unlike her own frank, fearless self, that a tender dread of disturbing her un necessarily, held him back. He was learning and developing rapidly in Love's school. Then he would see her again, and again-and win his way at last! Meantime Kate looked at her watch. "I am going to treat you unceremoniously, as an old acquaintance," she said, smiling away the abruptness of her words; "but I have letters to write, and-"

"And I have kept you too long from them," interrupted Galbraith, rising, but not in the least ruffied. "I shall see you to-morrow."

"You are going to Richmond, are you not?"

"True; well, on Sunday, then—and hear when you leave."

"It all depends upon the lawyer," she returned, in a low voice. "Goodbye, Sir Hugh Galbraith."

He took the hand she held out, pressing it close, tighter than he knew, and kept it, still not daring to trust himself to speak. Kate strove to withdraw it, and grem so deadly white, while she compressed her lips with a look of pain, that a sudden sense of coming evil struck him. He relinquished her hand, and with a hasty "Good-bye-God bless. you!" turned quickly away. [To be continued.]

IN primitive stages of society the clannish life of rude tribes may well have been more favorable to frank and truthful relations between man and man than our wider and looser social intercourse can be. Yet one can see from the habits of modern savages that already in early savage times society was setting itself to take measures against men who broke faith to save themselves from harm or to gain some coveted good. At the stage of civilization where social order was becoming regular and settled, the wise men turned their minds to devise guarantees stronger than mere yes and no. Thus the ordeal and the oath were introduced, that wrong-doing should not be concealed or denied, that unrighteous claims should not be backed by false witness, and that covenants made should not be broken.

The principles on which these ordeals and oaths were invented and developed may to this day be plainly made out. It is evident that the matter was referred to the two intellectual orders of early times, the magicians and the priests. Each advised after the manner of his own profession. The magician said, With my symbols and charms I will try the accused, and bind the witness and the promiser. The priest said, I will call upon my spirits, and they shall find out the hidden thing, and punish the lie and the broken vow. Now magic and religion are separate in their nature and

origin. Magic is based on a delusive tendency arising out of the association of ideas, namely, the tendency to believe that things which are ideally connected in our minds must therefore be really connected in the outer world. Religion is based on the doctrine of spiritual beings, souls, demons, or deities, who take cognisance of men and interpose in their affairs. It is needful to keep this absolute distinction clear in our minds, for on it depends our finding our mental way through a set of complicated proceedings, in which magical and religious elements have become mixed in the most intricate manner. Well they might, considering how commonly the professions of sorcerer and priest have overlapped, so as even to be combined in one and the same person. But it seems from a general survey of the facts of ordeals and oaths, that on the whole the magical element in them is earliest and underlying, while the religious element is apt to come in later in history, often only taking up and consecrating some old magical process.

In the series of instances to be brought into view, this blending of the religious with the magical element will be repeatedly observable. It will be seen also that the ordeal and the oath are not only allied in their fundamental principles, but that they continually run into one another in their use. Oaths, we shall

see, may be made to act as ordeals, and ordeals are brought in as tests of oaths. While recognizing this close connection, it will be convenient to divide the two and take them in order according to their practical application, ordeals being proceedings for the discovery of wrongdoers, while oaths are of the nature of declarations or undertakings.

The association of ideas which serves as a magical basis for an ordeal is quite childish in its simplicity. Suppose it has to be decided which of two men has acted wrongfully, and appeal is had to the ordeal. There being no evidence on the real issue, a fanciful issue is taken instead, which can be settled, and the association of ideas does the rest. Thus in Borneo, when two Dayaks have to decide which is in the right, they have two equal lumps of salt given them to drop together into water, and the one whose lump is gone first is in the wrong. Or they put two live shell-fish on a plate, one for each disputant, and squeeze lime-juice over them, the verdict being given according to which man's champion-mollusc moves first. This reasoning is such as any child can enter into. Among the Sandwich Islanders, again, when a thief had to be detected, the priest would consecrate a dish of water, and the suspected persons, one by one, held their hands over it, till the approach of the guilty was known by the water trembling. Here the connection of ideas is plain. But we may see it somewhat more fully thought out in Europe, where the old notion remains on record that the executioner's sword will tremble when a thief draws near, and even utter a dull clang at the approach of a murderer.

Starting with the magical ordeal, we have next to notice how the religious element is imported into it. Take the ordeal of the balance, well known to Hindu law. A rude pair of scales is set up with its wooden scale-beam supported on posts; the accused is put in one scale, and stones and sand in the other to counterpoise him; then he is taken out, to be put in again after the balance has been called upon to show his guilt by letting him go down, or his innocence by raising him up. This is pure magic, the ideal weight of guilt being by mere absurd association of ideas transferred to material weight in a pair of scales. In this pro

cess no religious act is essential, but in practice it is introduced by prayers and sacrifices, and a sacred formula appealing to the great gods who know the walk of men, so that it is considered to be by their divine aid that the accused rises or falls at once in material fact and moral metaphor. If he either goes fairly up or down the case is clear. But a difficulty arises if the accused happens to weigh the same as he did five minutes before, so nearly at least as can be detected by a pair of heavy wooden scales which would hardly turn within an ounce or two. This embarrassing possibility has in fact perplexed the Hindu lawyers not a little. One learned pundit says-He is guilty, unless he goes right up! A second suggests-Weigh him again! A third distinguishes with subtlety-If he weighs the same, he is guilty, but not so guilty as if he had gone right down! The one only interpretation that never occurs to any of them, is that in may be an imponderable. We may smile at the Hindu way of striking a moral balance, but it should be remembered that a similar practice, probably a survival from the same original Aryan rite, was kept up in England within the last century. 1759, near Aylesbury, a woman who could not get her spinning-wheel to go round, and naturally concluded that it had been bewitched, charged one Susannah Haynokes with being the witch. At this Susannah's husband was indignant, and demanded that his wife should be allowed to clear herself by the customary ordeal of weighing. So they took her to the parish church, stripped her to her under garments, and weighed her against the church Bible; she outweighed it, and went home in triumph. Here the metaphor of weighing is worked in the opposite way to that in India, but it is quite as intelligible, and not a whit the worse for practical purposes. For yet another case, how an old magical process may be afterwards transformed by bringing in the religious sanction, we may look at the ancient classic sieve and shears, the sieve being suspended by sticking the points of the open shears into the rim, and the handles of the shears balanced on the forefingers of the holders. To discover a thief, or a lover, all that was required was to call over all suspected names, till the instru

In

ment turned at the right one. In the course of history, this childish divining ordeal came to be Christianized into the key and Bible, the key of course to open the secret, the Bible to supply the test of truth. For a thief-ordeal, the proper mode is to tie in the key at the verse of the 50th Psalm, "When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him;" and then when the names are called over, at the name of the guilty one the instrument makes its sign by swerving or turning in the holders' hands. This is interesting as being almost the only ordeal which survives in common use in England; it may be met with in many an out-of-the-way farm-house. It is some years since English rustics have dared to "swim" a witch, that is, to put in practice the ancient water-ordeal, which our folk-lore remembers in its most archaic Aryan form. Its essential principle is as plainly magical as any; the water, being set to make the trial, shows its decision by rejecting the guilty, who accordingly comes up to the surface. Our ancestors, who did not seize the distinction between weight and specific gravity, used to wonder at the supernatural power with which the water would heave up a wicked fellow, even if he weighed sixteen stone.

Medieval ordeals, by water or fire, by touch of the corpse, or by wager of battle have fallen to mere curiosities of literature, and it is needless to dwell here on their well-known picturesque details, or to repeat the liturgies of prayer or malediction said or sung by the consecrating priests. It is not by such accompanying formulas, but by the intention of the act itself, that we must estimate the real position of the religious element in it. Nowhere is this so strong as in what may be called the ordeal by miracle, where the innocent by Divine help walks over the nine red-hot ploughshares, or carried the red-hot iron bar in his hand, or drinks a dose of deadly poison and is none the worse for it; or, in the opposite way, where the draught of harmless water, cursed or consecrated by the priests, will bring within a few days dire disease on him or her who, being guilty, has dared to drink of it.

Looking at the subject from the statesman's point of view, the survey of the ordeals of all nations and ages enables

us to judge with some certainty what their practical effect has been for evil or good. Their basis being mere delusive imagination, when honestly administered their being right or wrong has been matter of mere accident. It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that fairplay ever generally prevailed in the administration of ordeals. As is wellknown, they have always been engines of political power in the hands of unscrupulous priests and chiefs. Often it was unnecessary even to cheat, when the arbiter had it at his pleasure to administer either a harmless ordeal like drinking cursed water, or a deadly ordeal by a dose of aconite or physostigma. When it comes to sheer cheating, nothing can be more atrocious than this poison-ordeal. In West Africa, where the Calabar bean is used, the administerers can give the accused a dose which will make him sick, and so prove his innocence, or they can give him enough to prove him guilty, and murder him in the very act of proof; when we consider that over a great part of that great continent this and similar drugs usually determine the destiny of people inconvenient to the Fetishman and the Chief-the constituted authorities of Church and State-we before us one efficient cause of the unprogressive character of African society. The famed ordeal by red-hot iron, also, has been a palpable swindle in the hands of the authorities. In India and Arabia the test is to lick the iron, which will burn the guilty tongue but not the innocent. Now, no doubt the judges know the secret that innocent and guilty alike can lick a white hot iron with impunity, as any blacksmith will do, and as I have done myself, the layer of vapor in a spheroidal state preventing any chemical contact with the skin. As for the walking over red-hot ploughshares, or carrying a red-hot iron bar three paces in the palm of the hand, its fraudulent nature fits with the fact that the ecclesiastics who administered it took their precautions against close approach of spectators much more carefully than the jugglers do who handle the red-hot bars and walk over the ploughshares nowadays; and, moreover, any list of cases will show how inevitably the friend of the Church got off, while the man on the wrong side was sure to "lose his

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cause and burn his fingers." Remembering how Queen Emma in the story, with uplifted eyes walked over the ploughshares without knowing it, and then asked when the trial was to begin, and how, after this triumphant issue, oneand-twenty manors were settled on the bishopric and church of Winchester, it may be inferred with some probability that in such cases the glowing ploughshares glowed with nothing more dangerous than daubs of red paint.

Almost the only effect of ordeals which can be looked upon as beneficial to society is that the belief in their efficacy has done something to deter the credulous from crime, and still more often has led the guilty to betray himself by his own terrified imagination. Visitors to Rome know the great round marble mask called the Bocca della Verità. It is but the sink of an old drain; but many a frightened knave has shrunk from the test of putting his hand into its open "mouth of truth" and taking oath of his innocence, lest it should really close on him as tradition says it does on the forsworn. The ordeal by the mouthful of food is still popular in Southern Asia for its practical effectiveness: the thief in the household, his mouth dry with nervous terror, fails to masticate or swallow fairly the grains of rice. So in old England, the culprit may have failed to swallow the consecrated cor-snæd, or trial-slice of bread or cheese; it stuck in his throat, as in Earl Godwin's in the story. To this day the formula, " May this mouthful choke me if I am not speaking truth!" keeps up the memory of the official or deal. Not less effective is the ordeal by curse still used in Russia to detect a thief. The babushka, or local witch, stands with a vessel of water before her in the midst of the assembled household, and makes bread pills to drop in, saying to each in order, "Ivan Ivanoff, if you are guilty, as this ball falls to the bottom, so your soul will fall into hell." But this is more than any common Russian will face, and the rule is that the culprit confesses at sight. This is the best that can be said for ordeals. Under their most favorable aspect, they are useful delusions or pious frauds. At worst they are those wickedest of human deeds, crimes disguised behind the mask of justice. Shall we wonder that the world,

slowly trying its institutions by the experience of ages, has at last come to the stage of casting out the judicial ordeal; or shall we rather wonder at the constitution of the human mind, which for so many ages has set up the creations of delusive fancy to hold sway over a world of facts?

From the Ordeal we pass to the Oath. The oath, for purposes of classification, may be best defined as an asseveration made under superhuman penalty, such penalty being (as in the ordeal) either magical or religious in its nature, or both combined. Here, then, we distinguish the oath from the mere declaration, or promise, or covenant, however formal. For example, the covenant by grasping hands is not in itself an oath, nor is even that widespread ancient ceremony of entering into a bond of brotherhood by the two parties mixing drops of their blood, or tasting each other's. This latter rite, though often called an oath, can under this definition be only reckoned as a solemn compact. But when a Galla of Abyssinia sits down over a pit covered over with a hide, imprecating that he may fall into a pit if he breaks his word, or when in our police-courts we make a Chinaman swear by taking an earthen saucer and breaking it on the rail in front of the witness box, signifying, as the interpreter then puts it in words, "if you do not tell the truth, your soul will be cracked like this saucer," we have here two full oaths, of which the penalty, magical or religious, is shown in pantomime before us. By the way, the English judges who authorised this last sensational ceremony must have believed that they were calling on a Chinaman to take a judicial oath after the manner of his own country; but they acted under a mistake, for in fact the Chinese use no oaths at all in their law-courts. Now we have to distinguish these real oaths from mere asseverations, in which emphatic terms, or descriptive gestures are introduced merely for the purpose of showing the strength of resolve in the declarer's mind. Where, then, does the difference lie between the two? It is to be found in the incurring of supernatural penalty. There would be no difficulty at all in clearing up the question, were it not that theologians have set up a distinction between oaths of imprecation and oaths of witness.

Such subtleties, however, looked at from a practical point of view, are seen to be casuistic cobwebs which a touch of the rough broom of common sense will sweep away. The practical question is this: does the swearer mean that by going through the ceremony, he brings on himself, if he breaks faith, some special magic harm, or divine displeasure and punishment? If so, the oath is practically imprecatory; if not, it is futile, wanting the very sanction which gives it legal value. It does not matter whether the imprecation is stated, or only implied. When a Bedouin picks up a straw, and swears by Him who made it grow and wither, there is no need to accompany this with a homily on the fate of the perjured. This reticence is so usual in the world, that as often as not we have to go outside the actual formula and ceremony to learn what their full intention is.

Let us now examine some typical forms of oath. The rude natives of New Guinea swear by the sun, or by a certain mountain, or by a weapon, that the sun may burn them, or the mountain crush them, or the weapon wound them, if they lie. The even ruder savages of the Brazilian forests, to confirm their words, raise the hand over the head or thrust it into their hair, or they will touch the points of their weapons. These two accounts of savage ceremony introduce us to customs well known to nations of higher culture. The raising of the hand toward the sky seems to mean here what it does elsewhere. It is in gesture calling on the Heaven-god to smite the perjurer with his thunder-bolt. The touching of the head, again, carries its meaning among these Brazilians, almost as plainly as in Africa, where we find men swearing by their heads or limbs, in the belief that they would wither if forsworn; or as when among the Old Prussians a man would lay his right hand on his own neck, and his left on the holy oak, saying: "May Perkun (the thunder-god) destroy me!" As to swearing by weapons, another graphic instance of its original meaning comes from Aracan, where the witness swearing to speak the truth takes in his hand a musket, a sword, a spear, a tiger's tusk, a crocodile's tooth, and a thunderbolt (that is, of course, a stone celt). The oath by the weapon not only lasted on through classic ages, but remain

ed so common in Christendom, that it was expressly forbidden by a Synod; even in the seventeenth century, to swear on the sword (like Hamlet's friends in the ghost scene) was still a legal oath in Holstein. As for the holding up the hand to invoke the personal divine sky, the successor of this primitive gesture remains to this day among the chief acts in the solemn oaths of European nations.

It could scarcely be shown more clearly with what childlike imagination the savage conceives that a symbolic action, such as touching his head or his spear, will somehow pass into reality. In connection with this group of oaths, we can carry yet a step further the illustration of the way men's minds work in this primitive stage of association of ideas. One of the accounts from New Guinea is that the swearer, holding up an arrow, calls on Heaven to punish him if he lies; but by turning the arrow the other way, the oath can be neutralized. This is magic all over. What one symbol can do, the reverse symbol can undo. True to the laws of primitive magical. reasoning, uncultured men elsewhere still carry on the symbolic reversal of their oaths. An Abyssinian chief, who had sworn an oath he disliked, has been seen to scrape it off his tongue, and spit it out. There are still places in Germany where the false witness reckons to escape the spiritual consequences of perjury by crooking one finger, to make it, I suppose, not a straight but a crooked oath, or he puts his left hand to his side to neutralize what the right hand is doing. Here is the idea of our "over the left;" but so far as I know this has come down with us to mere schoolboy's shuffling.

It has just been noticed that the arsenal of deadly weapons by which the natives of Aracan swear, includes a tiger's tusk and a crocodile's tooth. This leads us to a group of instructive rites belonging to Central and North Asia. Probably to this day, there may be seen in Russian law-courts in Siberia the oath on the bear's head. When an Ostyak is to be sworn, a bear's head is brought into court, and the man makes believe to bite at it, calling on the bear to devour him in like manner if he does not tell the truth. Now the meaning of this act goes beyond magic and into religion, for we are here