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farming are something ghastly, but it is necessary to arouse the public conscience to insure the call for vigorous action which the existing condition of things demands.

The following description of the shambles to which one babyprocurer had conveyed five of her victims is taken from the report of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and is highly suggestive :

"It was the back room of a tumble-down laborer's cottage, scarcely fit for a coal-place and about twelve feet square. Crouching and sprawling on the floor, in their own excrement, were two children; two were tied in rickety chairs; one lay in a rotten bassinet. The stench of the room was so abominable that a grown man vomited when he opened the door. Though three children were each nearly two years old, not one of them could walk, only one could stand up by the aid of a chair. In bitter March there was no fire. Two children had a band of flannel round their loins, one had a small shawl on, the rest had only thin, filthy cotton frocks. All were yellow, feverish, and reduced to skin and bone. None of them cried; they were too weak. One had bronchitis, one had curvature of the spine, and the rest rickets: all from their treatment. There was not a scrap of children's food in the house. In a bedroom above was a mattress, soaked and sodden with filth, to which they were carried at night with two old coats for covering. All the children's clothes in the place were the handfuls of rags they wore. And a man and his wife sat watching them die of filth and famine, so making their living. It was their trade. These five weary creatures were all removed into restorative care, all injured for years, some for life. Two never recovered and died in hospital."

This is by no means an exceptional case. Sometimes the procurer dispenses with the receiver, and passes on the children to death herself.

Quite unconnected with baby-farming, but showing precisely the same results as regards child-suffering and mortality, are two systems known as child-insurance and burial-clubs. To most of our readers it may seem strange, to many, incredible, that English fathers and mothers could, after insuring their children's lives, deliberately arrange for their deaths in order to secure a petty sum of money. Few, however, amongst the educated have any real idea of the lengths to which the uneducated of feeble moral nature in the ranks of poverty will often go for the sake of gaining the sum of five or six pounds. When beer, tobacco, gambling, and idleness can be had in exchange for a child's life, the child is often sacrificed.

In the same way burial-clubs, in themselves a special form of insurance which enables the very poor to secure a profit of two or three pounds on each child buried, are a great temptation to arrange for its death. In 1891-92 the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children dealt with 3,809 cases of children insured at an average rate of a little below five pounds. Again, according to the Registrar-General's statistics, infant mortality is found to be lowest where this system of child insurance has not been introduced, but where the system is most common, infant mortality is highest, and increases with the spread of the system. It is painfully apparent, on the evidence which the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has brought to light, that persons of the lower classes, living in grinding poverty, uneducated, often callous, vicious, and having natures formed by the most sordid circumstances of life, should not be placed in the position of having a beneficial interest in the death of children of whom they have the custody.

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tion, while it confers rights on women, equally imposes duties on them, a conclusion to which they have given full recognition. But prompt and energetic as has been their participation in general measures of social reform, they have altogether withheld their support from a reform which is engaging man's most anxious attention—namely, that of cremation.

A reformation in the matter of the disposal of the dead in harmony with the spirit of the age, has been pushed forward by men with an energy which has compelled the officials of all civilized countries to devote their serious attention to it. The cholera epidemic was, and is, occasion for renewed efforts, all tending to the localization of the disease; but all such measures are inadequate. The consensus of medical opinion calls for the burning of the diseased body, as the only means of eradicating the infection.

The efforts of the supporters of cremation are based on the recognition of this principle; but these efforts are thwarted not so much by religion, although this is still hostile to a certain extent, as by the repugnance of the great majority of womankind who do not find cremation as conformable to their ideals as the prevailing fashion of burial. We are here confronted by a sentiment based on absolutely false ideas, whether the matter be regarded from the point of view of religion, or of regard for the dead. This sentiment has been already, and frequently, combated in these columns, and that, too, by women who had themselves experienced the same repugnance, but who had overcome it by an impartial weighing of the arguments and a realization of the dangers to the living, of which burial is so prolific a cause, and of which we have so many instructive examples.

This circle of enlightened women is naturally a contracted one, and will continue contracted until woman shall be made a participator in all other efforts for the welfare of the race, and thus brought to a realization of her proper duty in respect of all such problems.

When women shall be brought by an intelligent review of the subject to lend the proposed reform their earnest support, the opposition of the Church, which is a mistaken and baseless one, will melt away like snow in summer. This is the direction in which the battle of cremation versus burial has to be fought out. Let us, then, direct our efforts into this channel,. assured that in winning over the more thoughtful and best of womankind, the victory will be won.

Crime, Sentence, and Suspense.-A correspondent discusses in some detail one particular point in the history of retribution. He objects, and with reason, to the frequently long. duration of suspense in which many a prisoner who is aware that efforts are being made to obtain a mitigation of the deathpenalty is allowed to remain until almost the hour appointed for his execution. He would have the public, the medical profession, and especially those in authority, realize what is implied in an interval of two or three weeks thus passed in mingled hope and fear, its numbing influence on any movement towards confession or on any process of self-preparation for the final change, which excludes all earthly interests. How much more merciful it would be, he says, if the final Yea or Nay of Her Majesty's representative were communicated to the doomed offender at an early date after his conviction by the jury. No words of ours are needful to commend the justice of these observations. We trust that they will not be overlooked by those with whom rests the power to give them practical effect. We may here, however, be allowed to question whether petitions for the mitigation of sentences do not sometimes themselves constitute an avoidable difficulty in arriving at that early decision which in this matter is so desirable. Most people can recall the memory of cases in which the petitions prepared were clearly certain of rejection, and the fate of such may serve as a needed check upon the impulses of a false public sentiment.—Lancet, London, March 11.

Murders and Gambling.—We have a scrap-book in our office that contains a partial record of gambling, as furnished by the daily press. This record shows only a tithe of the real results, but these facts are appalling. The following is a synopsis from this record of crimes arising from gambling during 1890. One hundred and twenty-eight persons were either shot or stabbed over gambling-games. Four were stabbed and five shot at poker. Twelve stabbed and twenty-four shot over the game of craps. Twenty-eight were stabbed and fifty-five were shot over the gambling-table, or as the direct result thereof. Besides these, six attempted suicide, twenty-four committed suicide, and sixty persons were murdered in cold blood, while two were driven insane. Sixty-eight youths and persons have been ruined by pool-gambling and betting upon horse-racing. Among the crimes committed to get money to gamble with are two burglaries, eighteen forgeries, and eighty-five embezzlements, while thirty-two persons holding positions of trust in banks and other places of mercantile life, absconded. The enormous sum of $2,898,372 is shown by this same record as the proceeds of these embezzlements and defalcations. To those crimes must be added the long list of thefts, robberies, embezzlements, larcenies, and defalcations which are never known except to immediate friends, or persons especially interested.—Anthony Comstock, in Our Day, March.

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The volume is dedicated to Doctor Cesare Lombroso, expositions of whose theories have frequently appeared in these columns, and whose pupil Nordau modestly declares he is. In every page he invokes the authority of the Italian professor as well as of the French alienists whom Dr. Lombroso praises or who praise him. The particular ingenuity of M. Nordau consists in applying the theories of Lombroso to the study of contemporary manners, of literary manners in particular, and especially as they are found in France. The book, in fact appears as a history of contemporaneous French literature, considered from the point of view of different forms of mental alienation and degeneracy, of which that literature is the expression. The author's method is thus described:

"Most critics search for the literary, moral, or philosophical value of writers who are criticised. M. Nordau's sole endeavor is to find out under what particular type of disordered intelligence these writers must be classed. He has striven to connect with each of the authors about whom he writes one or two observations of alienists on cases of aberration of mind of the same kind which have been observed in clinics. Instead of comparing, as critics too often do, such or such a writer with such or such another, M. Nordau compares them with Eugene X., seventeen years old, attacked with megalomania, or with Alphonse Y., seized with religious madness, both under treatment in a lunatic hospital."

All of this first volume is devoted to contemporary writers, whom Nordau terms mystics. This word, however, says the Revue Bleue, he employs in a very broad sense; for every writer who gives evidence, however slight, of a religious belief is immediately classed as a mystic, and naturally is a man mentally deranged, degenerate, and the like, all these being expressions which, according to Nordau, are implied in the term mystic.

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the religious spirit to be the most contemptible forms of dementia. Moreover, to the mystics belong, according to Nordau, all those poets who give evidence of a too violent or a too delicate sensibility, which is as much as to say, all the poets whomsoever. No one will be astonished, then, to find classified under the general title of mystics the English pre-Raphaelites, Edouard Rod, Paul Desjardins, M. Verlaine, Count Tolstoi, and Richard Wagner. All of these gentlemen are simply assigned to that division of mystics to which they are supposed to belong, each of them being coupled more or less with an inmate of a lunatic hospital, suffering from the same variety of mystic delirium. For all the writers whose works or whose genius M. Nordau examines in his book he has found a general name. He calls them all graphomaniacs."

It is pointed out by the Revue that the book may have a bad effect on nervous people who read it. Such persons, in fact, are not unlikely to imagine that they have a malady like some one of those described, and fear that they are in a condition of mental alienation or degeneracy without knowing it, especially if they observe in themselves "constantly changing impressions, or religious sentiments, or moral prejudices, or even simply graphomania, that is to say, a fondness for writing." To persons who may be thus affected by the book the Revue offers some soothing considerations:

"Such persons may be comforted by reflecting that, if Tolstoi, Wagner, and so many others are out of their mind, being out of one's mind is not such a terrible thing after all, and that even if all the world is mad, madness need not frighten any one. There may be an inclination also, on the part of these nervous readers, to inquire under what special head of mania M. Nordau must be put, quite apart from his graphomania, which is amply proved on the title-page of his book, by an imposing list of works he has previously produced. If these nervous readers consider deeply, they will perceive, we think, that M. Nordau is suffering from a form of mental derangement, well recognized by most alienists, a form sometimes dangerous, since it consists in thinking that every one except one's self is mad, and in wanting to put all mankind in cells. This is a species of alienation with which Mr. Nordau is plainly afflicted and without dwelling on his graphomania, or expressing any opinion about his character, we do not think he has mentioned a living writer, whom it would be more prudent to keep in seclusion."

Although the remarks of the Revue appear to be partly the result of irritation at Nordau's confining himself entirely to French authors as illustrations of his theory, there seems to be a disposition on the part of contemporary writers to seek an explanation of the extravagant utterance of some writers in their mental derangement, as shown by a disordered life. An example of this disposition seems to be found in the Nineteenth Century, for March, in a paper by Leopold Katscher, on the French poet

ALFRED DE MUSSET.

There is nothing to indicate that Mr. Katscher is acquainted with Dr. Lombroso's theories or that he has formulated any general theory of his own. He undertakes only to account for the characteristics of the poet's works:

"His writings have an elective affinity with his life. His life was desolate and forlorn, a concatenation of anguish and despair; for this reason he is, as Honegger has somewhere remarked, the genius of despair,' or, as Gottschalk calls him, the poet of lost and abandoned souls.' That the tones which he found for the expression of such states of feelings are wonderful must be admitted, even by those who condemn them altogether as a literary phenomena. He is for the French what Byron was for the English, Heine for the Germans, Poe for the Americans, and Leopardi for the Italians. He resembles all these; but with all this, he possesses many qualities which distinguish him, or we may rather say his poetical genius, from that of his prototypes."

Evidence of alienation of mind Mr. Katscher finds in anecdotes related in the biography of de Musset by his brother, who was passionately fond of Alfred and never would have admitted for a moment that the poet was out of his mind. One of these anecdotes relates to a time when Alfred was still a boy.

"One day he broke a mirror, cut some new curtains, and pasted a map of Europe all over with wafers, without ever being punished. He made no promise that he would behave better in the future, but seemed astounded at the accidents.' This was quite suf

ficient to insure him immunity from all chastisement. He would scarcely allow any one to speak to him, and his brother was obliged to have recourse to a little banter in order to teach him a lesson. He would say, for instance: The mirror is broken, let us think no more about it; but try at least not to cut the curtains into ribands, and don't paste the Mediterranean over with wafers.''

It would seem that de Musset's family, as Mr. Katscher points out, regarded this freak of his as something more than the willfulness of a spoiled child, and rather as a sign of the boy's mind being unbalanced, and that, therefore, he was not wholly responsible for what he had done. Nor did he outgrow this mental unsoundness, Mr. Katscher tells us. When Alfred was seventeen years of age, and had successfully passed his examination at the college of Henry the Fourth, he wrote thus to his schoolfellow, Paul Foucher, subsequently the brotherin-law of Victor Hugo:

"I am sad and oppressed with weariness. I have not even the heart to work. What shall I do? I don't want to write, unless I could be a Shakespeare or a Schiller. For this reason I do nothing. I feel that for impassioned men it must be the greatest misery to be without passions. I would barter my life for two centimes if only one were not obliged to die to get rid of life. If I were at present in Paris I would drown in punch and beer every serious and respectable emotion there is left within me. That would indeed be a relief. They give opium to a dying man in order to lull him to sleep, although it is known that sleep will kill him. I would fain do the same with my soul.”

At first, Mr. Katscher remarks:

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These fearful words were words, and nothing else; but later the writer of them 'transformed them into a reality, with this difference, that he was not satisfied with beer and punch, but strove to drown his cares in absinthe.'

Unsoundness of mind Mr. Katscher finds in the first books de Musset published. In 1829, when he was in his nineteenth year, appeared his earliest production, a small volume of poems, which bore the title of Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie.

"The four largest contes in verse bear the titles, Chestnuts out of the fire, Mardocche, Don Paez, and Portia, and treat of love-adventures and adultery. The subjects are handled poetically, no doubt, but for all that dangerously. The imagination of the youthful poet revels in voluptuous and fearfully tragical pictures, destitute of any ethical background, which produce a feeling of sadness when we think of his youth.

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The second collection of poems, which he published two years later, were not received by the public with the same favor as the first. These Poesies diverses were more matured and tasteful as to form, and less exuberantly treated; nevertheless, on the whole, they were much in the same spirit as the previous ones. Some of the smaller ones utter the plain, unvarnished, and attractive language of ardent feeling; others give the most charming expression to the frivolity of an inconstant love; in others, and especially in Les Vœux Stériles, the hopeless blasé state of mind predominant in the poet is strongly marked."

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In 1833, when de Musset was in his twenty-third year, appeared Rolla," which Mr. Katscher regards as the characteristic emanation of the author's unsound mind. The poem is "neither more or less than a concatenation of wild, fantastic pictures." The life of Rolla, the hero of the poem, is one continued suicide. For three years he lives upon his means and then resolves to shoot himself." One of the ways in which Musset's unsoundness revealed itself was his excessive egotism. "In his poems, as also in his dramas and stories, his own person is always the central figure." For this reason he is no proper dramatist," because he allows his mind to wander away too far from the subject, goes too much astray into undramatical details, and is unable to concentrate his attention on the elements necessary for the production of a drama." Musset's disordered mind led to a disordered life, says Mr. Katscher. The poet's death was the result of his vices, against the effects of which he had been warned by physicians. The mentally diseased condition of the man is summed up by Mr. Katscher, in mentioning that Musset's brother regrets that a marriage project Alfred had in view came to nothing.

for matrimony as Alfred, with his unceasing irascibility, his continually excited nerves, his seething blood, and his over-irritated, hypersensitive judgment and imagination. His restless mind was incompatible with enduring happiness. With him, everything must be associated with storm and tempest. Marriage would not have given him the peace of mind of which he stood in need. Repose was contrary to his nature, and his wife-if she sincerely loved him-would most likely soon have died of a broken heart."

EXAMINATIONS.

PROFESSOR JOHN KENNEDY, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS,
BATAVIA, N. Y.

THIS

Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper in

Educational Gazette, Rochester, March.

HIS is an age of examinations. The primary child finds an examination awaiting him at the end of his first grade or even at intervals during the grade. He then runs the gauntlet of examinations to the end of his college-course. Would he then enter a professional school he must do so through the ordeal of an examination; and an examination determines his status on emerging therefrom. Nor is that all; the examiner still awaits him at the threshold of the civil service and the various professions. Having been vouched for by so many inquisitors he is at last permitted to exercise his attainments in some chosen sphere.

The motives actuating all this examining seem to be: (1) to enforce the performance of work assigned; (2) to determine the quality of the teaching; (3) to suggest wholesome lines of effort; and (4) to determine the status of the pupil or of the candidate for preferment. In justification of the first motive it is held that the average teacher would relax his efforts unless followed by the pressure of examinations. The validity of the remaining motives will not be questioned. The general purpose back of our multitudinous examinations is to stimulate educational activity and to promote richer educational results. That they do stimulate activity will not be doubted; that they promote educational results is vigorously mooted.

It is held by many observers that the effect of stated and frequent examinations is to promote cram, to eliminate from the efforts put forth every motive but the single one of passing the forthcoming examination. Cram is an unmitigated evil. It begets bad mental habits, it is the reverse of sound discipline and unfits its subject for severe application. It is therefore uneducating instead of educating; it wrenches some of the faculties with overstrain, while leaving others to wither from disuse; it tends to create confusion of ideas and to enfeeble both mind and body.

That examinations do promote cram the writer is prepared to assert. He has witnessed the forcing process, and has noted its tendencies. He has known intelligent and zealous teachers who were capable of educating the children, but who were prevented by the demands of a series of examinations. Their standing would be determined by those examinations alone, and unless they forced the children through them, they would be dropped, to be succeeded by others who would force the children even more remorselessly.

The tendency to cram for examinations is so general that not a few observers regard it as universal. As high an authority as Max Müller has almost committed himself to this view. Forty years ago he labored to promote civil-service examinations. After forty years of experiment, though not prepared to give up examinations, he is compelled to confess his sore disappointment. He says that the civil-service examinations have transformed all the schools in the Kingdom, even including the great universities, from institutions of learning and culture into instruments of cram.

But the fact that examinations promote cram is not evidence that they must necessarily do so. We do not believe that examinations will have to go, but we do believe that they will have to be reformed; an arbitrary line of question will have to The present tendency

"We should rather think that no man was ever so little adapted give way to a rational system of tests.

may be greatly reduced, if not entirely removed, by having school examinations emanate from three sources, instead of from one only. The superintendent's examination is necessary, mainly for its suggestiveness, though serving also to inform him where special effort is required. The teacher's examination is necessary to his own vindication and that of his pupils. He alone knows exactly what they have tried to do, and just what they have accomplished. Their failure on the superintendent's lines would indeed be mortifying; but it would not be ruin if the teacher could still show that they had learned many things, and learned them well. The superintendent's examination would lead the teacher to conform his work to a general line; but his own examination would remove the necessity of making his conformity slavish. If the superintendent is a wise man, he endeavors to find out whether the pupils know what they ought to know; but if unwise, he will endeavor to find out whether the pupils know what he knows. The objection to making the teacher the sole examiner, is that he can make a very deceptive appearance of knowledge and progress without any basis of sound culture. The children might seem intelligent and scholarly simply because they possessed good memories. But another factor is needed to secure the proper and complete stimulus of an examination. The lay public, those who are waiting to use the boys and girls, should have a voice in every examination.

But whether the parties to an examination be one or three, there are principles of questioning to be observed if intelligence is to be stimulated rather than repressed. It is easy to find out what one does not know; but that does not prove that he knows nothing. A pedantic questioner could frame ten questions in geography which a Humboldt could not answer. Should Humboldt therefore be accounted totally ignorant of geography? There are questions that give the candidate a chance to show that he has been well taught, that he is well-read, that he has carried on investigation and research. These beneficent questions are called constructive, because they enable the examined to marshal and send forth his own mental possessions. Such a question begins: "Tell what you know of—": "Give an account of-"; "Describe-"; Give examples of-," etc. Such questions offer no incentive to cram, as they cannot be met by cram effort. How different these from the questions, specific and definite, which appeal largely to arbitrary memory! The latter begin: What? "Where-?" "Who-?" etc. A good examination is an opportunity for the examined.

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EXAMINATIONS FROM A PEDAGOGIC POINT OF

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VIEW.

C. V. LANGLOIS.

Translated and Condensed for THE LITERARY Digest from a Paper in Revue Pedagogique, Paris, January.

T is the fashion nowadays to belittle examinations and decry the "Chinese" system, which prevails increasingly in contemporary societies, of barring entrance to a large number of careers by examinations. Certain radical reformers wish that "no one had the right to interrogate anybody," and think that if their wishes were realized, the world would go on a great deal better. It is, then, not useless to point out some commonplace truths, which the love of paradox and legitimate indignation aroused by crying abuses, have sometimes caused to be forgotten. Examinations justly play a considerable part in the organization of instruction and in society. On the one hand, they are the means, imperfect doubtless, but in many cases the best means of selection. On the other hand, the programmes of examination determine the studies and exercise on them a decisive influence, which may perhaps be very salutary.

The objections of the adversaries of examinations can, think, be ranged under three heads.

I

First, they deny that an examination is a good process of selection. Do we not see, they say, boldness and cheating succeed in examinations where knowledge and conscientious

ness fail? In answer to this objection it is necessary to make a distinction between those studies which develop the faculty of doing something which the student could not do before: to translate a page of Latin, of German, of Sanscrit; to speak a foreign language; to decipher ancient manuscripts; to resolve a problem; to diagnose a malady; to perform a surgical operation; and the studies which do not develop in the cleverest students any new power of a material order: history, philosophy, literature. Certainly, these last, which enrich and fortify the intellect, are in no wise inferior to the former; but from a pedagogic point of view they are much less suited to the purposes and objects of an examination. Nothing is simpler than to ascertain if a candidate has acquired the faculty of writing correctly in German, of deciphering a manuscript, of cutting off a leg, of preparing a potion according to the rules of art. With history, philosophy, and literature, it is quite different. For these the candidate can "cram," and pass a good examination, while actually knowing very little about the subjects on which he is examined. The first objection to which I have alluded, therefore, will be completely overcome, by multiplying technical proofs in examinations and excluding literary, or pseudo-literary, proofs as much as possible. In that way the element of chance in examination, if not entirely eliminated, will be very much diminished.

The second objection is that examinations are stimulants. These have a bad reputation, by reason of the abuse some persons make of them. That, however, does not prevent stimulants being useful in pharmacy and even in hygiene. It may be admitted that there are people who, under the stimulus of examination, perform prodigies of work, and who immediately thereafter fall into a state of chronic torpor. These cases are compared to cases of delirium tremens. Yet, they are no more arguments against the system of examinations than delirium tremens is an argument against the use of alcohol. Examinations are stimulants, but, with rare exceptions they are healthy stimulants. They stir up those who would not work without them, that is to say, much the larger number of students. It is noble, no doubt, to work for the pleasure of working. But very few in this world are those who so work.

