microbes, of whatever virulence, is their inclusion in cells.The British Medical Journal.

ELECTRICITY.

Electric Communication Without Wire-Conductors. - Interesting experiments have recently been made under Mr. W. H. Preece, with a view to electric communication between distant points without wire connection, namely, through air, water, or earth, says the Engineer. Mr. Preece proposed to conduct experiments in three different methods-first, by running a wire along the shore on light poles for a distance of about a mile, and a second wire from stem to stern of the ship, the two acting upon each other inductively through the intervening space; secondly, by suspending a short line over the side of the ship, so that it might dip into the sea in the direction of the end of the shore line, to work by conduction through the sea; and, thirdly, by running out a light cable from the shore to the ship, terminating in a coil at the bottom of the sea, near the ship, but not attached to it, while another coil is placed on board. These two coils are expected to act inductively, and to give ample sound on telephones by means of rapid alternations. The experiments by the first method have been carried to a successful issue within the last few days, the shore wire having been erected along the Welsh coast, commencing at Lavernock Point, a little south of Cardiff, and proceeding for a mile in the direction of Lavernock House. The lightship was represented for the occasion by the island of Flat Holme, in the Bristol Channel, and the line there erected, parallel to the first and three miles distant from it, was about half a mile long. The shore line was furnished with a powerful generator at Lavernock Point, and the island line with a sounder to receive the messages. The result was that the words dispatched into the mainland wire were heard on the island with perfect distinctness, but we can scarcely admit that Flat Holme represents the conditions of a ship.-Engineering and Mining Journal, New York, February 11.

What is Electricity ?—As far as the writer is able to understand the matter now, electricity is simply motion of the molecules of the different substances which are the subjects of electrical action, just as heat, light, and sound are, and the only difference between these forces is the rate of the motion. The motion of sound, as we all know, is comparatively slow; that of heat and light are very rapid. That of electricity would appear to be somewhat between the slow motion of sound and the rapid motion of those heat-waves whose motion is slowest. And it would appear that the wonderful adaptability which electricity shows for every kind of work is due entirely to the position which its rate of motion occupies in the scale of the energies. It would also appear that the reason this wonderful agent laid dormant for so many ages, and is even now only partially developed is, very largely, at any rate, because we have no sense which responds to the particular periods of vibration comprised within the electrical range.

Heat-currents would be far more efficient than electric-currents if we could make use of them as we do of the latter; and, as before remarked, the reason electricity is such a useful agent appears to be because its rate of vibration is sufficiently high to admit of rapid transmission, yet not sufficiently so to be destructive. It only becomes destructive when it is transformed into heat.-Electrical Review, New York, February 11.

The Crowning Achievements of the Telephone.-Two exhibitions of recent achievement in the line of telephony have recently taken place in this city. The first one signalized the opening of the telephone line from New York to Chicago. The next one was a public exhibition of the capacity of that line given by the transmission of music over the thousand miles intervening between here and the City of the Lakes. The music was so perfectly reproduced as to be heard by members of a large audience. To-day New York is in telephonic

communication with Chicago, and the oral transmission of intelligence has become an everyday affair. After the development of the telephone with microphonic transmitters for short-distance work had become an acknowledged fact, the troubles offered by induction and the static capacity of long lines caused many to believe that the telephone could never be a long-range instrument. As in the case of many other things in this world, it was found that the best appliances secured the desired results. The construction of an absolutely first-class copper line of large calibre wire, and of the most perfect details of mounting, has removed the thousand miles intervening between here and Chicago effectually, and now conversation can be held with Chicago even better than ordinarily with New York City connections. The success of longdistance telephoning in the present case is merely one of the additional triumphs of the best.

On February 7th of the present year, a still greater achievement was commemorated. On that day was witnessed the opening of the telephone line from Boston to Chicago. Telephoning is successfully carried on over 1,250 miles of wire, owing to a somewhat circuitous route followed by the line. All distances hitherto covered are insignificant compared to this. The possibilities it holds for the future cannot well be overestimated. A step beyond Chicago and the banks of the Missouri will be reached, and we may yet see Omaha and San Francisco connected by a line which will form the final link in a chain bringing San Francisco and New York within speaking range of each other. When conversation is carried on perfectly as it now is over 1,250 miles of wire, the extension of distance becomes a matter of detail.—Scientific American, February 18.

Electro-Physics.-Messrs. Sarasin and De la Rive read a paper before the French Academy of Sciences showing that the velocity of propagation of electrical waves was the same in air and conducting wires. The experiments were made in a very large hall in Geneva, with the aid of very large metallic surfaces, and by the method of interferences. They also proved that a circular resonator has a constant wave length independent of the dimensions of the oscillator, the intensity of oscillation alone varying. The quarter of a wave length of a circular resonator is very nearly equal to twice its diameter. A short description of their experiments may be found in L'Electricien, January 21.—Electrical World, February 18.

METALLURGY.

Singular Property of Ruthenium.-Professor Joly, of the Paris Ecole Normale, has already investigated the compounds of ruthenium, principally those resulting from an association of this element with binoxid of nitrogen, a combination which, behaving as a single body, unites with chlorine, bromine, iodine, and oxygen. Pursuing the study of this metal, Professor Joly, who claims it to be, of all known elements, that which presents the most original properties, recently submitted to the Académie des Sciences several samples of a red coloringmatter, resulting from an association not yet definitely determined (oxychlorid of ammoniacal ruthenium), giving a tinctorial power equivalent to that of the richest dye-materials obtained from coal-tar, to that of fuchsine, for instance. A five-millionth part of the substance suffices to color water. It dyes silk directly, and the color thus procured is stable. The chemical reactions of this new coloring-matter are equally interesting. Acids transform it into yellow, and alkalines bring it back to red. Unfortunately the scarcity of the metal which enters into the composition of this substance prevents at present its industrial utilization.-Iron, London, February 3.

OCEANOGRAPHY.

The Atlantic Sea-Bed.-Proceeding westward from the Irish coast the ocean-bed deepens very gradually; in fact, for the first 230 miles the gradient is but six feet to the mile. In the next twenty miles, however, the fall is over 9,000 feet, and so

precipitous is the sudden descent that in many places depths of 1,200 to 1,600 fathoms are encountered in very close proximity to the 100-fathom line. With the depth of 1,800 to 2,000 fathoms the sea-bed in this part of the Atlantic becomes a slightly undulating plain, whose gradients are so light that they show but little alteration of depth for 1,200 miles. The extraordinary flatness of these submarine prairies renders the familiar simile of the basin rather inappropriate. The hollow of the Atlantic is not strictly a basin, whose depth increases regularly toward the centre; it is rather a saucer or dish-like one, so even is the contour of its bed.

The greatest depth in the Atlantic has been found some 100 miles to the northward of the island of St. Thomas, where soundings of 3,875 fathoms were obtained. The seas round Great Britain can hardly be regarded as forming part of the Atlantic hollow. They are rather a part of the platform banks of the European continent which the ocean has overflowed. An elevation of the sea-bed 100 fathoms would suffice to lay bare the greatest part of the North Sea and join England to Denmark, Holland, Belgium, and France. A deep channel of water would run down the west coast of Norway, and with this the majority of the floods would be connected. A great part of the Bay of Biscay would disappear; but Spain and Portugal are but little removed from the Atlantic depression. The 100fathom line approaches very near the west coast, and sound•ings of 1,000 fathoms can be made within 20 miles of Cape St. Vincent, and much greater depths have been sounded at distances but little greater than this from the western shores of the Iberian Peninsula.—Nautical Magazine.

THE BENEFITS OF VIVISECTION.

