lege, where education of the highest standard may be acquired without reference to creed or any interference with religious opinions. As the promoters say in their prospectus, "Cette institution est entièrement étrangère à tout esprit ou intérêt de communion réligieuse, d'école philosophique ou de parti politique: elle proclame seulement le principe de la liberté et de l'inviolabilité de la science, et partant l'indépendance d'indagation et d'exposition, vis a vis n'importe quelle autorité, par la propre conscience du Professeur." Many shares have been subscribed for in and out of Spain, and when more publicity is given to the scheme, no doubt ample funds will be forthcoming.-Athenæum.

SCIENCE AND ART.

THE MOON'S CONDITION.-Whatever may be the theories of modern geologists, or whatever changes may yet await some of their conclusions, one thing seems evident, that the eruptive force which has moulded the surface of the moon into its present strange configuration has been decaying down to either comparative or absolute extinction. It is certainly not very material whether our generation may be contemporary with its expiring efforts, or with a subsequent state of quiescence; but it is a question not without much interest; and few observers would not hail with pleasure an opportunity of witnessing the activity of a lunar volcano. However, it is still sub judice whether anything of the kind has occurred since the invention of the telescope; and there is more difficulty than might be supposed in forming a reliable opinion, partly from the inaccuracies and mistakes of the earlier observers, partly from the deficiencies of existing maps, and partly from the backwardness to supply those deficiencies at the hands of the possessors of the powerful instruments of the day. Close investigation and careful drawing is required, and that under several angles of illumination; and though photography may render most important service, as that of an eye which never omits anything, yet the circumstances would be very exceptional which would give to its renderings the keenness and certainty of ocular inspection. Each mode may help the other. It is, of course, among the minutest craters, and, according to that great authority, Schmidt, among the fissures or cracks, that we must seek for the evidence of remaining chemical life. But change of perhaps a less intelligible nature may be detected among the multitude of light streaks and brilliant patches which variegate the fully-enlightened moon with such perplexing intricacy. There

is strong evidence of altered brightness in some places, and it is much to be wished that some careful, patient observer would undertake the task of giving us a portion, at least, of a map of the full moon.

PERIODICITY OF HURRICANES.- Vice-Admiral Fleuriot de Langle has published in the last two numbers of the Revue Maritime et Coloniale a long discussion on the periodicity of cyclones in all parts of the world. The paper scems to have been first read at the in Geographical Conference Paris last autumn. M. de Langle seeks to connect these storms directly with astronomical phenomena, as will be seen from the conclusions which he gives in the following

sentences:

"We may deduce from the preceding investigations that when the latitude of the place, the declination of the sun or the moon resume the same values respectively, and these phenomena coincide with an eclipse of the sun or the moon, or with a phase of the moon, on its approach to its apogee or perigee, there is danger of a hurricane. If at these critical periods there is any unsteadiness in the winds, extra caution is required when the apogee or perigee occurs near the time of full or new moon."

Of course the statements are corroborated by a copious array of diagrams and tables, but after a careful study of the paper we fail to find that much has been added to our knowledge of the subject. There seems to be one radical defect in the reasoning, which influences all discussions of the relation between the moon and the weather. The hour of occurrence of a phenomenon at one station is taken, and the relation of that occurrence to the moon's age and position is investigated; but it is persistently ignored that the hurricane moves over the earth's surface, so that if of any other phenomenon, it must necessarily its occurrence at A coincides with the period

fail to coincide with it at B.

ARCHEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES IN ROME.The excavations undertaken at the Esquiline to clear what remains of the nympheum, designated the temple of Minerva Medica, have been terminated. The ruins are surrounded with bath-rooms and porticoes of more recent construction. On the south side of the Piazza Dante vestiges have been discovered of a large edifice, having formed a portion of the Lamiani garden, enclosing two large reservoirs for water, and two semicircular rooms, and where were found three fragments of statues, a portion of a column of African marble, and some pieces of sculpture which belong to a group of figures discovered nearly in the same local

the mouth to be immediately rejected; so it occurred to him that as the nervous system appeared to want soothing instead of stimulating, powerful sedatives if put under the skin would prove beneficial. A solution of chloral hydrate (which has a very depressing action on the heart) was employed in twenty cases where the patients were either in collapse, or approaching it, and eighteen of these recovered. They were natives of Bengal. It is probable that, among Europeans, in severe cases, more powerful depressants may be required; and Surgeon-major Hall recommends the employment of solutions of Prussic acid, Calabar bean, bromide of potassium, and other true sedatives. Opium (which is not really a sedative, but a stimulating narcotic) and all alcoholic stimulants are to be avoided, and nothing given to the patient to drink, in collapse, except cold water, of which he may have as much as he likes.

VARIETIES.

BELLS. To a greater extent than any other author Charles Dickens recognizes and plays with the beauty of the bells. Even at an early age he began instinctively to classify bells as the delightful dinner bell," and the "abominable getting-up bell." On his nurse's knee, spell-bound and agape, he listened to the thrilling legend which tells how some infant knight-errant of the reign of

Edward III. "rode a cock-horse to Banbury Cross, to see the fine lady who wore bells on her toes, and bells upon her palfrey hung."

He heard how the bull tolled the bell at the funeral of poor Cock Robin; and that the sounds of the Bow-bells, which summoned little fortuneless Dick Whittington to "turn again," echoed through his after-life, is plain from the fact that he recurs to the story again and again, especially in "Dombey and Son." By the mouth of quaint little dreamy Paul Dombey, Dickens evinces his child-love of bells, asking the workman who was mending the clock at Dr. Blimber's academy for young gentlemen "a multitude of questions about clocks and chimes, as, whether people watched up in the lonely church-steeples by night to make them strike, and how the bells were rung when people died, and whether those were different bells from wedding-bells, or only sounded dismal in the fancies of the living;" and then proceeding "to enlighten his new acquaintance on the subject of the curfewbell of ancient days," and on the general history of bells, as the precocious lad was well qualified to do, doubtless somewhat to this effect: Bells, you must know, have, possibly from the time of Jubal, always sounded in the

martial pomps, the religious ceremonials, the wild festivities of barbarism. Was it not Layard who discovered small bronze bells in the palace of Nimroud? Aaron's robe was fringed with tiny bells of gold in token of his office, just as the Kings of Persia and the Princesses of Arabia wore golden bells upon their fingers and in their hair in token of their rank. Picture lovely Herodias dancing before Herod,

"While from her long dark tresses, in a fall
Of curls descending, bells as musical
As those that on the golden-shafted trees
Of Eden shake in the eternal breeze
Rang round her steps.'

At the worship of Isis and Osiris, at the rites of Cibele, at the mysteries of Bacchus, sculpture proves that bells were used They tolled in the temples of Brahma, were worn on golden zone by the nautch girls, were shaken in Indian jungles by the fleet courier to scare away the hyæna and the raan-eater. The continual jingling of the camels' bells is the marked characteristic of the Oriental caravan, except in the desert, where their sound might attract Bedouin freebooters to the spoil. They are as distinctively the Christian churchcall (ordained by symbols, baptized by bishops, christened by Popes) as trumpets were the Jewish, as the muezzin was the Mahometan, the tocsin the Mexican, as the symbol was peculiar to the mythologies of the East, the tom-tom to the rites of the African. At the elevation of the Host, on the garments of

Greek bishops, at feasts, funerals, triumphs, massacres, sounds the ubiquitous bell, even in the very anathema of the Church: recollect how the Pope, when Sir Ingoldsby Bray confessed to the murder of "only a bare-footed friar," exclaimed

"Go fetch me a book; go fetch me a bell

As big as a dustman's; and a candle as well;
I'll send him where good manners won't let me tell."

Again, recall how the great Lord Cardinal of
Rheims solemnly called for his candle, his
book, and his bell, and then excommunicated
the sacrilegious little jackdaw, causing its
premature moulting and ultimate remorse,
and discovery of the ring hidden in its nest
up in the belfry. Perhaps on account of
their sacred character, perhaps because most
nations have endowed music with potency to
dispel delirium, depression, insanity, the
ple invested church-bells with mysterious
attributes: they could exorcise evil spirits,
calm hurricanes, defy lightning, appease the
bloodthirsty, expel disease; lo! are not these
things all written in Longfellow's "Golden
Legend?"-Belgravia.

peo

MAX MULLER ON CHARLES KINGSLEY.Never shall I forget the moment when for the last time I gazed upon the manly features of