The third objection is that the programme of examinations they will have to undergo controls absolutely the studies of the large majority of young people. If the programme is well made it is an efficacious instrument of instruction. If it is badly made, there is nothing more injurious to the youthful mind. The obvious and true answer to that objection is that it is neither impossible nor even very difficult to prepare good programmes of study. No doubt, in France, the taste for systemization and uniformity has caused the preparation of programmes of studies, too vast in extent, and all of which are obligatory. A programme of study is the better for being supple; for containing a minimum of obligatory studies, and a considerable number of elective studies. In this respect, however, things are improving in France. Formerly, the programmes of studies were prepared in the offices of the Minister of Public Instruction. At present, this grave responsibility has been transferred to abler hands, to committees, to councils, the members of which are chosen by their peers.

DID SHAKESPEARE WRITE BACON'S WORKS? ARTHUR DUDLEY VINTON.

W

Condensed for The Literary DIGEST from a Paper in
Worthington's Magazine, Hartford, April.

HAT is now known as the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy has been productive of a great mass of literature; but the gist of all that has been published and the arguments that have been adduced show nothing except the probability of the one-man authorship of the Plays, the Essays, and the Philosophies. Whether this man was William Shakespeare or Francis Bacon, is the question; and to determine this is the design of this essay.

In 1585, when Shakespeare came to London, literature was the handmaiden of the stage; to associate with writers was to

the

meet actors, and to associate with actors was to meet authors. Shakespeare at once sought employment at the theatre; and launched a train of events that would bring him. to notice of literary men. He worked hard-acted, wrote, helped others to write. It is important to consider who were the men of this period to whom Shakespeare was capable of being useful. It is a very simple matter to name them, for we know that Shakespeare was under the patronage of Essex, Southampton, and Bacon. Bacon was the protégé of Essex, and Shakespeare was the protégé of Bacon.

The proof that Shakespeare's pen was employed by distinguished personages is not left to inference. We have the positive testimony of his contemporaries in 1592, as to what he had done and what he was then doing.

We know from Bacon's own admission that he was accustomed to rely upon others to prepare the works which he had published under his own name. When he had been banished to Gorhambury he desires to get back to London, where, he says, "I could have help at hand for my writings and studies"; and, again, he writes: "My labors are now most to have those works I had formerly published well translated into Latin by the help of some good pens." We know that Ben Jonson was one of these "good pens," and we have every reason to believe that Shakespeare was one of these helps," for we can trace throughout nearly all of Bacon's works the thought, style, and diction of the great poet. In the events of Bacon's own life there are certain proofs that William Shakespeare was furnishing manuscript to him.

Impartially considered, all the facts are utterly at variance with the theory that the works known as Bacon's were really the products of the brain of Francis Bacon. If we contrast the characters or Shakespeare and Bacon, we will find that the evidence is wholly in favor of Shakespeare as the author.

Francis Bacon was the most finished scoundrel of his age, addicted to every vice that afflicted humanity at that period. Pope called him "the meanest of mankind."

Sir John Herschell said of him: "His own actual contributions to the stock of physical truths were small, and his ideas of peculiar points strongly tinctured with mistakes and errors." The most eminent scholars of Germany and France have said Bacon was a vain and shallow pretender, without a spark of genius, an ignoramus, a charlatan, a humbug, a quack." A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit, nor can a mind as mean and vile as Bacon's be capable of the authorship of the Essays and the Novum Organum. But William Shakespeare, whom all his contemporaries, with the exception of Robert Greene, united in praising for his gentleness, courtesy, and ability, is exactly the kind of a man we should suppose to be the author of the Baconian theories, the Essays, and the Philosopliies. Where are the missing books of the "Great Instauration"? We have but the mere fragment and outline of a work; with a promise of a completed whole. Why was not this promise kept? Rawley, Bacon's chaplain, tells us that Bacon had the incomplete manuscript for a long time; that every year during the twelve years preceding his death (i. e., from 1614 to 1626) he fussed and tinkered with it. No doubt this work was one which Shakespeare left unfinished at the time of his death in 1616. In vain did Bacon, for ten long years, strive to act the part of the master whose cunning was stilled in death.

It must not be forgotten that after 1616 Bacon did not publish any work of importance that we cannot show to have existed previous to Shakespeare's death.

It is extremely probable that in Shakespeare's death we have the explanation of the literary sterility of Bacon's later years, and the true reason that the Novum Organum has to this day remained only a fragment.

I only refer in the briefest way to the close similitudes of thought, style, and diction in Shakespeare's plays and Bacon's works, and to the contemporaneousness of certain of the plays with some of the essays. I adduce a single illustration. In

1607-8, Bacon was engaged in studies of the "Characters of Julius and Augustus Cæsar," and very soon afterwards the play of "Julius Cæsar" came from Shakespeare's hand.

We would naturally suppose that the greater work would be the later completed, so we find thoughts, sentiments, and ideas, first appearing in prose under Bacon's name, afterwards polished and applied in the poetry of Shakespeare.

Those who endeavor to belittle Shakespeare's learning, deny him even the authorship of the Plays, because they cannot comprehend the way of reaching such heights of knowledge without the aid of professors and universities. They cannot understand that books and schools are helps, that they create nothing, that natural, innate faculty and power constitute the measure of genius. If we wish an illustration of this, there is Abraham Lincoln. His opportunities for training in the schools were far more limited than Shakespeare's, and his means of education bore no logical relation to the position he finally reached as a thinker and writer.

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY.

RECENT SCIENCE.

ARCHEOLOGY.

The Ancient Name of Great Britain.-The oldest form of the name of Britain is Ortanis, from which comes the adjective Ortanicos, which in Irish is Cruitnech. This last is the name which the Irish gave to the Picts, once masters of Great Britain. The adjective mentioned became in the language of the Gauls Pretanicos. Pytheas, the Greek navigator of Marseilles, who flourished about the time of Alexander the Great, and is said to have made a voyage to Britain, in one of his few fragments now extant, calls Great Britain the Pretanic Island. A century after Pytheas, a Gallic people-the Britanni— drove the,Picts out of the larger portion of Great Britain, and established themselves there. From this came confusion in the minds of Greek geographers between the name of the conquerors and that of the conquered island. Out of this confusion arose various and mixed forms. The Pretanic Island became Bretannic, and then Britannic, which form became fixed, and has come down to us.-Arbois de Jubainville, in Revue Archéologique, Paris.

ASTRONOMY.

Explanation of the Mars Canals. In the two last numbers of Die Natur (Halle), March 4th and 14th, Dr. A. Tooska explains the Mars Canals by the theory that they are rifts in its crust due to collisions with its own erstwhile satellites, which, by their wreck and submergence in the body of the planet, caused an upheaval of débris on either bank of the rift. In support of this view he draws attention to the fact that one of Mars's present satellites, "Phoebus," which revolves round the planet at a distance of only 806 miles from its surface, is within the limit at which the centre of gravity is in equilibrium with the centrifugal force (calculated in the case of Mars at 2,710 miles), that it is approaching it at ever accelerated speed, and will at no very distant day, perhaps in a few decades, strike the planet at a low angle, running along its surface, and rending its crust with just such results as are now exhibited by the supposed canals. That is, it will form two parallel elevated crests rising to a high mountain at their termination, where the satellite's force was expended, which, after cooling, will be covered with snow and ice, and glaciated, while the furrow itself will be filled with water, which will also freeze, presenting a bright line relieved by the deep shadows of the overhanging mountain chains, one of which, under the influence of the planet's rotation, will be much steeper than the other. From this anticipation of a now pending astronomical phenomenon it is but a short step to the conclusion that the existing phenomena are equally explicable on the assumption that Mars has in

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