N the Fortnightly Review for January there is an interest

of an appeal to those opponents of the practice who base their opposition on the contention that "no practical benefit has been derived from vivisection sufficient to outweigh its moral reprehensibility." The writer meets the objection by adducing the facts as regards tetanus, or lockjaw, a disease formerly incurable and unamenable to treatment, but which now, as a result of experiments on living animals, is rendered curable in them and in man. This disease the author claims to have selected for the purposes of the argument because it rests in a most immediate and unequivocal fashion solely on " vivisectional " experiment, and because it illustrates, in the best possible way, the tendency and goal of modern medicine where infectious diseases are concerned. He then gives the history of the disease and its treatment, of which the following is a concise summary:

"Up till eight years ago we were completely in the dark as to the cause and real nature of this complaint, which statistics show to be fatal in ninety cases out of a hundred. In 1884 a young German doctor, Nicolaier, found that the introduction of a small portion of the earth of streets and fields, under the skin of mice, gave rise to symptoms exactly resembling those of tetanus in man. He found also that the pus or matter formed in the wound reproduced the symptoms in animals inoculated with it, and further, that it contained almost always, a drumstick-shaped bacillus, which he regarded as the possible cause of the disease, but he was unable to isolate it. A young Japanese physician in Koch's laboratory, and two Italians, however, succeeded almost simultaneously in obtaining pure cultures, and found that an infinitely small drop of the culture introduced under the skin of animals induced tetanic symptoms ending in death. The poison was found to be secreted by the bacilli and separable from them by appropriate means. The rumstick-bacill was next subjected to experiment, and in 1890 Kitasako (the Japanese discoverer) and Dr. Behring discovered that by treating rabbits with tri-chloride of iodine they can be made "immune or proof against tetanus, so that the inoculation of twenty times the amount of virus sufficient to kill an ordinary rabbit is without any injurious effect. They further showed that the blood of an animal thus treated has the power of neutralizing the virus to such a degree, that thirty or forty drops of it injected into another rabbit suffice to render it immune.

Soon after the publication of Kitasako and Behring's first paper, the two Italian co-workers above mentioned, succeeded in

extracting from the blood of dogs thus rendered immune-a substance of the nature of albumen, that had the property of destroying the tetanus virus, within or without the body, and with which animals far advanced in tetanus could be cured. From the nature of its properties they named it tetanus antitoxin. After some attempts, they succeeded in getting it as a white crystalline powder, which retains its remedial power for many months."

The writer next passes to the history of the employment of this new remedy in the treatment of the human subject. Up to the present, there have been about a dozen cases, all of which have been successfully treated, Ordinarily, it would not be safe to draw conclusions from so few cases, but in the matter of tetanus, which is so almost invariably fatal, he appears to be justified in his contention that at least more than half of these patients were saved from a terrible death by tetanus antitoxin. Summing up, he says:

"Let the lay public once be brought to perceive, even in part, the true bearings of the question, let them once be in a position to compare the promises made for the future with the advances of the past, and I believe we should hear but little more of those outbursts of indiscriminate and inconsistent solicitude. They would then see that, not only in an isolated instance like tetanus, but also in the case of diphtheria, rabies, pneumonia, and a large number of other infections, we are by similar means drawing near the goal, and that, even as regards the greatest scourge of all, consumption, we can already, in the twilight of imperfect knowledge, see the attainable end to which we shape our course."

THE LIFE OF THE STARS.
DR. H. J. Klein.

Translated and Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper (3 pp.) in
Die Gartenlaube, Leipzig, January.
YHANGE is the order of the Universe; life and death are

by no means confined to organic beings on earth, but are

phenomena of the universal law of evolution to which all things, even the Stars are subject. Since the pale dawn of that long-past day when the first man trod the earth, Sun, Moon, and Stars have revolved in their appointed courses, to all appearances unchanged. In comparison with our little span of life, and even with the life of the race, they appear eternal, immutable; but each and all had a beginning; each and all will have an end. In the life of the heavenly bodies, as of our own Earth itself, a myriad years are but as a moment in the little span of our existence, but change is everywhere unceasing.

As Herschel suggested, and as later observers have confirmed, the substance of which all worlds are made, is the pale, dim, nebulous matter invisible to the naked eye, but discernible trough the telescope in all the early stages of condensation. The volume of this nebulous matter, according to Herschel, surpasses all comprehension; but at the same time is of such extreme tenuity that the smallest stars visible through it make even the brightest nebulæ appear dim.

Where these nebular masses display definite form, it is generally round or elliptical. The round masses are often brighter in the centre, paling from that point gradually, as if the centre were the seat of a concentrating power. The elliptical nebulæ present the same phenomena, and the appearance leaves little doubt that a condensation of the nebulous matter is taking place there, and a sort of nucleus is in course of formation. In many of these nebulæ the nucleus is surrounded with a soft radiance which Herschel compared to a mane; and which he suggested might, by absorption into the nucleus, impart a rotatory movement to it.

“Genius and nature are eternally allied"; and this dictum of the poet was justified in Herschel's case. Instinctively, one might say, he grasped the right conclusion. These nebulous clouds are, in fact, the primitive stuff of which solar systems are constructed. What the great man saw imperfectly with his bodily eye is now, thanks to the progress in optics and photography, rendered clear and indisputable. The manes are gigantic whirls of nebulous matter-spiral nebula-first rendered clear by Lord Rosse's telescope, and later confirmed by

the still more powerful telescopes of Mt. Hamilton, California. One must not forget that these phenomena are taking place on an immense scale, almost beyond human conception. The smallest nebular spots in the heavens exceed the Sun in volume, and the luminous manes playing round the nucleus of a nebular mass, extend through a space in comparison with which the distance between the Sun and the Earth is inconsiderable.

Here, then, we see the workshops in which world-systems are formed, the preliminary stages of world-evolution. From such nebular masses have the solar system and the fixed stars constructed themselves, and that in a mode which the French mathematician, Laplace, was the first to reveal. According to his hypothesis, our Sun, for example, in the remote past, was a vast nebular spot, of high temperature, revolving on its axis from west to east. In consequence of continuous loss of heat, the matter of the nebular mass became more and more compressed; and at length, in accordance, with prescribed mechanical laws, a free-floating ring separated itself from the nebular mass in the region of its equator. The cooling being continuous, and the condensation of the surface-matter keeping pace with it, the ring-formation would, in due course, repeat itself, all the rings working from west to east around the central The persistence of these rings would depend on their perfect uniformity in structure and condensation, which is very unlikely. Consequently they break up, and being still fluid, assume globular forms. These glowing nebular globes become planets, revolving round the Sun, from which they were thrown off. The larger planets go through the same course, throwing off rings which break up into satellites.

mass.

Laplace, at the time he originated his famous theory of world-origination, does not appear to have known of Herschel's investigation of nebulous masses. Observing that all the chief planets revolve from West to East around the Sun, that the Sun turns from West to East on its own axis, and that all the satellites pursue the same course round their respective planets, he started from the proposition that this must be due to some adequate cause, and this cause he traced to the comOf mon origination of all planets in a vast nebular mass. Laplace truly more than of any other it may be said that his keen insight enabled him to penetrate beyond the veil to that remote past when as yet the Stars which illuminate the firmament existed only as nebulous vapor. Who would have supposed, when this theory was advanced, that it was capable of verification. Nevertheless, with the march of science, sidereal photography has presented us with a picture of one of the largest nebular masses, with its rings and balls, in verification of Laplace's theory. This nebula was photographed by Mr. Isaac Roberts, of Liverpool, on December 29, 1888, after an exposure of four hours, involving the arduous task of moving the telescope continuously in harmony with the movements of the heavenly bodies. The nebular mass in question is known as the Andromeda Nebula, and is visible to the naked eye on a clear night. With a powerful telescope it is seen in the form of an elongated ellipse, with a bright nucleus at the centre.

The distance of the Andromeda Nebula is beyond all computation. Dotted over its surface are innumerable stars so remote that no telescope had betrayed their existence, and all these stars, even the smallest of them, are suns like our own, and which, like it, have been shining for myriads of years. In the infinite realms of space in which we severally play our little parts, a sun the size or ours is of no more significance than a drop of water in the ocean.

And for all these living suns the end must come; they are all constantly radiating into space, the heat generated in their formation, and, with its final disappearance, they will sink back into the formless cosmic-dust from which they sprang. Long before the light of our Sun shall be quenched, life on earth, and in the other planets of our system, will have disappeared; and this fate which awaits our system, has most assuredly been the fate of a thousand world-systems. And the universe itself must have an end. Science traces the chains of phenomena link by link without finding first cause or final consequence. Faith alone accounts for the origin of life by the Divine behest "Let there be."

IN

RELIGIOUS.

THE HAPPINESS IN HELL*: A REJOINDER.

N the Nineteenth Century for February, Professor St. George Mivart, answering Father Clarke's criticisms, calls attention to the grave effects of a typographical blunder. He writes:

"Every Catholic knows that in Hell (when that term is used in its wide and proper meaning) there is, and must be, some happiness. Now, my wish was to consider how great and how widely extended, according to Catholic doctrine, the happiness known to exist there might possibly be. The title I gave my paper, therefore, was The Happiness in Hell.' Great was my surprise when my paper appeared to find the difinite article omitted, and to read as its title simply Happiness in Hell.' The latter phrase may well have led persons to suppose that I thought I had made some great discovery, or was proclaiming doctrines the foundations of which were new instead of undisputed."

The Professor is evidently surprised that his critic had met with only those who condemned the views presented, and thinks that Father Clarke must have sought "the society of persons like-minded with himself-kindred souls, hugging self-imposed chains which bind them to narrow views and lower desires." He is "reluctantly compelled" so to think because of the number who have thanked him for the expression of his views, and for the benefit conferred. Among other evidences of the good accomplished he cites two laymen who informed him that "my views saved them from abandoning the Church."

In reference to Father Clarke's criticisms of the use of quotations from the various Catholic writers, the Professor sums up his answer with these words:

'But the question of what Bellarmine, Prudentius, or even St. Augustine may have said, is, after all, quite a subordinate one for Catholics, since they belong to a Church with a living voice, and are thus very independent of antiquity. I could, therefore, were it needed, throw aside all the theologians and Fathers to whom either I or my critic have referred, and confine myself to the pages of The Irish Eeclesiastical Record, in which every paper published is required to receive not only the nihil obstat of a duly appointed ecclesiastical censor, but the imprimatur of the Archbishop himself."

The Professor then quotes from the Record to show that the " evolution," for which he contended is allowed, and justifies his position of antagonism to the views of others by cataloguing some of the religious doctrines, which " my critic himself holds, which have been established by opposition to the sentiments and opinions current among Churchmen at different epochs."

The Professor declares that the true raison d'être of his recent article is not certain propositions which his critic selected, but a presentation of the teaching of the Catholic Church on the subject of eternal punishment so that those outside the Church may be attracted to her and those within her fold kept from straying away.

Now, multitudes of non-Catholics and very many Catholics are tried by the general teaching of the clergy with respect to Hell and its eternal fiery torments. To such persons I have offered my lately published inquiry as to how far we may be permitted to hope that teaching of the kind was exaggerated and unauthorative as I am fully persuaded it is."

In aswer to Father Clarke's charge that St. Augustine had been misrepresented when it was claimed that he "distinctly affirms that the lost prefer their existence as damned souls to non-existence," the Professor admits

"That in the passage referred to St. Augustine does not expressly

* Vide THE LITERARY DIGEST, Vol. VI., Nos. 9 and 15.

mention the damned, though I consider it evident that they are there implicitly included. I referred to those passages because in them St. Augustine, according to his custom, lays down an absolute and universal principle. In not a single instance, so far a I can ascertain, did St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, or any other of the scholastics who held the opposite view, answer St. Augustine in Father Clarke's way, or assert that the great doctor did not hold that his assertion applied to the lost. I adhere, then, firmly to the principle laid down by St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei. xi. 26). Father Clarke must justify his novel interpretation and show that the damned are excluded. However, in this matter (as in the case of mitigation in Hell) it is quite safe to affirm the position I have taken up. It is an opinion which has never been conlemned."

HADESIAN THEOLOGY; OR, THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SATAN: AN INSIDE HISTORY. HEODORE F. SEWARD, founder of the Brotherhood

THE

of Christian Unity, contributes a paper to Christian Thought for February, purporting to be a revelation of Satanic plans and methods for the overthrow of Christianity. This revelation is made by Diabolus, a prince of the royal blood, and member of the reigning family of Hades." We are told that

"When the earthly mission of Jesus was ended by His death on the Cross, Satan was more discouraged and downcast than he had ever appeared to be before. His faithful adherents, Mammon, Moloch, Baal, Dissimulus, and others, gathered around him and strove to cheer him out of his despondency."

They proffer various plans by which the influence of Christianity may be rendered of little account. They point to the "ignorant disciples " as illy-prepared to battle against Satanic "wiles and arts"; but Satan fears the Man, who resisted the temptation, and who planted the "seeds of love and truth in the world."

Dissimulus proposes to misinterpret the words of Jesus, but Satan declares that "there is one sentence alone that would annihilate my hopes if not another sentence had been recorded. It is this God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him might not perish, but have eternal life.'

Then Satan, being filled with rage, drove them out of his sight, and "for many years Hades was a region of utterly hopeless despair."

After a long period, Dissimulus calls the attention of Satan to the fact that the Apostolic Epistles had been written, and expresses the belief that he can induce the people to set a higher value on the Epistles than on the teachings of Christ." Although Satan rejected the idea that the people would esteem any instructions above those of the One whom they regarded as the Son of God, yet Dissimulus proceeds to show that

"The Epistles are already studied and discussed more than the Gospels. By artful suggestions in connection with certain texts, I have led thousands to believe that being a Christian does not depend on what they do or what they are, but on what they think. The consequence is they are having all sorts of controversies and contentions over doctrines and creeds."

Satan was greatly pleased with this information, and he commissioned Dissimulus to this special work:

"Set the people to fighting over predestination, reprobation, original sin-anything and everything that will lead their minds away from the plain teachings of their Master.'

The results of this work were soon apparent. Sects, creeds, and controversies arose everywhere.

"There are Sabellians and anti-Sabellians, Pelagians and antiPelagians, Arians and Socinians, and an infinite variety of headbeliefs and metaphysical distinctions.

Making religion a question of head-belief rather than of heart and life, led naturally to a vast increase in the number of sects, with every conceivable variety and shade of doctrine. Some of the sects were so small that we younger spirits often spoke of them as iusects. But, whether large or small, they all served the one purpose of giving predominance to the letter of the Scriptures, with a corresponding neglect of the spirit."

To show that Satan has more power in the world than the

Gospel according to Jesus, a catalogue is given of some of Satan's fav rite amusements:

"I. Attending service in a fashionable church.

“2. Visiting the Stock Exchange and the marts of trade. His majesty says he has no keener pleasure than seeing a pious church-member dealing in 'margins.'

"3. Attending church-fairs. This is one of his majesty's favorite recreations. To see a company of Christians eating oysters and ice-cream for the glory of God and the payment of a church-debt, always puts him in a good humor.

4, All other Satanic amusements are as nothing compared with the delight afforded him by a heresy-trial. He is entirely indifferent as to the result, knowing that the injury done to religion is practically the same, whether the trial fails or succeeds. On the whole, Satan is well satisfied with the outlook for his kingdom in the world. He says he is content to have Christian nations send missionaries to the heathen if they will also send rum and opium as they are now doing, He is willing that rich people shall give very generously to religious objects if they will get their money by dishonest, unjust, or even doubtful methods. He is much pleased with the custom of requiring members to subscribe to a creed which they cannot understand or do not believe. He likes to have people worship God devoutly on Sundays when they serve Mammon faithfully the rest of the week. Shall I tell you what we Hadesians think of your little planet ? It appears to us like a vast lunatic asylum, an abode of endless delusions and hallucinations. These delusions seem to us most strange and unaccountable because they are in opposition to your own positive knowledge.