Charles Kingsley-features which death had rendered calm, grand, sublime. The constant struggle that in life seemed to allow no rest to his expression, the spirit, like a caged lion, shaking the bars of his prison, the mind striving for utterance, the soul wearying for loving response-all that was over. There remained only the satisfied expression of triumph and peace, as of a soldier who had fought a good fight, and who, while sinking into the stillness of the slumber of death, listens to the distant sounds of music and to the shouts of victory. One saw the ideal man, as nature had meant him to be, and one felt that there is no greater sculptor than death. As one looked on that marble statue, which only some weeks ago had so warmly pressed one's hand, his whole life flashed through one's thoughts. One remembered the young curate and the Saint's Tragedy; the chartist parson and Alton Locke; the happy poet and the Sands of Dee; the brilliant novel-writer and Hypatia and Westward Ho; the rector of Eversley and his village sermons; the beloved professor at Cambridge, the busy canon at Chester, the powerful preacher in Westminster Abbey. One thought of him by the Berkshire chalk-streams and on the Devonshire coast, watching the beauty and wisdom of nature, reading her solemn lessons, chuckling, too, over her inimitable fun. One saw him in town-alleys, preaching the Gospel of godliness and cleanliness, while smoking his pipe with soldiers and navvies. One heard him in drawing-rooms, listened to with patient silence, till one of his vigorous or quaint speeches bounded forth, never to be forgotten. How children delighted in him! How young, wild men believed in him, and obeyed him, too! How women were captivated by his chivalry, older men by his genuine humility and sympathy! All that was now passing away-was gone. But as one looked on him for the last time on earth, one felt that greater than the curate, the poet, the professor, the canon had been the man himself, with his warm heart, his honest purposes, his trust in his friends, his readiness to spend himself, his chivalry and humility, worthy of a better age. Of all this the world knew little; yet few men excited wider and stronger sympathies. Who can forget that funeral on the 28th January, 1875, and the large, sad throng that gathered round his grave? There was the representative of the Prince of Wales, and close by the gypsies of the Eversley common, who used to call him their Patrico-rai, their Priest-King. There was the old squire of his village, and the laborers, young and old, to whom he had been a friend and a father. There were governors of distant

colonies, officers, and sailors, the bishop of his diocese, and the dean of his abbey; there were the leading Nonconformists of the neighborhood, and his own devoted curates, peers, and members of the House of Commons, authors and publishers; and outside the churchyard, the horses and the hounds and the huntsman in pink, for though as good a clergyman as any, Charles Kingsley had been a good sportsman, too, and had taken in his life many a fence as bravely as he took the last fence of all, without fear or trembling. All that he had loved, and all that had loved him was there, and few eyes were dry when he was laid in his own yellow gravelbed, the old trees which he had planted and cared for waving their branches to him for the last time, and the grey sunny sky looking down with calm pity on the deserted rectory, and on the short joys and the shorter sufferings of mortal men.-Preface to New Edition of the Roman and the Teuton.

SONNETS.

1.

O NATURE! thou whom I have thought to love, Seeing in thine the reflex of God's face,

A loathed abstraction would usurp thy place,While Him they not dethrone, they but disprove. Weird Nature! can it be that joy is fled,

And bald unmeaning lurks beneath thy smile? That beauty haunts the dust but to beguile, And that with Order, Love and Hope are dead? Pitiless force, all-moving, all unmoved,

Dread mother of unfathered worlds, assuage Thy wrath on us,-be this wild life reproved, And trampled into nothing in thy rage! Vain prayer, although the last of human kind,Force is not wrath,-but only deaf and blind.

11.

Dread force, in whom of old we love to see

A nursing mother, clothing with her life The seeds of Love divine, with what sore strife We hold or yield our thoughts of Love and thee! Thou art not calm," but restless as the ocean, Filling with aimless toil the endless yearsStumbling on thought, and throwing off the spheres,Churning the Universe with mindless motion. Dull fount of joy, unhallow'd source of tears,

Cold motor of our fervid faith and song, Dead, but engendering life, love, pangs, and fears, Thou crownedst thy wild work with foulest wrong When first thou lightedst on a seeming goal, And darkly blunder'd on man's suffering soul.

APRIL: A SONNET.

SNOW on the ground, and blossoms on the trees!
A bitter wind sweeps madly 'cross the moor;
The children shiver at the cottage door,
And old men crouch beside the fire for ease.
Yet still the happy lark disdains the breeze;

The buds swell out, the primrose makes a floor
Of sylvan beauty, though the frost be hoar,
And ships are battling with tempestuous seas.
'Tis April still, but April wrapt in cloud,-

Month of sweet promise and of Nature's bliss, When Earth leaps up at Heaven's reviving kiss, And flouts at Winter lingering in her shroud. Haste swiftly, Spring, to banish drear decay, And welcome Summer with the smile of May. JOHN DENNIS.