some of his less fortunate brethren. As a reward for "not doing it," the mahmalcamel becomes exempt from all labor for the rest of his life, which is passed in a lodging provided for his special use; and he has servants to wait upon him, and due provision made for his sustenance. Spite of the sacred mission of the mahmalcaravan, the wandering tribes of the desert do not scruple to lay it, like humbler ones, under contribution; the authorities have, in consequence, resolved to abridge the land-journey as much as possible; and this year, for the first time, the mahmal was sent from Cairo to Jeddah by railway, from whence it would be taken by steamer to Suez; still the camel's religious occupation is not quite gone, and the mahmal-carrier, after bearing the sacred carpet to the railway carriage, was provided with a truck to himself.

The camel has served other purposes than those of commerce and religion: he has been pressed into the service of warlike sovereigns, and employed not only to carry the luggage of their armies, but to draw scythed chariots, and to carry bowmen and swordsmen. Semiramis numbered, in one of her hosts, ten myriads of camel-mounted warriors, besides seventy millions of baggage camels. They were also employed by the strong-minded spouse of Ninus to carry the two millions of artificial elephants with which she marched into Mesopotamia. The legions of Xerxes suffered by their camels being carried away by lions in the night; and

Cyrus defeated Croesus by craftily taking advantage of the antipathy the horse bears to the camel. He mounted some of his soldiers on camels, and ordered them to charge the famous Lydian lighthorse. The chargers of the latter, rendered ungovernable by fear, fled from the field, and with them the hopes of the wealthiest of monarchs. Camels are still used in our Indian territories. The conqueror of Sinde, writing home while making his wonderful march upon the stronghold of the Ameers, exclaims: "Oh! the baggage, the baggage! it is enough to drive one mad. We have fifteen hundred camels with their confounded long necks, each occupying fifteen feet! Fancy these long devils in a defile, four miles and a quarter of them!" Yet this addition to the regular impedimenta of an army was far below the usual figure. Sir Charles is said to have been the first Indian general that marched with less than sixteen camels to carry his own baggage; Lord Keane required three hundred. The former commander declared emphatically that they were utterly unfit for military movements.

The time is possibly not far distant when the camel will be superseded by the great iron horse; but as long as the Arab finds in him a useful servant, meat, drink, clothing, and fuel, we need not wonder at the faith of the true believer, who expects to find a white-winged camel awaiting him as he steps out of his sepulcher, to convey his soul to paradise.

A MONSTER BAROMETER.-The great Water Barometer of the late Professor Daniell has been removed to the Crystal Palace. It was erected by him in 1832, at the foot of the staircase of the Royal Society's apartments in Somerset House. When the Society removed to Burlington House, their present habitation, the barometer was most suitably placed at the disposal of the eminent meteorologist, Mr. James Glaisher. On the 29th and 30th ult. the apparatus was removed, under his superintendence, by Messrs. Negretti and Zambra, who manifested great energy and skill in the operation, as stated by Mr. Glaisher, who has given an account of its removal in the Times. About a foot and a half of glass having been broken off the lower end of the barometer tube, Mr. Negretti succeeded in dexterously joining on a piece of glass tube to the broken end. By the aid

of steam - engines, etc., water was retorted, and steam generated and condensed. The tube, having been refilled, was finally closed by the blow-pipe, and the column of water reached nearly thirty-three feet without the slightest speck of air being perceptible. The instrument is fixed in an angle of the tropical department, and near the great tree. The top of the column of water can be seen from the first gallery; and as that change which causes a variation of an inch of mercury will cause a variation of more than a foot in a column of water, so the changes in the latter will be more than twelve times as great as in the former. Many oscillations, therefore, may be seen by the water which cannot be seen by the mer curial barometer; and in gales of wind or heavy storms, it will be highly interesting to watch its action.

MANY persons in modern Europe still forget that division is a condition of unity. Being persuaded that the greatest good consists in universal pacification, they imagine that all the disagreements and troubles of mankind may be averted by the intervention of the state. "China," remarks Ernest Renan scornfully, "is the ideal they propose to themselves."

To estimate the vast importance of the Reformation as a political and social movement, we need only to study carefully the history of France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It appears trite and commonplace to remark that a living unity is better than a dead uniformity, or that an enduring national prosperity can coëxist only with the perfect liberty of the subject. But from the days of Pisistratus to those of Macchiavelli, the most fatal errors in government have resulted from the attempt to establish false relations between the individual and the state.

The ancient idea of social order differed fundamentally from the modern. The "liberty" of antiquity was only another term for national independence. In reality, Sparta was no more free than Sardis. The development of the individual was entirely subservient to the law of the state. In old heathendom, religion was

* Etudes sur l'Histoire du Gouvernement représentatif en France. Par le Comte L. DE CARNÉ. Tomes. Paris. 1859.