"To us Hadesians the most unaccountable of all your delusions is that which leads you to cling so persistently to the idea that Church-membership is of the nature of an insurance-policy or title-deed which is bound to secure you a residence and citizenship in the heavenly land. If there is any one danger that your Lord and Master tried especially to guard you against it is this. Yet in all my attendance upon your Church-services I have rarely heard a preacher speak of the converted and unconverted, the saved and the lost, the sheep and the goats, without implying that the former are all in the Church and the latter out of it. And then usually follows the exhortation, 'Oh! you unhappy goats, why will you not come over into our fold and become sheep? But when the goats compare the lives of many of the sheep with the standard left them by their Saviour, they perceive so little difference between those who are in the fold and those who are out of it, that many of them can see no advantage in the change. For themselves, they prefer to remain goats rather than add to the list of spurious and self-deluded sheep.

'As a member of Satan's kingdom, I am obliged to concede that the Church is a tremendous power in resisting and overcoming that kingdom. But I can state positively from my knowledge of inside history that the churches will never do their full work while they give the prominence to creeds and doctrines that they do now. Let them put Christ first and doctrines second, and all His followers will be drawn together by the natural law of sympathy. The Church will become one in spirit, and Satan's power will be broken and gradually destroyed."

THE GRADUAL DISUSE OF HEBREW IN JEWISH WORSHIP.

ANATOLE LEROY-BEAULIEU, Member oF THE INSTITUTE. Translated and Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper (44 pp.) in Revue des Deux Mondes, Paris, February.

BE

ESIDES the language of the country in which they liveFrench, Spanish, German, Italian-the Jews, the Rabbis especially, have always cultivated the language of the Torah. The ancient idiom of Palestine was for them what Latin was for Christians; as was the case with Latin, educated Jews spoke and wrote Hebrew. Of the two dead languages, the one which has retained most life is the Hebrew, although as a local tongue, it was dead before Latin was formed; Hebrew, replaced in Palestine by the Aramaic or Chaldean, was, after the return from the Captivity, an artificial language, used by the learned alone. For the Israelites, ancient or modern. Hebrew was not merely the speech of religion or the learned language, it was also the sign, and, as it were, the bond, of their unity. In this sense, is was for them at once a national and

*

* It would be erroneous to suppose that all the learned Jews of the Middle Ages wrote in Hebrew, as our learned Christians wrote in Latin. The Jews used other languages, notably Arabic.

international language. The philosophers and poets of the Middle Ages, like Jehuda Halevy, gave it a new life.

Among the Jews of the East, not everything written in Hebrew letters is Hebrew. Once, at Warsaw, standing before the shop of a Jew, I tried to decipher some words in square characters on a long sign; I perceived that, instead of being Hebrew, the words were a German “jargon,” written in Hebrew characters. What the Russo-Polish Jew of to-day does for his jargon, the Jews of the Middle Ages often did for the French, Spanish, and Italian. This manner of writing (many were acquainted with no other) was for them a resource in time of persecution. It was like a secret writing, a conventional cipher, of which Israel only had the key; how could the Jews' Christian masters recognize their own language under this foreign disguise? In our day still, numbers of the Jews of the East employ the letters of the sacred language for their correspondence or for their books of account. I am not sure whether the Russian Government has not sometimes forbidden this use of the Hebrew characters.

Notwithstanding, the old tongue is losing ground; it is as much threatened as Latin, and for analogous reasons. In proportion as our schools have been opened to the Jews, they have been obliged to give Hebrew a less prominent place in education. Some of them would even like to banish it from the synagogue, at the risk of lowering the dignity of their worship. Numbers of Jews in the West of Europe, in order to follow divine service, are obliged to have prayer-books in the vulgar tongue; many of them no longer know how to read the venerable characters of the Hebrew, even with vowel points. In direct opposition to their fathers, they have synagogues where the liturgical chants are transcribed in Gothic or Latin letters. In most of the synagogues of the West, the local language, French, English, German, Italian, has won its place, even in the solemn offices, alongside the language of the Torah. The time is long passed when the rabbis were scandalized at seeing Moses Mendelssohn translate the Pentateuch into German. The Jews, nearly everywhere, have to-day for their liturgical offices translations of the Psalms or the Prophets; and in certain countries, in England, for example, in their version of the Sacred Books, they have tried to approximate the version in use in Christian churches.

I knew, a few years ago, a young Israelite from Berditchef, who aspired to be a rabbi, and who came to Paris with the intention of preaching in our synagogues in Hebrew. He was obliged to abandon his intention; he would not have been understood. He had to keep his Hebrew lectures for his Schule in Little Russia; there they understood him; but the police, suspicious of his eloquence in a dead language, made him discontinue his discourses. As to books, the Russian Imperial censors have specialists for Hebrew as they have for all the other languages of the Empire. Writers, modern Hebrew poets, have had the honor of having their works prohibited. I myself possess a collection of Hebrew poetry which quite recently was seized by the authorities in Lithuania. The precaution is not useless. It is in fact in Russia, in Poland, in Roumania, there where the Jews live in compact groups, isolated by the law and by their manners, there where all instruction has remained Talmudic, where little Jews at the age of five or six have the sacred texts put before them, there it is the Hebrew has remained the principal, if not the only, vehicle of ideas.

regard to it, the dealer told us that it was one of the most popular books in modern Italian literature.

Padre Agostino is a preacher whose fame has penetrated every hamlet of this fair peninsula. He who has with his own eyes seen the multitudes that throng to hear him, and seen the largest cathedrals crowded three and four hours before the time for services, and that policemen are necessary for the protection of life and maintaining order, is reminded of the days of Savanarola in Florence. Padre Agostino differs from that forerunner of the Reformation in this that he is not a preacher of repentance. Formerly he was only a Lenten preacher, who appeared during this season in all the great cities of Italy, preaching his Quaresima discourses. But now he is a traveling preacher, to whose services only those are admitted who have been provided with tickets. At Reggio recently the rabble mobbed the palace of the Bishop because he refused to give them "tickets" promiscuously. The angry crowd smashed nearly all the windows in the building. Wherever Agostino appears as a preacher, stenographers take down his discourses, which are regularly published in scores of Italian newspapers. Dealers in these cry out as an attraction for their goods, among suicides, murders, etc., also "L'ultima predica di Padre Agostino. Signori, l'ultima predica, bella, fresca!”

These sermons are sold in editions of tens of thousands. They are on various subjects but seldom constitute a cycle. Recently such a series was delivered to the mothers of Naples. Only married women were admitted, and the padre spoke freely on subjects considered indelicate for public discussion; but all the newspapers published these discourses, which were on the Education of Children. In Scafati, near Pompeii, Agostino delivered a series of addresses in honor of the Virgin Mary. Among the sermons generally delivered by him are those on topics like the following: The Existence of God; Who is God? What is Man? The Immortality of the Soul; The Necessity of Religion; Religion and the Family; True Religion; The Sources of Unbelief; Jesus Christ; The Teachings of Christ; Faith and Service; Sunday Rest; The Eucharist; Confession; Prejudices against Religion; Purgatory; The Workingmen; The Fatherland; The Church.

His sermons are mostly of an apologetic character. He seldom uses a Biblical text, and only occasionally cites a passage from Scripture. His method of delivery is not without theatrical display. Often he is cheered to the echo, and applause resounds throughout this Church as it did in the days of Chrysostom. Pastor Agostino is a sign of the times, and a significant phenomenon in modern religious life in Italy.

MISCELLANEOUS.

THE VALUE OF THE DISCOVERY MADE BY COLUMBUS.

EDWARD EVERETT HALE.

Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper (5 pp.) in

Harvard Monthly, Cambridge, January.

BOUT the year 1780 the Abbé Raynal published a book in

ABSixteen volumes, the last volume of which professed to

be wholly devoted to the enquiry whether America had been of more good or harm to mankind. It was really a rambling criticism on then existing governments, and Diderot and a score of others have had the credit of contributing to it. Be that as it may, Raynal was exiled for it, and on his recall in 1787 he suggested to the Academy at Lyons, a prize on the questions:

"Has the discovery of America been injurious or useful to mankind?"

"If injurious, how can the disadvantages be remedied ?"