “to call back that warmth of blood which age and inactivity had chilled,” he retired to his study and wrote fiery lyrics in its praise. His friend and great successor, Goethe, took to skating under peculiar circumstances. He sought relief in violent exercise from embittered memories of a broken-off love affair. He tried in vain riding and long journeys on foot; at length he found relief when he went to the ice and learned to skate, an exercise of which he was devotedly fond to the last. “It is with good reason,” he writes, “that Klopstock has praised this employment of our physical powers which brings us in contact with the happy activity of childhood, which urges youth to exert all its suppleness and agility, and which tends to drive away the inertia of age. We seem, when skating, to lose entirely any consciousness of the most serious objects that claim our attention. It was while abandoning myself to these aimless movements that the most noble aspirations, which had too long lain dormant within me, were reawakened; and I owe to these hours, which seemed lost, the most rapid and successful development of my poetical projects.”

That skating has been in certain circumstances something more than mere elegant accomplishment, is well illustrated by two anecdotes, told by the author of some entertaining “Reminiscences of Quebec,” of two settlers in the far West, who saved their lives by the aid of their skates. In one case the backwoodsman had been captured by Indians, who intended soon after to torture him to death. Among his baggage there happened to be a pair of skates, and the Indians’ curiosity was so excited that their captive was told to explain their use. He led his captors to the edge of a wide lake, where the smooth ice stretched away as far as the eye could see, and put on the skates. Exciting the laughter of the Indians by tumbling about in a clumsy manner, he gradually increased his distance from the shore, till he at length contrived to get a hundred yards from them without arousing their suspicion, when he skated away as fast as he could, and finally escaped.

“The other settler is said to have been skating alone one moonlight night, and, while contemplating the reflection of the firmament in the clear ice, and the vast dark mass of forest surrounding the lake and stretching away in the background, he suddenly discovered, to his horror, that the adjacent bank was lined with a pack of wolves. He at once ‘made tracks’ for home, followed by these animals; but the skater kept ahead, and one by one the pack tailed off; two or three of the foremost, however, kept up the chase, but when they attempted to close with the skater, by adroitly turning aside, he allowed them to pass him. And after a few unsuccessful and vicious attempts on the part of the wolves, he succeeded in reaching his log hut in safety.”

BOOK KNOWLEDGE AND MANNERS.

By LORD CHESTERFIELD.

I have this evening been tired, jaded, nay, tormented, by the company of a most worthy, sensible and learned man, a near relation of mine, who dined and passed the evening with me. This seems a paradox, but is a plain truth, he has no knowledge of the world, no manners, no address; far from talking without book, as is commonly said of people who talk sillily, he only talks by book; which in general conversation is ten times worse. He has formed in his own closet, from books, certain systems of everything, argues tenaciously upon those principles, and is both surprised and angry at whatever deviates from them. His theories are good, but, unfortunately, are all impracticable. Why? because he has only read, and not conversed. He is acquainted with books, and an absolute stranger to men. Laboring with his matter, he is delivered of it with pangs; he hesitates, stops in his utterance, and always expresses himself inelegantly. His actions are all ungraceful; so that, with all his merit and knowledge, I would rather converse six hours with the most frivolous tittle-tattle woman, who knew something of the world, than with him. The preposterous notions of a systematical man, who does not know the world, tire the patience of a man who does. It would be endless to correct his mistakes, nor would he take it kindly; for he has considered everything deliberately, and is very sure that he is in the right. Impropriety is a characteristic, and a never-failing one, of these people. Regardless, because ignorant, of customs and manners, they violate them every moment. They often shock, though they never mean to offend; never attending either to the general character, nor the particular distinguishing circumstances of the people to whom, or before whom they talk; whereas the knowledge of the world teaches one, that the very same things which are exceedingly right and proper in one company, time and place, are exceedingly absurd in others. In short, a man who has great knowledge, from experience and observation, of the characters, customs, and manners of mankind, is a being as different from, and as superior to, a man of mere book and systematical knowledge, as a well-managed horse is to an ass. Study, therefore, cultivate and frequent, men and women; not only in their outward, and consequently guarded, but in their interior, domestic, and consequently less disguised, characters and manners. Take your notions of things as by observation and experience you find they really are, and not as you read that they are or should be; for they never are quite what they should be.

* * * * *

A man of the best parts, and the greatest learning, if he does not know the world by his own experience and observation, will be very absurd; and consequently very unwelcome in company. He may say very good things; but they will probably be so ill-timed, misplaced, or improperly addressed, that he had much better hold his tongue. Full of his own matter and uninformed of, or inattentive to, the particular circumstances and situations of the company, he vents it indiscriminately; he puts some people out of countenance; he shocks others; and frightens all, who dread what may come out next. The most general rule that I can give you for the world, and which your experience will convince you of the truth of is, never to give the tone to the company, but to take it from them; and labor more to put them in conceit with themselves, than to make them admire you. Those whom you can make like themselves better, will, I promise you, like you very well.

A system-monger, who, without knowing any thing of the world by experience, has formed a system of it in his dusty cell, lays it down, for example, that (from the general nature of mankind) flattery is pleasing. He will therefore flatter. But how? Why, indiscriminately. And instead of repairing and heightening the piece judiciously, with soft colors and a delicate pencil; with a coarse brush, and a great deal of white-wash, he daubs and besmears the piece he means to adorn. His flattery offends even his patron; and is almost too gross for his mistress. A man of the world knows the force of flattery as well as he does; but then he knows how, when, and where to give it; he proportions his dose to the constitution of the patient. He flatters by application, by inference, by comparison, by hint; and seldom directly. In the course of the world there is the same difference, in everything, between system and practice.

UNDER THE AUTUMN SKIES.

By MRS. EMILY J. BUGBEE.

The clouds hung loose and gray,
Across the autumn sky,
And at my feet in golden piles,
The dead leaves, drifting lie.
No voice of summer song,
I hear from copse or tree,
The perfume of no summer flower,
Comes floating up to me.

Death’s silence over all,
Where music was, and bloom,
Enfolded all the sun-kissed hills,
In drapery of gloom.
I walk as in a dream,
Beneath the brooding sky,
While faded, as these autumn leaves,
Life’s hopes around me lie.

The keen and cruel frost
Has touched my world with blight,
And dark on all its splendors lie,
The shadows of the night.
The memory of its joy,
Like billows of the sea,
Come surging up the silver strand,
Then backward moaning flee.

Amid this sombre calm,
Beneath these skies of gray,
And drifting of the yellow leaves
I walk alone to-day,
And scarce can look beyond
The shadows cold and drear,
That fold, away from mortal sight,
The summer of my year.

In the eternal spring,
Beyond time’s changing skies,
Beyond the chilling frost of death,
A resurrection lies.
I can not tell how long,
The snow shall wrap their tomb,
But sometime, shall life’s blighted flowers
Burst into splendid bloom.

EIGHT CENTURIES WITH WALTER SCOTT.

By WALLACE BRUCE.

III.

One hundred years have passed away since Richard the Lion-hearted, Ivanhoe and Robin Hood met at the “Joyous passage of arms at Ashby.” Our next story, “Castle Dangerous,” opens upon days even more bitter and warlike; Scotland is rent with bitter feuds. The daughter of King Alexander the Third died in 1291, and no fewer than twelve persons claimed the throne. King Edward of England was chosen arbiter. He took advantage of sectional discord and endeavored to make Scotland subject to the English crown. He found a willing instrument in the person of John Baliol, who basely acknowledged himself vassal and subject. King Edward further demanded the surrender of three powerful castles, Berwick, Roxburgh and Jedburgh; but the people murmured and Baliol was compelled to do battle with Edward. Under this weak and treacherous leader the Scottish army was defeated in a great battle near Dunbar in 1296. Edward marched through Scotland at the head of a powerful army. He removed to London the records of the Scottish Kingdom, carried the great stone of Scone, upon which the Scottish Kings had been crowned for centuries, to Westminster Abbey, and placed the government of Scotland in the hands of John de Warrene, Earl of Surrey.

At this juncture a leader arose in the person of Sir William Wallace, the son of a private gentleman, and in no way related to the nobility of the kingdom. His glorious struggle kept alive the spark of Scottish liberty. He gathered to himself a band of brave men, and defeated the English army near Stirling. The Scottish people, as they had no king, chose him Protector, and he was titled Sir William Wallace, Governor of the Scottish Nation. He was defeated, captured by a traitor, brought to trial in the great hall of William Rufus in Westminster, sentenced to death as an outlaw, his body divided into four quarters and placed on London bridge.

Among the followers of William Wallace were two powerful barons, Robert Bruce and John Comyn, whose claims were about equal, by descent, to the Scottish throne. They met before the high altar in the Church of Dumfries. What passed betwixt them is not known; but they quarrelled and Bruce slew him with his dagger. Scott puts a defence of this high-handed deed in the mouth of Robert Bruce which we will quote later. Having committed an act which would bring down upon his head the fierce anathema of the Romish Church, which would moreover arouse the King of England and the powerful family of Comyn, Bruce determined to put them all to defiance, and was crowned King of Scotland at the Abbey of Scone the 29th of May, 1306. Among his devoted friends was James, Lord of Douglas. His castle was on the border of Scotland, and it is in the vicinity of this castle, known as Castle Dangerous, that the scene of our romance is laid. So much for the historical preface which may be of service to the reader in connection with the incidents under our consideration.

In the old chronicles and poems of Scottish history, notably that of Barbour, considerable space is devoted to the adventures of Douglas. His castle was captured again and again by the English; but the victors held it at such hazard against the attacks of the adventurous Douglas, that it was considered a perilous and uncertain piece of property. With a romantic enthusiasm, in keeping with those chivalrous times, Lady Augusta, a wealthy English heiress, distinguished for her beauty, promised her hand and fortune to the knight, who would show his courage by defending the castle against the Scots “for a year and a day.” A brave knight, John de Walton, started up and said “that for the love of that lady he was willing to keep the Perilous Castle for a year and a day if the King pleased to give him leave.” The King gladly gave his consent, being well pleased to get so brave a knight for such an important fortress.

There was an old prophecy of Thomas the Rhymer, that as often as the Castle of Douglas should be destroyed it would arise grander and stronger than ever from its ruins. The prophecy had already been fulfilled and its great walls seemed able to withstand the most powerful siege. Some manuscripts of Thomas the Rhymer were also preserved in the Castle, and our first chapter opens with a description of two travelers, showily dressed in the fashion of the wandering minstrels of the day, apparently father and son, making a pilgrimage to the castle with the avowed purpose of finding some of the papers or books of the old poet. They are lodged at the house of one Thomas Dickson. They arouse the suspicion of two English soldiers who are quartered at the Dickson farm-house. The elder minstrel is conducted to the castle and imprisoned; the younger is placed in a neighboring convent. By this time the reader begins to suspect that the younger minstrel is no other than the fair Lady Augusta, making a trip under disguise of a minstrel-boy to see how her knight is prospering. Attended by her father’s minstrel she reminds one of Rosalind in “As You Like It,” under the guidance of the faithful Touchstone. During her detention at the convent she confessed her secret to Sister Ursula, and they escape by night through a trap-door and subterraneous passage, although the convent is strongly guarded. They separate, and by rather an unnatural process again meet at the Douglas Kirk, where the services of Palm Sunday are converted into a warlike controversy. A hand-to-hand conflict, worthy of the Homeric heroes, is recorded between Lord Douglas and De Walton. In the midst of the fray a herald arrives, announcing the defeat of the English army, and the first triumph of Robert Bruce. De Walton surrenders to Douglas, who allows him without ransom to return to England with the Lady Augusta, and unlike the seven years’ toil of Jacob for Rachel, the daughter of Laban, which was lengthened to fourteen years, the one year and a day was shortened, no doubt to the great delight of the interested parties.

The most dramatic incident in the story is the midnight interview between the English knight, De Valence, and the old sexton in the ruined burial-place of the Douglas Kirk. The story throughout is chivalrous and romantic; but “Castle Dangerous” does not rank with other stories of the Waverley series in power, incident or dramatic unity. I have already alluded to “Count Robert of Paris” as the last of the Waverley Novels written by the great magician, and it is so regarded, as “Castle Dangerous” was never really completed by the author; but it serves as a connecting link in the great chain, and, in spite of its incompleteness, gives a graphic description of years eloquent with prowess and manly courage.

There are five poems of Sir Walter which I deem worthy of association with the Waverley Novels, viz: “The Lord of the Isles,” “The Lay of the Last Minstrel,” “The Lady of the Lake,” “Marmion,” and “Rokeby,” which I propose to consider, each in its place.

“The Lord of the Isles” is associated with the same stirring events as “Castle Dangerous,” and presents a faithful portrayal of the adventures and history of Robert Bruce. It opens at Ardtornish Castle whose ruins still rise bold and towering on the coast of Morven. I saw it once in the gray gloamin’ of an August evening, on my return from Staffa and Iona; and the opening canto of the poem was impressed upon my mind at that time, in lines never to be effaced. As I sat upon the deck of the steamer I heard the minstrel song again echoing among the crags—“Wake Maid of Lorn”—prelude to the wedding festivities already arranged but destined to be long delayed. I saw Lord Ronald’s fleet again sweep by

“Streamered with silk and tricked with gold,
Manned with the noble and the bold
Of Island chivalry.”

I saw the solitary skiff, bearing the hope and pride of Scotland, making slow and toilsome progress, with rent sail and gaping planks, and heard above the roar of the tempest the calm reply of King Robert to his impatient brother:

“In man’s most dark extremity
Oft succor dawns from heaven.”

I saw the lights of the castle again gleam over the dark billows as the door opened to the regal wanderer asking shelter. I saw the haughty look of the proud Lorn, his lifelong enemy. I saw the bridal feast changed into warlike debate, and Scott’s lines came to my mind with pictured force:

“Wild was the scene; each sword was bare,
Back streamed each chieftain’s shaggy hair
In gloomy opposition set,
Eyes, hands, and brandished weapons met;
Blue gleaming o’er the social board,
Flashed to the torches many a sword;
And soon those bridal lights may shine
On purple blood for rosy wine.”

I saw the Abbott, with hoodless head and withered cheek stop upon the threshold, while

“Threat and murmur died away,
Till on the crowded hall there lay
Such silence as the deadly still,
Ere bursts the thunder on the hill;
With blade advanced, each chieftain bold
Showed like the sworder’s form of old,
As wanting still the torch of life
To wake the marble into strife.”