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La Monarchie Française au Dixhuitième Siècle. Mémoires de Madame de Maintenon. Par le Duc

Par L. DE CARNÉ.

a national affair. In the first regular edict which was passed against the Christians, in the eighty-seventh year of our era, the Roman Emperor Domitian considered the offense of dissent from the established religion in the same light as a crime of high treason. And in the two remarkable letters that passed between_the moderate Trajan and the younger Pliny, we have an instance of the policy which approved the judicial persecution of religious opinions appearing to be in opposition to the national worship. Such a despotism could be maintained only on one condition: that the opinions and customs of all the surrounding nations should be in unison with it. And could we imagine a world so constituted that the principles of absolute government and universal centralization should be easily preserved, the existence of human depravity, with the absence of any counteracting influence, must inevitably involve the ruin of that world.

Thus it was that each nation of antiqui ty (possessing for a time some organic principle of its own; but being always narrow and circumscribed in its social conservatism) passed rapidly through the several phases of its development; and disastrous decay succeeded to its most brilliant splendor.

The Germanic races, (as Ernest Renan has remarked,) in bursting the bonds of the Roman Empire, effected the most important political revolution that the world has ever seen. It was the victory of the individual over the state. The despotism of the Empire had so enfeebled the civilized world, that the luxurious and effeminate majority was speedily overcome by an earnest and vigorous minority. Then commenced a new era. The tendency of the Germanic races was to absolute individualism. The theory of the state was completely strange to them, and the sysof the old and the new ideas. The royaltem of feudality resulted from the clashing ty of the Middle Ages was merely an extension of personal rights. The king was

the proprietor of the crown, and his authority was limited by charters and obligations. The bold and liberal barons who dictated conditions to the weak and vacillating John, had no idea of the nation as an absolute source of power. All such theories of government were confined to the peripatetic schoolmen who raved of Aristotle, without dreaming of putting his precepts into practice.

Christianity had, indeed, taken the place of Paganism; whilst, in accordance with the old régime, the Christian priesthood claimed its descent from an ancient hierarchy with a form and organization clearly defined. From the commencement of the fourth century (the epoch of their alliance with the Roman Empire) the churchmen had shown a decided preference for absolute authority. The Roman pontiff's considered themselves the chiefs of Christendom. In the name of a principle of universal centralization they endeavored to revive the ideas of antiquity. Even as early as under Charlemagne, their influence was silently leavening the nation. When, in the earlier stages of its history, the Christian religion was no longer persecuted by the State, it was not simply tolerated as free, but unfortunately be came subject to the Roman ideas, and transformed into a function of political power. In fact, since the period of Constantine, it may be said that the ancient Church has been more or less ruled by the interests of temporal kingdoms. In France the Church was transformed into a spiritual State, and the State into a kind of temporal Church. In a struggle between two great powers, the interests of one or the other become necessarily dominant. France, even during the most brilliant period of the Gallican Church, never attempted the most feeble approximation to a pure theocracy: the interests of the State remained always the most powerful. But in its centralized adminis tration the uniform government was eager to avail itself of the assistance of the priests. The absolute monarch was little content with his power over the interests of his people, when he could not tyrannize over their consciences. The confessional was the citadel of the Church; but this citadel was in the power of the State.

"France," exclaims M. Dollfus, "has been verging toward a triple Catholicism; a Catholicism which must embrace the whole physical, intellectual, and moral

man, in the narrow constraints of politi cal power." The roots of Catholicism have struck deeply in France, but they have undermined the foundations of national liberty. The intolerance of the Middle Ages was carried down into modern times. The Church, by its union with the monarchy, forced the State to act as executioner for her. Christianity thus inaugurated the most fatal type of spiritual tyranny. Diocletian and Nero founded no regular Inquisition. On the death of a tyrant in pagan Rome, the persecuted wretches might hope for a respite from their sufferings. But it remained for a centralized Church to establish the permanent scaffold in France; and it was reserved for the poetic and romantic Middle Ages to stifle all liberty of thought and conscience, by the most atrocious punishments which the cruelty and inveterate hatred of man could devise. St. Louis, the worthiest monarch who ever sat on the throne of France, and the most liberal sovereign of his times, was yet a terrible persecutor.

Thus it is in countries where an absolute government prevails, that a national and despotic Church produces the most disastrous consequences. Philip II., the Domitian of modern times, scarcely exercised a more important influence upon the religion of thousands, than did the amia ble Madome de Maintenon through her control of the cowardly Louis XIV. France has been proud of her concord. She has boasted of her grand uniformity; but it was her concord which led to the horrors of the Revolution, and it was her uniformity which engendered the skepti cism of the eighteenth century, and the flippant deism of the present day. It has been the error of France to oppose the free spontaneity of man's spirit; to forget in what sense the domain of the soul is spiritual, and independent of official organization. The mistakes into which France has fallen in her government, the difficulties which she has experienced in the establishment of a constitutional government, have been partly the work of Catholicism. A false idea of sovereignty has been engendered by a tendency to the Roman ideas. The theoretical monarchy of the Gallican Church must necessarily be a Louis XIV., possessing full power over the bodies and souls of his subjects. Nor has the Church itself been otherwise than injured by this alliance: